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 EMINENT RADICALS 
 
 IN AND OUT 
 
 OF PARLIAMENT. 
 
 °\T>
 
 Ex Libris 
 C. K. OGDEN 
 
 Eminent Radicals 
 
 IN AND OUT 
 
 OF PARLIAMENT. 
 
 BY 
 
 J. MORRISON DAVIDSON 
 
 (of the middle temple), 
 BARRISTER-AT-LAW. 
 
 W. STEWART & CO., 
 THE HOLBORN VIADUCT STEPS, E.C. 
 
 1880.
 
 COLSTON AND SON, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
 
 
 TO THE READER. 
 
 3>#<00- 
 
 ^THESE brief Sketches of EmiDent Eadicals were 
 originally contributed to the Weekly Dispatch. 
 
 They were each written at a single spell, and it was 
 not at first intended that they should be republished. 
 
 They, however, attracted an attention gratifying to 
 me in proportion to its unexpectedness. 
 
 Many brother journalists and several distinguished 
 members of the Legislature, whose judgment I was 
 bound to respect, urged reproduction. Hence this 
 volume, which owes much to the liberal enterprise of 
 the publishers. 
 
 As regards the Sketches themselves, their chief merit, 
 if they have any, consists in this, that they have not 
 been " written to order," but, by the indulgence of the 
 Editor of the Dispatch, express as nearly as possible 
 the sentiments of the writer regarding twenty-four 
 representative Eadicals, with most of whom he is per- 
 sonally acquainted. 
 
 These " Men of the Left " I regard as the salt of our 
 political world. Nevertheless, I can say with truth 
 that, if I have set down nothing in malice, neither have 
 I consciously extenuated in aught.
 
 vi To the Reader. 
 
 To complete the roll of Eminent Kadicals, at least a 
 score of other honourable names ought to be added. 
 " There be of them that have left a name behind them, 
 that their praises might be reported. And some there 
 be that have no memorial ; but these also were merciful 
 men, whose righteousness shall not be forgotten ; with 
 their seed shall remain a good inheritance, and their 
 glory shall not be blotted out. The people will tell of 
 their wisdom, and the congregation will show forth their 
 praise." 
 
 J. M. D. 
 
 6 Pump Coort, Temple, 
 January 1880.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 EMINENT RADICALS IN PARLIAMENT. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE, .... 9 
 
 JOHN BRIGHT, 19 
 
 PETER ALFRED TAYLOR, 29 
 
 SIR CHARLES WENTWORTH DILKE, ' . . .38 
 
 JOSEPH COWEN, . 50 
 
 SIR WILFRID LAWSON, 61 
 
 HENRY FAWCETT, • . 71 
 
 JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN, 84 
 
 THOMAS BURT, 95 
 
 HENRY RICHARD, 105 
 
 LEONARD HENRY COURTNEY, . . .116 
 
 ANTHONY JOHN MUNDELLA, . . . .125 
 
 EMINENT RADICALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 
 
 JOHN MORLEY, . 
 ROBERT WILLIAM DALE, 
 JOSEPH ARCH, 
 EDWARD SPENCER BEESLY, 
 
 137 
 147 
 158 
 168
 
 Vlll 
 
 Contents. 
 
 CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON, 
 JAMES BEAL, 
 
 MONCURE DANIEL CONWAY, 
 CHARLES BRADLAUGH, 
 JAMES ALLANSON PICTON, . 
 FREDERICK AUGUSTUS MAXSE, 
 THE HON. AUBERON HERBERT, 
 EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN, 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 
 179 
 
 • • 
 
 19 1 
 
 . 
 
 200 
 
 . 
 
 2IO 
 
 . 
 
 223 
 
 . 
 
 231 
 
 . 
 
 240 
 
 . 
 
 . 251
 
 EMINENT RADICALS 
 
 IN PARLIAMENT. 
 
 i. 
 
 WILLIAM E IV ART GLADSTONE. 
 
 " His strength is as the strength of ten, 
 Because hia heart is pure." 
 
 MR. GLADSTONE has himself defined a Radical politician 
 as one who " is in earnest." I thankfully accept the 
 definition, and unhesitatingly place his honoured name at 
 the head of this series of Biographical Sketches of Eminent 
 Radicals. He is, and has ever been, pre-eminently in earnest 
 — in earnest not for himself but for the commonweal. The 
 addition, " for the commonweal," is essential to the definition 
 for time was, of course. Avhen Mr. Gladstone was not num- 
 bered with eminent Radicals, but with eminent Tories, whose 
 characteristic it is, if they are in earnest at all, to be in 
 earnest chiefly for themselves or the interests of their class. 
 Of this latter reprehensible form of earnestness, I venture to 
 affirm Mr. Gladstone has at no time been guilty. While yet 
 in his misdirected youth among the Tories, he was never 
 really of them — 
 
 " He only in a general, honest thought, 
 And common good to all, made one of them. " 
 
 The circumstances of his birth and education almost neces- 
 sarily determined that he should enter public life as " the 
 rising hope " of Toryism. The strength, candour, generosity, 
 and innate nobility of his nature have with equally irre-
 
 io Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 sistible force made his whole subsequent career a slow but 
 sure process of repudiation of everything that Tories hold 
 dear. Forty-six years ago, when he entered Parliament for 
 Newark, as the nominee of the Duke of Newcastle, he was 
 the hope of the High Tory party ; to-day he is the hope of 
 the undaunted Radicalism of England, which, despite Con- 
 servative reactions and Whig infidelities, knows nothing of 
 defeat, but, like Milton — blind and fallen on evil times — 
 " bates not a jot of heart or hope, but steers right onwards." 
 Old as he is, his true place is at the helm of the Radical 
 barque. Who can foresee himself? 
 
 William Ewart Gladstone is the fourth son of Sir John 
 Gladstone of Fasque, Kincardineshire, first baronet. He 
 was born on the 29th December 1809, at Liverpool, where 
 his father, who had originally come from Leith, was then 
 famous as a successful merchant, and as an influential friend 
 and partisan of Canning. The name was originally spelt 
 Gladstanes or Gledstanes, gled being Lowland Scottish for a 
 hawk, and stanes meaning rocks. It is still not uncommon 
 in many parts of rural Scotland to call a man by the place 
 of his abode at the expense of his proper patronymic. In 
 earlier times such local appellations often adhered per- 
 manently to individuals, and it is to this process that the 
 Gladstone family is indebted for its name. 
 
 The ex-Premier's mother was the daughter of Mr. Andrew 
 Robertson, Provost of Dingwall, whose descent the credulous 
 Burke traces from Robert Bruce, the patriot King of Scot- 
 land. Be this as it may, Mr. Gladstone is of pure Scottish 
 blood — a fact of which he has oftener than once expressed 
 himself proud. Indeed, the perfervidum ingenium Scotortim 
 is his in a remarkable degree, and it has its influence on 
 public opinion across the Border, notwithstanding his English 
 training and his antipathetic High-Churchism. However 
 England may abase herself before the gorgeous Lord 
 Benjingo, Scotland will never turn her back on the un- 
 derrated Gladstone. There lives not a Scotsman that is 
 not inwardly proud of him, for blood is, after all, thicker
 
 William Ewart Gladstone. 1 1 
 
 than water. Evicted from one English constituency after 
 another for his devotion to Liberal principles, there is a sort 
 of " fitness of things " not without a certain pathos in the 
 gallant effort which the country of his forefathers has made 
 to seize a seat for him from between the teeth of the great 
 feudal despot of the North, " the bold Buccleuch." 
 
 From a very tender age young Gladstone exhibited a 
 wonderful aptitude for learning, and an almost superhuman 
 industry, which age, instead of abating, seemingly increases. 
 His daily autograph correspondence with high and low, rich 
 and poor, conducted chiefly by the much-derided post-card, 
 would afford ample employment for about six Somerset 
 House clerks working at their usual pace. He possesses, I 
 should say, without exception, the most omnivorous and 
 untiring brain in England, possibly in the whole world. No 
 wonder that his course at Eton and at Oxford was marked 
 by the highest distinction. A student of Christ Church, he 
 graduated " double first" in his twenty-second year, a super- 
 lative master of the language and literature of Greece and 
 Rome. He availed himself of every advantage the university 
 could bestow, and, unlike most other scholars who subse- 
 quently become politicians and men of the world, he has 
 never ceased to add to the immense store of his academic 
 acquirements. He has published Latin sacred verses not 
 appreciably inferior in grace to those of Buchanan and 
 Milton, and as a Homeric student his " Studies of Homer 
 and the Homeric Age " entitle him to no mean place among 
 scholarly critics. 
 
 Unfortunately, however, for him, the sciences of obser- 
 vation — chemistry, botany, geology, natural history, and the 
 like — were in his day almost wholly neglected at Oxford, 
 and in place thereof an incredible mind-distorting theology 
 was in vogue, from the evil consequences of which the 
 ex-Premier has not yet been able altogether to emancipate 
 himself. It has laid him open to many false charges, and to 
 some true ones. It made him for years a defender of the 
 utterly indefensible Irish Establishment, and when at last
 
 1 2 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 " the slow and resistless force of conviction " brought him to 
 a better frame of mind, the change was attributed by thou- 
 sands who ought to have known better to a concealed 
 conversion to Romansim. In vain has he striven in pamphlet 
 and periodical to rebut the allegation, and to make intel- 
 ligible to the English people his theological standpoint. 
 Newman, Manning, Capel, the most redoubtable champions 
 of Roman Catholicism in England, he has met, foot to foot, 
 and hand to hand, on their own ground, and foiled with their 
 own weapons. He has proved with amazing learning and 
 ingenuity worthy of the Schoolmen that the Papacy has at 
 last succeeded in " repudiating both science and history," 
 and that his Holiness himself is next door to Antichrist. 
 
 He, a simple layman, has demonstrated that he is one of 
 the greatest theologians of the age. Still, much as I admire 
 learning in every department of human intelligence, I must 
 confess that I should have liked Mr. Gladstone better had 
 he been more of a Gallio in such matters. One would almost 
 as soon see a noble intellect like his exercising itself about 
 the exploded theories of the astrologists or alchemists as 
 about the decisions of Church Councils, early or late. 
 
 His personal religion is, however, altogether another 
 matter. It is the chief source of his overpowering sense of 
 duty, of his righteous indignation, of his tender humanity. 
 He is as much a Christian statesman as Pym, Sir Harry 
 Vane, or Oliver Cromwell. His unaffected piety has opened 
 up to him the hearts of his Nonconformist fellow-countrymen 
 as nothing else could have done. Where he is best known 
 he is most esteemed — viz., at his seat of Hawarden, a fine 
 property, bought by his wife's ancestor Sergeant Glynne, 
 Chief Justice to Oliver Cromwell, on the sequestration of 
 the Stanley estates, after the execution of James, the seventh 
 Earl of Derby. 
 
 Every morning, by eight o'clock, Mr. Gladstone may be 
 seen wending his way to the village church of Hawarden to 
 engage in matins as a prelude to the work of the day. Even 
 when Prime Minister of England he has been found in the
 
 William Ewart Gladstone. 13 
 
 humblest homes reading to the sick or dying consolatory 
 passages of Scripture in his own soft melodious tones. 
 
 The best controller of the national exchequer that the 
 country has ever had, his personal charities are almost reck- 
 less. In the course of his long walks in the neighbourhood 
 of Hawarden, his pockets have an astonishing knack of 
 emptying themselves, and amusing stories are told of his 
 having had to walk home inconvenient distances of ten and 
 twelve miles in the dark because of his inability to raise so 
 much as a third-class railway fare. As Prime Minister he 
 refused an increase of salary, and when he quitted office he 
 was so impoverished that his famous collection of china is 
 said to have been sold in consequence. 
 
 All his known habits and recreations are of the most 
 innocent and healthy kind. He has nothing either of the 
 jockey or the gamekeeper in his composition — a fact which 
 may account for a good deal of the antipathy exhibited 
 towards him by the enlightened squirearchy of England. 
 Yet Mr. Gladstone has none of the " lean and hungry look " 
 of a Cassius about him. He is not a total abstainer, but he 
 is next door. His is pre-eminently a mens sana in cor- 
 pore sano. As is well known, he is one of the most stalwart 
 tree-fellers in England. His skill with his axe would not 
 disgrace a Canadian backwoodsman, and he has curious 
 taste in carving and pottery which is almost scientific. 
 
 Never was there a public man whose private " record " — 
 to use an Americanism — has been more blameless. In his 
 zeal for domestic purity, he has not hesitated to rebuke the 
 " conjugal infidelity " which, since the death of the Prince 
 Consort, has developed itself in close proximity to the 
 Throne. In a word, he is a Christian statesman with all 
 the advantages and disadvantages which adhere to that 
 character. 
 
 Let me now say a word of his renown as an orator. As a 
 speaker I should be disposed to place him midway between 
 Bright at his best and Beaconsfield at any time. For moral 
 earnestness Mr. Bright is not his inferior, and in the com-
 
 14 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 * 
 
 mand of pathos, humour, clear-cut thoughts, and chaste, 
 limpid English, he is undoubtedly his superior. On the 
 other hand, in versatility, in capacity for receiving new 
 ideas, and of marshalling multitudinous details, Mr. Glad- 
 stone has no living equal. He is the orator of affairs. He 
 has done what no one has ever done before him, made 
 Budgets eloquent, and figures to possess a lofty moral signi- 
 ficance. 
 
 Lord Beaconsfield unquestionably possesses in an eminent 
 degree some of the first requisites of oratory. He is more 
 witty, more ornate, and more audacious than his great rival, 
 but all is spoiled by levity, hopeless inaccuracy, and, I fear, 
 essential insincerity. " Can there be," Mr. Carlyle has asked, 
 " a more horrid object in creation than an eloquent man not 
 speaking the truth % " Was it " the cool conscious juggler," 
 the " Miraculous Premier " of to-day, that the Prophet of 
 Chelsea had in his mind's eye when, years ago, I heard him 
 put this important interrogatory on the occasion of his 
 Sectorial address to the students of Edinburgh University ? 
 Again, I fear, Yes. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone's oratory is marred by excessive copiousness 
 of diction, yet there is a charm in this rare defect. He 
 plunges right into a sea of words from which there seems no 
 possible extrication, and when he emerges safe and sound 
 his hearers feel like those who, " in the brave days of old," 
 beheld Horatius "plunge headlong in the tide" : — 
 
 " And when above the surges 
 They saw his crest appear, 
 All Rome sent forth a rapturous cry, 
 And even the ranks of Tuscany 
 Could scarce forbear to cheer." 
 
 Mr. Gladstone's conduct as a Parliamentary leader has been 
 severely censured by professed Liberals, and his resolution to 
 dissolve Parliament in 1874 has been specially instanced as 
 a proof of strategic unwisdom. I distinctly demur both to 
 indictment and proof. Those who say that he is not a good 
 leader are not "in earnest," and such men can never be ex-
 
 Willia?7t Ewart Gladstone. 15 
 
 pected to follow Mr. Gladstone with much comfort to them- 
 selves. He is the natural leader of the Advanced Liberals in 
 the House. The Blights, Dilkes, Chamberlains, Taylors, and 
 Courtneys would find no difficulty in following his lead. As 
 for the dissolution of 1874, so much complained of, no Liberal 
 Minister professing to govern, as every Liberal Minister is 
 supposed to do, in accordance with the will of the people, 
 could, in the face, of the adverse bye-elections which had 
 taken place, honestly refrain from directly appealing to the 
 constitutent authority. Indeed, the pity is, it seems to me, 
 that the appeal was not made sooner, for if that had been 
 done, all might have been well. The Conservative reaction 
 might have been nipped in the bud. 
 
 It remains to notice in very brief compass a few of the 
 more important events in the ex-Premier's public life, giving 
 preference to the more remote. In 1832 he was returned 
 for Newark in the Conservative interest, and in 1834 Sir 
 Robert Peel made him a Junior Lord of the Treasury. In 
 1835 he found himself Under-Secretary for the Colonies. 
 Shortly after Sir Robert's Administration fell, and Mr. Glad- 
 stone, in the cool shade of Opposition, found leisure to write 
 his oft-quoted works, " The State in its Relations with the 
 Church," and " Church Principles considered in their Results." 
 Lord Macaulay, in the Edinburgh Review, thus spoke the 
 judgment of posterity : — " We dissent from his opinions, but 
 we admire his talents ; we respect his integrity and bene- 
 volence, and we hope that he will not suffer political avoca- 
 tions so entirely to engross him as to leave him no leisure for 
 literature and philosophy." 
 
 In those days Mr. Gladstone held the untenable doctrine 
 that it is the business of the State to uphold "the true 
 religion." He ardently strove to find for the State Church a 
 moral basis and justification which it can never have. In so 
 doing he was "in earnest," but oblivious of the wisdom of 
 one who understood the genius of Christianity better than 
 himself : " My kingdom is not of this world." Since then " th e 
 slow and resistless force of conviction " has come to his aid.
 
 1 6 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 In 1841 Sir Robert Peel came back to office, and Mr. Glad- 
 stone was made Vice-President of the Board of Trade. In 
 1843 he became President of the Board, and for the first time 
 his wonderful genius for finance had full scope. In 1845 he 
 resigned office rather than be a party to adding to the 
 endowments of Maynooth, which he had condemned in his 
 work on " Church and State." Shiel wittily remarked that 
 " the statesman had been sacrificed to the author." In point 
 of fact his resignation is a standing rebuke to those who 
 have basely accused him of place-hunting. 
 
 From this time onwards Mr. Gladstone exhibited in in- 
 creasing measure and in numerous ways his leaning to- 
 wards Liberal opinions. Canningite and Oxford influences 
 began to lose their hold over him. " I trace," he said at 
 Oxford in December last, " in the education of Oxford of my 
 own time one great defect. Perhaps the fault was mine, but 
 I must admit that I did not learn when at Oxford that which 
 I have learned since — viz., to set a due value on the im- 
 perishable and inestimable principles of human liberty." In 
 the Budget of 1845 he defended a proposal to put slave- 
 grown sugar on a less favourable footing than free, and 
 when the Corn Law question became a "burning" one he 
 resigned his seat for Newark because of the anti-repeal 
 views of the Duke of Newcastle. His powerful pen was, 
 however, at the service of the repealers, and when the battle 
 was fought and won he was returned in 1847 for the Uni- 
 versity of Oxford. He was still, of course, nominally a Tory, 
 but one of his first acts was to support the removal of Jew- 
 ish disabilities, to the confusion of many of those whose 
 " rising hope " he was still supposed to be. 
 
 In the session of 1849 he made a powerful speech in favour 
 of the reform of our colonial policy, from which much benefit 
 has indirectly flowed to the colonies. 
 
 In 1851 "circumstances purely domestic" took him to 
 Naples, and there his humanity was stirred to its very core 
 by the unheard-of brutalities of King Bomba. His passionate 
 cry for redress sounded throughout the civilised world : " I
 
 William Ewart Glads lone. 17 
 
 have seen and heard the strong and true expression used, 
 1 This is the negation of God erected into a system of govern- 
 ment." For once Lord Palmerston was on the side of 
 justice, and the sword of Garibaldi eventually wrought out 
 for the Neapolitans the just vengeance which Mr. Gladstone 
 had invoked on their tyrants. 
 
 In the Administration of 1859, Mr. Gladstone, as Chancellor 
 of the Exchequer, was instrumental in the repeal of the paper 
 duty and in contracting the commercial treaty with France. 
 Of his remission of taxes and reductions of the National Debt 
 it is unnecessary to speak. They are achievements engraved 
 with an iron pen on the financial records of the country. 
 
 Two great questions, and two only, of his time has he com- 
 pletely misjudged, the Crimean war and the American war. 
 Of the first he was, to some extent, particeps criminis, and 
 with regard to the latter a singularly rash and hostile utter 
 ance numbered him with the friends of Secession. For the 
 former he has atoned by his late almost superhuman efforts 
 to prevent its recurrence ; and for the latter there is ample 
 compensation in our wisest international act, the Alabama 
 arbitration. 
 
 Of the mighty impulse which he gave to the movement 
 which ended in household suffrage being conferred on " our 
 own flesh and blood," of the imperishable achievements of 
 his late Ministry in passing the Ballot Act and the Edu- 
 cation Act, in abolishing purchase in the army, and above 
 all in disestablishing the Church of Ireland and reforming 
 the land laws of that unhappy country, what need to speak ? 
 To no Englishman of our time has it been given to per- 
 form such eminent service to his country and to humanity. 
 His Radicalism, commencing to meander more than forty 
 years ago among the stony uplands of Toryism, is now, as 
 the limit of life is approached, a majestic river, whose ample 
 flood will never be stinted or stayed till it is lost in the 
 ocean of eternity. 
 
 The times are fickle and out of joint. At the last general 
 election the constituencies deliberately cried out, " Not this
 
 1 8 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 man, but Barabbas ! " They have since given many signs 
 that they have had quite enough of Barabbas. That the 
 exceeding gravity of the times demands the return to office 
 of the ex-Premier there can be no doubt. He is emphati- 
 cally the man of the situation. In any case, if he has not 
 done enough for humanity, — if he has still, as he says, a 
 whole catalogue of " unredeemed pledges " to submit, — he 
 has done enough and more than enough to enshrine his 
 name imperishably in the hearts of all good men : — 
 
 " His life was gentle ; and the elements 
 So mixed in him, that Xature might stand up 
 And say to all the world, This was a Man ! "
 
 II. 
 
 JOHN BRIGHT. 
 
 " Thou art e'en as just a man 
 As e'er my conversation coped withal." 
 
 THERE is a quaint passage in " Ecclesiasticus " which ex- 
 presses better than anything I can think of my con- 
 ception of the way in which Mr. Bright will be regarded by 
 a not distant posterity. " Let us praise famous men," it runs, 
 " and our fathers that begat us. God hath wrought great 
 glory by them through His great power from the beginning ; 
 men renowned for their power giving counsel by their 
 understanding, and declaring prophecies; leaders of the 
 people by their counsels and by their knowledge meet for 
 the people, wise and eloquent in their instructions; rich 
 men furnished with ability, living peaceably in their habi- 
 tations." " All these," it is added, " were honoured in their 
 generations, and were the glory of their times." And, as- 
 suredly, if characteristics such as these appertain to any 
 man of our day and generation, it is to John Bright. What 
 leader of the people has given wiser counsel, more eloquent 
 instruction — nay, declared more prophecies % As applied to 
 him the title of Right Honourable is, for a wonder, fully 
 deserved. It fits like a glove. From the beginning of his 
 career until now " great glory has been wrought by him," 
 and that, too, "through His great power," Mr. Bright 
 would be the first to postulate. 
 
 Least of all our public men is the illustrious Tribune of 
 the People an adventurer, self-seeker, or demagogue. I do
 
 20 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 not know that he can be described as a " rich " man. Riches 
 is a specially comparative term in this aristocracy-ridden 
 land, but certainly the Anti-Corn Law agitation found him 
 a well-to-do man, " furnished with ability, living peaceably 
 in his habitation" at Rochdale, where he might have re- 
 mained to this day hardly distinguishable from the mass of 
 his fellow citizens, had he not had what, in the phraseology 
 of Puritanism, is named a " call." He was at the mill, as 
 Elisha was at the plough, when the divine messenger laid 
 hold of him in the guise of a gaunt, starving multitude, for 
 whose wrongs he was imperatively commanded to seek 
 redress at the hands of a heartless and stupid Legislature. 
 The Corn Laws repealed, the horizon of his public duties 
 widened, but the spirit in which he has continued to act has 
 remained the same. He is the great Puritan statesman ot 
 England, ever consciously living, as did his favourite poet 
 Milton, " in his great Taskmaster's eye." This is the key to 
 his simple but grand character, as it is to that of the much 
 more complex Gladstone — a singular fact, certainly, in view 
 of the grave doubts now entertained in so many not in- 
 competent quarters with respect to the objective reality of 
 all religious beliefs. 
 
 Mr. Bright has completed his sixty-eighth year, having 
 been born in 1811, in his father's house at Greenbank, near 
 Rochdale. Needless to say his ancestors did not " come 
 over at the Conquest." So far as is known, there is not a 
 single " de " among them. The first discoverable local 
 habitation of the Brights is a place still called "Bright's 
 Farm," near Lyneham, in Wiltshire. Here, in 1714, a certain 
 Abraham Bright married Martha Jacobs, a handsome Jewess, 
 and shortly afterwards the couple removed to Coventry, 
 where Abraham begat William Bright, who begat Jacob, 
 who begat Jacob junior, who, coming to Rochdale in 1796, 
 was espoused to Martha Wood, the daughter of a respect- 
 able tradesman of Bolton-le-Moors, and became in due 
 course the father of John the Great, the subject of this 
 sketch.
 
 John Bright. 2 1 
 
 Mr. Bright's ancestry abounds in Abrahams and Jacobs, 
 Marthas and Marys. He has a sort of vested interest in 
 Scriptural characters and Scriptural knowledge which comes 
 as instinctively to him as fox-hunting to a squire of the 
 county. He is a hereditary Nonconformist, nearly all his 
 relatives, as is well known, being members of the Society of 
 Friends. He may be said to have been born resisting 
 church rates. His father, a most estimable man, could 
 never be induced to pay them, and was, in consequence, 
 as familiar with execution warrants as with the pages of 
 his ledger. Not a bad example, assuredly, for a youthful 
 People's Tribune ! Bright the elder had started life as a 
 poor but honest weaver, working, as his right honourable 
 son has told all the world, for six shillings a week! In 
 1809 he took an old mill named Greenbank. Some Man- 
 chester friends who had confidence in his intelligence and 
 integrity supplied the capital, and by the time that the 
 ex-President of the Board of Trade had attained years of 
 discretion, the family were in easy circumstances. The 
 business has since been much developed, but the knowledge 
 that Mr. Bright, from the first, possessed a substantial 
 " stake in the country," has given a cogency to his more 
 Radical and humanitarian opinions, in the eyes of the 
 middle class, which no amount of mere argument could have 
 ever supplied. 
 
 Was Mr. Bright equally happy in his education? The 
 question is one of great difficulty, but, on the whole, I am 
 disposed to think he was. True, he did not learn much 
 at the Friends' schools which he frequented, but, on the 
 other hand, unlike Mr. Gladstone, with his great academic 
 acquirements, he learned nothing which it has been necessary 
 for him by a painful process to unlearn. If, like Shakespeare, 
 he "knows little Latin and less Greek," he knows un- 
 commonly well how to do without them. At the Ackworth 
 and York schools his heart was cultivated if his head was 
 not crammed. The foundations were laid deep and strong 
 of- a placid, free, wise, and upright manhood. " Knowledge
 
 22 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 comes, but wisdom lingers." It was the educational aim 
 of the Friends of Bright's childhood to instil wisdom first, 
 and to leave knowledge pretty much to take care of itself. 
 I do not like to contemplate what might have happened to 
 Mr. Bright if he had gone to Eton and to Oxford with Mr. 
 Gladstone and drunk in all the pernicious ecclesiastical and 
 political nonsense which the ex-Premier imbibed in his 
 misdirected youth. Mr. Gladstone has survived Oxford 
 and come out clothed and in his right mind, but it is highly 
 doubtful if Mr. Bright would have been equally fortunate. 
 He is by temperament a Conservative, who has been sin- 
 gularly faithful to all the ideals with which he started life. 
 What he is to-day he was forty-five years ago. His 
 principles are far-reaching and susceptible of varied applica- 
 tion, but I venture to affirm that if they were once realised, 
 he would be about the last man in England to find new 
 ones. He is the incarnation of Quakerism, summing up in 
 his own person all its noble law and all its prophets. The 
 sect which has been numerically so weak and morally so 
 strong will never produce another such. Its theory of the 
 public good, though perhaps the highest of any, is limited 
 after all. 
 
 One part of Mr. Bright's education which was not ne- 
 glected, and which has been to him from boyhood a source 
 of real inspiration, I ought not to overlook — viz., his study of 
 the great poets. He has a genius for appropriate quotation, 
 and if I might give a hint to my young readers, let me re- 
 commend them to verify, as occasion offers, the sources from 
 which he draws. They will be well repaid for the trouble. 
 
 Like most generous and humane natures, he is fond of the 
 lower animals, more especially of dogs ; but his canine, I am 
 sorry to say, are not equal to his unerring poetic instincts. 
 In this respect he is not much above the shockingly low 
 average taste of Lancashire. In his youth he was a good 
 football player, a smart cricketer, an expert swimmer, and 
 during a period of convalescence, more than twenty years 
 ago, he acquired the art of salmon fishing, which he has
 
 John Bright. 23 
 
 since, for recreative reasons chiefly, brought to considei-able 
 perfection. He is a total abstainer, and what with a steady- 
 hand, a quick eye, and indomitable patience, few better 
 amateur anglers appear on the Spey. 
 
 He is a charming companion, with a weakness for strolling 
 into billiard-rooms. Once at Llandudno, the story goes, he 
 played in a public billiard-room with a stranger, who turned out 
 to be a truculent Tory manufacturer from Yorkshire. While 
 the game was proceeding, the Yorkshireman's wife chanced to 
 ask some of the hotel attendants how her husband was en- 
 gaged, and was beside herself with alarm on learning that he 
 was in the company of one against whom she had so often 
 heard him express the most bloodthirsty sentiments. "Are they 
 fighting % " she asked, and could with difficulty be persuaded 
 that no altercation was going on. About a couple of hours 
 afterwards the husband turned up, rubbing his hands, and 
 told his wife with much satisfaction that he had just been 
 having a game at billiards with a most pleasant casual ac- 
 quaintance, and that they had arranged for another trial of 
 skill next day. " Why," exclaimed the lady, " it is John 
 Bright you have been playing with ! " The manufacturer's 
 countenance fell, but speedily recovering himself he ob- 
 served, in extenuation of his conduct, that the newspapers 
 always told lies about people, and so thoroughly was he 
 now satisfied of Mr. B right's entire harmlessness that, in 
 given circumstances, he should vote for him himself. 
 
 At home, at One Ash, Mr. Bright enjoys universal respect. 
 His abode, though most unostentatious, is a model of com- 
 fort and good taste. His library is noteworthy, being spe- 
 cially rich in history, biography, and poetry. At the close of 
 the Corn Law agitation upwards of £5000 were subscribed by 
 his admirers, and 1200 volumes purchased therewith, as some 
 slight acknowledgment of his powerful advocacy of the good 
 cause. As of yore, he regularly attends the services at the 
 humble meeting-house of the Friends, and as age advances 
 the sources of his piety show no symptom of drying up. 
 His charities, and —
 
 24 Eminent Radicals in Parliament, 
 
 " That best portion of a good man's life, 
 His little, nameless, unremembered acts 
 Of kindness and of love," 
 
 •which are in reality numerous, are seldom recorded, because 
 Mr. Bright, like his father before him, declines to blow a 
 trumpet when he does a good deed. He acts on the prin- 
 ciple of not letting his right hand know what his left hand 
 doeth in such matters, and, as a consequence, his benefac- 
 tions are better known to the beneficiaries than to the 
 public. 
 
 As to Mr. Bright's relations with his work-people, many 
 lying legends were at one time circulated by the Tory press. 
 They practically, however, received their quietus on the 
 2.5th of January 1867, when the alleged victims of Mr. 
 Bright's tyranny met and unanimously passed resolutions 
 so complimentary to their employer that for shame's cause 
 the Conservative organs had to look about for fresh subjects 
 of vilification. At that time Mr. Bright was able to say, 
 " From 1809 to 1867 is at least fifty-seven years, and I 
 venture to affirm that with one single exception, and that 
 not of long duration, there has been during that period un- 
 interrupted harmony and confidence between my family and 
 those who have assisted us and been employed in it." How 
 few employers in this age of " strikes " can say as much ! 
 
 With respect to Mr. Bright's oratory, I agree with all 
 competent judges that it is as nearly as possible perfect. 
 He is the prince of English speakers. I have been told by 
 some authorities who have heard Wendell Phillips speak 
 that he is equal to Mr. Bright, but from speeches by the 
 celebrated American which I have read, I should very much 
 doubt it. The heart, the conscience, the intellect, Mr. 
 Bright can touch with equal ease. His speech is the 
 natural expression of a mind at once beautiful and strong. 
 The whole man speaks, and not, as is the case with most 
 other speakers, only a part of him. His words glide like a 
 pleasant brook, without haste and without rest. His rising 
 in the House is always an event. I remember by chance
 
 John Bright. 25 
 
 being in the Speaker's Gallery on a Wednesday afternoon 
 when he made his now celebrated speech on the Burials 
 Bill. He had seldom spoken since his severe illness, and 
 was not expected to address the House. The debate had 
 been of the poorest select vestry stamp, without ability 
 and without human interest of any kind, when suddenly 
 a movement of expectation was visible on both sides of 
 the House — 
 
 " And hark ! the cry is ' Astur ! ' and lo, the ranks divide, 
 And the great lord of Luna comes with his stately stride. 
 Upon his ample shoulders clangs loud the four-fold shield, 
 And in his hand he shakes the brand which none save he can wield." 
 
 The effect was magical. Languid and recumbent legis- 
 lators sat erect, and were all attention in a moment. It was 
 curious to observe how the occupants of the Conservative 
 benches, the majority of whom in the present Parliament 
 look for all the world like a band of horse-jockeys and 
 prize-fighters, were affected. Mr. Bright talked to them 
 with all the simplicity and confidence of a good pater- 
 familias addressing his family circle with his back to his 
 own mantelpiece. And such talk I No wonder that they 
 listened with silent respect. The whole House was trans- 
 formed by it, and began to feel something like a proper 
 sense of its own duty and dignity. Before he had spoken 
 five minutes, the level of the debate had been raised fifty 
 degrees at least, and there was not an honourable, nor, for 
 the matter of that, a dishonourable, member present who 
 did not feel that the Government was morally and logically 
 routed, whatever its numerical triumph might be. 
 f Mr. Bright does one thing of which so many members are 
 oblivious ; he never in any of his speeches in Parliament 
 forgets that he is in the Great Council of the nation ; and 
 however violent may be the supposition, he always assumes 
 that his opponents are there to be convinced, if only the 
 matter at issue is put in a proper light. The prevailing tone 
 of his mind is one of hopefulness. He has large faith, and be- 
 lieves in the inevitable progress of humanity and the ultimate 
 
 B
 
 26 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 invincibility of truth. As he once said — " There is much 
 shower and sunshine between the sowing of the seed and the 
 reaping of the harvest, but the harvest is reaped after all." 
 
 But though his nature is large and forgiving, in solemn 
 earnestness of rebuke he is unmatched. Once or twice Lord 
 Palmerston, in the very height of his power and popularity, 
 was made to wince like a convict under the sentence of a 
 judge, and, if we except the unique moral insensibility of a 
 Beaconsfield, it would be difficult to conceive of a more 
 arduous undertaking than that of reaching the conscience 
 of Lord Palmerston. 
 
 In the terrible struggle which threatened to rend the 
 great American Republic to pieces, the innermost soul of 
 the Tribune of the People was stirred within him, and he 
 touched the limits of actual prophecy. In the darkest hour 
 of the fortunes of the North he declared — " The Chancellor 
 of the Exchequer (Mr. Gladstone) as a speaker is not sur- 
 passed by any man in England, and he is a great statesman ; 
 he believes the cause of the North to be hopeless ; and that 
 
 their enterprise cannot succeed I have another 
 
 and a far brighter vision before my gaze. It may be a 
 vision, but I will cherish it. I see one vast confederation, 
 stretching from the frozen North in unbroken line to the 
 glowing South, and from the wild billows of the Atlantic 
 westward to the calmer waters of the Pacific main ; and I 
 see one people and one language, and one law and one faith, 
 and over all that wide continent the home of freedom and a 
 refuge for the oppressed of every race and of every clime." 
 
 It remains to notice, however briefly, some of the more 
 noticeable events of Mr. Bright's public life. They have not 
 been so numerous as might, on first thoughts, be supposed, 
 for he has all his days been a sower of seed and not a reaper, 
 and of much that he has sown future generations will reap 
 the fruit. His " record " will be best found in his collected 
 speeches, which are, in my opinion, the finest in the language, 
 whether as regards matter or diction. / 1 know no politician 
 who has been more uniformly in the right when others have
 
 John Bright. 27 
 
 been in the wrong, and I know no greater master of the 
 English tongue./ 
 
 His first public appearance was made at Rochdale in 1830, 
 in his nineteenth year. It was in favour of temperance, and 
 is said to have been a success. Like most young speakers, 
 he commenced by committing to memory what he intended 
 to utter on the platform, but soon abandoned so clumsy and 
 exhaustive a method of address. Instead of memoriter re- 
 productions he held impromptu rehearsals at odd hours in 
 his father's mill before Mr. Nicholas Nuttall, an intelligent 
 workman and unsparing critic ; but even now his perorations 
 are written out with the greatest care. In those days 
 Mr. Bright was a diligent reader of the Dispatch newspaper, 
 and I trust he is still addicted to a practice so laudable. 
 Like most young men in easy circumstances, he had a 
 desire for travel, which was gratified by a visit to Jerusalem. 
 On coming within sight of the Holy City he was melted 
 to tears. 
 
 In the month of October 1838, the Anti-Corn Law League 
 had its insignificant and unpromising beginning. Five 
 Scotsmen, W. A. Cunningham, Andrew Dalzell, James Leslie, 
 Archibald Prentis, and Philip Thomson, residents in Man- 
 chester, along with William Rawson, a native of the town, 
 met like the Apostles of old, in an " upper room," and decreed 
 the orgin of the mammoth association. In the printed list 
 of the members of the provisional committee Mr. Bright's 
 name stands second. He had found his vocation, and in the 
 course of the memorable campaign that followed, he and the 
 late Mr. Cobden contracted a friendship which has justly 
 become historic. In speaking in the House of Mr. Cobden's 
 decease, the strong man, bowed down with the weight of 
 his sorrow, was barely able to utter : — " After twenty years 
 of most intimate and almost brotherly friendship with him, 
 I little knew how much I loved him until I found that I had 
 lost him." 
 
 In 1843, Mr. Bright first took his seat in Parliament for 
 Durham, and in 1847 he was returned for Manchester with-
 
 28 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 out opposition. In 1852 be was re-elected after a contest, 
 but at tbe subsequent general election of 1857 be lost his 
 seat on account of his unbending opposition to the Crimean 
 war and to the swagger of Palmerston in China. In the 
 autumn of the same year, however, he was returned by 
 Birmingham at a bye-election, and has continued to represent 
 the great Radical Mecca in Parliament ever since. 
 
 His memorable defeat at Manchester was, for him, the 
 greatest moral victory of his life, and he has had many. 
 With a sublime courage which has never been surpassed, he 
 strove almost single-handed to arrest in its mad career a 
 whole nation in pursuit of a mischievous phantom. In the 
 American war his services to his own country and to America 
 were unrivalled, and happily more successful. 
 
 That he is one of the best and most intelligent friends of 
 India, of Ireland, and of the unenfranchised and unprivileged 
 masses of Englishmen and Scotsmen, will go without saying. 
 As a member of Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet he was introduced 
 at Court, and is said to be a favourite there. I should have 
 liked him better had he continued — to use his own words 
 — " to abide among his own people." Evil communications 
 have a tendency to corrupt the best manners, and Mr. Bright 
 has never been at his best since he made the acquaintance of 
 royalty. 
 
 Latterly the brunt of the fighting has fallen on Gladstone, 
 who, by an arduous heart-searching process, has, at seventy, 
 reached conceptions of the public good which were familiar 
 to Mr. Bright's mind at twenty. It is now Mr. Bright's turn 
 to put his powerful hand to the plough. He looks vigorous 
 as ever, and it has not been his wont to spare himself in 
 great emergencies. Let him remember the wisdom of Ulysses 
 addressed to the " great and god-like " Achilles : — 
 
 "To have done, 
 Is to hang quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail, 
 In monumental mockery."
 
 III. 
 
 PETER ALFRED TAYLOR. 
 
 " And I have walked with Hampden and with Vane, 
 Names once so gracious in an English ear." 
 
 HAVING now portrayed, however imperfectly, our two 
 most illustrious Radical statesmen, Mr. Gladstone and 
 Mr. Bright, I come to deal with one who is not a states- 
 man — who makes no pretension to statesmanship — but who 
 as a politician has nevertheless " been fashioned unto much 
 honour from the cradle." His name will not be found, I 
 think, even among that multitude which no man can number, 
 the " Men of the Times." 
 
 Nor is the omission so culpable as may at first sight 
 appear, for Mr. P. A. Taylor belongs at once to the Radical 
 past and the Radical future rather than to the imperialised 
 present. He is the most unique figure in the House of 
 Commons, a man who in the days of the Long Parliament 
 would have been after gentle Lucy Hutchinson's own Re- 
 publican heart, and who in those of Queen Victoria has been 
 best appreciated by such gifted pioneers of progress as Maz- 
 zini and Mill. He has now represented Leicester in Parliament 
 for seventeen years, and all that time he has neither led nor 
 followed : neither been mislead by the leaders of his party 
 nor been found following the multitude to do evil. If he has 
 led at any time, it has been as the captain of forlorn hopes, 
 the champion of forgotten rights, the redresser of unheeded 
 wrongs. He is the Incorruptible of the House. In evil 
 and in good report he has striven to subject every issue
 
 30 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 that has presented itself to the test of general principles of 
 human well being. 
 
 I am not now considering whether he has been uniformly 
 right in particular deductions from these principles. He 
 may or he may not ; all I say is that he has been uniformly 
 true to his principles from his youth up. They alone have 
 been his leaders. Of " doctrines fashioned to the varying 
 hour" he has known nothing, and, from the constitution 
 of his mind, will never know. 
 
 Mr. Taylor is generally considered an eccentric member, 
 but his eccentricity is wholly on the surface. Once under- 
 stand his principles, or rather solitary principle of action — 
 viz., that liberty, liberty, liberty, is the best of all things in 
 all things political, religious, social or commercial, and the 
 course which the senior member for Leicester will pursue on 
 any given question may be predicted almost with mathe- 
 matical certainty. 
 
 I always remember a curiously instructive telegraphic 
 summary of a speech delivered by Mr. Taylor to his con- 
 stituents about the time of the Republican agitation. It was 
 a model of compression, but it illustrates admirably what I 
 have been saying It appeared among other items of 
 " Election News," and ran thus : — " Mr. P. A. Taylor, the 
 member for Leicester, addressed his constituents last night. 
 He declared for the Republic and against the Permissive 
 Bill." I don't know whether the intelligent reporter saw 
 any irony in the juxtaposition into which the Republic and 
 the Permissive Bill were thus brought, but sure I am that 
 Mr. Taylor would have recognised none. According to his 
 views, the one was in favour of, the other in opposition to, 
 liberty. Hence his support and his antagonism. Both 
 flowed naturally from the same source — a source at once 
 of strong personal conviction and ancestral pride. 
 
 It may appear somewhat strange to attribute ancestral 
 pride to an out-and-out Democrat like Mr. Taylor, but it 
 is impossible fully to understand his character without taking 
 the markedly Liberal tendencies of his forefathers, both in poli-
 
 Peter Alfred Taylor. 3 1 
 
 tics and religion, into account. Mr. Taylor may be described 
 as a hereditary Radical of two and a half centuries' standing. 
 
 The pseudo-science of heraldry is coming to have an unex- 
 pected value as an aid to the study of the laws of heredity. 
 Mental-like physical characteristics are shown to persist and 
 recur from generation to generation, contrary to all our 
 preconceived notions of the determining causes of the 
 opinions of individuals and the way in which they are 
 formed. The acquisition of riches is vulgarly supposed to 
 make the best of Radicals Conservatives. Self-interest, it 
 is held, induces them instinctively to throw in their lot with 
 the privileged classes, but the history of some of the most 
 respectable and well-to-do families in England proves the 
 very opposite. The instinct in favour of progress may fail 
 for a generation, but it soon reappears. 
 
 Mr. Taylor's genealogy is in itself a standing refutation of 
 ordinarily accepted theories. The name is distinctly of plebeian 
 origin ; but, as early as the reign of Edward III., Mr. Taylor's 
 progenitors possessed large estates in Huntingdonshire. They 
 " bore arms " of course, and, evidently with the desire, if pos- 
 sible, to aristocratise their name, they called themselves Tay- 
 lards. And this continued to be the spelling till the close of 
 the sixteenth century, when the patronymic was restored to 
 the more ancient plebeian form by an irate Taylard who con- 
 sidered that he had had enough of aristocracy. The head of 
 the family had died leaving a pregnant wife behind him and 
 a will which intentionally or otherwise omitted the normal 
 word " male." A girl was born, and an astute gentleman, 
 named Brudenell, who afterwards became Earl of Cardigan, 
 married the heiress and her estates, in her fourteenth year. 
 The Taylards took the matter into Chancery, but failed to 
 secure the succession, and being greatly impoverished, their 
 chief representative came to London and established himself 
 on the spot where Messrs. Longmans' well-known publishing 
 house now stands, as plain " Mr. Taylor, Haberdasher." 
 
 He prospered in business, and was a staunch supporter 
 of the Commonwealth, which rewarded his zeal by several
 
 32 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 important appointments. He was a warm friend of the 
 regicides, and added to his political misconduct religious 
 heresy. He ably defended the noted Socinian preacher of 
 the day, Goodwin. 
 
 At the Restoration, William Taylor, son of this Republican 
 haberdasher, was pardoned by Charles II. for his father's 
 manifold offences, on the payment of a heavy fine — pardoned 
 (he was but fourteen !) " for all manners of treacheries, 
 crimes, treasons, misprisons, ... all and singular murders." 
 
 Passing rapidly down the stream of time, we come to the 
 Rev. Henry Taylor, of Portsmouth, who matriculated at 
 Cambridge University in 1729. He is better known as Ben 
 Mordecai, from the production of a very clever book entitled 
 "The Apology of Benjamin Ben Mordecai for embracing 
 Christianity." He possessed all the family characteristics in 
 an eminent degree. In religion he was an Arian and 
 Universalist, and neither menace nor persuasion could ever 
 induce him to read the Athanasian Creed from his pulpit. 
 He tried hard to get the Prayer-Book reformed, and all but 
 succeeded in procuring the objects for which Broad Church- 
 men still sigh. He denounced the Game Laws, and would 
 not turn on his heel to be introduced to royalty when it 
 came in his way. Albeit a Churchman he was in all respects 
 the prototype of the honourable member for Leicester, 
 Radical in politics as in religion, with a caustic vein ot 
 drollery, of which the following extract from a circular to the 
 clergy, found among his papers, may serve as a specimen. 
 It reminds one forcibly of Mr. Taylor's own very clever con- 
 tribution to the " Pen and Pencil Club " styled " Realities." 
 It is fittingly labelled " Impudent," and begins : " One hun- 
 dred and fifty sermons, such as are greatly admired and are 
 but little known, engraved in a masterly running hand, 
 printed on stout writing paper, and made to resemble manu- 
 script as nearly as possible; in length from twenty to 
 twenty-five minutes, as pithy as possible, intelligible to 
 every understanding, and as fit to be preached to a polite 
 as to a country congregation," etc.
 
 Peter Alfred Taylor. 33 
 
 Nor is Mr. Taylor descended from a Radical stock on the 
 paternal side alone. His maternal grandfather was George 
 Courtauld, who travelled much on philanthropic missions in 
 America, and was the fast friend of Dr. Priestley and Thomas 
 Paine. The first of the Courtaulds is said in infancy to 
 have been smuggled to England in a pannier by his Hugue- 
 not guardians, at the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. 
 Not only was George Courtauld a zealous Unitarian, but his 
 political sympathies appear also to have been Republican. 
 Writing from America to a relative in England, he shrewdly 
 remarks, " I cannot but think with Mr. Paine that you have 
 no Constitution. You have, indeed, a form of Government, 
 but how you came by that it is very difficult to say — cer- 
 tainly it was not that form which, after mature deliberation, 
 the people of England chose for themselves." 
 
 Within the last few years Lord Beaconsfield has demon- 
 strated to all whom it may concern that Mr. Taylor's grand- 
 father and Mr. Paine were not far wrong in divining that 
 the English people have " no Constitution," only " a form of 
 Government," which, in the hands of a despotic Minister, 
 may be twisted into the most dangerous imperialistic shape. 
 " Our glorious Constitution " is a political imposture and 
 superstition which the member for Leicester, the descendant 
 of such a clear-sighted race of iconoclasts, can hardly be 
 expected to swallow without protest. 
 
 Mr. P. A. Taylor, M.P., was born in London, in 1819. He 
 is the eldest son of Peter Alfred Taylor, of the old and 
 highly respected firm of Courtauld, Taylor, & Courtauld, 
 silk manufacturers, Booking, Braintree, Halstead. He was 
 educated in the first instance at the Unitarian School at 
 Brighton, then taught by the Rev. J. P. Malleson. At four- 
 teen years of age he was removed to London, and fur a 
 short time he attended University College. 
 
 Of the Unitarians, as a sect, it has been wittily said that if 
 they can only see their way to believe in one God, they in- 
 variably pay twenty shillings in the pound. They are an 
 eminently rational, upright, and progressive people ; and
 
 34 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 politically their services to the country have been invaluable. 
 In all respects, Mr. Taylor's educational and social advan- 
 tages were of the most enviable kind. His father was an 
 ardent opponent of the Corn Laws, of Church Rates, and of 
 a limited franchise. The friends of Mr. Taylor's youth were 
 reformers of the highest intellectual grasp, including Mill, 
 Mazzini, Colonel Perronet Thomson, and Ebenezer Elliot, 
 the Corn-Law Rhymer. 
 
 The man, however, to whom Mr. Taylor owed most was 
 the celebrated W. J. Fox, the minister of South Place 
 Chapel, Finsbury, where ,the Taylors, father and son, 
 attended for many years. Mr. Fox was a preacher of extra- 
 ordinary talent and energy. From being the "Norwich 
 Weaver Boy" he became simultaneously minister of the 
 most intellectual congregation in the metropolis, member of 
 Parliament for Oldham, and last, not least, he wielded the 
 powerful pen of " Publicola " in the Weekly Dispatch. After 
 his death, Mr. Taylor, in one of the best speeches he ever 
 delivered, said of him with much truth: "His political 
 principles were not so weakly based that he feared to trace 
 the result in the history of various kinds of government ; 
 nor his religion so poorly grounded as to fear scientific 
 inquiry. He searched after truth, and followed wherever it 
 might lead him." In portraying Fox's virtues, Mr. Taylor 
 described the leading features of his own mind. 
 
 Very early in life Mr. Taylor entered his father's business, 
 for which he showed aptitude of the highest order, and by 
 1866 he was able to retire from the firm with a handsome 
 competency. This fact is all the more gratifying that for 
 upwards of twenty years previously he had been giving up 
 much of his time to the public service. 
 
 In quitting connection with the firm, Mr. Taylor addressed 
 a characteristic circular to all the employes. " My friends," 
 it said among other things, " with the close of the old year 
 has ceased, as you all probably are aware, my connection 
 with the business, and therefore with you. I cannot let 
 such a connection cease without just one word of kindly
 
 Peter Alfred Taylor. 35 
 
 farewell, of hearty good wishes. In wishing you farewell, I 
 reflect with satisfaction that the name of Taylor will still be 
 represented in the house by my brother. Finally, let me say 
 that should my name ever reach you in connection with any 
 question of public interest, I can promise beforehand that it 
 will only be on the side ever upheld by my father before me 
 — that, viz., of justice for all, and of political enfranchise- 
 ment for the working classes." 
 
 In Parliament, Mr. Taylor is rapt and solitary, living in 
 the world of his own ideas. Nevertheless, his singleness of 
 purpose, accuracy of statement, genuine humour, originality 
 of ideas, and clear, effective speaking never fail to secure for 
 him a respectful hearing, however distasteful may be the 
 subject of his address. 
 
 At home he is a delightful host, an inveterate joker of 
 jokes. His wife, a lady of great accomplishments, is hardly 
 behind him in zeal for the public good. Every post brings 
 heaps of letters from aggrieved subjects of her Majesty in all 
 parts of the world. They are all carefully considered, and 
 parliamentary or extra - parliamentary redress invoked, 
 according to circumstances. In his capacity of redresser- 
 general of unheeded wrongs and oppressions, Mr. Taylor has 
 quite a business to attend to; and in this character have 
 some of his greatest senatorial successes been achieved. 
 
 He is the terror of the " great unpaid," whose cruel antics 
 throughout rural England he has done much to curb. Every 
 day justices' justice is more of a byword and a reproach. 
 He has striven hard to remove the inequalities of Sunday 
 legislation, and the poor of London in particular owe him a 
 debt of gratitude for taking the sting out of the great 
 harasser of their lives, that too " busy bee," Bee Wright. It 
 is but the other day that Mr. Taylor, at a cost of more than 
 £2000, presented the working men of Brighton with a 
 People's Club which will secure to them on Sundays some- 
 thing like the advantages of a local Carlton or Reform. 
 
 In the attempt to bring General Eyre to justice he was 
 hardly less active than Mr. Mill.
 
 36 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 The "cat" he has satisfied all humane minds is twice 
 accursed, cursing him that administers and him to whom it 
 is administered. 
 
 The Game Laws he has had the courage to expose in all 
 their naked infamy to a country still held tight in the vice ot 
 feudalism. 
 
 He has been one of three in resisting the spoliation of the 
 Exchequer by Royal princes and princesses, and the most 
 important perhaps of all future Parliamentary reforms, the 
 payment of members, he has made peculiarly his own. His 
 speech on the latter subject is one of the most convincing 
 ever delivered by him or any other living member of the 
 House. 
 
 As President of the " People's International League," Mr. 
 Taylor in his younger days was untiring in his endeavours 
 to liberate Poland, Hungary, and Italy from the oppressor's 
 grasp. By voice, pen, and purse, he did his best for the 
 popular cause. 
 
 The only conspicuous blunder of his life was his advocacy 
 of the Crimean war in opposition to Cobden and Bright. 
 The wrongs of Poland rankled in his breast and blinded his 
 judgment, as it fatally darkened the understanding of so 
 man}' other true friends of freedom. In the American Civil 
 War, needless to say, his sympathies were entirely with the 
 North and the policy of abolition, of which he had long been 
 a strenuous advocate, 
 
 In America the name of P. A. Taylor is perhaps better 
 known than in England, and it will be better known to 
 posterity than to his contemporaries. Nor is this to be 
 wondered at, for in this royalty and aristocracy ridden land 
 the member for Leicester is a " rare " figure, and precious as 
 he is rare. He is, in a sense, " a survival " from the great 
 era of the Commonwealth — a mind of the type of Vane, 
 Ludlow, Hutchinson, Scott, and Hazelrig — an idealist in 
 politics, but withal a practical idealist. He is more human 
 than English, his principles being more or less applicable to 
 all times and to all places. Having embraced a principle, he
 
 Peter Alfred Taylor. 37 
 
 holds by it with the tenacity of a bull-dog, fearlessly pushing 
 it to its remotest consequences. 
 
 This was the distinguishing mental characteristic of all 
 the great Republicans of the seventeenth century. Since 
 then an extraordinary blight has fallen on the political in- 
 telligence of Englishmen. They waste their best intellect 
 in the defence of palpable anomalies and pernicious com- 
 promises. Even Gladstone and Bright have not escaped 
 the contagion of compromise. They go to Court and are 
 caught in the net of " Society," which sticks to them like 
 a Nessus shirt. Peter Alfred Taylor has never been caught. 
 He has gone to no Court but that of the Sovereign People. 
 I honour the man and the constituency which has so long 
 honoured itself by honouring him. 
 
 " Stainless soldier on the walls, 
 
 Knowing this and knows no more — 
 "Whoever fights, whoever falls, 
 
 Justice conquers ever more: 
 And he who battles on her side, 
 
 God, if he were ten times slain, 
 Crowns him victor glorified — 
 
 Victor over death and pain."
 
 IV. 
 
 SIR CHARLES W. DILKE. 
 
 " A greyhound ever on the stretch 
 To run for honour still." 
 
 IN treating of Gladstone, Bright, and Taylor, who have 
 preceded the senior member for Chelsea in this series, 
 I have in some measure felt on sure ground — the ground of 
 history or accomplished fact. The youngest of the above 
 trio is sixty, and had entered the arena of public life ere the 
 subject of this memoir had well left his cradle. One could, 
 consequently, speak of them almost with as much confidence 
 as of the dead. Their lengthened past was a clear index to 
 their necessarily briefer future. In due course they will pass 
 over to the majority, and their works will follow them. 
 With Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke it is altogether different. 
 He belongs exclusively to the immediate present. It will 
 take him thirty-five more years to attain the venerable age 
 of the woodcutter of Hawarden. He is emphatically a con- 
 temporary, as fine an example as can well be found of the 
 culture and aspirations of this generation. It is his future 
 that is most important, and it is full of promise. 
 
 As Mr. Gladstone in his youth was pronounced " the rising 
 hope of Toryism," so Sir Charles W. Dilke may with better 
 assurance be hailed as the rising hope of Radicalism — of 
 all that is sincere, capable, and of good repute in English 
 politics. The odds are heavily in his favour. He has youth, 
 health, wealth, birth, strength, talent, industry, firmness of
 
 Sir Charles W. Dilke. 39 
 
 character, special training, and moral courage of a very high 
 order on his side. Such a combination of advantages seldom 
 fails. If he is spared to his country for the next twenty 
 years he will almost certainly be able to say with regard to 
 her fortunes, whatever these may be, Magna pars fui. 
 
 "Never prophesy," said the wise Quaker, "unless thou 
 knowest ! " Nevertheless, I venture to predict that, sooner 
 or later, Charles Wentworth Dilke will be called upon by 
 the people of England to take a very high place, and he 
 will succeed too, by the right of the fittest. Like his friend 
 Gambetta, he has been tried in the fiery furnace of political 
 calumny and social hate, and has not been found wanting. 
 " Society " undertook to put him down, and he has put down 
 Society. Of the two he has proved himself the stronger, 
 and a better proof of capacity to serve the nation it would 
 be impossible to adduce. 
 
 " That which is bred in the bone," says the proverb, "will 
 come out in the flesh." The anti-monarchical sympathies of 
 the Dilkes, like those of the Taylors, are at least as much 
 inherited as acquired. No fewer than three of the Dilke 
 ancestry were among the judges of Charles I., viz., the re- 
 solute Bradshaw, who presided over the High Court of 
 Justice, Sir Peter Wentworth, and Cawley. All were stern 
 foes of "one-man government," whether that one man were 
 the u divine right " Charles Stuart, or the Puritan Bonaparte, 
 Oliver Cromwell. " For what king's majesty," asks the im- 
 mortal defender of the regicides, Milton, " sitting on an ex- 
 alted throne ever shone so brightly as that of the people 
 of England then did, when, shaking off that old superstition 
 which had prevailed a long time, they gave judgment on 
 the king himself, or rather upon an enemy who had been 
 their king, caught, as it were, in a net by his own laws, and 
 scrupled not to inflict on him, being guilty, the same punish- 
 ment which he would have inflicted on any other % " . . . 
 "This is the God," he continues, "who uses to throw down 
 proud and unruly kings . . . and utterly to extirpate 
 them and their family. By his manifest impulse being set
 
 40 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 at work to recover our almost lost liberty, we went on in no 
 obscure but an illustrious passage pointed out and made 
 plain to us by God Himself." 
 
 At his trial Charles vainly declined to recognise the 
 authority of the Court, on the silly pretext that he himself 
 was " the fountain of all law." " If you are the fountain of 
 all law," curtly observed Bradshaw, " the people are the 
 source of all rights." When the Cromwellian coup d'etat took 
 place, Sir Peter Wentworth was, I think, the last man in the 
 House to protest against the violence offered to the repre- 
 sentatives of the people, and Bradshaw afterwards told the 
 military usurper to his face, " We have heard what you did, 
 and all England shall know it. Sir, you are mistaken in 
 thinking Parliament is dissolved. No power under Heaven 
 can dissolve them but themselves. Take you notice of 
 that." 
 
 One sister of Sir Peter Wentworth's was married to 
 Bradshaw's brother, while another, Sybil Wentworth, be- 
 came the wife of Fisher Dilke, from which union the dis- 
 tinguished representative of Chelsea in Parliament is line- 
 ally descended. 
 
 The Dilkes were probably of Danish origin, and are to be 
 found settled at Kirby Mallory, in Leicestershire, as early as 
 the middle of the sixteenth century. 
 
 Fisher Dilke was a Puritan of the Puritans, much given 
 to angling and piety of an extravagant kind. He was a 
 Fifth Monarchy man, and like his sect would have prepared 
 the ways of King Christ and made the paths of his speedy 
 return straight by first abolishing all existing authority and 
 cancelling all bonds of human allegiance. He was doomed 
 to sore disappointment. His co-secretaries mustered strong 
 in Barebone's Parliament, but in the eyes of the pious Lord 
 Protector did no good whatever, though they never de- 
 liberated without meanwhile setting apart a committee of 
 eight of their number to seek the Lord in prayer. Their 
 mittimus came speedily from the Protector in the memorable 
 words, "You may go elsewhere to seek the Lord, for to
 
 Sir Charles W. Dilke. 41 
 
 my certain knowledge he has not been here for many- 
 years." 
 
 At the restoration of the Monarchy Fisher Dilke is said to 
 have died of sheer grief, having first dug his own grave. 
 
 Of all Sir Charles's ancestors, however, the most re- 
 markable was Peter Wentworth, the grandfather of Sybil, 
 wife of Fisher Dilke, leader of the Puritan Opposition in 
 Parliament in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and brother-in- 
 law to the famous Secretary of State, Sir Francis Walsing- 
 ham. This Peter and his brother Paul were seldom out of 
 trouble. Hallam calls them "the bold, plain-spoken and 
 honest, but not very judicious Wentworths, the most un- 
 daunted assertors of civil liberty in this reign." 
 
 In the Parliament of 1575, Peter made a stiff speech in 
 defence of the rights and privileges of the Commons. It is 
 on record. " I find," said he, " within a little volume these 
 words in effect : ' Sweet is the name of liberty, but the thing 
 itself a value beyond all estimable treasure.' So much the 
 more it behooveth us to take great care lest Ave, contenting 
 ourselves with the sweetness of the name, lose and forego 
 the thing." " Two things do great hurt in this place. The 
 one is a rumour which runneth about saying, ' Take heed 
 what you do, the Queen liketh not such a matter ; whoso 
 preferreth it she will be offended with him.' The other, a 
 message is brought into the House either commanding or 
 inhibiting, very injurious to the freedom of speech and 
 consultation. I would to God these rumours and messages 
 were buried in hell, for wicked they are ; the Devil was the 
 first author of them, from whom proceedeth nothing but 
 wickedness." 
 
 And so on he went reprobating the venal flatterers ol 
 royalty who " make traitorous sugared speeches," "send to 
 Her Majesty a melting heart that will not stand for reason," 
 and who blindly follow their leaders instead of voting " as 
 the matter giveth cause." 
 
 Peter was not permitted to finish his speech, but was 
 given into the custody of the Sergeant-at-Arms, pending 
 
 C
 
 42 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 an examination of the delinquent by a Committee of the 
 House." 
 
 His apology is recorded : " I heartily repent me that I 
 have hitherto held my peace in these causes, and I do 
 promise you all, if God forsake me not, that I will never 
 during my life hold my tongue if any message is sent in 
 "wherein the liberties of Parliament are impeached ; and 
 every one of you ought to repent you of these faults and 
 amend them." 
 
 He was, of course, sent to the Tower, where he remained 
 over a month, when "Her Majesty was graciously pleased to 
 remit her justly occasioned displeasances." 
 
 He returned to the House, but in the following session he 
 was re-committed for a similar offence. Indeed, he appears 
 latterly to have spent more of his time in the Tower than 
 at St. Stephen's, and in the Tower the stout-hearted, liberty- 
 loving man is believed ultimately to have perished. 
 
 His plainness of speech had aroused against him more 
 than royal ire. He and Paul were both at constant feud 
 with the prelates. On one occasion the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury announced, in the hearing of Peter, that it was 
 the function of Parliament to pass Articles of Religion 
 approved of by the clergy without note or comment. 
 " No," said the indomitable iconoclast, " by the faith we 
 bear to God we will pass nothing before we understand 
 what it is ; for that were but to make you Popes. Make 
 you Popes who list, we will make you none." 
 
 Through the member for Chelsea Elizabethan Peter yet 
 speaketh. And how modern is it all ! How little real 
 progress have the English people made in liberty since 
 these indignant words were uttered three centuries ago ! 
 Nay, may it not even be doubted whether in some respects 
 we have not even lost ground % Have we not still 
 bishops thrusting down our throats articles of religion 
 which neither they nor we can understand % Have we 
 not likewise our royal " messages " respecting manifold 
 dowries and annuities, duly heralded by sinister " rumours "
 
 Sir Charles W. Dilke. 43 
 
 of royal " displeasance " which incontinently convert hon- 
 ourable members into a troop of Court flunkeys, and make 
 even Liberal Ministers deliver themselves of " traitorous 
 sugared speeches " enough to make Peter and Paul Went- 
 worth turn in their coffins ? — 
 
 " A^e, thou art shamed ! 
 Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods ! 
 Oh ! you and I have heard our fathers say 
 There was a Brutus once, that would have brook'd 
 The eternal devil to keep his state in Rome 
 As easily as a king." 
 
 Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke, M.P., is the eldest son of 
 Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke, first baronet, and grandson 
 of Charles Wentworth Dilke, the celebrated critic, whose 
 literary judgment and administrative talent were the chief 
 stock in trade both of the Athenceum and the Daily News 
 in their younger days. 
 
 Sir Charles's father, as is well known, was much devoted 
 to matters affecting Art and Industry, and was a leading 
 promoter of the Great Exhibition of 1851. As some acknow- 
 ledgment of his eminent services he was offered, and 
 accepted, contrary to the advice of his father, the critic, a 
 baronetcy. The old gentleman was an inflexible Radical, 
 and Sir Charles may be said in all his mental and moral 
 characteristics to be the son of his grandfather rather than 
 of his father. He was the preceptor and companion of 
 Dilke's youth. He was an antiquary as well as a critic, and 
 loved to trace the descent of grandson " Charley's " mother 
 from the gentle and unselfish regicide Cawley as a noble 
 pattern for her to set before her son. 
 
 The future member for Chelsea was born in the borough 
 which lie now represents in September 1843. He is conse- 
 quently in his thirty-sixth year. At the second of two 
 private schools which he attended in the Metropolis, he dis- 
 played mathematical talent, and in due course he matricu- 
 lated at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, with the intention of 
 pursuing with assiduity his favourite study, in which he
 
 44 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 obtained a Scholarship. He soon, however, changed his 
 mind, and betook himself to law, as calculated to bear more 
 directly on a Parliamentary career, for which he very early 
 determined to qualify himself. He worked hard, and was 
 easily senior in the Law Tripos for 1865. 
 
 In 1866 he was called to the Bar by the Honourable 
 Society of the Middle Temple. Shortly afterwards he 
 started on a " round the world " journey of two years' dura- 
 tion. The trip bore excellent fruit in the well-known work 
 " Greater Britain," which, in the first year of its publication, 
 ran through four editions. 
 
 In 1868 he was returned to Parliament for Chelsea by a ma- 
 jority of nearly two to one, and again in 1874 he headed the 
 poll, notwithstanding an opposition of unexampled violence. 
 
 Sprung from a race of journalists and litterateurs, his pen 
 is never long idle. Since the publication of " Greater Britain" 
 he had found time to publish the " Fall of Prince Florestan 
 of Monaco," and to edit, under the title " Papers of a Critic," 
 his grandfather's chief contributions to the pages of the 
 Athenaeum, which paper he also occasionally supervises in 
 person. 
 
 As, however, his name has been at times connected with 
 the Dispatch, I may take this opportunity of mentioning that 
 he has not now, and never has had, any connection with 
 that paper. 
 
 Since his former travels, he has been " round the world " 
 a second time, his chief object being to acquaint himself 
 with the state and prospects of Japan. He has visited every 
 English-speaking corner of the globe, is thoroughly conver- 
 sant with the condition of our Indian Empire, and is better 
 acquainted with the language, literature, people, and govern- 
 ment of Russia than any man in the House. 
 
 He is perhaps the first thoroughly competent Englishman 
 who has ever seen and described the men, manners, and 
 institutions of the United States as they really are, and not 
 as they are wont to appear to the jaundiced eye of national 
 jealousy and aristocratic aversion. The American Republic
 
 Sir Charles W. Dilke. 45 
 
 is substantially Sir Charles's " Greater Britain," to which he 
 foresees the hegemony of the English-speaking race is ulti- 
 mately destined to fall. He believes in the possibility of 
 one omnipotent all-embracing federation of English-speak- 
 ing men, of which the United States shall at once supply 
 both the nucleus and the model. 
 
 In the study of foreign affairs he has taken nothing for 
 granted. Everything he has examined on the spot and 
 verified with his own eyes. He would make an incompar- 
 ably well-informed Foreign Secretary, and it is not improb- 
 able, nay it would be gratifying to the whole Liberal party, 
 that in the next Liberal Administration he should be offered 
 and should accept office in that department of State. 
 
 Like Mr. Gladstone, he is an untiring toiler, and from the 
 first he has worked on the most profitable lines. Whether 
 as law-student, traveller, author, journalist, or politician, 
 whatever he has done he has done faithfully and well. 
 
 Every recess he shuns delights and spends laborious 
 holidays at his romantic provincial retreat at La Sainte 
 Campagne, near Toulon, in digesting materials for a magnum 
 opus, " The History of the Present Century." 
 
 He is personally a total abstainer, though opposed to the 
 Permissive Bill, and is in all things a pattern of method and 
 regularity of habits. 
 
 At Cambridge he was a finished oarsman. He is likewise 
 a vigorous long-distance walker, a good marksman, and a 
 deft fencer. 
 
 In nothing has he shown such marked improvement as in 
 his style of public speaking, Though twice president of the 
 Union Debating Society at Cambridge, he was at first a 
 most unimpressive speaker — I hesitate to use his own term, 
 " lugubrious." But now it is not so. He is fluent, easy, and 
 agreeable ; one of the best level business speakers in Parlia- 
 ment. As for the matter, that has at all times been such as 
 to redeem the worst faults of manner. Just a little too much 
 of it at a time, perhaps — more, at least, than can be well 
 digested by a mass meeting even of Chelsea electors — but
 
 46 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 not one word in bad taste, " nothing extenuated, nothing set 
 down in malice." 
 
 When he has been reviled — and who ever was more vil- 
 lainously overwhelmed by a hurricane of abuse % — he reviled 
 not again. Like the soul of honour that he is, he has never 
 stooped to personal invective. Under the severest provoca- 
 tion he has said nothing to wound the susceptibilities of the 
 most sensitive. In this respect he has set an example to 
 some of our foremost public men. Comes this extraordinary- 
 forbearance of grace or of nature, it may be asked. By 
 nature, I should say. To him opposition from men or things 
 is of exactly the same character. It is something to be 
 overcome by patience and pressure in the line of the least 
 resistance. In other words, the member for Chelsea is 
 lacking in sympathy. He is fitted to become a great par- 
 liamentary leader rather than a Democratic agitator. His 
 political aims, it is true, are much the same as were those 
 of passionate old Peter Wentworth, his ancestor ; but it 
 would never for a moment occur to him to wish that the 
 most impudent of royal begging messages should be incon- 
 tinently buried in hell. Indeed, if insisting on some explana- 
 tions being given with respect to the monstrous abuses of 
 the Civil List, and if in affirming his preference for a Con- 
 stitutional Republic based on merit to a Monarchy, however 
 limited, founded on birth, he had shown more anger and less 
 reason, sneers would have been regarded as the only weapon 
 necessary to employ against him. It was the very fact that 
 he used arguments which every snob in England knew to be 
 unanswerable that the Royalist tempest — what I may call 
 the " white terror " — was evoked. 
 
 It may here be convenient to consider the Republican 
 episode in his career. There can be no doubt that Royalty 
 was alarmed, that its numerous hangers-on were alarmed, 
 and that the privileged classes generally, whose own exist- 
 ence depends on the maintenance of the Monarchical super- 
 stition as an article of the popular faith, were thoroughly 
 alarmed.
 
 Sir Charles W. Dilke. 47 
 
 " Kings most commonly," says Milton, " though strong 
 in legions are but weak at argument, as they who have ever 
 been accustomed from their cradle to use their will only as 
 their right hand, their reason always as their left. Whence, 
 unexpectedly constrained to that kind of combat, they prove 
 but weak and puny adversai-ies." The Royalists made up 
 for the weakness of their arguments by the weight of their 
 brick-bats. At Bolton, while Sir Charles was addressing a 
 large audience admitted by ticket, the place of meeting was 
 assailed by a furious mob of Royalists, who succeeded in 
 murdering one peaceable Radical, William Scofield, a work- 
 ing man, and wounding several others. The magistrates 
 and the police both scandalously failed in their duty on the 
 occasion, and to this day their conduct has never been 
 adequately explained. 
 
 If the blood of an innocent man had been shed by 
 Republican hands, what a howl for vengeance would there 
 not have been heard ! At Reading, the late Mr. George 
 Oclger, than whom a more able and upright politician never 
 lived, was within an ace of meeting the fate of Scofield. 
 
 The leading organ of the " party of order," the Standard, 
 threatened the representative of Chelsea with physical 
 violence. " The attachment of Englishmen for the Royal 
 Family," it said, " may take an unpleasantly practical form if 
 Sir Charles Dilke should ever insult a party of gentlemen 
 by repeating in their presence calumnies such as he was 
 permitted to utter with impunity before the ' roughs ' of 
 Newcastle." 
 
 It is here worth putting on record the worst that Sir 
 Charles did say in the famous address alluded to. The 
 meeting was held in November 1871, Mr. Joseph Cowen in 
 the chair. This was the head and front of his offending : 
 " There is a widespread belief that a Republic here is only 
 a matter of education and time. It is said that some day a 
 Commonwealth will be our form of Government. Now, 
 history and experience show that you cannot have a Re- 
 public without you possess at the same time the Republican
 
 48 Eminent Radicals in Parlia?)tent. 
 
 virtues ; but you answer, Have we not public spirit ? Have 
 we not the practice of self-government? Are not we 
 gaining general education ? Well, if you can show me a 
 fair chance that a Republic here will be free from the 
 political corruption that hangs about a Monarchy, I say for 
 my part — and I believe that the middle classes in general 
 will say — Let it come." 
 
 The answer should have been, We Englishmen have not 
 public spirit ; we have not the practice of self-government ; 
 we do not possess the Republican virtues of independence 
 and self-respect, without which there can be no genuine 
 Republic. We love to deceive both ourselves and others. 
 It is the " name " of liberty that we affect ; the " thing " 
 itself is unknown to us. 
 
 Is it to be wondered at that Sir Charles Dilke, fresh from 
 brighter countries like the United States and our colonial 
 possessions, where self-government is a reality, should have 
 misconstrued the reply of an oracle so ambiguous and un- 
 trustworthy? But no harm has been done by his miscalcula- 
 tion — rather much good. The country has been made to 
 know that it has at least one public man of first-rate ability 
 and dauntless courage, who is not afraid to reconcile 
 administrative practice with the best political theory when- 
 ever the people are prepared to abandon their unworthy 
 idols and to look the facts of history, experience, and 
 common sense straight in the face. 
 
 And as for Sir Charles, he is an imperturbable, good-natured 
 man, who doubtless considers that he took ample revenge 
 on all his unscrupulous calumniators when he published 
 anonymously his clever brochure, the " Fall of Prince 
 Florestan of Monaco." Several leading Tory journals ad- 
 vised him to lay the lessons taught by the Radical Prince of 
 Monaco to heart ! How he must have chuckled ! It is only 
 natures of the largest and healthiest mould that are thus 
 capable of looking amusedly at the comical aspect of their 
 own doings. 
 
 In the domain of current domestic legislation, Sir Charles 
 has played no unimportant part. It is to him we owe the
 
 Sir Charles W. Dilke. 49 
 
 popular constitution of our School Boards, it having been 
 Mr. Forster's original intention to entrust the duties of 
 school management to committees of Boards of Guardians. 
 
 His also was the clause which conferred the municipal 
 franchise on female ratepayers. He procured for the working 
 men of London a most desirable boon in the extension of the 
 hours of polling, and in everything appertaining to the 
 better representation of the people in Parliament he has 
 taken a leading part. On the all-important question of the 
 redistribution of political power in particular he is, it is not 
 too much to say, the greatest authority in the House. Like 
 John Bright, he loves the big constituencies, and would, as 
 far as possible, make them all numerically equal. 
 
 He is not ordinarily an amusing speaker, but one of his 
 speeches on the unreformed corporations will rank among 
 the wittiest delivered by any member since he entered the 
 House. His collected speeches on electoral reform, the Civil 
 List, free trade, free land, and free schools are a ready 
 repertory of trustworthy facts, which ought to be in the 
 hands of every reformer. With respect to the Zulu war, in 
 the session of 1879, with the approbation of Lord Harting- 
 ton, he took the lead in opposition to the Government 
 policy, a sufficient indication of the respect entertained for 
 his judgment in colonial affairs. 
 
 In every department he is a friend of economy. In Parlia- 
 ment he is ever vigilant and never fussy. When he speaks 
 it is always to contribute some new fact or unused argument 
 to the debate, and he never fails to catch the ear of the 
 House, which admires his straightforwardness, manly bear- 
 ing, and unremitting attention to his parliamentary duties. 
 
 He is well versed in the forms of the House. Above all, 
 he has honesty and excellent common sense to guide his 
 steps aright. 
 
 If, with all these endowments, he should fail in the not 
 distant future to achieve great things for his country, both 
 I and many other observant sympathisers "whose judg- 
 ment cries i' the top of mine" will feel just cause for sore 
 disappointment.
 
 V. 
 
 JOSEPH CO IV E N. 
 
 " Like one of the simple great ones 
 Gone for ever and ever by." 
 
 I SHALL never forget one delightful forenoon I spent 
 with Mr. Cowen since his entrance into Parliament. 
 Previous to his coming to St. Stephen's, he had been well 
 known to me by reputation, but by reputation only. 
 
 As the disciple whom Mazzini, the prophet and high priest 
 of modern Democracy, loved, I was curious to know what 
 manner of man the great Northumbrian Radical really was. 
 I arrived early, and found him in his library in the act of 
 finishing his morning correspondence. I had just time to 
 glance at his books before engaging with him in conversa- 
 tion. A man may be known by his books as by the company 
 he keeps. They were almost exclusively composed of the 
 most recent productions of the Democratic Press, such as one 
 would expect to find on the shelves of an intelligent artisan 
 politician rather than on those of the possessor of a residence 
 in Onslow Square. And the appearance of Mr. Cowen him- 
 self was exactly in keeping. His features bore no trace 
 whatever of having been imported " at the Conquest." 
 There he sat, a genuine workman from Tyneside, the de- 
 scendant of generations of honest toilers — plain and homely 
 to a degree. Nothing but the lofty dome of brow betrayed 
 the mental superiority of the man, and when subsequently 
 he put on the never-failing slouched hat, even that not in- 
 fallible sign of greatness was remorselessly hidden away. 
 
 Presently we began to talk as freely as if we had been 
 acquainted for years. The villainous Northumbrian intona-
 
 Joseph Cowen. 51 
 
 tion was at first somewhat of an impediment in my way. 
 I had never learned Northumbrian, and being a fair linguist, 
 did not like to acknowledge my ignorance. 
 
 One or two proper names he was good enough to spell for 
 me. As, however, he gradually became more animated his 
 English became better and better, until at last he was one 
 of the most articulate-speaking of Englishmen I had ever met. 
 
 It was a lovely day, and we decided on a stroll in the 
 direction, as it turned out, of the modest house where Mazzini 
 conspired against the crowned heads of Europe for so many 
 years. On the way he spoke of that gifted friend of his 
 youth and manhood — the greatest man, Mr. Cowen thinks, 
 and I am half inclined to accept his estimate, that Europe 
 has produced for centuries — of Garibaldi and Orsini, of 
 Kossuth, of Herzen and Bakounin, of Ledru Rollin and Louis 
 Blanc, but above all of the Polish revolutionary leaders 
 Worcell, Darasz, Mieroslawski, Dombrowski, and Langiewicz. 
 
 I inquired why, of all the Continental exiles, he appeared 
 to have been most drawn towards the Poles. He replied 
 with profound feeling, " Because they seemed the most 
 forlorn." There was no getting over this answer, which 
 throws a flood of light on the deplorable action which 
 Mr. Cowen has seen fit to take with regard to the Eastern 
 question. 
 
 For years his house at Blaydon Burn, near Newcastle, had 
 been an asylum for the victims of Russian tyranny. For 
 years he had spent two-thirds of an ample income in keeping- 
 alive the patriotism of the Polish insurgents and other 
 enemies of the White Tsar. To him Poland was and is 
 a land of heroes and martyrs ; Russia everything that is 
 the reverse. So thoroughly identified was Mr. Cowen with 
 the anti-Russian sentiments of the Polish and Hungarian 
 exiles, that orders were issued by all the despotic Powers of 
 Europe, by Russia, Prussia, France, Spain, and Italy, for his 
 arrest, should he venture to set foot on their soil. 
 
 Not able to catch the son the police twice arrested his 
 father, the late Sir Joseph Cowen, in his stead. His home
 
 5 2 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 at Blaydon Burn was incessantly watched by the spies of 
 Continental Governments. 
 
 When Cowen and Mazzini met it was neither inNewcastle nor 
 London, but generally in some quiet midway town or village, 
 where they could not readily be subjected to espionage. 
 
 The despots of the Continent had, in point of fact, very 
 good reason to regard Mr. Cowen as a dangerous personage. 
 He was not merely a wealthy Englishman who gave of his 
 substance freely in order that the axe might be laid by others 
 to the root of the upas tree of their authority, but one who 
 did not scruple when occasion offered to levy war against 
 the oppressors, so to speak, on his own account. 
 
 During the last rising in Poland he fitted out, at his own — , 
 charges, a vessel which it was intended should hoist the 
 Polish flag, and, like another Alabama, sweep Russian com- 
 merce off the seas. She escaped from the Tyne without 
 much difficulty, and reached Barcelona in safety. Her next 
 destination was the coast of the little island of Elba, where 
 a Polish commodore of experience, who had come all the 
 way from the Russian naval station at Kamchatka — on 
 French leave, of course — was waiting with a full complement 
 of marines, to take possession in the name of the Provisional 
 Government at Warsaw. 
 
 They waited in vain. The drunken ravings and cowardice 
 of the English crew brought about the seizure and confisca- 
 tion of the vessel by the Spanish authorities almost in spite 
 of* themselves. The chief naval authority of the port was at 
 that time a brother of General Prim, himself a revolutionary. 
 He winked hard, and it so happened, curiously enough, that 
 the only Spanish man-of-war available for seizing her was 
 under the command of an Englishman, formerly a Newcastle 
 engineer, who, on being sent to inspect the ship and her papers, 
 winked harder still. With reasonable promptitude she might 
 have got clear off, but did not, to the great grief of Mr. Cowen 
 and the Provisional Government of Poland. 
 
 The above is but one out of scores of daring enter- 
 prises with a similar object in which Mr. Cowen has been
 
 Joseph Coiven. 53 
 
 engaged. Once lie had a wonderful box constructed and 
 well lined with notes suitable for issue by the Secret 
 Committee of Government over which Langiewicz pre- 
 sided. It was given in charge to a faithful messenger, 
 with instructions to seek the headquarters of the insur- 
 gents by a somewhat devious route. No sooner did he set 
 foot on the Continent, however, than he was seized by the 
 police and put in prison. He was never tried, and never 
 told his offence, but the contents of the well-filled purse with 
 which he had started from England were weekly disbursed 
 to pay his board for the space of a whole year. At the end 
 of that time he was put on board a ship bound for London, 
 and landed penniless. 
 
 Regarding the adventures, misadventures, and hair-breadth 
 escapes of proscribed Poles, Italians, and Hungarians, Mr. 
 Cowen has many a curious and pathetic tale to tell. He 
 was the chief banker and general agent in this country of 
 the European revolutionaries. Nearly all their more im- 
 portant correspondence passed through his hands on its way 
 to and from the Continent, and for long his commanding 
 position as a British manufacturer and shipowner, doing 
 business in all parts of Europe, effectually baffled the most 
 vigilant espionage of the despotic Powers. 
 
 Having seen the abode of the great Italian, we turned 
 into Hyde Park, and under the shadow of Albert the Gilt 
 conversed of current politics and living Radical politicians. 
 He was very candid, and I remarked with interest how 
 similar were his judgments of men and things to those which 
 I could readily suppose Mazzini would have formed in 
 similar circumstances. 
 
 One able member of Parliament was an Atheist to the 
 backbone, and why such a one should be a Radical rather 
 than a Tory, or why, indeed, being a wealthy man, he should 
 care to trouble himself about politics at all, was a mystery to 
 the member for Newcastle. Another was lacking in anything 
 like genuine sympathy for the people, and had fallen into 
 the abyss of wire-pulling and political beadledom. All
 
 54 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 unconsciously he had become as earnestly eloquent as 
 if he were addressing a considerable audience, his usually 
 homely features admirably mirroring the thoughts which 
 rose spontaneously to his lips. 
 
 Mr. Cowen's abhorrence of atheistic or unbelieving poli- 
 ticians was to me all the more impressive that his own 
 mind was evidently not untinged by sadness — had not 
 altogether escaped the influence of that great despair with 
 respect to the supernatural which has in our day over- 
 taken the bravest and the best. 
 
 On taking leave of Mr. Cowen I had no hesitation in con- 
 cluding that I had never met a more singular combination of 
 simplicity of manner, business-like shrewdness, intellectual 
 vigour, comprehensive sympathy, and powerful imagination. 
 These qualities appear to me to mingle in disproportionate 
 measure, but their co-existence in his mind affords a clue to 
 the surprising splendour of his imagery, which, if the House 
 had had a few more samples of it, might almost justify me 
 in ranking him next to Bright as a master of senatorial 
 eloquence. 
 
 If great poets are born, not made, so likewise are great 
 orators, and sure enough Mr. Cowen is one of the few really 
 great orators in the House. His style is neither that of 
 Bright, Gladstone, nor Beaconsfield. His best periods 
 have an antique, Roman-like stateliness Avhich is to me 
 peculiarly attractive. In their majestic roll they are more 
 like those of the late Ledru Rollin than of any modern 
 speaker. 
 
 Mr. Cowen was born at Blaydon Burn, near Newcastle, in 
 the month of July 1831. His father, Sir Joseph Cowen, 
 knight, who preceded him in the representation of New- 
 castle, was originally a working blacksmith. He was of an 
 inventive turn of mind, and when the discovery of gas 
 began to be utilised he hit on several ingenious contrivances 
 for facilitating its manufacture. Before long he was a 
 wealthy man, and one of the most respected and public- 
 spirited citizens of Newcastle. It is to his untiring exertions
 
 Joseph Cowen. 55 
 
 and foresight that Newcastle in a great measure owes its 
 mercantile prosperity. 
 
 He found the Tyne a shallow stream, up which vessels of 
 the smallest draught could with difficulty sail. He left it so 
 deepened that it is now one of the most navigable of rivers. 
 The merit of this great achievement was publicly recognised 
 by Mr. Gladstone, who in consequence had him clubbed 
 knight — a distinction, however, to which he was indifferent. 
 From the beginning to the end of his career he was a 
 Radical reformer. 
 
 The Cowens are a somewhat numerous family, and have 
 been settled in and around Blaydon Burn for about three 
 centuries. They came originally from Lindisfarne, or Holy 
 Isle, of which the stock had been denizens from a remote 
 antiquity. The Cowens were among the first genuine 
 English co-operators on record — co-operators in production 
 as well as in distribution. They were for generations mem- 
 bers of a singular society, instituted about the middle of the 
 seventeenth century by an enterprising manufacturer, Crow- 
 ley — the "Sir John Anvil" of Addison's Spectator — whose 
 members worshipped in common, fed in common, and shared 
 equally in the common profits of their industry. This 
 society was not disrupted till 1814, in the lifetime of Mr. 
 Cowen's grandfather. Since then, it may be worth remark- 
 ing, co-operation has again, under Mr. Cowen's fostering 
 care, taken a firm hold on Blaydon-on-Tyne. 
 
 Though Blaydon is a mere village, Mr. Holyoake, in his 
 " History of Co-operation," declares that next to Rochdale it 
 has the most remarkable store in England. It has grown 
 from a house to a street. The library contains upwards of 
 1500 volumes of new books. The profits for 1876 amounted 
 to £16,886. The society has an Education Fund of £400 
 per annum. 
 
 When the Co-operative Congress met at Newcastle in 
 1873, Mr. Cowen, not then M.P., was elected president, and 
 delivered an address the remembrance of which still lives in 
 co-operative circles.
 
 56 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 Mr. Cowen's early education was received at a good local 
 school, whence he proceeded to the University of Edinburgh, 
 which then, by reason of the renown of its professors, en- 
 joyed something like European fame. Russell, Palmerston, 
 Lansdowne, had been there before him. Christopher North 
 still lectured, and Lord Macaulay represented the city in 
 Parliament. 
 
 With no professional object in view, young Cowen sought 
 simply culture, and that he found to more purpose, perhaps, 
 than it would have been possible for him to do elsewhere. 
 He studied what subjects he pleased, preferring the time- 
 honoured classics, became president of the University Debat- 
 ing Society, and entered heartily into the political and social 
 life of the citizens. 
 
 His chief extra-mural instructor was the Rev. Dr. John 
 Ritchie — a really great man in a small community. Though 
 a preacher, and a Scottish preacher too, he was above 
 sophistry, an intrepid Radical, and a first-rate platform 
 speaker. 
 
 About this time also Mr. Cowen, while yet an Edinburgh 
 student, made the acquaintance of Mazzini, who subse- 
 quently exercised over him an influence so remarkable. 
 Young as he was Mr. Cowen had entered an indignant 
 public protest against the infamous and, till it was proved, 
 incredible violation of the illustrious exile's letters by Sir 
 James Graham and the Post-Office officials. Mazzini was 
 interested in his youthful defender, thanked him by letter, 
 and to Mr. Cowen were addressed the dying patriot's last 
 written words. 
 
 On returning to Blaydon, Mr. Cowen engaged actively in 
 his father's business of fire-proof brick and retort manufac- 
 ture, the firm normally employing as many as a thousand 
 men. At the Blaydon works there have been no strikes, for 
 the very good reason that Mr. Cowen, though an employer 
 of labour, has always been regarded as an intelligent ex- 
 ponent of trades union views — in short, as a trusted trades 
 union leader. His support of the nine hours' movement was
 
 Joseph Cowen. 57 
 
 from first to last of a most decided character, and such as 
 everywhere to evoke the warmest feelings of gratitude 
 among workmen. 
 
 His persistent efforts, too, to found, improve, and federate 
 mechanics' institutes all over the populous Tyneside district 
 ought not to be forgotten. For many years he personally 
 discharged the duties of a teacher in one of these institu- 
 tions, which owe so much of their success to his enthusiasm 
 and talent as organising secretary. 
 
 Nor has Mr. Cowen been less active in the domain of pure 
 politics, whether local or imperial. He is now president of 
 the Northern Reform League — an organisation which has 
 been in existence in one form or another for more than 
 twenty years. He was present at its inception, and acted 
 as its first treasurer. In the Reform demonstrations of 1867 
 the League played an important part, calling out an array 
 of supporters which the Metropolis itself could hardly 
 match. 
 
 As a member of the Town Council Mr. Cowen on several 
 occasions declined the dignity of the mayoralty. This did 
 not, however, prevent his brother councillors from getting a 
 local Act of Parliament passed to enable them to make him 
 an alderman when, by becoming a parliamentary representa- 
 tive, he had ceased to be a member of the municipal body. 
 
 To add to all these manifold activities, Mr. Cowen has for 
 twenty years been the proprietor and political director of the 
 Newcastle Chronicle, one of the most influential and aggres- 
 sively Radical journals in provincial England. The Chronicle 
 is what, alas ! so few newspapers now-a-days are, a real 
 political instructor within the area of its circulation. It 
 has writers, among whom I may mention two well-known 
 journalists, Mr. Thomas Brown and Mr. Adams, who for range 
 of political knowledge and absolute fidelity to principle have 
 no superiors in or out of London. The result was seen at 
 the last general election. When the Conservative reaction 
 ran high everywhere else, the Northumbrian Liberals smote 
 their Tory opponents hip and thigh all along the line. 
 
 D
 
 58 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 Twelve Liberals to one Tory were, if my memory serves me, 
 the Durham returns. 
 
 There is one other noticeable but well-nigh forgotten pub- 
 lication with which the member for Newcastle was intimately 
 connected which deserves to be recalled. In 1852 he pur- 
 chased the small estate of Brantwood, Coniston, Lancashire, 
 now, I believe, the property of Mr. Ruskin, as a local habita- 
 tion for the English Republic, which consisted of a series of 
 Republican tracts in prose and verse, pitched in a very lofty 
 key. They were issued for five or six years, and Mr. Cowen, 
 if I mistake not, united in his own person the somewhat in- 
 congruous, but in his case by no means incompatible, functions 
 of poet laureate and treasurer of a movement symbolised 
 by a beautiful tricolour of blue, white, and green, designed by 
 the accomplished artist-editor, Mr. W. J. Linton. In those 
 days Mr. Cowen was in fact, I presume, what he now is only 
 in theory, a staunch Republican. 
 
 With regard to Mr. Cowen's parliamentary career, it is hard 
 to speak with impartiality. His fervid Jingoism has affected 
 Avith profound regret his warmest admirers, myself among 
 the rest. There have not even been wanting some base 
 enough to attribute his support of the wicked and disastrous 
 foreign policy of the Beaconsfield Government to motives 
 other than disinterested. The true explanation of his aber- 
 ration is quite otherwise. He is still a Hungarian — a Polish 
 insurgent. Nothing is changed. Russia is his mortal foe. 
 Like a true Bourbon, he has neither learned nor forgotten. 
 Any stick is good enough to beat the Muscovite dog with. 
 He advocated the Crimean war in the hope that something 
 might " turn up " for his exiled clients. Nothing came of it ; 
 but a fig for experience. Mr. Cowen is, like the great author 
 and finisher of his faith, Mazzini, essentially an idealist — a poet 
 with intense sympathy and vivid imagination. His sympathy 
 and imagination have temporarily overwhelmed his reason. 
 That is all. Nothing better, nothing worse. If I were to 
 have the making of two perfect Radical politicians, I should 
 mix Dilke and Cowen together. The one is two-thirds
 
 Joseph Cowen. 59 
 
 reason and one-third imagination, the other two-thirds 
 imagination and one-third reason. Give C. one-third of D.'s 
 reason, and D. one-third of C.'s sympathetic fancy, and then 
 you would have a correct balance of powers. 
 
 Bright's is the only powerful intellect in the House in 
 which reason and imagination are blended in just and equal 
 proportions, the imagination acting as a stimulus to the 
 reason, but never as a controlling power. 
 
 I will illustrate what I mean by a passage from Mr. 
 Cowen's magnificently unwise Jingo speech in the House on 
 the occasion of the supposed Russian advance on Constan- 
 tinople: — 
 
 " I ask English Liberals if they have ever seriously con- 
 sidered the political consequences of an imperial despotism 
 bestriding Europe — reaching, indeed, from the waters of the 
 Neva to those of the Amour — of the Head of the Greek 
 Church, the Eastern Pope, the master of many legions, 
 having one foot on the Baltic, planting another on the 
 Bosphorus. When icebergs float into southern latitudes, 
 they freeze the air for miles around. Will not this political 
 iceberg, when it descends upon the genial shores of the 
 Mediterranean, wither the young shoots of liberty that are 
 springing up between the crevices of the worn-out fabrics of 
 despotism % " 
 
 Now, all this is very striking — nay, appalling ; but John 
 Bright, I am sure, knowing that icebergs have a habit of 
 melting long before they reach the shores of the Mediter- 
 ranean, would never have been guilty of bringing any berg 
 of his so far South. As it is, the political iceberg from the 
 North has liberated Bulgaria, while that from the South, 
 pushed on by English Jingoes, has ineffectually striven to roll 
 its icy mass over the young shoots of Roumelian liberty. 
 
 Apart, however, from this deplorable Jingo infatuation, 
 Mr. Cowen's parliamentary achievements have in no way 
 belied the high hopes that his friends reposed in his great 
 abilities and immense experience. His speeches on the 
 Friendly Societies Bill, on the County Suffrage Bill, on Mr.
 
 60 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 Plimsoll's bill, on the County Courts Bill, the Licensing 
 Boards Bill, and, above all, on the Royal Titles Bill, have 
 given evidence of a varied capacity for legislative work 
 which has not been equalled by any member of his own 
 standing in the House. 
 
 During the parliamentary contest in Newcastle occasioned 
 by the death of his father, Mr. Cowen delivered a series of 
 speeches on political questions and public policy which justly 
 arrested national attention. They have been collected, and 
 will abundantly repay perusal. They are without exception 
 as fine electioneering speeches as I ever read, and if he had 
 never opened his lips again would have entitled him to no 
 mean place among English orators and statesmen. 
 
 On one point only did he show a disposition to lower 
 the Radical flag, to be unfaithful to himself and his glorious 
 antecedents. He was repeatedly taxed with being a Repub- 
 lican, and his explanation was that he held the Republican 
 form of government to be in theory the highest known 
 to man, but that in practice he was devoted to the British 
 Monarchy. Now, to my mind this is wholly illogical, and 
 not altogether honest. Having discovered a true or best 
 theory, it is the duty of every honest man to act on it, 
 whether it be in the domain of politics or mathematics. 
 If there is a better way, we have no right to fold our hands 
 and content ourselves with the worse. " Ye cannot serve 
 God and Mammon." To the sincere mind all compromise 
 in such circumstances is impossible. It will not do to say, 
 " Well, no doubt in theory the worship of God is the correct 
 thing, but for all practical purposes the service of Mammon 
 is perferable." Least of all living English politicians could 
 I have conceived of Mr. Joseph Cowen appearing on a public 
 platform with such an impotent formula in his mouth. In 
 the case of others "thrift might follow fawning," but with 
 Mr. Cowen it was not, and is not so. That he should not 
 have been able to say to this contemptible spirit of sub- 
 terfuge, " Get thee behind me, Satan," is to me a mystery 
 even unto this day.
 
 VI. 
 
 SIR WILFRID LAWSON. 
 
 " And though that he was witty he was wise, 
 And of his port as meke as is a mayde : 
 He never yet no vilanie ne sayde 
 In alle his lif, unto no raanere wight — 
 He was a vary parfit gentil knight." 
 
 I BELIEVE with all sound Christian people, our mendicant 
 archbishops and bishops included, that it is as impossible 
 for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven as for a camel 
 to go through the eye of a needle. My experience has like- 
 wise agreed with that of the Pagan Fronto, who Marcus 
 Antoninus says told him " that the so-called high born are for 
 the most part heartless." But, as is generally admitted, 
 there are exceptions to all rules, and Sir Wilfrid Lawson is 
 an exceptional man. He is a baronet, and so wealthy that I 
 am almost afraid to particularise with regard to his income. 
 Having never suffered the least inconvenience from the 
 deceitfulness of riches myself — my experience, alas ! has been 
 chiefly the other way — I prefer to speak of matter more 
 within the scope of my knowledge. With respect to Sir 
 Wilfrid Lawson, however, I am sure of two things. In spite 
 of his baronetcy he is a "jolly good fellow," and in spite 
 of his riches he may reasonably hope to enter in at the 
 celestial gates, unless they are barred by John Calvin him- 
 self — a contingency which there is less and less reason to 
 apprehend. 
 In any case there would be very little good of sending him
 
 62 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 to " the other place." Like Monk Basil of the old church 
 legend, he would almost certainly, if ordered down stairs, 
 make a little heaven of mirth in his own more immediate 
 neighbourhood, and so disturb general arrangements that it 
 would speedily be found necessary to have him removed to 
 more comfortable quarters. For not only is he witty in 
 himself, but the cause that wit is in other men. It is im- 
 possible to converse with him for five minutes running 
 without becoming in some measure affected by his irresistible 
 spirit of " gay wisdom," as the Premier has felicitously 
 designated his peculiar humour. 
 
 It is a total mistake to suppose that Sir Wilfrid's jokes 
 are mere platform reproductions. He is even more witty in 
 private than in public, and you never meet him that he has 
 not the air of a man who has just experienced some extra- 
 ordinary piece of good luck, in which you are called upon, if 
 you are not an absolute churl, to participate. He is brimful 
 and running over with sprightly sallies and clever epigrams. 
 Indeed, they seem to come as naturally to him as dulness to 
 most of us. And his wit is of the best kind. It is never 
 used to wound the feelings of any, but to laugh men out 
 of their follies, pretences, and insincerities. His keenest 
 shafts are never envenomed, and are never sped except 
 with a moral purpose. Were it otherwise he might be 
 classed with the humorous light horsemen of debate — of 
 whom Mr. Bernal Osborne was a favourite specimen — in 
 which case he would, of course, be entitled to no place in 
 this series. 
 
 As it is, I believe Sir Wilfrid Lawson to be one of the 
 most earnest and trustworthy Radicals in the House of 
 Commons. Some there are, doubtless, who hold that true 
 moral earnestness is never to be found clothed in quasi- 
 comical attire — that facetiousness and Radicalism are incom- 
 patible. My reply is that the honourable member for Carlisle 
 finds genial satire to be by far the most effective weapon in 
 his intellectual armoury, and that, like a wise man, he puts 
 his special talent to the best use he can. In skilful bauds
 
 Sir Wilfrid Law son. 63 
 
 the scimitar of Saladin will strike home as surely as the 
 battle-axe of King Richard. 
 
 After some consideration of the matter, I have arrived at 
 the conclusion that great Radicals, like great poets, are born, 
 not made. They inherit rather than acquire the qualities of 
 intellect and heart which enable them to point the path of 
 human progress. Radicalism is a rare and generous fruit, 
 which it takes generations to grow in anything like per- 
 fection. 
 
 Sir Wilfrid's grandfather, jovial old Mr. Wybergh, was the 
 counterpart of his grandson in wit and in politics, except that 
 he required the aid of something stronger than either tea or 
 cold water in order to keep in good form. An obituary notice 
 of him, not long since unearthed by Mr. George Augustus 
 Sala, credits him with an " uninterrupted gaiete de cosur, which 
 not even pain or sickness had power to subdue." When Lord 
 Brougham made his historic descent on Cumberland in the 
 Liberal interest, the old gentleman was one of his most 
 active supporters, and much harm did he do to the Tories by 
 the inimitable raillery with which he assailed them. On one 
 occasion, observing that the Conservative side of the hust- 
 ings was crowded with clergymen, he stretched out his hand 
 towards them and prefaced a spirited onslaught with the 
 text, " The Lord gave the word, and great was the company 
 of the preachers." 
 
 He was not a Lawson at all, but the representative of an 
 old Yorkshire family who had become connected with the 
 county of Cumberland through marriage with Miss Hartley, 
 whose sister was the wife of the then owner of Bray ton. Old 
 Wilfrid Lawson having no descendants, left his estates and 
 name to his godson and nephew by affinity, the father of the 
 present baronet. He, the late Sir Wilfrid, married a Miss 
 Graham of Netherby, the sister of Sir James Graham, the 
 well-known Minister of State — who was consequently the 
 member for Carlisle's uncle. Sir Wilfrid senior was a staunch 
 Liberal, who did not permit family connections to hamper 
 him in the discharge of his public duties. When Sir James
 
 64 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 Graham vacillated in his allegiance to Liberalism, his brother- 
 in-law, who was universally esteemed for his many virtues, 
 set an example to the constituency of fidelity to principle, by 
 being among the first to record his vote against him. The 
 poll was then open, and of two days' duration, and the conse- 
 quence was that the Minister lost his seat. On repentance 
 only was he permitted to resume it. 
 
 The witty champion of the Permissive Bill was born in the 
 year 1829, at Brayton Hall, Aspatria, Cumberland. He suc- 
 ceeded to the family estates and the baronetcy, which has 
 existed, with a break, for about two centuries, on the death 
 of his father in 1867. His education was for a youth of his 
 social status of a very limited kind. He was never either at 
 a public school or at college ; and if you ask him what in- 
 struction he received, he replies, with evident satisfaction, 
 that he never had any. His father was a very " Low " or 
 Evangelical Churchman — a teetotaller, too, for many years — 
 who dreaded the contaminating influences of University life 
 on his boys more than he coveted for them academic distinc- 
 tions. What happened, accordingly, I cannot better describe 
 than in the words of Sir Wilfrid's brother William, the author 
 of " Ten Years of Gentleman Farming," a singularly candid 
 and interesting book. " I had the advantage," he says, " of 
 being the son of parents who were more anxious that their 
 children should be happy and good than that they should be 
 learned or great. My father had my education conducted — 
 in a religious manner — at home, where I acquired a little 
 Latin and Greek, and a few other things ; and where, as is 
 the case with many other youths, anything in the shape of 
 lessons was not attractive to me, and I learned as little as 
 possible. I had, before I was eighteen, travelled several 
 times on the Continent of Europe, and had visited Egypt and 
 Palestine ; but circumstances never brought me in contact 
 with rich or great people, and I had not much of what 
 is called ' knowledge of the world ; ' nor, as I always had 
 the prospect of enough wealth to enable me to live with- 
 out working, did I form what are called ' business habits.
 
 Sir Wilfrid Law son. 65 
 
 Trained as a shooter of animals, a hunter of Cumberland 
 beasts with hounds, and a trapper of vermin, I found myself, 
 in the spring of 1861, in my twenty-fifth year, without an 
 occupation, without many acquaintances — except among the 
 poor, whom I had not learned to despise because they spoke 
 bad grammar, and took their coats off too work — and without 
 the reputation of having been successful in any undertaking 
 except that of the mastership and huntsman ship of my 
 brother's foxhounds." 
 
 As a consequence of this sort of training, Sir Wilfrid Lawson 
 is almost entirely devoid of personal ambition. Goodness, 
 not greatness, is the object at which he aims. He is rich, 
 but his sympathies with the poor are as fresh and keen as if 
 he were one of them. He has not been deluded by the 
 deceitfulness of riches, nor is " rank " to him other than the 
 poor " guinea stamp " in comparison with the pure gold of 
 genuine manhood. I know no one in any station of life who 
 seems to me to realise more fully that 
 
 " Kind hearts are more than coronets, 
 And simple faith than Norman blood." 
 
 For fifteen or sixteen years he has been a total abstainer, 
 simply from a sense of duty towards his fellows, and not 
 from any personal or physical antipathy to stimulants. 
 While the world standeth he will do nothing to cause his 
 brother to offend ; nay, more, he will do his utmost to remove 
 stumbling-blocks from his brother's path. In so acting he 
 may be right or he may be wrong, but at all events the 
 motive is eminently respectable. 
 
 In 1859, in his father's lifetime, he entered Parliament as 
 member for Carlisle, and found a more useful and honourable 
 occupation than that of " a hunter of Cumberland beasts with 
 hounds." In March 1864, he first brought in a bill, since 
 known as the Permissive Bill, "to enable owners and occu- 
 piers of property in certain districts to prevent the sale of 
 intoxicating liquors within such districts." He lost his seat 
 in consequence, and from 1865 to 1868 he was out of Parlia-
 
 66 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 ment. Then the tide turned, and the cathedral city reversed 
 its verdict, many publicans and sinners doubtless repenting 
 them of the evil they had done. 
 
 Like most places blessed with a dean and chapter, the 
 Carlisle electors are in truth anything but a model consti- 
 tuency. It is but lately that an obnoxious ex-mayor of the 
 city petitioned against the return of two municipal coun- 
 cillors, on the ground of bribery and treating, and had them 
 duly unseated, the joke of the affair being that among the 
 more systematic treaters figured some of the most active 
 members of Sir Wilfrid's committee. Altogether the trial 
 revealed a state of social habits and political practices so 
 reprehensible, that one can only be thankful that so question- 
 able a constituency should elect to be represented in Parlia- 
 ment by so unquestionable a member as Sir Wilfrid Lawson. 
 It is one of the advantages of virtue that vice is always com- 
 pelled to pay it a certain unwilling homage. 
 
 It remains to speak of Sir Wilfrid's legislative career, and 
 of certain conceptions of the common weal with which his 
 name has become indissolubly associated in the public mind. 
 Two interests of transcendent importance, one social, the 
 other political, he has made peculiarly his own, viz., those of 
 temperance and peace. He is the sworn foe of publicans and 
 soldiers. He regards both as Jiostes ltumani generis, whom it 
 is the duty of all good citizens to unite to extirpate. In 
 place of strong drink he offers us cold water, and in place of 
 war a court of arbitration. Was there ever such a visionary ? 
 Why, since the dawn of human history till now, these are the 
 twin Molochs to which countless generations have sacrificed 
 their first-born. Who are we that we should depart from the 
 wisdom of our ancestors ? Did not the son of man himself 
 come eating and drinking'? Are not the princes and poten- 
 tates of the earth — our " sovereigns and statesmen " — they 
 who set armies in motion 1 And do not all manner of priests, 
 whether Protestant or Romanist, fervently thank God when 
 the bloody work has been effectually accomplished? David 
 going out with sling and stone against Goliath of Gath did
 
 Sir Wilfrid Lawson. 67 
 
 not require to possess one- twentieth part of the sublime faith 
 of him who undertakes to rout a combined array of publicans 
 and Jingoes. 
 
 A wide survey of history seems to show that the essential 
 habits of individuals and of nations are ineradicable. The 
 asceticism of the Commonwealth was followed by the un- 
 bridled licence of the Restoration ; the austere virtues of the 
 Roman Republic by the unlimited vices of the Empire. 
 Human nature is so imperfect that there is an undoubted 
 danger in being " righteous overmuch." What, then, is the 
 true motto of the temperance reformer ? It is to be found in 
 the words of Goethe, " Without haste and without rest." The 
 drinking habits of the people must be eradicated gradually, 
 one branch of the upas tree being lopped off here, and another 
 there, till at last the time may come when it will be safe to 
 strike at the trunk itself. 
 
 I do not for a moment mean to affirm that Sir Wilfrid 
 Lawson is so ignorant of human nature as to be likely to 
 dash his head incontinently against it ; but he has many 
 intemperately temperate followers who habitually do so, to 
 the great detriment of the cause which they and all well- 
 intentioned citizens have at heart. Enthusiastic temperance 
 reformers are so apt to under-estimate the warping influence 
 of social customs and of early acquired habits, even on the 
 healthiest consciences. I, for example, through force of 
 association, am not an abstainer, though I often feel that it 
 would be right I should be so ; yet I am Pharisee enough to 
 thank Heaven as often as opportunity offers that I am 
 not like that inhuman •'• hunter of Cumberland beasts with 
 hounds," Sir Wilfrid Lawson, Bart., the apostle of tem- 
 perance, whose devotion to the public weal and domestic 
 purity of life I so greatly admire. I would rather get hope- 
 lessly drunk every day in the week than even for once 
 
 " Blend my pleasure or my pride 
 With sorrow of the meanest thing that lives." 
 
 Howbeit, had I been born a fox-hunting squire like the 
 baronet of Bray ton, there are ten chaDces to one that I
 
 68 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 should have been as arrant a Nimrod as he. " That monster 
 custom which all sense doth eat of habit's devil," is too 
 much for us all, if not in one particular, then in another. 
 
 Like all friends of temperance who aim at possible re- 
 forms, I rejoice that Sir Wilfred, during the session of 1879, 
 saw fit to substitute "Local Option" for the Permissive 
 Bill. The latter had a detestable plebiscitary and imperialist 
 flavour about it which made it stink in the nostrils of every 
 man who believes that representative institutions afford the 
 safest guarantees at once for liberty of the citizen and 
 efficiency of administration. From this objection Local 
 Option is free, and a flag is now unfurled around which may 
 rally every one who is not the blind partisan of a "trade" 
 which openly boasts of preferring its own small and not 
 over-creditable " interest " to every consideration of national 
 welfare. 
 
 For years the publicans have openly identified themselves 
 with every reactionary " cry," and they will have themselves 
 to blame if at last they find themselves at deadly feud with 
 the whole Liberal party. It is perfectly intolerable that 
 such a body of licensed monopolists should be permitted 
 longer to make and unmake Governments. To this con- 
 clusion has Sir Wilfrid Lawson's persistent efforts brought 
 us, and who shall say it is not a long way? 
 
 With regard to Sir Wilfrid's enlightened advocacy of 
 peace principles, no exception whatever need be taken. He 
 is not, so far as I know, a " peace at any price man," but he 
 is the very incarnation of the righteous spirit of anti-Jingo- 
 ism. Historically Jingoism is a ghastly recrudescence of all 
 the brutal, bloodthirsty passions of bygone generations. 
 Sir Wilfrid was one of the few members of the House who, 
 at the moment that we seemed on the very brink of com- 
 mitting the incalculable folly and unforgivable crime of 
 rushing into a second Crimean war, most clearly apprehended 
 the true character of the impending calamity, and courage- 
 ously pointed it out to Parliament and the country. It is 
 in such crises that true Radicals, genuine patriots, come to
 
 Sir Wilfrid Lawson. 69 
 
 the surface. It is not every man who, when such tried 
 friends of freedom and national rectitude as Mr. Joseph 
 Cowen are found fervently preaching the immoral and 
 parochial doctrine of " my country right or my country 
 wrong," has the fidelity to affirm, " I have a mightier country 
 than you, and a larger interest to protect. The globe is my 
 country, and its entire inhabitants are my countrymen. 
 Eternal justice is the interest which I desire to see con- 
 served." 
 
 This was the spirit in which Sir Wilfrid spoke when 
 nearly everyone else feared to utter words of truth and 
 soberness ; and his constancy ought not to be forgotten. 
 His cause, the cause of international arbitration, is a growing 
 one. In spite of appearances, the day-dream of Mazzini will 
 yet be realised. There will be a United States of Europe, 
 as of America, and the sad Italian, 
 
 " Who, rowing hard against the stream, 
 Saw distant gates of Eden gleam, 
 And did not dream it was a dream," 
 
 will be numbered among the world's greatest seers. 
 
 Sir Wilfrid has likewise, in the matter of the royal grants, 
 along with Sir Charles Dilke and Mr. P. A. Taylor, done all 
 that one faithful representative could to rescue the people's 
 hardly-earned money from the devouring maw of useless 
 princes and princesses. 
 
 For the rest, the member for Carlisle, on subjects with 
 which he is less familiar, always follows the best lead, and 
 his vote will never be found recorded among the ayes when 
 it should be among the noes. 
 
 He is not what can be called an orator, but his style of 
 speaking is admirably adapted to the matter, which is no 
 less closely reasoned than wittily conceived. He is the 
 readiest and perhaps the most pungent writer of satirical 
 verses I ever met. If he were setting himself to it, he could 
 fill columns of Punch every week, to the great advantage of 
 the proprietors. He is almost as good a writer of verse as I
 
 7o Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 am of prose — which is saying a good deal. I subjoin a very- 
 recent specimen, consisting of a paraphrase of the Ministerial 
 reply to Mr. Samuelson's question regarding the language 
 officially used in Cyprus : — 
 
 " About Cyprus we scarce know what language to speak, 
 Whether English, or Turkish, or Russian, or Greek; 
 There's only one language we can't speak, forsooth — 
 When Cyprus is mentioned we never speak truth."
 
 VII. 
 
 HENRY F A 1VCETT. 
 
 "This is he who, felled by foes, 
 Sprang harmless up, refreshed by blows." 
 
 FOR twenty-one years the brightness of noonday has been 
 to Henry Fawcett, " member for Hackney and Hindo- 
 stan," as the blackness of midnight. As is well known, he 
 has been stone blind during the whole period of his public 
 life. The fact is a most painful one, which I allude to 
 thus early, not for the purpose of exciting sympathy, but 
 because it is impossible to estimate aright the magni- 
 tude of Mr. Fawcett's achievements if the heaviness of the 
 odds against which he has had to contend is not duly taken 
 into account. 
 
 There are always clever people ready to demonstrate that 
 untoward calamities, which do not happen to themselves, 
 are somehow blessings in disguise. Are you lamed for life ? 
 So much the better for you. Is there not thus effected an 
 immense saving of shoe-leather? For the future you are 
 independent of shoemakers. Are you deprived of sight? 
 Good for you again ; for is it not a fact that the blind have 
 a marvellous gift of groping their way in the dark? Do not, 
 for example, the excavations of Herculaneum and Pompeii 
 testify that in their last agony the doomed inhabitants 
 sought the aid of sightless guides to direct their flight? 
 
 Most true, there is generally some compensation for the 
 heaviest misfortune, but it is, alas, as a rule, are too small 
 for the loss sustained. And such, no doubt, has been the
 
 72 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 experience of the eminent politician and economist, Henry 
 Fawcett. 
 
 Bereft of sight, he has achieved much ; with sight, he 
 would beyond question have achieved still more. For his is 
 an exceedingly strong and healthy nature, as little prone to 
 succumb to the enervating influences of prosperity as to the 
 prostrating blows of adversity — a true Samson Agonistes, 
 whose locks, however closely shorn by unlucky chance, were 
 bound to grow some day and somehow. 
 
 His intellect is characterised by a vigour that is almost 
 redundant, a tenacity of purpose that turns not back, and a 
 personal courage curiously combined with caution which it 
 would be exceedingly difficult to match inside or outside of 
 Parliament. 
 
 Physically he is a picture of health and strength, one of 
 the tallest men in the House, with long sinewy limbs and 
 that peculiar poise about the shoulders suggestive of a 
 leonine bound, which is generally observable in persons of 
 extraordinary intrepidity of character. As might be ex- 
 pected of one in such fine animal condition, Mr. Fawcett's 
 habitual mood is cheerful, even to mirthfulness. He has 
 escaped being a mere athlete by becoming a scholar, and it 
 is pretty certain that, if he had not been a philosopher, he 
 would have been a demagogue. 
 
 He has strong natural affinities for the "unwashed" multi- 
 tude. " March without the people," he would say with 
 Ledru Rollin, "and you march into night; their instincts 
 are a finger-pointing of Providence, always turned towards 
 real benefit." 
 
 Men cast in such a big mould as Mr. Fawcett are almost 
 inevitably democrats. The mere gaudium certaminis of 
 politics is life for them. With culture and honesty of pur- 
 pose such as the Cambridge Professor possesses, robust, 
 hearty natures of this stamp make the most trustworthy 
 Radical politicians. They have what is so necessary for 
 political life, " staying power." They do not despair of 
 progress because for a time there is an ebb in the popular
 
 Henry Fawcett. 73 
 
 tide. They know that high-water mark will again be 
 reached before long, and if they cannot do better they are 
 content to wait the event. 
 
 Henry Fawcett, M.P., was born in the neighbourhood of 
 Salisbury, in the year 1833. His father, Alderman Fawcett, 
 of Salisbury, was born at Kirby Lonsdale in 1793. He is 
 now consequently in his eighty-sixth year, and a haler old 
 gentleman or more resolute Radical it would be difficult to 
 find in all England. He came to Wiltshire from Westmore- 
 land in his youth, and after engaging for some time in trade, 
 betook himself to the more congenial occupation of a gentle- 
 man-farmer. His energy and intelligence as an agriculturist 
 were conspicuous, and when the Anti-Corn Law agitation 
 was initiated both were heartily enlisted on behalf of the 
 League. Even yet he is an effective public speaker, and is 
 a personal friend and warm admirer of Mr. Bright. 
 
 Mr. Fawcett's mother is no less remarkable. Like her 
 husband, the alderman, she is a sort of semper eadem no less 
 in mind than in body. She is a keen politician — on the right 
 side, of course — and to her does Mr. Fawcett attribute, in no 
 small measure, the strength of his own Radical convictions. 
 
 Thus happy in his parentage, the member for Hackney 
 was no less so in other essential particulars affecting his 
 childhood and youth. He was country bred — and such a 
 country, too — imbibing no taste that was not equally good 
 for head, heart, and body. Health, the essential condition 
 of all great achievements, he stored up abundantly, while at 
 the same time the discipline of his mind was by no means 
 neglected. 
 
 His family were neither rich nor poor, but in that "just 
 middle" state which neither suggests to the youth that 
 exertion is superfluous, nor inflicts on him the labour of 
 acquirement as an unavoidable drudgery. Till his four- 
 teenth year he attended a local school in the vicinity of 
 Salisbury, whence he was removed to Queenwood College, 
 Hants, where he remained for two years. There he had the 
 good luck to benefit by the teaching of Professors Tyndall 
 
 E
 
 74 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 and Frankland. He next attended King's College, London, 
 and in 1852 he was duly entered as a student of Trinity 
 Hall, Cambridge. To Cambridge young Fawcett brought 
 with him an unquenchable love of all manner of rural pur- 
 suits, the frame of an athlete, the ringing voice of a hunts- 
 man, and a tolerable store of learning. 
 
 He did not neglect his opportunities at the University. 
 He was an adept at boating, skating, riding, angling, walk- 
 ing, racquets, cricketing, and prizetaking. In 1856 he 
 graduated Seventh Wrangler, and was subsequently elected 
 a Fellow of his college. 
 
 From a very early age he had displayed premonitory 
 symptoms of a more than ordinary devotion to politics. 
 While still an undergraduate the writings of the late John 
 Stuart Mill made a deep impression on his mind, and partly 
 determined him to seek an entrance into Parliament by the 
 time-honoured avenue of ,the Bar. He accordingly com- 
 menced to " keep terms " at Lincoln's Inn, where he would 
 have been duly " called " had not the terrible calamity to 
 which I have already alluded intervened. 
 
 In the autumn of 1858 he was one day out with a small 
 party engaged in partridge shooting. A covey rose and 
 flew over a slight elevation, on the remote side of which 
 Mr. Fawcett had momentarily disappeared. A companion 
 unfortunately fired at the instant his head topped the rising 
 ground, and two pellets, with something like diabolic pre- 
 cision, neatly perforating the spectacles he was wearing, 
 lodged themselves in the retina of the eyes, and " at one 
 stride came the dark." From that day to this, 
 
 " Those eyes, though clear, 
 To outward view, of blemish or of spot, 
 Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot ; 
 Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear 
 Of sun, or moon, or star throughout the year, 
 Or man or woman." 
 
 The pain of the accident was soon over, and it remained for 
 Mr. Fawcett to consider how far so irreparable a mischance
 
 Henry Fawcett. 75 
 
 had necessarily affected his habits of life and future pro- 
 spects. His invincible pluck did not desert him for a 
 moment. Luckily his academic training was completed, 
 and the benchers of Lincoln's Inn, on hearing the sad facts 
 of the case, considerately offered to " call " him to the Bar 
 without further to do. He might succeed as a counsel in 
 spite of his blindness. Armed Avith logic, imperturbability, 
 and physical endurance such as his, one might undoubtedly 
 accomplish much. Still, the drawbacks to a successful pro- 
 fessional career were undeniable, and Mr. Fawcett wisely, it 
 seems to me, resolved not to encounter them, but to take a 
 straighter cut to Parliament. 
 
 Except in this particular, however, he determined that his 
 blindness should make " no difference," and it is wonderful 
 how little it has actually affected his habits and intentions. 
 In the very heart of London he has contrived to secure a 
 modest house with a garden one-tenth of a mile long, where 
 he can promenade all alone to his heart's content. He is 
 never so happy as in the open air, and in his native 
 Wiltshire his pedestrian feats have become almost pro- 
 verbial. His topographical knowlege is so minute, that when 
 his guides are at fault he not unfrequently directs them — 
 from early recollections of natural objects, of course. 
 
 He religiously frequents the University Boat-race on the 
 Thames, and is as heartily interested in the proceedings 
 of the day as the keenest-eyed observer. At Cambridge he 
 is stroke-oar of the "Ancient Mariners'" boat, and a better 
 stroke no crew of "mariners," ancient and modern, need 
 desire. 
 
 He is a good swimmer. When the Fens are frozen he 
 takes to his skates as naturally as a duck in the water takes 
 to her webs. On such occasions his daughter, a graceful 
 maiden of eleven winters, precedes, her father whistling 
 playfully. 
 
 He is likewise an ardent equestrian, and when in residence 
 at the University, seldom a day elapses that the Professor 
 of Political Economy may not be seen, accompanied by some
 
 7 6 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 one of his numerous friends, cantering fearlessly on New- 
 market Heath or Across Flat. He occasionally even follows 
 the hounds on a well-trained steed, and so hard a rider is he 
 said to be that the livery-stable keepers have two tariffs, 
 one ordinary for those who have not been seen in the society 
 of Professor Fawcett, and one extraordinary for those that 
 have. 
 
 Add to this that Mr. Fawcett is one of the best and most 
 indefatigable amateur salmon and trout fishers that can well 
 be imagined, and it will readily be admitted that no great 
 " difference " has overtaken him with regard to outdoor 
 recreations. 
 
 But if this is the case with respect to his personal habits, 
 it is none the less true of his political intentions. He had 
 hoped to enter the House as a successful counsel. As it was, 
 he had to seek admission without the aid of that quasi-pass- 
 port, without fame, and without what is even still more 
 indispensable to a parliamentary candidate, money. Not 
 that he was by any means a poor man, in the strict sense 
 of the word. He has always been in comfortable circum- 
 stances, thanks to a provident father and his own exertions; 
 but rather in the sense that his wants have been few and 
 legitimate rather than that his income has been large. But 
 he has had no superfluous thousands with which to oil the 
 electoral wheels of any constituency. He has, however, 
 invariably got over this difficulty with characteristic bold- 
 ness and commendable candour. 
 
 His first venture was with the electors of Southwark in 
 1861, on the death of Sir Charles Napier, "Black Charlie." 
 He did not know a soul in the borough, which he invaded 
 with his secretary in a cab. They went straight to a 
 printer's, and ordered a number of bills to be issued announc- 
 ing the candidature of Henry Fawcett in the Radical in- 
 terest. 
 
 He had previously spoken in public, once in Exeter Hall on 
 trades unionism, arid once at Glasgow, at the Social Science 
 Congress, with considerable acceptance; but to all except
 
 Henry Fawcctt. 77 
 
 the merest fraction of the electors, his very name was 
 unknown ; and worse and worse, when they came to meet 
 him he was blind, aud they soon had it from his own lips 
 that he was not rich, and would employ neither paid agent 
 nor canvasser. 
 
 Was there ever such a madman ? Howbeit, the great 
 ability and striking gallantry of the blind candidate soon 
 began to tell with the constituency, and there is no saying 
 what might have happened if Mr. Fawcett had not been 
 over-persuaded to retire before the poll to avoid the charge 
 of creating a division in the Liberal ranks. The experience 
 he had gained, however, was of the most valuable kind. It 
 went to prove, incredible as it may appear, that the portals 
 of the " rich man's club " at Westminster may be successfully 
 forced at the cost of a few hundreds by candidates at once 
 poor and honest, if only they have the requisite faith and 
 ability to make the venture. 
 
 In 1863, Mr. Fawcett contested the borough of Cambridge 
 on the same principles that he had found to answer so unex- 
 pectedly well in Southwark. He was defeated, but by an 
 insignificant majority. 
 
 He next contested Brighton in 1864, warmly espousing the 
 cause of the North in its struggle with the slave-holding 
 States of the American Union. Again he was unsuccessful, 
 but the following year, nothing daunted, he returned to the 
 charge, and was elected by a large majority. 
 
 In 1868 he was once more victorious, but at the general 
 election of 1874, the annus mirabilis of Tory reaction, both he 
 and his Liberal colleagues in the representation were thrown 
 out, and replaced by Conservative nobodies. 
 
 Besides the general wave of reaction, which ran high 
 nearly everywhere, there were special objections to Mr. 
 Fawcett. He was not a rich resident, whose patronage 
 benefited the shopkeepers, and he was, rightly or wrongly, 
 opposed to the Permissive Bill without having the smallest 
 hope of support from the publicans. But he lost his seat, 
 to the deep regret of the most reflecting electors of Brighton,
 
 yS Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 and of earnest and intelligent Radicals throughout the 
 country. 
 
 It was impossible, however, that such a man should long 
 be excluded from the Legislature. In two months' time a 
 vacany occurred in the representation of the vast Metro- 
 politan constituency of Hackney, and the eyes of the Liberal 
 electors were at once turned with one accord towards Mr. 
 Fawcett. He was elected without difficulty, his great 
 services to India, and his persistent opposition to all en- 
 croachments on Epping Forest and the New Forest weigh- 
 ing heavily in his favour in the electoral balance. 
 
 In Parliament, Mr. Fawcett's career has been one of no 
 ordinary success. He is recognised by all parties in the 
 House as a speaker of decided mark, and his vote is always 
 to be weighed as well as counted. He entered the Legis- 
 lature with a body of well-defined principles, and he has 
 stuck to them manfully through evil and through good 
 report. His political conceptions are in a great measure 
 those of his friend, the late Mr. John Stuart Mill. Unlike 
 Goethe, for example, it was the special function of that 
 great and generous thinker to fertilise, not sterilise, the 
 minds of other men ; 
 
 " And methinks the work is nobler 
 And a mark of greater might ; 
 Better far to make a thinker 
 Than to make a proselyte. 
 Nobler for the sake of manhood, 
 Better for the cause of truth. 
 Though your thinker be but rugged 
 And your proselyte is smooth." 
 
 Mr. Fawcett's ideas may be described as ultra-individualist 
 in their tendency. He is an " administrative Nihilist," who 
 believes that government is at best a necessary evil, and that 
 the less the people have of it, and the more they are left to 
 seek their own happiness in their own way, the better for 
 them. 
 
 In a country like Germany, with its Autocracy on the one
 
 Henry Fawcett. 79 
 
 hand and its Socialism on the other, he would be between the 
 upper and the nether millstone, and would assuredly, politi- 
 cally speaking, be speedily pounded to atoms. Here and in 
 the United States the tendency is decidedly towards a more 
 and more comprehensive individualism ; but it is very doubt- 
 ful whether in several instances Mr. Fawcett has not given 
 us somewhat " too much of a good thing." His opposition, 
 for example, to Mr. Mundella's Factory Acts Amendment 
 Bill, limiting the labour of women in factories to nine hours, 
 was, to say the least, an attitude of doubtful wisdom. If 
 women could protect themselves from oppressive toil, then, 
 of course, Mr. Fawcett was right; if the evidence was the 
 other way, then he was wrong. The question is one of 
 evidence solely, and I for one am of opinion that Mr. Faw- 
 cett's judgment was not in accordance with the evidence, 
 He was willing, nay, has exerted himself manfully, to extend 
 the benefits of factory legislation to the children of agricul- 
 tural labourers, on the ground that they could not help 
 themselves. How much better off were the majority of 
 those for whose benefit the Nine Hours Bill was introduced ? 
 In reality hardly any. 
 
 Again, with respect to the licensing question, Mr. Faw- 
 cett's position has somewhat too much of the non possumus 
 about it. The problem is one, doubtless, of very great diffi- 
 culty, and certainly the Permissive Bill was a crude attempt 
 to deal with it. But to tell us that Local Option is as 
 objectionable as the Permissive Bill, or even more so, is to 
 affirm one of two things — either that the present licensing 
 system is perfect and inviolable, or that free trade in liquor 
 is the true remedy for the monstrous evils of intemperance 
 to which society is on all hands admitted to be a prey. If 
 no remedy is the true remedy, then we ought to know it. 
 
 On the Republican question, too, I am free to admit Mr. 
 Fawcett's conduct has been unsatisfactory. In principle he 
 has declared himself a Republican, while in practice remaining 
 a Royalist. Such an attitude is untenable, illogical, and 
 altogether unworthy both of the man and the cause.
 
 80 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 More I need not say. These positions, however, which 
 the member for Hackney defends with so much gallantry and 
 so little regard for his own popularity, are, generally speak- 
 ing, virtues in excess, and cannot for a moment be permitted 
 to weigh with any rational mind in judging of his career 
 as a legislator. 
 
 Who can ever forget the evening when the blind member 
 was the only representative of the people who saw his way 
 into the lobby where Sir Charles Dilke and Mr. P. A. Taylor 
 were tellers against the dowry to the Princess Louise? 
 What Londoner can ever be too grateful to him for preserv- 
 ing from imminent alienation the ancient rights of the people 
 in Epping Forest? If he had been member for Hackney at 
 the time he was fighting so doggedly against the threatened 
 enclosures, there might have been some suspicion that it 
 was done merely to gratify his constituents. As it was, not 
 even that pardonable kind of self-interest can be laid to his 
 charge. 
 
 It will likewise be long remembered by the skilled artisans 
 of London with what courage and devotion he acted as 
 chairman of the late Mr. George Odger's committee in 
 Southwark, when that Republican artisan statesman was so 
 near obtaining a well-merited seat in the Legislature of his 
 country. 
 
 But it is as the " member for India " that Mr. Fawcett's 
 name will be handed down to posterity. He has the largest 
 constituency of any man in the world, and his responsi- 
 bilities have become as real as if they were imposed by 
 law. He is the true Minister for India; Lord Cranbrook 
 and Mr. Stanhope are but clerks by comparison, accomplish- 
 ing like hirelings their official day. It is not to Lord 
 Cranbrook but to Henry Fawcett that millions of Indians 
 look for redress of grievances, for words of sympathy and 
 comfort. 
 
 It is to be hoped that when the next Liberal Administra- 
 tion comes into power, the unique position which the 
 member for Hackney holds in the hearts of the Indian
 
 Henry Fawceit. 8 1 
 
 people will not be overlooked. His presence at the India 
 Office would do more to secure India than twenty Afghan 
 expeditions. Mr. Fawcett has been at enormous pains to 
 acquaint himself with the actual state of India, and yet his 
 first application to the subject was more like an accident 
 than anything else. He happened to oppose as a gross and 
 shameful injustice the proposal of the Goverment of the 
 day to saddle the Indian Exchequer with the cost of a 
 particular entertainment given to the Sultan of Turkey. 
 Bit by bit his knowledge of the systematic manner in which 
 India is " exploited " by England grew, and he at last re- 
 solved to subject the whole question of Indian finance and 
 Indian administration to a patient and searching analysis. 
 For years he worked four hours every day at the tangled 
 skein as one would for an examination, and when data failed 
 him he had influence enough to secure the appointment of 
 a Parliamentary Committee on Indian Finance, which sat 
 for three whole sessions. 
 
 At the end of the investigation he had as fully mastered 
 the subject as it was possible to do. He has all the more 
 important figures by heart, and can hurl them with crushing 
 effect at the head of whoever takes it upon him to unfold 
 the Indian Budget. 
 
 It is one of the beneficial effects, if I may so speak, of Mr. 
 Fawcett's blindness that he speaks, and does not read, his 
 figures to the House. These, through his youthful but 
 smart secretary, he selects so appropriately and uses so 
 sparingly that his financial statements are singularly lucid 
 and unencumbered, each set of figures being the evidence 
 of some solid argument. 
 
 By dint of great perseverance the country has at last, 
 in some measure, been got to realise that India is as near as 
 possible a sucked orange, and that if we do not retrace our 
 steps and repent us of the evil we have been doing, the 
 "brightest gem in her Majesty's diadem" will speedily be 
 in pawn. At this moment an Indian bankruptcy stares us 
 in the face with all its terrible consequences. The limit of
 
 82 Emineiit Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 taxation has been reached, while the expenditure of the 
 Administration is unlimited as ever. 
 
 To Mr. Fawcett more than to any other man or half- 
 dozen of men do we owe our knowledge of the appalling 
 condition of the " brightest gem," which, if one could im- 
 agine a gem being so ill-behaved, may explode any day with 
 such violence as to shake to its foundations the throne not 
 merely of the "Empress of India," but that of the Queen of 
 England also. In this grave relation the voice of Henry 
 Fawcett has been as the voice of one crying in the wilder- 
 ness. If the British people have not made their paths 
 straight, it has not been his fault. 
 
 The Indian people are frequently taxed by Anglo-Indians 
 with ingratitude. I may mention, by the way, that Mr. 
 Fawcett has not found it so. It is now some time since 
 a great number of very poor Hindoos subscribed a sum 
 sufficient to defray the cost of his next election for Hackney. 
 The fund has been invested for the purpose in the names of 
 Sir Charles Dilke, Professor Cowell, and Mr. Dacosta. 
 
 Mr. Fawcett is not merely an excellent platform speaker 
 and a trenchant parliamentary debater, but he is a political 
 economist of no mean order. His " Manual of Political 
 Economy " has run through five editions, and ought to be in 
 the hands of every youthful student of economic science. 
 The " Economic Position of the British Labourer " is like- 
 wise a valuable contribution towards the elucidation of 
 a painful subject ; while " Pauperism : its Causes and 
 Remedies," though in my opinion mistaken in some of its 
 conclusions, is yet an eminently suggestive book. 
 
 In addition to the above works, Mr. Fawcett published in 
 June 1879 "Free Trade and Protection," one entire edition 
 of which was shipped for Australia and the United States, 
 while another was taken up by the Cobden Club. There is 
 besides a goodly volume of his collected " Speeches," which 
 will well repay perusal, and another of " Essays," the con- 
 joint production of Mrs. Fawcett and himself. 
 
 In conclusion, I cannot mention the name of this accom-
 
 Henry Fawcett. 83 
 
 plished lady without according her my small meed of praise. 
 If it was passing sad that Mr. Fawcett should lose the use 
 of his own eyes, it was passing fortunate that he should 
 obtain the aid of such another pair. When I think of this, 
 it almost repents me that I should have spoken so slight- 
 ingly of the compensation theorists in the first paragraph 
 of this sketch.
 
 VIII. 
 JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN. 
 
 " I am your Mayor. 
 Few things have failed to which I set my will ; 
 I do my most and best." 
 
 OIR JOHN FALSTAFF, in his days of rotundity, could 
 ^ recollect a time when he was slim enough to " creep 
 through an alderman's thumb-ring." But there are alder- 
 men and aldermen. The Cockney type, with which Shake- 
 speare and we Londoners, alas, are but too familliar, is an 
 ignorant, obese, pompous being, " who struts and stares and 
 a' that" — a glutton and a wine-bibber, an inveterate jobber, 
 and a Jingo. 
 
 The subject of this sketch, Alderman Chamberlain, M.P., 
 the renowned ex-Mayor of Birmingham, is the exact reverse 
 of this picture. Of all living Englishmen he has deservedly 
 earned the highest reputation as a municipal administrator, 
 and he remains a pre-eminently courteous and cultivated 
 gentleman — a lover of books, of paintings, and of flowers. 
 Indeed I have heard an excellent judge say of the ex- 
 Dictator of Birmingham, with his lithe limbs and classical 
 features, that he is perhaps the best bred man in Parliament ; 
 and if he is not the most learned, he is certainly one of the 
 most studious members of the House. There is a certain 
 " pale cast of thought " on Mr. Chamberlain's youthful hand- 
 some face which gives an added interest to his charm of 
 manner. 
 
 Democracy, it has been alleged, both produces, and is
 
 Joseph Chamberlain. 85 
 
 partial to, coarseness in its representatives. The reverse is 
 nearer the truth. Really good manners — the happy way of 
 doing things — can never be acquired in an exclusive or 
 aristocratic society, by reason of the paucity and uniformity 
 of the models ; and it is an indisputable fact that Radical 
 constituencies cceteris paribus prefer to be represented by men 
 of culture and refinement. Witness the choice by Paris of 
 such representatives as Victor Hugo, Ledru Rollin, and Louis 
 Blanc, and by Massachusetts of Webster, Adams, Charles 
 Sumner, and many others such. If in England the union 
 of culture and Radicalism is less observable, the reason is 
 not far to seek. Excepting Birmingham, which returns 
 Bright and Chamberlain to Parliament, there are scarcely 
 any genuinely Democratic constituencies in this country. 
 We are aristocratic, and therefore coarse in our prefer- 
 ences. 
 
 But this does not help me with the ex-Mayor, who is not 
 merely a thought fulpolitical student, but one with whom it 
 is impossible to converse, however briefly, without discerning 
 that he is a man of genuine good feeling, strict integrity, 
 resolute purpose, and unquestioning belief in the people as 
 the only legitimate source of authority. If he is admired 
 by the men of Birmingham, the admiration is at least 
 mutual. 
 
 He is a singular example of a prophet who is honoured 
 in his own country, and who makes no concealment of his 
 conviction that that country is " the hub of the universe." 
 
 His remarkable self-possession his detractors in Parliament 
 have been pleased to call overweening self-confidence. It 
 is really nothing of the kind. There are more Parliaments 
 than that mongrel thing which assembles at St. Stephen's 
 to do little but mischief. Is there not the Town Council of 
 Birmingham — the threshold of which it is as difficult for a 
 Tory to pass as for a rich man to enter the kingdom of 
 heaven ; and has not Mr. Chamberlain for years sat princeps 
 inter pares in that Radical Witanagemot, playing the part 
 of a terrestrial Providence to an entire community ? If
 
 86 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 Parliament could be constituted as the Town Council of 
 Birmingham is constituted, then Mr. Chamberlain might 
 begin to respect it. As it is, he feels that it is below 
 rather than above the level of his experience. 
 
 The parliamentary machine is vaster than the municipal, 
 but its mechanism is less perfect and the results are every- 
 way less satisfactory. If he were asked whether the Town 
 Council of Birmingham could not manage the affairs of the 
 nation better than the entire paraphernalia of Queen, Lords, 
 and Commons, I have little doubt what his answer would 
 be, and I am not at all sure that he would be wrong. 
 
 Parliament has, in fact, reached an unparalleled state of 
 incompetency and inertia, and it is only men like Mr. 
 Chamberlain, who come to it with fresh eyes and with an 
 undoubted capacity for the conduct of affairs, that are able 
 to estimate its performances at their true value. Mr. 
 Chamberlain has shown himself to be what I may call a 
 great municipal statesman, and being so, he has perpetually 
 before him a valuable standard of comparison, such as is 
 not possessed in an equal degree by any other member of 
 Parliament. No one else stands exactly on the same 
 political plane, and no one in so brief a space — it is 
 scarcely ten years since he made his first speech in support 
 of Mr. Dixon's candidature for Birmingham — ever contrived 
 to attach to himself a more numerous and respectable fol- 
 lowing in the country. 
 
 Mr. Chamberlain was born in London, in July 1836. He 
 is consequently in his forty-third year, but in appearance 
 he is more like a man of thirty-three than of forty-three. 
 
 The Chamberlains were originally a family of Wiltshire 
 yeomanry, settled at Shrivenham, but for a hundred years 
 previous to the removal of the late Mr. Chamberlain to 
 Birmingham they had carried on, from father to son, on 
 the same spot in Milk Street, Cheapside, and under the 
 same name, an extensive business as leather merchants and 
 shoe manufacturers. 
 
 In religion the family was Unitarian, and almost as a
 
 Joseph Chamberlain. 87 
 
 matter of course Radical in politics. " Take a thorn bush," 
 said the once renowned Abd-el-Kader, u and sprinkle it for 
 a whole year with water ; it will yield nothing but thorns. 
 Take a date tree, leave it without culture, and it will always 
 produce dates." And so it was with Mr. Chamberlain. He 
 was not left without culture, for a Unitarian upbringing is 
 generally an education in itself; but for one that has since 
 evinced so marked a capacity for literary expression, both 
 spoken and written, his scholastic training appears to have 
 been but meagre. He was, indeed, a pupil of University 
 College School for some time, but at the early age of six- 
 teen he was put to business. 
 
 In his eighteenth year his father became one of the part- 
 ners of the great screw manufacturing firm of Nettlefold & 
 Chamberlain at Birmingham, and thither the future Mayor 
 went with the family. There he devoted himself assiduously 
 to the development of the paternal industry, which ultimately 
 assumed gigantic proportions, the firm employing as many as 
 two thousand " hands." 
 
 Throughout, employers and employed were on the best of 
 terms, and when, in 1875, Mr. Chamberlain, after his father's 
 death, finally retired from the business in order to devote 
 himself exclusively to the public service, he did so with an 
 ample fortune and the best wishes of the numerous operatives 
 of the firm, who embraced the opportunity to bestow on him 
 a handsome token of their regard in the shape of a valuable 
 piece of plate. 
 
 Mr. Chamberlain has oftener than once acted as an arbi- 
 trator in labour disputes, and always with the utmost fairness 
 and good sense, his most notable award, perhaps, being one 
 which substituted a sliding scale for a fixed rate in the 
 memorable coal-mining strike in Staffordshire in 1873-4. 
 
 Mr. Chamberlain was thirty-two years of age before he 
 ever addressed his fellow-citizens, and he at once made his 
 mark as a singularly clear, articulate, methodical speaker. 
 The fact is peculiar, but not altogether inexplicable. For 
 years before he had been a diligent reader, utilising all his
 
 88 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 spare time in his library, the shelves of which are filled with 
 some three thousand well-selected volumes. He had thus 
 acquired much knowledge, and what with a ready tongue 
 and rare nerve, he felt fully equipped for the brilliant public 
 career on which he entered in 1868. 
 
 Onerous and honourable duties were at once thrust on him. 
 In 1868 he accepted the chairmanship of the famous Educa- 
 tion League, and in the same year he became a member of 
 the Town Council. In 1870 he was returned as one of the 
 members of the School Board of Birmingham, and in 1873, 
 when the Secularists, so called, secured a majority on the 
 Board, he was elected chairman. In 1873 he was likewise 
 unanimously elected Mayor, and in 1874 and 1875 a similar 
 honour awaited him. 
 
 At the general election in 1874 he contested Sheffield in 
 the Radical interest, but the town of Roebuck, Broadhead, 
 and the Sheffield Telegraph knew itself better than to seek the 
 services of so reputable a representative. He was at the 
 bottom of the poll, the " frightful example " to all Radicals, 
 Roebuck being at the top. An army of one thousand five 
 hundred publicans worked night and day for this result. 
 The whole town was given over to indescribable riot, and 
 Mr. Chamberlain, who exhibited the greatest personal intre- 
 pidity and good humour, was oftener than once exposed to 
 serious risks. Roebuck, singularly enough, was supported by 
 the Daily News. Not many months elapsed, however, before 
 Mr. Dixon retired from the representation of Birmingham, 
 and the Mayor took his place in Parliament unopposed. 
 
 One event that occurred in Mr. Chamberlain's mayoralty I 
 must not forget. In November 1874, the Prince of Wales 
 practically invited himself to Birmingham, and much curiosity 
 was felt as to the manner in which the Mayor would receive 
 the Heir-Apparent. Mr. Chamberlain has never concealed 
 his preference for Republican institutions, and the visit was 
 necessarily of a somewhat embarrassing character. Nav, 
 more, the Court party probably intended it to embarrass. 
 They had scored an immense triumph, and they were deter-
 
 Joseph Chamberlain. 89 
 
 mined to follow it up by bearding Radicalism at headquarters. 
 They had succeeded in cementing the shattered reputation 
 of his Royal Highness with surprising cunning. After the 
 theatrical and almost blasphemous apotheosis of the Prince 
 at St. Paul's on the occasion of his recovery from an illness 
 which it would take a great deal to convince me was not 
 purposely exaggerated, it was evidently felt that almost any- 
 thing might be attempted in the way of humbugging the 
 people. Vult populus decipi et decipiatur. 
 
 The Republican Mayor was to be put on his mettle, and 
 what he did was this. He agreed to receive the Prince as 
 the guest of the town, but he voted against defraying any 
 portion of the expenses of the royal visit out of the public 
 rates. Rather than that he would be host himself. For the 
 rest, to have received the young man at all Mr. Chamberlain 
 could not have gone through the performance with less 
 offence to Republican feeling. His language was a miracle 
 of dexterous steering between loyalty to the People and 
 loyalty to the Prince — two interests for ever incompatible. 
 
 All the same, his Royal Highness had the best of it. 
 What royalty wanted was a big gratis advertisement at 
 the expense of the Radical Mecca, and it got it. The 
 British Monarchy exists, as quack medicines exist, by dint 
 of wholesome " puffing," the only difference being that the 
 first is gratuitously advertised by its dupes, while notices 
 of the latter are paid for by the parties directly interested. 
 Now the Mayor unquestionably placed himself among the 
 dupes of royalty, but I am free to admit he was in a 
 strait place. 
 
 But Mr. Chamberlain's mayoralty was distinguished by 
 more useful if less ornamental work than that of entertaining 
 worthless princes. In the successive years during which he 
 presided over the Town Council with consummate tact and 
 administrative talent, he courageously grappled with three 
 great questions affecting the welfare of the borough. Unlike 
 most towns of more ancient date, Birmingham possessed no 
 revenue but the rates when Mr. Chamberlain took office. 
 
 F
 
 90 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 He looked about, and he soon found another source of civic 
 income. He resolved that Birmingham should no longer 
 be at the mercy of private companies for its gas supply. 
 He made up his mind that the Corporation should possess 
 itself of the undertakings of the Birmingham Gas Light 
 and Coke Company, and of the Birmingham and Stafford- 
 shire Gas Light Company, and he was manfully backed by 
 the Council. And with what result? In three years' time 
 £80,000 have been appropriated in aid of the rates, £50,000 
 allocated as a reserve fund, £40,000 as a sinking fund; while 
 the cost of gas to the consumers has been reduced 6d. per 
 1000 cubic feet, being equivalent to a saving of £60,000 
 per annum. 
 
 Having thus disposed of the two gas companies' under- 
 takings, Mr. Chamberlain next resolved to deal with that 
 of the Birmingham Waterworks Company. It also, after the 
 inevitable calculations, negotiations, and parliamentary action, 
 became the property of the Corporation, and though it has 
 not been deemed advisable to raise revenue out of such a 
 primary necessary of life as water, a good reserve fund has 
 been laid past and a thoroughly efficient supply secured 
 to the community. 
 
 Like other towns, Birmingham is not without its " slums," 
 and to these the Mayor next turned his attention. Taking 
 advantage of the provisions of the Artisans' Dwellings 
 Improvement Act, and borrowing at the 3^ per cent, rate, 
 the Corporation has already purchased for the sum of 
 £1,500,000 the area covered by all the vilest habitations 
 in the borough. The Act empowers the municipal authori- 
 ties to pull down, but not to re-erect. The private indi- 
 viduals, however, to whom the Corporation may convey a 
 title will have to rebuild under conditions conformable to 
 the health of the community and to the special convenience 
 of the working class. It need surprise no one if Mr. Cham- 
 berlain be yet found to have been a better sort of Haussman 
 to Birmingham. 
 
 Nor are the daring schemes of this municipal innovator
 
 Joseph Chamberlain. 91 
 
 yet exhausted. Not content with giving the people light, 
 water, and wholesome dwellings, he proposes shortly to 
 make them the proprietors of their own public-houses ; and 
 from the favourable manner in which the Lords' Committee 
 on Intemperance have spoken of his proposals, it is not 
 at all unlikely that Parliament will permit the capital of 
 the Midlands to make the experiment which her ex-Mayor 
 desires. 
 
 What he proposes is that the Corporation should possess 
 itself of all the public-houses in Birmingham — some 1800 in 
 number — the owners having first been expropriated on a 
 scale of compensation fixed by the Legislature. Thereupon 
 1000 are to be abolished at a stroke, and the remainder 
 equipped in such a manner as to supply all the legitimate 
 wants of the community. And the scheme, he calculates, 
 will pay, and pay well. 
 
 It has several obvious advantages. The servants of the 
 Corporation would, unlike the publicans, have no interest 
 either in the insobriety of their customers or the adultera- 
 tion of the liquor sold. The poor man's drink would be as 
 good as the rich man's, which is far from being the case at 
 present ; the political power of the publican would be anni- 
 hilated ; and last, not least, the necessity for police espionage 
 would be almost at an end. There is no one cure for 
 drunkenness, but this seems as feasible as any for a great 
 community ; and if the ratepayers of Birmingham are will- 
 ing to risk their money in giving so bold an application of 
 the Gothenburg system a fair trial, there can be no reason 
 in the world Avhy they should be restrained. It may be 
 that Birmingham is destined to initiate a public-house reform 
 as contagious as has been the example which she has set to 
 other places in respect, for example, of education and Liberal 
 organisation. 
 
 As chairman of the School Board of Birmingham, and as 
 president of the National Education League, Mr. Chamber- 
 lain has achieved nearly as great things in the educational 
 as in the municipal world. Under his chairmanship of the
 
 92 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 Birmingham Board a complete separation was effected be- 
 tween secular and religious instruction, while 14,500 children 
 were added to the Board schools, and 9700 to the denomi- 
 national. The League, of course, was not able to embody 
 its ideal of a free, universal, compulsory, and secular system 
 of education, but all the same it did a world of good in 
 curbing the vagaries of Mr. Forster and the insolent preten- 
 sions of Churchmen. 
 
 In 187 G the League was dissolved, but its spirit yet liveth, 
 and may perchance before long take unto itself a new body. 
 Should this not be so, its programme is nevertheless as cer- 
 tain to be ultimately realised as has been the case with the 
 "points" of the "People's Charter." 
 
 It is unnecessary to enlarge further on Mr. Chamberlain's 
 local achievements. He has a manifest genius for every- 
 thing affecting the work of corporate bodies, and would 
 make a heaven-born President of the Local Government 
 Board. His speeches in Parliament on the County Boards 
 Bill and the Prisons Bill would alone have stamped him as a 
 master of everything that pertains to a " spirited domestic 
 policy," of which the country stands so much in need, and of 
 which it hears so little. 
 
 Mr. Chamberlain, however, has greater claims on the 
 Liberal party than any that I have yet adduced, and these 
 are of a special and most important character. When our 
 spirits have failed us, and the majority have seemed dis- 
 posed to be "led" — whither our "leaders" would not or 
 could not tell us — he has always come cheerily up in the 
 pages of the Fortnightly with a new " programme " to put in 
 our hands. He has rallied us to the cry of Free Land, Free 
 Church, Free Schools, and Free Labour ; and when that was 
 not enough, he has set himself to " reorganise " and put us in 
 marching order with our faces to the foe. Like all true men 
 and brave spirits he is greatest and most helpful in adver- 
 sity. For why ? Is he not the father of the much derided, 
 much denounced " caucus," which is yet destined to be such 
 an important factor in the political life of the country ?
 
 Joseph Chamberlain. 
 
 'o 
 
 Mr. Chamberlain, however, claims no special credit in con- 
 nection with the caucus. He simply regards it as in some 
 form inevitable, and therefore he tries to make the most of 
 it. With the old restricted franchise, when the electors were 
 a select and privileged class, no such party discipline was 
 required. A caucus is simply an elected committee. Sixty 
 voters may require no such committee to prepare their busi- 
 ness for them, simply because they are practically a com- 
 mittee already. It is quite another matter when the num- 
 bers rise to 600, or 6000 or 16,000, as the case may be. 
 Then some understanding must be come to, some suitable 
 machinery must be devised to give effect to the general 
 desires. In such circumstances the English race naturally 
 and instinctively have recourse to popular election to rectify 
 matters, and this, after all, is the worst sin that can be laid 
 at the door of the " caucus." 
 
 The great matter, Mr. Chamberlain insists, is to ensure 
 that your Hundred, Three Hundred, or Six Hundred be 
 truly representative of the party voters. If that is secured 
 all is well ; if not, not. Whoever distrusts the caucus 
 honestly worked distrusts the people as the true source 
 of power. The party vote need not be one whit less 
 honestly recorded because it is informal. Such, as I under- 
 stand it, is Mr. Chamberlain's position, and it seems well- 
 nigh unanswerable. 
 
 What then are the advantages of such an organisation of 
 the Liberal forces? They are various. One is, and it is 
 perhaps the most obvious, that it tends to put a strong 
 check on what Scotsmen call " divisive courses " at elections. 
 At the last general election twenty-six votes on a division 
 were lost to the Liberal cause through a suicidal multiplica- 
 tion of Liberal candidates at the polls! 
 
 There is, however, it must be admitted, another and a much 
 more certain method of preventing such disasters — viz., the 
 French method of compelling by law a second ballot where 
 no candidate has secured a clear majority of the voters. 
 
 It is perhaps too much to expect that any such sensible
 
 94 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 rule will ever be adopted by the British Legislature, but Mr. 
 Chamberlain admits that it is the true remedy, although that 
 provided by the caucus is, of course, not inconsistent with it. 
 
 But it is not on this ground so much that Mr. Chamberlain 
 justifies the caucus. He regards it as an invaluable school 
 for political instruction. Nor is that all. The National 
 Liberal Federation, of which Mr. Chamberlain is president, 
 has in more than one sudden emergency shown a prompti- 
 tude in bringing pressure to bear on the Government, by 
 means of powerful deputations and concerted public meet- 
 ings, that never could have been rivalled by any conceivable 
 isolated action. Mr. Bright, in introducing to Lords Harting- 
 ton and Granville the great national deputation in favour of 
 peace, summoned by the Federation and the National Re- 
 form Union, pointedly described it as " a remarkable deputa- 
 tion — such a one as I have not seen before in my political 
 experience." 
 
 Of course, with a more constitutional premier than Beacons- 
 field at the helm of the State, the occasions on which the 
 Federation would thus require to revieAV its forces would be 
 few and far between, but certainly for the present the 
 Liberal party owes the president of the Federation a deep 
 debt of gratitude for the disinterested sagacity he has dis- 
 played in striving to furnish it with such a potent weapon of 
 defence ready to its hand. 
 
 The National Liberal Federation was constituted at 
 Birmingham in May 1877, and Mr. Gladstone, it will be 
 remembered, was one of its sponsors. It then numbered 
 forty-six associations ; it has now risen to over a hundred, 
 and every week adds to its strength and efficiency. It com- 
 bines in a marvellous manner complete local autonomy with 
 a capacity for concerted action something like that which 
 existed amongst the Hanse Towns of the Middle Ages. Mr. 
 Chamberlain has done surprising things as a party organiser, 
 but this is distinctly his masterpiece.
 
 IX. 
 
 THOMAS BURT. 
 
 " Go far and go sparing, 
 For you'll find it certain, 
 The poorer and baser you appear, 
 The more you'll look through still." 
 
 THE results of the general election of 1874 were surprising 
 in many respects, and to many persons ; but probably 
 to none more so than Mr. Thomas Burt, M.P. While other 
 prospective legislators were studying or wassailing at 
 Oxford and Cambridge, the honourable member for Morpeth 
 was laboriously ransacking the bowels of the earth in grimy 
 Northumberland for coals wherewith to supply the com- 
 plex wants of the British public. Like Goldsmith's village 
 preacher. " he ne'er had changed, nor wished to change his 
 place," and when his fellows first advised him of their 
 intention to bring him forward as a candidate for Parlia- 
 mentary honours, he replied in the words of the anti- 
 Utopian : — 
 
 " Oh, brothers, speak of possibilities, 
 And do not break into these wild extremes," 
 
 But elected he was to take his seat among his '• betters " — 
 among lordlings and millionaires — in the choicest of West- 
 end metropolitan clubs, and that, too, with an ease which 
 contrasted sharply with the ill-success in other constituencies 
 of more widely-known " labour candidates." 
 
 This effect, however, was not without an efficient cause.
 
 96 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 Apart from the fact that the Morpeth register was in a con- 
 dition exceptionally favourable to the return of a genuine 
 working man, Mr. Burt was in reality, with all his seeming 
 diffidence and meagre presence, an exceedingly formidable 
 candidate. 
 
 He is able and "canny" to a degree, and conspicuously 
 devoid of those faults that do more easily beset trades-union 
 leaders. He never, for example, speaks on any subject with 
 which he is not thoroughly conversant, and his range of topics 
 is by no means limited. He never tells you on the first 
 occasion that you are alone with him, that every other ex- 
 ponent of the claims of labour, except himself, is a fool or a 
 knave ; and when he makes an engagement he keeps it, with 
 all the punctuality of a good middle-class man of business 
 who knows the value of time. 
 
 He is, in truth, a singularly fair-minded man, as capable of 
 looking at any issue arising in the labour market from the 
 point of view of the employer as of the employed. From 
 contact and observation he has learned to combine, in a 
 great measure, the characteristic virtues of both classes, 
 while discarding their special vices. His sympathies are, of 
 course, entirely with the working man, but the impartiality 
 of his judgment saves him from anything like indiscriminate 
 partisanship. 
 
 His workingmanism, too, is of such a catholic kind as 
 practically to obliterate the hateful distinctions of class 
 altogether. It does not stop at handworkers, but embraces 
 all honest brain-workers as well. It is only with the mon- 
 strous army of royal and aristocratic Do-nothings and Eat- 
 all s, which in this England of ours is permitted to such an 
 unparalleled extent to lay waste the harvest of honest 
 industry, that Mr. Burt is at war. 
 
 In politics he is a very intelligent English Kadical, and 
 nothing more. He is actuated by no Socialistic or subversive 
 passions, and if he gives the best portion of his legislative 
 attention to the interests of his own class, it is simply be- 
 cause he thinks, and thinks justly, that these are the most
 
 Thomas Burt. 97 
 
 neglected at St. Stephen's. We hear of " officers and gentle- 
 men." If he is a workman, he is likewise a gentleman. 
 Like the late Mr. Odger, he has succeeded in completely 
 emancipating himself from the warping influences of class- 
 feeling, and by dint of a severe course of reading and 
 reflection he has arrived at conceptions of the public good 
 which may be truly called statesmanlike. There are not 
 many men in Parliament regarding whom it would be honest 
 to aver as much. But the politics of the pit are manifestly 
 more enlightened, more national in scope, than those of 
 church or castle, bar or barrack-room ; and if Mr. Thomas 
 Burt be a fair specimen of " pitmen " politicians, I have no 
 hesitation in saying that it is a misfortune for the country 
 that there are so few of them in the House. 
 
 Wonderful to relate, he represents his constituents in 
 Parliament, not himself. If the truth were told, "log- 
 rolling " is an art as well understood at Westminster as at 
 Washington, and, to my certain knowledge, Mr. Burt has, on 
 more occasions than one, resisted the machinations of the 
 tempter with scrupulous fidelity. 
 
 Mr. Burt was born at Murton Row, a small hamlet about 
 two miles from North Shields, Northumberland, in November 
 1837. His ancestors, needless to say, did not " come over 
 at the Conquest." The fact is not recorded, but I believe 
 they were in England long before that great national 
 calamity. His father, Peter Burt, was an upright, hard- 
 working miner, much addicted in his spare hours, if he may 
 be said to have enjoyed such, to Primitive Methodism, trades 
 unionism, and reading. He was a " local preacher," and his 
 literary tastes, as may be readily imagined, had a strong 
 theological bias. But he was distinctly a superior man, and 
 no mere narrow-minded sectarian. The truly apostolic Chan- 
 ning was among his treasured authors, an insignificant fact 
 perhaps in itself, but one which helped materially to stimulate 
 the youthful intelligence of his son, and to cast his character 
 in a noble mould. 
 
 Thomas Burt's mother was likewise no ordinary person.
 
 98 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 She possessed a solid judgment and a tender heart, and 
 while she lived she was the angel of the lowly household, 
 which saw many ups and downs before the member for 
 Morpeth reached man's estate. 
 
 When Burt was but seven years of age, the great North- 
 umberland strike began, and he thus early tasted something 
 of the bitter fruit of these labour struggles, which he has 
 since exerted himself so strenuously to avert. Burt senior 
 being a prominent striker, his family, with many others, was 
 evicted from its humble abode, and might have perished from 
 exposure but for the benevolent intervention of a neighbour- 
 ing farmer, who contrived to accommodate no fewer than 
 three households in two small rooms. 
 
 At the end of the strike, Burt's father, being a " marked 
 man," and regarding discretion as the better part of valour, 
 relreated to Helton, in the county of Durham, where he 
 found employment for about a year. Subsequently, the 
 family moved to Haswell Blue House, a hamlet midway 
 between Haswell and Sholton Collieries, and in the former 
 of these mines, Thomas Burt, M.P., commenced work as 
 a " trapper" on his tenth birthday. His schooling had neces- 
 sarily been of an irregular kind, and though not without 
 
 "The gleams and glooms that dart 
 
 Across the schoolboy's brain, 
 The song and the silence in the heart, 
 That in part are prophecies, and in part 
 
 Are longings wild and vain," 
 
 Burt entered the Inferno of Haswell Colliery without having 
 exhibited any conspicuous talent, and to all appearance the 
 gates of night closed remorselessly behind him. 
 
 It may be of interest to those, if there be any such, who 
 still believe in the luxurious miner of the newspaper legend, 
 with his curious taste in champagne, pianos, and greyhounds, 
 to know something of the honourable member's under- 
 ground experiences, and these, I may premise, were by no 
 means exceptional. He commenced as a " trapper." at lOd. 
 per day of twelve hours. A " trapper " is a doorkeeper
 
 Thomas Burt. 99 
 
 who sat, or sits, in utter darkness, peering wistfully into the 
 " palpable obscure " for the approach of any mortal with a 
 lamp. Such occupation might suit a notorious criminal of 
 a philosophical turn of mind, but none other. 
 
 Promotion, however, soon came Mr. Burt's way. He 
 became a subterranean " donkey-driver," and his wages 
 rose 4d. per diem. Then followed " management of an 
 inclined plane " at Sherburn House Pit, between Durham 
 and Thornley, wages from Is. 4d. to Is. 6d. ; and later, two 
 years' "putting," or pony driving at Dalton Colliery, wages 
 from Is. 6d. to 2s. per diem. 
 
 In 1851 the family ceased to sojourn in Durham and 
 returned to its native Northumberland, settling ultimately 
 for a period of eight or nine years at Seaton Delaval. Here 
 further promotion awaited young Burt. He became a 
 " water-leader," and his wages varied from 2s. 6d. to 3s. 6d. 
 per day. " Water-leading " is not a specially amusing 
 occupation. Before you know where you are, you are 
 frequently up to the waist in the subterranean liquid, which 
 has about as much fancy for being " led " as a Tipperary 
 pig. Add to this that the hours of labour, though nominally 
 twelve, were practically thirteen " from bank to bank," and 
 that the distance to and from home was a good two miles' 
 walk, and it will readily be granted that the honourable 
 member for Morpeth's opportunities for self-culture were in 
 no way enviable. 
 
 At fifteen years of age he had besides recklessly cut him- 
 self off from the consolation of champagne by becoming a 
 total abstainer, and somewhat later he had to cure an 
 inherited weakness for the cultivation of music simply 
 because he had no time to spare. In his eighteenth year, 
 however, he graduated as a pitman. He became a "hewer," 
 and his wages rose to from 4s. to 5s. per diem, the hours of 
 labour sensibly diminishing at the same time. 
 
 And so on Mr. Burt went "toiling, rejoicing, sorrowing," 
 till the autumn of 1865, when he was elected by his brother 
 workmen general secretary of the Northumberland Miners'
 
 ioo Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 Association. Then, after eighteen years of unremitting un- 
 derground toil, and the usual miners' hairbreadth escapes 
 with his life, Mr. Burt got permanently to the surface, and 
 eight years later his apparition startled the " rich men " at 
 St. Stephen's. 
 
 From pit to Parliament is assuredly a long way and an 
 arduous. It may not be a very great or even desirable 
 distinction to be able to write M.P. after one's name, but 
 nobody will deny that to earn the right, as matters stand, is 
 an achievement of almost fabulous difficulty for a man that 
 has neither birth nor wealth to recommend him. In Mr. 
 Burt's case both these passports to electoral influence were 
 conspicuous only by their absence ; yet here he is with 
 perhaps as attached a constituency as any in England behind 
 him. Other members pay vast sums for the honour of being 
 permitted to represent their constituents in Parliament. 
 Here, on the contrary, you have a body of electors who 
 voluntarily tax themselves in order to pay their member a 
 salary of £500 a year for representing them. Was there 
 ever a more daring outrage on constitutional propriety? 
 And, what is stranger still, this phenomenal member, whose 
 praises are alike in the mouths of Ministerialists and Opposi- 
 tion, is an avowed foe of royalty and aristocracy, of " Beer 
 and the Bible." There is scarcely an " ism," from Republi- 
 canism downwards, that he cannot swallow without so much 
 as making a wry face. Since Andrew Marvell's time there 
 has been no such marvel in Parliament as Thomas Burt, the 
 chosen of Morpeth. 
 
 At about fifteen years of age he began, all unconsciously 
 of course, to educate himself for the discharge of his present 
 responsible duties. And he educated himself to some pur- 
 pose. While " his companions slept " this physically feeble 
 but mentally strong Northumbrian miner " was toiling 
 upwards in the night." He eschewed the public-house and 
 kept the very best society — the society of Channing, Milton, 
 Emerson, and Carlyle; of Shakespeare, Tennyson, Longfellow, 
 Wordsworth, Shelley, and Burns ; of Burke, Grattan, and
 
 Thomas Burt. 101 
 
 Curran ; of Macaulay, Gibbon, and Hume ; of Scott, 
 Thackeray, Dickens, and George Eliot ; of Adam Smith, John 
 Stuart Mill, Bastiat, Fawcett, Thornton, and other illustrious 
 intellects. Latin and French he hammered out as best he 
 could from the pages of " Cassell's Popular Educator," while 
 Euclid and shorthand received no inconsiderable share of his 
 attention. And whatever he read he mastered and assimi- 
 lated with a rare appreciation of all that he found true and 
 beautiful. 
 
 Then came the application of all this acquirement — a true 
 and beneficent application. He did not wrap his talents in 
 a napkin, but devoted them ungrudgingly to the elevation 
 of his fellow-workmen. He lectured on temperance, trades 
 unionism, arbitration, co-operation, education, the advantages 
 of Mechanics' Institutes, politics, and gradually became a 
 clear, judicious, and convincing public speaker. 
 
 He was a Sunday-school teacher, a day-school secretary, 
 and an organiser of temperance societies. He came to read 
 men as he had read books, with intelligence and sympathy, 
 and the miners on their part were quick and generous to 
 discern that they had found in their fellow-workman a true 
 friend and able counsellor. 
 
 In 1860 the Burts left Seaton Delaval and settled at 
 Choppington, now a portion of the parliamentary borough of 
 Morpeth, and here it was that the great administrative 
 talents of the honourable member first displayed themselves. 
 He speedily became the delegate of the Choppington men, 
 and ultimately, in 1865, General Secretary of the Northum- 
 berland Miners' Mutual Confident Association. 
 
 The union was then under a heavy cloud. There was 
 but £23 in the exchequer, and an extensive strike — the 
 Cramlington — was proceeding. The new secretary was 
 bitterly attacked by a "A Coalowner " in the columns of 
 the Newcastle Chronicle. He replied with characteristic 
 dignity and spirit. " I was chosen agent for this associ- 
 ation," he wr te, "for the purpose of doing the best I 
 could to aid the workmen in securing justice. I did not 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 SANTA BARBARA
 
 102 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 force myself on the men ; they urged me to take the office ; 
 and as soon as they can dispense with my services I am 
 prepared to resign. But so long as I am in office I will do 
 my best to serve my employers. Four months since I was 
 a hewer at Choppington Colliery. As a working man, I was 
 in comfortable circumstances, serving employers whom I 
 respected, and who, I believe, respected me. I had been at 
 that colliery nearly six years, and during that time I had 
 never a wrong word with an official of the colliery. 'A 
 Coalowner' may ask there whether I was a 'demagogue' 
 or an .' agitator.' I left the colliery honourably, and I have 
 no doubt I can get my work again at that place if I want it. 
 If not, I can get work, I doubt not, elsewhere, and under 
 good employers too, for I long since made up my mind not 
 to work for a tyrant. I say this merely to let your readers 
 know that the position I hold is not degrading either to 
 myself or the men who employ me." 
 
 Largely as the result of this rare combination of moder- 
 ation and firmness on the part of the secretary, external aid 
 flowed freely into the coffers of the association. When the 
 strike ended a surplus of £700 remained over. 
 
 By Mr. Burt's advice this sum, instead of being divided 
 among the several collieries in the union, was made the 
 nucleus of a central fund, which in a few years increased 
 to £16,000, while the membership of the union was quad- 
 rupled. 
 
 Though in Parliament, Mr. Burt is still the adviser-general 
 and appellant-judge of the association, whose solidarity and 
 wise counsels have done so much to inspire both employers 
 and employed in Northumberland with feelings of amity 
 and mutual respect. Recently there has been a sensible 
 decline in the membership of the union, owing chiefly to 
 the wholesale depopulation of certain districts consequent 
 on the prolonged depression of trade and the enforced stop- 
 page of the less remunerative pits. Within the last three 
 and a half years the miners of Northumberland, to their 
 credit be it recorded, have expended nearly £17,000 in
 
 Thomas Burt. 10 
 
 o 
 
 support of brethren thus thrown out of employment. In- 
 deed, that they should have hitherto been able to face the 
 crisis so manfully and efficiently can only be regarded as 
 another miracle of thrift and self-sacrifice worthy of the 
 men who, by returning Mr. Burt to Parliament as their 
 "paid member," were the pioneers of one of the must 
 necessary and important political reforms of the future. 
 
 The circumstances attending the return of the member 
 for Morpeth to Parliament have never yet received the 
 general attention and commendation they deserve. They 
 were most remarkable. Two pitmen, Mr. Robert Elliot (a 
 poet of no mean merit) and Mr. Thomas Glassey, along 
 with two brothers, Drs. James and Robert Trotter, local 
 medical practitioners, did the heaviest portion of the elec- 
 tioneering, which, at the height of the Tory reaction, 
 resulted in 3332 votes being recorded for Mr. Burt, against 
 585 for his amiable Tory opponent, Major Duncan. 
 
 Never was there such unbounded enthusiasm. The 
 prophet of Choppiugton was indeed honoured in his own 
 country. His election expenses were defrayed by public 
 subscription. He had nothing to do but address the electors 
 and prepare to draw his parliamentary salary, which if not 
 large is perhaps amply sufficient for his modest wants and 
 limited desires. 
 
 Well may Morpeth, the borough of the derided " Howkies," 
 with their short lives — computed to reach an average of only 
 twenty-eight years — their sore toil and pitiable pay, say to 
 the most virtuous constituency in the kingdom, " Go thou 
 and do likewise." 
 
 " Go on until this land revokes 
 The old and chartered lie, 
 The feudal curse whose whips and yokes 
 Insult humanity." 
 
 And as for the fortunate member for Morpeth, he has in 
 Parliament, I think, redeemed all the legitimate expectations 
 that were formed of him. His speeches on the County 
 Franchise Bill, on the Employers' Liability for Injury Bill,
 
 104 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 on the grants to Wales and Connaught, and, above all, his 
 hearty denunciation of the Afghan war, leave nothing to be 
 desired. 
 
 With regard to the Medical Bill, he showed somewhat too 
 great a confidence in quack doctors and unlicensed bone- 
 setters, but that is a small matter. 
 
 For the rest, as I have said before, his conduct in the 
 House has evoked the praise of all parties. The worst of 
 Tories admit that he is " fair," and herein perhaps lurks a 
 danger for the member for Morpeth. Reformers of great 
 wrongs cannot afford to cultivate this spirit of fairness to 
 excess. Be fair, be fair, be not too fair ! " Beware ye when 
 all men speak well of you, for so did they of the false pro- 
 phets that were before you."
 
 X. 
 
 HENRY RICHARD. 
 
 " And evermore beside him on his way 
 The unseen Christ shall move." 
 
 IN the House of Commons are to be found a good many 
 members who profess the Christian religion — at all 
 events in public — but excepting Mr. Henry Richard there 
 are very few, so far as I know, who make the smallest 
 pretence of literally squaring their politics by the precepts 
 of the New Testament. 
 
 The politics of Rome and of Canterbury — of the Papal 
 and Anglican priesthoods — are, of course, well represented 
 at St. Stephen's, but their relation to Christianity proper is 
 so remote, or indeed antagonistic, as to merit no recognition 
 in this connection. They are merely ecclesiastical intrigues, 
 and in no true sense Christian or even religious in their aim 
 or tendency. 
 
 But Mr. Richard's position is different. He is distinctly a 
 Christian politician, and herein lies his strength or weakness 
 as a legislator. The estimable " Apostle of Peace " is, 
 wonderful to relate, a Gospel Radical, and it is by that 
 difficult standard that it will be necessary in some measure 
 to try him. He believes that Christianity supplies the 
 politician, as it does the individual, with a true, or rather the 
 true, conduct-chart, and his pamphlet " On the Application 
 of Christianity to Politics " leaves us in no doubt as to his 
 canons of Biblical interpretation. 
 
 G
 
 106 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 " I have no hope," he tells us, " for the future of this world 
 that is not connected with Christianity." 
 
 When " every thought shall have been brought into 
 captivity to the obedience of Christ," then only will Mr. 
 Richard feel satisfied that we are politically on the right 
 rail. There are not two moralities, he maintains — a private 
 and a public, a personal and a political. Mr. Richard's 
 method with the Jingoes is the shortest of any. Is it not 
 written, "Thou shalt not kill?" Therefore is the occupa- 
 tion of the soldier for ever accursed, cursing alike con- 
 queror and conquered. 
 
 According to this exegesis, such gallant Christians as 
 Sir Henry Havelock and Captain Hedley Vicars, of pious 
 memory, were little better than public cut-throats or licensed 
 murderers. So be it. Mr. Richard will shrink from none of 
 the consequences of his understanding of Holy Writ. The 
 commandment is absolute. "Avenge not yourselves, but 
 rather give place unto wrath, for it is written, vengeance is 
 mine, I will repay it, saith the Lord." "Resist not evil." 
 " See that none render evil for evil unto any man, but ever 
 follow that which is good, both among yourselves and to 
 all men." " If you do well and suffer for it, and ye take 
 it patiently, this is acceptable unto God." 
 
 These are hard words for flesh and blood to apply liter- 
 ally, but Mr. Richard in his " Defensive War " makes it plain 
 that he will, no more than Hosea Biglow, admit of any 
 
 dodging : — 
 
 " If ye take a sword and dror it 
 And go stick a feller through, 
 Guv'ment ain't to answer for it, 
 God will send the bill to you." 
 
 If a robber assail you with murderous intent, there are 
 "three courses" open to you. You may expostulate with 
 him on the error of his ways, you may exert moderate force 
 to restrain him from burdening his soul with a great crime, 
 and, lastly, you may exhibit true moral courage by running 
 away as fast as ever your legs will carry you ; but on no
 
 Henry Richard. 107 
 
 account are you to lay the flattering unction to your soul 
 that, under any circumstances, is there such a thing as 
 "justifiable homicide " possible. 
 
 Similarly with regard to other questions of vital public 
 interest, such as the support of religion by State, whether 
 in Church or school, the member for Merthyr finds something 
 like absolute prohibitions where the great majority of pro- 
 fessing Christians appear to discover the reverse. 
 
 How wonderful is Mr. Richard in his exegesis ! How 
 wonderful are the majority of Christians in theirs! How 
 marvellously malleable are the memorials of the Christian 
 faith themselves ! Humanly speaking one would say some 
 of them must be at fault, but which, I am pleased to think, 
 it is not my province to determine. • 
 
 Infidel Radicals are in these days of general apostasy as 
 thick as blackberries. It is refreshing occasionally, for the 
 sake of variety if for nothing else, to encounter one who 
 is thoroughly orthodox. " The stone which the builders 
 rejected, the same is become the head of the corner." Nor 
 am I unmindful of the warning — "And whosoever shall fall 
 on this stone shall be broken ; but on whomsoever it shall 
 fall it will grind him to powder." 
 
 Suffice it for my purpose to postulate that Mr. Richard 
 is as good a Radical as he is a Christian, and that with him 
 the terms are in a great measure convertible. May Heaven 
 multiply this particular school of Christians, for never were 
 they more sorely needed than at present : — 
 
 " Keep thou the child-like heart 
 That shall his kingdom be, 
 The soul pure-eyed that wisdom led 
 E'en now His blessed face shall see." 
 
 Henry Richard, M.P., was born at the little town of 
 Tregaron, Cardiganshire, in 1812. The locality is peculiarly 
 Welsh in all its aspects, and the " member for Wales " is, as 
 is befitting, of pure Welsh descent, his mother's maiden 
 name having been Williams. 
 
 His father and grandfather were both ministers of the
 
 io8 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 Calvinistic Methodist persuasion, the latter for the long 
 space of sixty years. In one of his addresses to his con- 
 stituents at Merthyr, Mr. Richard told them, with manifest 
 pride, " that he had come of a good stock who had served 
 Wales well in days gone by." And so it was. His father, 
 the Rev. Ebenezer Richard, of Tregaron, was no ordinary 
 man. Welshmen, even more than Scotsmen, appear to 
 benefit by the kind of instruction which is conveyed in 
 "sermons," and Richard senior was a powerful preacher, 
 the memory of whose pulpit oratory is still cherished in 
 South Wales. Nor was he prominent only in spiritual 
 things. For many years he was general secretary to his 
 denomination, and along with the Rev. Thomas Charles, of 
 Bala, he conferred on the Principality what was at the time 
 an inestimable boon, viz., a thoroughly comprehensive system 
 of Sunday-school education, which had regard to the wants 
 of adults as well as of juveniles. 
 
 His home at Tregaron was the rallying point of much of 
 the religious and philanthropic activity of South Wales. 
 The chief actors concerned believed, and not without reason, 
 that they were engaged in a work no less momentous than 
 the regeneration of the Principality, and their earnestness, 
 as might have been expected, made an indelible impression 
 on the open mind of young Richard, whose earliest memories 
 are of fervent " revivals," " seasons of refreshing," etc. 
 
 From the doctrines imbibed in his childhood he has never 
 appreciably departed, yet the tenacity with which he sticks 
 to his creed is not to be confounded with bigotry. In the 
 sphere of civil action there is not in all England a more 
 enlightened advocate of the broadest freedom. His human 
 sympathies are as generous and keen as they were fifty 
 years ago. In his case there has been none of that 
 
 " Hardening of the heart that brings 
 Irreverence for the dreams of youth " 
 
 such as, I am bound to say, it has been mine to observe in 
 but too many victims of early Calvinistic training. 
 
 But it must not be supposed that his education was
 
 Henry Richard. 109 
 
 altogether of a religious complexion. At an early age he 
 was sent to Llangeltho Grammar School, and subsequently, 
 when eighteen, he became a student of the Highbury Inde- 
 pendent College, London, the Calvinistic Methodists having 
 then no theological school of their own. 
 
 At both places the insti'uction was sound so far as it went, 
 and Richard, as was to be expected from a youth of his 
 conscientious disposition, did not fail fully to avail himself 
 of his opportunities. 
 
 At the close of his theological curriculum he joined the 
 Independent Communion, and became minister of Marl- 
 borough Chapel, Old Kent Road. The congregation was 
 moribund, but the Rev. Henry Richard was equal to the 
 occasion. In a short time the attendance greatly increased, 
 a considerable debt was paid off, schools were built, and a 
 literary institute was established. 
 
 It was not long, however, before Mr. Richard found a 
 wider field for his talent, and perhaps a truer .vocation. 
 In 1843 occurred in Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire 
 what were known as the " Rebecca Riots." The Welsh 
 roads were then encumbered with turnpike gates to an 
 unendurable extent, and some of the younger men among 
 the tenant farmers, despairing of relief by more legitimate 
 means, had recourse to nocturnal acts of demolition. 
 
 The Principality was overwhelmed with obloquy in con- 
 sequence, and but for the courageous stand taken by Mr. 
 Richard, who publicly explained the origin and narrow 
 limits of the disturbances, there is no saying to what 
 foolish acts of repression the Government of the day might 
 not have been induced by the panic-stricken magistracy to 
 have recourse. 
 
 But the matter did not end with the Rebecca Riots. In 
 1846 a Government Commission was sent into Wales to 
 inquire into the state of education in the Principality. The 
 Commissioners' report duly appeared in three formidable 
 volumes, formidable alike for their contents and size. The 
 Welsh were deliberately described as the most debased,
 
 1 1 o Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 ignorant, lewd, and vicious people under the sun. The 
 misrepresentation, it cannot be doubted, was most vile. 
 Something like a wail of anguish broke from the heart of 
 the ancient Cymric race. The Commissioners had ap- 
 parently listened to nothing but the calumnies poured into 
 their ears by territorial justices of the peace and Anglican 
 parsons with empty churches. 
 
 Again Mr. Richard came forward as the champion of his 
 slandered countrymen, and in a masterly lecture which he 
 delivered in Crosby Hall in the spring of 1848, he vindicated 
 the character of the Welsh people, and succeeded in a great 
 measure in rolling back the rising tide of English prejudice 
 and calumny. 
 
 Further, in 1866 Mr. Richard contributed to the Morning 
 Star an exhaustive series of letters on the " Social and 
 Political Condition of Wales," the value of which Mr. Glad- 
 stone thus handsomely acknowledged in the speech which 
 he delivered as President of the National Eisteddfod, held 
 at Mold in 1873: — "I will frankly own to you that I have 
 shared at a former time, and before I had acquainted myself 
 with the subject, the prejudices which obtain to some extent 
 with respect to Wales, and I am come here to tell you how 
 and why I have changed my opinion. It is only fair that I 
 should say that a countryman of yours, a most excellent 
 Welshman, Mr. Richard, M.P., did a great deal to open my 
 eyes to the true state of the facts by a series of letters 
 which, some years ago, he addressed to a morning journal, 
 and subsequently published in a small volume, which I 
 recommend to all persons who may be interested in the 
 subject." 
 
 Not without reason has Mr. Richard been dubbed " mem- 
 ber for Wales." He incarnates all the best characteristics of 
 his race. 
 
 If he is trusted as a good Welshman he is none the less so 
 as a staunch Nonconformist. Welshmen are born Dissenters, 
 and it is natural that they should follow Mr. Richard in such 
 matters; but it is a higher compliment to him to say that
 
 Henry Richard. 1 1 1 
 
 the confidence of his countrymen is heartily endorsed by the 
 whole body of English and Scottish Nonconformists. There 
 is not a better representative Nonconformist in Parliament 
 than the member for Merthyr. His opposition to the ob- 
 noxious clauses of the Education Act of 1870 was as hearty 
 as that of the most pronounced " Secularist " in the House, 
 and went a long way to prove that Christianity properly 
 understood and applied to politics means something far 
 other than priestcraft and obscurantism. 
 
 The member for Merthyr spoke with all the more au- 
 thority, that for years he had been one of the most active 
 promoters of popular education in Wales. He was one of 
 the first members of the Congregational Board of Education, 
 and when that body ultimately showed too strong a par- 
 tiality for denominational interests he joined the Voluntary 
 School Association, founded on a broader and more unsec- 
 tarian basis, and during the whole subsequent period of its 
 useful existence he was its honorary secretary, — travelling, 
 speaking, and writing on its behalf, and taking an active 
 part in the establishment and control of its Normal 
 Schools. 
 
 It is, however, neither as Welshman, Nonconformist, nor 
 Educationist that Mr. Richard's name is destined to go down 
 with honour to remote posterity. It is as the strenuous ad- 
 vocate of peace that he will be entitled to lasting remem- 
 brance. 
 
 In 1848 he was appointed secretary of the Peace Society ; 
 and in 1851 he finally abandoned the ministry in order to 
 devote himself soul and body to the good cause. He felt 
 that it was not enough to denounce the blood-guiltiness of 
 war. Wars are but barbarous methods of settling inter- 
 national disputes. Let us urge on " sovereigns and states- 
 men," he reasoned, " a better way, one at least not a disgrace 
 to civilisation and Christianity. Let us boldly bring forward 
 in the Legislature a resolution in favour of arbitration as a 
 substitute for the sword." 
 
 In 1848, Mr. Cobden was appealed to, and assented to
 
 1 1 2 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 become the standard-bearer of the Peace Society, and to 
 his intense gratification the resolution which he moved the 
 following session was supported by no fewer than seventy- 
 nine votes. 
 
 On the Continent, likewise, the work went bravely for- 
 ward. From 1848 to 1852, International Peace Congresses, 
 promoted by Mr. Richard and Mr. Elihu Burritt, were held at 
 Brussels, Paris, Frankfort, London, Manchester, and Edin- 
 burgh. The Paris Congress was presided over by Victor 
 Hugo, while the London Conference was attended by Gar- 
 rison, Phillips, Lucretia Mott, and other distinguished 
 Americans. Bright, Lamartine, Arago, Humboldt, Liebig, 
 Suringar, Coquerel, Brewster, Cormentin, Girardin, Beckwith, 
 Gamier, and many other illustrious persons, were among the 
 foremost advocates of the movement. 
 
 But " Messieurs les Assassins " were not prepared to let 
 slip their bloody pastime so easily. Louis Napoleon per- 
 petrated his execrable coup oVetat, and the war-spirit was 
 again evoked with fourfold violence. The Crimean war 
 followed, and the exertions of Mr. Richard and the Peace 
 Society were perfectly paralysed. The Press ridiculed 
 them ; they became a byword. 
 
 At the close of the war in 1856, when the Plenipotentiaries 
 were sitting in congress at Paris, negotiating terms of peace, 
 it occurred to Mr. Richard and his friends that an effort 
 ought to be made to get the principle of arbitration recog- 
 nised in the treaty. Lord Palmerston was seen by an 
 influential deputation, but held out no hope. Still Mr. 
 Richard persevered. 
 
 No one, however, could be induced to accompany him to 
 Paris. At last he addressed himself to the guileless Quaker, 
 Joseph Sturge. " Thou art right," was the instant reply, 
 " and if no one will go with thee, I will." They started ac- 
 cordingly, along with Mr. Hindley, the member for Ashton, 
 and their faith was rewarded. Lord Clarendon earnestly 
 pleaded their cause with the Plenipotentiaries, who unani- 
 mously declared in favour of recourse being had to the good
 
 Henry Richard. 1 1 
 
 j 
 
 offices of some friendly power before any appeal should be 
 made to the arbitrament of the sword. 
 
 This formal sanction given to the principle of international 
 arbitration has not been wholly inoperative. In the set- 
 tlement of the Alabama claims, England and America set 
 a memorable example of moderation and good sense to the 
 entire family of nations — an example, alas, which has since 
 then been but too seldom imitated. For why? Something 
 more must be done to restrain the illimitable horrors of 
 war, than to provide a feeble substitute for multitudinous 
 homicide, after the causes have come to a head. The causes 
 must themselves be eliminated. Could arbitration ever 
 restrain a Napoleonic coup d'etat, or influence for a moment 
 such dynastic exigences and ambitions as brought France and 
 Germany into their last terrible death grapple? The French 
 and German peoples had no quarrel with each other. The 
 quarrel was entirely one between their rulers, supported by 
 the governing oligarchy of the two countries. In the same 
 way the English people have had no cause of discontent 
 with the poor Afghans or Zulus. 
 
 War is wholly the work — the infamous work — of "sove- 
 reigns and statesmen." Sovereigns must have wars. 
 However peaceful their professions, they have a direct and 
 overwhelming interest in the maintenance of division and 
 discord among nations. Were it not for wars, the occupation 
 of kings would be gone, and the credit of the kingly form of 
 government would sink to zero. In other words, Europe 
 must become a federated, self-governing Republic, before the 
 world can hope to attain to a permanent peace. Until the 
 People are Sovereign, until the " United States of Europe" 
 have been established, " the ogre of war," as Bastiat 
 has well said, " will cost as much for his digestion as for his 
 meals." Till democracy has in every state put down all her 
 enemies under her feet, there cannot, in the nature of things, 
 be any genuine disarmament. 
 
 Let Mr. Richard ponder this matter, and prepare to deal 
 less gently than he has been in the habit of doing with the
 
 1 1 4 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 causes of war — with the aforesaid sovereigns and statesmen. 
 Does he want a text to warrant him in seeking to rid the 
 world of these illustrious vultures % Here is one that ought 
 to suit him : " Ye know that they which are accounted to 
 rule over the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and 
 their great ones exercise authority upon them. But so 
 shall it not be among you : but whosoever will be great 
 among you shall be your minister. And whosoever shall be 
 the chiefest shall be the servant of all." 
 
 They who exercise lordship over us tell us of patriotism. 
 What is patriotism % I have seen some of the votaries of the 
 patriotic goddess at their devotions. I witnessed the loath- 
 some exploits of the Hyde Park Jingoes, and I saw the 
 Cannon Street Hotel sacked by the unconvicted thieves of 
 the Stock Exchange. I have had enough of patriotism for a 
 lifetime. I agree with Dr. Johnson that " patriotism is the 
 last refuge of the scoundrel." There is but one Fatherland — 
 the World ; and one body of Countrymen — the Human Race. 
 I know of but one patriotism, that of the ancient Roman, 
 " Ubi bona ibi patria." Instead of a blessing it is often a 
 misfortune to have been born in a particular locality or 
 
 country : — 
 
 " In what land the sun doth visit, 
 We are brisk whate'er betide ; 
 To give space for wandering is it 
 That the world was made so wide." 
 
 Mr. Richard first entered Parliament for Merthyr in 1868, 
 under the most honourable circumstances. Nearly the whole 
 of the available suffrages were recorded for him, the Hon. 
 Mr. Bruce (now Lord Aberdare) and Mr. Fothergill dividing 
 the second votes between them. 
 
 The Welsh landlords never received so sharp a lesson. 
 They retaliated by evicting some two hundred of Mr. Rich- 
 ard's supporters. He shortly impeached the transgressors in 
 one of the boldest speeches that had been heard at St. 
 Stephen's for a very long time, and his fearless exposure of 
 the delinquents had not a little to do with the passing of the 
 Ballot Act.
 
 Henry Richard. 115 
 
 In 1873 occurred perhaps the greatest triumph of his life. 
 He proposed an address to Her Majesty, praying that she 
 would instruct the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs 
 "to enter into communication with foreign Powers with a 
 view to the establishment of a general and permanent 
 system of international arbitration." Mr. Gladstone op- 
 posed the motion, but the Government was beaten by a 
 majority of ten in a House of nearly 200 members. Addresses 
 of congratulation poured in on Mr. Richard from all parts of 
 the world, one from Italy being headed by General Garibaldi. 
 Charles Sumner wrote from the Senate House at "Washing- 
 ton, " It marks an epoch in a great cause. This speech 
 alone with the signal result will make your life historic." 
 
 In the following September he visited nearly all the 
 capitals and many of the chief cities of the Continent. 
 Everywhere he was received with open arms and hailed as 
 a sort of " Saviour of Society." More eloquent testimony to 
 the unbearableness of the military yoke beneath which the 
 nations of the Continent are groaning could not have been. 
 His progress was converted by the grateful multitudes into 
 something like a triumph in honour of the herald of that 
 better time which shall be — 
 
 " When the war drums throb no longer, 
 And the battle flags are furled 
 In the Parliament of Man, 
 The Federation of the World."
 
 XL 
 
 LEONARD HENRY COURTNEY. 
 
 " Can rules or tutors educate 
 The democrat whom we await ? " 
 
 IN Mr. Thomas Burt, the member for Morpeth, we had an 
 excellent example of what the mine arid the trade union 
 can do to form the mind and character of a legislator. 
 Similarly, in Mr. Leonard Henry Courtney, member for 
 Liskeard, we have an equally perfect sample of what an 
 institution so far removed from the mine as the university, 
 working at high pressure, can effect. 
 
 Mr. Courtnev has been but a short time in Parliament, 
 and I feel that it is consequently somewhat premature to 
 take his political horoscope. He, however, entered the 
 House so exceptionally well equipped for the discharge 
 of his legislative duties, and has on the whole executed them 
 so efficiently, that his claims to recognition as an Eminent 
 .Radical cannot be overlooked. He is beyond all question 
 a very able man, whatever his critics in or out of the House 
 may say to the contrary, and among the younger members 
 of the Commons, I know no one whose future conduct will 
 be better worth watching. He is one regarding whom it 
 may be safely predicted that, to use a Scotch proverb, he 
 will speedily " either make a spoon or spoil a born." His 
 detractors say that he has already spoiled the horn, chiefly 
 by want of tact. 
 
 He is accused of the unpardonable parliamentary offence 
 of "lecturing" the House instead of addressing it; and it
 
 Leonard Henry Courtney. 117 
 
 must be admitted that the charge is not wholly groundless. 
 Even those who are discerning enough to recognise his rare 
 intellectual accomplishments and powers of close reasoning 
 cannot endure this sort of thing. It is in human nature in 
 such circumstances to call out — 
 
 " If thou art great, be merciful, 
 O woman of Three Cows ! " 
 
 In the debate on Mr. Trevelyan's motion in favour of the 
 county franchise, the member for Liskeard told the House* 
 with very little circumlocution, that it had degenerated, and 
 that the members generally were nobodies. The inference, 
 of course, was unavoidable, that the speaker was somebody. 
 Well, I readily admit both proposition and deduction, but 
 " hold it not honesty to have it thus set down." 
 
 The great majority of Mr. Courtney's colleagues, it is true, 
 are mere rule-of-thumb legislators, whereas his knowledge of 
 politics is by comparison scientific. But the uninstructed 
 are there to be persuaded, " educated," if you will, by the 
 better disciplined intellects, and there is no surer test of 
 genuine culture than the habitual exhibition of a tender 
 regard for the feelings of the ignorant. Not that Mr. Court- 
 ney means it in the least. He is as little of a prig as any 
 man I ever met — a downright hearty good fellow, as true as 
 steel to his convictions of what is for the public good, and 
 without any fundamental egotism of character. In private 
 he has not a particle of the " Professor" about him, and as 
 this fact comes to be commonly recognised, it may be hoped 
 the memory of his public forwardness will be effaced and 
 full justice done to his remarkable acquirements and good 
 intentions. 
 
 Mr. Courtney, M.P., was born at Penzance, in July 1862. 
 His father, John Sampson Courtney, of Alverton House, 
 was a native of Ilfracombe, where his ancestors had been 
 settled for two hundred years at least. Courtney senior, early 
 in life, took to banking, and has for half a century been con- 
 nected with the firm of Bolitho, Sons, & Co., bankers, Penzance.
 
 1 1 8 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 Like his son Leonard, the eldest of a family of nine, he has 
 always been mighty in figures, and is the author of several 
 useful works, chiefly of local statistical utility — e.g., " Sta- 
 tistics of Pilchard Fishery," "Transactions of the Royal 
 Cornwall Polytechnic Society," " A Guide to Penzance," etc. 
 
 What the father accomplished on a local scale it has been 
 the destiny of his son to amplify, as it were, to national 
 dimension. At an early age he was sent to the Regent 
 House Academy, the chief school in the neighbourhood, and 
 from the first he displayed conspicuous talent. Latterly his 
 studies were superintended privately by Dr. "Willan. Then 
 for a short time he was employed in the bank of Messrs- 
 Bolitho, Sons, & Co., but finally, in his nineteenth year, it 
 was recognised that a university career would best suit his 
 strong love of study and remarkable powers of application. 
 Accordingly, in 1851 he was entered as a student of St. 
 John's College, Cambridge, and in 1855 he graduated with 
 honours, which speak volumes in themselves. He was 
 Second Wrangler and Smith's Prizeman. 
 
 Needless to say, such honourable achievements were not 
 long without their reward. He became a Fellow of his 
 college, and was speedily immersed in lucrative private 
 tuition. His preliminary training had not been specially 
 adapted to secure him such distinctions, and it is, therefore, 
 impossible to withhold our admiration for the vigour of mind 
 and body which enabled him to triumph so signally. 
 
 How far marked aptitude for mathematical studies is 
 indicative of general intellectual superiority, has been the 
 subject of much controversy. Lord Macaulay kept an ex- 
 haustive catalogue of senior wranglers who always remained 
 juniors in everything but mathematics, and Sir William 
 Hamilton estimated the disciplinary value of the study at a 
 very low rate. The truth, however, seems to be that the gift 
 or knack which enables one man to manipulate algebraic 
 quantities so much more readily than another may or may 
 not co-exist in the mind with other, it may be, greater 
 endowments. One thing only is very certain, the process of
 
 Leonard Henry Courtney. 1 1 9 
 
 intense ratiocinative specialisation to which wranglers must 
 
 necessarily subject themselves cannot fail to seriously dwarf 
 
 their other faculties. Off their special topics, the writings 
 
 of great mathematicians have nearly always struck me as 
 
 peculiarly bloodless and uninteresting, and it is no small 
 
 praise to Mr. Courtney to say that he is an exception to this 
 
 rule. In point both of reasoning and style, his contributions 
 
 to the Fortnightly, for example, and his reported speeches, 
 
 bear but few traces of the depletory process to which I have 
 
 alluded. This exemption may, to some extent, be accounted 
 
 for by the fact that on completing his university curriculum 
 
 he broke vigorously into intellectual fields and pastures new. 
 
 In 1858 he was called to the Bar by the Honourable Society 
 
 of Lincoln's Inn, and in 1872 he became Professor of Political 
 
 Economy at University College, a post which he retained for 
 
 nearly three years. During that time he acquainted himself 
 
 with all the best writers on the subject, and became a warm 
 
 advocate of the special views of John Stuart Mill. From 
 
 Mill it is easy to see that he derived a great deal more than 
 
 from the Alma Mater of which he is a Senior Fellow. With 
 
 respect to the representation of minorities, and the female 
 
 franchise more particularly, the mantle of the deceased 
 
 philosopher has fallen on his shoulders. Mill was never at a 
 
 university, yet it has been his part to fructify the intellects 
 
 of such distinguished university alumni as Courtney and 
 
 Fawcett. Without his influence there is no saying what 
 
 they might not have been. 
 
 Oxford and Cambridge are in reality huge forcing houses 
 for the production of young aristocrats, maintained at scan- 
 dalous cost, in no sense national institutions, and about the 
 last places in the world where one would dream of going in 
 order to acquire the art of thinking. Such exceptionally 
 intelligent and public-spirited emanations as the members 
 for Hackney and Liskeard are in reality rather a misfortune 
 than otherwise. Their " fellowship " is a snare : — 
 
 " The name of Cassius honours this corruption, 
 And Chastisement doth thei efore hide his head."
 
 120 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 It is hardly too much to say that if Oxford and Cambridge 
 were erased from the map of England to-morrow, and the 
 intellect of the country permitted to flow into freer channels, 
 the political and general intelligence of the people would be 
 elevated by the change many degrees. 
 
 Besides discharging the duties of the Political Economy 
 Chair at University College, Mr. Courtney has held several 
 other appointments which have necessarily extended the 
 range of his intellectual vision. He has been an examiner 
 in Literature and History for the Indian Civil Service, and 
 examiner in the Constitutional History of England for the 
 University of London. Since 1864 he has, moreover, been a 
 Times leader writer, with all that that implies. 
 
 When he left his seat in the gallery to take his seat on the 
 Opposition benches he entered the actual arena of politics 
 armed, so to speak, cap-a-pie. In addition he had travelled 
 much and examined on the spot the working of the political 
 machinery of many lands. He had visited nearly every Euro- 
 pean country, the United States twice, as well as Canada, 
 India, Turkey, and Egypt. 
 
 His first attempt to force the gates of St. Stephen's was 
 made at the last general election, when he boldly threw 
 down the gauntlet to that clever but unstable politician, 
 the late Right Honourable Edward Horsman. Mr. Horsman 
 won by the narrow majority of five votes. A somewhat 
 acrimonious war of words followed, wherein Mr. Courtney 
 had not the worst of it. 
 
 Towards the close of 1876 Mr. Horsman died, and Mr. 
 Courtney and Lieutenant-Colonel Sterling entered the field, 
 the former polling 388, and the latter 281 votes. Mr. Court- 
 ney's poll was the largest ever recorded for a candidate at 
 Liskeard, and coming as it did when Liberal fortunes were 
 very low, did a good deal to reinvigorate the party in Parlia- 
 ment. 
 
 It remains to consider, however inadequately, a few of 
 the more prominent questions with which Mr. Courtney has 
 identified himself. He is now the chief advocate in Parlia-
 
 Leonard Henry Courtney. 121 
 
 merit of the representation of minorities and of women, or to 
 be more gallant, of women and minorities. Now, with regard 
 to the question of minority representation much may be said 
 •pro and con. Mr. Mill undoubtedly regarded Mr. Hare's 
 scheme of " proportional representation " as a political 
 discovery of the most important character, and any such 
 opinion of Mill's is, of course, entitled to respectful con- 
 sideration. But Mr. Courtney is so enamoured of three- 
 cornered constituencies" and "cumulative votes" that he 
 positively refused to support Mr. Trevelyan's County Fran- 
 chise Bill because it contained no provision for the realisation 
 of a " principle which would re-create political life, raising it 
 out of the degradation which overlaid it." Mr. Courtney 
 tells us we are about to be overwhelmed by the billows of a 
 tempestuous democratic ocean abounding in unknown terrors. 
 There is but one escape, we must all put out to sea in tiny 
 " three-cornered " boats, on pain of universal political ship- 
 wreck. Was there ever so great faith seen in or out of 
 Israel ? One recalls the exclamation of the Breton mariner, 
 " How great, Lord, is thy ocean, and how small is my 
 skiff! " The danger to be apprehended is no less than 
 the gradual extinction of the "independent member." 
 
 Now, apart from the fact that the independent member is 
 generally a member who is not to be depended on, is it a 
 fact that our experience of the actual working of the " cumu- 
 lative vote " and of the " three-cornered constituency " has 
 been so encouraging as to induce us to withhold the 
 franchise from the county householder until the requisite 
 number of " corners " and " cumulations " can be created ? 
 I chance to know the electoral circumstances, parliamentary 
 and scholastic, of two important cities in the North, the one 
 returning three members to Parliament by the three-cornered 
 artifice, the other thirteen members to the School Board by 
 the cumulative process. In the former case the Tories, at 
 the last general election, managed to return their candidate 
 simply because no human ingenuity could, with the secrecy 
 of the ballot-box to contend against, so evenly apportion the 
 
 H
 
 122 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 two votes of each Liberal elector among the three Liberal 
 candidates, as to keep the Conservative at the bottom of 
 the poll. With an open vote, it was quite possible, though 
 unnecessarily difficult, but under the ballot it was a pre- 
 posterous game of blind man's buff — the veriest ne plus 
 ultra of legislative folly. The minority succeeded with a 
 vengeance. 
 
 In the other case three School Board elections have taken 
 place. On the first occasion the Radical (" Secularist ") 
 minority put up too many candidates and returned none ; 
 next election they carried two, who found themselves power- 
 less to influence the decisions of the ultra-orthodox majority. 
 These two stood again, but as acquiescing in the ecclesiastico- 
 educational policy favoured by the mass of the electors, and 
 lost their seats, as they deserved to do. An intelligent and 
 active minority with a just cause was thus effaced. It would 
 be very unsafe to found any argument on such slender data, 
 but it is quite possible that the ultimate effect of minority 
 representation, at all events in its present shape, may be 
 found to have the very opposite effect of what Mr. Courtney 
 anticipates. Its tendency appears to be to confirm majorities 
 in erroneous opinions, while hopelessly discouraging right- 
 thinking minorities from further propaganda. When once 
 we have obtained something like true electoral majorities it 
 will be time enough to provide for the representation of 
 minorities. 
 
 At the election of 18 68, Lancashire, as Mr. Courtney has 
 pointed out, with its included towns, returned twenty-two 
 Conservative to eleven Liberal representatives, yet the 
 Liberal vote was 104,000 strong, while the Conservative was 
 only 102,000. Suppose the distinction of town and county 
 were abolished once and for all, and each shire or aggregate 
 of shires were permitted to vote for a group of candidates in 
 proportion to its electorate, on something like the old French 
 system of scrutin de liste, would not that give a fairer chance 
 to "independent members" and candidates above "medio- 
 crity " than thoroughly artificial corners and cumulations ?
 
 Leonard Henry Courtney. 12 
 
 j 
 
 Let Mr. Courtney consider the matter, for certainly the 
 minority representation craze has landed him in strange 
 seeming contradictions. 
 
 On the one day he opposed the enfranchisement of the 
 county householder, and on the next he proposed to remove 
 ihe electoral disabilities of women. He would plead, doubt- 
 less by way of extenuation, that this was not a lowering, 
 but an assimilation of the franchise, and that he was not 
 consequently compelled by consistency to encumber his bill 
 with any three-cornered contrivances. But the point is all 
 too fine, and the House showed its sense of the incongruity 
 of the situation by recording a majority of 114 votes against 
 the measure, as compared with 80 the year before, and 
 this notwithstanding the fact that the member for Liskeard's 
 arguments were most cogent. It is hardly necessary to 
 observe that, like all ardent advocates of female rights, Mr. 
 Courtney is a bachelor. 
 
 But there is one question with respect to which the most 
 captious Radical can have nothing but words of praise to 
 bestow on Mr. Courtney. Since he first entered Parliament 
 he has never ceased, in season and out of season, to oppose 
 with rare foresight the disastrous policy of which the upshot 
 has been the serious and discreditable war with the Zulus. 
 His fidelity in this matter ought never to be forgotten. 
 
 On the 7th of August 1877, he moved the following re- 
 solution with respect to the annexation of the Transvaal : — 
 " That, in the opinion of this House, the annexation of the 
 South African Republic is unjustifiable, and calculated to be 
 injurious to the interests of the United Kingdom and of its 
 colonies in South Africa." " We had formerly agreed," he 
 said, " not to carry our arms into the middle of Africa, and to 
 allow the Dutch Boers themselves to go into the interior. 
 We had reversed that policy. We had taken on ourselves 
 the immense burden of administering the affairs of the 
 Transvaal. We had made ourselves responsible for what 
 that Republic had done, and would have to take up its quarrels 
 with the native chiefs. The cost would not be borne by the
 
 124 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 colonies, and would have to be borne by us at home. The 
 vote of to-night was the first symptom of the considerable 
 expenditure which the country would have to bear for many 
 years in connection with this matter." 
 
 Most true ; " the pity is 'tis true." I reproduce these words 
 from Hansard, because they are an imperishable monument 
 of Mr. Courtney's sagacity as a counsellor of the nation in 
 the conduct of difficult affairs. He demonstrated that Sir 
 Theophilus Shepstone had, with a high hand, violated both 
 the conditions by which the Colonial Office sought to bind 
 him in his dealings with the Transvaal. He had issued his 
 annexationist proclamation without the sanction of the High 
 Commissioner, and against the wishes of the Boers, who 
 publicly protested against the outrage in the proportion of 
 twelve to one. The subjugation of the Transvaal was per- 
 haps the most treacherous act, the basest manifestation of 
 our " spirited foreign policy," and yet, alas, Lord Sandon, in 
 the recent debate on Sir Charles Dilke's resolution, was able 
 to say with truth : — " The honourable member for Liskeard 
 has a right to raise the question of the Transvaal, but most 
 of those opposite can scarcely do so with good grace. The 
 annexation of the Transvaal was accepted generally by the 
 two great political parties in the House." 
 
 Having done our best to restore the emancipated 
 Roumelians to the hateful yoke of the Sultan, it was 
 perhaps fitting that we should seek to subject these brave 
 Dutch Republicans to that of the Empress of India. tem- 
 pora, mores! I congratulate the member for Liskeard 
 that in this infamous transaction his hands at least are 
 clean.
 
 XII. 
 
 ANTHONY JOHN MUNDELLA. 
 
 " O heavens ' what some men do 
 While some men leave to do ! " 
 
 THERE is no better example in Parliament of what is 
 called a "self-made man" than Anthony John Mun- 
 della, the irrepressible representative of Sheffield Radicalism. 
 An apologist of the late Andrew Johnson, President of 
 the United States, once urged, in the hearing of Thaddeus 
 Stevens, that "Andy" was at least a "self-made man." 
 The retort of that bitterest of politicians was crushing. " I 
 am glad to hear it — it relieves Providence of a heavy re- 
 sponsibility." Now, one has at first a little of this sort of 
 feeling with respect to Mr. Mundella. The edifice which this 
 self-made man erects is apt to appear so much more elegant 
 to the architect than to the public. Besides, the honourable 
 member for Sheffield is a curious combination. His coat is 
 one of many colours. He is half Italian, half English. He 
 has been everything, from a " printer's devil " to a " captain 
 of industry," and each avocation has left some traces of its 
 influence on his character and sympathies. He is half work- 
 man, half employer. He is a Churchman and a warm 
 advocate of religious equality; a Radical and a supporter of 
 the royal grants. He is a living illustration of the truth of a 
 profound saying in Ecclesiasticus : " All things are double." 
 Add to this that his energy is irrepressible : that he is not
 
 126 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 afflicted, to put it mildly, with mock modesty; that he 
 represents on pure principles a constituency which is pre- 
 eminently the most rascally in England ; that he is withal 
 fundamentally an able and honest politician, justly regarded 
 by the working class as one of its greatest benefactors, and 
 it will readily be admitted that first impressions of such a 
 man are apt to be erroneous. 
 
 Among so many seeming contradictions it is difficult to 
 find the reconciling principle or central fact, but like all 
 other men and politicians, Mr. Mundella may be known by 
 the surest of all tests, by his " fruits." 
 
 I shall merely premise, before recounting the leading facts 
 of his career, that it would have perhaps been better to 
 classify the member for Sheffield as an Eminent Democrat 
 rather than as an Eminent Radical. He is emphatically a 
 man of the people, rightly or wrongly feeling as they feel, 
 thinking as they think ; and I doubt if there be in Eng- 
 land, excepting Mr. Bradlaugh, a more effective out-of-door 
 speaker, a more powerful haranguer of mass meetings. He 
 is at home in a multitude, however vast or however rude. He 
 is one of the very few members of the House of Commons 
 who can beat down a refractory public meeting by unflinch- 
 ing resolution and sheer strength of lung. In the town of 
 Broadhead such a qualification is simply invaluable, and 
 but for the unsparing exercise of it at the election of 1874, 
 the Liberalism of Sheffield would have showed but poorly 
 indeed. 
 
 Anthony John Mundella, M.P., was born at Leicester, in 
 March 1825, the eldest son in a family of five. Mundella 
 senior was a Lombard refugee, a native of Como, who, 
 taking part in the insurrectionary movement against the 
 Austrians in 1820, was driven into exile. He landed in 
 England almost penniless, and settled eventually in 
 Leicester, where he endeavoured to earn a livelihood as a 
 teacher of languages. Instruction in modern tongues was 
 then a luxury in which but few indulged, and the luckless 
 Antonio in consequence frequently broke the exile's bitter
 
 Anthony John Mundella. 127 
 
 bread — endured what his immortal countryman Dante has 
 called " the hell of exile." Educated for the Roman Church, 
 he had no regular profession on which to rely. His income 
 Avas consequently at all times precarious. He married, how- 
 ever, a remarkable woman, Rebecca Allsop, of Leicester, a 
 lady richly endowed mentally, and possessed of some little 
 property. She was an adept in lace-embroidery, then a 
 remunerative art, and her skill and unremitting industry in 
 the main supported the Mundella household for the first ten 
 years of her married life. 
 
 Then there came a crisis. Her eyesight almost completely 
 failed, and Anthony had in consequence to be removed from 
 school in his ninth year, in order to put his childish shoulder 
 to the wheel. So far his education had been carefully super- 
 intended. Mrs. Mundella had a wide knowledge of English 
 literature, was a diligent Shakespearian scholar, and little 
 Anthony had been as quick to learn as she had been apt to 
 teach. 
 
 His acquirements accordingly secured him employment in 
 a printing office, where he remained till his eleventh year. 
 Thereupon he was apprenticed to the hosiery trade. He 
 was most fortunate in his employer, a discriminating man, 
 whose son, a member of Parliament, was the first to welcome 
 Mr. Mundella to St. Stephen's on his return for Sheffield in 
 1868. 
 
 In his eighteenth year his apprenticeship was at an end. 
 He had mastered his trade thoroughly, and contemporane- 
 ously he had learned all that could be acquired at the Me- 
 chanics' Institute of the town, and a great deal more. He 
 was an indefatigable reader. 
 
 In his nineteenth year, so conspicuous was his business 
 capacity that he was engaged as manager of a large enter- 
 prise in the cotton trade. At twenty-three he removed to 
 Nottingham, to become junior partner in a firm which shortly 
 transacted the largest hosiery business in the Midlands, 
 Hone, Mundella, & Co., employing as many as 3000 " hands." 
 Of this flourishing company Mr. Mundella is still a director,
 
 128 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 though not interfering very actively with the management. 
 He is, moreover, chairman of the Commercial Union Insur- 
 ance Company, and is a director of the National Bank and of 
 the Bank of New Zealand. 
 
 To very few " printers' devils " or " stockingers " is it 
 given thus to have a finger in the grande commerce of the 
 country, but Mr. Mundella climbed the ladder steadily and 
 skilfully, and it cannot be said of him that when he got to 
 the summit he forgot the condition of the less fortunate 
 toilers whom he left below. On the contrary, no working 
 man in England has striven more earnestly or intelligently 
 for the elevation of the mass than the member for Sheffield, 
 as a bare enumeration of his political and legislative res 
 gestce will readily show. 
 
 Always precocious, Mundella's political career began in 
 mere boyhood. The Austrian tyranny, which had driven his 
 father from his native land, and the miserable condition of 
 the " stockingers " among whom his lot was cast, naturally 
 disposed him to become a partisan of the " Charter," which 
 was at that time being earnestly advocated in Leicester by 
 the well-known Thomas Cooper, author of the " Purgatory 
 of Suicides," a work written in Leicester Gaol. 
 
 Cooper, in his interesting " Autobiography," published in 
 1872, gives us a vivid glimpse of the adolescent representa- 
 tive of Sheffield : — " I had been appealing strongly one 
 evening to the patriotic feelings of young Englishmen, 
 mentioning the names of Hampden, Sydney, and Marvell, 
 and eulogising the grand spirit of disinterestedness and self- 
 sacrifice which characterised so many of our brave fore- 
 runners, when a handsome young man sprang upon our 
 little platform and declared himself on the people's side, 
 and desired to be enrolled as a Chartist. He did not belong 
 to the poorest ranks, and it was the consciousness that he 
 was acting in the spirit of self-sacrifice, as well as his fervid 
 eloquence, that caused a thrilling cheer from the ranks of 
 the working men. He could not have been more than 
 fifteen at the time ; he passed away from us too soon, and
 
 Anthony John Mundella. 129 
 
 I have never seen him but once all these years. But the 
 men of Sheffield have signalised their confidence in his 
 patriotism by returning him to the House of Commons ; and 
 all England knows, if there be a man of energy, as well 
 as uprightness in that House, it is Anthony John Mundella." 
 
 This picture is obviously somewhat overdrawn, but in the 
 main it is doubtless correct. At Leicester, from 1840 to 
 1848, Mr. Mundella agitated by voice and pen for the 
 "Charter," and had the satisfaction of hearing reform 
 ballads of his own composition sung in the streets. 
 
 When he removed to Nottingham in 1848, new public 
 duties awaited him. He was made successively Town 
 Councillor, Sheriff, Alderman, Justice of the Peace, and Pre- 
 sident of the Chamber of Commerce. These local experiences 
 were, of course, valuable to him as a legislator in posse, 
 but it was in another and more original field that he first 
 did signal and I might say inestimable service to the entire 
 community. 
 
 He was the author in 1860, as he was the president for 
 eleven years subsequently, of the Nottingham Board of 
 Arbitration and Cou cilia tion for the Hosiery Trade — the 
 harbinger of so many others. Wearied with incessant 
 " strikes " and " lock-outs," Mr. Mundella, after many weeks 
 of fruitless negotiation, at last got employers and employed 
 together. 
 
 After three days' discussion, the then existing strike was 
 closed by mutual concession, and a resolution agreed to that 
 in future all questions affecting wages should be authori- 
 tatively settled by a board consisting of nine duly elected 
 representatives of the masters and nine of the men. The 
 board held its first meeting on the 3d of December I860. 
 In an article on " Conciliation and Arbitration " in the Con- 
 temporary Review for 1870, ten years later, Mr. Mundella 
 thus sums up the results of the experiment : — " Since the 
 27th of September 1860, there has not been a bill of any 
 kind issued. Strikes are at an end also. Levies to sustain 
 them are unknown ; and one shilling a year from each
 
 130 Eminent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 member suffices to pay all expenses. This, not a farthing 
 of which comes out of the pockets of their masters, is equi- 
 valent to a large advance of wages. I have inspected the 
 balance-sheet of a trade union of 10,300 men, and I found 
 the expenditure for thirteen months to amount to less than 
 a hundred pounds." 
 
 It is against the operation of this beneficent principle — 
 this proved success — that the Durham coalowners were the 
 first, on a great scale, to attempt to lift impious hands. It is 
 impossible for any impartial observer not to conclude that 
 they preferred the darkness to the light, their deeds being evil. 
 Mr. Mundella for one did not conceal that this was his view 
 of the situation. 
 
 No sooner was the Nottingham method of settling trade 
 disputes by arbitration recognised as feasible than Mr. 
 Mundella, as its author, was invited by many towns, and 
 among others by Sheffield, to give popular expositions 
 of his system. Sheffield had suffered many things at the 
 hands of Broadhead and his infamous crew, and so pleased 
 was the cream of the working men with the prospect of 
 escape from the vicious circle in which they were involved, 
 that in 1868 they invited the chairman of the Nottingham 
 Board to come forward as their candidate. He was returned 
 at the head of the poll, notwithstanding the strenuous support 
 given to Roebuck by the assassin Broadhead at trade union 
 meetings. 
 
 On entering Parliament the honour of seconding the 
 Address was conferred on him by Mr. Gladstone. Since 
 then his efforts to benefit the working class have been 
 unflagging, and, on the whole, most successful. His speech 
 on the second reading of the Education Bill was pronounced 
 by Mr. Gladstone to be the most important delivered on the 
 occasion. He had examined into the educational systems of 
 America, Germany, Switzerland, and Holland on the spot, 
 and was therefore in a position to speak with authority on 
 the all-important theme. 
 
 His persistent efforts to repeal the Criminal Law Amend-
 
 Anthoiiy John Mundella. 131 
 
 ment Act, that the equality of workmen before the law might- 
 be established, and to pass the Factory Nine Hours Bill in 
 order that the hours of labour might be shortened to hapless 
 women and children, have been rewarded. The Government 
 has itself done what it would not permit him to do. All the 
 same the credit must be accorded to Mr. Mundella, whose 
 views on labour and factory legislation were at the last 
 general election made test questions all over the North of 
 England. 
 
 In 1878 he succeeded in carrying a useful bill for the 
 Preservation of Fresh-water Fisheries, so as to increase 
 the supply of food and give harmless sport to the poorer 
 class of anglers. In the subsequent session his bill to abolish 
 property qualifications in connection with all local govern- 
 ment and municipal bodies was lost by only six votes. 
 
 To some, such legislative achievements may appear small 
 and commonplace, but it should be recollected that this is 
 the day of small things, and that in legislation, as in other 
 matters, it is " the mean and common, the things of the 
 eternal yesterday," that it is most desirable and least agree- 
 able to tackle. 
 
 I have said that Mr. Mundella is a Democrat rather than 
 a Radical, and I shall finally give an illustration of what I 
 mean. On the vote to pay the cost of the Prince of Wales's 
 mischievous jaunt to India he sided with the majority in 
 favour of the royal subsidy, and he had the temerity to assign 
 his reasons for so doing. "As long as we had a Monarchy 
 we should be ashamed to have a cotton velvet or tinfoil sort 
 of Monarchy ; he did not believe in a cheap, shabby, Brum- 
 magem Monarchy ; and he always would give his vote loyally 
 and in consistency with those opinions which he believed to 
 be the opinions of his constituents." 
 
 Now, it is impossible to say whether the Radicalism or the 
 logic of this sentence is the worse ; yet, I suppose, it must 
 be admitted that such clap-trap is regarded by the demos of 
 Sheffield — to use the language of our Democratic-Imperialist 
 Premier — as " the voice of sense and truth." In the first
 
 132 E7ninent Radicals in Parliament. 
 
 place, apart from the fact that an advanced Radical might 
 reasonably be expected to be ashamed of having a Monarchy 
 of any kind, cheap or dear, Mr. Mundella knew, as every 
 other member knew, that the reasons set forth for the 
 Prince's trip were not the true reasons. In the second place, 
 as a friend of the people, and knowing, as he so well knows, 
 the sore privations of the masses, how could he, with a clear 
 conscience, hint that a royal family, which directly costs the 
 nation £1,000,000 per annum, is either cheap or shabby? 
 The Presidency of the United States costs £10,000 a-year ; 
 and no impartial observer has ever yet affirmed that the 
 simple courtesies and hospitalities of the White House com- 
 pare unfavourably with the ridiculous tomfooleries of the 
 Court of St. James's. In the third place, it is not the part 
 of a good Radical, as Mr. Mundella seems to think, implicitly 
 to follow the multitude, even if the multitude consist of one's 
 constituents. There is a following of the multitude to do 
 evil which the true Radical will resist, when necessary, at 
 all hazards, in the interest of the people themselves. When 
 great principles are at stake, the genuine Radical must ever 
 be ready to go out into the wilderness, if need be, alone : — 
 
 " Far in front the Cross stands ready, 
 
 And the crackling faggots burn, 
 While the hooting mob of yesterday 
 
 In silent awe return 
 To glean up the scattered ashes 
 
 Into History's sacred urn." 
 
 Mr. Mundella has likewise a curious disposition to adorn 
 his conversation with quite unnecessary allusions to the 
 opinions of " lords" and other great people of his acquaint- 
 ance, who are intellectually greatly his inferiors. In aris- 
 tocracy-ridden England, this is nearly always a marked trait 
 of the self-made man. 
 
 The fact is, the honourable member for Sheffield, with all 
 his vigour of intellect and many virtues, has not altogether 
 escaped the "society" contagion of which the Court is the 
 centre, which has made so many strong men weak, and
 
 A nthony John Mundella. 
 
 i 
 
 
 caused " the currents of so many enterprises ot pith and 
 moment to turn aside and lose the name of action." 
 
 " O thou that sea walls sever 
 
 From lands unwalled by seas, 
 Wilt thou endure for ever, 
 
 O Milton's England, these ? 
 Thou that wast his Republic, 
 
 Wilt thou clasp their knees ? 
 Those royalties rust-eaten, 
 
 Those worm-corroded lies 
 That keep thy head storm-beaten 
 
 And sunlike strength of eyes 
 From the open air and heaven 
 
 Of intercepted skies."
 
 EMINENT RADICALS 
 
 OUT OF PARLIAMENT.
 
 EMINENT RADICALS 
 
 OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 
 
 °>»io°- 
 
 JOHN MO RLE Y. 
 
 "He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one, 
 Exceeding wise, fair spoken, and persuading." 
 
 OF all Swift's bitter sayings, the bitterest perhaps was 
 his observation that mankind are abont as well fitted 
 for flying as for thinking. If this be true — and it is not 
 necessary to be much of a misanthrope to admit that 
 generally speaking the human mind is a very imperfect 
 instrument — nothing can be more deplorable than the 
 slight esteem in which the ablest thinkers are held by the 
 majority of English electors. 
 
 " Thirty millions of people, mostly fools," and without 
 so much as the capacity to discern the importance of put- 
 ting the helm of the State into the hands of the least 
 foolish. Howbeit, the phenomenon is not new. " There 
 was a little city, and few men within it, and there came a 
 great king against it and besieged it, and built great bul- 
 warks against it. Now there was found in it a poor wise 
 man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city, yet no man 
 remembered that same poor man." The true "saviours of 
 society " are after all its original thinkers. Of these 
 England has at no time been without her share, and in 
 
 I
 
 138 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 her treatment of them, politically speaking, she has walked 
 with remarkable fidelity in the footsteps of the men of 
 " the little city." 
 
 Witness Mill and Westminster. Westminster, in a mo- 
 ment of illumination, elected as her representative in Parlia- 
 ment the greatest political thinker in the kingdom, but soon 
 felt the honour she had thus done herself more than she 
 could bear, and returned in haste to her vomit. In no other 
 civilised country except England could such a man have been 
 excluded for any length of time from the national councils. 
 In France, half - a - dozen signed articles would probably 
 have brought him about as many offers of seats in' the 
 Legislature, while in the United States he would, to a 
 certainty, have been made an ambassador of the first rank. 
 Even Spain values her Castelars and Pi y Margalls — 
 England alone keeps on, if not absolutely stoning the pro- 
 phets, at least studiously neglecting them. 
 
 The result we see in the heavy arrears of domestic legis- 
 lation, the helplessness and criminality of our diplomacy 
 abroad, and, worse than all, the disgust with representative 
 institutions which a Parliament of intellectual imbeciles is 
 sure, sooner or later, to inspire. 
 
 I have been led to make the above remarks in conse- 
 quence of its being intended to bring the subject of this 
 sketch forward as a candidate for a metropolitan constitu- 
 ency at the next general election. I trust that no effort 
 will be spared to secure the return of one who, in my 
 opinion, has no superior out of Parliament in respect of those 
 qualifications which go to make up real statesmanship. 
 
 That so distinguished an authority on nearly every one 
 of the great questions, political and ethical, which agitate 
 modern society should never yet have found a place at St. 
 Stephen's, is a standing impeachment of the political saga- 
 city of popular electorates. And it would be an additional 
 cause for rejoicing if a scholar and a gentleman like Mr. 
 Morley could be made to replace one or other of the cor- 
 rupt ring of ignorant, vain-glorious, aldermanic gluttons who
 
 John HI 01' ley. 139 
 
 have taken so many of our metropolitan constituencies 
 captive. 
 
 The contrast of political type would be sharp and salu- 
 tary, and an important outpost of the City Tammany might 
 thus be carried. Westminster, after discarding Mr. Mill, is 
 hardly entitled to have it placed in her power to reject the 
 greatest of his disciples. 
 
 As in the case of most speculative writers, the story of Mr. 
 Morley's life is exceedingly simple, almost necessarily an 
 autour de ma chambre affair. His life is in his books, which 
 have influenced the thoughts of many who have never read 
 them. He was born at Blackburn, in December 1838, the 
 son of a physician in good practice. The father was pious 
 without bigotry, somewhat eccentric, but, on the whole, a 
 judicious parent. As might be expected in such circum- 
 stances, the future editor of the Fortnightly went the regular 
 round of school, college, and bar. He was educated at 
 Cheltenham College, whence he proceeded to Oxford, where 
 he graduated in 1859. Subsequently he kept terms at 
 Lincoln's Inn, and was duly " called " to the Bar by that 
 Honourable Society, but never practised. 
 
 It is not a little remarkable that all this time Mr. Morley 
 showed no particular aptitude or even liking for study. He 
 who has since dug so sedulously about the very roots of the 
 tree of knowledge, among the primary conceptions of the 
 human race — he who is now in the very vanguard of 
 " free thought " — was at college something of a mooning 
 "Evangelical." "Who in this mysterious world can foresee 
 himself? 
 
 What a contrast, for example, is here to the experience of 
 his friend Mill, whose old Pagan father, James, is credibly 
 said to have imparted to him when an urchin the somewhat 
 startling intelligence that there is no God, coupled with a 
 prudent injunction to keep the information to himself. 
 
 Yet John Stuart Mill if he had lived much longer was 
 apparently bidding fair to take a high place, not, certainly, 
 among orthodox believers, but among the worthies of the
 
 140 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 Unitarian calendar. Most powerful intellects are either 
 religious or religiously anti-religious, superstitious or super- 
 stitiously anti-superstitions. Mr. Morley belongs to the latter 
 category, and the fact is not inexplicable. At a certain period 
 of youth, when the passions are strong and reflection is weak, 
 religious emotions very frequently come in — and come in 
 opportunely — to supply the restraining influence of reason. 
 When they are no longer needed they die out, and if they 
 have been very fervid the more ingenuous order of minds 
 is but too apt to resent them as idle delusions and to rush 
 into opposite extremes. Weaker and less ingenuous natures 
 profess to feel them after they have ceased to influence, and 
 so become religious hypocrites. 
 
 The transition is not easy to make, and I am not sure 
 that Mr. Morley has been quite successful in the operation. 
 Throughout his writings, with all their patient truthfulness 
 and candour, I think I can discern a certain undercurrent of 
 unconscious bias on the question of religion, as if the pen- 
 dulum of reason had swung back with such violence as to 
 become slightly overbalanced. 
 
 Unlike Mill, who approached the subject from a unique 
 standpoint of impartiality, he makes at once too much and 
 too little of the theme. But of this more anon. 
 
 In 1860 Mr. Morley commenced his career as a journalist 
 and man of letters, and from the first he laid the hand of a 
 master on whatever he touched. His earliest contributions 
 were to the Leader, then an organ of advanced Liberalism, of 
 which George Henry Lewes was the first editor. He worked 
 with a will, and soon became known to those whose business 
 it is to gauge intellectual capacity. In 1863 he joined the 
 staff of the Saturday Review, on which he remained for five or 
 six years. During that period he had for collaborateurs three 
 of the most formidable intellectual gladiators in England — 
 viz., Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Sir William Vernon 
 Harcourt, and Sir Henry Maine : — 
 
 " Tis heavy odds against the gods 
 When they will match with Myrmidons."
 
 John Morley. 141 
 
 But Mr. Morley was equal to the occasion. Many of his 
 Saturday Revieio articles were characterised by striking 
 originality of thought and fearlessness of expression. One 
 in particular, entitled "New Ideas," made so deep an im- 
 pression on Mr. John Stuart Mill that he wrote to a friend 
 anxiously inquiring who the author might be, and thus 
 were laid the foundations of a life-long friendship of no 
 ordinary intimacy and reciprocal esteem. I know hardly 
 anything finer in prose than the reverence without obsequi- 
 ousness which pervades Mr. Morley's article on the death of 
 Mill. It is the very poetry of a manly sorrow. 
 
 " The nightingale which he longed for fills the darkness 
 with music, but not for the ear of the dead master; he rests 
 in the deeper darkness where the silence is unbroken for 
 ever. We may console ourselves with the reflection offered 
 by the dying Socrates to his sorrowful companions : he who 
 has arrayed the soul in her own proper jewels of moderation 
 and justice and courage and nobleness and truth, is ever 
 ready for the journey when his time comes. We have lost 
 a great teacher and example of knowledge and virtue, but 
 men will long feel the presence of his character about them, 
 making them ashamed of what is indolent or selfish, and 
 encouraging them to all disinterested labour, both in trying 
 to do good and in trying to find out what the good is — which 
 is harder." — Siste Viator. 
 
 Ever ready to do battle in the front rank of Liberalism, 
 Mr. Morley chivalrously undertook to edit the Morning Star 
 at a time when, for reasons chiefly connected with the com- 
 mercial management, success was no longer possible. 
 Through no fault of his it was permitted to expire, and 
 Radicalism thus lost a most faithful and competent advocate. 
 To this day that loss remains unrepaired, and it has been 
 one of no ordinary seriousness to the party and to the 
 country, for since that time metropolitan Radicalism can 
 hardly be said to have been represented in the daily 
 press. 
 
 In 1867 Mr. Morley succeeded Mr. Lewes in the editorship
 
 142 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 of the Fortnightly, and in his hands a hitherto colourless 
 magazine soon became the recognised medium of all manner 
 of new and not unfrequently very unpopular ideas. And 
 this bold, uncompromising policy, I am glad to think, has 
 met with a gratifying measure of success. The Fortnightly 
 is a tower of strength to Radicalism in all its higher walks, 
 and its editor is ever vigilant and resolute to " hold the fort " 
 against all comers. 
 
 In the same year that Mr. Morley became the editor of the 
 Fortnightly, he paid a short visit to the United States, and 
 was introduced at the White House to the then President, 
 Andrew Johnson. He did not, like certain weak-minded 
 travellers with whom we are all acquainted, return professing 
 to be cured for life of Republican ideals. On the contrary, 
 he came back favourably impressed with the simplicity of 
 American official life, and confirmed generally in his demo- 
 cratic sympathies. 
 
 In 1869, at a bye election, Mr. Morley contested his native 
 Blackburn in the Radical interest, but without success. The 
 " Conservative working man " was against him. In certain 
 Lancashire constituencies it can no longer be doubted that 
 this anomalous being exists, and exists in force. Conservat- 
 ism implies that there is something to conserve, but in these 
 God-forsaken regions you have the effect without the cause 
 — men guarding rigorously what they never possessed. It 
 is as if a slave with freedom within his grasp should cling 
 tenaciously to his chains. Howbeit, Mr. Morley made a 
 stubborn fight, and showed himself as cogent with his tongue 
 on the platform as with his pen in the closet. He is a most 
 skilful and persuasive speaker, with hardly a trace of those 
 oratorical defects which generally mar the public utterances 
 of great authors. He knows the difference between the 
 written and the spoken linguistic mould, and can deftly cast 
 his thoughts in either. Dissenting as he does even from the 
 most heterodox Dissenters, I have yet heard him speak with 
 rare acceptance on a Liberation Society's platform to the 
 pink and flower of English Nonconformity. Such a spectacle
 
 John M or ley. 143 
 
 of mutual toleration is among the most hopeful signs of 
 English public life. 
 
 But it is at home in his literary workshop that the editor 
 of the Fortnightly will be seen to most advantage. The 
 appointments of Berkeley Lodge, Putney, are such as to make 
 the mouths of more obscure journalists water. The ample 
 library looks out on a beautifully-embowered lawn, while 
 every domestic detail is perfect. A man who cannot write 
 well with such happy surroundings has hopelessly mistaken 
 his calling. And best of all is the frank, truthful, earnest 
 conversation of the host himself. There is no evasion, no 
 hedging. When I first met him we plunged right into the 
 questions of Deity, of the immortality of the soul, of the 
 Republic, of Robespierre, of Burke, of his friend Chamberlain, 
 et de omni scibili, in an hour's time. 
 
 In reflecting he has a curious habit of listening as it were 
 to the tones of some far-off voice. I could not agree with 
 many of his positions, but felt the greatest difficulty in main- 
 taining my own. His religious scepticism is very deep and 
 subtle. He might, I dare say, if hard pressed, admit that 
 there are evidences of divine arrangement in the universe 
 amounting to a low degree of probability ; and as regards a 
 life beyond the grave he might go the length of dreading 
 with Hamlet " what dreams may come in that sleep of 
 death." But in any case he would turn away from such 
 conjectural speculations, and substitute social for religious 
 duties. This at once raises the intricate question of the 
 influence of religion on morality. Is the connection neces- 
 sary or accidental'? It would not be difficult, for example, 
 to show that the Pagan Cetewayo was throughout the 
 Zulu troubles a pattern of justice as compared with our 
 eminently Christian High Commissioner, Sir Bartle Frere, or 
 that so public-spirited a citizen and infidel as Mr. Charles 
 Bradlaugh would be a much more trustworthy custodian of 
 other people's moneys than the pious directors of the City of 
 Glasgow Bank. 
 
 But granted that a man's religion has little or no influence
 
 144 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 over his moral conduct — what then % Man will ponder the 
 strange problem of his destiny, and those who believe that 
 religion is a mere mental infirmity must be prepared boldly 
 to sum it up in the terrible words of Richter, " Of the world 
 will become a world-machine, of God a force, and of the 
 second world a coffin." 
 
 Such teaching, it can hardly be doubted, would profoundly 
 alter the hopes if not the moralities of the more energetic 
 portion of the human family. Burns in his most despairing 
 poem sang — 
 
 " The poor oppressed honest man 
 Had surely ne'er been born 
 Had there not been some recompense 
 To comfort those who mourn." 
 
 No comfort, alas ! no recompense. In such sore plight 
 humanity, I fear, would be disposed to say with Marcus 
 Antonius, " It were well to die if there be gods, and sad to 
 live if there be none." 
 
 With respect to the question of a Republic, Mr. Morley's 
 attitude, as might be expected in so courageous a political 
 thinker, is clearly defined. He recognises that until the 
 Republican banner is boldly unfurled we who are Radicals 
 are condemned to strike at phantoms. He is, of course, at 
 the same time no partisan of any revolution other than a 
 revolution of public opinion. In his powerful treatise on 
 " Compromise," he says : — " Our conviction is not, on the 
 present hypothesis, that Monarchy ought to be swept away 
 in England, but that Monarchy produces certain mischievous 
 consequences to the public spirit of the community. And so, 
 what we are bound to do is to take care not to conceal this 
 conviction ; to abstain scrupulously from all kinds of action 
 and observance, public or private, which tend ever so 
 remotely to foster the ignoble and degrading elements that 
 exist in a Court and spread from it outwards ; and to use all 
 the influence we have, however slight it may be, in leading 
 public opinion to a right attitude of contempt and dislike for 
 these ignoble and degrading elements, and the conduct
 
 John Morley. 145 
 
 engendered by them." This is not the language of sapon- 
 aceous bishops or of turtle-fed aldermen, but it is " the 
 voice of sense and truth," albeit it was never heard at the 
 Guildhall. 
 
 With nearly all that Mr. Morley has written on Voltaire, 
 Rousseau, Diderot, Turgot, and the French Revolution, I 
 cordially concur. To Robespierre alone I think he has done 
 scant justice, while to Burke he has been more than kind. 
 With the impartiality of a judge, and the insight of a states- 
 man rather than of a man of letters, he has succeeded in 
 dispelling much of the obscurity in which Mr. Carlyle is 
 chiefly responsible for having involved the greatest move- 
 ment of the mind of modern Europe. Carlyle's " French 
 Revolution " is undoubtedly a work of genius, but so has a 
 lurid " nocturne " by Mr. Whistler being pronounced to be a 
 work of genius. The trouble is that neither has the smallest 
 resemblance to the original. The time is coming when, it 
 is to be hoped, the English people will have forgotten all 
 about the " sea-greenness " of Robespierre, and remember 
 only his unquestioned and unquestionable " incorruptibility." 
 
 Mr. Morley's objection to Carlyle's bogey does not lie in a 
 nickname, but I think he would, perhaps, have regarded 
 Robespierre with a kindlier eye if he had not been the 
 auther of the dictum : " Atheism is aristocratic. The idea of a 
 Great Being who watches over oppressed innocence and punishes 
 triumphant crime is essentially the idea of the people." 
 
 Mr. Morley's admiration for Burke I am wholly unable to 
 comprehend. To bracket him with Milton is like comparing 
 a penny whistle to an organ. Nay, those who thought only 
 of dining when he thought of convincing were not so cul- 
 pable as has been insinuated. It would have been greatly 
 to the advantage of England and of Europe if Burke had 
 never crossed St. George's Channel. 
 
 As a practical politician, Mr. Morley has strenuously 
 exerted himself to secure two great objects — to level down 
 the Church politically, and to level up the working class 
 socially, with a view to unite the whole people in the
 
 146 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 pursuit of national as distinguished from sectional ideals. 
 As president of the Midland Institute, in 1876, he delivered 
 a remarkable address on " Popular Culture " in the Birming- 
 ham Town Hall, an address which will be found to embody 
 opinions of the highest wisdom and sentiments of the 
 noblest aspiration. It ends thus, and with it this notice 
 must also end. 
 
 " When our names are blotted out and our place knows us 
 no more, the energy of each social service will remain, and 
 so, too, let us not forget, will each social disservice remain 
 like the unending stream of one of Nature's forces. The 
 thought that this is so may well lighten the poor perplexi- 
 ties of our daily life, and even soothe the pang of its 
 calamities ; it lifts us from our feet as on wings, opening a 
 larger meaning to our private toil and a higher purpose to 
 our public endeavour ; it makes the morning as we awake to 
 its welcome and the evening like a soft garment as it wraps 
 us about ; it nerves our arm with boldness against oppression 
 and injustice, and strengthens our voice with deeper accents 
 against falsehood, while we are yet in the full noon of our 
 days, yes, and perhaps it will shed some ray of consolation 
 when our eyes are growing dim to it all, and we go down into 
 the Valley of Darkness."
 
 II. 
 
 ROBERT WILLIAM DALE. 
 
 " Well clone ! thy words are great and bold ; 
 At times they seem to me, 
 Like Luther's in the days of old, 
 Half battles for the free." 
 
 RADICALISM is like a great world-haven which many 
 ships reach by divers ocean tracks. It is a generous 
 fruit which grows on trees of many species. The editor of 
 the Fortnightly, about whom I had somewhat to say in the 
 preceding article, and the lion-hearted pastor of Carr's Lane 
 Chapel, Birmingham — what a contrast ! 
 
 How far apart their motives — how closely allied their 
 public aims ! 
 
 The earnest " rationalist " and the earnest religionist are 
 sworn bothers in political conflict ; the one because, like 
 Abou Ben Adhem, he is content to be written down simply 
 " as one that loves his fellow-men," the other because he is 
 penetrated by the apostolic conception that he is a " co- 
 worker" with his Divine Master in the sacred cause of 
 humanity. 
 
 Mr. Dale is a political Christian, a sort of spiritual utili- 
 tarian of a remarkable type — the best living embodiment of 
 the traditions of the sect to which Oliver Cromwell belonged. 
 Not orthodox certainly, as the Scribes and Pharisees hold 
 orthodoxy, but still, for so powerful an intellect, strangely 
 orthodox.
 
 148 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 "I am very sensible," says Swift, in his "Argument to 
 Prove that the Abolishing of Christianity might be attended 
 by some Inconveniences," " how much the gentlemen of wit 
 and pleasure are apt to murmur and be shocked at the sight 
 of so many daggled-tail parsons who happen to fall in their 
 way and offend their eyes; but, at the same time, these 
 wise reformers do not consider what an advantage and feli- 
 city it is for great wits to be always provided with objects of 
 scorn and contempt in order to exercise and improve their 
 talents and divert their spleen from falling on each other 
 or on themselves. . . . We are daily complaining of the 
 great decline of wit among us, and would we take away the 
 greatest, perhaps the only, topic we have left % " 
 
 Well, if there are any such great wits about who have a 
 desire to exercise their talents in this particular way, I should 
 strongly recommend them to go down to Birmingham and 
 break a lance with the minister of Carr's Lane Chapel. He is 
 a man of the people, and will give them a kindly welcome. 
 If they do not find him at home in his formidably-equipped 
 study, deep in the production of some systematic theological 
 treatise on the Atonement or the Ten Commandments, they 
 will be pretty sure to discover him either at a Liberal Ward 
 Committee, at the Liberal Association Rooms in consulta- 
 tion with the taciturn strategist Schnadhorst, or haranguing 
 an obstreperous multitude of electors in the Town Hall. 
 When he is disengaged he will be at their service, and if 
 they get much amusement at his expense I wonder. 
 
 A happier, heartier man than Mr. Dale — he disclaims the 
 " Eev.," as a rag of priestcraft — I never met, combining as 
 he does in no ordinary measure the laureate's desiderata of 
 manhood — "heart, head, hand." His practice squares with 
 his theory of life to a nicety. His soul is in his work. Like 
 Cromwell, he prays to God, and keeps his powder dry. What 
 good, he is never tired of asking, is the petition, " Thy will 
 be done on earth as it is in heaven," if a man is not pre- 
 pared at the call of duty to take off his coat and descend 
 into the political arena to wrestle with the powers of Con-
 
 Robert William Dale. 149 
 
 servative darkness? In one of his "Nine Lectures on 
 Preaching," delivered as Lyman Beecher Lecturer at the 
 University of Yale, Connecticut — a series of papers not less 
 distinguished by practical wisdom than literary merit — he 
 told the students of the theological faculty: 
 
 " In your pastoral preaching you ought not to omit to 
 illustrate the law of Christ in relation to public duty. 
 
 " Perhaps you have sometimes met good people who have 
 informed you in a tone of spiritual self-complacency that 
 they have never been in a polling-booth. They do not seem 
 to understand that the franchise is a trust, and that it im- 
 poses duties. 
 
 " A Secretary of State might as well make it a religious 
 boast that he habitually neglected some of the work belong- 
 ing to his department. The duties of an individual voter 
 may be less grave than the duties of an official politician, but 
 neglect in either case is a crime against the nation, 
 
 " I think it possible that the time may come when men 
 
 who refuse to vote will be subjected to Church discipline, 
 
 like men who refuse to pay their debts. The plea that the 
 
 discharge of political duty is inconsistent with spirituality 
 
 ought to be denounced as a flagrant piece of hypocrisy. It 
 
 is nothing else. The men who urge it are not too spiritual 
 
 to make a coup in cotton or coffee. Although they profess to 
 
 be alarmed at the spiritual terrors of the ballot-box and of 
 
 an occasional hour in a political committee-room, they are 
 
 not afraid that their spirituality will suffer if they spend 
 
 eight hours every day in their store or their counting-house. 
 
 Their spirituality is of such a curious temper that it receives 
 
 no harm from pursuits — no matter how secular — by which 
 
 they can make money for themselves, but they are afraid of 
 
 the most disastrous consequences if they attempt to render 
 
 any service to their country. The selfishness of these men 
 
 is as contemptible as their hypocrisy. They consent to 
 
 accept all the advantages which come from the political 
 
 institutions of the nation, and from the zeal and fidelity of 
 
 their fellow-citizens. . . . People who are so very spiritual
 
 150 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 that they feel compelled to abstain from political life ought 
 also to renounce the benefits which the political exertions of 
 their less spiritual fellow-citizens secure for them. They 
 ought to decline the services of the police when they are 
 assaulted, they ought to refuse to appeal to such an unspiri- 
 tual authority as a law court when their debts are not paid, 
 and when a legacy is left them they ought piously to abstain 
 from accepting it, for it is only by the intervention of public 
 law that they can inherit what their dead friends have left them. 
 
 " For men to claim the right to neglect their duties to the 
 State on the ground of their piety, while they insist on the 
 State protecting their persons, protecting their property, and 
 protecting from disturbance even their religious meetings in 
 which this exquisitely delicate and valitudinarian spirituality 
 is developed, is gross unrighteousness. It is as morally dis- 
 graceful as for a clerk to claim his salary from his employer 
 after leaving other men to do the work for which his em- 
 ployer pays him." 
 
 Plain speaking of this sort from the Carr's Lane and other 
 Nonconformist pulpits of Birmingham has materially helped 
 to preserve the borough from the arrow of Burnaby which 
 flieth by day, and the pestilence of Jingo which stalketh by 
 night. 
 
 Mr. Dale was born in London, in December 1829. His 
 early education was received chiefly at a private school in 
 Finsbury Square, kept by a Mr. Willey. After a brief period 
 of probation as an assistant master, he removed to Birming- 
 ham to attend Springhill College, a training school of the 
 Congregationalists, the religious denomination of his parents. 
 Here he remained for the whole curriculum of six years, and 
 in 1853 he graduated at London University, carrying off the 
 gold medal in the department of Philosophy and Political 
 Economy. Among his tutors at Springhill was Henry 
 Rogers, author of the once popular work, " The Eclipse of 
 Faith." Rogers had a fine literary taste, with which he did 
 not fail to imbue his pupils. A strong friendship sprang up 
 between the old man and Dale, and to this day the latter
 
 Robert William Dale. 151 
 
 acknowledges his obligations to his master with almost 
 juvenile warmth. 
 
 Another remarkable friend of Dale's youth was a man 
 renowned in the world of Evangelical Nonconformity, John 
 Angell James. He was for over half a century the pastor of 
 Carr's Lane Chapel, and Dale had no sooner finished his 
 studies than he was appointed his colleague and successor. 
 James imagined that he himself was a staunch Calvinist. 
 But Calvinism his successor could not swallow, and shortly 
 after his appointment he one Sunday opened a vigorous fire 
 on its cardinal dogma, and set the congregation by the ears. 
 James appealed to by alarmed church-goers, magnanimously 
 defended his colleague : 
 
 " He is a young man," he said ; " but the root of the 
 matter is in him. Wait ; you will see." 
 
 They waited, but did not see, for the young man hardened 
 his heart ; and to this day he repudiates the doctrine which 
 " sends ane to heaven and ten to hell, a' for Thy glory," as 
 unscriptural and revolting. 
 
 James himself had a na'ive excuse for practically banishing 
 it from his preaching. " Ah, well," he would say, " you 
 see the Scriptures don't say much about it." 
 
 In relation to eternal punishment, Mr. Dale's position is 
 that of an exegetical Darwin. He believes that hereafter the 
 spiritually fittest will alone ultimately survive. With him the 
 spiritual and not the material is the real. There is a Light 
 which lighteth every man that cometh into this world, be he 
 Jew or Gentile, Christian or Pagan. It is a plastic theory, 
 of which much may be made by a humane mind. Ac- 
 cordingly, Mr. Dale is a very cosmopolitan sort of Christian. 
 He is a strong admirer of Mr. Moody, of Moody and Sankey 
 fame, and he is a sworn friend at the same time of Mr. Cross- 
 key, the leading Unitarian heresiarch of Birmingham — 
 
 " Of old tilings all are over old, 
 
 Of good things none are good enough ; 
 He'll show that he can help to frame 
 A Church of better stuff."
 
 152 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 The Can's Lane congregation consists of over fifteen hun- 
 dred " souls," though I fear their pastor counts them as 
 frequently by " votes." They are largely composed of 
 working men and small tradesmen — nearly all Liberals. A 
 sprinkling are quasi-Conservatives ; among the latter a 
 wealthy alderman, about whom Mr. Dale tells with glee 
 how he described one of his special expositions of Christian 
 truth as " a brilliant farrago of democratic nonsense." 
 
 And this has struck me as a peculiar feature of Birming- 
 ham Radicalism. It is intense without being bitter or per- 
 sonally rancorous. It may be different in the actual throes 
 of an election contest, which I have never witnessed ; but 
 ordinarily there is a gratifying exhibition of mutual respect 
 among political opponents. There is, at all events in the 
 Dale family, a kindly tendency to regard a Tory as an " un- 
 developed Liberal," who will do better by-and-by. The 
 political evangel, like the religious, is not completely closed 
 
 to any. 
 
 I shall never forget my first impression of the Dale house- 
 hold. A ward election was impending at the time, and Mrs. 
 Dale, a lady not less remarkable than her husband for vigour 
 of mind and public spirit, was in the thick of it canvassing 
 the women electors, note-book in hand, as if the salvation of 
 the borough depended on the issue. I had always regarded 
 canvassing as more or less demoralising work, but it depends 
 largely on the spirit in which it is conducted. Mrs. Dale was 
 a model canvasser, using no argument even with the most 
 ignorant which did not appeal to their better reason. The 
 result was mutually beneficial. The accomplished lady had 
 her sympathies with the poor braced, and her knowledge of 
 their wants extended, while her less fortunate sisters had 
 their political education, to some extent at least, improved by 
 coming in contact with a superior mind. 
 
 The interest taken in politics by the youngest members of 
 the family, hardly in their teens, would have been comical if 
 it had not been so genuine and intelligent. 
 
 The political soundness of Birmingham Mr. Dale traces
 
 Robert William Dale. 153 
 
 back to the old Dr. Priestley leaven, which is still at work in 
 the community. The good which that great man did has 
 not been interred with his bones. The Tory mob of his day 
 stoned him, but the present generation has built him a worthy 
 sepulchre. 
 
 The solidarity of the Birmingham Liberal vote is less easy 
 to account for. Mr. Dale thinks the large number of small 
 employers of labour, who are only a few degrees removed 
 from the condition of their employes, has much to do with it, 
 and he is probably right. There is more of what the French 
 call egalite in Birmingham than in any other town in England. 
 No doubt there are snobs there, as elsewhere ; but I have 
 not had the misfortune to meet them. Rich men like Mr. 
 Chamberlain are devoted to Radical principles, and that sets 
 the fashion. Given, moreover, culture and religion on the 
 same side, and the worst Conservative foe that remains to 
 be overcome is ignorance. 
 
 This last-named obstacle to the triumph of Radicalism Mr. 
 Dale has set himself vigorously to combat. He was one of 
 the most strenuous champions of the famous National Educa- 
 tion League, which had for its object the complete separation 
 of religious from secular instruction in Board schools. To 
 seek to disestablish religion in the Church, and to hasten to 
 establish it in the school, did not seem to some Noncon- 
 formists too glaring an inconsistency. The minister of Carr's 
 Lane thought otherwise, and was returned at the first School 
 Board election in the purely " secular " interest, along with 
 Chamberlain, Dawson, Wright, Dixon, and Vince. They 
 were in a minority on account of the inexperience of the 
 * party managers in working the cumulative vote. At the 
 ensuing election, however, they succeeded in securing a bare 
 majority, and public education in Birmingham was " secu- 
 larised" at a blow. Since then, alas, there has been a 
 certain retrogression. 
 
 The Board, which consists of fifteen members, is subdivided 
 into five committees — Finance, Education and School Man- 
 agement, Sites and Buildings, General Purposes, and Night 
 
 K
 
 154 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 Schools — and it requires no small amount of skilful manipu- 
 lation to supply each of these with a Liberal chairman. Mr. 
 Dale has acted as chairman of the hardest-worked of all the 
 committees — viz., Education and School Management. He 
 is, moreover, under the new Government scheme' for the 
 better conduct of the Grammar School, with its large 
 revenues, a Governor, having been appointed to that honour- 
 able office by the University of London. But though the 
 School Board of Birmingham has discharged its duties with 
 exemplary efficiency, Mr. Dale is opposed on principle to the 
 multiplication of such authorities. He would strengthen the 
 local Parliament, the Birmingham Town Council, and place 
 every civic interest in its keeping. The Corporation already 
 manages the gas and water supplies, and Mr. Dale would not 
 shrink from charging it with the control of education and of 
 the liquor traffic as well. I cannot but think he is right. 
 Everything that tends to fritter away the authority and 
 dignity of our municipalities is an injury to the public spirit 
 of a community, and there is no surer mode of bringing about 
 a result so undesirable than the senseless multiplication of 
 local boards. It is the latest application of one of the most 
 ancient maxims of tyranny — Divide et impera. 
 
 There is neither inside nor outside Parliament a more 
 eloquent and uncomprising advocate of Church Disestablish- 
 ment than Mr. Dale. He approaches the question primarily 
 from the old Puritan standpoint — viz., that the State cannot 
 rightfully legislate for the Church. The latter is to the 
 former what the conscience is to the individual. The things 
 of Caesar and the things of God must be kept asunder — Reg- 
 num meum non est de hoc mundo. The union of Church and 
 State is a foul liaison which use can never convert into just 
 matrimony. Such is his theory. 
 
 Now for a statement of the practical disadvantages of the 
 Anglican Establishment. " To a Nonconformist," he says 
 in his "Impressions of America" — a series of admirable 
 sketches, political, social, educational, and religious, contri- 
 buted to the Nineteenth Century — travelling in America
 
 Robert William Dale. 155 
 
 one of the freshest sensations arises from the absence of an 
 ecclesiastical Establishment. In England I am reminded 
 wherever I go that the State is hostile to my religious 
 opinions and practices. Diocesan Episcopacy, in my judg- 
 ment, deprives the commonalty of the Church of many of 
 their rights and releases them from many of their duties ; 
 but in every parish I find an Episcopal clergyman who, accord- 
 ing to Mr. Forster's accurate description, is a servant of the 
 State. Though I am a minister of religion, the civil Govern- 
 ment has placed me under the spiritual charge of the Vicar 
 of Edgbaston ; that excellent gentleman is my pastor and 
 religious teacher. I am not obliged to hear him preach, but 
 the State has thought it necessary to entrust him with the 
 duty of instructing me in Christian truth, and celebrating for 
 my advantage the Christian sacraments. The doctrine of 
 baptismal regeneration seems to me a mischievous super- 
 stition, but I cannot say this to anybody without being in 
 revolt against a great national institution. 
 
 " Now and then I am bound to liberate my conscience, 
 and I tell my congregation what I think of the doctrine ; 
 but within a couple of hundred yards there are two national 
 buildings, in which, under the authority of the State, the 
 State clergy give thanks to Almighty God for the regenera- 
 tion of every child they baptise, and in which grown men 
 and women are taught that in baptism they were made 
 members of Christ, children of God, and inheritors of the 
 kingdom of heaven. The law is against me. It tolerates 
 me, but condemns me. It barks, though it does not bite. 
 It describes me as being among those people in divers parts 
 of this realm who, ' following their own sensuality and living 
 without knowledge and due fear of God, do wilfully and 
 schismatically refuse to come to parish churches.' It has 
 provided a book of Common Prayer, that ' every person 
 within this realm may certainly know the rule to which he 
 is to conform in public worship.' I am permitted to break 
 the rule, but the rule stands. It is the policy of the State to 
 induce the country to accept or retain religious doctrine
 
 156 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 which seem to me to be erroneous, and an ecclesiastical 
 polity which seems to me to be unfriendly to the free and 
 vigorous development of the religious life. The position of 
 a Nonconformist in this country is, to say the least, not a 
 pleasant one. His religious work is carried on in the presence 
 of a Government which condemns his creed, condemns his 
 modes of worship, condemns his religious organisation, and 
 sustains the authority of a hostile Church. In the United 
 States 1 breathed freely." 
 
 Towards the close of 1875, Mr. Dale and the Rev. Guinness 
 Rogers delivered a series of vigorous Disestablishment 
 addresses at Bradford, Liverpool, Leeds, Manchester, Nor- 
 wich, and Derby. They have been reprinted by the Liber- 
 ation Society, and should be in the hands of every advocate 
 of Disestablishment. 
 
 Mr. Dale has travelled in the East and in the West. He 
 has visited Egypt, the Sinaitic Desert, and Palestine. His 
 American wanderings, however, have borne the most valuable 
 fruit. His published " Impressions " of the States are the 
 best complement to Sir Charles Dilke's " Greater Britain " 
 with which I am acquainted. They supply exactly the sort of 
 information one desires with regard to that mighty theatre 
 of new social and political experiments. That so many 
 competent observers are now turning their footsteps towards 
 the Far West is a subject for unqualified congratulation : — 
 
 " Was the Mayflower launched by cowards, 
 Steered by men behind their time ? 
 Turn those paths towards Past or Future 
 That make Plymouth Eocks sublime ? " 
 
 It is a Western and not an Eastern policy of which England 
 stands most in need. Overthrow the aristocracy of this 
 country and there will be no insuperable barrier to a grand 
 reunion of the two great branches of the English-speaking race. 
 When the pressure of Mr. Dale's pastoral and political 
 duties is considered, the tale of his literary labours is im- 
 mense. They include a " Life of John Angell James," a 
 volume of "Week-Day Sermons." "The Atonement," which
 
 Robert William Dale, 157 
 
 ran through seven editions in four years, "Lectures on 
 Preaching," " Discourses on Special Occasions," " The Ten 
 Commandments," " Lectures on the Epistle to the Hebrews," 
 an " Essay on Lacordaire," another on " George Dawson," 
 " A Reply to Mr. Matthew Arnold's Attack on Puritanism," 
 " The Necessity for an Ethical Revival," etc. Besides con- 
 tributing to the British Quarterly, the Fortnightly, the Con- 
 temporary, and the Nineteenth Century, he has acted as joint 
 editor of the Eclectic Review, and for seven years as editor of 
 the Congregationalist, the organ of his denomination. In re- 
 gard to many of these multifarious matters I am far from 
 being able to see eye to eye with him, but he is always 
 earnest, honest, able, tolerant, the steady, stout-hearted 
 friend of civil and religious liberty, as he understands civil 
 and religious liberty. In one of the hymns compiled by Mr. 
 Dale, still sung at Carr's Lane Chapel, I read — 
 
 " Unlearn not the lore thy Wycliffe well learned, 
 Forsake not the cause thy Milton approved, 
 Forget not the fire where thy Latimer burned, 
 Nor turn from the truth thy Cromwell so loved." 
 
 To younger Radicals among us, who draw inspiration 
 from less venerable historic sources, such injunctions may 
 appear superfluous. But they are still real to many of the 
 best men and women in England with whom it should be 
 our pride and pleasure to co-operate. Mr. Dale can pour 
 new wine into old bottles without accident. He is likewise 
 perfectly familiar with the uses of the newest bottles of 
 Liberalism, as will be discovered by anyone who cares to 
 read his presidental address delivered to the members of the 
 Birmingham Junior Liberal Association in October 1878. 
 He is one of the most effective platform speakers in Great 
 Britain, and would make a heaven-born parliamentary candi- 
 date for a great popular constituency. Is it past prayiDg 
 for that such a man should be translated from Carr's Lane, 
 Birmingham, to the wider sphere of usefulness at St 
 Stephen's, Westminster %
 
 III. 
 
 JOSEPH ARCH. 
 
 " Men rough and rude pressed round 
 To hear the praise of one 
 Whose heart was made of manly, simple stuff 
 As homespun as their own." 
 
 SINCE Wat Tyler perished by the hand of the assassin 
 Mayor of London, Walworth, the agricultural labourers 
 of England have had no more sincere and capable leader 
 than Joseph Arch. To sketch his career is in a great meas- 
 ure to depict the condition and characteristics of his class, 
 a numerous and important section of Englishmen, of whom, 
 until quite recently, less perhaps was known for certain 
 than of Afghans, Zulus, or the Ten Lost Tribes. For cen- 
 turies they had been forgotten helots, mute bearers of other 
 men's burdens, the starved, unlettered, hereditary bonds- 
 men of " merry England." Their misery gave the lie direct 
 to our boasted prosperity and freedom. The statue might 
 be imposing, but the feet were obviously of clay. " And 
 behold the tears of such as were oppressed, and they no 
 comforter : and on the side of the oppressors there was 
 power. " Yea, very great power and very terrible oppres- 
 sion. On the agricultural labourer of England rests to this 
 day the curse of the Norman Conquest, the economic 
 damnation of the " three profits " of which our " miraculous 
 Premier" is so enamoured that he has taken to demonstrat- 
 ing that the arrangement is a law of nature.
 
 Joseph Arch. 159 
 
 The English labourer is the true servus servorum, the slave 
 of the farmer, who is in turn the slave of landlord and 
 parson. On him presses with crushing weight the whole 
 fabric of "society." He is the subject-matter, the corpus vile 
 of the Great Unpaid. Where were the judicial dignity of 
 Justice Shallow but for the peccant Hodge who pilfers a 
 turnip, gathers a mushroom, or knocks over a hare ? Where 
 were the pride of " officers and gentlemen," were there no 
 regiments of full privates recruited from rural England to 
 command ! On whom could the so-called National Church 
 unctuously enjoin contentment with the condition of life 
 wherein it has pleased God to place them were there no 
 serfs of the soil among her presumed adherents ? 
 
 Indeed, for many generations the combination of powers 
 spiritual and temporal against the English agricultural 
 labourer has been so irresistible that the marvel is he has 
 the smallest manhood left. Reform after reform has passed 
 him by unheeded, or rather has increased the distance 
 between him and other classes of the community. The 
 Protestant Reformation deprived him of the charities of the 
 monasteries, and in their place put in force poor laws of 
 unexampled barbarity. It found him sunk in ignorance, 
 and it kept him so. In time Reform Bills came, but who 
 should bestow franchises on a being so abject I Free trade 
 gave a new impetus to British commerce, but, let the 
 economists explain it as best they may, the Manchester 
 cornucopia never poured any of its abundance into Hodge's 
 lap. He was seemingly beyond the beneficent operation 
 even of economic laws. For five-and-twenty years he had 
 with more or less variation been going from bad to 
 worse. So much indeed was this the case that the opening 
 of 1872 found the actual tillers of English soil in a state 
 of " depression" bordering on actual famine. Then it was 
 that the Agricultural Labourers' Union took root, and Mr. 
 Joseph Arch first became known to the public as the Moses 
 who had been raised up to lead his down-trodden brethren 
 out of the house of bondage. Like his prototype, he might
 
 160 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 have gone over to the oppressor, much to his own ad- 
 vantage, in the capacity of land steward to a local Pharaoh, 
 but he had resisted the temptation, and when the hour 
 struck the man was ready. 
 
 Joseph Arch, founder and president of the Agricultural 
 Labourers' Union, was born in November 1826, at Barford, 
 a beautiful village, of some eight hundred souls, about three 
 miles from the historic town of Warwick. All about are 
 stately mansions of the great, and Shakespeare's Avon 
 winds close by through lovely meadows studded with 
 majestic trees. Like himself, Arch's father and grandfather 
 were industrious, ill-requited hewers of wood and drawers 
 of water. Howbeit, 
 
 " Let not Ambition mock their useful toil, 
 Their homely joys and destiny obscure; 
 Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile 
 The short and simple annals of the poor." 
 
 The life story of Mr. Arch's father is short enough and 
 sad enough. Unlike his son he was a man of peace, dis- 
 posed in all things to conform to the behests of the powers 
 that be, but he " drew the line somewhere," and not to his 
 advantage. He was sufficiently ill-advised to refuse to sign 
 a petition in favour of the Corn Laws, and so became by 
 one rash act a " marked man," on whom " quality " never 
 after smiled. For more than fifty years he toiled, and when 
 at last he was no longer able to drag his weary limbs to the 
 fields, he took to bed, and sorrowfully turned his face to the 
 wall. The savings of a lifetime of painful industry and 
 frugality amounted to four shillings and sixpence ! The 
 denouement I cannot better describe than in the words of 
 the Rev. Mr. Attenborough, whose faithful sketch of Mr. 
 Arch I cordially recommend to those who may wish further 
 information regarding the origin of the National Agri- 
 cultural Labourers' Union, and the early career of its 
 founder : — 
 
 " The worn, crumbling Arch, just tumbling down, was to 
 be propped up with ' good support,' and there was four
 
 Joseph Arch. 161 
 
 shillings and sixpence towards providing it. ' Give him 
 some beef tea, get him a drop of good wine if you can, and 
 take this prescription to the chemist's.' 
 
 " The poor patient's friends sat wondering, and weighing 
 his four and sixpence against the doctor's counsel ; it was 
 nowhere. The old man wept, knowing he was, after all his 
 work, to become a burden to those he loved, and who, as he 
 knew, had barely enough for themselves. 
 
 " * I be afeard, Joe, the parish will give thee nothin' for 
 me, be'n as yer a Dissenter.' Joe was not anxious they 
 should, but Joe's wife had been in the habit of earning a 
 couple of shillings a week at charing, and now that the old 
 man wanted nursing, she had to give this up and stop at 
 home. To the guardians Arch made a reasonable offer. 
 
 "'Gentlemen, I don't want you to support my aged 
 father; but if you will give my wife one shilling and six- 
 pence towards nursing him, now that she is cut off her 
 charing, I shall be much obliged to you; it isn't much; it's 
 less than the loss of my wife's earnings, and nothing towards 
 the expense.' 
 
 " ' Certainly not, Arch, your father can go to " the house," 
 and you must pay one and sixpence towards his support.' 
 
 " ' Good morning, gentlemen. I'd sooner rot under a 
 hedge than he should go there.' 
 
 " The old man lingered for ten months, and during the 
 last few weeks of his life the parish, against Arch's will, but 
 with the consent of his wife, allowed him one shilling and 
 sixpence and a loaf ! Then he died, and his son bought him 
 a coffin, and hid him down in the earth on whose broad 
 bountiful breast there seemed to be no room for him. 
 Fifty years a worker, thirty years a ratepayer, a life's saving 
 of four shillings and sixpence, a choice between the work- 
 house and his son's poor cottage, eighteenpence and a loaf 
 for two months — this was the life story of Arch senior ! " 
 
 Nor was this in ante-union days an isolated instance of 
 hardship. On the contrary, so far from being the exception, 
 it was the rule. Work as hard and live as sparingly as one
 
 1 62 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 might, the inevitable goal was the workhouse. Wages 
 would admit of no other result, and this in Christian Jingo 
 England, with its "miraculous Premier" and its capacity 
 for undertaking unlimited campaigns ! The thought burns 
 like a hot iron, and the warning word " Beware ! " rises to 
 indignant lips — 
 
 " Lest, when our latest hope is fled, 
 Ye taste of our despair, 
 And learn by proof in some wild hour 
 How much the wretched dare." 
 
 It was not from his father, but from his mother that Mr. 
 Arch inherited his moral stamina. She was a woman of 
 well-defined views in religion and politics, leaning strongly 
 towards Nonconformity and Radicalism. She could both 
 read and write — rare accomplishments for one in her lowly 
 station of life — and before her boy was six years of age he 
 could, thanks to her tuition, do likewise. 
 
 Thereupon he was sent to the village school, where he 
 remained for two years and three-quarters, and then his 
 education was pronounced complete. Money was wanted 
 above all things in the Arch household, and at the ripe age 
 of eight years and three-quarters young Arch commenced 
 to earn his livelihood as a bird-scarer or " crow-kepper," 
 with wages at the rate of fourpence per diem. In South 
 Warwickshire the living scarecrows are dressed as nearly 
 as possible like the more common inanimate objects with 
 which farmers are wont to adorn their potato fields. They 
 are supposed to be more effective than the voiceless 
 stationary " keppers," inasmuch as from dawn till eve they 
 move from field to field, emitting all manner of strange and 
 alarming sounds. Their garb is, however, so grotesque that 
 the birds, it is hinted, draw near for the purpose of laughing 
 at them, and so the provident husbandman's laudable aim 
 is frustrated. 
 
 At ten years of age Joseph was considered ripe for the 
 more responsible occupation of plough-driving. All day 
 long the poor lad would trail his heavily-clogged boots by
 
 Joseph Arch. 163 
 
 the side of the horse, to whose gearing he would occa- 
 sionally have to cling from sheer exhaustion. Thereupon 
 the furrow would bulge, and the incensed ploughman, 
 dexterously hurling at him a great clod, would lay him 
 prone, face downwards, on the just upturned soil. 
 
 Nor did material hardships constitute his sorest trials. 
 As he grew older and entered on his " teens," he was 
 promoted to drive a team in harvest-time, and felt himself 
 every inch a man. His employer thoughtlessly taking 
 advantage of his youthful elation of spirits, plied him with 
 excessive quantities of liquor, and but for the peremptory 
 steps taken by Mrs. Arch to keep her boy in the strait path 
 of sobriety, the apostolate of the agricultural labourers 
 might have been rendered for ever impossible in the person 
 of Joseph Arch. In his sixteenth year this kind, judicious 
 mother was no more, but her admonitions were indelibly 
 impressed on her son's mind. To his mother Arch ascribes 
 whatever good he has been able to achieve. 
 
 At twenty years of age, Arch's character was no longer to 
 form. He was a local preacher, and earning the highest 
 wages to be made as an agricultural labourer — viz., eleven 
 shillings a week. Several eligible opportunities occurred 
 for bettering his condition, but he resolved instead to 
 " stand by the old man." 
 
 Shortly after he married the daughter of a local artisan, a 
 woman of great natural endowments, both of head and heart. 
 Though uneducated, technically speaking, she is, I think, 
 superior to her husband as a speculative politician. At 
 every step she has stimulated his zeal by steady devotion 
 to great principles — greater, perhaps, than it would natu- 
 rally occur to him to advocate. 
 
 In due course two children were born to them, and Arch's 
 wages unhappily fell to nine shillings a week. Four persons 
 to maintain at the rate of, say fourpence per head per diem ! 
 The thing Mrs. Arch declared could not be done, and so she 
 took a bold step. She partially returned to her ante-nuptial 
 employment, while her husband took up his tools and scoured
 
 164 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 the country in quest of more remunerative work than was 
 to be had in the neighbourhood of Barford. For months 
 he never crossed his own threshold. In his wanderings he 
 encountered poverty beside which even the Barford standard 
 was one of comparative plenty. In Herefordshire he found 
 able-bodied men with wives and families toiling from morn- 
 ing till night for seven shillings a week. With one of these 
 he once lodged. How the wife and children subsisted Arch 
 could never ascertain, but the husband fared thus : — " Break- 
 fast, a dry crust; dinner, ditto; supper — the great meal of 
 the day — sometimes ' scald-chops,' a dainty dish, consisting 
 of broken bread moistened by pouring hot water upon it, 
 and sometimes a pint of cider warmed over the fire and a 
 crust dipped into it. This from Monday till Saturday, and 
 on Sunday occasionally a bit of bacon ! " 
 
 He beheld the tears of the oppressed, and they had no 
 comforter, and he vowed in the bitterness of his heart that 
 if ever an opportunity should present itself he would try to 
 be that comforter. The clock struck sooner than he ex- 
 pected. 
 
 Presently he was enabled to return to Barford to under- 
 take '"jobs" which required the assistance of other " hands." 
 As an employer he was not merely considerate but generous. 
 His own specialty as an agricultural labourer is hedge-cut- 
 ting — he is the champion hedge-cutter of all England. 
 
 All his life Mr. Arch has been addicted to reading. His 
 earlier studies were chiefly of a pietistic character. He 
 devoured the Bible, the " Pilgrim's Progress," Pike's " Early 
 Piety," " Pearson on Infidelity," et hoc genus omne. He still 
 preaches to vast audiences, generally twice, and sometimes 
 three times on Sundays. Originally a Primitive Methodist, 
 he has latterly laid aside the shibboleths of sect altogether 
 and taken his stand on the common ground of Christ's 
 humanitarian precepts and the example of his spotless self- 
 sacrificing life. His experience as a local preacher in ad- 
 dressing large audiences is to a great extent the secret of 
 his success as a political agitator.
 
 Joseph Arch. 165 
 
 The National Agricultural Labourers' Union was started 
 in this wise : " On the 5th of July 1872 "—I quote Mr. Arch's 
 own unvarnished narrative of " The Rise and Progress of the 
 N.A.L.U." — "two farm labourers, named Henry Perks and 
 John Davis, were sent by their fellow-labourers from Welles- 
 bourne, in Warwickshire, to the village of Barford. The 
 object of the deputation was to wait upon me to ask me to 
 
 help them to form a union Fortunately I was 
 
 at home when they arrived. I went inside to see the men, 
 who said, ' We are come over to see you about our having 
 a union. We formed a bit of one under the hedge the other 
 day ; but we can't go on very well without some one to put 
 us right. The men are all ready for it, and we appeal to 
 you.' 
 
 " ' But,' I said, ' do you mean to stick together % ' 
 " ' Yes,' was the reply. 
 
 " ' Well, now,' said I, ' you go back and get some of the best 
 men in Wellesbourne, and ask Mrs. Baker to let you have 
 the clubroom, and I will be over on Wednesday night at 
 seven o'clock. But, remember, you must be prepared for 
 conflict, as the farmers will be sure to oppose you.' 
 
 " The reply was, ' You come, it can't be worse for us than 
 it is.' " 
 
 Thus simply was the " Revolt of the Field," the most 
 remarkable social upheaval of the day commenced. The 
 news spread like wildfire, and on the Wednesday night Mr. 
 Arch addressed over a thousand fellow-labourers under a 
 great chestnut tree at Wellesbourne. 
 
 Meeting followed meeting in rapid succession. Arch was 
 ubiquitous and untiring, and at last, at a memorable meeting 
 at Leamington, the National Union was formed, with Joseph 
 Arch as chairman, assisted by an executive committee of 
 twelve labourers and an influential consultative council, 
 comprising Professor Beesly, Mr. Jesse Collings, Mr. J. C. 
 Cox, Mr. Ashton Dilke, the Hon. Auberon Herbert, Mr. E. 
 Jenkins, and others. 
 
 The moderation of the demands of the union was no less
 
 1 66 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 remarkable than the violence of the opposition offered by- 
 landlords, parsons, and farmers. Bishops menacingly alluded 
 to " horseponds " as fitting receptacles for agitators. Then 
 followed the memorable Chipping Norton prosecution and 
 conviction of labourers' wives and the important trial at 
 Faringclon to test the right of public meeting, where Sir 
 James Fitzjames Stephen held a brief for the union with 
 such signal success. 
 
 But it is not my business to write a history of the N.A.L.U. 
 Suffice it to say that in most instances the immediate object 
 of the union has been attained. Wherever the men have 
 stood manfully by the union, wages have gone up, agricul- 
 tural depression notwithstanding, from 15 to 20 per cent. 
 In south Warwickshire, wages which in 1872 stood at from 
 10s. to 12s. now range from 13s. to 15s. a week. 
 
 Within the executive of the N.A.L.U., harmony, I regret 
 to say, has not uniformly prevailed. The urban unionists, 
 who have exerted themselves, I believe, with perfect dis- 
 interestedness for the emancipation of the agricultural 
 labourer, have never regarded Mr. Arch's lead with much 
 confidence, and the latter has not failed to reciprocate this 
 sentiment of distrust. The reason, I think, is that Mr. Arch 
 is a thorough agricultural labourer, with all the virtues and 
 some of the failings of his class. He has seen so little real 
 generosity exhibited towards the serfs of the soil that he is 
 somewhat over-suspicious on their account. He fears the 
 Greeks, even when they bring gifts to his clients, and this 
 attitude, I am bound to say, has not always been without 
 justification. It served him notably in Canada when he 
 came to negotiate with the unscrupulous ring of emigration 
 crimps who, in the fall of 1873, formed the Macdonald 
 Cabinet. Canada is, in truth, a country where it is difficult 
 to say whether the rigour of the climate or the corruption of 
 the Government is the more unendurable. If he had listened 
 to the warbling of the official sirens and deported large num- 
 bers of English labourers to the inclement shores of Canada, 
 it would have been enough to wreck the union for ever.
 
 Joseph Arch. 167 
 
 Mr. Arch's sojourn in the United States was less satis- 
 factory. The New York working men, intending a great 
 compliment, had advertised him to speak at the Cooper 
 Institute without his consent — more Americano. He de- 
 clined, with quite unnecessary bluntness. He did not 
 proceed far enough west, for there, if anywhere, is it 
 possible to find the Promised Land of the English agri- 
 cultural labourer. On a future tour of inspection it is to be 
 hoped he will repair so great an oversight, inasmuch as it is 
 pretty certain that emigration has all along been the sheet 
 anchor of the union. Under the auspices of the N.A.L.U., 
 and partly aided by its funds, some 700,000 souls have left 
 our shores, or migrated from country to town, since 1872. 
 At that time members could with difficulty pay l^d. a 
 week to the union ; now the subscription is 2 £d., and there 
 is still a solid phalanx of 25,000 subscribers. 
 
 But the good work is hardly begun. The labourer has to 
 obtain the franchise, and the land has to be completely 
 defeudalised before Mr. Arch's mission will have been fulfilled. 
 I have never met a man who, from personal observation, has 
 grasped so comprehensively the evils of our land monopoly. 
 In his own neighbourhood Mr. Arch is an encyclopaedia of 
 information regarding the past and present produce of the 
 various adjacent estates. Within the last twenty-five years 
 cattle and sheep, he will tell you, have in most cases de- 
 creased by more than one-half without a single rood of 
 pasture land being broken up. Instead of "three profits," 
 there will hardly be enough for one if the present system is 
 to obtain much longer. Feudalism is eating itself up, in 
 South Warwickshire at least. These be truths which no 
 one could inculcate with greater authority at St. Stephen's 
 than the founder of the N.A.L.U., and there it is to be hoped 
 Mr. Arch will, after next election, have an opportunity of 
 explaining his view of the " three profits," and who ought to 
 reap them.
 
 IV. 
 
 EDWARD SPENCER BEESLY. 
 
 " Thou, Humanity, art my Goddess ; to thy law 
 My services are bound ; wherefore should I 
 Stand in the plague of custom ?" 
 
 LAST issue in writing of Mr. Joseph Arch I ran no 
 inconsiderable risk of losing sight of the man in the 
 magnitude of the cause with which his name is identified. 
 This week I am in similar and greater peril ; for if it be one 
 thing to face National Agricultural Unionism as the subject- 
 matter of Radical effort, it is quite another to tackle the 
 whole duty of man — the Religion of Humanity — as revealed 
 in the fulness of these later times by Auguste Comte. 
 
 To those who know anything of the writings of that 
 extraordinary man I need scarcely say that, whatever may 
 be thought of his ulterior conclusions, his was one of the 
 most powerful, laborious, and all-embracing intellects of any 
 time or clime. If one cannot accept his ideas it is still 
 necessary to revise one's own in the light of them, for as 
 Moses was fitted for his mission by being learned in all the 
 learning of the Egyptians, so assuredly Auguste Comte was 
 superlatively conversant with all modern sciences, with 
 astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology; and being so con- 
 versant, he made, some sixty years ago now, a notable 
 discovery. He found that each of these sciences had in 
 the course of its development passed through three stages 
 — a theological, a metaphysical, and a positive. Take, for 
 example, life in man and brute — what is it V The answer of
 
 Edward Spencer Beesly. 1 69 
 
 primitive man, the theological answer, is, God breathed 
 into their nostrils the breath of life, and they became 
 living creatures. Then came the metaphysical explana- 
 tion : they live because their blood is pervaded by a mys- 
 terious sublimated essence called " vital spirits," or " physio- 
 logical units." Then at last the question why they live is 
 given up as hopeless, and it is only asked how they live, 
 and by what means the conditions of life can be modified 
 for their profit or loss. This is the last or positive stage 
 which is ultimately reached in every science. 
 
 From 1822 to 1842 Comte was busily engaged in verifying 
 the above profound generalisation in detail. Heureka ! He 
 had found a master-key to the whole history of mankind, 
 religious, philosophical, moral, and political. The founda- 
 tions of a true science of sociology might at last be confi- 
 dently laid. The gods and the metaphysicians might now be 
 safely, nay, advantageously, bowed out of the great Temple 
 of Humanity, in appropriate niches of which should be placed 
 such miscellaneous benefactors of the race as Moses, Christ, 
 Mohammed, the Buddha, St. Thomas Aquinas ; Plato, 
 Socrates, ^Eschylus, Confucius, Shakespeare, Dante ; Thales, 
 Archimedes, Newton, Kepler ; Ariosto, Cervantes, Moliere ; 
 Julius Caesar, Trajan, Danton, and a great company of other 
 prophets who, in their day and generation, had worked hard 
 in the sacred cause of Humanity, without, of course, appre- 
 hending very clearly what they were about. 
 
 Some of them, no doubt, had concerned themselves much 
 about supernaturalities, immortalities, and such like childish 
 things, according as they were in the theological or meta- 
 physical stage ; but they had all agreed in this, " to live not 
 for themselves, but for others." 
 
 Here then is the " Open Sesame " of the Future. The 
 pillars which support the great fane of Humanity are 
 three — Affection, Order, Progress ; the first representing the 
 principle ; the second, the basis ; the third, the end of the 
 new creed. And whosoever builds on any other foundation 
 let him be Anathema Maranatha. Not quite so strong as 
 
 L
 
 1 70 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 that, perhaps, but still not far from it ; for good Comtists 
 attribute the sum of political strifes and social miseries to the 
 conflict which necessarily arises from the fact that large 
 masses of mankind are some of them still in the theological, 
 some in the metaphysical, and only an elect few in the 
 positive stage of belief. Until all have been brought into 
 the positive fold wars and rumours of wars are inevitable. 
 Like other millenniums, alas, that of the Positivists has been 
 postponed sine die, and to a necessarily distant day too. 
 
 I should be sorry indeed if anyone were to suppose that 
 the above is other than the faintest outline of the creed 
 of which the learned Professor of History in University 
 College, London, is so devoted and fearless an exponent. 
 It cost him ten years' patient study to attain to settled con- 
 victions on the subject, and even yet he is not in the priest- 
 hood of Positivism. He is only a sort of lay deacon, or 
 stalwart doorkeeper, at the Temple of Humanity. This 
 being so, I feel that it is not a little presumptuous in me 
 who have given but little attention to this new and most 
 difficult of cults, to attempt in any way to pass judgment on 
 it ; and were it not that Mr. Beesly's political conduct and 
 historical writings have been so directly inspired by Comtism, 
 I should most willingly give it a wide berth. 
 
 There is so much that is admirable, and so many things at 
 the same time that traverse one's most cherished opinions — 
 prejudices, a Comtist would doubtless say — in the system of 
 Comte, that it becomes a matter of no ordinary difficulty to 
 review Mr. Beesly's career, simple as have been the incidents, 
 with impartiality and discrimination. 
 
 Edward Spencer Beesly was born at Feckenham, Wor- 
 cestershire, in January 1831. His father was vicar of the 
 place, a sincere, sober-minded Evangelical of the old school, 
 who kept up intimate relations with the leaders of his own 
 party in the Church, and with few others. 
 
 His son Edward he found leisure to educate at home till 
 the young man was of age to be entered as a student at 
 nowise illustrious " Wadharu," Oxford. This home-trainiug
 
 Edward Spencer Bee sly. 171 
 
 may in some measure account for the fact that the English- 
 man who in public life has most frequently and audaciously 
 made light of the tenderest susceptibilities of all manner of 
 reputable people " with gigs," is in the bosom of his family 
 a model of gentleness and every domestic virtue. 
 
 At Wadham College Mr. Beesly was lucky in his friend- 
 ships, having for tutor Mr. Congreve — then the Rev. Richard 
 — and for fellow-students Mr. Frederic Harrison and Mr. J. H. 
 Bridges. Congreve was a man of admitted ability — one of 
 the most accomplished Aristotelians of his day. Sincere but 
 eccentric, no one was very much astonished when one fine 
 morning it was rumoured in Oxford that he had been formally 
 admitted into the Church of Auguste Comte. In time he was 
 followed by Beesly, Harrison, and Bridges ; Beesly, as I have 
 said, taking ten years to acquaint himself with the evangel 
 of the Parisian before relinquishing that of the Nazarene. 
 
 In 1854 Mr. Beesly graduated with honours, and was 
 appointed an Assistant Master in Marlborough College. 
 Subsequently he sought for and obtained the position of 
 Principal of University Hall, Gordon Square, London, in suc- 
 cession to Dr. Carpenter, who had been preceded by Mr. 
 Hutton, now of the Spectator, by the gifted Arthur Clough, 
 and nominally by F. W. Newman, the first Principal designate 
 who had never acted. The Hall is tenanted by students of 
 all religious denominations, and no proselytising is permitted. 
 There is a complete pax ecclesiastica maintained at University 
 Hall almost unknown in similar institutions. 
 
 In 1860 Mr. Beesly was appointed Professor of History 
 in University College, an office the duties of which he 
 was peculiarly fitted both by predilection and training to 
 discharge. 
 
 The Professor in his class-room is always interesting. He 
 is unconventional without being familiar, and he has a happy 
 knack of presenting the purely human aspect of his subject, 
 however far it may appear to be removed from the domain of 
 current interests, which seldom fails to leave the desired im- 
 pression. The Comtian principle of the continuity of human
 
 172 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 life enables Mr. Beeslyto irradiate the darkness of the past by 
 the light of the present with no ordinary success. 
 
 The last time I was in his class-room — the class is a mixed 
 one of young ladies and gentlemen, the propriety of whose 
 behaviour is a standing disproof of the fears of timid 
 moralists — he was comparing the cardinal features of the 
 religion of ancient Rome with those more particularly of 
 Christianity. The great goddess of the Romans was really 
 Roma, the " abstract double " of the Eternal City. There 
 was one Rome built by the hands of many generations of 
 Romans, and another built up by the imaginations of many 
 generations of Quirites. This process of creating a divinity 
 after their own image did not shock the Roman people. 
 They were in the theological stage of development. Well, 
 it struck me very forcibly that this delusive object of Roman 
 worship was hardly less an imposture than the object of 
 Comtist veneration, the Being of Humanity. The Being of 
 Humanity is the thinly disguised " abstract double " of an 
 indefinite number of men and women, past, present, and to 
 come, " mostly fools," with a considerable infusion of knaves. 
 I for one absolutely refuse to worship at the shrine of such 
 a Mumbo Jumbo. Having been once brought out of the 
 theological wilderness by a process so painful, I positively 
 decline to be again led back into it by a shabbier road 
 than I entered it. 
 
 Of course I shall be told that I do not understand the 
 Comtist religion, or perhaps that I am incapable of under- 
 standing it; for, like all possessors of absolute truths, Comtists 
 have a short way with unbelievers. My only consolation is 
 — and I admit it is a poor one — I am still in a majority in 
 this country. I do not forget that Christianity was once in 
 a minority of one, and if the avowed English co-religionists 
 of Mr. Beesly number only some sixty or seventy souls at 
 present, I am free to grant that they have among them pro- 
 portionally by far the best brains in England. And they are 
 diligent in season and out of season — zealous in every good 
 work as they understand good works. Mr. Beesly's labours
 
 Edward Spc7icer Beesly. 1 73 
 
 in connection, for example, with the translation of Comte's 
 "Politique Positive" into English are enough to make any 
 member of the Company of Biblical Revisers blush for very 
 shame. He is likewise a frequent contributor to the columns 
 of La Revue Occidentale, the organ of the Orthodox Positivists, 
 conducted by the Primate of the body, Pierre Laffitte, a per- 
 sonal disciple of Comte. 
 
 It may be necessary to explain how it comes to pass that 
 Mr. Beesly is an orthodox and not a heterodox Positivist. 
 The seamless coat of Comte has, alas, already been rent. 
 Dr. Congreve has disavowed the headship of Laffitte, and so 
 has become schismatic, taking half of the Comtist Church in 
 England and its dependencies with him. He has turned his 
 back on Paris, as Henry VIII. turned his back on Rome. He 
 has set up an independent island Church, and may be re- 
 garded as a sort of Comtist Protestant. 
 
 On the other hand, Mr. Beesly, Dr. Bridges, Mr. Harrison, 
 Mr. Vernon Lushington, Mr. Cotter Morison, and others still 
 remain Ultramontanes, repairing from time to time to Paris 
 to engage in the solemnities which annually take place at 
 Comte's old abode on the anniversary of his death. The 
 house is kept exactly as when the founder of the new reli- 
 gion died, and is the sacred rendezvous — the kaaba — of the 
 faithful. The meeting-place of the Orthodox is the Caven- 
 dish Rooms, Mortimer Street, Langharn Place, where a course 
 of lectures of an expositional character are delivered on 
 Sunday evenings during the winter months by Mr. Beesly, 
 Mr. Harrison, and other qualified laymen. 
 
 It remains to glance at some of Mr. Beesly 's political 
 opinions, acts, and historical writings, which are one and all 
 penetrated through and through by the principles and spirit 
 of his master, Comte. They have all for their central idea 
 or governing principle the far-reaching Comtian dictum : "The 
 working class is not, properly speaking, a class at all, but 
 constitutes the body of society. From it proceed the various 
 special classes, which we regard as organs necessary to that 
 body." Woe to the aforesaid special classes if they cease to
 
 1 74 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 be necessary organs. Woe to Mr. Gladstone, woe to Earl 
 Beaconsfield, woe to Parliament, woe to all men who are 
 unduly friendly to special classes. Let them but show their 
 baneful partiality, and the Professor will smite them with 
 remorseless impartiality. To him the Trojan Whig and the 
 Tyrian Tory have ever been much alike. Nay, he has even 
 been known to speak disrespectfully of parliamentary institu- 
 tions themselves, as Sidney Smith said Lord Jeffrey once 
 spoke depreciatingly of the Equator. He has scoffed at the 
 respectability of our middle class, and treated our greatest 
 plutocrats as if they were nobodies. In all things he is pre- 
 eminently un-English, affirming, as he does, the immense 
 superiority of Frenchmen and French institutions over 
 Englishmen and English institutions. England's function 
 among the nations is merely to play the part of the " horrible 
 example." She will do nothing at home that is not base 
 and hypocritical ; nothing abroad that is not tyrannical 
 and suicidal. The cup of her iniquities is almost full to 
 overflowing. 
 
 Mr. Beesly would give up India to-morrow, to say nothing, 
 of course, of Afghanistan. He would make an ample apology 
 to Cetewayo, and replace him on the throne of Zululand. 
 He would surrender Gibraltar to Spain, and make a present 
 of Ireland to Mr. Parnell, or to anybody else who might care 
 to take it off our hands. He would concentrate all our 
 military and naval strength in and around Great Britain 
 and having thus fortified the island by lopping off its rotten 
 outlying members, the country would be in a position to 
 enter on the discharge of international duties meet for 
 civilisation, conformable to the Religion of Humanity. 
 
 England, along with France, would then be in a position 
 to protect free Denmark, free Holland, free Belgium, from 
 German or other autocratic aggression, and as opportunity 
 occurred a blow for the resuscitation of Poland might per- 
 chance be struck. The Neo-Imperialists, at all events, can 
 hardly be expected to regard this as the " voice of sense and 
 truth," but it is unquestionably Positive Politics as under-
 
 Edward Spencer Beesly. 175 
 
 stood by Auguste Comte, and his disciple is not the man 
 to shrink from any of the consequences of his master's 
 teaching. 
 
 With respect to only one point in this programme do I 
 care meantime to pronounce an opinion. The Comtists have 
 never ceased to protest against our conquests in Hindostan 
 and our opium wars with China. Mr. Beesly in particular 
 has lifted up his voice against these cold-blooded enterprises, 
 which fill the mind of every sagacious observer with the 
 gloomiest forebodings, with an energy that does him the 
 greatest credit. It is one of the saving graces of the 
 Comtist creed that it includes the most abject sons of men in 
 the adorable Being of Humanity. They may be in the back- 
 ward metaphysical state, like the Hindoos, or in the yet more 
 unredeemed theological condition of the Zulus, but they are 
 not, therefore, fit subjects for Christian oppression. They 
 are where the most civilised peoples once were, struggling, 
 weary and footsore, along the dusty highway of human 
 progress which all must tread. If they fall among thieves, 
 it is ours to play the part of the good Samaritan and lift 
 them out of the ditch into which the footpads have cast them. 
 But we, alas, are the footpads. I shall not speedily forget 
 the righteous indignation with which Mr. Beesly recently 
 spoke to me of the Zulu war. He felt the misdeeds of our 
 representatives as a stain on his personal honour. The 
 name of Frere, even more than that of Eyre, ought to go 
 down with infamy to the latest posterity. 
 
 The mentioning of Eyre recalls to my mind an incident 
 in Mr. Beesly's career which brought down on his head an 
 extraordinary torrent of journalistic and other invective. At 
 a public meeting held in connection with the Broadhead 
 murders in 1867, he somewhat infelicitously observed that 
 Eyre " had committed his crime in the interest of employers, 
 just as Broadhead had committed his crime in the interest of 
 workmen." The wealthy class, he argued, had approved, 
 while the working class had condemned murder. This was 
 enough ; he was declared to have " apologised " for Broad-
 
 176 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 head's crimes, and even to have converted him " into a 
 hero." So far was this from being the fact that it was 
 subsequently proved that Mr. Beesly had on the first intima- 
 tion of the atrocities gone out of his way to urge the unions 
 to " ferret out any member guilty of a breach of the law and 
 drag him to justice." This was, however, not enough. A 
 victim was wanted, and for a time the vials of class calumny 
 continued to be poured on the Professor's devoted head. Had 
 he been a weak man he would have succumbed to the 
 violence of the storm. As it was he stood erect and immov- 
 able as a pillar, and the tempest gradually died away. 
 
 But the Broadhead incident was by no means Professor 
 Beesly's first offence against society. On the 28th day of 
 September 1864 he had actually presided at the first meet- 
 ing of "the International," in a room of St. Martin's Hall, 
 Long Acre. There Tolain submitted his memorable project, 
 and Marx, Eccarius, Odger, Lucraft, Llama, and Wolff were 
 named as a provisional committee. Here at least was one 
 highly educated English gentleman with the courage of his 
 opinions whom no political Mrs. Grundy could intimidate. 
 
 In 1875 occurred the iniquitous conviction of the five 
 cabinet-makers, Read, Weiler, Ham, Hibbert, and Matthews, 
 for the offence of picketing. Again, Mr. Beesly came boldly 
 to the front. During the term of their imprisonment he 
 lectured at the Eleusis Club on their behalf; when they were 
 released he was among the first to welcome them at the 
 prison-door; and he presided at the complimentary dinner 
 at which they were subsequently entertained, supported by 
 the Hon. L. Stanley, Mr. John Morley, Dr. Congreve, Mr. 
 Ashton Dilke, Professor Hunter, and others. 
 
 In March 1877 died George Odger, the Epaminondas of 
 English politicians. He was interred in the Brompton 
 Cemetery, and from a broken column near his grave Pro- 
 fessor Beesly pronounced a befitting eulogium on his career 
 in presence rather than in the hearing of a countless 
 multitude. 
 
 " George Odger," he said, " was not only a good but a great
 
 Edward Spencer Beesly. 177 
 
 citizen, one who put his public in the first rank of duties, and 
 was prepared to sacrifice all private interests to that con- 
 sideration " — a meed of praise not less deserved by the eulo- 
 gised dead than by the living eulogist. There is not, I am 
 sure, a more inflexibly honest politician or cultivated gentle- 
 man in England than Professor Beesly. 
 
 But I am bound to say that I think many of his political 
 conceptions are mistaken. Like all Comtists, his admiration 
 for France is excessive, and he dangerously undervalues the 
 importance of parliamentary government. I acknowledge 
 with gratitude the immense sacrifices which the French 
 People have made in the cause of human emancipation. 
 France is pre-eminently 
 
 " The Poet of the Nations. 
 That dreams on and wails on 
 While the household goes to wreck." 
 
 All the same I cannot conceive with Mr. Beesly that Eng- 
 lish workmen, as such, have any very vital stake in the 
 evolution of the social and political life of France. If they 
 cannot, with the aid of the less selfish and more intelligent 
 section of the middle class, combine in their own way to 
 establish on the ruins of Monarchy and Aristocracy in Eng- 
 land a stable Republic, not based on birth and privilege, but 
 on merit and equal rights, then let them throw up the sponge, 
 once and for all, and, betaking themselves, not in their thou- 
 sands, but their millions, to the free, open-armed United 
 States of America, leave behind them a solitude wherein 
 their oppressors may meditate at their leisure on the con- 
 sequences of their own selfishness and folly. 
 
 A word or two on Mr. Beesly's vigorous vindication of 
 Catiline, Clodius, and Tiberius, and I am done. To him these 
 besmirched historic personages are standard-bearers of the 
 Roman Revolution, the lineal descendants of the illustrious 
 Gracchi and of Drusus. According to this view Cato and 
 Cicero, Brutus and Cassius, were the Beaconsfields and Salis- 
 burys, while the Catilines and the Clodii were the Dilkes and 
 Chamberlains of the time. The cause of the latter triumphed
 
 1 78 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 eventually when Julius Csesar crushed the Senate and became 
 the Saviour of Society — the great world prototype of per- 
 sonal rulers. 
 
 In a sense the advent of Roman Imperialism was a popular 
 gain. It replaced many tyrants by one. But it gave the 
 death-blow to whatever little public spirit remained in Rome, 
 and that calamity was irreparable. I grant the Republican 
 Oligarchy was largely corrupt and oppressive. Unhappily, 
 it never occurred to anyone to renovate the Roman Legis- 
 lative Assemblies by the admisson of representatives from 
 the provincial Communes. Representative government as 
 now understood was the discovery of a later age. As it was, 
 Cato and Cicero, Brutus and Cassius, saw the image of con- 
 stitutional freedom receding day by day, and they clung 
 desperately to her skirts. In such evil times Radicals became 
 Conservatives, and Conservatives ostensible Radicals. 
 
 Mr. Beesly seems to me to forget that even a hateful 
 middle class may be crushed at too great a cost. Like all 
 Comtists, he is too partial to able men placed in authority 
 by brute masses. For my part, had I lived in the days 
 of Brutus and Cassius, I am certain that I should have 
 been on the losing side at Philippi, just as I should have 
 been at the coup d'etat, or as I should be if ever M. Gambetta, 
 for example, were to show symptoms of following in the 
 footprints of Napoleon.
 
 V. 
 
 CHARLES H ADDON SPURGEON. 
 
 " God forgive me ! If ever I 
 Take aught from the Book of that. Prophecy, 
 Lest my part, too, should be taken away 
 From the Book of Life on the Judgment Day." 
 
 FROM Professor Beesly's Comtism to the Rev. Charles 
 Haddon Spurgeon's Christianity — what a distance to 
 travel ! Mr. Beesly once somewhat uncharitably accused 
 Mr. Gladstone of being more concerned about his " con- 
 temptible superstitions than about politics." What would 
 he not say of the views of the Pastor of the Metropolitan 
 Tabernacle 1 ? You might search the whole world and find 
 no one whose mind was more thoroughly under the do- 
 mination of theological ideas than Spurgeon's. To a 
 Positivist the reverend gentleman must appear like a sur- 
 vival not of the fittest, but of the unfittest — a painful ana- 
 chronism to remind good Positivists and advanced thinkers 
 generally of the lowly estate from which they have emerged. 
 Not even reached the metaphysical stage ; and yet Mr. 
 Spurgeon has thousands and thousands of excellent men 
 and women who hang on his every word, spoken and writ- 
 ten, as if it were the very bread of life. 
 
 With hardly an attempt at direct political propagandism, 
 Mr. Spurgeon contrives to be the greatest single influence in 
 South London in favour of Liberalism. At elections, School 
 Board and Parliamentary, his followers display an energy 
 and discipline which leave nothing to be desired. They are
 
 i8o Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 men of faith, who do not lose heart in times of adversity and 
 reaction. Their human sympathies as well as their spiritual 
 have been warmed by the flame which burns in the bosom 
 of the devout and fearless Great Heart of the Metropolitan 
 Tabernacle. 
 
 If the common characteristic of men of progress, of genu- 
 ine Radicals, be that they " live not for themselves but for 
 others," then it would be hard to find a better Radical than 
 Mr. Spurgeon. As his Divine Master went about doing 
 good, so has His disciple ever struggled hard to follow in 
 his footsteps. So much I readily grant. My heart is en- 
 tirely with this pure-minded, unsophisticated believer, but 
 my unsanctified head will not, alas, follow it. I go to the 
 Tabernacle and I admire the vastness of the audience, the 
 simple, unconventional eloquence of the preacher, the pith 
 and mother-wit of many of his sayings ; but on the whole 
 the phraseology, if not strange, is almost meaningless to 
 me, and I return to my place about as little edified as if the 
 good man had been talking in some dead language to which 
 I had no key. Instead of attracting me, his familiarity with 
 the Almighty and His ways repels me. He is more intimate 
 with Him than I am with my dearest friend. Is this the 
 unredeemed condition of the theologically-minded spoken of 
 by the Prophet Comte? I ask myself; or what is it? — 
 
 " It is growing dark ! . . . . 
 I come again to the name of the Lord ! 
 Ere I that awful name record, 
 That is spoken so lightly among men, 
 Let me pause awhile and wash my pen ; 
 Pure from blemish and blot must it be 
 When it writes that word of mystery." 
 
 To Mr. Spurgeon there is no mystery at all. He knows the 
 decrees of God, and he has escaped the wrath to come. 
 Hallelujah ! Mr. Spurgeon is a converted man ; and that 
 makes all the difference. 
 
 Now, how was he converted ? This becomes an im- 
 portant question, for on his early conversion hangs the
 
 Charles Haddou Spurgcon. 1 8 1 
 
 whole of Mr. Spurgeon's future career. He is one of the 
 elect, and in regard to so important a matter I much prefer 
 that he should speak for himself. The event took place on 
 December 15th, 1850, in the Primitive Methodist Chapel, 
 Colchester, in Mr. Spurgeon's sixteenth year. 
 
 " It pleased God in my childhood to convince me of sin. 
 At last the worst came to the worst. I was miserable ; I 
 could do scarcely anything. My heart was broken in pieces. 
 Six months did I pray — prayed agonisingly with all my heart, 
 and never had an answer. I resolved that in the town 
 where I lived I would visit every place of worship in order 
 to find out the way of salvation. I felt I was willing to do 
 anything and be anything if God would only forgive me. I 
 set off, determined to go round to all the chapels, and I went 
 to all the places of worship, and though I dearly venerate 
 the men that occupy those pulpits now, and did so then, I 
 am bound to say that I never heard them once fully preach 
 the gospel. I mean by that, they preached truth, great 
 truths, many good truths that were fitting to many of their 
 congregation, spiritually-minded people ; but what I w T anted 
 to know was, How can I get my sins forgiven? And they 
 never once told me that. I wanted to hear how a poor 
 sinner under a sense of sin might find peace with God, and 
 when I went I heard a sermon on ' Be not deceived ; God is 
 not mocked,' which cut me up worse, but did not say how 
 I might escape. I went another day, and the text was some- 
 thing about the glories of the righteous ; nothing for poor 
 me. I was something like a dog under the table — not 
 allowed to eat of the children's food. I went time after 
 time, and I can honestly say that I don't know that I ever 
 went without prayer to God, and I am sure there was not 
 a more attentive hearer in all the place than myself, for I 
 panted and longed to understand how I might be saved. 
 At last one snowy day — it snowed so much I could not go 
 to the place I had determined to go to, and I was obliged to 
 stop on the road, and it was a blessed stop to me — I found 
 rather an obscure street, and turned down a court, and there
 
 1 82 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 was a little chapel. I wanted to go somewhere, but I did 
 not know this place. It was the Primitive Methodists' Chapel. 
 I had heard of these people from many, and how they sang 
 so loudly that they made people's heads ache ; but that did 
 not matter. I wanted to know how I might be saved, and if 
 they made my head ache ever so much I did not care. So 
 sitting down, the service went on, but no minister came. At 
 last a very thin-looking man came into the pulpit, and 
 opened his Bible and read these words : ' Look unto me and 
 be saved, all the ends of the earth.' Just setting his eyes 
 upon me as if he knew me all by heart, he said, ' Young 
 man, you are in trouble.' Well, I was, sure enough. Says 
 he, ' You will never get out of it unless you look to Christ.' 
 And then, lifting up his hands, he cried out as only, I think, 
 a Primitive Methodist could do, ' Look, look, look ! It is only 
 " look,'" said he. I saw at once the way of salvation. Oh, 
 how I did leap for joy at that moment ! I kneAv not what 
 else he said. I did not take much notice of it, I was so 
 possessed with that one thought. Like as when the brazen 
 serpent was lifted up, they only looked and were healed. I 
 had been waiting to do fifty things, but when I heard this 
 word 'Look!' what a charming word it seemed to me. 
 Oh, I looked until I could almost have looked my eyes away, 
 and in heaven I will look on still in my joy unutterable." 
 
 Here, then is an authentic narrative of the election of 
 Charles Haddon Spurgeon ; and what could be more in- 
 genuous % He was converted by the word " look," as the 
 sinful old Scotchwoman was brought from nature to grace by 
 the solemn emphasis with which Dr. Chalmers pronounced 
 the word Mesopotamia. In a similarly unhappy frame of 
 mind George Fox sought advice from a clergyman and was 
 admonished to " drink beer and dance with the girls." There 
 is in truth a great variety of cures for such spiritual maladies. 
 Edward Spencer Beesly finds great joy in believing in 
 Comtism, John Henry Newman in embracing Romanism, 
 and Charles Haddon Spurgeon in flying to the iron rock 
 of Calvinism. They are all converted from uncertainty to
 
 Charles H addon Spurgeon. 183 
 
 certainty. ter quaterque beati! I would to Heaven I 
 were as sure of anything as these men are of everything. 
 Similar phenomena are common among Mohammedans and 
 Buddhists. 
 
 The great mistake that is made by such religionists as Mr. 
 Spurgeon is to suppose that there is no law of conversions 
 as of other mental moods. A true grammar of spiritual 
 assent has yet to be written, and when that has been fairly 
 executed by some competent investigator of psychological 
 phenomena like Professor Bain, for example, there will be 
 nothing startling or abnormally significant in the experience 
 of the pastor of the Metropolitan Tabernacle. The element 
 of mystery will inevitably be eliminated, and evangelical 
 conversions will come perchance to be classified as a sort of 
 measles or small-pox of the intellect. 
 
 Charles Haddon Spurgeon was born at the village of Kel- 
 vedon, in Essex, in June 1834. Like so many other families 
 who have left their mark on the religious life of England, the 
 Spurgeons are the descendants of pious Continental refugees. 
 Driven from the Netherlands by the persecutions of Alva, 
 they settled in Essex and produced a line of pastors — each 
 of them remarkable in his own way — which has remained 
 almost without a break until now. Preaching has become 
 quite a hereditary occupation or passion with the Spur- 
 geons. In the phraseology of the sects, " They have never 
 wanted a man to stand before the Lord in the service of the 
 sanctuary." 
 
 Mr. Spurgeon's grandfather, James Spurgeon, was for 
 over half a century pastor of the Independent Church at 
 Stambourne, in Essex. " Like Luther," says his grandson, 
 in an article in the Sword and the Trowel, "he had a vivid 
 impression of the reality and personality of the great enemy, 
 and was accustomed to make short work with his sugges- 
 tions." 
 
 An extraordinary narrative follows, which I fear must be 
 ranked with " contemptible superstitions." He had been 
 converted under a particular tree in a wood, and the devil,
 
 184 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 appearing to him in a dream, threatened to tear him to 
 pieces should he venture to repair to the hallowed spot 
 by a particular path. Greatly daring, he went, and dis- 
 covering, of course, no fiend at the tree, he exclaimed, 
 "Ah, cowardly devil, you threatened to tear me in pieces, 
 and now you do not dare to show your face." Instead, how- 
 ever, of finding Satan at the rendezvous, his eye lighted on 
 what w T as much to be preferred — viz., a massive gold ring, 
 for which, mysteriously enough, there was no claimant. 
 
 But the sequel to the story is the best. The old man con- 
 tinued annually to visit the spot for devotional exercises, 
 till at last a wheat field occupied the site of the wood. He 
 then knelt down among the wheat to pray, but had hardly 
 commenced when he was sternly reminded that his sacred 
 grove had not been cut down for nothing, and that he 
 must seek the Lord elsewhere. "Maister,'' cried a harsh 
 voice on the other side of an adjoining hedge, "thayre be a 
 creazy man a-saying his prayers down in the wheat over 
 thayre ! " 
 
 John Spurgeon, the son of this venerable grove-wor- 
 shipper, and father of the subject of this sketch, was the 
 second of a family of ten. For many years he was engaged 
 in business in Colchester, but, like so many of his family, he 
 eventually drifted into the ministry, doing duty successively 
 at Tollesbury ; Cranbrook, Kent ; Fetter Lane, Holborn ; and 
 at Islington. 
 
 When a mere child, his son, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, 
 became an inmate of his grandfather's house at Stambourne, 
 and at once came under the most pietistic influences. When 
 ten years of age (see Sword and Trowel) a man of God, the 
 Rev. Richard Knill, made him the subject of a prophecy, 
 which, of course, came to pass. 
 
 " Calling the family together, he took me on his knee, and 
 I distinctly remember his saying, ' I do not know how it is, 
 but I feel a solemn presentiment that this child will preach 
 the gospel to thousands, and God will bless him to many 
 souls. So sure am I of this that when my little man
 
 Charles H addon Spurgeon. 185 
 
 preaches in Rowland Hill's Chapel, as he will do one day, I 
 should like him to promise me that he will give out the 
 hymn commencing — 
 
 ' God moves in a mysterious way 
 His wonders to perform.' " 
 
 This sort of half-insinuated miracle is of not infrequent 
 occurrence in Mr. Spurgeon's writings, and it is by no means 
 the most satisfactory feature. Whenever I stumble on such 
 things I recall the story of the unsanctified Yankee politician, 
 who said he did not so much object to twaddle as to the 
 people who ignominiously believed in it. Twaddle, he 
 admitted, might have its uses. 
 
 There were two taverns in this shrewd man's town of un- 
 equal repute ; one of them was the head quarters of the anti- 
 Masonic leaders — anti-Masonry was the " cry " of the hour — 
 the other was the resort of the body of their followers. At 
 the beginning of the legislative session our politician had 
 taken up his quarters at the tavern frequented by the anti- 
 Masonic rank and file. After a little while, however, he 
 astonished the anti-Masonic leaders at the other tavern by 
 presenting himself at their table. " What brings you here I " 
 they asked ; " we thought you had cut us to go to the other 
 place." "So I did," he replied, "but I can't stand the 
 nonsense of your d — anti-Masons down there ! " " Well," 
 they laughingly responded, " how have you bettered yourself 
 here, for we are all anti-Masons too 1 ?" "True enough," 
 said the clear-headed legislator ; "but there is a great dif- 
 ference ; those d — fools down yonder believe in it ! " 
 
 It is this unfaltering " believing in it," nevertheless, that is 
 at once the source of Mr. Spurgeon's weakness and of his 
 strength. When Robespierre made his first appearance in 
 the Assembly he was derided by all but Mirabeau, who, more 
 discerning, observed, " That man will go far ; he believes 
 every word he says." So it is with Mr. Spurgeon. He has 
 gone a long way, and will continue to go a long way, for he 
 believes every word he says. So has it been with Newman, 
 who firmly mooring his bark to the rock of Papal Infallibility, 
 
 M
 
 1 86 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 has become a Prince of the Roman Church. One only requires 
 to shut one's eyes and walk by faith in order to achieve 
 great things, yet there are disadvantages connected with this 
 contemning of one's sight. I have, for example, been at 
 pains to glance at most of the productions of Mr. Spurgeon's 
 prolific pen, and I can find nothing that does not bear an 
 utterly ephemeral impress. His mind, it is true, is thoroughly 
 saturated with the ideas and the literature of the Hebrew 
 race, the least scientific of all the great nations of antiquity, 
 but I cannot discover that he is abreast of any other kind of 
 knowledge. The sacred writings of other peoples are seem- 
 ingly sealed books to him. Neither by the development 
 hypothesis nor by the comparative historical method — the 
 two great clarifiers of modern thinking — has Mr. Spurgeon 
 apparently benefited in the least. 
 
 In a lecture on " The Study of Theology," delivered before 
 the Young Men's Christian Association at Newington, he 
 explained the manner in which he dealt with refractory texts. 
 When books failed him he offered, he said, this prayer, " 
 Lord, teach me what this means," and he added, " it is 
 marvellous how a hard, flinty text struck out sparks with the 
 steel of prayer." 
 
 I admit the sparks, but I desiderate the light of a genuine 
 scholarship ; and though it would be most unjust to speak 
 slightingly of Mr. Spurgeon's acquirements, I cannot but 
 think that his influence for good would have been immensely 
 more lasting had he acted on his father's sensible advice, and 
 subjected himself to a sound collegiate training before be- 
 coming a teacher of other men. 
 
 The motive which determined him to reverse the sound 
 maxim, disce ut doceas, was characteristic. " Still holding on 
 to the idea of entering the collegiate institution, I thought 
 of writing and making an immediate application ; but this 
 was not to be. That afternoon, having to preach at a 
 village station, I walked slowly in a meditative frame of 
 mind over Midsummer Common to the little wooden bridge 
 which leads to Chesterton, and in the midst of the common I
 
 Charles H addon Spurgeon. 1S7 
 
 was startled by what seemed to me to be a loud voice, but 
 which may have been a singular illusion. Whichever it was 
 the impression it made on my minil was most vivid. I 
 seemed very distinctly to hear the words, ' Seekest thou 
 great things for thyself, seek them not ! ' This led me to 
 look at my position from a different point of view, and to 
 challenge my motives and intentions. . . . Had it not 
 been for these words, I had not been where I am now," etc. 
 
 Either a loud voice or a singular illusion, but in any case 
 good enough to prevent a lad of eighteen, already acting as 
 a pastor at Waterbeach, from seeking to complete his legiti- 
 mate studies ! " Backed like a weasel, or very like a whale " 
 — it is all the same. Well, one might think such things, but if 
 I were Mr. Spurgeon I should not say them. However they 
 may affect the unthinking mass, they cannot but make the 
 judicious grieve. They are a direct incentive to ignorant 
 spiritual self-sufficiency. 
 
 What is the consequence to Mr. Spurgeon himself? He 
 began to preach when he was sixteen, and between his 
 earliest and his latest discourses there is but little to choose, 
 whether as regards matter or manner. From the first he 
 was popular — a great preacher, but a very indifferent 
 thinker — the prophet of incipient reflection, the high priest 
 of emotional religion. 
 
 He had scarcely passed his nineteenth year when he was 
 appointed pastor of his present metropolitan charge. His 
 first London sermon, in December 1853, was addressed to 
 200 hearers; |in three months' time he counted auditors 
 by the thousand. Since then he has touched nothing which 
 has not prospered, and his industry has been enormous. In 
 1859 was laid the first stone of the vast Metropolitan 
 Tabernacle, which, completed in 1861 at a cost of £31,332, 
 accommodates with ease an audience of 6000 persons. 
 
 In connection with the Metropolitan Tabernacle, and 
 owing its origin to Mr. Spurgeon's persistency, is the 
 Pastors' College, an institution maintained at great cost for 
 the education of Baptist preachers ; the Stockwell Orphan-
 
 1 88 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 age, the Colportage Association, and a great variety of other 
 benevolent institutions, large and small, which bear eloquent 
 testimony to the enduring zeal of Mr. Spurgeon in pro- 
 moting what he regards as the truest interests of humanity. 
 
 In addition to all these achievements, Mr. Spurgeon's 
 publications of one kind or other have been innumerable. Of 
 his sermons some twenty-two volumes have already been 
 published, and single copies have been known to attain a 
 circulation of 200,000. 
 
 Who shall say that the theological age of the world has 
 yet been outlived ? And it is not because Mr. Spurgeon 
 preaches soothing doctrines to his flock that they are 
 attracted by him. He is the mainstay of Calvinism in 
 England. The elect few alone are to be saved ; the rest go 
 to eternal perdition. He will not hear of the smallest limi- 
 tation to their torments. This diabolic dogma, worthy of 
 the man who betrayed the noble Servetus to the stake — a 
 man head and shoulders above Calvin, both as a theologian 
 and as a man of science — is not worthy either of the head or 
 heart of the pastor of the Metropolitan Tabernacle. AVere it 
 true the creature would then indeed be more just than the 
 Creator, and all but the vilest reprobates would refuse to be- 
 come "breeders of sinners." Virtuous men would everywhere 
 conspire to bring the race to speedy extinction, so as to 
 baulk the malevolent Demiurgus of his prey. The doctrine 
 is rendered for ever incredible by its very enormity. I took 
 some exception to the Religion of Humanity in the pre- 
 ceding article, but this may be called the Religion of In- 
 humanity, and it I totally repudiate. " A plague on both 
 your houses ! " more especially the latter. Burns was more 
 humane, and peradventure not less Christian, when he wrote 
 of the " arch enemy " — 
 
 " But fare ye weel, Auld Nickie Ben, 
 Oh, wad ye tak' a thought and men', 
 Ye aiblins might, I dinna ken, 
 
 Still ha'e a stake : 
 I'm wae to think upon yon den, 
 
 E'en for your sake."
 
 Charles Haddon Spurgeon. 1 89 
 
 At the London School Board election of 1870, Mr. Spur- 
 geon materially aided in cementing the compromise by 
 which Scripture teaching has been retained in rate-sup- 
 ported schools. He forgot the admonition of Christ, " Render 
 unto Csesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the 
 things that are God's." He called in the arm of the flesh to 
 levy rates from Atheists and all manner of unbelievers for 
 the support of what was delusively termed non-sectarian 
 education. In but too many instances those who have most 
 urgently demanded the disendowment of religion in the 
 Church have rushed with the greatest haste to endow it in 
 the schools. They have abolished Church formularies and 
 made every teacher a formulary unto himself or herself. 
 Instead of one creed being taught, we have at present 
 twenty or more in full swing, for I defy Mr. Spurgeon or any 
 other to impart non-sectarian Biblical instruction. The 
 thing is impossible. 
 
 Mr. Spurgeon's recent discourse on the Present Crisis was 
 what may be described as a model political sermon. " ' But,' 
 saith one, ' we hope we shall have national prayer.' I hope 
 so too ; but will there be a national confession of sin % If 
 not, how can mere prayer avail % Will there be a general 
 desire to do that which is just and right between man and 
 man % Will there be a declaration of England's policy never 
 to trample on the weak, or pick a quarrel for our own 
 aggrandisement ? Will there be a loathing of the principle 
 that British interests are to be our guiding star instead of 
 justice and right? Personal interests are no excuse for 
 doing wrong; if they were so we should have to exoner- 
 ate the worst of thieves, for they will not invade a house 
 until their personal interests invite them. Perhaps the 
 midnight robber may yet learn to plead that he only com- 
 mitted a burglary for fear another thief should take the 
 spoil and make worse use of it than he. When our 
 interests are our policy, nobility is dead and true honour 
 is departed. 
 
 " Will the nation repent of any one of its sins ? If stern
 
 190 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 reformation went with supplication, I am persuaded that 
 prayer would prevail ; but while sin is gloried in my hopes 
 find little ground to rest upon. It may be that my text will 
 be the sole answer of the Lord: 'I will go and return to my 
 place till they acknowledge their offence and seek my face ; 
 in their affliction they will seek me early.' "
 
 VI. 
 JAMES B E A L. 
 
 " We cannot bring Utopia by force, 
 But better, almost, be at work in sin 
 Than in a brute inaction browse and sleep." 
 
 THERE is not in England's vast Metropolis, or perad- 
 venture in all England, a Radical who during the last 
 thirty years has more consistently acted on this principle 
 than Mr. James Beal, of 20 Regent Street, auctioneer and 
 land agent. His name may be comparatively unfamiliar to 
 some of my readers, but it ought not so to be. 
 
 He is the typical Radical citizen of London — a bourgeois 
 untainted by any of the political failings of the English 
 middle class. These consist of indifference to the claims of 
 intellectual superiority on the one hand, and to the demands 
 of suffering humanity on the other. The British shopkeeper 
 is not without his virtues, but he is neither the friend of 
 thinkers nor of the proletariate. In both these respects Mr. 
 Beal has risen conspicuously above the class to which he 
 belongs, while assiduously and intelligently striving to pro- 
 mote its legitimate interests. For more than a quarter of a 
 century this busy, bustling auctioneer has contrived to de- 
 vote some portion of his day — often the best portion of it — 
 to the furtherance of this scheme or that of municipal or 
 national reform. Without fee or reward, in evil and in good 
 report, he has gone steadily forward, studying, writing, 
 lecturing, organising on behalf of some good cause or other — 
 
 " One of much outside bluster ; for all that, 
 Most honest, brave, and skilful.''
 
 192 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 Mr. Beal has made the public interest his interest to an 
 extent that has not been excelled by any private citizen of 
 the day. His achievements bear eloquent testimony to the 
 good which it is possible for individual Radicals to effect 
 who may never even aspire to a seat in the House. 
 
 The self- forgetfuln ess which enables such public-spirited 
 citizens as Beal to feel greater pleasure in returning to Par- 
 liament political thinkers of the eminence of Mill and Morley 
 than in being themselves returned is one of the most hope- 
 ful signs of English public life. It points to the ultimate 
 conquest of Philistia by the forces of humanity and right 
 reason, and in that sacred warfare Mr. Beal has earned for 
 himself imperishable distinction. In Phlisitia he is not of it. 
 On the contrary, he has assailed the Philistines in their chief 
 strongholds of vestry, guild, and corporation with a vigour 
 which has caused them to tremble behind their entrench- 
 ments. But I must not anticipate. 
 
 Mr. Beal's public work, like his private business, has been 
 of a strictly practical character, and will be best treated in 
 brief chronological sequence. Whatsoever his hand has 
 found to do he has done it with his might. There are many 
 good men willing to discharge public duties at the solicita- 
 tion of others. But Mr. Beal is not one of these. It has 
 been his function to invent duties for himself and others, as 
 the sequel will show : — 
 
 " No man is born into the world whose work 
 Is not born with him ; there is always work, 
 And tools to work withal for those who will ; 
 And he who waits to have his task marked out 
 Shall die and leave his errand unfulfilled." 
 
 James Beal was born in Chelsea (Sloane Square), in Feb- 
 ruary 1829. His father was a respectable old Tory trades- 
 man, who had originally come from Yorkshire. He died 
 before Beal had completed his seventeenth year, living long 
 enough, however, to satisfy the subject of this memoir that 
 he and his male parent possessed few or no sympathies in 
 common. It was different with Beal's mother. She was a
 
 James Beal. 193 
 
 woman as remarkable for vigour of mind as of body, and 
 from her her son inherited most of his mental and physical 
 characteristics. Without brothers, and without access to his 
 father's sympathies, Beal naturally enough " took after " his 
 strong-minded mother, whose memory he still reverently 
 cherishes. 
 
 There was no London School Board in those times, and 
 young Beal's education was accordingly of a somewhat 
 meagre kind. He attended several local schools, kept by 
 private teachers, but never got beyond the " beggarly 
 elements " of the three R's. He was eventually put to 
 business in his fourteenth year, the consequence being that 
 Mr. Beal is substantially a self-taught man. No one who 
 has gone through the regular scholastic mill could doubt this 
 for one moment. The matter of his writings is always ex- 
 cellent, but the manner is generally very rugged. His 
 arrows have terrible barbs, but no feathers. They do not 
 kill at long range, but they are very formidable in a hand- 
 to-hand encounter. As a journalist, the directness, not to 
 say the fury, of his method of attack, so different from that 
 of the professional scribe, arrests and is bound to arrest atten- 
 tion by its very novelty, if for no better reason. 
 
 Mr. Beal's business training was in every way more 
 fortunate than his educational. He commenced as clerk in 
 a solicitor's office, and before he had completed his sixteenth 
 year he had mastered Blackstone and acquired a general 
 knowledge of legal forms and principles, which could not fail 
 to be of the greatest use to him as a man of business in 
 after life. 
 
 About this time he had fortunately few companions except 
 his books, and these he read with avidity, storing up much 
 valuable information, which he shortly found most service- 
 able. One of his few friends happily possessed a large and 
 well-selected library, and Beal having the run of it, did not 
 neglect the opportunity to make up for the shortcomings of 
 his school training. 
 
 Subsequently Mr. Beal entered the office of an upholsterer,
 
 194 Eminent Radicals otit of Parliament. 
 
 but before he was twenty-one he found himself a partner in 
 the extensive auctioneer and land-agency business of which 
 he has now for many years been the principal. This Radical 
 of the Radicals has bought and sold more real estate, let and 
 hired more aristocratic mansions, than perhaps any land 
 agent in England. Such a fact, so antecedently improbable, 
 speaks volumes for the integrity and capacity of the man. 
 
 In 1848 Mr. Beal began to apply his mind to politics " in 
 earnest " — that is to say, he became a confirmed and immov- 
 able Radical. He had previously induced his father, much 
 to the old man's subsequent astonishment, to record his vote 
 for Cochrane, then Radical candidate for Middlesex — a 
 thoroughly characteristic act ; for Beal, with all his fiery 
 zeal, has a wonderful knack of converting foes into friends, 
 if only an opportunity of exerting his personal influence is 
 afforded him. His own mind is so thoroughly made up that 
 he will speedily make up yours if you are not on your guard. 
 He became a member of the " Discussion Classes " which 
 then met at the National Hall, Holborn, and there he made 
 the acquaintance of such well-known apostles of Radicalism 
 as Hetherington, Lovett, Watson, and Place. 
 
 The first reform with which his name is associated was 
 the abolition of the penny stamp on newspapers. Brougham 
 had succeeded, in 1834, in effecting a reduction of the 
 obnoxious impost from fourpence to a penny, and Hether- 
 ington, Place, Beal, and others, in 1848, formed a committee 
 for its total removal. In furtherance of the movement, Beal, 
 in 1849, published an excellent pamphlet, entitled " A Few 
 Words in Favour of the Liberty of the Press and the 
 Abolition of the Penny Stamp on Newspapers." The com- 
 mittee was ultimately merged in an association for the 
 repeal of both the advertisement duty and the paper duty, 
 objects which were eventually attained. 
 
 In 1850, Mr. Beal contributed to the Freeholder a valuable 
 series of letters on the land question. They were reprinted 
 in 1855, and a second edition, entitled " Free Trade in 
 Land," appeared in 1876. Both as regards theory and prac-
 
 fames Bectl. 195 
 
 tice the author shows himself a thorough master of his 
 subject. He has read and he has observed, and both read- 
 ing and observation have convinced him that our whole 
 system of land tenure is simply barbarous. 
 
 From 1851 to 1855 he was actively engaged in establish- 
 ing freehold land societies throughout England and Scot- 
 land. Many suburban estates were bought and subdivided 
 among the shareholders as sites for cottages, one out of 
 many advantages of the arrangement beh)g that thousands 
 of artisans, then without the franchise, were thus enabled by 
 a flank movement to obtain it. 
 
 About the same time Mr. Beal came prominently forward 
 in the character of an ecclesiastical reformer, addressing a 
 series of trenchant letters to the Bishop of London on cer- 
 tain Popish practices observed in the Church of St. PauJ, 
 Wilton Place, and of St. Barnabas, Pimlico. A memorable 
 action, " Westerton and Beal v. Liddel," ensued. The legal- 
 ity of Ritualism had never been legally challenged since the 
 Reformation. Mr. Beal appeared in person before the Privy 
 Council, and obtained a favourable judgment, but without 
 costs, which were cheerfully defrayed by public subscription. 
 The agitation resulted in the Public Worship Act, and the 
 end is not yet. 
 
 In 1857, Mr. Beal entered on a long and arduous struggle 
 with the gas companies of the Metropolis. These companies 
 had " districted " London among themselves, and ruled the 
 consumers with a rod of iron. Mr. Beal contrived to effect 
 a combination of vestries against the companies — on the 
 principle, I suppose, of setting a thief to catch a thief — and 
 after a contest which lasted all through '57, '58, '59, and '60, 
 the Metropolitan Gas Act was passed, which improved the 
 quality of the gas supply, limited its price, curtailed divi- 
 dends, and effected a net saving to the consumers of 
 £625,000 per annum, — a sum equivalent to the entire School 
 Board rate. 
 
 Not satisfied, however, Mr. Beal in 1868 had another bill 
 for the further amendment of the Metropolitan gas supply
 
 196 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 introduced into Parliament. Its history was peculiar. The 
 Metropolitan Board of Works opposed it, and the Corpora- 
 tion of the City of London appropriated it, the Metropoli- 
 tan Board, subsequently reporting, with the consistency which 
 distinguishes it, that the Act had immensely benefited the 
 City ! 
 
 In 1873 yet another gas bill was introduced, with the 
 approval of the Board of Trade. Its object was to amalga- 
 mate the various companies, with a view to facilitate the 
 eventual purchase of their united undertakings by the yet 
 unborn municipality of the Metropolis. The result was so 
 far satisfactory. All the companies north of the Thames 
 were unified, while those south of it were reduced to four in 
 number. 
 
 In 1870, Mr. Beal induced the Government to give notice 
 of its iutention to improve the water supply of London. 
 Unfortunately the good intention, like so many others, went 
 to pave the unmentionable region spoken of by Dr. Johnson ; 
 but the subject has not been allowed to drop. It has been 
 demonstrated at influential public meetings recently held 
 that the present Metropolitan water supply is unsatisfactory 
 as regards purity, cost, and the poundage principle of assess- 
 ment. Put the water supply under representative instead 
 of company control, and it is calculated that £150,000 per 
 annum can readily be saved to the ratepayers. Next ses- 
 sion Mr. Cross stands pledged to deal with the question, and 
 it can hardly be that he should deviate far from the lines 
 drawn by Mr. Beal, who first set the stone rolling. 
 
 In 1876, Mr. Beal broke new and most important ground. 
 Fearing least an increased education rate should render the 
 cause of scholastic enlightenment unpopular, he set himself 
 to investigate other possible sources of revenue, and an 
 altogether remarkable series of papers on " The Corporation 
 Guilds and Charities of the City of London," contributed to 
 the Dispatch, and signed "Nemesis," was the result. The 
 revelations were simply astounding. The Corporation, with 
 a revenue of £600,000 per annum derived from the " common
 
 James Beal. 197 
 
 good," the Liveries with more than £1,000,000 issuing out 
 of trust funds, and the City Charities with a good £100,000 
 annual income, were shown to be one vast network of 
 corruption and malversation. Ab uno disce omnia. 
 
 In 1513, the Mercers held 160 acres of trust land, located 
 chiefly in Marylebone and Westminster (Bradbury's trust). 
 They now retain eight and a half acres, and no man can or will 
 tell what they have done with the rest of the estate. The 
 eight and a half acres yield a rental of £27,575, and the trustees 
 make a return to the Charity Commissioners of a fixed 
 "annual payment of £1, 10s. per annum to St. Stephen, 
 Coleman Street." Having done this, they feel they have 
 discharged their duty towards the " pious founder " and the 
 public, and pocket the little balance for the trouble they have 
 taken. In New York, certain malefactors connected with 
 Tammany Hall, who in a similar manner sought to convert 
 public trusts to private uses, speedily found their way to the 
 Tombs amid a hurricane of popular execration. If they had 
 been in "famous London town" they would have been 
 central figures at the Lord Mayor's Show, clothed, not in 
 sackcloth and ashes, but in purple and fine linen, the observed 
 of all observers. 
 
 Mr. Beal holds, and I heartily agree with him, that these 
 nefarious city jobbers must be compelled to disgorge at 
 least half their revenues for Metropolitan education, or 
 justice will remain a laughing-stock. Mr. Beal, almost single- 
 handed, has carried dismay into their camp. The Grocers' 
 Company has given £25,000 to the London Hospital, and the 
 guilds are organising a technical college to cost £20,000 per 
 annum. But these are not tokens of genuine repentance. 
 They are mere dissembling peace-offerings to be set aside by 
 the public with contempt. 
 
 The existence of so many anomalies and gigantic abuses 
 convinced Mr. Beal, as early as 18(31, that what is really 
 wanted is a single municipality for the whole of London. In 
 that year a Committee of the House, before which Mr. Beal 
 was examined, considered the whole subject, and ever since
 
 198 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 his views have been rapidly winning public approval. Mill, 
 Buxton, Elcho, and Shuttleworth have each unsuccessfully 
 brought in bills embodying Beal's ideas. Latterly Mr. 
 Gladstone has promised his powerful support, and placed the 
 reform of the municipality of London at the head of his long 
 list of " unredeemed pledges." Eventual triumph is accord- 
 ingly as good as certain. When it comes it will be the 
 cleansing out of the biggest Augean stable in Christendom. 
 
 Mr. Beal, as is well known, was the moving spirit in the 
 generous electioneering effort which in 1865 resulted in the 
 return of the late John Stuart Mill for Westminster free of 
 expense, and it was owing to his enlightened action that the 
 first London School Board had among its members such 
 distinguished men as Lawrence, Huxley, and Morley. And, 
 unwearied in well-doing, he is again at his post. What he 
 did for Mill he is resolute to do for the greatest of his disciples, 
 John Morley, and for Sir Arthur Hobhouse. Voluntary 
 subscriptions have poured in so generously for the impending 
 contest that there has already been banked a sum almost 
 sufficient to fight the battle of intellect and worth against 
 vulgar wealth and bastard Imperialism. May the fickle 
 divinity that controls elections second his praiseworthy 
 efforts ! 
 
 Mr. Cross's vaunted Artisans' Dwellings Act Mr. Beal 
 would have rendered workable, if the right hon. gentleman 
 had only had the good sense to profit by his advice. His 
 plan was not to enforce sales to the local authority, but to 
 compel the owners of dilapidated tenements themselves to 
 incur all risks in connection with the pulling down and 
 re-erection of condemned buildings owned by them. As it 
 is, the Metropolitan Board is at a standstill, having lost 
 £800,000 of the ratepayers' money in the vain attempt 
 to sell the sites of " rookeries " for as much as they cost. 
 Verily, wisdom is justified of her children. 
 
 In conclusion, it may be said that in no progressive move- 
 ment, national or municipal, since 1848 has Beal failed to 
 play a manly and singularly disinterested part. In 1851,
 
 James Bcal. 199 
 
 when Joseph Hume and Sir Joshua Walmsley endeavoured to 
 revive public interest in parliamentary reform, Beal ''stumped" 
 London for them, and materially helped to convince Earl 
 Russell of the inexpediency of adhering to his "finality" 
 policy. He had his reward in the legislation of 1867. 
 
 In 1857 appeared " Beal's History of the London Joint- 
 Stock Banks," contributed originally to the Bankers Circular 
 — an interesting and useful production. In 1859 he pub- 
 lished a trenchant exposure of the confessional in the Church 
 of England. 
 
 In 1866 was founded by him the Metropolitan Municipal 
 Association, and subsequently the Guilds Reform Association, 
 both of which bodies have rendered excellent service in pre- 
 paring London opinion for necessary changes in local govern- 
 ment. 
 
 Nor have Mr. Beal's sympathies been confined to London 
 or England exclusively. He was a determined partisan of 
 the North during the American civil war, and at a public 
 meeting held in London in the interest of the Confederates 
 he tore down the " Palmetto flag " from the wall, and trampled 
 it under foot at the risk of serious personal violence. 
 
 When Garibaldi was wounded at Aspromonte he raised a 
 fund of £1000 to send out Professor Partridge to give the 
 noble general the benefit of first-rate surgical skill. 
 
 Indeed, as I have said, it is impossible to mention almost any 
 good pie for thirty years past in which this indefatigable 
 friend of humanity has not had a finger. One stands simply 
 amazed at the multitude of his good deeds, which have no 
 smack of self-consciousness. It would be impossible to 
 imagine a reformer with less cant or nonsense about him 
 than Beal. He has no " unction " of any kind — a hearty, 
 sharp, decisive man, ordained to be a Radical and pioneer 
 of progress from the foundations of the world. " Wha does 
 his best," said Burns, " will whiles do mair." James Beal, 
 methinks, has oft done mair.
 
 VII. 
 
 MONCURE DANIEL CONWAY. 
 
 " His hearers can't tell you on Sunday beforehand 
 If in that day's discourse they'll be Bibled or Koraned, 
 For he's seized the idea (by his martyrdom fired) 
 That all men (not orthodox) may be inspired." 
 
 MR. CONWAY'S inspiration may be questioned, but none 
 will gainsay his total heterodoxy. If he is not a 
 prophet it is not his fault — he is the least orthodox preacher 
 in London. " His faith has centre everywhere, nor cares to 
 fix itself to form." 
 
 The congregation of South Place Chapel, Finsbury, are 
 Nonconformists who non-conform very much. Their Bible 
 is called " The Sacred Anthology " — a book of ethnical 
 Scriptures, collected and edited by Mr. Conway. The pur- 
 pose of the work is simply moral. " He has aimed," he says 
 in the preface, " to separate the more universal and endur- 
 ing treasures contained in ancient Scriptures from the rust 
 of superstition and the ore of ritual," and he has succeeded 
 in his aim. To good Rationalists " The Sacred Anthology " 
 ought to be what " The Garden of the Soul " is to good 
 Romanists. " The utterance does not wholly perish which 
 many peoples utter; nay, this is the voice of God." 
 
 At South Place, the condemnation of the Pharisees who 
 for a pretence make long prayers is not incurred. No 
 prayers are offered up. There has been substituted what is 
 called " meditations " or moral soliloquies, and the finest 
 music. The whole atmosphere of the chapel is " advanced "
 
 Moncure Daniel Conway. 201 
 
 to such a degree that Unitarians of the older school when 
 they occasionally enter it are almost as puzzled as orthodox 
 Trinitarians what to make of it. The average intellectual 
 level of the congregation is, I should imagine, the highest 
 in London. Men and women who could not be induced to 
 listen to any other preacher go readily to hear Mr. Conway. 
 Nowhere will you find a finer collection of human heads. 
 And yet Mr. Conway is not an orator in any sense of the 
 word. 
 
 His predecessor, the celebrated W. J. Fox, "Publicola" of 
 the Dispatch, and M.P. for Oldham, was a different man. He 
 combined all the qualities of a popular, if heretic, preacher. 
 It is what Mr. Conway says, and not how he says it, that 
 attracts. He is hardly even a scholar in the strictly technical 
 sense of the term, and in matters of detail he is occasionally 
 inaccurate. But he is an original and fearless thinker, a born 
 instructor of other men in whatever is true, beautiful, and 
 good, with an ear delicately attuned to catch the faintest 
 accents of the " still small voice " of conscience. What he hears 
 in the closet he has the courage to proclaim from the housetop. 
 His discourses consequently bear an oracular impress. They 
 have, moreover, an aroma of mysticism, faint bat sweet — a 
 breath of New England transcendentalism, peculiarly grate- 
 ful to unaccustomed Cockney nostrils. 
 
 It were curious to speculate what would happen if, say, 
 Spurgeon and Conway were to exchange pulpits for a month 
 or so. Both churches, I imagine, would be completely 
 emptied. To the Eclectics of South Place Mr. Spurgeon's 
 doctrines would be mere foolishness, while to the Calvinists 
 of the Tabernacle Mr. Conway would be worse than a 
 stumbling-block ; he would be Antichrist. Yet there is a 
 golden bridge over this terrible chasm of conflicting beliefs. 
 Mr. Conway and Mr. Spurgeon have a common object for 
 which they toil — viz., the moral elevation of mankind. 
 Where this essence of all true religions is present, the form 
 is of secondary consequence. Creed or no creed, for the 
 good the path of duty is the same. 
 
 N
 
 202 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 " The soul is still oracular ; amid the market's din 
 List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within — 
 'They enslave their children's children who make compromise 
 with sin.'" 
 
 Moncure Daniel Conway, it need scarcely be recorded, is by 
 birth an American. He was born in 1832, near Fredericksburg, 
 Stafford County, Virginia, where his father, Walker Peyton 
 Conway, a gentleman of independent fortune, enjoyed uni- 
 versal esteem. The elder Conway was both a county 
 magistrate and a member of the State Legislature. The 
 stock had come originally from Wales, and in the course of a 
 century or more had multiplied rapidly in Stafford County. 
 Intermarriage with other " leading families " of Moncures 
 and Daniels had been very frequent. The Moncures were 
 of Scottish Jacobite extraction, while the Daniels were 
 English. The father of young Conway's mother was John 
 Moncure Daniel, a graduate in medicine of Edinburgh 
 University, and Surgeon-General of the United States army. 
 Among her ancestors was likewise Stone, the first colonial 
 governor of Maryland, while her grandfather, Thomas Stone, 
 enjoyed the proud distinction of being one of the signatories 
 of the famous Declaration of Independence. These were 
 matters of some moment in a State where slavery was an 
 institution and " mean whites " were treated with contempt. 
 
 Supported by troops of affluent friends and kinsmen, 
 Conway's path in life seemed at its commencement nowise 
 steep or arduous. As a politician he might hope to climb 
 the ladder of power and dignity in the Republic easily and 
 rapidly. 
 
 But the lion of slavery crouched in the way. His father 
 was, unfortunately, a large slave-owner — a humane man, 
 it is true, but still, like his neighbours, an owner of scores 
 of human chattels. " Few," says Mr. Conway in his " Tes- 
 timonies concerning Slavery," " are the really peaceful 
 days that I remember having smiled on in my old Virginian 
 home ; the outbreaks of the negroes among themselves, the 
 disobediences which the necessary discipline can never
 
 Moncure Daniel Conway. 20 
 
 j 
 
 suffer to be overlooked, the terrors of devoted parents at tlie 
 opportunities for the display of evil tempers and the incep- 
 tion of nameless vices among their sons, I remember as the 
 demons haunting those days. I have often heard my parents 
 say that the care of slaves had made them prematurely old." 
 
 Conway's early education was the best that the neigh- 
 bourhood afforded. As a child he attended several private 
 schools, and subsequently he became a pupil of the Classical 
 and Mathematical Academy in Fredericksburg. Here he 
 made rapid progress, and in due course was entered as an 
 undergraduate of Dickinson College, Pennsylvania, where 
 he graduated in 1849. 
 
 The students were mostly from Maryland and Virginia, 
 with strong pro-slavery sympathies, and young Conway 
 returned to his Virginian home in his eighteenth year as full 
 of anti-Northern prejudices as the rest. He commenced the 
 study of law at Warrenton, and while thus engaged fell under 
 the influence of a remarkable man, his cousin John M. Daniel, 
 the formidable duellist editor of the notorious Richmond 
 Examiner. Daniel was the best educated man in Richmond, a 
 profound student of Spinoza, Hegel, Kant, Fichte, Feuerbach, 
 Fourier, Causin, Voltaire. His range of vision far exceeded that 
 of any man Conway had known, and it is scarcely to be won- 
 dered at that Daniel made a strong impression on his youth- 
 ful kinsman's mind. He professed to rest slavery on a quasi- 
 scientific basis of racial inferiority. " We hold," he declared 
 in his journal, to which Conway became a contributor, "that 
 negroes are not men in the sense in which that term is used 
 by the Declaration of Independence. Were the slaves men, 
 we should be unable to disagree with Wendell Phillips." 
 
 Thus fortified in his pro-slavery ideas, Conway's next step 
 was to become the secretary of a Southern Rights, otherwise 
 a Secessionist Club, whose sole raison d'etre was to break up 
 the Union in the interest of the " peculiar institution " of the 
 South on the first available opportunity. So much for the 
 pernicious teaching of his misanthropic cousin. But happily 
 other considerations began to weigh with Conway. If cir-
 
 204 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 cumstances had leagued him with the oppressor, kind Nature 
 had made him at heart an irrepressible Radical. 
 
 In 1850, before the completion of his eighteenth year, 
 appeared his first pamphlet, entitled " Free Schools in 
 Virginia," which was distributed among the people and laid 
 on the desk of every member of the State Convention, 
 which met that year for the revision of the Virginian Code. I 
 have read this plea for free schoolsto educate tke"mean whites," 
 and can only wonder that a lad of eighteen should have had 
 the ability or patience to produce so masterly an appeal. 
 
 The effect was, nevertheless, most disappointing. He was 
 virulently attacked by the journals as one who, by advo- 
 cating a " mob road to learning," was jeopardising the very 
 existence of Southern society. The mean whites, like the 
 servile blacks, must be kept in ignorance. It is not, how- 
 ever, so long since representatives of our own " agricultural 
 interest " were in the habit of giving expression to views 
 equally enlightened. 
 
 But Mr. Conway was not thus to be put down. Reason, 
 conscience, compassion told him that the cause he had 
 espoused was just and beneficent. He had not taken it up 
 as he had taken slavery, on trust. He had thought out the 
 problem for himself, and he remained unshaken in his con- 
 victions. Whether he knew it or not, he had taken a distinct 
 step away from the slave-holding oligarchy in the direction 
 of freedom. In order to promote his laudable object he 
 threw up the law and took to the gospel. He became a 
 Methodist preacher, as the likeliest means of reaching the 
 hearts and heads of the poor whites whom he desired to 
 benefit. The Baltimore Methodist Conference speedily 
 appointed him to the charge of some twelve congregations. 
 One of these happily lay in a section of country settled by 
 Quakers, and consequently unpolluted by any taint of 
 slavery. He saw prosperous agriculturists and happy, free, 
 educated negro labourers, and the scales began to fall from 
 his eyes. He had never dreamed of such a state of 
 society. At first he was bewildered, but an aged Quaker,
 
 Moncure Daniel Conway. 205 
 
 whose acquaintance he had made, eventually enabled him to 
 turn a steady, admiring gaze on the rising sun of Negro 
 Emancipation : — 
 
 " Up, up ! and the dusky race, 
 That sat in darkness long, 
 Be swift his feet as antelope's, 
 And as behemoth strong." 
 
 " Again," says Mr. Conway, " I visited the old Quaker 
 patriarch, and told him with what delight I had found that 
 the interior of Sandy Spring was even more attractive than 
 its exterior. 
 
 " ' Now, friend, can thee account for this evident superiority 
 of the Friends' neighbourhood over the rest of this county, 
 or of thy own State % ' 
 
 " ' Well,' I ventured, ' doubtless you have certain habits of 
 thrift and industry which others have not.' 
 
 " ' Perhaps it is so,' said the old man gravely ; after which 
 followed a long silence, which I felt belonged to him and 
 was for him to break. Then he turned his eyes — at once 
 luminous and keen — full upon me, and said, — 
 
 " ' But there is one habit of our people to which thee will 
 find, should thee search into it, is to be traced all the improved 
 condition of our lands and our homes, that is the habit of 
 taking care that our labourers get just wages for their work. No 
 slave has touched any sod in any field of Sandy Spring.' ' 
 
 These simple words converted the reluctant secretary of 
 the Southern Rights Club into an uncompromising Aboli- 
 tionist. Henceforth his duty with respect to the great social 
 problem of his time and country was clear to him. 
 
 The change in his religious conceptions was no less strik- 
 ing. About the time of the Moody and Sankey revivals Mr. 
 Conway gave an account of his own conversion almost 
 unparalleled in its candour. 
 
 " It was my destiny to be born in a region where this 
 kind of excitement is almost chronic. . . . When the 
 summer came the leading Methodist families — of which my 
 fathers was one — went to dwell in the woods in tents.
 
 206 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 About two weeks were there spent in praying and preaching 
 all the day long — pausing only for meals — and during all 
 that time the enclosure in front of the pulpit was covered 
 over with screaming men and women and frightened 
 children. . . . While I was there women came and wept 
 over me ; preachers quoted Scripture to me. No one 
 whispered to me that I should resolve to be better, more 
 upright, true, and kind. Hundreds were converted by my 
 side, and broke out into wild shouts of joy. But I had no 
 new experience whatever. I was not in the least a sceptic. I 
 believed every word told me. Yet nothing took place at all. 
 On a certain evening I swooned. When I came to myself I 
 was stretched out on the floor with friends singing around 
 me, and the preachers informed me that I had been the 
 subject of the most admirable work of divine grace they had 
 ever witnessed. I took their word for it. All I knew was 
 that I was thoroughly exhausted and was ill for a week." 
 
 But he did not take their word for it for an unreasonable 
 time. In 1852 his religious as well as his social ideas under- 
 went modifications so important that he determined to be- 
 take himself to Harvard University, where the dominant 
 theology is Unitarian. Here he graduated B.D. in 1854, 
 having in the interval contracted lasting friendships with 
 Emerson, Parker, Sumner, Phillips, and others, the best hearts 
 and heads in the Republic. 
 
 After completing his studies he returned with fond hopes 
 to his home in Virginia. But it was only to find that as an 
 Abolitionist his own flesh and blood regarded him as a leper. 
 
 At last a company of young men confronted him in the 
 street and warned him that he must henceforth regard him- 
 self as a perpetual exile from Virginia, kindly adding that 
 he had been spared tar and feathers solely on his parents' 
 account. Thereupon he again turned his steps towards the 
 free North, and in 1854 he was appointed minister of the Uni- 
 tarian church in Washington, but did not long find rest for the 
 sole of his foot. An anti-slavery sermon which he preached 
 in denunciation of the dastardly outrage on Senator Sumner
 
 Moncure Daniel Conway. 207 
 
 by Preston Brooks led to his dismissal by the most liberal 
 and anti-slavery congregation in Washington. 
 
 In 1856 he was invited by the Unitarians of Cincinnati to 
 become their pastor, and there some of his most useful and 
 brilliant discourses were delivered. But his mind was 
 absorbed in the impending conflict with the slave power, and 
 he ultimately became an Abolitionist lecturerer in Ohio and 
 the Middle States. And his pen was as busy in the work of 
 emancipation as his tongue. 
 
 In 1858 were published "Tracts for To-day;" in 1861 
 came "The Rejected Stone;" in 1862 "The Golden Hour." 
 All these were powerful weapons put into the hands of the 
 Abolitionists, "The Rejected Stone" in particular making 
 a deep impression on the mind of the Martyr-President 
 Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 Subsequently he became the first editor of the Boston 
 Commonwealth, a high-class weekly, primarily started as an 
 Abolition organ. 
 
 Meanwhile, his father and his two brothers threw in their 
 lot with the Secessionists, the young men both receiving 
 wounds in the fratricidal struggle. 
 
 At last, when the tramp of the Federal soldiers was heard 
 
 in the streets of the little town whence Conway had been 
 
 driven in 1854, he hastened to the spot to assist the slaves of 
 
 his father's household to escape to the free North-west. By 
 
 dint of great exertions he found the fugitives. The old 
 
 woman who had nursed him sprang forward and folded him 
 
 in her arms as if he were still a child. " Far into the night 
 
 we sat together, and they listened with glistening eyes as I 
 
 told them of the region to which I meant to take them, where 
 
 never should they 
 
 ' Feel oppression, 
 Never hear of war again.' 
 
 At Baltimore Railway Station all was nearly lost. A threat- 
 ening mob beset the station, and the ticket agent peremp- 
 torily intimated, ' I cannot let these negroes go on this road 
 at any price.' I simply presented my military order to this
 
 2o8 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 very disagreeable and handsome agent, and he began to read 
 it. He had read but two or three words of it when he looked 
 up with astonishment and said, — 
 
 " ' The papers says these are your father's slaves.' 
 " ' They are,' I replied. 
 
 « < Why, sir, you could sell them in Baltimore for fifty thou- 
 sand dollars ! ' 
 
 " ' Possibly,' I replied, whereupon (moved probably by sup- 
 posing that I was making a greater sacrifice than was the 
 case) the young man's face was unsheathed ! 
 
 " ' By God ! you shall have every car on this road if you 
 want it, and take the negroes where you please ! ' 
 
 " Then, having sold me the tickets, he gave his ticket- 
 selling to a subordinate and went out to secure us a car to 
 ourselves, and from that moment, though the imprecations 
 around us went on, our way was made smooth. " 
 
 In 1863, Mr. Conway was commissioned by the friends of 
 Abolition to come to England to try to influence English as 
 he had American opinion in favour of the Federal cause, and 
 in this good work he was engaged when the Confederacy 
 collapsed. 
 
 At that juncture South Place Chapel was in need of a 
 pastor, and who so able to discharge the duties as this trans- 
 atlantic Iconoclast and Idealist, who brought with him to the 
 Old World the best manhood of the New? 
 
 In 1875 he revisited the West on a lecturing tour, and 
 was received by his long-estranged family and by his country- 
 men generally with open arms. He was offered the pastorate 
 of Theodore Parker's old church in Boston, but preferred to 
 return to England, where the battle with theological obscur- 
 antism and political oligarchy is more arduous. England has 
 sent so many of her good and brave men to America, that 
 it is but right that the latter should begin to return the 
 compliment. 
 
 Mr. Conway, needless to say, remains a staunch Republican. 
 Like all intelligent American citizens whom I have known, 
 the more he has studied our political institutions, the less he
 
 Moncure Daniel Conway. 209 
 
 has been captivated by them. His little work, " Republican 
 Superstitions," is the best commentary on the working of 
 " our glorious constitution " that I know. Therein he shows, 
 with incontrovertible logic, and complete mastery of details, 
 that it is precisely the monarchical elements thoughtlessly 
 or superstitiously imported into the constitution of the 
 United States by its framers that have worked all the 
 mischief in the Republic. 
 
 He would have but one Chamber, returned by equal 
 constituencies, with a Chief Magistrate and Executive 
 directly eligible by and responsible to the Legislature. A 
 second Chamber, if it is opposed to the popular House, is 
 noxious ; if it is in harmony with it, it is superfluous. 
 
 Mr. Conway has learned by the sad experience of his own 
 beloved Republic how disastrous a thing is the doctrine of 
 State Rights or Home Rule. Let this Radical of Radicals 
 speak a word in season to those undiscerning ones in Eng- 
 land who in this matter seem in haste to confound purblind 
 reaction with action, retrogression with progression. 
 
 " Could there be a more cruel concession made by England 
 to Ireland than that very Home Rule for which so earnest a 
 demand is now made? Whether England should concede 
 complete independence to Ireland may be a question ; but to 
 raise up in Ireland ambitions that at some point must be 
 checked, to give embodiment to aspirations and interests 
 which no sooner reach their development than they will be 
 certainly crushed, were the gift of weak indulgence, and by 
 no means that of true generosity. For every concession the 
 Northern people made to 'State Sovereignty' in the South, 
 several thousand Southereners had to be slain in the end."
 
 VIII. 
 
 CHARLES BRA DLAUGH. 
 
 I 
 
 " There is heresy here, you perceive, for the right 
 Of privately judging means simply that light 
 Has been granted to me for deciding on you ; 
 And in happier times, before Atheism grew, 
 The deed contained clauses for cooking you too." 
 
 HAVE been warned by kind friends who have been 
 pleased to commend several of the foregoing sketches 
 much beyond their deserts — friends whose good opinion I 
 highly value — that whatever I do I must on no account 
 allow "Bradlaugh" to appear in this series. To very many 
 " Iconoclast" is still monslrum horrendum cui lumen ademptum. 
 But my reply has invariably been, How are you to keep him 
 out? The man is altogether too big to be passed over if 
 one is not to lose sight of everything savouring of reason- 
 able proportion. Besides, though due regard must be had to 
 the " single life," it is of yet greater importance to consider 
 the " type," and a more marked type of Radicalism than that 
 which is incarnated in Mr. Charles Bradlaugh does not exist. 
 He is the grim captain of that section of English Radicals, 
 far more powerful than is generally supposed, who boldly 
 inscribe on their banner the watchwords, Atheism, Mal- 
 thusianism, Republicanism. These formidable isms, which 
 philosophers have excogitated in the closet or whispered in 
 the salon, Mr. Bradlaugh has with stentorian voice pro- 
 claimed from the housetop. It is not that his opinions 
 differ so much from those entertained by many most re-
 
 Charles Bradlaugh. 2 1 1 
 
 spectable and intelligent members of " society." His offence 
 consists in having conveyed the news to the " man in the 
 street." He has insisted on popularising doctrines which 
 "vested interests" desire to see imparted only to a select 
 body of initiated. 
 
 In all such matters, however, there are really but two 
 questions to be asked. Has the propagandist acted in good 
 faith? Has he been true to his own convictions? Now, 
 Mr. Bradlaugh is a very big man, as well in mind as in body, 
 and large objects ought never to be inspected with a micro- 
 scope. He has been the hero of a hundred fights, and it may 
 well be that he has not on all occasions conducted himself 
 with the perfect chivalry of a knight of romance. Still, 
 taking him all in all, and having due consideration for the 
 many hardships and temptations of a career such as his, I 
 cannot doubt that he has been valiant, singularly valiant, 
 for the truth as he has known it, and that he will be justly 
 regarded by posterity as one of the most remarkable figures 
 of his time and countrv. 
 
 His anti-religious ideas are in the main repugnant to me, 
 as I dare say they are to many of my readers; but let us 
 not judge Mr. Bradlaugh or any other public-spirited citizen 
 by our particular standard of spiritual rectitude. " Those 
 who have not the law are a law unto themselves, their con- 
 science accusing or excusing one another." To his own 
 Master, to the light which lighteth every man who cometh 
 into this world, Mr. Bradlaugh must stand or fall. Judge 
 not that ye be not judged. Rather let us say, as did Oliver 
 Cromwell in a somewhat similar case, " Sir, the State, in 
 choosing men to serve it, takes no notice of their opinions ; 
 if they be willing faithfully to serve it, that satisfies. I 
 advised you formerly to bear with men of different minds 
 from yourself. .... Take heed of being too sharp or 
 too easily sharpened by others against those to whom you 
 can object little, but that they square not with you in every 
 opinion concerning matters of religion." 
 
 It is a work of some difficulty to summarise the chequered
 
 2 1 2 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 career of Mr. Bradlaugh. He himself has attempted it with 
 indifferent success in a brief " Autobiography," clear enough 
 so far as the narrative of events is concerned, but lacking 
 somewhat in human interest. 
 
 He was born at Hoxton, in 1833. His father was a 
 struggling, indefatigable solicitor's clerk, who could but 
 ill afford to give his son Charles the scanty education which 
 he actually received. At seven years of age he attended a 
 National School in Abbey Street, Bethnal Green. Subse- 
 quently he was sent to a small private school in the same 
 quarter, and in his eleventh year he completed his meagre 
 educational curriculum at a boys' school in Hackney Road, 
 having acquired little beyond a knowledge of the three R's. 
 He is, consequently, for the most part a self-taught man, but 
 he has taught himself to some purpose. His mind is in 
 a splendid state of discipline. You can account for the fact 
 when you see his library, which is as extensive as it is 
 curious, the well-worn accumulations of a life devoted to 
 stormy controversy abroad and intense study at home. I 
 never remember to have seen such a serviceable collection 
 of argumentative shot and shell as on Mr. Bradlaugh's 
 shelves. 
 
 Mr. Bradlaugh was first employed as errand boy to the 
 firm which his father served. In his fourteenth year he was 
 equal to the more important duty of acting as wharf clerk 
 and cashier to a firm of coal merchants in Britannia Fields, 
 City Road. While so engaged the serious troubles of his life 
 began. 
 
 In his sixteenth year he was a model young Christian, an 
 enthusiastic Sunday-school teacher ; altogether a promising 
 neophyte of the Church as by law established. But he had 
 not, like Mr. Spurgeon, attained to that chronic state of con- 
 version, that sublime superiority to reason, which should 
 enable him to dote with unutterable joy on such empty 
 words as " Look, look, look ! " 
 
 The Bishop of London was announced to hold a confirma- 
 tion in Bethnal Green, and the incumbent of St. Peter's,
 
 Charles Bradlaugh. 2 1 3 
 
 Hackney Road, in an evil hour, requested his youthful 
 Sunday-school teacher to be prepared with suitable answers 
 to any questions that might be put by the Right Reverend 
 Father in God affecting the Thirty-Nine Articles and cognate 
 matters. Like an obedient son of the Church, young Brad- 
 laugh complied, and began to compare the Articles with the 
 Gospels, but finding, as well he might, that they differed, he 
 wrote a respectful note to his clergyman, asking to be piloted 
 through one or two of his difficulties. 
 
 The ill-advised incumbent replied by informing the lad's 
 parents that their son had turned Atheist, and that he had 
 been suspended from his functions as a Sunday-school 
 teacher for a period of three months. It is not given to the 
 clerical profession, as a rule, to know much about human 
 nature, but this was an exceptional blunder. I do not know 
 that Mr. Bradlaugh is constitutionally a doubter — indeed, I 
 think not — but he is a bom fighter, a dialectical athlete 
 revelling in the gaudium certaminis as a strong man rejoices 
 to run a race. 
 
 The young tiger had tasted blood. He refused to attend 
 church during the interval of his suspension as a teacher, and 
 soon began to spend his Sundays elsewhere and otherwise. 
 The time — 1849 — was one of great religious and political 
 ferment, and Bonner's Fields, near where the Consumption 
 Hospital now stands, was the habitual resort of disputants of 
 all kinds. Thither Bradlaugh repaired to mingle with youth- 
 ful ardour in the fray — at first on the orthodox Christian 
 side, then as a Deist, and ultimately as a full-fledged 
 Atheist or ne plus ultra Infidel. 
 
 How great a spark the rash, intolerant incumbent of St. 
 Peter's had kindled ! Mr. Bradlaugh's next step on the 
 downward path was to become a teetotaller, and this brought 
 matters to a crisis. At the instance of the reverend gentle- 
 man, Mr. Bradlaugh's employers gave him " three days to 
 change his opinions or lose his situation." He might have 
 swallowed one at a time, but " Beer and the Bible " made his 
 gorge rise.
 
 214 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 Rather than succumb the poor boy elected to go out from 
 his father's house a social outcast, and throw himself on the 
 stony-hearted world. Whether pride or principle had most 
 to do with this Hegira it might be hard to say, but in any 
 case the die was irrevocably cast. He soon became known 
 as a boy preacher of the most audacious infidelity. But it 
 did not pay. Unlike Spurgeon's godliness, Bradlaugh's un- 
 godliness was by no means " great gain." In his seven- 
 teenth year he found himself reduced to such straits that he 
 was compelled to enlist in the 7th Dragoon Guards, and with 
 this regiment he served for three years in Ireland, and there 
 he did not neglect his opportunities. He studied the griev- 
 ances of the Irish people on the spot, and hence his never- 
 failing sympathy with that much-enduring race. By his 
 hand was drawn up the famous manifesto of the Irish Re- 
 public which ushered in the Fenian agitation. 
 
 In 1853, through the death of an aunt, he inherited a small 
 sum of money, out of which he purchased his discharge, and 
 returned to London, quitting the regiment with a " very 
 good character" from his colonel, who all along treated him 
 with marked consideration. He was soon lucky enough to 
 find employment in the chambers of a solicitor named Rogers, 
 a liberal-minded man, who was proof against all the shafts 
 of anonymous bigotry which were showered on him as the 
 harbourer of Iconoclast. In this office Mr. Bradlaugh acquired 
 a knowledge of legal principles and procedure of which the 
 most eminent counsel at the English Bar might well be proud. 
 He again began to lecture in various Metropolitan Free- 
 thought institutions, more particularly the Hall of Science, 
 City Road, of which my friend, Mr. Evelyn Jerrold, has 
 recently given an account so just and graphic. 
 
 In 1855, Mr. Bradlaugh had his first encounter with the 
 police authorities in regard to the right of public meeting in 
 Hyde Park. He carried his point, and was publicly thanked 
 by the Royal Commission of Inquiry for the value of the 
 evidence given by him on the occasion. 
 
 In 1858, Mr. Edward Truelove, the well-known and person-
 
 Charles Bradlaugh. 215 
 
 ally estimable Freethought publisher, was arrested for issuing 
 the pamphlet, " Is Tyrannicide Justifiable % " while Simon 
 Bernard was at the same time incarcerated at the instance 
 of the French Government for alleged complicity in the 
 Orsini conspiracy. In the defence of both Mr. Bradlaugh 
 rendered material assistance. 
 
 "In October I860," said Mr. Bradlaugh in his "Autobio- 
 graphy," " I paid my first visit to Wigan, and certainly 
 lectured there under considerable difficulty, the resident 
 clergy actually inciting the populace to physical violence 
 and part destruction of the building I lectured in. I, how- 
 ever, supported by a courageous woman and her husband, 
 persevered, and, despite bricks and kicks, visited Wigan 
 again and again, until I had bon gre mal gr& improved the 
 manners and customs of the people, so that I am now a 
 welcome speaker there. I could not," he naively adds, 
 "improve the morals of the clergy, as the public journals 
 have recently shown, but that was their misfortune, not 
 my fault." 
 
 In 1861, Mr. Bradlaugh was arrested at the instance of 
 the Young Men's Christian Association of Plymouth, but 
 he succeeded, thanks to his forensic skill, in wringing from 
 an unwilling bench of magistrates a prompt certificate of 
 dismissal. Mr. Bradlaugh then, in turn, raised proceed- 
 ings against the Plymouth Superintendent of Police for 
 illegal arrest. The verdict, one farthing damages, though 
 unsatisfactory in the main, had yet two important results — 
 it made the Plymouth authorities pay sweetly for their in- 
 tolerance in the shape of costs, and it secured the right of 
 free speech in Plymouth and adjoining towns. 
 
 In 1862 a Church of England clergyman was guilty of a 
 foul libel affecting the late Mrs. Bradlaugh and her two 
 amiable and highly accomplished daughters, whom to know is 
 to respect. " This fellow," says Mr. Bradlaugh, " I compelled 
 to retract every word he had uttered, and to pay £100, 
 which, after deducting costs, was divided amongst various 
 charitable institutions. The reverend libeller wrote me an
 
 2 1 6 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 abject letter begging me not to ruin his prospects in the 
 Church by publishing his name. I consented, and he has 
 since repaid my mercy by losing no opportunity of being 
 offensive. He is a prominent contributor to the Rock and 
 a fierce ultra-Protestant." 
 
 Mr. Bradlaugh's relations with the Anglican priesthood, 
 it must be admitted, have at all times been most unfor- 
 tunate. 
 
 To the Reform League, in 1867, Mr. Bradlaugh, at his 
 own charge, rendered most valuable services — services 
 which, when his connection with the association ceased, 
 were handsomely acknowledged in writing by the president, 
 Mr. Beales, and the secretary, Mr. George Howell. 
 
 To his marvellous courage and perseverance is it likewise 
 owing that the last fetter has been struck off the Press of 
 England. Up to 1869 every newspaper was required by 
 law to give securities to the extent of £800 against the 
 appearance of blasphemous or seditious libels. Mr. Brad- 
 laugh, refusing compliance, printed his journal "in defiance 
 of her Majesty's Government," and so repeatedly baffled 
 the law officers of the Crown in their prosecutions that the 
 statute had finally to be repealed, the late Mr. J. S. Mill 
 writing thus to the defendant in connection with the event : 
 "You have gained a very honourable success in obtaining 
 a repeal of the mischievous Act by your persevering resist- 
 ance." 
 
 Mr. Bradlaugh was likewise instrumental, after much 
 costly litigation, in establishing the competency of Free- 
 thinkers to give evidence in courts of law. He carried a 
 case in which his testimony as plaintiff was objected to 
 from court to court till the Evidence Acts of 1869 and 1870 
 eventually relieved Freethinkers from a disability so griev- 
 ous and unjust. 
 
 During the Franco-Prussian war, Mr. Bradlaugh took no 
 active part in favour of either side till the installation of 
 the provisional Republican Government. Then, as might 
 have been expected, he used his utmost influence on behalf
 
 Charles Bradlaiigh. 2 1 7 
 
 of France. Great meetings were held in London and in 
 the leading provincial towns to express sympathy with the 
 struggling Republic, which it was hoped might ultimately 
 be able to drive the invader from French soil. Twice was 
 Mr. Bradlaugh put under arrest — once by the Provisional 
 Government, and once by M. Thiers — for his presumed 
 support of dangerous sections of the Republican party, but 
 his loyalty to the cause of free government in France did 
 not go unacknowledged. The Tours Government thanked 
 him for his fraternal efforts in a long and flattering letter 
 signed by Gambetta, Cremieux, Glais Bizoin, and Fourichon, 
 while M. Tissot, the French charge d'affaires in England, and 
 Emmanuel Arago, a member of the Provisional Government, 
 addressed him individually, the last-named eminent man 
 concluding his note with the words : — " Mr. Bradlaugh est 
 et sera toujours dans la Republique notre concitoyen." 
 
 In 1873 Mr. Bradlaugh conveyed to the short-lived Re- 
 publican Government of Spain the congratulations of a 
 great Radical meeting held in the Town Hall of Birmingham, 
 and was received by the Republicans of nearly every shade 
 with open arms, notwithstanding an intimation, lodged by 
 Mr. Layard in his ambassadorial capacity, that the Queen of 
 England would regard any manifestations of confidence in 
 Mr. Bradlaugh as a personal affront. The speech which 
 the English iconoclast delivered at the great banquet given 
 in his honour at Madrid was marked by singular moderation 
 of tone. He was perhaps the first Englishman who foresaw 
 the accession of the Alphonsists to power. 
 
 Towards the end of 1873, Mr. Bradlaugh visited the United 
 States of America, and commenced an extensive lecturing 
 tour, dealing with such subjects as English Republicanism, 
 the Irish Land Question, etc. He lectured in all the chief 
 towns of New England and the middle States, and met 
 generally with a most cordial reception. At Boston, " the 
 hub of the universe," the late Senator Sumner presided at 
 Mr. Bradlaugh's lecture, with Wendell Phillips and Lloyd 
 Garrison on the platform beside him. Mr. Sumner introduced 
 

 
 2 1 8 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 the great bugbear of English public life as " the Samuel 
 Adams of 1873," the Samuel Adams of 1766 being " that 
 austere patriot always faithful and true" who spoke the first 
 words of defiant protest against the tyranny of English 
 monarchical rule in New England. The lecturer realised 
 on an average the handsome sum of one hundred and sixty 
 dollars per lecture. 
 
 On the occasion of the Prince of Wales' mischievous and 
 insidiously planned jaunt to India, Mr. Bradlaugh was not 
 wanting to the popular cause. He called the people 
 together in Hyde Park, in which he may be said to have 
 preserved the right of public meeting, and entered a spirited 
 though unavailing protest against the subsidy, and petitions 
 bearing 135,000 signatures were in consequence laid on the 
 table of the House of Commons. The shameless Tichborne 
 imposture he smote with the hammer of Thor, and through- 
 out the late disgraceful Jingo episode in the history of the 
 nation he was faithful even to the shedding of blood. At 
 the second of the two memorable Jingo demonstrations in 
 Hyde Park he would in all probability have been killed but 
 for his enormous bodily strength and personal intrepidity. 
 As it was his left arm, with which he protected his head from 
 the savage blows of his assailants, fell powerless by his side 
 before he could cleave his way with a heavy truncheon to a 
 place of safety. Erysipelas supervened, and for three weeks 
 his life was in peril. It is but fair to add that five of his 
 foemen found their way to St. George's Hospital. 
 
 I have mentioned these matters with perhaps tedious 
 minuteness, because in public life Mr. Bradlaugh, like poli- 
 ticians in better repute, has a right to be judged by his 
 " fruits." It is but too common in respectable circles to 
 regard him as a vulgar, self-seeking demagogue. Now, 
 demagogue he may be, but certainly not in the objectionable 
 accepted sense of the word. He has never concealed his 
 anxiety to get into Parliament, but of all the roads by which 
 St. Stephen's may be approached he has certainly chosen the 
 least likely and the most arduous. He has been at a world
 
 Charles Bradlaugh. 219 
 
 of pains to spoil his own chances. All the great " interests " 
 — royalty, aristocracy, plutocracy, church, chapel, public- 
 house — have arrayed themselves against him. Yet excepting 
 Mr. Gladstone, this man has perhaps the most attached per- 
 sonal following of any politician in England. This unique 
 position he has won by his daring, by his intellect, by his 
 Titanic energy, and by his general thoroughness of character. 
 If he is not a real hero, he is a surprisingly clever counterfeit. 
 In his own way, and by his own example, he has inspired 
 many thousands of the most abject of his countrymen with 
 reinvigorated feelings of self-reliance and renewed hope on 
 earth. He has taught them the inestimable lesson of self- 
 help, of righteous indignation against oppression. 
 
 On the other hand, like nearly all Atheists whom I have 
 known, he is a consummate egotist. He who recognises 
 in nature no power greater than himself almost necessarily 
 rises rapidly in self-esteem. There is very little room left 
 for the Christian virtues of patience, humility, charity. 
 Indeed, these are pretty much what Mr. Bradlaugh attri- 
 butes to Christ as faults of character. There is no God, 
 and Charles Bradlaugh is his prophet. This is the secret of 
 his power. Not that I mean to affirm in the least that 
 Bradlaugh's egotism is incompatible with the common weal. 
 In a different way from Beesly or Spurgeon he has arrived 
 at certainty. That is all. He might say, like Faust — 
 
 " No scruples or doubts in my bosom dwell 
 Nor idle fears of devils in hell." 
 
 Hurrah for the " Everlasting No ! " On this sure founda- 
 tion let the edifice of human happiness be erected. Abso- 
 lute selfishness more or less enlightened — call it individ- 
 ualism, or by whatever name you will — is the way, the 
 truth, and the life. Whenever any great world-synthesis 
 of religious or moral ideas has broken down, this has been 
 the inevitable result of analysis. But the human race can 
 never permanently live on negations. In the heat of con- 
 flict, while the old system is dying and the new is unborn,
 
 20 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 they may appear almost like Gospel truths, but when the 
 ground has once been fairly cleared their significance is at 
 an end. Men once more begin to recognise in nature a 
 more profound purpose, a more all-pervading intelligence, 
 a more sacred continuity than before. Comte attempted to 
 piece together the broken links of our faith, but failed. Mr. 
 Bradlaugh merely dances an Indian war-dance in paint and 
 feathers among the debris. It is, in my opinion, a poor and 
 questionable occupation for so able a man. The Deliverer is 
 yet to come, and there are many signs that he cannot now 
 be far off. Meantime wise men will possess their souls in 
 patience, awaiting with confidence the dawn of the better day. 
 
 But all this has little to do with Mr. Bradlaugh's politics, 
 which are of this world, and not of the next. He is pecu- 
 liarly wanted at this moment at St. Stephen's, where a disease 
 worse than paralysis has seized on the legislative body. 
 If the corpse can be revivified, he is the man to do it ; and 
 if I were a Northampton elector, Christian or Infidel, I 
 should spare no effort to secure his return, if on no higher 
 ground than on this, that desperate diseases require des- 
 perate remedies. 
 
 I am, moreover, bound to say this in favour of Mr. Brad- 
 laugh as a politician, that in all my experience I have never 
 known him take the wrong side on any public question. 
 And what he has been in the past he will be in the future. 
 He could not now betray the people though he were to try. 
 He has peculiar claims on Northampton. Thrice has he 
 contested it, and on each occasion has he come nearer win- 
 ning. It is a disgrace to any system of government pre- 
 tending to be representative that the acknowledged chief of 
 militant English Republicanism, and what is of less conse- 
 quence, of organised Secularism, should have no voice in the 
 Legislature of a country which he has done so much by 
 ceaseless toil to preserve from sinking into political apathy. 
 A better plea than the exclusion of Mr. Bradlaugh from the 
 House of Commons could not be adduced in favour of Mr. 
 Hare's scheme of proportional representation.
 
 Cha rles Bra dla usrh. 221 
 
 <5 
 
 It remains to glance, however briefly, at Mr. Bradlaugk's 
 published writings. These consist chiefly of theological 
 and political essays. Of the former, the philosophical or 
 expositional portion is, for a very different reason, about as 
 worthless as those of Mr. Spurgeon ; while the historical, as 
 for example the lives of David, of Jacob, and Jonah, are, to 
 say the least, very amusing, though I should scarcely have 
 thought the game worth the candle. Of his political works, 
 on the other hand, all are accurate and of immediate interest. 
 " Hints to Emigrants to the United States," in particular, no 
 intending emigrant should be without. It is a plain, un- 
 varnished tale told by the most competent and impartial 
 observer who has ever yet applied his mind to this im- 
 portant subject. His sketches of Cromwell and Washington, 
 though biography is by no means his forte, display states- 
 manlike insight. I conclude with the words of final " Con- 
 trast " :— 
 
 "A fitting emblem for Oliver Cromwell is presented by 
 the grandly glorious Western sunset. Still mighty in the 
 fierceness of its rays, few eyes can look steadily into the 
 golden radiance of that evening sun ; the strongest must 
 lower their glances, dazzled by its brilliance. Every cloud 
 is rich w T ith ruddy gilding, as if the mere presence of that 
 sun made glorious the very path it trod. And yet, while 
 one looks, the tints deepen into scarlet, crimson, purple, as 
 though that sun had been some mailed warrior, who had 
 gained his grand pre-eminence by force of steel, and had left 
 a bloody track to mark his steps to power. And even while 
 you pause to look, the thick dark veil of night falls over 
 all, with a blackness so cold, complete, and impenetrable as 
 to make you almost doubt the reality of the mighty magni- 
 ficence which yet has scarcely ceased. In the eventide of 
 his life's day such a sun was Cromwell. Few men might 
 look him fairly in the face as peers in strength. His 
 presence gives a glory to the history page which gilds the 
 smaller men whom he led. And yet Tredah and Worcester, 
 Preston and Dunbar, and a host of other encrimsoned clouds
 
 222 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 compel us to remember how much the sword was used to 
 carve his steps to rule. And then comes the night of 
 death — so thickly black that even the grave cannot protect 
 Cromwell's bones from the gibbet's desecration. And not 
 unfittingly might the sunrise, almost without twilight, in the 
 same land, do service as emblem for George Washington. 
 He must be a bold man who, in the mists and chills of the 
 dying night, not certain of its coming, would dare to watch 
 for the rising sun. And yet, while he watches, the silver 
 rays, climbing over the horizon's hill, shed light and clear- 
 ness round ; and soon a golden warmth breathes life and 
 health and beauty into blade and bud, giving hope of the 
 meridian splendour soon to come. George Washington was 
 the morning sun of a day whose noontide has not yet been 
 marked — a day of liberty rendered more possible now that 
 slavery's cloud no longer hides the sun ; a day the enduring 
 light of which depends alone on the honest Republicanism of 
 those who now dwell in that land where Washington was 
 doorkeeper in Liberty's temple."
 
 IX. 
 
 JAMES ALL ANSON PICTON. 
 
 -♦- 
 
 " Come wander with me," she said, 
 " Into regions yet untrod ; 
 And read what is yet unread 
 In the manuscripts of God." 
 
 TAMES ALLANSON PICTON, the author of "The Mys- 
 O tery of Matter," is one of those rare persons who, to use 
 his own quaint phrase, have "gone through Materialism and 
 come out at the other side." Such an explorer, it will 
 readily be admitted, well deserves a place in this or any 
 other series of pioneers of progress. But I would rather not 
 be the chronicler of his toilsome journey. No wonder if the 
 St. Thomas' Square congregation, Hackney, found diffi- 
 culty in following their spiritual guide on his dim and peril- 
 ous way. But though the path which Mr. Picton has cleft 
 through the Materialistic jungle be arduous for ordinary 
 mortals to tread, it is in my opinion the best that has yet 
 been cleared. " Narrow is the way that leadeth unto life, 
 and few there be that find it." Mr. Picton makes a clean sweep 
 of the supernatural, but imparts to the natural a lofty sig- 
 nificance which more than compensates for the loss. " All 
 forms of finite existence may, for aught I care, be reduced to 
 modes of motion ; but motion itself has become to me only 
 the phenomenal manifestation of the energy of an infinite 
 life in which it is a joy to be lost. To me the doctrine of an 
 eternal continuity of development has no terrors, for believ- 
 ing matter to be in its ultimate essence spiritual, I see in
 
 224 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 every cosmic revolution a ' change from glory to glory, as 
 by the Spirit of the Lord.' I can look down the uncreated, 
 unbeginning past without the sickness of bewildered faith. 
 My Father worketh hitherto. My sense of eternal order is no 
 longer jarred by the sudden appearance in the universe of a 
 dead, inane substance foreign to God and spiritual being." 
 
 " Thus at the roaring loom of time I ply, 
 And weave for God the mantle thou seest him by." 
 
 All religions properly so-called conceive of phenomena as 
 the outcome of an eternal, incomprehensible Power, " which 
 makes for righteousness" throughout the universe. Every 
 irreligious system, on the other hand, regards the pheno- 
 menal altogether apart from its source. The question then 
 arises, which way of looking at the mighty enigma is the 
 more philosophic 1 The Positivists reply, and Mr. Bradlaugh 
 replies, "We know nothing of the source, nor can know." 
 But their parade of ignorance almost presupposes the reality 
 of that of which they profess to be ignorant. 
 
 " The same intellectual constitution which makes science 
 possible, the impulse to seek after the reason of things and 
 their completeness, implies in its very germ an already exist- 
 ing, though inarticulate, belief in ultimate substance and in 
 an infinite unity. Further, the very fact that our mental 
 faculties cannot work without suggesting this dim majesty 
 which is beyond their ken, compels a constant reference 
 thereto, which, as it is involved in the laws of thought, 
 cannot be without practical import." 
 
 Our Positivist brethren will, of course, seek to impugn the 
 validity of such reasoning, but they are, as a rule, persons so 
 superstitiously anti-superstitious that their objections may 
 be discounted almost by anticipation. In any case, Mr. 
 Picton believes that he has passed clean through the pre- 
 valent Materialism and emerged into a spiritual effulgence 
 which irradiates in some degree the darkest crannies of 
 human destiny. He has unbounded faith, that is to say 
 loyalty, to the Divine Will, as he apprehends it.
 
 James A Hanson Pic ton. 225 
 
 But if his own faith in the Eternal overflows, his charity 
 towards those who have stopped midway in the ascent 
 of the Materialistic Hill of Difficulty is equally without 
 limit. 
 
 " Take the philosopher," he says, " who thought out, or 
 thinks he has thought out, his system of the universe. 
 Finding no place therein for a God such as he was taught to 
 speak about and dream about in his childish years, he calmly 
 says, " there is no God at all. . . . He is confident in 
 his system of the universe, and is assured that it always 
 works together under the same conditions to the same 
 ends. He would stake his life upon the certainty that 
 impurity and duplicity and dishonesty must bring misery 
 and confusion into the Commonwealth. Now, such a man 
 has far more trust in the Lord than ever he supposes. 
 Through despair of presenting that inconceivable Being in 
 any form whatever to his consciousness, he fancies that he 
 dispenses with the thought entirely. But the more nearly 
 he comes to a realisation of oneness in that system of the 
 universe which he thinks he has wrought out, the more 
 nearly does he come to the thought of God. The more 
 confidently he rests in the certain working of moral as well 
 as of physical laws, the more does he manifest that which, in 
 our minds, is equivalent to trust in the Lord. Under any 
 form of religion, and under no form of professed religion, 
 then, the exhortation of the text. ' Trust in the Lord and do 
 good,' may be carried out and its creed asserted." 
 
 In a word, Mr. Picton's charity induces him to ascribe 
 religion to the professedly irreligious. He compels them to 
 come in. 
 
 Discussing the problem of the immortality of the soul, he 
 says : — 
 
 " We should not repine if the larger life beyond death 
 remains a hope too grand for any earthly form. I live ; this 
 I know. And all around me is a Power, immeasurable, in- 
 scrutable, of which I can only think that it lives more 
 grandly and mightily than I, folding me in its embrace and
 
 226 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 making a reverent feeling of my own nothingness the 
 supreme bliss. Whence I came I know not ; whither I go 
 I cannot tell. But every moment of true communion with 
 the Infinite opens out eternity. Whatever tenfold compli- 
 cated change has happened or may come, however strangely 
 the bounds which now limit my personal life may be broken 
 through, however unimaginably my consciousness of God 
 may be enlarged, it is impossible that the more real can be 
 merged in the less real, and while material phenomena are 
 but phantoms, God Himself only is more real than I." 
 
 The above quotations give but a faint impression of this 
 remarkable work, " The Mystery of Matter," which, along with 
 an earlier volume, " New Theories and the Old Faith," goes 
 further towards revivifying true religion by rendering it 
 credible, than all the heavy tomes of orthodox theology 
 which have appeared within the last decade. 
 
 Mr. Picton has combined science, logic, disciplined imagina- 
 tion, and fervent piety in the execution of a task of immense 
 difficulty, and the result is a cogent testimony to the in- 
 destructibility of essential religion in the soul of man : — 
 
 " Still Thou talkest with Thy children, 
 Freely as in eld sublime ; 
 Humbleness and truth and patience 
 Still give empire over time." 
 
 James Allanson Picton was born in Liverpool, in the 
 historic year of reform 1832. His father, whose name was 
 recently so honourably before the public as the originator 
 and chairman of the Liverpool Free Library and Museum, 
 was then a well-to-do architect, a staunch Liberal in a com- 
 munity abounding in political reactionaries, a cultivator of 
 letters in a hive of commercial industry. He is the author of 
 the " Memorials of Liverpool," a model work of the kind, and 
 would now have been occupying the mayoralty chair in the 
 Town Council but for the domination of a Tory majority, 
 which the last municipal election has happily reduced to 
 unwonted insignificance.
 
 James A Hanson Picton. 227 
 
 At an early age young Picton was sent to what was then 
 known as the High School, the upper branch of the 
 Mechanics' Institution, where up to his sixteenth year he 
 continued to make steady progress in all the ordinary 
 and some of the extraordinary branches of study. 
 
 On leaving school, Picton entered his father's office, and 
 for the next three years of his life diligently set himself 
 to master the requirements of the paternal profession, which, 
 if he had continued to follow it, would pretty certainly 
 have been to him a lucrative calling. But eventually he 
 abandoned it for, as he believed, a higher, if less remuner- 
 ative, occupation. 
 
 Inspired from his youth up with philanthropic sentiments, 
 Picton had become an enthusiastic Sunday-school teacher, 
 and this experience led him to think of the ministry as a 
 suitable sphere of action. 
 
 He was never very orthodox in his religious beliefs — how 
 could a mind capable of such profound speculation so be % — 
 but he had an eye to his main object, the moral elevation of 
 the poor and ignorant, and he decided that the pastoral 
 fulcrum of Independent Nonconformity was the best for his 
 purpose — which may be doubted. 
 
 Accordingly, at nineteen years of age he resumed his 
 studies, and was entered simultaneously as a student of 
 the Lancashire Independent College and of Owens College, 
 Manchester. At the latter institution he stood first in 
 classics at his final examination. In 1855 he took the 
 Master's degree in classics at London University, and his 
 academic studies were at an end. 
 
 In 1856 Mr. Picton's career as an Independent minister 
 began. The start was not promising. Suspected of hetero- 
 doxy, he was black-balled by the zealous shepherds of the 
 Manchester Ministers' Meeting, who appear to have applied 
 to him pretty much the now somewhat obsolete argument, 
 " He is an Atheist. Eece signum, he doesn't believe in the 
 Devil."
 
 228 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 " Careless seems the great Avenger ; history's pages but record 
 One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the Word. 
 Truth for ever on the scaffold, Wrong for ever on the throne — 
 Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown 
 Standeth God within the shadow, keepiug watch above his own." 
 
 The orthodox pastors, however, had gone a step too far. 
 Public opinion strongly manifested itself against such an act 
 of barefaced intolerance, and by a suspension of rules Mr. 
 Picton was admitted to the pastorate of a congregation at 
 Cheetham Hill, Manchester. 
 
 His work lay chiefly among the poor and destitute, for 
 whom no man seemed to care. For the children he com- 
 posed a model little " Catechism of the Gospels," and for the 
 instruction of adults he and Mr. Arthur Mursell delivered 
 weekly lectures on suitable subjects in the large room of a 
 « ragged school." 
 
 In 1862, however, while thus beneficently engaged, the 
 bull's-eye of orthodoxy was again turned on him. In con- 
 nection with the centenary of " Black Bartholomew," he 
 published a discourse entitled " The Christian Law of 
 Progress," which was pronounced to be " of dangerous 
 tendency." Thereupon the heretic removed to Leicester, 
 where he succeeded to Dr. Legge's charge, but his 
 " tendencies," it is deplorable to relate, became worse 
 instead of better. He fell into bad company, particularly 
 that of Mr. Coe, the Unitarian minister, and a powerful 
 contingent of Radical working men, whom he was in the 
 habit of addressing in his chapel on Sunday afternoons 
 on such unhallowed topics as " True Radicalism," " The 
 Rights of Man," the death of Earnest Jones, the Jamaica 
 outrages under Governor Erye, etc. 
 
 As in Galilee, so in Leicester, the common people heard 
 their teacher gladly, but the uncommon folks took a different 
 view of the matter. What amounted to a vote of want of 
 confidence in Mr. Picton's ministry was passed, and though 
 very activ r e steps were taken to prevent his departure from 
 Leicester, the heresiarch felt constrained to turn his face
 
 James A Hanson Pic ton. 229 
 
 towards our metropolitan Babylon, which, with all her draw- 
 backs, is generally large-hearted enough to welcome able 
 and earnest exponents of the most diverse opinions, whether 
 religious or political. 
 
 In 1869 Mr. Picton succeeded to the pastorate of St. 
 Thomas' Square, Hackney. Here his " tendencies " were as 
 bad as ever. He resumed his evil habit of Sunday lecturing, 
 and the intelligent artisans of the neighbourhood flocked to 
 hear him. For two successive seasons the critical period of 
 English history from the reign of Elizabeth to the Revolution 
 of 1688 was subjected to systematic criticism, and Mr. Picton 
 was never more gratified than by the appreciation of solid 
 instruction exhibited by his auditors. 
 
 A working men's club was next started, an institution 
 which survives in the Borough of Hackney Working Men's 
 Club, one of the most useful and prosperous undertakings of 
 the kind in London. 
 
 In 1870 preparations for the first London School Board 
 election began, and Mr. Picton was among those who were 
 solicited by the electors to offer themselves as candidates. 
 He complied, and though then necessarily but little known 
 to the general London public, secured a seat through the 
 devotion of his friends, more particularly those of the work- 
 ing class. And the confidence then reposed in him was 
 twice renewed with even greater emphasis by the con- 
 stituency. For three years he filled a most responsible post 
 on the Committee of School Management, before which are 
 laid all the details of school affairs. 
 
 Throughout an advocate of " education, secular, com- 
 pulsory, and free," he was not unnaturally believed by 
 many besides myself to have deserted the Radical standard 
 in favour of the present immoral " compromise " of the 
 religious difficulty — the offspring of a foul liaison between 
 Church and Chapel. But this, I am assured, is a mis- 
 apprehension of Mr. Picton's position. Finding that the 
 compromisers, while pretending to exclude from the school- 
 rooms one catechism, had practically introduced as many
 
 230 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 creeds as trie total number of sects to which Board teachers 
 belong, he exerted himself with very limited success to 
 mitigate the evil by increasing the moral at the expense of 
 the theological instruction. 
 
 As it is, Mr. Picton, after nine years' hard work on the 
 Board, has been compelled, chiefly by the unsatisfactory 
 state of his health, to seek a temporary respite from public 
 duties, and the minds of our children are meantime at the 
 mercy of a motley crew of Romanist, Anglican, Ritualist, 
 Baptist, Presbyterian, Unitarian, and Atheist instructors to 
 make or mar at their good pleasure. The result is easy to 
 predict — a general sapping of the foundations both of re- 
 ligion and morals. Birmingham in this matter has fallen low 
 enough, but she has not yet reached the metropolitan depth 
 of degradation. 
 
 Some months ago Mr. Picton resigned his pastorate of the 
 St. Thomas' Square congregation, and he is at present 
 enjoying a well-merited rest from his labours. He does not 
 intend to resume ministerial functions, I believe, but possibly 
 to throw his entire energies into literary and political pursuits. 
 
 The gifted authoress of " The True History of Joshua 
 Davidson " hazards the prediction that if Christ, who " went 
 about doing good," were to reappear on the earth in our day, 
 it would be in the character of a Radical politician ; and if it 
 is meant simply that the platform and the press are now 
 more powerful agencies for good or evil than the pulpit, it 
 were hard to differ from her. 
 
 Able, single-minded men like Picton are sadly wanted in 
 Parliament, and the Churches will, as a rule, be glad to be 
 rid of persons of such " dangerous tendencies." His political 
 contributions to the Fortnightly, Macmillan, and the Weekly 
 Dispatch have, apart from his platform utterances, marked 
 him out as a vigorous political thinker, on whom Radical 
 constituencies should keep an eye. He is a tried soldier in 
 the ranks of Democracy, who well deserves promotion at the 
 people's hands, all the more so because he would be the last 
 to seek it.
 
 X. 
 
 FREDERICK AUGUSTUS MAXSE. 
 
 " To side with truth is noble 
 When we share her wretched crust, 
 Ere her cause bring fame and profit 
 And 'tis prosperous to be just." 
 
 iT is now several years since I first chanced to meet Rear- 
 Admiral Maxse at a Reform Conference, but until quite 
 recently I have had no opportunity of verifying my early 
 impressions. These, with certain reservations, were of a 
 most favourable kind, and they have been abundantly con- 
 firmed on closer acquaintance. 
 
 Maxse is what so very few Englishmen are, an idealist 
 in politics, a singularly poor hand at a compromise. In- 
 stead of accommodating his theory to the facts, he strives 
 to bend the facts to his theory. With sailor-like single- 
 mindedness, he has an awkward trick — awkward in a 
 politician — of making use of language in order to express 
 his meaning instead of concealing it, as a good wire- 
 puller should. His more candid political friends, conse- 
 quently, complain that he cannot be got, even at critical 
 electoral seasons, to recognise the advantage of calling a 
 spade an elongated agricultural implement. Hence the 
 damning suspicion which obtains in certain quarters that the 
 Admiral is, with all his ability, " impracticable." An English- 
 man and not " practical ! " How could such a one hope to 
 enter in at the strait gate which leadeth to St. Stephen's? 
 Impracticability were a grievous fault, and grievously did 
 the gallant Admiral answer it at Southampton in 1868, and
 
 232 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 in the Tower Hamlets in 1874. But the fault, and I frankly 
 admit its existence, lay at least as much with the Admiral's 
 critics as with himself. If he were too much devoted to the 
 ideal, they were too little. I agree, for once, with the pro- 
 phet of " sweetness and light," that " Philistia has come to 
 be thought by us as the true Land of Promise; the born 
 lover of ideas, the born hater of commonplaces, must feel in 
 this country that the sky over his head is of brass and iron." 
 
 Now, Admiral Maxse is a born lover of ideas, a born hater 
 of commonplaces, and he has never been adequately able to 
 apprehend how inaccessible are the vast majority of his 
 countrymen to such sentiments. In this sense has he shown 
 himself really impracticable. Among a quicker-witted and 
 more logical people, like the French, the chances are that he 
 would have found himself quite at home. He ought to have 
 known Englishmen better. A London constituency, unlike a 
 Parisian, will always prefer a gluttonous alderman with a 
 marked aversion to the letter h, to the profoundest philo- 
 sopher or to the truest philanthropist. Blessed is the cul- 
 tivated Radical who expects little of the average English 
 elector, for he shall not be disappointed. Admiral Maxse, I 
 have heard it said, has been seriously disappointed by his 
 political experiences. Not disappointed, though disenchanted 
 he has certainly been. But like other true soldiers of Demo- 
 cracy, he has " learned to labour and to wait." 
 
 The disillusioning process is always a painful one for a 
 lofty, ardent nature like Maxse's, but it is salutary all the 
 same. It does not alter by a hair's-breadth one's sense of 
 duty, while it teaches invaluable lessons of method and 
 adaptation in relation to the social environment. Progress, 
 though inevitable, is seldom to be obtained by a coup : — 
 
 " We see dimly in the present what is small and what is great, 
 Slow of faith, how weak an arm may turn the iron helm of fate." 
 
 Frederick Augustus Maxse was born in London in the 
 year 1833. He is now consequently in the full vigour of 
 manhood, lithe of limb, and intrepid of carriage, every inch
 
 Frederick Augustus Maxse. 233 
 
 an " officer and a gentleman." He is on the Retired List, 
 but in an emergency he might well become the Blake of 
 a Second Commonwealth. Speculative, perhaps somewhat 
 chimerical, in religion and politics, he is yet obviously a man 
 of action, a born commander of men. His father, James 
 Maxse, was a Tory squire of the old school, who had in- 
 herited immense wealth honourably acquired by the Maxse 
 family as merchants in Bristol. He was one of the best 
 heavy-weight riders across country of his geueration, and as 
 for his feats, have they not been duly recorded by Nimrod in 
 connection with the famous Melton Meets? On the mother's 
 side the Admiral is a Berkeley, his mother being Lady 
 Caroline Maxse, daughter of the fifth Earl of Berkeley. The 
 Berkeleys have for generations been noted for great physical 
 toughness and consistent political Whiggery, the late "Ballot" 
 Berkeley, M.P. for Bristol, being Maxse's uncle. Family 
 politics, however, never influenced the Admiral's opinions in 
 the least. He left home too early for that. He was afloat 
 in his thirteenth year, having previously attended successively 
 good private schools at Brighton, Hampton, and Paris. In 
 Paris he acquired a mastery of the French language, which 
 he has since found of the greatest benefit. His interest in 
 French politics is at least as keen as in those of his own 
 country. He is on terms of intimacy with nearly all the 
 great men of the Third Republic, with whom he has so much 
 more in common than with the ruck of English Liberals. 
 
 Excellent busts of Hugo and Gambetta — the best I have, 
 seen — adorn his mantelpiece at The Chestnuts, Wimbledon, 
 where all things bespeak the apple-pie order of the Captain's 
 Cabin. One room is entirely hung with marine drawings, 
 consisting chiefly of ships in which the owner has sailed. 
 His first ship, which he joined on passing the examination 
 then set to cadets, was the Raleigh, Captain Sir Thomas 
 Herbert. The Raleigh sailed for the South American station, 
 where she remained for three years. There was a naval 
 brigade on shore to protect the town of Monte Video, and 
 the Raleigh lay lazily off the coast to succour the marines if 
 
 P
 
 234 Eminent Radicals out of Pa rh 'anient. 
 
 need were. These three years Maxse as good as completely 
 lost. He was supposed to learn navigation, but the chaplain 
 who was his instructor knew little or nothing about the 
 subject which he was supposed to teach. 
 
 In his sixteenth year he returned to England, but was 
 speedily again afloat as midshipman in H.M.S. Frolic, Captain 
 Vansittart. The Frolic went to the Mediterranean. In 1852 
 he served as lieutenant on board H.M. sloop Espiegle, in the 
 West Indies, whence he was invalided home just in time to 
 take part in the Crimean war. He was appointed acting 
 flag-lieutenant to Sir Edmund Lyons, and sailed for the 
 scene of conflict. No sooner had the allied troops disem- 
 barked than his commanding officer recognised his special 
 fitness to act as naval aide-de-camp to Lord Raglan. He 
 was attached to the headquarter staff in naval uniform, but 
 with a cavalry sword. Prompt, daring, intelligent, an op- 
 portunity for earning distinction was not long in occurring. 
 He carried an important message to the fleet from head- 
 quarters, riding across the head of the Bay of Sebastopol, a 
 distance of fifteen miles, through a territory alive with 
 Cossacks and fugitive Russian regulars. Happily the gallant 
 youth accomplished his task in safety, but it might well have 
 been otherwise. So much was Lord Raglan impressed with 
 this act of courage that he made it the subject of special 
 commendation in an early despatch, and young Maxse was 
 at once promoted to the rank of Commander. The Admiral, 
 who is as modest as he is brave, makes light of the matter, 
 but the example was much needed, and it had its effect on 
 older officers, who, it may be remembered, were at the time 
 much hampered in the discharge of their military duties by 
 " urgent private affairs." Maxse was subsequently engaged 
 in the battle of Inkermann, and witnessed " the Six Hundred " 
 ride " into the jaws of death, into the mouth of hell," at 
 Balaklava, his brother, Colonel Fitzhardinge Maxse, acting 
 on the occasion as aide-de-camp to Lord Cardigan. On the 
 death of Lord Raglan, whose memory he fondly cherishes, 
 he returned with his remains to England on board H.M.S.
 
 Frederick Angus his Maxse. 235 
 
 Caradoc, and was shortly afterwards appointed to the com- 
 mand of the steam corvette Ariel, in the Mediterranean. 
 Thereafter his promotion in the service was, aud would have 
 continued, rapid, but circumstances arose which tended 
 materially to divert his thoughts from purely professional 
 objects. 
 
 Maxse's education had been purely naval. It ought, I 
 think, to have been literary or philosophic. Ideas take pos- 
 session of him with overpowering force. He is their servant 
 rather than their master. He has read extensively and 
 closely, but with passion, I do not say prejudice. The con- 
 sequence is that he is at times apt to see objects in con- 
 siderable disproportion, a defect which a more systematic 
 scholastic training in youth would have done much to cure. 
 While yet a " middy," he had read star-eyed Shelley, and 
 the humanitarian impression made on his mind has never 
 been effaced. The seeds of Radicalism were thus early laid, 
 though they took some little time to germinate : — 
 
 " There is no wind but soweth seeds, 
 Of a more true and open life, 
 Which burst, unlooked for, into high-souled deeds, 
 With wayside beauty rife." 
 
 Let us hear the Admiral's own account of his conversion 
 to the gospel of aggressive Radicalism : — " My profession has 
 been that of a naval officer. I was brought up to the tune 
 of 'Rule Britannia' and 'Britons never shall be slaves.' 
 Ignorant of politics, when at sea I was indifferent to politics. 
 If I had been polled for my vote as a young lieutenant, I 
 dare say I should have voted Conservative — indifferentism 
 forming a main element of Conservatism. What made me 
 an active politician was, when I came to live on shore, 
 observing the condition of the English agricultural labourers. 
 I found that a large number of Britons were slaves, slaves to 
 artificial oppressive circumstances, for the maintenance of 
 which the governing classes stood, in my eyes, responsible ; 
 and upon the discovery of this I determined that if during 
 the whole of my life I could carry but a single handful of
 
 236 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 earth towards the foundation of a better state of society, 
 that handful I would carry." Accordingly the Admiral, act- 
 ing on his well-worn maxim, " People who do not care for 
 politics do not care for their fellow-creatures," has twice, as 
 has been said, sought the suffrages of popular constituencies. 
 
 At Southampton, in 1868, he addressed himself more par- 
 ticularly to questions affecting the land and education. He 
 is a fluent, forcible speaker, too earnest to be amusing, but 
 always attractive because instructive. You feel that his 
 mind is made up, and that what he says he will infallibly 
 perform. But he does not see the by-play of electioneer- 
 ing, and from sheer honesty of purpose and detestation of 
 chicane, he falls into the most obvious traps laid for him by 
 the enemies of his cause. " Leading questions " are put to 
 him which he answers with ruinous candour. He knows 
 nothing of the Scotsman's art of answering one inconvenient 
 question by asking another. He seems never even to have 
 profited by the illustrious example of Mr. Gladstone's " three 
 courses," which intimates to the caviller — " You pays your 
 money and you gets your choice." It is seemingly impos- 
 sible to get into the Admiral's head what is almost an axiom 
 in electioneering, viz., that the shortest line that can be 
 drawn between two political points is often a mighty cir- 
 cumbendibus. Neither at Southampton nor in the Tower 
 Hamlets did the gallant Admiral evince the smallest appre- 
 ciation of these elementary campaigning truths. 
 
 In the Tower Hamlets, though personally an abstainer, he 
 took strong ground against the Permissive Bill, and he would 
 have nothing to do with the publicans. Both parties, of 
 course, voted against him. Again, Liberal Churchmen would 
 have none of him because of his strong advocacy of dis- 
 establishment, while the Nonconformists, to their everlast- 
 ing discredit, threw him completely overboard because of his 
 advanced views regarding the opening of museums on Sun- 
 days. The committee of the Tower Hamlets Nonconformist 
 Liberal Association had actually the indecency to issue a 
 manifesto during the contest, wherein, after premising that
 
 Frederick An gushes Maxse. 237 
 
 they had carefully considered the claims of the various 
 candidates, they went on to say, — " Captain Maxse, by his 
 advocacy of the opening of museums on Sunday, and his 
 sympathies in favour of ' Home Rule,' precluded a consid- 
 eration of his name." 
 
 This being the enlightened verdict of Little Bethel, the 
 defeat of the Radical candidate is not, perhaps, much to be 
 wondered at, especially when it is added that only 17,000 
 electors took the trouble to go to poll for five candidates out 
 of a constituency of 32,000. Some of these " fixes " the 
 gallant Admiral could never be put in again, the advocates 
 of the Permissive Bill, for example, having themselves aban- 
 doned their measure, and in its stead substituted " local 
 option," a change of front which will enable Admiral Maxse 
 and many other genuine Radicals in future to render them 
 willing aid. By way of equivalent it will be their duty 
 to help to keep off the land-sharks that prey on candidates 
 of such exceptional honesty of purpose as the Admiral. His 
 high courage, resolute purpose, and lofty enthusiasm would 
 be a very clear addition of strength to the flaccid Radicalism 
 of St. Stephen's. His failings outside Parliament would very 
 closely resemble virtues inside. 
 
 Admiral Maxse's name is closely identified with several 
 questions of vital interest to the nation, more particularly 
 with Electoral Reform, Land Tenure Reform, Religious 
 Equality, National Education, the Enfranchisement of the 
 Agricultural Labourers, and Woman Suffrage. He has 
 probed the inequalities of our representative system to the 
 core, and if there be anyone who still believes in the delusion 
 that this is a self-governed land, and has any desire to know 
 the naked truth, I cannot do better than recommend him to 
 peruse Maxse's pamphlet, " Whether the Minority of Elec- 
 tors should be Represented by a Majority in the House of 
 Commons'?" Thirty thousand electors, he shows, in small 
 constituencies elect forty-four members of Parliament, while 
 546,000 in large boroughs return only thirty-five. Thirty 
 thousand electors thus outvote 546,000. At the last general
 
 238 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 election 18,000 electors of Manchester, who recorded their 
 votes in favour of a candidate, failed to return him, while 
 18,000 electors, living in petty boroughs or rural constitu- 
 encies, seated no fewer than thirty honourable members ! 
 Fourteen thousand electors in Buckinghamshire return eight 
 members ; 50,000 in Lambeth have but two allotted to them. 
 
 Commenting on such stupendous anomalies, the Admiral 
 indignantly observes, — " The splendid outcome of our parlia- 
 mentary system is that a minority of electors appoint a 
 majority of members of Parliament, and the majority of elec- 
 tors appoint their minority to be steadily outvoted and 
 beaten, and all the while statesmen and journalists vie with 
 one another in national brag, and tell the deluded people 
 that they are blessed above all other peoples in their institu- 
 tions and in their laws. And the story is circulated so per- 
 sistently that at last, as people are ultimately convinced by 
 a perpetual advertisement, they think that it is even so." 
 
 During the autumn of 1874, chiefly through the exertions 
 of the Admiral, was formed the Electoral Reform Association. 
 It had for its chief object the equalisation of constituencies, 
 and started with the promise of a most useful career. It 
 made shipwreck, however, unfortunately over the question 
 of Woman Suffrage, against which Admiral Maxse set his 
 face with, I think, most injudicious vigour. It is a problem 
 which may be safely left for such goody-goody sentimental 
 people to solve in their own fashion as we see voting for 
 incompetent women in preference to competent men in 
 School Board elections. 
 
 I have read with some curiosity the Admiral's " Woman 
 Suffrage, the Counterfeit and the True — Reasons for Oppos- 
 ing Both," and can only feel astonishment that he should 
 have been at so much pains to argue so stoutly either on the 
 one side or the other. Female suffrage would have done 
 very well if only the Admiral had had the good sense to let 
 it alone. It is a topic which females and feminine men 
 should be permitted wholly to monopolise. It will please 
 them, and do no one much injury.
 
 Frederick Augustus Maxse. 239 
 
 As a member of the executive council of the Land Ten- 
 ure Reform Association, Maxse did yeoman's service. He 
 lectured on the subject in various towns, and always with 
 effect. At the great public meeting held in Exeter Hall in 
 March 1873, presided over by the late John Stuart Mill, 
 Admiral Maxse moved the first resolution, and anticipated 
 in his speech much that is now being forced on public atten- 
 tion by the agricultural distress which has set in with such 
 severity. The Association was perhaps before its time 
 somewhat ; but its attitude was prophetic. 
 
 Maxse's best known pamphlet, which has had a deservedly 
 large circulation, is entitled " The Causes of Social Revolt," 
 being the substance of a lecture delivered in London, Ports- 
 mouth, Bradford, Nottingham, and other towns. It will 
 repay careful perusal. 
 
 It is not often that Admiral Maxse has concerned himself 
 about foreign affairs, but his letters to the Morning Post on 
 " the German Yoke " in Alsace-Lorraine were most valuable 
 contributions towards the proper understanding of a nefarious 
 " imperial " proceeding which it is safe to prophesy will yet 
 cause much blood and many tears to be shed. The bravest 
 of the brave and a Crimean hero, he has been throughout 
 our " spirited foreign policy " a steady anti-Jingo and a foe 
 to militarism. Indeed, wherever the Admiral has erred it 
 has been on the side of a frankness rare in English public 
 life. With his aristocratic and professional connections he 
 might years ago have entered Parliament, either as a 
 nominee of the Whigs or the Tories. Instead of that, " he 
 humbly joined him to the weaker side" with the usual 
 result. His choice of sides is an eloquent and spontaneous 
 testimony to the grievances endured by the English people 
 at the hands of an oppressive oligarchy. Such men as 
 Frederick Augustus Maxse are an honour to any class, but 
 belong to none. Their capacity for self-sacrifice is their true 
 patent of nobility, and that no sovereign can either confer 
 or take away.
 
 XL 
 
 THE HON. AUBERON HERBERT. 
 
 " They are slaves who dare not be 
 In the right with two or three." 
 
 WHEN a patrician like the Hon. Auberon Edward William 
 Molyneux Herbert comes to figure as a strenuous 
 people's tribune, it is not unnatural that his motives should 
 be subjected to searching analysis. Of thorns men do not 
 ordinarily gather figs, nor of aristocratic bramble-bushes 
 gather they democratic grapes. Nevertheless, when it does 
 happen that grapes are produced in such circumstances, they 
 are sometimes of the choicest quality. They are like the 
 strawberry that has ripened under the nettle. In the society 
 of a man like Herbert you feel that Noblesse oblige is not 
 quite an empty phrase. There is a certain chivalry in his 
 Radicalism, a knight-errantry if you will — a combination of 
 courage and courtesy, gentleness and independence, which it 
 would be hard indeed to match in these unromantic days : — 
 
 " For manners are not idle, but the fruit 
 Of loyal nature and of noble mind." 
 
 By one or two critics I have been accused of fanatical 
 abhorrence of aristocracy ; but it is not so. On the contrary, 
 I should say of such men as Herbert, " I have not found so 
 great faith, no not in Israel." I could name several members 
 of his order who, for purity of motive, sense of justice, and 
 genuine love of their fellow-men, have no superiors, or per- 
 haps equals, in the ranks of those whose political principles 
 may be said by comparison to bear interest. The aristo-
 
 The Hon. Auberofi Herbert. 241 
 
 cracy of England has never been absolutely without some 
 redeeming representatives. If it had been wholly noxious 
 it could not have survived so long. But it was founded in 
 conquest and rapine, and it has all along clung to birth and 
 not merit, as the chief justification of its existence. The 
 House of Lords is the most extraordinary anachronism in the 
 political world. The idea of a hereditary legislator is even 
 ^more absurd than that of a hereditary butcher or baker, and if 
 Englishmen had had any sense of the ludicrous the peerage 
 would have been laughed, if not kicked, out of existence 
 long ago. Notwithstanding some appearances to the con- 
 trary, the baronage of England, Mr. Herbert maintains, and 
 I agree with him, is now as effete as the Sublime Porte. 
 There is but one thing they can now do with advantage — 
 efface themselves as speedily as possible, and fall into line in 
 the great army of democracy, which, often retarded in its 
 advance, never really turns back ; which, " like death, never 
 gives up a victim." 
 
 When an aristocrat by birth becomes a democrat by re- 
 flection, when a Royalist by association becomes a Repub- 
 lican by sympathy, the process of conversion can never be 
 without interest. Those of us who, like myself, were at no 
 time anything if not Radical, are apt to set but too little 
 store by principles which one in Mr. Herbert's position prizes 
 like so much treasure-trove. Converse with Mr. Herbert on 
 such matters and you are made to feel as if you had been 
 entertaining angels unawares. The ethical superiority of the 
 Radical creed which you may have assumed he will demon- 
 strate to you with a freshness of logic and a fervour of con- 
 viction that I have never heard surpassed. Not that I agree 
 with all or nearly all of the practical conclusions at which he 
 has arrived. Of some of these I shall have a few words to 
 say by-and-by. It is the frank, generous spirit, void of the 
 faintest suspicion of arriere pensSe, in which he approaches 
 every political problem that is the great matter. 
 
 Auberon Herbert was born in London, in 1838, his father 
 being Henry, third Earl of Carnarvon, and his mother Hen-
 
 242 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 rietta Anna Howard, niece of the twelfth Duke of Norfolk. 
 The father of the first Earl of Carnarvon, the Hon. Major- 
 General William Herbert, was a son of the eighth Earl of 
 Pembroke. Henry, the first earl, was raised to the baronage 
 as Lord Porchester of High Clere, Southampton, in 1780, and 
 in 1793 he was made Earl of Carnarvon. He was a gentle- 
 man of intrepid bearing, and is said to have earned his claim 
 to a peerage by drawing his sword and threatening to run 
 Lord George Gordon, of riotous memory, through the body 
 unless he undertook on the spot to withdraw the mob from 
 the precincts of St. Stephen's. The second earl affected 
 Whiggery ; the third, the author of " Portugal and Gallicia," 
 an authoritative book of travel of no inconsiderable literary 
 merit, was a Tory ; while the fourth, the late Colonial Secre- 
 tary (Mr. Herbert's brother) — whose resignation was the first 
 clear intimation to the country that Beaconsfield and the 
 Jingoes in the Cabinet meant serious mischief — it is hoped 
 will eventually sever his connection entirely with the uncon- 
 stitutional party, and join the Liberal party, with which he 
 is so much more in sympathy. 
 
 Mr. Herbert is married to Lady Florence Amabel, a 
 daughter of the sixth Earl of Cowper. She is a woman as 
 remarkable for simplicity of manners as for the vigour 
 of her intellect and the kindness of her heart. If Mr. Her- 
 bert is speculative, she is the incarnation of common sense. 
 Tennyson's daughter of a hundred earls was not one to be 
 desired. It is different with Lady Florence. She has fewer 
 airs than the opulent green-grocer's wife round the corner, 
 who might learn much from her in domesticity. With her 
 as with her husband, noblesse oblige. 
 
 Mr. Herbert's early education was superintended by tutors, 
 to the personal rather than to the scholastic influence of 
 some of whom he was much indebted. In 1857 he pro- 
 ceeded to Oxford, where he became a student of St. John's 
 College, but studied steeple-chasing and kindred pursuits 
 more than the ancient classics or any other kind of litera- 
 ture. The spirit of adventure was strong within him, and
 
 The Hon. Auberon Herbert. 243 
 
 after two years of desultory reading he determined to enter 
 the army so as to see service abroad. Accordingly in 1859 
 he joined the 7th Hussars at Canterbury, and subsequently 
 served in India for a period of sixteen months, attaining the 
 rank of lieutenant. Here, perversely enough, he was as 
 studious as at Oxford he had been idle. He edited a little 
 magazine called the Crusader, and began to qualify himself 
 for staff duties. With this object in view he returned to 
 Oxford to complete his University curriculum, and graduated 
 B.C.L. in 1862. On taking his degree, not caring to resume 
 his military career, he devoted himself to University tuition, 
 and subsequently obtained a "Founders' Kin" Fellowship. 
 
 In 1864 the man of "blood and iron" had matured his first 
 great crime by procuring the invasion of Schelswig-Holstein 
 by an irresistible Austro-Prussian army. Mr. Herbert, deeply 
 sympathising with the gallant Danes, abandoned his acade- 
 mical pursuits and hastened to the Dybbol lines in order to 
 encourage the defenders by succouring their wounded. He 
 rendered valuable aid ; was oftener than once under fire, and 
 became a great favourite both with officers and men. The 
 Government subsequently signalised its gratitude by con- 
 ferring on him for his labour of love the Order of the Danne- 
 borg. The distinction was otherwise well merited, for Mr. 
 Herbert pleaded the Danish cause with the English people in 
 a series of " L etters from Sonderborg " in a way that would 
 have stirred their hearts to active intervention if anything 
 could have aroused them from their apathy. When England 
 is prepared to fight innumerable campaigns, it is, alas ! not 
 done on behalf of Danes, but of Turks — not for freedom but 
 for despotism. 
 
 The Sonderborg letters are replete with manly feeling and 
 shrewd military observation. They have been republished 
 in a little volume, entitled " The Danes in Camp," which 
 every student of Bismarckian rascality ought to peruse. I 
 make but two brief extracts illustrative of its tone : " As you 
 will easily conceive, the conduct of England has placed 
 neither our nation nor our policy in a favourable light. The
 
 244 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 Danes are sorely hurt at our desertion of their fortunes. They 
 feel it the more acutely because between them and England 
 there has existed a silent brotherhood. English is the 
 language which is taught in their schools and colleges, and 
 which forms a regular part of their education. Their cus- 
 toms, their feelings, their ways of thought, their character, 
 and sometimes their very look, are English. To English 
 literature they have turned in the attempt to oppose it to 
 that of Germany. English is the language which they seem 
 to have chosen even in preference to French or German, 
 which would have afforded a better link of communication 
 between themselves and the nations of that great continent 
 on whose outer edge their fortunes are cast, and to which 
 they cling desperately, with nothing but the bravery and the 
 stern virtues of the old Norse race to maintain them on their 
 narrow foothold." 
 
 " Dark as are the clouds, and cruel as is the game which is 
 being played out, I am determined to remain constant to my 
 belief that I have both visited Arcadia and seen a ' patriot 
 army.' Do you blame me in this nineteenth century for 
 cherishing two such illusions, if illusions they are ? " 
 
 While I am about it, I may as well finish the record of Mr. 
 Herbert's warlike experiences. No sooner had he left the 
 Dybbol lines than he sought those before Richmond, where 
 the silent, inflexible Grant had at last got Secession firmly 
 by the throat. The taciturn General gave him a kindly 
 reception, but was not to be " drawn." Not a man on the 
 staff could move him to the faintest demonstrativeness. At 
 last a dispute arose as to the distance between two places. 
 One officer said five miles, another four, another six. " Three 
 and a half," interjected Grant, with a tone of decision. He 
 alone was right. The General had been drawn, and every- 
 body was satisfied. President Lincoln, to whom Mr. Herbert 
 was introduced at Washington, impressed him very differ- 
 ently. Sagacity and honesty were his obvious charac- 
 teristics. His implicit trust in Grant made Grant be trusted. 
 The General had many enemies, some of whom accused him
 
 The Hon. Auberon Herbert. 245 
 
 of intemperance. " Does Grant get drunk I" asked the 
 President of one of these maligners. " They say so." " Are 
 you quite sure he gets drunk V " Quite." The President 
 paused, and then gravely ejaculated, "I wonder where he 
 buys his whisky ?" " And why do you want to know ?" was 
 the astonished rejoinder. " Because, if I did," replied 
 Lincoln, " I'd send a barrel or two of it round to some other 
 generals I know of." 
 
 When Mr. Herbert went to America he was still a Con- 
 servative. What he saw and heard, however, on the great 
 Republic was not without its influence on his future conduct. 
 " The easy, powerful current of life, the mixture of classes, 
 the respect shown to all, made a deep impression on me. 
 Ready to see all the faults of democratic government, I saw 
 them, and yet felt the power and depth of the tide, as if 
 I had passed from some narrow lake out on the sea." 
 
 In the Franco-German war Mr. Herbert was once more 
 a ministering angel to the wounded. " When in the 
 Luxembourg train I heard the sound of firing, jumped out, 
 took my place in a coach going to a nearer point, saw the 
 battle of Sedan going on from a rising ground, collected 
 some lint, and with a large pitcher of water started for the 
 field. It was a long distance, and I found myself for the 
 greater part of my road absolutely alone. The villages 
 through which I passed were almost entirely deserted. In 
 the afternoon the firing ceased. It was nightfall before 
 I reached the field. Some German officers asked for a 
 drink of my water, but considerately accepted my excuse 
 that it was for the wounded. ... In the morning I 
 found a country house full of wounded French who had 
 not yet been taken to hospital. I spent the whole morn- 
 ing in applying the few simple lessons I had received in 
 washing wounds and bandaging, and I think the belief 
 that they had a doctor amongst them, which I took care 
 not to disturb, did more good to them than my bandages. 
 It was a pretty little country house, and as I tore up sheets 
 and curtains for what I wanted I could not help thinking
 
 246 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 of the return of the luckless owners, who, however, perhaps 
 came back with an exceedingly grateful feeling that any 
 house at all remained to them." This simple narrative 
 admirably illustrates the leading features of the writer's 
 character — his self-reliance and his humanity. 
 
 To come now to Mr. Herbert's political acts and principles, 
 which should have been reached sooner. He started life, to 
 be sure, as a Tory, but I cannot discover that he. had ever 
 the root of the matter really in him. He called himself a 
 Conservative long after he had become more Liberal than 
 most Liberals. At Oxford, however, he must have had the 
 reputation of being a sound Conservative, for he was elected 
 President of the Union Debating Society over a Liberal 
 opponent, and in 1865 he stood unsuccessfully for Newport, 
 Isle of Wight, in the " Liberal-Conservative " interest. In 
 1866 a safe Conservative seat was offered to him, but he had 
 resolved to throw overboard the Irish Church, and with the 
 Irish Church necessarily went the safe seat. More decided 
 steps followed. He went down to Newport and frankly told his 
 old friends that he could no longer conscientiously act with 
 them ; and, what testified still more strongly to the sincerity 
 of his motives, he resigned his private secretaryship under Sir 
 Stafford Northcote, and engaged in the less lucrative occupa- 
 tion of furthering various working-class movements in which 
 Mr. Hodgson Pratt took an interest. The conversion was 
 complete, but not sudden. It had been produced by several 
 considerations, the cumulative effects of wliich were simply 
 irresistible. On his way to serve in India he had stopped 
 long enough in Venice to take sides against the Austrian 
 tyrant, and on his return to Oxford the writings of Mill, more 
 particularly his famous treatise on " Liberty," Buckle's " His- 
 tory of Civilisation," and the personal influence of Goldwin 
 Smith, had the effect, so to speak, of regenerating his entire 
 political nature. When he made the final plunge into 
 Eadicalism he felt like an escaped prisoner on the first day 
 of freedom. 
 
 In 1868 he made a gallant but unsuccessful effort to wrest
 
 The Hon. Auberon Herbert. 247 
 
 a seat from the Tories in Berkshire. It was not long, however, 
 before a much more suitable constituency sought and secured 
 his services. In 1870 he was returned for Nottingham by a 
 large Radical majority, and remained in Parliament till the 
 dissolution of 1874, when, to the disappointment of many 
 enthusiastic friends and supporters, he retired from the re- 
 presentation of the borough. His health had suffered, and 
 his notions of the true functions of a Legislature had in the 
 interval undergone a change of which he could not at the 
 time foresee the consequences. He required leisure to think 
 them out. But of this more anon. 
 
 In Parliament Mr. Herbert was not, generally speaking, 
 a grata persona. He was too conscientious to be a good 
 party man, too Radical all round both for Conservatives 
 and Liberals. The cut and colour of his coats, moreover, 
 scandalised honourable members. They were light green 
 when they ought to have been of a more sombre hue, and 
 it was oftener than once debated by certain of the weaker 
 brethren whether the Speaker's attention might not with 
 advantage be drawn to the irreverent attire of the member 
 for Nottingham. This, however, was not Herbert's greatest 
 enormity. In seconding Sir Charles Dilke's famous motion 
 respecting the Civil List, and commenting on the justly- 
 suspected frauds connected therewith, Mr. Herbert, while al- 
 luding to the actual occupant of the throne with all the super- 
 stitious reverence which a degraded public opinion could 
 possibly exact, had yet the manhood to affirm his conviction 
 that a Republic is preferable to a Monarchy in a community 
 such as ours. Thereupon one honourable member "spied 
 strangers in the gallery," and had the Press ejected, while 
 a noble lord manifested his loyalty to the Crown by " cock- 
 crowing ! " So great was the uproar, raised chiefly by the 
 " party of order," that for the space of an hour the member for 
 Nottingham could scarcely ejaculate more than a word or 
 two at a time. The Speaker pronounced the scene the 
 most " painful " he had ever witnessed ; yet I have never 
 heard anyone allege that Herbert uttered one untrue or
 
 
 248 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 offensive syllable in his speech. The fault was entirely 
 with the fault-finders. It was the old story — Great is Diana 
 of the Ephesians ; the silversmiths were all in arms. Howbeit, 
 
 "They have rights who dare maintain them ; 
 
 We are traitors to our sires, 
 Smothering in their holy ashes 
 
 Freedom's new-lit altar fires. 
 Shall we make their creed our jailor ? 
 
 Shall we, in our haste to slay, 
 From the tombs of the old prophets 
 
 Steal the funeral lamps away 
 To light up the martyr fagots 
 
 Round the prophets of to-day ? " 
 
 The religious provisions of the Scotch Education Bill 
 of 1872 Mr. Herbert criticised with commendable candour 
 and a rare appreciation of the evil effects of ecclesiastical 
 uniformity on the character of the Scottish people. The 
 justice of his strictures, to which no member from Scotland 
 dared give expression, was gratefully acknowledged by 
 enlightened Scottish opinion. 
 
 In 1873, in criticising the Army Estimates, Mr. Herbert 
 took occasion to impugn the organisation and question the 
 efficiency of our standing army. He proved by irrefutable 
 statistics that the British army is consumed by loathsome 
 disease, and thinned by incessant desertion to an extent 
 that is almost incredible. " Officers and gentlemen," need- 
 less to say, were horrified, more especially when they were 
 told by a member, who might be regarded as one of them- 
 selves, that a territorial citizen force, a simple extension of 
 the Volunteer system, would be more effective in the field 
 than a standing army, and incomparably less costly to the 
 British taxpayer. 
 
 Mr. Herbert's kindly nature was never seen to greater 
 advantage than in the untiring efforts he made " to provide 
 for the protection of wild birds during the breeding season." 
 He set forth the virtues of thrushes, blackbirds, jays, and 
 sparrows with something like paternal pride, and begged the 
 House, with a genuine ardour which aroused its sympathy,
 
 The Hon. Auberon Herbert. 249 
 
 "to have compassion on creatures which were so entirely 
 within their power." So true it is that — 
 
 " He prayeth well who loveth well 
 Both man and bird and beast." 
 
 Since Herbert has been out of Parliament he has devoted 
 himself to agricultural pursuits, but no serious call to public 
 duty has found him wanting. The Bulgarian atrocities filled 
 his mind with horror. He came to London and " lobbied " 
 for weeks in order to put courage into the breasts of timid 
 Liberal members. The St. James's Hall conferences owed 
 him much for the success which attended them, and he gave 
 a striking proof of his personal intrepidity by presiding at 
 the second anti-Jingo meeting in Hyde Park, where the 
 Herculean strength of Mr. Bradlaugh with difficulty availed 
 to save himself from a violent end. 
 
 As a politician, Mr. Herbert has latterly adopted the ultra- 
 individualist theories of Mr. Herbert Spencer, and started a 
 "Personal Rights and Self-Help Association" as the outward 
 manifestation of his new faith. The Personal Rights Associa- 
 tion abhors Socialism in every form. What is Socialism ? 
 It exists whenever the State does for individuals what they 
 might voluntarily achieve for themselves. They are the 
 best laws which repeal laws. The Church as by law estab- 
 lished is a Socialist institution — down with it. National 
 education is Socialist — down with it. The Poor Law is 
 Socialist — repeal it. The Liquor Laws are Socialist — away 
 with them. Factory legislation is Socialist — undo it. What 
 is wanted is absolute free trade in everything — religion, 
 ignorance, whisky, destitution, and overwork. The hotter 
 war, the sooner peace. The individual must save himself. 
 By throwing away the State crutch is it alone possible to 
 learn to walk. The true sphere of government is merely to 
 preserve the internal and external police of the realm. 
 When more is attempted it is an illegitimate and baneful 
 exercise of authority, an arrest of progress, a stunting of 
 the national growth. Either the State must do everything 
 
 Q
 
 250 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 for the individual, or the individual must do everything 
 for himself. Neck or nothing ! It is the ideal social 
 democracy of Germany against the ideal individualist 
 democracy of England. Unfortunately the problem is com- 
 plicated, and will remain insoluble until monarchy and 
 aristocracy have disappeared from both countries. A privi- 
 leged aristocracy at the top of the social pyramid necessarily 
 implies protected poverty at the base. Deal with the cause 
 before you meddle with the effect. When some simple form 
 of Republican government, based on universal suffrage, such 
 as Mr. Herbert desires, has been attained, it will be time 
 enough seriously to concern ourselves about the intrinsic 
 consequences of Socialism and Individualism. With a com- 
 pleted democracy, socialist and individualist conundrums 
 will solve themselves. Let Mr. Herbert seek first the Re- 
 public, and all else will be added to him.
 
 XII. 
 
 EDWARD- AUGUSTUS FREEMAN. 
 
 " The Politics are base : 
 
 The Letters do not cheer ; 
 And 'tis far in the deeps of History 
 
 The voice that speaketh clear." 
 
 AMONG eminent English Radicals, Freeman, the historian, 
 occupies a unique place. He goes forward by going 
 backward. He is a Radical because he is a Conservative- 
 He is a Democrat because he is a student of antiquity. 
 Addressing the Liverpool Institute in November last, he 
 described himself as " belonging to that old-fashioned sect 
 that dreads nothing so much as the change of novelty." It 
 is his boast to be one of the trusty few who " cleave to the 
 old faith that there is something in the wisdom of our fore- 
 fathers, and that the right thing is to stand fast in the old 
 paths." The Tories are dangerous innovators. Our political 
 progress has consisted in setting aside " the leading sub- 
 tleties which grew up from the thirteenth century to the 
 seventeenth " and reverting " to the plain common sense ol 
 the eleventh or tenth, and of times far earlier." The most 
 primitive institutions of the English race were based on 
 universal suffrage. The Swiss Republic is the oldest polity 
 in Europe, and the best. In all history there is hardly a 
 more picturesque chapter than that with which Freeman's 
 " Growth of the English Constitution " opens : " Year by 
 vear, on certain spots among the dales and mountain-sides of 
 Switzerland, the traveller who is daring enough to wander
 
 252 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 out of beaten tracks and to make his journey at unusual 
 seasons, may look on a sight such as no other corner of the 
 earth can any longer set before him. He may there gaze 
 and feel what 110113 can feel but those who have seen with 
 their own eyes, what none can feel in its fulness but once in 
 a lifetime, the thrill of looking for the first time face to face 
 on freedom in its purest and most ancient form. He is there 
 in a land where the oldest institutions of our race — institu- 
 tions which may be traced up to the earliest times of which 
 history or legend gives us any glimmering — still live on in 
 their primeval freshness. He is in a land where an im- 
 memorial freedom, a freedom only less eternal than the 
 rocks that guard it, puts to shame the boasted antiquity of 
 kingly dynasties, which by its side seem but as innovations 
 of yesterday. There year by year, on some bright morning 
 of the spring-tide, the Sovereign People, not entrusting its 
 rights to a few of its own numbers, but discharging them 
 itself in the majesty of its own corporate person, meets in 
 the open market-place or in the green meadow at the 
 mountain's foot to frame the laws to which it yields obe- 
 dience as its own work, to choose the rulers whom it can 
 afford to greet with reverence as drawing their commission 
 from itself. Such a sight there are but few Englishmen who 
 have seen. To be among those few I reckon among the 
 highest privileges of my life. 
 
 " Let me ask you to follow me in spirit to the very home 
 and birthplace of freedom, to the land where we need not 
 myth and fable to add aught to the fresh and gladdening 
 feeling with which we for the first time tread the soil and drink 
 in the air of the immemorial Democracy of Uri. It is one ot 
 the opening days of May ; it is the morning of Sunday, for 
 men there deem that the better day the better deed — they 
 deem that the Creator cannot be more truly honoured than 
 in using in His fear and in His presence the highest of the 
 gifts which He has bestowed on man. But deem not that 
 because the day of Christian worship is chosen for the great 
 yearly assembly of a Christian commonwealth the more
 
 Edtvard Augustus Freeman. 253 
 
 direct sacred duties of the day are forgotten. Before we in 
 our luxurious island have lifted ourselves from our beds the 
 men of the mountains, Catholic and Protestant alike, have 
 already paid the morning worship in God's temple. They 
 have heard the Mass of the priest or they have listened to 
 the sermon of the pastor before some of us have awakened to 
 the fact that the morn of the holy day has come. And when 
 I saw men thronging the crowded church, or kneeling for 
 want of space within on the bare ground beside the open 
 door, and when I saw them marching thence to do the 
 highest duties of men and citizens, I could hardly forbear 
 thinking of the saying of Holy Writ, that ' where the Spirit 
 of the Lord is there is liberty.' 
 
 "From the market-place of Altdorf, the little capital ot 
 the canton, the procession makes its way to the place of 
 meeting at Bozlingen. First marches the little army of the 
 canton, an army whose weapons never can be used save to 
 drive back an invader from their land. Over their heads 
 floats the banner, the bull's head of Uri, the ensign which 
 led the men to victory on the fields of Sempach and Mor- 
 garten, and before them all, on the shoulders of men clad in 
 a garb of ages past, are borne the famous horns, the spoils of 
 the wild bull of ancient days, the very horns whose blast 
 struck such dread into the fearless heart of Charles of 
 Burgundy. Then, with their lictors before them, come the 
 magistrates of the commonwealth on horseback, the chief 
 magistrate, the L an damnum, with his sword by his side. 
 The people follow the chiefs whom they have chosen to the 
 place of meeting, a circle in a green meadow, with a pine 
 forest rising above their heads and a mighty spur of the 
 mountain range facing them on the other side of the valley. 
 The multitude of freemen take their seats around the chief 
 ruler of the commonwealth, whose term of office comes that 
 day to an end. The Assembly opens ; a short space is first 
 given to prayer, silent prayer, offered up by each man in the 
 temple of God's own rearing. Then comes the business of 
 the day. If changes in the law are demanded, they are then
 
 254 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 laid before the vote of the Assembly, in which each citizen 
 of full age has an equal vote and an equal right of speech. 
 The yearly magistrates have now discharged all their duties ; 
 their term of office is at an end, the trust which has been 
 placed in their hands falls back into the hands of those 
 by whom it was given, into the hands of the sovereign 
 people. The chief of the commonwealth, now such no 
 longer, leaves his seat of office and takes his place as a 
 simple citizen in the ranks of his fellows. It rests with the 
 free will of the Assembly to call him back to his chair of 
 office, or to set another there in his stead. 
 
 " Men who have neither looked into the history of the past, 
 nor yet troubled themselves to learn what happens year by 
 year in their own age, are fond of declaiming against the 
 caprice and ingratitude of the people, and of telling us that 
 under a Democratic Government neither men nor measures 
 can remain for an hour unchanged. The witness alike of 
 the present and of the past is an answer to baseless theories 
 like these. The spirit which made Democratic Athens year 
 by year bestow her highest offices on the patrician Pericles 
 and the reactionary Phokion still lives in the Democracies of 
 Switzerland, and alike in the Landesgemeinde of Uri and 
 in the Federal Assembly at Berne. The ministers of kings, 
 whether despotic or constitutional, may vainly envy the 
 same tenure of office which falls to those who are chosen to 
 rule by the voice of the people. Alike in the whole Con- 
 federation and in the single canton, re-election is the rule ; 
 the rejection of the outgoing magistrate is the rare exception. 
 The Landamman of Uri, whom his countrymen have raised 
 to the seat of honour, and who has done nothing to lose 
 their confidence, need not fear that when he has gone to the 
 place of meeting in the pomp of office his place in the march 
 homeward will be transfered to another against his will." 
 
 In the foregoing extract the reader has Freeman at his 
 best — Freeman the Liberal politician and Freeman the de- 
 vout Christian. His politics and his religion, like Gladstone's, 
 inspire all his writings. His life has been one strenuous
 
 Edward A ugustus Freeman. 255 
 
 endeavour to vindicate by precept and example the noblest 
 traditions of the one and of the other. As a man of Teutonic 
 stock, he has at all times taken strong ground against 
 unhappy Celts, and, as a follower of Christ, he has assuredly 
 never shown undue compassion for the disciples of Mahomet. 
 Yet it were hard to tax Mr. Freeman with prejudice. The 
 strength and honesty of his intellect no man can question. 
 Of historians he is the most industrious and accurate, and 
 he is by no means deficient in imagination. In this last 
 quality he is of course immeasurably inferior to a prose poet 
 like Carlyle, but there is compensation. He has never sunk 
 a Vengeur, and I could scarcely conceive of him having the 
 philological credulity to connect " king " with " cunning 
 man." History is but past politics, just as politics are 
 present history. This cardinal truth Mr. Freeman, as a 
 narrator of events, fully apprehends, and this it is that 
 gives such lucidity and value to all his writings. He has, 
 moreover, moral courage of the highest order, and admirable 
 tenacity of purpose. To his own mind his objects are in- 
 variably clear, and he takes the most direct, if sometimes not 
 the most pleasant, means of clarifying the minds of others. 
 For such constitutionally inaccurate persons as Beaconsfield 
 and Froude he has, like experience, proved himself a hard 
 taskmaster, but the public has reaped the benefit of his 
 occasionally " brutal frankness." 
 
 Yet Avith all these varied qualifications, moral and intel- 
 lectual, Mr. Freeman is not without his limitations. His 
 mind is a peculiarly English mind, strong in facts and shrewd 
 at inferences, but weak and timid in the application of first 
 principles. Original speculators like Spencer or Bain might 
 logically overthrow the very foundations of his political and 
 religious beliefs, and he would never know or care. He is an 
 accomplished specialist in letters, and he is content so to be. 
 Living all his days the life of a squire of his coimty, his 
 habits of thought are as realistic as those of the class of 
 which he is so great and unwonted an ornament. All the 
 difference is that his historical recollection is better than
 
 256 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 theirs. Things that they regard as sacred by reason cf 
 their antiquity he knows to be of comparatively modern 
 origin. In a note to " The Growth of the English Consti- 
 tution " he makes the following manly declaration with re- 
 gard to the monarchical superstition which is so sedulously 
 fostered in this country: "There really seems no reason why 
 the form of the Executive Government should not be held as 
 lawful a subject for discussion as the House of Lords, the 
 Established Church, the standing army, or anything else. 
 It shows simple ignorance, if it does not show something 
 worse, when the word ' Republican ' is used as synonymous 
 with cut-throat or pickpocket. I do not find that in Re- 
 publican countries this kind of language is applied to the 
 admirers of Monarchy ; but the people who talk in this way 
 are just those who have no knowledge of Republics, either 
 in past history or in present times. They may very likely 
 have climbed a Swiss mountain, but they have taken care 
 not to ask what was the constitution of the country at its 
 foot." 
 
 Edward Augustus Freeman was born at Harborne, in the 
 neighbourhood of Birmingham, in 1823. He unfortunately 
 lost both parents before he was one year old, his father, 
 John Freeman, Esq., of Pedmore Hall, Worcestershire, dying 
 at the comparatively early age of forty. His paternal 
 grandmother, who resided at Northampton, became his 
 guardian, and with her he had his home till his removal 
 to Oxford in 1841. Before proceeding to the university, 
 he had attended for several years a school at Cheam, Surrey, 
 a private tutor, the Rev. Mr. Gutch, subsequently preparing 
 him for matriculation at Trinity College. There his great 
 talent and industry were not without their reward. He 
 was elected a Scholar, and in 1845 he became a Fellow of 
 his college. Twelve years later, after the publication of 
 several of his historical works, he was made Examiner 
 in Law and Modern History, and in 1873 Examiner in the 
 School of Modern History. Both universities have vied 
 with each other in recognising his vast attainments, Oxford
 
 Edward Augustus Freeman. 257 
 
 conferring on him the honorary degree of D.C.L., and Cam- 
 bridge that of LL.D. 
 
 Like many other Oxford men who have subsequently 
 arrived at a knowledge of the truth as it is in Radicalism, Mr. 
 Freeman was brought up in the strictest bonds of political 
 and ecclesiastical Toryism. His grandmother had sown seed 
 at Northampton which the Tractarians, then in the ascen- 
 dant, watered at Oxford. Among his college friends was 
 Patterson, now Mdnsignor, and other incipient Romanists of 
 distinction. About this period, likewise, he wrote verses, 
 and very good verses, too, as regard form, of an ultra- 
 Royalist or Jacobite character, Carlos, a maternal ascendant 
 who, tradition says, was the last man to strike a blow for the 
 King at Worcester, being a favourite subject of his muse. 
 
 But so sound an intelligence as Freeman's could not long 
 draw sustenance from such unrealities. In 1847 he married 
 an estimable lady, the daughter of his former tutor, Mr. 
 Gutch, and gradually put away the more childish things of 
 political and ecclesiastical reaction. Slight, and it might be 
 said almost whimsical, considerations at first weighed with 
 him. Always an interested and critical student of history, 
 Church history at first more particularly, he was struck with 
 the unsatisfactory bearings of two ecclesiastical facts or 
 fictions. Edward the Confessor had a wife, and the king- 
 dom sorely wanted an heir to the Crown, but the saintly 
 character of the monarch could only be sustained by practi- 
 cal celibacy. Was this asceticism rational sanctity % Again 
 the salvation of some millions of unfortunate Swedes was 
 made to turn on the sufficiency of the consecration of a parti- 
 cular bishop of the sixteenth century. Was this reasonable 
 theology % Clearly the chaff of Ritualism must be separated 
 from the older and more solid grain of Anglicanism. 
 
 The Tractarian movement was not. however, all loss to 
 Mr. Freeman. It made him a profound student of architec- 
 ture, and a clever sketcher of ecclesiastical buildings. In 
 such matters he has often been consulted by the greatest 
 authorities, among others by Sir Gilbert Scott. His " History
 
 258 Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. 
 
 of Architecture " (1849), " an Essay on Window Tracery " 
 (1850), and " The Architecture of Llandaff Cathedral " (1851), 
 his earliest publications, are still works of acknowledged 
 merit. 
 
 While I am dealing with Church matters, I may as well 
 note the progress which this enlightened Churchman has 
 made in respect of the question of disestablishment and dis- 
 endowment. He heartily supported the abolition of the Irish 
 Establishment, and in 1874 he published a curiously tentative 
 volume, in which he discussed the position of the English 
 Church, arriving at the somewhat novel conclusion that the 
 property of the National Church is not national property. 
 Its revenues, he argues, are in precisely the same position as 
 those of Nonconformist communions. The Sovereign Power, 
 however, being absolute, may appropriate whatever it has 
 a mind. A neater little juggle with Austin's definition of 
 sovereignty I do not remember to have seen. True, the 
 State may never have by any formal act, as Mr. Freeman 
 alleges, endowed the Church as by law established ; but 
 surely Mr. Freeman will not deny that there was a time 
 when the Church and the people were co-extensive, and in 
 theory they are still one and indivisible. In practice the so- 
 called State Church is merely a monopolising sect which has 
 fraudulently appropriated the shares of all the other sects. 
 These latter, when they are strong enough to bring sove- 
 reign authority to bear, will eject the dispossessor, and compel 
 him to disgorge his ill-gotten gains. He would be a bold 
 Churchman, indeed, who should propose to deal similarly with 
 the revenues of Nonconformist communions. More recently, 
 however, the attitude of the State Church towards the 
 struggling Christian populations of Turkey has satisfied Mr. 
 Freeman that, having ceased to act as the conscience of the 
 nation, its moral justification is at an end. It is to be hoped 
 Mr. Gladstone and other zealous Churchmen will likewise 
 discern how faithfully the Nonconformists of England have 
 done what the Established sect has so conspicuously left 
 undone.
 
 Edwa rd A ugustus Freeman. 259 
 
 In the autumn of 1869 Mr. Freeman pricked the national 
 conscience in a memorable manner regarding the " morality 
 of field sports." He held up the barbarities of the battue to 
 the shame and scorn of mankind. The withers of " quality " 
 were mercilessly wrung, from those of the Prince of Wales 
 downwards. There were numberless attempted defences, 
 but not one that Mr. Freeman was not able to break down 
 with the greatest ease. The contemptible hypocrisy of 
 persons like his Royal Highness who act as patrons of 
 societies for the prevention of cruelty to costermongers' 
 donkeys, while themselves delighting in the cruel and un- 
 manly massacre of tame pigeons and semi-domesticated 
 pheasants, was thoroughly exposed in the course of the 
 controversy, and a well-aimed blow struck at the heart of 
 the abomination of the Game Laws, which have so long 
 disgraced the statute-book of the country. 
 
 "Strange that of all the living chain 
 That binds creation's plan 
 There is but one delights in pain — 
 The savage monarch man ! " 
 
 It is hardly necessary to say that, with perhaps the single 
 exception of Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Freeman is the greatest 
 living master of the Eastern question in all its details. He 
 was four years of age when the battle of Navarino was 
 fought, and he remembers the receipt of the intelligence. 
 He may be said to have been interested in the emancipation 
 of the Eastern Christians ever since. At the time of the 
 Crimean war his pen was incessantly employed in combat- 
 ing the national madness. The number of persons in this 
 country who then understood the real issues in the East 
 was insignificant, and Freeman was one of the few. He 
 may be said to have advocated the " bag and baggage " 
 policy from the beginning. And he never lost sight of his 
 object. When the City fell down and worshipped the Sul- 
 tan on the occasion of his visit to London, Mr. Freeman 
 almost alone entered a spirited protest against the base 
 idolatry, and described the Oriental tyrant in befitting
 
 260 Eminent Radicals out of Parlia77ient. 
 
 terms. When the Herzegovinian insurrection broke out he 
 was one of the first who strove to range his countrymen on 
 the side of the oppressed. By innumerable letters to the 
 newspapers and speeches in various towns he did an im- 
 mense deal to enlighten public opinion, and he succeeded 
 personally in raising no less a sum than £10,000 in further- 
 ance of the good cause. In 1877 he visited Greece, and was 
 received by the people of such places as Zante, Corfu, 
 Ithaca, and Athens with unbounded enthusiasm and grati- 
 tude. He addressed them in their own tongue, and, as he 
 himself has related, was not merely cheered, but kissed by 
 certain of his audience. Among the Christian population of 
 the Balkan Peninsula the names of Gladstone and Freeman 
 are deservedly regarded as household words. 
 
 The greatest impeachment in my opinion of the soundness 
 of Mr. Freeman's political judgment was his justification 
 of the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine — I beg a thousand 
 pardons, Elsass-Lothringen— by the Germans at the con- 
 clusion of the Franco-German war. He boldly argued that 
 Germany was entitled to rend from France a portion of 
 territory which had once been Teutonic, whatever the in- 
 habitants, who were notoriously French in sympathy, might 
 say to the contrary. The consent of the governed, the 
 necessary condition of free government, was nowise needed 
 when the precious Teuton had his fish to fry. Now, I admit 
 that France had many offences at her back for which it was 
 right that she should atone, but had the " man of blood and 
 iron" and the Majesty of Prussia none? What of bleeding 
 Poland ? What of Silesia ? What of Hanover ? What of 
 Schleswig-Holstein? All this Pan-Teutonism conveniently 
 overlooked. And what has been the result? A war of 
 revenge has been rendered a dead certainty : — 
 
 " Out of evil, evil flourishes ; 
 Out of tyranny, tyranny buds." 
 
 An imperial despotism has been established in Germany at 
 least as detestable as that which Louis Napoleon Bonaparte
 
 Edwa rd A ugustus Freeman. 2 6 1 
 
 & 
 
 set up in France. The iron of that tyranny has entered into 
 the very soul of the German people, and so long as it can be 
 pretended that a Gallic revanche is possible, there will it 
 remain. How Mr. Freeman could have justified such a pal- 
 pable sowing of dragon's teeth I have never been able to 
 fathom. 
 
 In 18i58, Mr. Freeman contested Mid-Somerset in the Liberal 
 interest, but without success. His failure, I consider, was a 
 public loss of no small magnitude. He is a good speaker, 
 and his special knowledge would on many occasions in recent 
 sessions have been of the highest utility in Parliament. For 
 iive-and-twenty years he was a Saturday Reviewer, and he 
 wrote much in the Pall Mall Gazette in its more Liberal 
 days. The House of Commons contains no member who, 
 as a student of constitutional history, could compare for 
 a moment with the author of the "Norman Conquest," the 
 " History of Federal Government," and " Comparative 
 Politics." Any legislature might well be honoured by the 
 presence of such a scholar, and any constituency in the 
 kingdom might be proud of such a representative. 
 
 COLSTON AND SON, PiUNXEItS, EDINBURGH.
 
 O'CONNOR'S LIFE OF BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 PEOPLE'S EDITION. 
 
 LORD BEACONSFIELD; 
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 By T. P. O'CONNOR, M.A. 
 
 PRICE TWO SHILLINGS. 
 
 |C o n a a n ; 
 
 W. STEWART & CO., 
 
 The Holborn Viaduct Steps, E. C. 
 
 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 
 
 A terrific exposure of the public career of Lord Beaconsfield. — Spectator. 
 
 A storehouse for all future writers of modern history. — Atkenceum. 
 
 We know not where the history of the period it embraces can be found so 
 succinctly narrated. — World. 
 
 The narrative throughout is most animated and eloquent. — Nonconformist. 
 
 It is a work of high literary excellence. — Scotsman. 
 
 Mr. O'Connor has told the story in the most graphic manner. — Echo. 
 
 Written in a critical spirit, and its permanent value is consequently greater. 
 — Time. 
 
 An important political work, and one which cannot be too widely read. 
 By far the completest work which has yet appeared. — Manchester Examiner. 
 
 One of the most important contributions to our literature that has lately 
 appeared. The Book has a capital index — Sheffield Independent. 
 
 Considered merely as a mine of facts, supersedes all others. — Western 
 Morning News. 
 
 A very able and complete work. — Western Daily Mercury. 
 
 Mr. O'Connor has taken pains to collect a vast amount of information 
 relating to the early incidents of Mr. Disraeli's pubHc career. — Daily 
 Chronicle. 
 
 Mr. O'Connor has availed himself of many sources of information within 
 his reach. — Bookseller. 
 
 A most interesting and popular life of Lord Beaconsfield. — North British 
 Daily Mail,
 
 Just Published. Price Is. 
 
 Parliament and the Constitution. 
 
 A Popular Explanation of the Forms and 
 Usages of the British Parliament. 
 
 BY 
 
 A PARLIAMENTARY REPORTER. 
 
 IP o n u o n : 
 
 W. STEWART & CO., 
 
 The Holborn Viaduct Steps, E. C. 
 
 SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS. 
 
 Election of Members — Assembling of Parliament — The Speaker 
 — House of Peers — House of Commons — Petitions — Re- 
 turns — Introduction of Bills — Queen's Speech — Questions — 
 Motions — Estimates — Public Bills — Second Readings — 
 Committee — Private Bills — Select Committees — Publication 
 of Evidence — Sittings of Parliament — Rules of Debate — 
 Prorogation — Privilege — The Constitution — Ancient Rule 
 — Conquest — Military Service — The Church — Constitutions 
 of Clarendon — Courts of Justice — Progress of the People — 
 Magna Charta — The House of Commons — Customs Duties 
 — Constitutional Progress — The Rising of the Peasants — 
 The Reformation — The Bill of Rights — Parliamentary- 
 Reforms. 
 
 # ** To those who would properly understand Parliamentary 
 Debates, and to newspaper readers generally, this accurate 
 and clearly written little manual should prove of very 
 considerable value.
 
 JUST PUBLISHED, Crown 8vo, 2s., Superior Edition, 3s. 6d. 
 
 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE, 
 
 AND 
 
 WHAT HE HAS DONE: 
 
 A POPULAR BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 BY 
 
 SAMUEL BENNETT 
 
 (of the middle temple), 
 BARRISTER-AT-LAW. 
 
 f 0nbon: 
 
 W. STEWART & CO., 
 
 The Holborn Viaduct Steps, E. C. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 I. The Two Premiers. 
 I r. Youth and Early Associations. 
 
 III. The Rising Hope of the Tory 
 
 Party. 
 
 IV. Peel's Lieutenant. 
 V. Minister of Finance. 
 
 VI. The Friend of Humanity. 
 VII. The Crimean War. 
 VIII. A Prosperous Regime. 
 IX. The other Side. 
 X. The Present Situation. 
 
 iv
 
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