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 ENGLAND: 
 
 ITS PEOPLE, POLITY, AND PURSUITS.
 
 ENGLAND: 
 
 ITS PEOPLE, POLITY, AND PURSUITS. 
 
 BY 
 
 T. H. S. ESCOTT. 
 
 NEW AND REVISED EDIT/ON. 
 
 LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, 
 
 Limited. 
 1885 
 
 [All rig/its reserved. ]
 
 LONDOX : 
 
 PRINTED B7 J. S. VIRTUE AND CO., LIMITED, 
 
 CITY ROAD.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 TO THE PRESENT EDITION. 
 
 This book was first published rather more than five years ago, when, 
 in its original two-volume shape, it passed through two considerable 
 editions. A third edition was subsequently published in a single 
 volume, and of this that now issued is, so far as shape and size are 
 concerned, as nearly as possible, a facsimile. The work, however, 
 has undergone material modifications. Many parts of it have been 
 completely rewritten, while throughout it has been carefully revised, 
 corrected, and, generally, brought down to date. It may therefore, to 
 some extent, claim to be a new work. At the same time its organic 
 structure has not been changed and the remarks with which I prefaced 
 it in 1879 are therefore applicable to it now : — 
 
 " The object of this book has been so fully explained in the first 
 chapter that it scarcely seems necessary to inflict a Preface upon the 
 reader. Yet there are some things which could not well be stated in 
 the body of the work, and which it may not be amiss here briefly to 
 set forth. 
 
 " My purpose has been to present the public with as complete and 
 faithful a picture of contemporary England as the limits of space and 
 opportunity would allow. That I might do this the better, I have 
 devoted much time to the collection of materials, I have made several 
 visits to different parts of the country, I have conversed with, and 
 lived amongst, many varieties of people. The facts given are those of 
 observation and experience, and whatever there is of description in 
 this volume may, at least, claim to be a transcript of what I have seen. 
 
 " While I have endeavoured to be as accurate as possible in my 
 narrative of the general condition of England, and in my account of 
 the influences which are at work among us, and which may, perhaps, 
 determine our future, so have I studiously avoided all historical retro- 
 spect when it did not appear absolutely necessary for a right under-
 
 VI PREFACE. 
 
 standing of our present state. Thus, too, while criticism and the 
 expression of personal opinion have seemed occasionally unavoidable, 
 I have aimed at being scrupulously sparing of both. 
 
 " Of the plan of tbe work I will only here say that those who 
 honour me with a continuous perusal of its pages will, I venture to 
 think, perceive that its chapters are logically connected by a per- 
 vading identity of purpose. There are certain central ideas in 
 the book round which I have endeavoured to group my facts and 
 descriptions, and which I have explained at sufficient length in the 
 introductory chapter. Whether the point of view there taken be right 
 or wrong, it is at least that which has been taken consistently, and I 
 hope it will have the effect of imparting to the entire work a certain 
 unity and cohesion. Again, though I cannot hope to have escaped 
 sins of omission, I would venture respectfully to be allowed to remind 
 those who may not find all their conceptions realised, that this book is 
 not an encyclopaedia but a survey, and I would further crave per- 
 mission to add that in some cases I have found it necessary to treat 
 of particular subjects elsewhere than in those chapters in which, from 
 their titles, such subjects might be expected to have a place. Thus, 
 though there is no chapter exclusively devoted to the literature of the 
 day in all its branches, I trust that a fair general view of that litera- 
 ture aud its tendencies will be found in the three chapters, Religious 
 England, Modern Culture and Literature, and Modern Philosophical 
 Thought, which should be read together, and to which I might perhaps 
 add that on Popular Amusements. 
 
 " While the information contained in these volumes is for the most 
 part the result of study of the facts at first hand, I have also profited 
 greatly from the perusal of official documents and other treatises. 
 Whenever a statement is made from Blue Books of a kind likely to 
 challenge criticism or provoke controversy, I think I shall be found 
 to have pointed out where it may be found in the original. In other 
 cases I have not thought it necessary to load any page with those 
 references, whose frequent repetition chiefly serves to distract the 
 reader's attention. The parliamentary papers which I have found of 
 most assistance are the reports of the Commission on the employment 
 of children, young persons, and women in agriculture of 1807, of the 
 Factory and Workshops Acts Commission of 1870, the reports of the 
 Commissioners appointed to inquire into the Truck system of 1871, as 
 well as the periodical reports of the Educational Department, of the 
 Inspectors of Factories, and of the Poor Law Board, and the Journals 
 of the Royal Agricultural Society. As regards the other works to 
 which I am mainly indebted, they will be found, I think, in almost 
 every instance named in the text or in a foot-note. 
 
 " My best thanks are due lor the assistance which, in the produc- 
 tion of this work, I have received from many friends, and from some
 
 PREFACE. vil 
 
 who, till it was undertaken, were strangers. Without this help the 
 book could not have been written." 
 
 I am particularly indebted to Mr. A. J. Wilson for his invaluable 
 services in the chapter on Commercial and Financial England, and to 
 Major Arthur Griffiths and Mr. W. L. Courtney for the chapters on 
 Criminal England and Modern Philosophical Thought. 
 
 T. H. S. ESCOTT. 
 
 Londox, 
 
 December, 1884.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTKR PAGE 
 
 I. Introductory 1 
 
 II. The English Village 8 
 
 III. Great Landlords, and Estate Management .... 24 
 
 IV. Rural Administration 40 
 
 V. Municipal Government 55 
 
 "VT. Towns of Business 74 
 
 VII. Towns of Pleasure 93 
 
 VIII. Commercial and Financial England ..... 103 
 
 IX. Commercial Administration ....... 120 
 
 X. The Working Classes ........ 130 
 
 XL The Working Classes {continued) .... . . 163 
 
 XII. Pauperism and Thrift . 188 
 
 XIII. Co-operation 221 
 
 XIV. Criminal England 238 
 
 XV. Travelling and Hotels 256 
 
 XVI. Educational England 271 
 
 XVII. The Social Revolution 301 
 
 XVIII. The Structure of English Society 314 
 
 XIX. Society and Politics 338 
 
 XX. Crown and Crowd ......... 349 
 
 XXL Official England ......... 364 
 
 XXII. The House of Commons ........ 379
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 XXIII. The House of Lords 
 
 XXIV. The Law Courts . 
 
 XXV. The Services .... 
 
 XXVI. Religious England . 
 
 XXVII. Modern Philosophical Thought 
 
 XXVIII. Modern Culture and Literature 
 
 XXIX. Popular Amusements 
 
 XXX. Professional England . 
 
 XXXI. Imperial England and Conclusion 
 
 PAOE 
 
 402 
 415 
 433 
 453 
 481 
 502 
 536 
 554 
 570 
 
 Index. 
 
 5S7
 
 ENGLAND. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 The Scope and Purpose of the Present Work — New Forces introduced into the National 
 Life during the Present Century— Social, Political, Moral, and Intellectual Problems 
 of the Day— What are the Duties of the State!* — What the Imperial Mission of 
 England? — The Age not only one of Transition but of Organization — Economy 
 of Forces of all kinds — General Contents of this Work, and Treatment adopted. 
 
 A work honestly attempting a comprehensive and faithful picture of 
 the social and political condition of modern England requires small 
 apology. The nineteenth century, in this country as elsewhere, has 
 been marked not merely by changes and improvements vast and sweep- 
 ing in degree, but by achievements wholly new in kind. Methods 
 and institutions long existing among us have been brought nearer to 
 perfection ; forces previously unfelt or unknown have been introduced. 
 On the one hand, there may be witnessed the realised result of the 
 complete operations of centuries ; on the other, there is visible the as 
 yet unfinished product of agencies still at work. At the beginning of 
 the current century, though we had perfected the stage-coach, no new 
 principle had been applied to locomotion since the Romans conquered 
 this island ; or, to go back to a date still more remote, since Cyrus 
 introduced the system of posting into the empire which he conquered 
 "upwards of three thousand years ago. Steam, at the same time that 
 it changed the conditions of travelling, effected a social revolution 
 throughout the world. Co-operating with the electric telegraph, and 
 equalising the relations of space and time, as gunpowder equalised the 
 various degrees of physical strength, it brought the country to the 
 doors of the town, and bridged over the gulf between England and 
 the countries of the Continent. Co-operating with free trade, it 
 raised us to a perilous height of commercial prosperity, and added 
 dignity and influence to the principle of wealth.
 
 2 ENGLAND. 
 
 Analogous alterations have been wrought in the political and the 
 intellectual -world. A system of genuinely popular government has 
 been established among us, and is now awaiting extension and com- 
 pletion with the common consent of all parties in the State. In the 
 political Reform Acts of 1832 and 1867 we have had two measures, 
 and in the County Franchise Bill we shall have a third, entirely 
 different in scope and principle from any previously passed by an 
 English Parliament. For the first time in our history the attempt 
 has been made with earnestness and success to introduce an effective 
 scheme of popular education ; and for the first time also there has 
 been witnessed the universal dissemination of a popular literature, 
 fettered by no political or religious constraints. 
 
 As we have seen the enlightenment, so we have seen the upheaval 
 and the fusion of classes. Old lines of social demarcation have been 
 obliterated, ancient landmarks of thought and belief removed, new 
 standards of expediency and right created. The same process has 
 been unceasingly active in the domain of politics, philosophy, litera- 
 ture, and art. It may be, here and there, revival rather than inno- 
 vation ; a return to the old rather than a departure to the new ; but, 
 in many cases, the idols which we reverenced but a little time ago 
 have been destroyed. We have made for ourselves strange gods, and 
 we live in a state of transition to a yet unknown order. The precise 
 functions of the new philosophy, science, tbeology, and art are as 
 loosely defined as the exact provinces of the three estates of the 
 realm, or the future relations of the different component parts of 
 society. We hold enlarged conceptions of our place in the scale of 
 the nations of the earth, but what England's mission really is we have 
 not quite decided. We are in process of making up our minds what 
 respect or attention, in fixing the destinies of a great empire, is due 
 to the popular will, what obeisance to the Sovereign, what confidence 
 to the Sovereign's advisers. We are in perplexity as to the course we 
 sbould steer between the democratic and the monarchical principles. 
 It is a moot point whether the governed or the governors should be 
 the judges of the plan of government that is adopted. It is an open 
 question whether we should accept measures because of the man, or 
 base our estimate of the man upon his measures. The several rights 
 of employer and employed, capital and labour, are an unsolved 
 problem. A clear and generally accepted notion of the duties of the 
 State has still to be formed. Politicians and sociologists debate on 
 platforms and in magazines — five-and-twcnty years ago it would have 
 been in pamphlets — as to the amount of legislation with which it is 
 necessary to protect the interests of a class or the well-being of the 
 individual. If it falls within the sphere of Government to provide the 
 machinery of education and health for the community, up to what 
 point is it the duty of Government to insist upon its use ? How far
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 3 
 
 are men to be protected against their own vices, or the consequences 
 of those vices ? Are the masses to be taught sobriety by Act of 
 Parliament ? Is the drunkard to be condemned, or to be suffered to 
 condemn himself, to close confinement for his drunkenness ? Is 
 incontinence ot all kinds to carry with it its own probable punish- 
 ment ? 
 
 At every turn some vital issue presents itself in a guise more or 
 less easily to be recognised. The Municipal Corporation Act of 1835, 
 which conferred upon ratepayers the right of electing their municipal 
 authorities, the Town Councils, and thus established the principle of 
 local and representative self-government, was hailed with enthusiasm 
 as the charter of the provincial liberties of England. The necessity 
 for the existence of a central authority in the capital was admitted, 
 but it was half believed that its controlling influence would seldom or 
 never be felt. If, in the interval that has since elapsed, free play has 
 been given in many respects to the principle of local independence, a 
 certain later tendency towards its abridgment cannot be ignored. 
 The chief provincial cities and boroughs of England have acquired 
 fresh power and importance. The self-government of villages has 
 almost entirely disappeared. Even over the great towns and entire 
 urban or rural districts, the central Government practically claims an 
 authority which is by no means unresistingly admitted. Manchester, 
 Liverpool, and Birmingliam have advanced in magnitude and in 
 influence ; but London has become increasingly the metropolis of the 
 empire, and a minute and far-reaching system of bureaucratic control 
 is exercised from Whitehall, within a radius equal in extent to the 
 length and breadth of the United Kingdom. 
 
 Modern legislation has created new departments of State. We have 
 entire armies of official inspectors of all kinds. We accumulate annual 
 libraries of focal reports. Applications to the executive in London or 
 to Parliament at Westminster are imperatively enforced, upon a multi- 
 tude of novel and miscellaneous pleas. The supervision of our prisons 
 has been vested in a body of commissioners nominated by the Crown. 
 On the other hand, it is a question which perplexes the Government, 
 and of which no satisfactory solution has yet been proposed, whether 
 the administration of counties should be transferred from the hands of 
 the country gentlemen to the nominees and representatives of the 
 ratepayers. These are not the only matters in which the supremacy 
 and responsibility of the State are closely canvassed. Is the State, in 
 addition to its duties as the champion of the different communities 
 that live under it, to fulfil the function of an accommodating money- 
 lender, on easy terms, for the carrying out of local improvements ? 
 What is the exact point at which the State is under an obligation to 
 relieve local rates out of imperial taxation, and when and wiry does 
 that obligation cease ?
 
 ENGLAND. 
 
 Nor is it only the position and the attributes of the English Govern- 
 ment at home that are the subjects of controversy and uncertainty. 
 The duties of the English Government abroad, the place England 
 should fill in the hierarchy of sovereign states, the extent to which and 
 the channels by which her authority and influence should make them- 
 selves felt, are points provoking much dispute and much enthusiasm, 
 but oll'ering no immediate prospect of permanent settlement. It is 
 thought by some that we have already witnessed an emphatic and an 
 abiding protest against the political doctrines which are commonly 
 associated with the name of Cobden. The English people, it is 
 asserted, have loudly testified to their desire that England should be 
 something more than the emporium of Europe, a place of merchandise 
 and barter for the nations of the world. The popular veto upon an 
 unqualified acceptance of the doctrine of non-intervention is said to 
 have gone forth. We are, if this view be correct, thirsting for the 
 responsibilities of empire, and panting for the fresh and invigorating 
 atmosphere which the periodical enlargement of our imperial bounda- 
 ries brings with it. Strong voices of grave warning have been raised 
 p gainst these ambitions. On the one hand it has been hinted that we 
 should prepare ourselves for a reduction rather than for an increase 
 of our imperial cares, and that we should witness with satisfaction, 
 since it is approaching with the certainty of fate, the contraction of 
 the foreign dominions of England within narrower limits. On the 
 other hand a movement has sprung up, both in the mother country 
 and in several of her leading dependencies, in favour of the establish- 
 ment of more binding and intimate political ties between them. As 
 yet no definite scheme of colonial federation has received influential 
 support or even countenance. But nobody who marks the names of 
 those who have recently identified themselves with the general prin- 
 ciple which every project of the kind necessarily involves, can well 
 doubt that the question is coming within the domain of practical 
 politics, and that it is surrounded with very momentous even if 
 somewhat remote possibilities. 
 
 Between these two schools of counsellors, one urging us to restrict 
 and the other inviting us to enlarge our imperial cares and liabilities, 
 England at present seems to halt. It is not necessary here to fore- 
 cast the selection which she may finally make, or the national conse- 
 quences which that selection will involve. Upon one or two historical 
 facts, and some of our more prominent social conditions, it may be 
 desirable in connection with these matters very briefly to dwell. If 
 the Englishman wants some more definite and tangible guarantee of 
 foreign empire than a vague boast that the sun never sets upon the 
 British flag ; if, instead of a personal devotion to fatherland, the old- 
 lasliioncd belief that England and England alone was abundantly 
 sufficient for all his wants, he would fain bestride the world like a
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 5 
 
 Colossus, it is to be remembered tbat there is much in the infectious 
 spirit of the age to explain such a sentiment. Is not the present the 
 age of immense transactions and colossal speculations ? Have we not 
 imported the idea of this vastness from the other side of the Atlantic 
 — and are we not attempting its realisation here ? Everywhere small 
 establishments have been swallowed up in large. The private firm is 
 absorbed in the limited liability company ; the private bank in the 
 joint-stock. The tradesman no sooner finds himself doing well than 
 he is seized with a desire to extend his premises ; and, if matters 
 prosper, he will presently buy up the section of a street. Above all 
 things, it is the era of material triumphs. The miraculous feats of our 
 engineers, the immense development of machinery, the mastery which 
 on every hand man seems to be acquiring over nature, have brought 
 with them to Englishmen a sense of boundless power — a conviction 
 that they have the command of resource and the fertility of invention 
 which mark them out as all creation's heirs. Amid the ceaseless clang 
 of hammers and the everlasting roar of human industry, the English- 
 man unconsciously apprehends some echo of the far-off infinite. Carlyle 
 is welcomed as a great teacher, because he appeals to this inarticulate 
 feeling, and, without his readers being precisely aware of it, has shaped 
 it into ruggedly eloquent utterance. Is it an idle fancy to see in the 
 vague popular desire for an indefinite extension of the dominions and 
 the responsibilities of England an enlarged reflection of the insatiate 
 passion that is generated by the social conditions under which we 
 live? 
 
 But the new spirit of boundless empire means more than this. If it 
 is a reaction against a real or imaginary neglect of the imperial interests 
 of England in the past few years by England's governors, it is in a 
 great degree the significant product of two separate forces — the one 
 practical, the other sentimental. England is a country whose population 
 is perpetually overflowing her narrow geographical bounds. She wants 
 careei's for her sons ; she wants safe opportunities of investment for 
 her capital. With an enormously developed middle-class such as we 
 now have, it is felt that there would be no adequate number of avenues 
 to employment if our foreign possessions were reduced. India and the 
 colonies afford occupation for tens of thousands of young men born to 
 decent station. Even thus, more occupation, and that of a dignified 
 or gentlemanlike kind, is wanted. 
 
 Nor is the sentimental force one whose influence can be neglected. 
 The immense increase of wealth among the middle classes has resulted 
 in a larger demand for professions which commend themselves to the 
 polite world. Such a profession is the profession of arms. The soldier 
 has always been a social favourite. The abolition of purchase in the 
 army has resulted in the establishment of a professional army, and, by 
 giving them a kind of family interest in the calling of arms, has created
 
 6 ENGLAND. 
 
 a wider and more intensely military spirit among the middle classes 
 than once seemed possible. The volunteer movement has operated in 
 precisely the same direction. An imperial policy not only means 
 abundance of civilian, but regularity of military employment. At the 
 same time that it commends itself to the English mind as a policy 
 worthy of a race which has made its greatness by the sword, it is 
 recognised also as stamped with the more or less avowed approval of 
 the upper classes of English society. 
 
 It is not the only characteristic of our age that it is transitional. It 
 may further be described as one distinguished by the economy and 
 organisation of forces of all kinds. While science teaches us how to 
 prevent the waste of motive power, philanthropy encourages us to 
 prevent the wholesale waste of humanity. Thus it is that we are 
 constantly endeavouring to amend our educational system, to provide 
 more effective machinery for the promotion of thrift, for the distribu- 
 tion of charity, and for the cultivation of other social and political 
 virtues. Household suffrage not only exists, but in a variety of ways 
 tbere is visible the organised effort to ensure that its active exercise 
 shall be increasingly productive of substantial results. The working 
 classes are acquiring more and more political power; at the same time 
 they are being taught how they can make that power more directly and 
 definitely felt. Whatever virtues, capacities, energies, may reside in 
 any part of our population, these are now in process of being drawn 
 forth, and pressed into practical service. Sides are being formed, 
 specific parts taken, schools of thought multiply, societies for action 
 increase. What was simple becomes complex, what was always 
 complex becomes more complex still. 
 
 It will be the chief part of our duty in the following pages to analyse 
 and explain the constituents of the artificial civilisation and of the 
 minutely elaborated institutions of the time. Such an attempt, it is 
 believed, will at least have the merit of novelty. The laws and polity 
 under which we live have received much of learned comment; their 
 history and principles are detailed and explained in encyclopedias and 
 text-books. But they have, for the most part, been treated in the 
 spirit of the constitutional anatomist; they have been examined, 
 not so much in their practical working and mutual relations while 
 working, as in the theory of their mechanism while at rest. They 
 have been studied more as abstractions than as concrete realities. 
 Hence it is that Englishmen and Englishwomen generally lack a 
 vividly complete idea of the institutions under which they live, and 
 have no clear and comprehensive notion of the particular forces at 
 work in the atmosphere around them. Every one knows that we have 
 in England local self-government ; few know how in practice it is 
 administered. In the same way, it is universally recognised that we 
 enjoy immense commercial prosperity, but it is only those personally
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 7 
 
 concerned who have an accurate acquaintance with the details of 
 management on which that prosperity depends. The came remarks 
 are applicable to all departments of our national life. The names are 
 familiar to each one of us ; the facts are familiar only to the compara- 
 tively limited number whom they especially affect. 
 
 What in this work will be done for institutions will be done in the 
 same manner for classes and occupations, professions and pursuits ; 
 for the refining influences of culture, as well as the organisation of 
 commerce ; for our social not less than our municipal and political 
 system ; for tbe amusements and recreations of the age, as well as its 
 literature, philosophy, art, religion, and law. Necessarily the space 
 that can be devoted to each of these topics is comparatively small, but 
 into that space materials, it is hoped, may be collected which will 
 present the reader with a comprehensive view of the influences, the 
 tendencies, and the general economy of English life. We shall pass 
 from the simpler elements of our civilisation and government as they 
 may be beheld in rural England to the busier and more highly organised 
 customs and administration of our great centres of trade and industry. 
 We shall make the acquaintance of typical members of our labouring 
 community in town and country, and of the changes in the conditions 
 of their life, whether actually accomplished or still in progress. Having 
 thus seen, in concrete shape, the personnel of the English nation at 
 large, their temper, tastes, toils, and pastimes, it will remain to examine 
 the social organisation of the polite world, and the institutions and 
 principles established among us for the administration of the empire. 
 At each step we shall be conscious of a gradual ascent. We shall be 
 working constantly upwards, and arriving at the general from the 
 particular. If this method seems to involve the inversion of the 
 natural order of sequence, it may not be unattended by some advan- 
 tages, and the whole will be, perhaps, the better understood when it 
 has been seen what are the parts of which it consists.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE ENGLISH VILLAGE. 
 
 An English Village a Microcosm of the English Constitution — Relations of Squire, 
 Clergyman, and General Body of Parishioners — Sketch of the Country Parson : his 
 Day; his multifarious Duties, Religious and Secular — Sketches of Country Parsons 
 who do not conform to this Type — A Disorganised Parish — Hostile Estimates of the 
 Country Clergyman of the English Church — His Relations to the Farmers and 
 Dissenters of his Parish. 
 
 An English village may be described as a picture in miniature not 
 only of the English nation but of the English Constitution. Koughly 
 speaking, there is to be seen in every English parish a reflection of the 
 three estates of the realm — the lords spiritual, the lords temporal, the 
 commons. The representative of the lords spiritual is the clergyman ; 
 of the lords temporal, the squire ; of the commons, the tenant and 
 villager ; while squire and clergyman between them, like the two 
 Houses of Parliament, practically exercise not a few of those functions 
 which in their essence pertain to the Sovereign only. The normal 
 or ideal state of things in a country parish is one under which there 
 is absolute unanimity between the action and the will of the repre- 
 sentatives of the spiritual and temporal powers — that is, between the 
 parson and the squire — and where the inhabitants acquiesce in the 
 decision and policy of these as in the dispensation of a beneficent 
 wisdom. Nor is the theory of English village life, or the analogy which 
 has been suggested between the State and the parish, destroyed by the 
 fact that deviations from the ideal standard are not unknown. For 
 the most part, the elements to which village life may be reduced 
 combine with tolerable harmony in practice ; and when there is 
 discord, it is not the system, but clumsiness or error in its adminis- 
 tration, which is to blame. 
 
 Recent legislation, as will be presently seen, has in some reBpei I 
 materially affected the relations between those in whom are vested the 
 secular and religious jurisdiction of English country districts. But 
 the main principles of the system are now what they always have 
 been, and completely to eradicate them would entail asocial revolution. 
 Just as the squire — the word is used for convenience sake, whether 
 the local great man be peer, baronet, small country gentleman, or that 
 combination of minister of the Church of England and territorial 
 potentate which Sydney Smith has called " Squarson " — necessarily
 
 THE ENGLISH VILLAGE. U 
 
 has a moral influence added to his secular condition, so the clergyman 
 has attributes distinctly secular in addition to his ecclesiastical preroga- 
 tives. The Church of England lies at the root of the parochial system 
 of England. The subdivisions of the country are ecclesiastical. The 
 local dispensary, the poor-rate, the way-rate, the vestry, are parochial 
 institutions. Not merely the village parson, rector or vicar, has defi- 
 nite legal duties and authority, but the clergyman's churchwarden, the 
 parish clerk, the sexton. The unity between Church and State is 
 typified in the administration of an English village at every turn. The 
 squire is a magistrate ; not improbably the rector is a magistrate too. 
 The clergyman and the congregation have each their churchwarden. 
 The parish clerk, beadle, and sexton have all of them a legal and civil 
 status, and in a great number of cases share, with the clergyman whose 
 nominees they probably are, responsibility for the order of the parish. 
 
 The position and authority of the clergyman vary according to 
 circumstances. The growing tendency on the part of the squire is to 
 be elsewhere than at his country home during the greater part of the 
 year. His parliamentary duties demand his presence in London ; his 
 social obligations compel him to make a round of visits ; regard for 
 his health and that of his family renders it necessary that he should 
 travel annually for a few weeks. Though this gentleman may un- 
 doubtedly be, for nine months out of every twelve, an absentee land- 
 lord, he has, he remarks, the satisfaction of knowing that in his 
 absence everything is looked after admirably. He has an agent in 
 whom he reposes the utmost confidence, and who has carte-blanche to 
 do what is fair and reasonable in the interests of his tenants. He has 
 a clergyman whom he pronounces a blessing to the entire neighbour- 
 hood. Thus, one of two things happens : either the local supremacy, 
 secular as well as ecclesiastical, becomes centred in the hands of the 
 clergyman, or a struggle develops itself between the clergyman and 
 the representative of the squire — his agent. It depends in each case 
 on the character of the clergyman and the squire which alternative 
 is realised. In the majority of instances the two authorities pull well 
 together. But perhaps the best way of forming an idea of the working 
 of the system in English life will be to take a concrete illustration. 
 
 We are, let the reader suppose, engaged in visiting an agricultural 
 village, with a population of some five or six hundred souls, situated 
 half a dozen miles from the nearest railway station. It is the month 
 of June ; every feature in the peaceful landscape is in the perfection 
 of its beauty ; the fresh deep green of the English foliage — the freshest 
 and deepest in all the world — has as yet lost nothing of its depth or 
 freshness ; there is an odour of new-made hay in the air ; the music 
 of the whetstone sharpening the mower's scythe may be heard in the 
 morning, and all day long the lark carols high overhead. The whole 
 village, in fact, is busily occupied with the grass harvest, and the
 
 10 ENGLAND. 
 
 farmers are intent upon getting it in before there comes the break in 
 the weather portended by certain ugly barometrical signs. The 
 village is a purely agricultural one ; it contains a general store shop, 
 a shoemaker's, a small tailor's, a small inn, and one or two beershops. 
 The lord of the manor is also the representative of the county in 
 Parliament, and, as is incumbent on an elective legislator, is, in 
 these days of leafy June, busily engaged in his senatorial duties at 
 Westminster. A better squire no parson, as the parson himself admits, 
 could wish. Indeed the two have been friends together from boy- 
 hood. They were companions at school, played in the school eleven 
 at Lord's, went to the university in the same October term. The 
 squire is not a very great landlord, for his property in that neighbour- 
 hood barely produces £3,000 a year, but he has possessions elsewhere, 
 and he is not without judicious and profitable investments. He is 
 liberal, sees that the dwellings of his labourers are kept in proper 
 condition, gives largely to all local funds, and has just built some 
 very handsome schools. But he has never been guilty of the indis- 
 criminate bounty which is the parent of pauperism. He has been 
 fortunate in securing as his bailiff and agent a respectable gentleman, 
 who has no social ambition of an aggressive kind, and no wish to 
 assert his authority in opposition to that cf the rector. 
 
 And the rector himself — what cf him ? That is the rectory, two 
 or three hundred yards this side of the church. A substantial 
 building, set in a pleasant garden, girt with a' hedge of fuchsias, myrtle, 
 and laurel. The glebe attached to the living is large, and from it 
 indeed comes the greater part cf the rectorial revenue. A few fields 
 the parish priest keeps in his own hands, and he too, like his farmers, 
 has been busy hay-making and hay-carrying in this glorious June 
 weather. It is now the afternoon, and three or four hours in every 
 afternoon — the interval, that is, between lunch and dinner — it is his 
 habit to devote to driving, to riding, or, more commonly, to pedestrian 
 tours of parochial inspection, and visits to his parishioners. At the 
 present moment he is strolling through one of Farmer Goodman's 
 fields, and — he is an authority on these matters — is taking up and 
 smelling, in the approved fashion ol the connoisseur, some of the grass 
 which two days ago has fallen ridgeways before the mower's scythe. 
 He has a well-made, upright figure ; a clear, cpen expression ot coun- 
 tenance ; he is rather over fifty years of age, and his dress is of black 
 cloth, distinguishable in hue but scarcely in cut from that which, were 
 he at home instead of at Westminster, the squire himself would wear. 
 He chats occasionally with the men, who are busily employed in 
 filling the carts, or in seme other duty of the field; but you may 
 notice that he is very careful to avoid the appearance of inflicting his 
 company on any one of them. 
 
 Let us see how he is occupied at other hours of the day. Family
 
 THE ENGLISH VILLAGE. 11 
 
 prayers are over by half-past eight, for the rector likes to have finished 
 his breakfast and to get to his study by nine. This morning he is 
 particularly busy ; there are letters to answer, a sermon to prepare, 
 diocesan documents to be examined and signed, and there is a great 
 deal of reading which he is anxious to do. He bas scarcely sat down 
 to his tea and toast, with yesterday's Times, just arrived, at his side, 
 wben a knock comes at the door. It is Martha Hodge, who wants to 
 know when her baby can be christened ; or John Giles, wbo is 
 anxious to fix the day and hour for his Reverence to tie the knot 
 between himself and Sarah Stokes ; or it may be tbat one of tbe 
 farmers' wives has called round to speak to the rector's lady on the 
 subject of the tunes and hymns which were sung last, or will be sung 
 next, Sunday ; or it is a labourer's wife, who has a tale of sorrow and 
 want to impart, who seeks relief from extreme destitution, and who is 
 striving up to the last to keep out of the jurisdiction of " tbe House." 
 At last he has disposed of some half-dozen of these interruptions, and 
 is secure in his library, deep in papers and in thought. But his seclu- 
 sion is not to remain long undisturbed. The inevitable knock at the 
 door comes, and one of the parochial functionaries is announced as 
 waiting to see him. It is his churchwarden, whose duty it is to 
 inform him that one of his congregation — a farmer of controversial 
 turn, or a farmer's wife or daughter, with a nice eye for ritual pro- 
 priety — has taken exception to something that was said, sung, or done 
 in church last Sunday ; protests that he or she distinctly saw the 
 pastor make, or fail to make, some specific genuflexion at a certain 
 point in the service ; complains that in his or her opinion the language 
 of such-and-such a hymn smacks too much of Popery or Calvinism ; 
 declares that between the tune to which the organist (who happens to 
 be the rector's eldest daughter) played it, and a music-hall ditty, the 
 air of which was recently ground out by a nomad Italian organ-boy 
 who chanced to be passing through the village, there was a suspici- 
 ously strong resemblance. 
 
 The purpose for which the interview is sought may be of a less 
 frivolous character. The parish is disturbed by some crime, agitated 
 by some scandal, or is threatened by some nuisance, big with the 
 seeds of death and disease to the inhabitants. The question, there- 
 fore, submitted to the clergyman by churchwarden, clerk, or beadle 
 is whether immediate application should not be made to th# head of 
 the local constabulary, or to the local sanitary inspector, or to what- 
 ever other official has cognisance of the special cause of danger or 
 offence. Nor do the secular responsibilities of the country parson end 
 here. If the village post-office is also a savings-bank, those of his 
 parishioners who are of thrifty habits will be able to transact their 
 own small financial business without his intervention. But it might 
 happen that no such encouragement to thrift as a savings-bank in
 
 1 2 ENGLAND. 
 
 connection with the post-office existed, and in that case the rector 
 would frequently find himself doing duty as village banker. Occasion- 
 ally, too, he discharges in minor maladies the functions of the village 
 doctor. The local doctor employed by the guardians lives at some 
 little distance, and has, it may be, besides, an objection to attending 
 patients gratuitously. There are medicines to be prescribed, soothing 
 drinks and nutritious diet to be sent to the sick-room. No squire 
 who, as it has been said, is almost of necessity for eight or nine 
 months out of the twelve an absentee, however well-disposed, and 
 however comprehensive the instructions which he may have left to 
 his servants, can entirely relieve the clergyman as a dispenser of 
 material comforts and relief. Then, as the rector or vicar is something 
 of a banker and a doctor, so, also, is he something of a lawyer and 
 general agent as well. He is often invoked to arbitrate in family 
 differences ; he is expected to procure occupation for lads and maidens 
 who wish to go out into the world. He is, in fact, looked upon as an 
 oracle whose inspiration is never to fail, and as a source of charity 
 which is never to run dry. Of the ten or fifteen thousand beneficed 
 clergymen of the Church of England, it is the exception to find one 
 who does not, to the best of his ability and means, discharge most of 
 these duties ; and not these only, but many more. 
 
 AVe have spoken of the documents which our parson has received 
 by the morning's post. Among them are some that come from the 
 Education Office, and relate to his school. There are long and com- 
 plicated returns to be filled up, which will necessitate a conference 
 with the schoolmaster and schoolmistress. Possibly he has no sooner 
 mastered the contents of these documents, and is busying himself 
 upon his sermon, than he receives a call from the schoolmaster. The 
 School Inspector of the district, a young gentleman fresh from the 
 university, has suddenly made his appearance on a surprise visit. 
 This youthful dignitary has to be duly met, and afterwards be invited 
 to luncheon, and discoursed with on the idiosyncrasies of the district. 
 And this is the lightest portion of the burden which the Education 
 Department and the existing Education Acts impose on the shoulders 
 of the beneficed divine. There are school committees which meet 
 periodically ; the parson himself frequently has to do duty as a house- 
 to-house visitor among the parents of his parish, and personally to 
 inquire inio the causes of absence : an invidious task this, and one for the 
 discharge of which some other functionary might easily be provided. 
 Even yet the catalogue of the secular or semi-secular offices of the 
 country clergyman is not exhausted. There is many a village parson 
 who has had quite as much experience as many an ordinary solicitor 
 in the drawing up of wills ; and as habits of thrift increase among the 
 working classes, there is a proportionate increase also in the duties 
 of this description which devolve upon the minister of the Church.
 
 THE ENGLISH VILLAGE. 13 
 
 The average English rustic has a profound objection to, and suspi- 
 cion of, banks of deposit of any kind. Gradually he is overcoming his 
 prejudice against the Post-office Savings-bank ; but as a rule he prefers 
 acting as his own banker, and keeping in some secret place the money 
 which he has been able to put by. If he be of an unusually confiding 
 disposition, he will entrust his accumulated hoard to some individual 
 — the clergyman, or his landlord. Banks break, and firms go into 
 liquidation, and from the point of view of the agricultural mind there 
 is always danger in numbers. But the squire or the parson is an in- 
 tegral and visible part of the system under which the peasant lives 
 his daily life, and thus it is that the parson, who is always on the 
 spot, is constantly commissioned to purchase a cottage, or make some 
 other investment. The treasury in which the precious coins — gold, 
 silver, and copper — are deposited is almost without exception an old 
 stocking or a tea-pot, secreted in some mysterious corner. It is far 
 from unprecedented for the rustic capitalist who resorts to this primi- 
 tive mode of banking to have by him upwards of £100. Unfortunately, 
 it is by no means always the case that the possessor of this wealth is 
 as wise as he or she has been thrifty, and takes the precaution of 
 bequeathing it in legal form. No will has been made ; some friend or 
 relation, having, it may be, an idea of the hoarding which has been 
 in process for years, explores each nook and cranny of the dwelling, 
 comes upon the tea-pot or the old stocking, and secretly exulting in 
 the truth that dead men tell no tales, appropriates the contents.* 
 
 * It has been the policy of the Legislature for some years past to encourage the thrifty 
 among the working classes to make provision for the posthumous disposal of their pro- 
 perty by will, and otherwise. Estates not exceeding £100 in total amount are altogether 
 exempt from probate duty, and the probate duty is only one pound for every full sum 
 of £50, or any part thereof, up to £500; one pound five shillings for every full sum of 
 £50, or any part thereof, up to £1,000 ; while it is three pounds for every full sum of 
 £100, or any part thereof, over £1,000. Where the estate does not exceed £300 in total 
 amount, probate may be taken out for a fixed charge of fifteen shillings, with a duty of 
 one pound ten shillings if it exceeds £100. And probate in this case need not be taken 
 out in any court, but may be obtained from an officer of the Inland Revenue appointed 
 for the purpose. Again, special facilities have been accorded by statute for the trans- 
 mission of sums coming due at their death since 1855, by members of registered friendly 
 societies ; since 1862, by members of registered co-operative societies ; since 1876, by 
 members of registered trade unions ; and since 1883, by depositors in savings-banks. All 
 that is necessary is that the member or depositor should sign a simple form of nomina- 
 tion of some person or persons to whom the money shall be paid by the society or bank 
 on his decease, and that, at a charge of threepence, the nomination shall be recorded in 
 a book provided in that behalf by the society or bank. Officers and servants of these 
 several institutions are excluded from benefit by such nominations, unless they are 
 nearly related to, or connected with, the nominator. Under the Provident Nominations 
 and Small Intestacies Act 1883, the amount of the sums capable of thus being passed 
 by nomination has been raised from £50 to £100. When the sum exceeds £80, after 
 the deduction of the funeral expenses of the nominator, the nominee must produce 
 a receipt for legacy or succession duty, or prove that none is payable. When the estate 
 exceeds £100 in total amount, probate duty is payable on the sum nominated, or a 
 statutory declaration may be required from the nominee that the estate does not exceed 
 £100 in amount.
 
 14 ENGLAND. 
 
 And there are other functions which our clergyman is called upon 
 to perform. He has to attend to various administrative and delibera- 
 tive duties at stated intervals in the adjoining town. Perhaps he is a 
 member of the Board of Guardians ; perhaps, and more probably, he 
 is on the directorate of the county hospital or reformatory. And yet 
 within the limits of his own village he has hygienic occupation 
 enough, as, indeed, has been already shown. He is the dispenser of 
 not a little charity of his own ; he is the distributor and trustee of 
 funds which landlords who have property in the place leave to him to 
 manage. The task may not involve much labour, but it is a singu- 
 larly ungrateful one. He has to contend against a vulgar idea that to 
 the fingers of him who has the management of money, money some- 
 how or other inevitably adheres, and the recipients of the bounty 
 secretly insinuate, or sometimes openly aver, that the sum available 
 for eleemosynary purposes is not what it ought to be. Nor is he 
 without some official connection with two of the chief institutions in 
 almost every English village — the Clothing Club and the Benefit 
 Society. As regards the former he acts as banker and accountant, 
 enters in a book all the payments made by different members to the 
 fund, and when the season for purchases arrives, draws up and signs 
 the orders on the tradesmen in the neighbouring town. 
 
 With the Benefit Society he has less to do in an official capacity. 
 These institutions may be described as organising the application ot 
 the co-operative principle, in some of its most elementary shapes, to the 
 simple conditions of rustic life. The plan of then- formation and their 
 operative method are always the same. They offer a premium to 
 thrift, but annuities, or insurance against death, do not usually enter 
 into their scheme. The average sum paid by the majority of the 
 members is fifteen shillings a year. When disabled by illness they 
 receive from the common fund nine shillings a week. In case of 
 death, each member is entitled to £3 to £0, as the expenses of his 
 funeral, and £2 to £4 in defrayal of those of his wife's. The society 
 also employs a medical man of its own, who, in consideration of a 
 certain small salary, usually about £30 a year, attends to all the 
 members without payment of any further fee. In case of permanent 
 disablement from sickness or age, the society discontinues its relief, 
 while there is a regulation, by no means invariably observed, that 
 relief shall be withheld entirely when the accident or illness is the result 
 of vicious and preventible causes — has proceeded from drunkenness 
 or any form of debauchery. An idea may be gamed of the importance 
 of these associations from the fact that in an agricultural village ot a 
 midland county, with a population ot 500, a Benefit Society, which 
 has been in existence for forty years, has at the present moment a sum 
 of £G00 invested in the Three per Cents. The treasurer of these 
 societies is usually a farmer. The clergyman is the chaplain, who is
 
 THE ENGLISH VILLAGE. 15 
 
 often consulted as to the administration of the fund, asked to arbitrate 
 in disputed cases of relief, and occasionally to advise as to investments. 
 A Benefit Society would be nothing without its annual feast ; and 
 at the banquet — 2s. 6d. per head — given on this occasion it is the 
 natural thing that the clergyman should preside. 
 
 From this, which is in no way an exaggerated account of the multi- 
 farious services that a parish clergyman is called upon to render to 
 his parishioners in their secular life, some notion may be formed of the 
 far-reaching consequences of the good or evil which he has it in his 
 power to effect. In a majority of English villages he is the soul and 
 centre of the social life of the neighbourhood, the guarantee of its 
 unity, the tribunal to which local differences and difficulties are 
 referred, and before which they are amicably settled. That this is 
 practically so is really admitted by the enemies of the Church and 
 clergy of England, when they allow that the great argument against 
 the disestablishment of the Church is the hopelessness of providing 
 anything like an efficient substitute for it in country districts. Its 
 strength, in fact, lies in its parochial organisation, and its direct con- 
 nection with the State confers a dignity upon its ministers, and secures 
 for them a confidence which Englishmen are slow to accord to men 
 who are without a public official status. 
 
 The condition of those parishes in which the resident clergyman 
 does not use the manifold influences at his disposal for good, and 
 neglects or misconceives the plain duties of his position, is the best 
 proof of the extent of clerical opportunities. The country parson 
 whom we have hitherto had in our mind's eye is a conscientious, sen- 
 sible English gentleman, anxious to do his duty towards God and his 
 neighbour, possessed of no extreme views, and bent upon the illustra- 
 tion of no subtleties of theological refinement. He lives in his parish 
 for ten months out of the twelve, and he finds that the eight or nine 
 weeks' change of scene which he thus allows himself renders him tne 
 fresher and the more capable of work when he returns. But as there 
 are absentee squires, so there are absentee parsons, and these are of 
 two or three types. There is the clergyman who has an innate dis- 
 like to country life, who has two or three marriageable daughters, as 
 many sous who require to be educated, and a fashionable, valetu- 
 dinarian wife. The worthy couple arrive at the conclusion that they 
 can stand it no longer. The girls all ought to be out in the great 
 world : they are pretty girls, they are good girls ; but what chance 
 have they of finding husbands in the seclusion of Sweet Auburn ? 
 Then the boys ought to be at school, but schooling is so expensive ! 
 Moreover, the lady is more than ever convinced that the climate does 
 not suit her ; and as for her husband, she has distinctly heard an ugly 
 dry cough, which ought to be looked after, proceed from his reverend 
 chest in the night watches. A communication is addressed to the 
 
 '6*
 
 1 6 ENGLAND. 
 
 bishop, or a personal interview is sought with his lordship, and the 
 rector and his family obtain leave of absence for a year. At the 
 expiration of this term, the application, backed by the same cogent 
 arguments, is renewed, and the leave of absence is extended. Mean- 
 while, the curate in charge, installed at the rectory at Sweet Auburn, 
 is one of the many hack parsons who abound in England, and who 
 are satisfied to do tbe duty of the place for an indefinite period, in 
 consideration of a small stipend, the whole of the produce of the 
 excellent garden, the cheapness of butcher's meat, and the salubrity 
 of the climate. The services are gone through in a slovenly, per- 
 functory manner. Sunday after Sunday the congregation becomes 
 smaller and smaller. There is very little visiting done by tbe deputy 
 incumbent of this cure of souls in the parish on week-days ; and the 
 tendency of everything is towards a relapse into primitive paganism. 
 
 So it goes on from year to year. One morning the news comes 
 that the absentee rector has died at Bath or Cheltenham. In course 
 of time his successor is appointed — an enthusiastic, devout, earnest 
 man. Perhaps it is his first experience. He had expected to find 
 Sweet Auburn all that Goldsmith had described it. He had fondly 
 looked for a cordial reception fiom clean, smiling, virtuous villagers, 
 and hearty, God-fearing farmers, Instead, he finds that his lot is cast 
 in an atmosphere of want and sin. The villagers are ill-fed, ill-clad 
 men and women, who regard the parson as their natural enemy ; the 
 farmers are grumbling malcontents, the votaries of a crass, unintelli- 
 gent disbelief, who seldom enter church, and who are wholly indifferent 
 to the cultivation of sweetness and right. The sanitary condition of 
 the place is detestable, and the new parson is aghast at the state of 
 things which confronts him. He had dreamed of Paradise, and here 
 are the squalor, filth, and vice of Seven Dials. 
 
 This is an extreme case ; it is, however, far from being the only 
 example which might be given of parochial neglect at the hands of the 
 responsible clergyman. Sloughton-in-the-Marsh is a college living. 
 It is not, indeed, likely to remain so much longer, for the master and 
 fellows of the society who have the patronage are anxious to sell it 
 and other benefices, in order that they may have increased funds at 
 their disposal for educational purposes, and for the establishment of 
 fresh university centres throughout England. For a long succession 
 of years the spiritual wants of Sloughton have been ministered to by 
 distinguished members of the college to which the living belongs, 
 who have either wearied of the life of the university, or who have 
 received the benefice as the reward of their educational efforts else- 
 where. At the present moment the rector of Sloughton may be a 
 representati\ c of any one of several distinct divisions of divines. He 
 is, perhaps, an ecclesiastical dignitary of some standing — a cathedral 
 canon and eminent preacher at Whitehall. He is a bachelor, a
 
 THE ENGLISH VILLAGE. 17 
 
 member of the Athenaeum Club, has his pied-a-terre in London, pos- 
 sibly keeps on some rooms at Oxford, and when he is at Sloughton, 
 values it chiefly on account of the opportunities of learned leisure 
 which it offers. In his absence there are a couple of curates who 
 may indeed be blameless, but who, not having the authority, cannot 
 display the efficiency of their chief. The accomplished rector, when 
 he is there, always preaches once on a Sunday, his sermon being 
 about as intelligible to his flock as an extract from Butler's " Analogy," 
 or Mansel's " Bampton Lectures;" and, being a kind-hearted as 
 well as a liberal man, visits his parishioners, and makes them presents 
 of money. 
 
 Or let it be supposed that the rector of Sloughton is in no sense 
 justly open to the imputation of absenteeism. He lives in his 
 rectory for nine months out of the twelve, and, when there, is closely 
 and constantly employed. But his occupations, which are suffi- 
 ciently exacting, have nothing whatever to do with his parishioners. 
 The fact is, he takes pupils, and edits school and college classics. 
 He is a man of blameless life, of great natural kindness, of large and 
 liberal culture. But he is a born schoolmaster or professor. He 
 would gladly dedicate his existence to researches into the genitive case 
 at Heidelberg, or he might be trusted to do all that scholarship and 
 industry could do towards improving the standard of Latin composition 
 at a school. At Sloughton he does to its fullest extent his duty by 
 his pupils and their parents. It would shock him infinitely to be told 
 that he failed to do it by his parishioners. He dislikes death-beds, it 
 is true. Surrounded by young people, he is not quite clear that he is 
 justified in entering sick-rooms when there is any suspicion of infec- 
 tious disease. Yet he has attended several death-beds in the course 
 of the last two years, and he is not aware that in any case where one 
 of his parishioners has been in sickness or sorrow he has failed to 
 attend when summoned, — or to despatch a curate. As regards his more 
 strictly ecclesiastical duties, the services in his church are performed 
 with scrupulous neatness and care. His sermons are compact, clear, 
 scholar-like little essays, capable of being understood by the most 
 untutored intellect, on popular religion and morality. It is, in fact, 
 impossible justly to accuse him of any specific dereliction of his duty ; 
 and yet the organisation of his parish is far from complete. Still, the 
 machine is kept in operation — there is no break-down ; there may be 
 apathy and indifference on many points on which it could be wished 
 that a stronger and livelier interest existed ; but there is no open feud 
 between parson and people, such as there is quite sure to be when the 
 parson feels himself compelled, for conscience sake, to run athwart 
 the popular will. It may be matter of satisfaction that the race of 
 orthodox high and dry clerics is disappearing from the face of the 
 earth, and that the clergyman who hunts three days a week is becoming
 
 18 ENGLAND. 
 
 an anachronism. But it is probable that none of these was the instru- 
 ment of as much mischief, as much alienation from religion itself, as 
 the country parson who believes that it is his sacred duty violently to 
 break with the ecclesiastical traditions of his parish — to introduce 
 the representation of a high Anglican ritual, if the antecedents of the 
 place have been Protestant and Evangelical ; or to root out the last 
 traces of Anglicanism with iconoclastic fervour and indignation, if his 
 predecessor has belonged to the school of Keble and Pusey. Common 
 sense and infinite tolerance are as indispensable in the successful cler- 
 gyman as devotion to duty, and they are virtues which were perhaps 
 more uniformly forthcoming among the working parsons of the old 
 school than among the self-sacrificing but indiscreetly zealous and 
 aggressive apostles of the new. 
 
 But it will be contended by many persons that the view which has 
 here been presented of the country parson is an illusion born of weak 
 partiality for the Establishment, and that even the instances of by 
 no means model parsons which have been given are far from being 
 sufficiently unfavourable to be frequently true. Some clergymen in 
 rural England, it will be said, are drunken; others are in a chronic 
 state of insolvency ; many are ignorant, unlettered — not merely devoid 
 of knowledge, but devoid of the wish to acquire knowledge. Many, it • 
 may be admitted, are indifferent, careless, worldly, putting on piety 
 with their surplices, and keeping their conscience in their cassocks. 
 Some champions of disestablishment and disendowment, it has been 
 said, admit that the chief obstacle in the way of disestablishment is 
 the provision of an adequate substitute for the parochial system of the 
 Church of England in rural districts. But others boldly declare that 
 the parson is the reverse of a beneficent institution, that he is not the 
 connecting-link between social extremes, that he never takes the edge 
 off class quarrels, that he does not act and cannot act, by his influence 
 with the employer, as an advanced guard of the interests of the 
 employed. From this point of view, the parson represents in matters 
 spiritual the principle of superstition, and in matters temporal the 
 principles of tyranny and greed. So far from being a lavish dispenser 
 of his own charity, or a just dispenser of the charity of others, the 
 country clergyman systematically diverts from its proper object to his 
 own pocket the bounty bequeathed by the dead to tho living. As he 
 is a grievous impediment in the way of their worldly welfare, so, 
 according to this view, has he been in the past, and is in the present, 
 a serious, if not fatal, hindrance to the secular enlightenment of the 
 poor. He is, in fact, one of an odious trio — of which the two other 
 members are the farmer and the landlord — leagued against the work- 
 ing classes, and pledged to oppose whatever may conduce to their 
 welfare. It will help you nothing, in arguing with persons who think 
 in this way, to adduce instances within your own knowledge in which
 
 THE ENGLISH VILLAGE. 19 
 
 such imputations upon the clergy are emphatically untrue. If you 
 mention names, you will simply be told that these are exceptions. If 
 you draw attention to cases in which clergymen are doing battle for 
 the people with the great landlords, not only when there has been ah 
 educational issue concerned, but when such purely material issues are 
 at stake as a rigbt of way, or a right of cutting turf, you are at once 
 overwhelmed with an entire catalogue of alleged contradictory experi- 
 ences. The parson, as depicted for the benefit of the agricultural 
 labourer by his champions, is one half a designing mystery-man, and 
 the other half a smooth-speeched bandit. He has entered into a 
 secret compact with the landlord and tenant of the soil that he will 
 help them to grind the peasant to impotence, and to do his utmost to 
 prevent him from ever learning to rise to the majesty of manhood, or 
 the active enjoyment of full political rights. 
 
 To help him in this sinister purpose, he has clothed himself with 
 superstitious attributes, and he invokes a supernatural sanction. If he 
 has seemed actively to contribute to the advancement of education in 
 the days when no Education Act existed, it has merely been that, by 
 establishing an educational monopoly, he might retard and hinder a 
 degraded peasantry in their struggles towards enlightenment. The 
 facts of English history he has perverted to his own sectarian purpose ; 
 the tbree " R.'s " themselves he has, in some way or other, made the 
 vehicles of his own reactionary sacerdotalism. The one object of his 
 life is to keep the labourers and their families in a state of ignorance 
 and subjection. Knowledge is power; is it conceivable, therefore, 
 that he should have been the disinterested friend of education ? To 
 taste of privilege, or freely to enjoy an undoubted right, begets the 
 desire to taste further and enjoy more ; how, therefore, can it be 
 doubted that the parson, in league with the proprietor, is always 
 ready to stop up field paths, and to enclose fresh acres of common 
 land? 
 
 One of the questions periodically addressed by the Agricultural 
 Labourers' Union is, " How many charities are there in your parish, 
 and do the clergy distribute them among those who do not go to 
 church equally with those who do ? " And again, " Don't you think 
 the clergy uphold bad laws made by landlords, which are an unmiti- 
 gated system of robbery ? " * These inquiries are made apparently 
 not so much for the purpose of eliciting information as of serving 
 as texts for inflammatory indictments against the clergyman. The 
 refrain of all is the same. The moral pointed never varies — that the 
 agricultural poor cannot come by their own till the black terror has 
 been exorcised. The clergyman, so his rural parishioners are told, is 
 
 * These questions are taken verbatim from a long list addressed by a prominent 
 member of the Union, Mr. George Mitchell, to the rural labourers of England, on the 
 eve of an agricultural demonstration near Yeovil, on Whit-Monday, 1881.
 
 20 ENGLAND. 
 
 the self-seeking jackal of station and wealth. He combines with the 
 lawyer to plunder the poor of the larger part of those charities which 
 have been left for the poor man's enjoyment. He combines with the 
 parish doctor — as slavish an instrument of territorial despotism as 
 himself — to drive the labourer into pauperism, by a host of base de- 
 vices. He understands, although his helpless victims often do not, that 
 any relief from the rates constitutes a political disqualification. There- 
 fore he is perpetually contriving that the parish doctor should attend 
 the wife or child of the peasant, providing such medicines as may be 
 wauted at the parish expense. Nothing which can be said with the 
 object of showing that neither in town nor in country is the parson 
 anything but the poor man's enemy is left unsaid. 
 
 The result of the ideas which are thus diffused by printed broad- 
 sheets and itinerant spouters has still to be seen. It is even admitted 
 by the chief agitators themselves, who, arguing from certain periods 
 of the Church's history and certain excesses of the ecclesiastical 
 temperament, can bring forward some colourable justification for their 
 invective, that the Established Church cannot be successfully attacked 
 before the working classes have been thoroughly educated. When 
 tbe Education Acts of 1870 and 1876, supplemented by a variety of 
 educational influences not less valuable than legislation itself, have 
 done their work, then, and not till then, will the emancipation of the 
 people from the fetters of priestcraft fairly begin. It is further 
 allowed that the Church of England has, and will continue to have, a 
 stronger claim for consideration' in country districts than in towns. 
 And this for the simple reason that the machinery of self-improve- 
 ment, which is the most certain enemy of the Established Church, is 
 more easily to be found in towns. For three centuries the Church of 
 England has been on its trial. That probationary period has not yet 
 expired, nor can it ever expire. The Establishment will be judged by 
 its fruits, and directly the quality of its harvests is justly open to 
 general suspicion, directly it is felt that its agency can with advantage 
 be superseded by any other, directly this substitute assumes a tangible 
 shape, and admits of clear definition, the attack upon it will enter on 
 a new phase. It is only the earlier operations of the assault which 
 are now being felt ; it is the menace, not the decree, of a change 
 which has been pronounced. Whether the attack will be successful, 
 and the great experiment of a State Church will be openly declared a 
 failure, depends not so much upon the tactics of the party of aggres- 
 sion as upon the policy of the officers employed in the defence. The 
 future of the Church of England, in town and country alike, is mainly 
 in the hands, not of its enemies, but of its clergy. If the days of 
 priestcraft have gone by, it does not follow that the English people 
 are at all anxious to dispense with the organised assistance of a 
 national clergy, such as that clergy has here been described as being.
 
 THE ENGLISH VILLAGE. 21 
 
 There are two chief difficulties by which the country parson some- 
 times complains that his path is beset. Of these one consists of the 
 farmers, the other of the Dissenters of his parish. Both classes are 
 undeniably distinct powers in most English villages. Their attitude 
 towards the parson may be one of active opposition, or passive 
 neutrality, or goodwill and energetic assistance. Which of these 
 it is to be may sometimes depend upon causes beyond the clergy- 
 man's control, but is more frequently regulated by the policy he 
 may himself pursue, and the amount of discretion he may display. 
 There is as much variety among the farmers as among any other 
 section of the population. They differ greatly even in adjacent 
 parishes, and the interval of a mile often separates a social stratum 
 that is wholly satisfactory from one which is thoroughly bad. But 
 taking them in the mass, the tenant agriculturists of England have 
 displayed marked and rapid improvement in the course of the last 
 five-and-twenty years. The small British farmer of the old time, 
 crass, ignorant, wrong-headed, stingy, heavy with beer, or steeped in 
 spirits, superior only to his labourers in having more money to com- 
 mand the opportunities of self-indulgence, is gradually disappearing. 
 He is being replaced by a successor of a better type, who reads and 
 thinks for himself, who does not believe that education is necessarily a 
 bad thing, who perceives that to supplement wages by the wanton 
 increase of the poor rate is a short-sighted as well as a generally 
 mischievous policy, and is no longer blindly opposed to contributing 
 a reasonable measure of assistance to the village school. He is thus 
 the parson's friend rather than his uncompromising foe, and in villages 
 where specimens of the older and less honoured variety still linger, it 
 will usually be discovered that the public opinion of his class is 
 against him. 
 
 As the farmer's sons are already in training to surpass the virtues 
 of their sire, so his daughters are rapidly rising to the higher levels of 
 modern enlightenment. They have been well educated, their educa- 
 tion being finished at a carefully selected boarding-school. If there 
 is anything to criticise in their attainments, it is, perhaps, that they 
 might have received a little more instruction in the plain duties of the 
 housewife. But this will come with experience, and meanwhile, the 
 influence which they exercise at home, w r ith their taste for music, 
 books, and flowers, is a genuinely humanising one. They have the 
 ordinary accomplishments of ladies, and they have manners which are 
 quite up to the ordinary drawing-room standard. They represent, in 
 brief, a new and a better force in the economy of rural England, which 
 is probably destined to do quite as much good in its way as school 
 boards and school attendance committees. 
 
 With reference to Dissenters, it is necessary to distinguish between 
 Nonconformity as it exists in country districts and as it exists in towns.
 
 22 ENGLAND. 
 
 In the latter, it usually assumes more or less of a political complexion, 
 and is often aggressively hostile to the State Church as an institution 
 and to the clergymen who are its officers. In the former, it is seldom 
 tinged with political partisanship of any kind, though its hold upon the 
 rural population, in some parts of England, is deep. The influence of 
 Wesley and Whitfield survives to this day. In all those counties where 
 John Wesley preached, notably in Cornwall, his tradition remains, and, 
 co-operating with the emotional Celtic temperament, continues to be 
 the inspiring element of a deeply cherished popular creed. Again, in 
 the north of England, Dissent is organised with great compactness 
 and power among the manufacturing classes. But with these excep- 
 tions, it will generally be found that families have deserted the church 
 for the chapel from a real or an imaginary failure on the part of the 
 clergyman to supply their spiritual wants, from some lamentable 
 deficiency of ecclesiastical tact, or from some exceptional combination 
 of personal causes. Farmers and labourers alike, in the rural districts, 
 are generally prepared to give their preference to the church rather 
 than to the chapel. In cases of birth, marriage, and death, and in all 
 the solemn crises of life, it is to the ministrations of the church that 
 they naturally turn. Yet calling themselves Churchmen, they hold 
 that they are free to attend chapel, if the teaching in the church seems 
 to them false or profitless. Their social relations frequently tend to 
 confirm this view. Connected by blood or marriage with purely 
 Dissenting families, they share many of the religious prejudices and 
 theological sentiments of their kinsfolk. When kindness, courtesy, 
 judgment, and a discreet tolerance in the inculcation of theological 
 dogmas are forthcoming, when the clergyman disarms Dissent by 
 showing that he neither fears, hates, nor suspects it, when he addresses 
 his congregation on subjects of practical interest, remembering that 
 even doctrines have their practical side, in language which they can 
 all understand, when he does not too emphatically accentuate denomi- 
 national differences, — then he will in all probability, unless they happen 
 to be subject to the influence of some very wrong-headed leaders, not 
 merely have no trouble with his Dissenters, but will find them among 
 the most regular attendants at his church. 
 
 It must always be remembered that English religion — especially in 
 the rural districts— -owes a great debt to the beneficent agencies of 
 Nonconformity in past times. When, during the first thirty years 
 of the current century, the activity and efficiency of the Church of 
 England were at their lowest ebb, Dissent was in many places the 
 only influence that preserved the vital spark of Christianity. The 
 spirit which now animates the clergymen of the Establishment as a 
 body may have rendered the services of Dissent superfluous. The 
 practical experiences of a great number of clergymen would confirm 
 this view. The rector of a parish, in one of the most dissenting
 
 THE ENGLISH VILLAGE. 23 
 
 portions of the West of England, remarked not long ago to a woman, 
 at whose cottage he had called, that he was afraid she neglected 
 religion, since he had never seen her at church. She immediately 
 replied that she " always went to chapel." " I am delighted," he 
 quickly and sagaciously rejoined, " to hear it : I want you to go 
 somewhere to worship God. Pray, be sure you keep your chapel 
 regularly." Repeating his visit after an interval of about three 
 months, he remarked: "I hope you have been regularly to chapel 
 since I was last here ? " "I have never," was the answer, " entered 
 chapel since." " I am sorry," said the clergyman, " to hear it ; why 
 have you not done so ? " " Have you not," the woman with evident 
 surprise asked, " seen me ? I have been at church every Sunday 
 since you called last. I thought that as you did not ' run out against' 
 the chapel-goers, I should like to hear you." This is a true story, 
 and it points a moral which is at least suggestive. The influences of 
 Dissent alone never yet produced the disruption of a village and the 
 desertion of a church. In most instances, where these things have 
 occurred, it will be found that it is the tactics adopted by the repre- 
 sentatives and champions of the Church which have organised Dis- 
 senters into a powerfully offensive body, and ranged them in an 
 implacably hostile camp.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 GREAT LANDLORDS, AND ESTATE MANAGEMENT. 
 
 The Popular Conception of the Life of a Territorial Aristocracy inaccurate -Generally 
 Absorbing Character of the Duties attending Management of Property -The Daily 
 Life of an English Noble and Landlord — General Principles of Administration of 
 Large Properties — The Estates of the Dukes of Westminster and Northumberland — 
 The Alnwick Property — From Newcastle to Tynemouth — Farmers on the Alnwick 
 Property, their Management and Supervision — Management of the Duke of Devon- 
 shire's Property — Management of the Duke of Cleveland's — Review of Features 
 chiefly Prominent in English Estate Management generally — The Ecclesiastical 
 Commissioners' Estates — The Management of Smaller Properties. 
 
 It is time to turn from the reflection and model of the ecclesiastical 
 power, as it may be seen in the typical English village, to the depart- 
 ment of purely civil and secular authority. We have seen the parson 
 combining with his sacred calling not a few temporal attributes ; let 
 us now look at that portion of the machinery of English life which is 
 exclusively temporal, and at the individual persons, of varying grades 
 of dignity, who happen to be entrusted with its exercise. If there is 
 one lesson which it seems reasonable that the wealthier members of 
 the great hereditary aristocracy of England should learn from the 
 complex and unending duties of their station, it is that, however wide 
 and absolute their authority, they can never escape the cares and 
 responsibilities of trusteeship. The popular notion of their existence 
 and its duties is not unlike the childish notion of the life of the 
 sovereign — the successful pursuit of pleasure in all its varied forms 
 by easy and thornless paths. The year of the titled nobility of the 
 realm is thought to divide itself into two parts, of which one is the 
 London season. Eine equipages, great entertainments, public ban- 
 quets, private dinners, the clubs, the park, casual strolls to the House 
 of Lords twice or thrice a week — these to the multitude are the chief 
 features in their existence between the months of February and 
 August. They are varied later, by many visits for purposes of sport 
 or pleasure to country palaces and mansions, to foreign capitals, to 
 continental lakes. Rather more than half the year is devoted entirely 
 to the race after excitement elsewhere than in the fashionable quarters 
 of the capital. The London season comes to an end, and there is 
 the departure for the grouse moors of the North. The shutters are 
 put up in the great houses of Belgravia and Mayfair, because the
 
 GREAT LANDLORDS, AND ESTATE MANAGEMENT. 25 
 
 noble and fashionable proprietors have gone off to Homburg, are taking 
 the waters at Vichy, or are circumnavigating the globe in the floating 
 palaces known as yachts. The popular fancy may fill in the picture 
 as it will, but the tints chosen are sure to be those of enjoyment, 
 luxury, and an absence of all worldly cares. 
 
 Those who entertain less conventional notions, and have had oppor- 
 tunities of closer observation, would suggest a few alterations both in 
 outline and detail. They know that even the highest rank has its duties 
 and its toils, that occupation is eagerly sought by those who could well 
 afford to dispense with it, and that pure idleness is not necessarily the 
 highest bliss to the heir of an ancient and exalted title. They point to 
 the fact that even in the absence of political ambition, other motives 
 of disquiet and unrest agitate the most unquestionably patrician breasts. 
 They notice how the proprietors of immense estates and princely 
 revenues plunge into occupations, with as fixed a resolve to succeed 
 as if their future livelihood depended on their success. And these 
 views, in respect to that considerable section of the aristocracy which 
 not only acknowledges but performs the duties of its station, are 
 abundantly proved by experience. In spite of the effect of early edu- 
 cation, notwithstanding the enervating and sometimes positively noxious 
 influences of the atmosphere in which their boyhood and youth have 
 been passed — an atmosphere of adulation, indulgence, deference, servile 
 and senseless homage — many of the inheritors of fabulous wealth will 
 be found sternly buckling on their armour, and eager to do battle with 
 the rough world. When it is remembered that there is no lot so trying 
 on this earth as that of the youth of one who is, or who is destined in 
 the fulness of time to be, a great English Peer, the wonder is, not 
 that some proportion of English peers have no other ideal than one of 
 self-gratification, but that so many of them set to the nobility of every 
 other European countiy an example of energetic devotion to public or 
 private duty. 
 
 But it is not on the political position and opportunities of the 
 Peerage that stress will now be laid. Let us look at the functions 
 and engagements of its members as the lords of the soil. A consider- 
 able landowner may find enough to occupy every moment of his time 
 in the management of his private affairs and in his social duties. A 
 country gentleman who shoots a little, hunts a little, looks after his 
 property personally, is bent on improving it, and only calls in the 
 services of a bailiff to supplement his own defective experience, will 
 in reality find that he has as few spare minutes as a merchant's clerk. 
 The higher the personage is placed in the social scale, the more anxious 
 and laborious is his life. It is now beginning to be known that many 
 hours are daily devoted by Her Majesty to the consideration of State 
 documents, and the weighing of Ministerial policy. The Queen's more 
 illustrious subjects can as little afford to be idle as the Queen herself.
 
 26 ENGLAND. 
 
 The great landlords of England are really the rulers of principalities. 
 They are at the head of not one department, but of three or four 
 different departments of State. They are charged with the admiuis- 
 tration of a miniature empire, which often embraces a number of pro- 
 vinces whose conditions, resources, and necessities differ as much as 
 if they were separate kingdoms. 
 
 What is the daily life of a territorial magnate such as this, even in 
 London, when the season is at its height ? As surely as ten o'clock 
 comes each morning he will seek his library, where his correspond- 
 ence is spread on the table for his perusal. The letters are written 
 by all kinds of people, and with all kinds of aims. Some are from 
 tenants on his estates, who want repairs done, or apply for permis- 
 sion to make alterations in their holdings ; others are from bailiff's 
 and stewards, and embody reports of their periodical tours of 
 inspection. Others are mere begging letters from a legion of mendi- 
 cant correspondents. There is not one of these to which our great 
 man will not give his personal consideration. On the back or margin 
 of each he will note down the nature of the reply to be sent, and 
 when he has thus gone through the entire number, he confers with his 
 secretary. 
 
 It is easy enough to dispose of the applications from tenants, large 
 or small. In some cases they are obviously admissible, in a few they 
 are transparently the reverse, in others they are referred to an agent 
 who is on the spot. As regards the requests which the post has 
 brought with it that his Grace will grant of his generosity a sum for 
 the adornment of a church or the building of a school, some of these 
 clearly lie outside the area of his legitimate beneficence. The decision 
 on some is postponed, and on some is immediately given in the affir- 
 mative. It is different with the purely eleemosynary applications. 
 Here every entreaty for alms is probably referred to the Charity 
 Organisation Society, but at the same time an acknowledgment of 
 these letters is sent by return of post to the whole host of needy 
 correspondents. Nothing, however, is given until the Society has 
 reported. If the report is favourable, if the case is deserving, a sum 
 is sent to the Society, or to the secretary of one of its local branches, • 
 to be distributed in its full amount at once, or in instalments to be 
 spread over a certain number of weeks. Let it be further supposed 
 that our great man is not only a mighty landowner in the country, but 
 that he is the possessor of priceless acres, covered with mansions, 
 in town. In this case, he has, of course, a central estate office, 
 in which a staff' of agents and their clerks are employed. Once a week 
 a board meeting is held, at which the landlord hears a full account 
 of all that is being done, or that it is in contemplation to do, by the 
 lessees of his property. Documents are examined — opinions of experts 
 are given. The surveyor controverts or supports the desirability of a
 
 GREAT LANDLORDS, AND ESTATE MANAGEMENT. 27 
 
 concession ; the architect reports favourably or unfavourably concerning 
 the outline of a house. Attendance at these meetings is in itself a 
 kind of professional education. The great man takes his place in his 
 council chamber, and at his side is the son who will one day rule in 
 his stead, and who is being thus early trained in the management of 
 a flairs. 
 
 The administration of every department of the property is con- 
 ducted upon the same precise principles. Routine is followed as 
 closely in all its method and punctuality as in a Government office or 
 a model commercial business. Take the single question of accounts, 
 whether they come under the head of household or estate expenditure. 
 The turn-over — to employ a mercantile metaphor — is tens of thousands 
 in the year; but there is as little chance of a halfpenny being unaccounted 
 for when the Christmas quarter expires, as there is of the ledgers of 
 Coutts's bank being sixpence wrong on the morning of any given first 
 of January. The accounts of the agents on the estates in the north of 
 England, the south of England, and in London itself, are forwarded at 
 fixed periods, and are duly audited by the retainer who is personally 
 attached to, and who is always in immediate attendance on, the 
 great man, with clerks and deputy agents at his disposal. The books 
 are kept with the exactness of the books of a life assurance office. As 
 it is known what the expenditure upon the property ought to be, so 
 also do the means exist which render it possible to check with unerr- 
 ing accuracy the expenditure of the household. The steward forwards 
 his statement of money actually expended — or, rather, of bills incurred 
 — once a month, all accounts being settled at monthly intervals. It is 
 not only the actual amount spent in any particular period of four weeks 
 and a few days which is entered in these volumes; the number of 
 persons to be provided for is noted as well. Thus an average is struck ; 
 and, given the size of the household during any month, reference to 
 earlier entries will supply the data for a verdict of the reasonableness 
 of the pecuniary statement especially under review. 
 
 There are fewer points of difference to be noted in the out-door 
 management of the great estates of England than formerly. The ten- 
 dency undoubtedly has been to reduce varieties to a dead level of 
 excellence and merit. Picturesque customs and the perpetuation of 
 romantic and feudal traditions will be looked for in vain ic all save a few 
 cases. It is worth observing that whereas such survivals are occasionally 
 found on properties which have been from the first in the hands of secu- 
 lar lords, theyare practically unknown on estates which were transferred 
 to secular owners at the time of the Reformation. It would, in fact, seem 
 as if the aristocracy who profited by the destruction of the monasteries, 
 anxious to break at once and for ever with the old regime, immediately 
 plunged into the modern and prosaic period. This is notably the case 
 with the great House of Bedford, whose property, however, once pos-
 
 28 ENGLAND. 
 
 sessed, in all matters appertaining to its administration, certain 
 marked peculiarities. Prominent among these was the establishment 
 of an industrial village, which was an integral part of the property at 
 Woburn. The remains of this settlement are still to be seen in the 
 tall factory tower conspicuous amid the trees. In the old days, a 
 generation or two ago, the whole place resounded with the din of 
 labour. The estate of the Duke of Bedford was then self-sufficient, 
 in the Aristotelian sense of the word. If a house or cottage had to 
 be built, rails or gates to be put up, repairs of any kind, whether on 
 the roofs of the tenements above or in the drainage of the ground 
 beneath, to be- effected, the workmen to execute the task were ready 
 and at hand within the confines of Woburn Abbey. If the same work 
 had to be done on other portions of the ducal domains in different 
 parts of England, a contingent from the Bedfordshire organisation 
 was drafted off. There was something eminently feudal in the 
 scheme, and there was much which, in its day, was not without its 
 practical advantages. But the shrewd heads of the ducal house began 
 to find that the time had arrived when money could be saved, and 
 the work done as effectively, if they resorted to the open market. 
 The Woburn organisation was dissolved, and contracts with master 
 builders and others took its place. 
 
 On the Duke of Westminster's Cheshire estate, at Eaton, a system 
 not unlike that which formerly existed at Woburn is still in force. 
 Here a staff of workmen are maintained at a distance of two miles 
 from his Grace's house, in a place known as " The Yard." The Yard 
 is, in fact, a small industrial village, and is filled with workshops and 
 workmen's dwellings. To become attached to this staff is generally 
 regarded as a piece of promotion and luck. The actual money value 
 of these places is not, indeed, in excess of the wages of labourers 
 elsewhere. The actual wages may be a trifle lower, but so also is the 
 rent of the houses, while the accommodation and sanitary arrange- 
 ments are perfect in every detail. Men know well enough that they 
 have but to obtain the position, and to conduct themselves well, 
 and that their future in life is secure. They will be encouraged to 
 practise the virtue of thrift, and working steadily through the years 
 of strength and manhood, they will find that provision has been made 
 for old age, sickness, or death. But the stall' of workmen thus main- 
 tained at Eaton is not sufficient for the wants of the property at all 
 seasons of the year. The Duke assumes, in the majority of instances, 
 responsibility for the repair of farm buildings and cottages, and the 
 contingent of the Eaton Yard labourers has to be reinforced by help 
 from without. In such cases as these, the necessary arrangements 
 are, of course, made by contract, and it would probably be a rare 
 exception to find any largo property in the present day on which the 
 contract system does not exist to a greater or less extent.
 
 GREAT LANDLORDS, AND ESTATE MANAGEMENT. 29 
 
 If we would see how onerous and complex estate management may 
 be, how nearly the power and responsibilities of a great rural poten- 
 tate approach to those of royalty, what various departments the 
 principality of an English noble may include, how wide is the know- 
 ledge and how incessant the care necessaiy for dealing with each, we 
 cannot do better than go to the most northern county of England. 
 We will select a district of which Alnwick Castle is the centre, and 
 take a rapid survey of the dominion of the Duke of Northumberland. 
 The ancestral home of the Percies may be said in a sense to symbolise 
 the character of their realm. It is a feudal castle, at once in a park 
 and in a town. On one side, opposite the chief gate, is the main 
 street of Alnwick, a thriving community of some six thousand souls ; 
 on the other side, strictly speaking on all the other sides, is the park, 
 holding within its broad limits every variety of woodland scenery, of 
 moor and forest, of rugged mountain, of well-tended shrubbery and 
 of rich pasture land. A river of uncertain depth and breadth traverses 
 the vast domain — now a rivulet, and now a foaming torrent ; here so 
 shallow that the sands which form its channel give it all their colour, 
 and here a series of deep, dark pools, where the salmon-trout lie ; at 
 one part overhung by trees, at another flowing on through an un- 
 shaded bed of shingle and rock. There are drives, under artificially 
 formed avenues, along a road as smooth as that running from Hyde 
 Park Corner to the Marble Arch ; but a little distance off, the path is 
 steep and rocky, and one is in the heart of a complete sylvan solitude, 
 with a deer park on one hand, while on the other rise the bleak 
 heights which the black game love. 
 
 The situation of the castle typifies the nature of the estate, because 
 the Duke of Northumberland derives his revenues partly from urban, 
 partly from rural sources. He is the lord of many acres wholly 
 given up to the farmer ; he has also acres burrowed by collieries and 
 rich in mineral wealth, and acres which are part of, or which have 
 been already annexed to, the great capital of the district, the famous 
 port of Newcastle-on-Tyne. As he has farms and villages, so he is 
 proprietor of the soil on which docks and entire towns are built. Mid- 
 way between Newcastle and Tynemouth an army of labourers is 
 briskly employed in excavating and clearing away the soil, admitting 
 the waters of the Tyne farther into the land, and in erecting mighty 
 walls of granite, and cement, almost as indestructible as granite, 
 as bulwarks against the river. The works are undertaken by and 
 at the expense of the Tyne River Commissioners. But the land 
 is the Duke of Northumberland's, and has been acquired by the 
 Commission on a perpetual ground rent. The ducal interests are 
 represented on that Commission, and the plans for the new docks 
 have been submitted to the Duke. We go a few miles farther down 
 the river, and at last reach the point where it discharges itself
 
 30 ENGLAND. 
 
 into the German Ocean. We have, in fact, reached Tynemouth, at 
 once the Brighton, Ramsgate, and Margate of the prosperous inhabi- 
 tants of Newcastle-on-Tyne. A more breezy watering-place, a nobler 
 expanse of sands, a finer frontage of sea could not be desired. It is 
 plain that Tynemouth is a pleasure-town of modern growth. It is 
 plain also — from the predominance of the word " Percy " in the 
 names of the new streets, crescents, and gardens — to whom Tyne- 
 mouth belongs. One of the last titles which may have caught the 
 eye of the traveller as he drives in a cab to St. Pancras Station is 
 perhaps Woburn Place, or Tavistock Place. Suppose that he leaves 
 the train at Bedford : Tavistock or Woburn is still the legend on the 
 first trim row of houses which meets his glance. The influence and 
 power of the great families of England are ubiquitous. There is no 
 escaping from them ; they are shown alike in city and country, in 
 town and suburb. At one end of Tynemouth a new building has 
 been constructed, with adjacent pleasure-grounds and picturesque 
 walls ; it is a winter garden and aquarium, built by the inhabitants of 
 the place on ground which is given them by the benevolent despot of 
 the ' district, the Duke of Northumberland, for a nominal rent. A 
 splendid new road has just been completed : it is the Duke of 
 Northumberland at whose expense the work has been done. What 
 Eastbourne is to his Grace of Devonshire, Tynemouth is to his Grace 
 of Northumberland. There is an obvious advantage in the supreme 
 control of a town being thus vested in one landlord. The place is 
 sure not to be disfigured by hideous buildings, and not to be spoiled 
 by an irruption of undesirable visitors. At Eastbourne and at Tyne- 
 mouth there are laws that are inflexible as those of the Medes and 
 Persians against the erection of houses which do not come up to a 
 certain standard of beauty and solidity. 
 
 Make a circular tour of twenty miles in the neighbourhood of 
 Tynemouth, and you will perpetually find yourself on the property 
 of " The Duke." It is not a picturesque neighbourhood, but it is 
 covered by snug homesteads and farm-buildings — the perfection of 
 cleanness and neatness. The soil is fairly fertile, but the chief wealth 
 of the land is underneath. We are, in fact, now on the Duke of 
 Northumberland's mining property. The colliers have just finished 
 their spell of work, and are going home to their pretty cottages with 
 the well-cared-for gardens behind, and their porches covered with 
 honeysuckle and roses. The mine is in the hands of a company, 
 p; iving a royalty on its produce, and that is the arrangement usually 
 adopted where the soil is rich in minerals. For extent and variety 
 combined, the Duke of Northumberland's property is perhaps 
 unequalled in the United Kingdom. A drive of thirteen miles from 
 Acklington to Alnwick will take you through a tract of country utterly 
 different from that in the vicinity of Tynemouth, which belongs
 
 GREAT LANDLORDS. AND ESTATE MANAGEMENT. 31 
 
 entirely to him. It is a rich farming district, the average size of 
 each farm being four or five hundred acres. Some of the farms on 
 the Northumberland property are nearly ten times this size. But 
 inasmuch as the ground let with them is for the most part sterile 
 moorland and highland, their size is in an inverse ratio to their value. 
 England can show no better specimens of farming than are here to 
 be seen, no better homesteads, no more capacious and scientifically 
 arranged out-houses, stables, and farm-yards, no more comfortable 
 dwellings for the farm-labourers themselves. The Duke's tenants are 
 thorough masters of their calling, and are in what is spoken of as a 
 large way of business. There is no new improvement or invention 
 relating to the tillage of the soil or the increase of its capacities which 
 is not speedily adopted, no precaution possible to human foresight 
 and experience for reducing the evil consequences of ungenial and 
 inclement seasons which is not taken. It is a peculiarity of the 
 Northumberland property that in almost every case the labourers live 
 within a few minutes' call of the farmer who employs them. Each 
 farm is, in fact, a compact, self-contained industrial settlement. 
 There is the farm-house itself — a complete modern mansion, with all 
 the improvements of modern times, furnished within like what it is, 
 the residence of an educated gentleman of the nineteenth century — 
 the farm-buildings, with their copious supply of light, air, and water, 
 granaries, barns, and the most approved apparatus for the prevention 
 of waste in every shape ; and finally, grouped around or flanking 
 these, the cottages of the labourers, with their porch, oven and tank, 
 cool larder, and little plots of garden ground before and behind. 
 
 Such are the external features of a typical English property of the 
 first order of magnitude. What is the principle of its internal 
 management, and the system of its general administration ? The 
 chief agent or commissioner of this vast domain, with its manifold 
 industries and opportunities, its physical characteristics and resources 
 as diverse as the features in the wide-spread landscape which it 
 includes, must necessarily be a man of large experience, great practical 
 knowledge, with a quick eye, a tenacious memory, an apt judge of 
 character, a thorough farmer, a first-rate man of business, equally 
 fitted for the supervision of purely agricultural and purely commercial 
 affairs. He is responsible to his chief for the protection of his interests 
 and the improvement of his property, of whatever kind. He has to 
 negotiate with river commissioners and town corporations. He has 
 to conclude and superintend the execution of contracts. He has to 
 listen to applications from tenants, to see to the redress of grievances, 
 to decide what demands are reasonable and what suggestions are 
 wise, to judge whether it is desirable that repairs in any farm- 
 buildings or farm-house shall be undertaken this year or shall be 
 postponed until the next, to know accurately what are the works in
 
 32 ENGLAND. 
 
 any particular department of which the state of the ducal exchequer 
 will admit at any particular time, to communicate on all these matters 
 periodically with the Duke, to keep an eye over the expenditure and 
 income of what is in itself a little empire. How does he set to work 
 to do all this ? The entire estate is mapped out into provinces called, 
 in the case of the Northumberland property, " bailiwicks." It is for 
 the commissioner to see that at the head of each bailiwick is placed 
 a proper and responsible person. Applicants for the position are, as 
 may be supposed, overwhelmingly numerous. Estate management 
 has become a profession, and the younger sons of the great families 
 are among those who seek employment in it. 
 
 But the agents superintending the bailiwicks form only one division 
 of the commissioner's staff. Entering the court3-ard of Alnwick 
 Castle by the town gate, one finds immediately on the right hand the 
 Alnwick estate office. Here once every week the commissioner sees 
 any one of the Duke's tenants who desires an interview, for whatever 
 purpose. Here, too, he meets his representatives. It is from this 
 office that all orders are issued as to the repairs which are to be done ; 
 and if a builder wishes to contract for any work it is to this office that 
 his application is made. The official who is directly concerned with 
 this branch of the office is the " clerk of the works." The agents on 
 the separate bailiwicks report that on such-and-such a farm it is 
 desirable that such-and-such things shall be done ; the Duke's com- 
 missioner at once instructs the clerk of the works, who proceeds to 
 look at the matter from a technical point of view, to consider the 
 feasibility of the proposal. He too, in his turn, makes a report, which 
 includes an estimate of the expenditure and other observations. This 
 document comes before the commissioner, who, if he is of opinion that 
 the time is ripe for the enterprise, and that the Duke's hands are not 
 already too full, forwards the entire series of papers, or a precis of 
 them, to his Grace, who writes his answer, "Yes" or "No," "I 
 approve" or "I disapprove," in the margin. It may, and does 
 occasionally, happen that there is a conflict of opinion between the 
 bailiwick agent and the clerk of the works, or architect, as to the 
 expediency of some specific proposal. They may disagree as to the 
 exact spot on which certain buildings are to be erected ; the extent to 
 which certain repairs are to be carried ; the necessity for carrying out 
 any repairs at all. In such cases the commissioner himself will be 
 called upon to arbitrate, and his decision in that stage of the business 
 is final. The Duke reserves to himself the right of sanctioning or 
 rejecting the proposal ; but direct communication between the Duke 
 and his agents, or the Duke and his tenants, there is none. 
 
 Next to the Duke of Northumberland's Alnwick estate that of the 
 Duke of Cleveland in Durham is probably the largest owned by any 
 one proprietor in any single county. It commences four miles
 
 GREAT LANDLORDS, AND ESTATE MANAGEMENT. 33 
 
 to the west of Darlington, a town which contrasts in every respect 
 with Alnwick. Here there are no visible signs of that feudal in- 
 fluence which we have seen outside the walls of the Percys. Great 
 chimneys, which are to the great manufacturing centres of England 
 what the forests of masts are to its great harbours, are to be seen from 
 afar. The atmosphere is heavy with smoke, and the streets swarm 
 with stalwart workmen. Look where you will, there is nothing to 
 remind one of the old county town, dominated by the social in- 
 fluences of a ruling house. Darlington is twelve miles distant 
 from Raby Castle, which is as nearly as possible the centre of the 
 Duke of Cleveland's principality. There is nothing quite like Raby 
 elsewhere in England. It is a huge pile of castellated granite 
 architecture, which bears the stamp in every part of no mock 
 antiquity, and is surrounded by a moat centuries old, tilled with water. 
 Here there are mediaeval courtyards and quadrangles, and it is a 
 peculiarity of the house that, at the chief entrance, there are doors 
 which, on being opened, admit a carriage bodily into the hall by a 
 passage which runs across a spacious chamber into the courtyard on 
 the other side. 
 
 The portion of the Duke of Cleveland's property in the immediate 
 neighbourhood of Raby, amounting to some 25,000 acres, is occupied 
 by a tenantry whose holdings range from 100 to 500 acres each. 
 Much of this land has been newly laid down to grass, the Duke being 
 generally disposed to encourage the conversion of tillage into 
 pasturage, and assisting his tenants in the work. The seeds are 
 given, free of all charge, to the occupiers of the soil by the landlord, 
 whenever the land is pronounced to be in a suitable condition for 
 their reception. In the upper part of the estate, bordering upon 
 Cumberland, are the lead mines of which his Grace is entire owner, 
 leased to the London Lead Company and other lessees, upon terms 
 which will presently be mentioned. Here most of the agricultural 
 tenants are connected in some way or other with the mining interest. 
 A few years have witnessed great alterations and improvements in 
 this part of the property. Large sums have been expended in the re- 
 building of dwelling-houses, in the laying down of main roads, in the 
 reclamation of land by drainage, planting, and enclosure. The result 
 of these operations is that, as on the Scotch estates of the Duke of 
 Sutherland, the whole surface of the country has been transformed, 
 and what was once a barren solitude is a fertile and prosperous tract. 
 The pasturage of this region has been increased by the addition of 
 hundreds of acres of grass, while thrice the number of cattle which 
 it could formerly with difficulty support now crop its abundant 
 herbage. 
 
 These works have been conducted, greatly, of course, to the increase 
 in value of the property, at the expense, in the first instance, of the 
 
 D
 
 34 ENGLAND. 
 
 owner, and by workmen especially retained and employed for 
 the purpose. It is the regular organisation of such a staff as 
 this purpose requires which is the first thing noticeable in the 
 management of the Raby property. There are distinct sets of work- 
 men, regularly employed either at weekly wages or by piece-work, 
 in separate yards in the immediate neighbourhood of the castle. 
 Close to the building is an enclosure in which are situated the house 
 of the clerk of the works and several carpenters' and joiners' shops. 
 The work done here is exclusively devoted to the castle itself, and has 
 no connection with any of the operations on the general estate. At a 
 little distance from this is a much larger yard, where the estate work 
 proper is performed. Here there are wheelwrights' stalls, carpenters' 
 benches, and smiths' forges, where wood fences are made or repaired, 
 carts mended and even manufactured. But the men thus employed 
 represent only a small proportion of the permanent staff retained upon 
 the Duke of Cleveland's estate. No visitor to Raby and its neigh- 
 bourhood can fail to be struck by the admirable neatness with which 
 the hedges are trimmed and the palings preserved, and by the excel- 
 lence of the macadamised roads. This is entirely because the Duke 
 keeps them in his own hands. A considerable contingent of men, 
 skilled in everything that has to do with hedges, stone walls, fences, 
 and highways, are perpetually at work. Any tenant, on payment of 
 their wages, may command their services, the landlord having the 
 satisfaction of knowing that the necessary repairs will be properly 
 carried out. In the case of drainage the landlord bears the entire 
 burden of the expenditure, charging the occupant of the soil interest, 
 at five per cent., on the money expended upon the work. Inside 
 Raby Park itself 900 acres of land are retained as a home farm, and 
 not far from this is another farm of 500 acres, which, held by the 
 Duke's agent, is intended as a model for the fanners of tbe surround- 
 ing district. Here, as elsewhere, the covenants between the landlord 
 and the tenant are in the shape of yearly agreements : the landlord 
 reserves to himself the sole right to kill every kind of game, and the 
 tenant knows that so long as he farms upon sound principles he enjoys 
 practical fixity of tenure. Where special relations of this kind have 
 become established between landlords and tenants it is more than 
 probable that the general provisions of such measures as the Agri- 
 cultural Holdings Acts or the Ground Game Act will have little or 
 no practical effect. On the great estates, which are in the main 
 generously as well as wisely administered, recognised custom will 
 always assert its authority before that of positive law ; and statutes, 
 however enlightened in their intention, will compete in vain against 
 wbat has been proved by experience to be on the whole a just and 
 convenient tradition. 
 
 These different operations and properties have correspondingly
 
 GREAT LANDLORDS, AND ESTATE MANAGEMENT. 35 
 
 distinct departments in the management of the Duke of Cleveland's 
 estate, and the control over all is rigidly centralised in the office of 
 the chief agent, which is within the castle walls, and from whom all 
 authority issues. The system here pursued is more purely bureau- 
 cratic than in the case of either the Duke of Northumberland or tbe 
 Duke of Devonshire. Instead of administering, like the latter, his 
 estate by several agents of co-equal power, or, like the former, by a 
 chief commissioner with a number of agents under his immediate 
 authority, the Duke of Cleveland is directly represented only by one 
 chief agent, who, without the same assistance from a staff of subor- 
 dinate officials, is responsible for the control of the whole of what is 
 called the " settled estate," and whose head-quarters are at Raby 
 itself. Thither come all accounts in connection with the Shropshire, 
 Staffordshire, and Northamptonshire properties to be audited, nor 
 would the agents or bailifs on any of these engage in any considerable 
 enterprise without communicating with the chief agent or with the Duke 
 himself. Weekly and monthly returns are made at Raby by the 
 forester and his staff, by the hedging and draining staff, by the fore- 
 man of the labourers employed on the home farm, and by the con- 
 trollers of the house, park, and gardens. Entries are made of all in 
 ledgers kept with the greatest nicety ; a brief abstract is prepared at 
 the end of the financial year and submitted to the landlord. There 
 are other points in the administration of this admirably managed 
 property which deserve mention. Rents are paid in twice a year, 
 first by the tenants to the Duke's head representative, secondly by the 
 agents to the Duke's bankers. But from the total of this rental there 
 has, before it reaches the ducal coffers, been deducted the expenditure 
 upon repairs and permanent improvements, according to the estimate 
 which, at the beginning of the financial year, has been submitted to 
 his Grace. The expenses, therefore, of the estate are really paid 
 before their proprietor is in receipt of his revenues, and all those 
 revenues, in the shape in which they eventually come to him, repre- 
 sent clear income. 
 
 The Raby estate office is also the head-quarters of the administra- 
 tion of the mines and quarries. For the conduct of all these, or 
 rather for the incoming of the royalty for which the Duke of 
 Cleveland has let them, the chief agent is personally responsible. 
 As this gentleman contrives to keep the agricultural property of the 
 Duke in a highly satisfactory condition, with only an estate bailiff as 
 a general overseer under him, so, by the simple instrumentality of a 
 mineral bailiff, he effectually protects the interests of the Duke, vested 
 in coal, lead, and iron mines, and stone quarries. On special occasions, 
 when the produce of a mine is weighed, the mineral bailiff is personally 
 present, but the general plan is for the authorities of the mine to for- 
 ward to the Raby estate office an estimate of its yield, the Duke's 
 
 d2
 
 00 ENGLAND. 
 
 agent having it in his power to examine the company's books as a 
 check upon their figures. 
 
 It has been already remarked that there are few exceptions to the 
 rule in the case of the great landed estates, that while a limited staff 
 of workmen are permanently retained for doing jobs in connection 
 with the house of the great landowner, most of the work is performed 
 by contract with local mechanics and artisans. Thus, the Duke of 
 Devonshire, whose estates, if their acreage is not so capacious as the 
 Duke of Northumberland's, are much more widely scattered, keeps a 
 small contingent of plumbers comfortably housed above the stables at 
 Cbatsworth, while in the adjoining wood-yard, house-joiners and 
 estate-joiners are settled. 
 
 The Duke of Devonshire himself undertakes the execution of all 
 repairs for the tenants on his property — a plan which has the advan- 
 tage that under its operation there are no perpetual claims upon the 
 landlord for improvements. It is a marked feature on the Duke of 
 Devonshire's Derbyshire, Yorkshire, and Lancashire estates, that in 
 very many instances as much as two acres of land is attached to the 
 labourers' cottages. This not merely gives them constant occupation 
 of a profitable kind, enabling them often to keep a couple of cows, but 
 attaches them to their homes, and invests these with a special and 
 enduring interest. It has been the immemorial custom on the Devon- 
 shire estates to let farms by annual agreement, subject to a re-valuation 
 at the end of every twenty-one years. This arrangement comes to 
 very much the same thing as a lease for that term. The tenants 
 know well that so long as they do their duty by the land they will 
 not receive notice to quit ; and here, as elsewhere, the records 
 of the property show many cases in which farms have been in pos- 
 session of the same families, from father to son, for many genera- 
 tions, and not infrequently for two or three centimes. When the re- 
 valuation is made, a full report of the condition of all the farms and 
 other portions of the estate is drawn up. Anything that can throw 
 light upon the management of a particular holding, and the qualities 
 displayed by a particular tenant, is duly noted down, as well as the 
 improvements which it may be considered desirable to effect, or 
 which the tenant himself may have suggested as requisite. It is 
 then for the Duke and his agents to consider whether the farm 
 shall remain in the same hands, and what repairs shall be done. In 
 consideration of such repairs as may finally be carried out, either a 
 permanent addition is made to the rent, or the tenant is charged a 
 percentage on the money expended. 
 
 The estates of the Duke of Devonshire lying in several counties, it 
 would not be practicable to apply to them the principle of concentra- 
 tion which works so well on the domains of the Dukes of Cleveland 
 and Northumberland. Such a thing as an absolutely best system of
 
 37 
 
 territorial administration is no more possible than an absolutely best 
 form of government ; and just as the relations between the great land- 
 lord and his agents will depend upon the degree of their mutual know- 
 ledge and confidence, so the principle on which estates are controlled 
 will be fixed by their geographical peculiarities. The Duke of Northum- 
 berland is a territorial magnate who has one prime minister as his 
 commissioner, and as much may be said of the Dukes of Westminster 
 and Cleveland. The Duke of Devonshire has probably more than half 
 a dozen responsible controllers, each independent of the other, pos- 
 sessed of co-equal and co-ordinate powers, and each communicating 
 directly with him. These make reports to his Grace on the condition 
 and requirements of tbeir separate departments, but only at intervals 
 of nearly a year, and not on paper only or chiefly, but in personal 
 conversation. The business year begins and ends at different times 
 on the different properties, and consequently the season of the annual 
 audit of each is different too. Like the Duke of Northumberland, the 
 Duke of Devonshire owns not merely many varieties of farms as well 
 as mines and mills, but a prosperous and thriving township. His 
 Grace, indeed, has two watering-places in which his power is supreme 
 — one the inland spa of Buxton, the other Eastbourne on the south 
 coast. At both of these places the land is let out for building pur- 
 poses, the landlord — as with the Duke of Northumberland at Tyne- 
 mouth — permitting no house or structure of any kind to be erected 
 which has not received his approval or that of his responsible agents. 
 Such is a synoptical view of the natural characteristics, and the 
 general principles of management, of three or four of the largest pro- 
 perties in England — the Westminster, Northumberland, Cleveland, and 
 Devonshire estates. There are other general features in the admini- 
 stration of English properties which might be studied with advantage 
 by many continental landlords. The strictest method is, as we have 
 seen, the very soul of the organisation, and the records of the property 
 are preserved as carefully, and are in their way as important, as those 
 of a department of the public service. There are, in the case of every 
 well-conducted property, piles of agreements between landlord and 
 tenants ; tin cases containing the monthly and annual budgets of the 
 estate for a long series of years ; masses of manuscript containing the 
 data on which these estimates are drawn up ; abstracts of accounts, 
 with marginal references to ledger folios, and a perfect library of 
 volumes made up of the correspondence between the landlord and his 
 agents for a number of years. And there are other official papers 
 relating to the administration of the property. One is a " Return of 
 the Progress of New Erections, Alterations, and Repairs made under 
 the Superintendence " of the architect for the estate in any given 
 month. It is in effect a little manuscript book in which is noted the 
 progress that has been made in the works undertaken on the different
 
 38 ENGLAND. 
 
 holdings, the sums which have been actually expended, and the further 
 sums which it is estimated will yet have to be expended — first, in the 
 course of next month ; secondly, in the course of the next year. Some 
 at least of these figures — those indicating the sums estimated as neces- 
 sary during the coming month — have a place in another printed form, 
 "Estimate of Expenditure." On this sheet there are supplementary 
 entries, such as "Additions and Repairs," "Household Gardens and 
 Pleasure Grounds." 
 
 There is yet another class of documents of even greater importance 
 than any which we have yet examined. They are those which lay 
 down in lec;al phraseology the relations existing between landlord and 
 tenant. Here there is no absolute uniformity, but there is, as we have 
 seen, an approach to uniformity. There is a general indisposition 
 on the part of landlords to grant leases. Some landlords there are 
 who give their tenants the option of a lease or an annual agreement. 
 But as a rule the tenure of farms on the great estates is a matter of 
 annual agreement. Improvements in the way of drainage, buildings, 
 roads, and fences are either done at the expense of the landlord, or if 
 the tenant immediately defrays their cost he receives compensation 
 from the landlord. In all leases there are special clauses reserving to 
 the landlord property in the minerals under the surface of the soil. 
 The landlord stipulates that the farmhouse shall be regularly inhabited 
 by the tenant. The cost of repairs is generally a matter of private 
 arrangement between landlord and tenant, but in the majority of cases 
 it is upon the shoulders of the former that the greater part of the 
 burden falls. 
 
 The great estates do not always have as their owners titled or 
 untitled proprietors. The Crown and the Ecclesiastical Commis- 
 sioners are at the present moment the largest landowners in England, 
 having the management of properties with a rental of upwards of 
 £ 100,000, scattered over all parts of the United Kingdom. These are 
 administered upon practically the same principles which obtain in the 
 case of the chief of the landed nobility. The responsible agents are two 
 eminent firms, officially designated Surveyors, the jurisdiction of the 
 one being in the north, and of the other in the south, of that portion 
 of Great Britain which is this side of tbe Tweed. These have head 
 offices in London, and a large staff of clerks, secretaries, and archi- 
 tects, and a variety of local bailiffs. Each of the surveyors is 
 constantly travelling, receives frequent reports from his local agents, 
 and communicates a general statement of affairs to the Commission, to 
 which he may be said to stand in nearly the same relation that a 
 managing director does to tbe other members of the Board of a 
 public company. Under the Ecclesiastical Commission the value of 
 the Churcb lands has nearly doubled in the course of thirty years. 
 The surveyors are constantly in communication with the principal
 
 GREAT LANDLORDS, AND ESTATE MANAGEMENT. 89 
 
 agents of the great landed proprietors, and are quick to adopt any 
 improvement which suggests itself as desirable or practicable. The 
 government of properties which are in the possession of the City 
 Guilds is, for the most part, equally excellent and effective, and in 
 this case, too, the method adopted is that in force upon the large 
 estates of which we have spoken. 
 
 It must not be supposed that these immense properties are the only 
 examples of first-rate estate management in England. Many of the 
 smaller estates of country gentlemen and of noblemen are controlled 
 with an efficiency and an ability that leave nothing to be wished. 
 The same amount of organisation there cannot be, for the simple 
 reason that the opportunity and necessity for it do not exist. Neither 
 can it generally be expected that the labourers' cottages, the hedges, 
 draining, and roads, should be in the same perfect order in these as 
 in the case of the principality of a great territori, 1 magnate. Uniform 
 and considerable improvement there is, and ever has been ; but where 
 the supply of capital is necessarily limited, operations cannot be 
 conducted on the same grand and magnificent scale. In compara- 
 tively few estates with a rental of less than £10,000 a year does 
 the landlord keep a chief agent, who is exclusively devoted to the 
 affairs of his property. In many cases where the revenue is much in 
 excess of this sum, the agent charged with the superintendence of one 
 property is responsible also for the control of a second and even a 
 third. There is, indeed, always resident on the estate a bailiff of 
 considerable knowledge, and eminently trustworthy, who duly 
 reports on the condition of affairs, either to the agent, or possibly to 
 the landlord himself. When the estate is a much smaller one, say 
 from £3,000 to £7,000 a year, the official who receives the rents is 
 probably an estate agent by profession, and has the charge of a great 
 number of these properties, often at some distance from each other. 
 Experience proves the wisdom of employing such a representative in 
 the management of estate business, and experience also proves that 
 the attempt to delegate the authority which that management implies 
 to the bailiff, who is in social station inferior in all probability to the 
 tenants themselves, does not answer well. The custom which was 
 once common, of placing estates under the management of country 
 solicitors, is gradually disappearing, though still very far from being 
 altogether extinct.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 RURAL ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 Government of an English Village — Elections of Guardians of the Poor expected : Local 
 Interest taken— Extent to which Boards of Guardians have assumed Powers pre- 
 viously vested in the Vestry — Candidates for the Election, and Principles at issue — 
 Defective Sense of Personal Responsibility and Duties of Citizenship among all 
 Classes of Englishmen — Influence of Great Nobles on Squirearchy, and indirectly 
 upon Boards of Guardians — Meeting of the Board : Kinds of Business discussed, 
 and various Functions discharged — Magistrates at Quarter Sessions — Kinds of 
 Business done, and way in which it is done — Opportunities of the Institution, and 
 some Reforms in it suggested. 
 
 It is the smaller squires, a gradually diminishing class, and the 
 farmers, who do the daily work of the government of rural England, 
 and who form the rank and file of the local officials. How does the 
 administrative machinery thus constituted work when it is actually 
 in motion ? 
 
 It so happens that there is some little excitement noticeable in the 
 village or parish which we are now visiting. DuriDg the past fort- 
 night there has been much disputation, mainly of a personal character, 
 among the ratepayers who compose the vestry ; a good deal more, 
 indeed, than might have been expected, seeing that the parish rate- 
 payer himself has comparatively little direct authority. He has been 
 compelled to acquiesce in the centralising tendencies of the times, and 
 to delegate to a few trusted persons the power which was once abso- 
 lutely deposited in his own hands. Every parish officer, Mr. Clare 
 Read once said in the House of Commons, has been disestablished in 
 the last fifty years except the parson. The remark is scarcely an 
 exaggeration. The churchwardens continue to exist, but their sphere 
 is purely ecclesiastical ; the parish constable became an anachronism 
 owing to the Act of 1872, though the gradual disuse in practice of his 
 office may be traced to the at first gradual, and then compulsory, 
 institution of a county police force, dating from about 1850, or a little 
 later ; the overseers are only officials for, in technical parlance, 
 " making " the rate, for which the guardians, like county justices, 
 merely issue a precept. It may be mentioned, however, that the 
 overseers have also one other important function : they make up, in 
 the first instance, the roll of rateable property, which, subject to the 
 revision of the Assessment Committee, determines the assessment of
 
 RURAL ADMINISTRATION. 41 
 
 the parish. In various valuation bills provision has been made for 
 giving them the aid of the surveyor of taxes in_ doing this, but they 
 do not like the proposal, which, however, will in all probability ere 
 long be carried out, while it has also been suggested that they should 
 be relieved of their duties as assessors altogether. 
 
 The miniature image of our representative system may be seen in 
 the English village, and it is a question of representation which is 
 now exercising the little community. The parish is one of about 
 twenty in the district which are about to send a delegate to a body 
 that, with more appropriateness than the vestry, may be called the 
 local Parliament — the Board of Guardians.* The principle at issue is 
 one of real importance, and considerable interest has been taken in 
 the names inscribed on the nomination papers, which have been 
 already forwarded to the clerk of the Board. Every voter, in other 
 words every ratepayer, has a right of nomination, and, exercising this 
 right, a simple agricultural labourer has had the audacity to propose 
 a gentleman — perhaps the parson of the parish — who is known to 
 look at affairs of local administration from a point of view not too 
 popular in the neighbourhood. The village, in fact, is divided into 
 parties by an embittered dispute as to whether the guardian to be 
 elected shall be a candidate who is in favour of, or opposed to, the 
 system of out-door relief ; whether he shall be one who would make 
 stricter regulations for securing the minimum of out-door relief by 
 more rigidly enforcing the test of the "house;" whether, in other 
 words, as we shall see hereafter, he is to be the advocate or antago- 
 nist of a practice which, as facts and figures abundantly prove, pro- 
 motes chronic pauperism among the working classes, tends more than 
 anything else to degrade the character of the lower orders, and 
 absolves the higher from individual responsibility in relation to their 
 humbler neighbours. Fifty years ago this kind of contest was un- 
 known in English village life. The autonomy of the parish was then 
 unimpaired ; the jurisdiction of the vestry, or, at least, of the over- 
 seers, who on this matter constituted the great parochial authority, 
 though under the old poor law they were sometimes overruled by the 
 magistrates, was in theory absolute. During the greater part of the 
 first half of the current century, each parish not only had the manage- 
 ment of its own poor, but also in all things relating to its sanitary 
 condition and local taxation was a strictly self-governing body. Roads 
 are intentionally excluded from the above list, because over 6,000 of 
 the rural parishes (nearly half probably) retain their management 
 of roads by elective parochial surveyors, and highway districts are 
 permissive only. One after another, these parochial prerogatives 
 
 * In 1883 there were about 15,000 parishes and 650 unions in England and Wales — 
 hence the average is nearly 23 parishes to a union ; some unions have 40 or 50, and there 
 are others with as many as 70 or 80.
 
 42 ENGLAND. 
 
 have been lost, and little more in the way of the active duties of 
 administration is left, to the vestry than the collection of rates which 
 it has no power itself to fix. 
 
 The Board of Guardians, having concentrated in themselves the 
 chief administrative and executive functions of the ratepayers, as 
 well as having added to these other powers which overseers and 
 vestry never possessed, it is natural that considerable local efforts 
 should be made to influence its composition. Accordingly, when the 
 vestry met, a rather rare event, a couple of weeks ago on parochial 
 business, some allusion was made to the forthcoming contest, and the 
 qualifications of the different candidates, which led to a keen and 
 even acrimonious debate. Since then the discussion has been continued 
 in the village taproom, at cottage hearth-sides, in farmhouse yards, 
 in the market town, and wherever else the electors or their nominees 
 have happened to assemble. The struggle, it is clear, lies between 
 two competitors for the sometimes coveted distinction : a farmer of 
 some substance, who, rising superior to the prejudices of many of 
 his class, believes that out-door relief is an unmitigated mischief to 
 the poor themselves, and a local publican in a brisk way of business, 
 who regards all recipients of out-door relief as potential accessions to 
 the ranks of his customers. It may be that there is a sentimental 
 philanthropist who is also in the field, but he will only divide one 
 party or the other, and the election mainly reduces itself to a struggle 
 between the principles which have been indicated. 
 
 Because the name of the parson has not been mentioned in con- 
 nection with the competition, it by no means follows that he neces- 
 sarily holds aloof from it. He may be a candidate himself, or he 
 may, in his capacity as chairman of the vestry, which constitutes the 
 electorate, be using — as it is perfectly legitimate that he should use — 
 his influence in support of a particular candidate. After not a little 
 experience he has come to the conclusion that the moral, social, and 
 educational welfare of the neighbourhood is jeoparded by the indiffe- 
 rence of the farmers, who compose the great majority of the Board, 
 to the questions which very nearly concern them. For it is the 
 farmers who are the real local legislators of England, and the British 
 farmer who takes a large, a liberal, and an enlightened, view of the 
 duties of his position is less commonly met with than might be 
 desired. To put it differently, he seldom proposes to himself a higher 
 standard of responsibility than that which is common to his order ; 
 and to say this is to bring no worse charge against him than that he 
 regards existence and its duties from the same point of view as most 
 of his social superiors. The sense of the duties of citizenship indeed 
 has yet to be quickened among all classes of the community. 
 
 The great local magnate, the representative of monarchy in his 
 own provincial world, the apex and figure-head of English local
 
 RURAL ADMINISTRATION. 43 
 
 government — the Lord Lieutenant of the county himself — sets the 
 example which the squirearchy imitate, and to which the yeomanry 
 unconsciously conform. The Lord Lieutenant is a nobleman of 
 great wealth and birth, of blameless reputation, of beneficent inten- 
 tions. He is the patron of local societies, of schools, of charitable 
 institutions beyond number. He is generous, philanthropic, and 
 probably something of an autocrat. He contributes liberally to the 
 support of all local movements, if they are in what he considers " the 
 right direction ; " whether they are right he claims himself to decide, and 
 the principle of their conduct he rigidly prescribes. If a neighbourhood 
 in which he has property wants a dole out of his purse to enable it to 
 build a school, he will take the whole expenditure upon himself. But 
 he will do this only on condition that the inhabitants should adopt a 
 School Board immediately, or should pledge themselves never to 
 adopt a School Board, according to the colour of his political opinions. 
 And in seventy-five cases out of a hundred the great man carries his 
 point. The demagogues of the village beershops and revolutionary 
 tillers or tenants of the soil may talk as they will, but the " Castle " 
 — if such be the name and style of the ancestral dwelling of the great 
 man — has but to express its wish, the wish becomes law, and eager 
 effect is given to the law by the veriest Thersites of the district. The 
 son of a typical potentate is not perhaps a young man of great natural 
 aptitude for affairs, and he is certainly the professor of an anti-popular 
 and exclusive creed. But his sire considers that the time has arrived 
 when he should represent a division of the county in Parliament, and 
 a meeting is accordingly convened at which it is unanimously decided 
 that the noble lord is the only eligible candidate. The resolution is 
 proposed by one Boanerges, who has recently been inveighing in his 
 own circle against the influence of the territorial aristocracy, and has 
 been seconded by another Boanerges who is locally credited with an 
 aim and mission of a still more subversive character. 
 
 All this, it may be said, is as it should be, and if all that could be 
 advanced against the duke, marquis, or earl, who is the king of the 
 county, were that he was an amiable despot, it would amount to very 
 little. But his duties, political and social, frequently call him away, 
 and when he is at home he is occupied with his guests, his fox- 
 hounds, and his battues, and may be one of those who neglect the 
 more irksome responsibilities of vast possessions. There are certain 
 ancestral charities on his estate which must be kept up, and his agent 
 has to keep them up accordingly. There are certain institutions in 
 his villages known as almshouses, which have been endowed from 
 generation to generation by charges on the great man's land, and he 
 ignores the fact that these establishments are for the most part 
 hotbeds of pauperism, and of helpless, hopeless want. It is not 
 to his taste to take a leading part in the business of the county, and
 
 44 ENGLAND. 
 
 accordingly the gentry who live about him, the squires of various 
 degrees of wealth and dignity, practise a similar abstention. If his 
 grace or his lordship goes to a county meeting, then the minor terri- 
 torial rulers, the untitled squires, will go also, because, in conventional 
 parlance, it is " the right thing to do." But the country gentlemen, 
 being in the great majority of cases magistrates, are ex officio members 
 of the local Board of Guardians — are, in fact, in virtue of their posi- 
 tion, responsible for the financial, the sanitary, and the educational 
 state of the neighbourhood. Their power for good or evil is practi- 
 cally unlimited, and if it is to be for good, it must be actively exercised, 
 and its active exercise means constant attendance at the meetings of 
 the Board, not merely rare periodical appearances for the purposes of 
 patronage, or perfunctory participation in the discharge of the func- 
 tions of the magisterial bench. If, therefore, our local Parliaments 
 sometimes do their work imperfectly, it must be borne in mind that 
 the cause of their defects is closely associated with a hundred deeply 
 rooted habits and traditional prejudices. What is wanted is a keener 
 and wider conception of duty, and if the parish parson can help to 
 create such a sentiment, and actively make it felt either at the election 
 of Guardians or at the meeting of the Board itself, happy is he, and 
 well will it be for the neighbourhood. 
 
 Meanwhile the election itself is over ; the new Board of Guardians 
 is complete, and its sittings have begun. The magistrates, parsons, 
 farmers, tradesmen, and publicans who constitute the Board — if it 
 happens, indeed, to include so many varieties of English life — have 
 come together on the occasion of one of tbeir weekly meetings, at the 
 regular place of rendezvous. There is plenty of business to discuss, 
 and there is likely to be some rather sharp debating of the rougher 
 sort. The chairman, it may possibly be, is not quite punctual in his 
 arrival at the scene of action, and it is beginning to be a question 
 whether his place will not have to be filled by deputy. He comes at 
 last, genially apologetic or transparently indifferent, as the case may 
 be ; a representative English gentleman, more at home in the field 
 than in the council-chamber, and slightly disposed, perhaps, to push 
 the principles of leaving well, or perhaps bad, alone, further than 
 might seem desirable even to languid reformers. He owns a fair pro- 
 perty in the neighbourhood, is honestly desirous to do his duty, and 
 believes that on the whole his duty is best done by allowing matters 
 pretty much to take their own course. 
 
 Contrast with him yonder clerical member of the Board, who sees 
 in it a great agency for effecting those reforms which have, as he 
 believes, a directly religious sanction. He is a gentleman of some 
 determinatioD, knows what he means, and has a tolerably clear con- 
 ception of the way in which what he wants is to be secured. There 
 is a look about his eyes which stamps upon him as clearly as could
 
 RURAL ADMINISTRATION. 45 
 
 words the legend, "No surrender!" On his face there are visible 
 those lines of quiet resolution which proclaim that, if fighting is neces- 
 sary, fight he will. He is noticeable in many respects among his 
 colleagues in the Board-room ; the petty squire, in somewhat strait- 
 ened cii'cumstances, who has just strolled in, but who has no idea in 
 particular, and who is secretly absorbed in calculating whether he can 
 afford a house in London during tbe coming season, or a continental 
 trip in the autumn ; the publican or tradesman, who, compliant and 
 servile in his business, has views of his own, which he intends to 
 stand up for among his brother guardians ; the ordinary specimen of 
 the British farmer, whose notions are summed up in the simple for- 
 mula that nothing must be done which seems to threaten an increase 
 of the rates. He has allies and he has enemies at the Board. If 
 there are those who see in our parson a mere meddler, there are those 
 also who know that he is earnestly and courageously working out a 
 faith which, in process of time, is destined, if effect be given to it, to 
 enlighten the earth by removing from its surface a vast amount of 
 human misery. It may also be that more than one of the landowners 
 in the district not only recognise but utilise the opportunities of their 
 position, and are members of the Board in reality as well as in name ; 
 or that among the farmers there are some who actively sympathise 
 with the good work. Lastly, there are few Boards of Guardians 
 which do not count among their members one or two of the smaller 
 kind of tradesmen, who are at once the most fussy and the most revo- 
 lutionary of the body. 
 
 What is the work on which our guardians are engaged to-day? It 
 may belong to one or several of many varieties, for the functions of 
 guardians are only less numerous and complicated than the authorities 
 under which the inhabitant of a rural parish lives. The simple English 
 villager is the creature of a highly complex economy. He may be 
 defined as one who lives in a parish, in a union, in a highway district, 
 or in a county, according to the point of view which is taken, while 
 in three of these he always is. It is, further, far from unlikely that 
 he should be subject to six kinds of authority : the Local Board, the 
 vestry — whose officers, as we have seen, are the overseers — the School 
 Board, the Highway Board, the guardians, and the justices. As is 
 the multiplicity in the possible modes of government with which he is 
 acquainted, such, or almost such, may be that of the taxation which 
 he has to pay, although much of this taxation, so far as it is levied for 
 local purposes, is called by the generic name of " Poor Pate."* Three 
 
 * Although by no means the whole of the taxation for local purposes is comprised 
 under the name of Poor Rate, that rate does generally comprise the County or Borough 
 Kate, the School Board Rate (in rural districts), the Sanitary General Rate, and where 
 Highway Boards exist it will include the Highway Rate. In other cases, the Highway 
 Rate is a wholly separate charge ; and so, where it exists, is the rate levied by Local 
 Board
 
 46 ENGLAND. 
 
 kinds of authority tliere are which are universal from one end of 
 England to the other : the poor law authority, the highway authority, 
 and, most noticeable of all, the sanitary authority. The bodies exer- 
 cising these powers in town and country are not the same, but there 
 is no corner of the land over which they are not spread. In rural 
 districts, such as that which we are now considering, the sanitary 
 authority is the Board of Guardians, and we may suppose that it is a 
 sanitary question which engages its attention to-day. 
 
 Our guardians then, let it be understood, have considered the 
 reports of particular cases of distress made to them by their agents, 
 the relieving officers ; have disposed of sundry demands for out-door 
 relief; have decided what admissions shall be made to the workhouse 
 itself. In their capacity of guardians of the poor pure and simple they 
 have thus exhausted the catalogue of their duties. But they have much 
 else to think of. In some instances they have the functions of a 
 School Board to discharge, as members of the local School Attend- 
 ance Committee ; they have to revise valuation lists ; they have to 
 look closely after sanitary matters, and to consider the reports of paid 
 sanitary officers. They may be sitting in full conclave, or as members 
 of one of the committees to which they have delegated their functions. 
 Their business, we have assumed, on the present occasion is sanitary. 
 They have received the unwelcome intelligence that a deadly epidemic 
 has broken out at some point in the union area, and shows every sign 
 of spreading ; or they have reason to fear that the drainage is not 
 quite satisfactory ; or they are puzzled to know why the sanguine 
 anticipations of their medical officer should be falsified with such 
 lamentable emphasis by results. One of their number ventures to 
 suggest that perhaps the reason is to be found in the fact that they 
 push the doctrine of delegated responsibility to an indefensible length. 
 And in truth there may be something in the theory. They have en- 
 trusted to a medical expert, paid by a handsome salary, duties which 
 it would be infinitely better they should discharge themselves. The 
 medical expert has assured them that all is right, but there can be 
 nothing more unconscionable or perverse in their action than the 
 pestilences and sicknesses to which humanity is heir. One guardian 
 has every reason to believe that the district in question is, from a 
 hygienic point of view, all that could be desired. It is true that for 
 some time past there has been a nasty sorethroat about, but then it is 
 in the air. It may be that the drainage is defective, but then our 
 guardian will argue that the most perfect drainage in the world can- 
 not make the unclean clean, though he omits to notice the truth that 
 when pollution is systematically promoted by imperfect drainage, 
 cleanliness is impossible. 
 
 Much ingenuity is expended in framing hypotheses to explain the 
 origin of the evil ; more money is voted for patent drainage pipes ;
 
 RURAL ADMINISTRATION. 47 
 
 the experienced medical officer is exhorted to keep his eyes particularly 
 wide open. Everything, in brief, is done but the one thing necessary. 
 The guardians, who constitute the sanitary authority, are not per- 
 suaded that so long as they abdicate in any degree their own personal 
 functions a satisfactory result is impossible ; -and that if they would 
 insure the neighbourhood against noxious maladies generated by pre- 
 ventive causes, they must not fear to thrust their presence into un- 
 lovely corners or to hold their nostrils above unsavoury smells. It is 
 in sanitary matters as it is in matters of pauperism, and as it is to 
 some extent in educational matters : the sense of individual and per- 
 sonal responsibility is lacking, and the vigorous spirits are few and far 
 between who bring the need of the sense of responsibility home to 
 those from whom it should never be absent. The machinery which, 
 it may be contended, ought to have this effect is at work — that is, the 
 Local Boards are responsible to the central government. The Local 
 Government Board in London demands and receives statements of 
 annual income and expenditure from the Board of Guardians in the 
 country ; despatches its inspectors to report on all they see or can dis- 
 cover ; helps the local authorities with loans at three and a half per 
 cent., but only when the purpose for which the loan is wanted has re- 
 ceived its official approval. Yet something more, it is plain, than this 
 is necessary if we are to see uniformity of law or practice established 
 at our Boards of Guardians, and if the customs of one are to be brought 
 into any degree of accord with those of another only five miles off. On 
 the representation of their medical officer, the guardians give instruc- 
 tions that drains shall be enlarged, or that new sewers shall be 
 made. It is obvious that the benefit of these improvements, while it 
 is in a general sense felt by the whole community, is specially and im- 
 mediately experienced by the landlords of houses. A well-drained 
 tenement has a higher marketable value, commands a greater rent 
 than one which is ill-drained, and the better drainage is no sooner 
 effected than the rent goes up accordingly. Naturally the conse- 
 quence of this is to diminish the sense of responsibility which attaches 
 to the landlords ; and thus the many are taxed for the direct and 
 peculiar advantage of the few. 
 
 Thus much of vestries and Boards of Guardians. We rise gradually 
 to a higher sphere, and approach a more august authority, the County 
 Magistrates assembled in the Court of Quarter Sessions. Of the duties 
 of magistrates, or, to give them their more dignified title, Justices of 
 the Peace, in Petty Sessions, more will be said elsewhere. There are 
 in all some eight hundred and twenty Petty Sessional divisions in 
 England and Wales, which only accidentally correspond with any 
 other areas, and which come within the jurisdiction of the unpaid 
 administrators of the law. The business of Petty Sessions is mainly 
 judicial, and comprises all such minor cases as can be at once dis-
 
 48 ENGLAND. 
 
 posed of without the summoning of a jury. But it is not the 
 privilege or the duty of attending Petty Sessions, and dealing out im- 
 mediate retrihutive vengeance to trespassers and perpetrators of larce- 
 nies of the lesser kind, that makes the position of a County Magistrate 
 en vial tie in the eyes of the ordinary Englishman. As Boards of 
 Guardians have deprived the vestries of their authority, so now is 
 there an organised movement to divest the magistrates of most or all 
 of the prerogatives they prize. The centralizing tendency of the times 
 is irresistible, and when the establishment of County Boards has 
 reduced the administrative power of the justices to zero, the ancient 
 glory of Quarter Sessions will be gone, and one of the main reasons 
 for the applications now made to the Lord Lieutenant of the County 
 for the Commission of the Peace will be found to have disappeared. 
 The Court of Quarter Sessions is a grand judicial tribunal, but the 
 fame which Quarter Sessions bestows on country gentlemen comes 
 from their achievements less in the judicial than in the administrative 
 field ; and when magistrates cease to manage the business of their 
 county, they will cease also to care for its official honours. At 
 present, however, that is a contingency of the future. Quarter Sessions* 
 may be menaced, like much else, with disestablishment. Meanwhile 
 the Court exists, and the right to affix the letters " J.P." to one's 
 name is yet esteemed a distinction. It is respectable, it is ancient, it 
 is closely associated with territorial position and proprietorship. It 
 is, therefore, held out as an inducement to the gentlemen'who, having 
 made their fortunes in trade, desire to purchase estates in the country, 
 by the ingenious agents who gather their profit out of such negotia- 
 tions. Here is a copy of a lithographed circular which not long ago 
 accompanied the glowing description of a Lancashire property then in 
 the market : " A high social prestige attaches itself to the purchaser 
 of this estate, as there is no resident squire in this or the adjacent 
 parish. There is no superfluity of magistrates in the district, and 
 the honourable office of Justice of the Peace would most undoubtedly 
 be conferred on the new owner after the lapse of a decent interval of 
 time." * 
 
 This cunningly devised statement supplies, perhaps, the one con- 
 sideration which was wanting to make Mercator close the bargain. He 
 becomes duly installed in the great house, and "after a decent 
 interval " is an applicant for the honour of the County Magistracy. 
 The application, however, is not made in his own person. Etiquette 
 n quires that the request shall be vicariously made to the Lord Lieu- 
 tenant of the county, and if that eminent personage views it with 
 favour, the request is practically granted — practically, but not accord- 
 ing to the letter of the law. In law the refusal or the bestowal of the 
 honour rests with the Crown, advised by the Lord High Chancellor. 
 
 * Tliis is a literal extract from a circular in my possession.
 
 RURAL ADMINISTRATION. 49 
 
 As a matter of fact, it is the Lord Chancellor who appoints, and the 
 Lord-Lieutenant who recommends. Cases, indeed, are not unknown 
 in which the authority of these two dignitaries comes into collision. 
 A district memorialises the keeper of the monarch's conscience against 
 the ratification of the Lord-Lieutenant's nomination, or an individual 
 appeals to the Lord Chancellor against his objection by the Lord 
 Lieutenant. But, as a rule, the system works harmoniously, and in 
 rural England the doctrine may be said to be firmly established that 
 the administration of the law — like the administration of other local 
 business — shall follow the ownership of the land. Lord-Lieutenants of 
 counties take different views of their responsibility in recommending 
 candidates for the magistracy. Political and religious considerations 
 have their full weight given to them, and Nonconformist and Liberal 
 justices would be at a discount in a strong Tory shire. Others, again, 
 are disposed to take the qualification of magistrates aspirant as suffi- 
 ciently proved by the partial certification of the friend who mentions 
 them. Others institute a just and critical inquiry into personal 
 aptitude as well as social claims. Others, again, carry circumspectness 
 to the verge of caprice, and at the same time that they appoint a 
 magistrate gratify a crotchet. 
 
 But all this time the Court of Quarter Sessions has been assembling 
 in the county town, and the justices are entering the chamber in 
 which the decrees are to be registered which will for the next three 
 months constitute the law of their little province. It is a long, lofty 
 room, down the centre of which runs a long green-baize-covered table, 
 manifestly meaning business. In they come, the men of metal and 
 many acres, from the Marquis of Carabas down to the well-to-do 
 country farmer. Here is the representative of a house which has 
 been settled in the neighbourhood for centuries, whose first founders 
 helped to conquer the kingdom for William the Norman. Here, too, 
 is the gentleman who represents the principle of plutocracy, and who 
 is a new-comer from Liverpool or Threadneedle Street. Then there 
 are the county squires, big and small, a few professional men, one or 
 two retired naval or military officers, a few clergymen, and several 
 younger sons of great noblemen. 
 
 The affairs of the county, not the administration of the law, now 
 concern them. They have met, not to try prisoners, but to test 
 accounts and to discuss local matters, and the chances are that they 
 will display much ability, industry, and shrewdness in the conduct of 
 the various business before them. There is, perhaps, more than one 
 magistrate present to-day who thinks that Quarter Sessions are not 
 what they were, and dwells with admiring regret on the composition 
 and the procedure of the court in the fine old times now gone. The 
 speeches made, the counsel given, the masterly manner in which 
 everything was done, were worthy then of the Imperial Parliament at 
 
 E
 
 50 ENGLAND. 
 
 Westminster, for the simple reason that the most prominent men at 
 Quarter Sessions were the master-minds of St. Stephen's. It is not 
 impossible that the local court contained one or two Cabinet Ministers 
 as its active members. Probably a clear majority of those who did 
 the real work of the meeting had seats in the House of Commons or 
 House of Lords, and were versed in the art of political management, 
 which experience of these assemblages is calculated to teach. It may 
 be that the chairman of the court was none other than the Speaker of 
 the Lower House of Parliament, the first Commoner, and the best 
 shot, of England; or that the justice who presided over his brother 
 justices to-day was a statesman who had saved an. entire political 
 party from catastrophe last week.* 
 
 Be this as it may, there they were. Peers, Cabinet or ex-Cabinet 
 Ministers, members of the House of Commons, squires big and small, 
 professional men, parsons, a yeoman or two, gathered together to 
 transact the business of the county. The conference was as salutary 
 as its results were effective. It was an education for many ; it was 
 an advantage to all. It disciplined and cultivated the minds of the 
 country gentlemen who spent their time amid their paternal acres. It 
 brought distinct classes into contact ; it smoothed off angularities of 
 character ; it taught moderation, tact, discretion. These are virtues 
 still inherent in the institution, but they fail to impress the spectator 
 in the same degree. In the majority of English counties Quarter 
 Sessions are not what they were. The members of Parliament, the 
 eminent statesmen, the Cabinet Ministers, will be looked for in vain. 
 The naval and military half-pay officers are more numerous, and if 
 they are also commendably energetic, are not generally thought quite 
 to understand the genius of the place. The smaller country squires 
 form a class which is rapidly dying out. The larger country squires 
 and great nobles have other things to do. The representatives of com- 
 merce and plutocracy have gained a preponderating voice. Finally, 
 the sphere of the operations of Quarter Sessions has been materially 
 contracted, mainly by the fact that all eyes are now turned to London, 
 and especially by the transfer of prisons to the care of State, with only 
 a remnant of supervisional powers left to the justices. 
 
 There are still, however, many very important matters brought up 
 by notices of motion, and young men still find in Quarter Sessions the 
 opportunity of winning their spurs. Throughout the year some, at 
 least, of them are hard at work on committees charged with the con- 
 Bideration and adjustment of finance, with the special investigation of 
 county bridges, shire halls, county buildings, police, asylums, licensing, 
 the execution of the Contagious Diseases (Animals) Act, the Weights 
 
 * Among contemporary Cabinet Ministers who are or have been Chairmen of Quarter 
 Sessions are the late Mr. Ward-Hunt, Lord Carnarvon, Sir Richard Cross, Lord Salisbury, 
 Sir Slallord rvorthcotc, Lord Derby, and the late Lord Hampton. 

 
 RURAL ADMINISTRATION 51 
 
 and Measures Acts, the Sale of Food and Drugs Act, and the control 
 of minor local authorities. Lunatic asylums, police, bridges, and 
 licensing are the subjects which are most keenly discussed.* Keports 
 of committees in all these matters are read and debated, the report 
 which is first taken being that of the committee of finance. There is 
 the county rate to be fixed, and it is these reports which regulate its 
 amount. The committee has been ascertaining the total of the net 
 rateable value of the parishes which make up the couDty aggregate, 
 and the guardians have been estimating the amount wanted for poor 
 relief. Thus there is a long array of figures to come before the justices 
 in the Court of Quarter Sessions assembled. It is, in fact, a kind 
 of local budget which is read, and when read and sanctioned the 
 guardians have to supply the funds, which are raised by the rates 
 that the overseers collect, f 
 
 Such, in outline, is the system which it is now in contemplation 
 materially to modify. The general arguments on which such a change 
 is based are, first, the disregard of the representative principle in this 
 department of the national life ; and secondly, the economy, as well 
 as the simplicity, which would result from the substitution of one 
 authority for several. Now, as regards the former of these points, it 
 is the fact that the Village Reeves and Port Reeves were in the Anglo- 
 Saxon period chosen by popular election. This custom disappeared to 
 a great extent at the Conquest ; but even as late as the 28th Edward I. 
 an Act was passed asserting for the people the right of the election of 
 sheriffs in every shire " if they list ; " nor was the right taken away 
 before the 9th Edward II., on the plea of the dangers of " tumultuous 
 assembling." As regards the justices or conservators of the peace, 
 they were elected by the freeholders of the county up to the com- 
 mencement of the reign of Edward III., when that monarch took the 
 commission of the peace into his own hands, and at the present 
 moment the coroner is the only ancient officer whose election is vested 
 immediately in the people or freeholders. The inconvenience arising 
 from this neglect of the representative principle in county matters is 
 aggravated by the fact that, while the population is growing in num- 
 bers and density, there exists no satisfactory method of taking its voice 
 in local affairs. The Lord Lieutenant, indeed, has the power of con- 
 vening the county by special summons. Theoretically, also, presenta- 
 
 * Roads, except where quasi-judicial Acts are required, or an adoption of the High- 
 way Act is proposed, seldom give rise to much debate. 
 
 f The magistrates in Quarter Sessions have, as such, neither knowledge of nor con- 
 cern with, the sums required by the guardians. All that come before them are the 
 County and Police Rat*s : thus their finance deals with by far the least important portion 
 of the local funds. The County and Police Rates may be only 5d. in the pound ; the 
 charges borne by the ratepayer in consequence of calls for guardians, Highway, and 
 School, and the rest authorities will be about 2s. 6d. or 3s. in the pound. The County 
 Assessment Committee does assess the county, but their valuation is only used for 
 County Rate. 
 
 E 2
 
 52 ENGLAND. 
 
 tions, or statements of grievances, may still be made to the grand 
 juries of the county at the Assizes and Quarter Sessions. But the first 
 cf these expedients is only resorted to for the relief of public feeling 
 when it is profoundly moved, and is inapplicable for the sober dis- 
 cussion of business ; and the second, the presentations seldom get 
 farther than the court to which they are submitted. 
 
 It is the multiplicity of concurrent authorities, the confusion which 
 is the effect of this concurrence, the independence, and the consequent 
 conflict of local governing bodies, that are the chief causes of mis- 
 chief and inconvenience. Such a distribution of powers is equally 
 fatal to efficiency and unfair to the ratepayer. "If," as is stated 
 by Mr. Wright in the admirable memorandum on the subject of local 
 government, drawn up by him under the supervision of Mr. Rathbone 
 and Mr. Whitbread, a few years back, and republished in the current 
 year, " one simple unit of local government were adopted for all 
 purposes, there would be a single governing body, elected at one time, 
 and in one manner, and by one constituency ; and this body, by 
 itself or by its committees, would manage all the affairs of the 
 Locality on consistent principles; its proceedings would be subject to 
 effective control by the ratepayers, and last, though not least, it 
 would have one budget of expenditure and debt of the whole locality." 
 We should, in fact, get rid of the perplexing distribution of action 
 among overseers, guardians, Highway Boards, Burial Boards, Justices 
 of the Peace. Simplification would bring with it to the ratepayers the 
 power of control. It may further be regarded as desirable that there 
 should be a channel of trustworthy communication between the rate- 
 payers, the people, and the Local Government Board, the central 
 authority. This there cannot be until we have genuinely represen- 
 tative as well as generally responsible local bodies. Once let these 
 exist, with no needless impediments in the way of their working 
 efficiently, and the necessity for interference by the central authority 
 will be diminished, while the use and value of the information which 
 it can furnish will be materially augmented. The balance will, in 
 fact, be finally and satisfactorily struck between independence judi- 
 ciously regulated and perpetual anarchy from which there can be no 
 outcome but severe centralisation. 
 
 It is impossible to discuss this part of the subject without briefly 
 glancing at the objections which are taken to the discharge of their 
 purely judicial duties by magistrates who have no special legal 
 training, and who, when points of law arise before them, are obliged 
 to trust to the wisdom and experience of their clerks. Here again it 
 must be allowed that the censors of the existing regime have, to a 
 certain extent, antiquity on their side. The original statute of 
 Edward III., which gave the right of nominating justices to the 
 Crown, provides that they (the justices) should be " good men and
 
 RURAL ADMINISTRATION. 53 
 
 lawful " — skilled in the law. A later statute of the same king ordains 
 that one lord with three or four men of the hest reputation, together 
 with men learned in the law, should be assigned to each county. 
 Various statutes were passed in the reign of Richard II., enacting 
 that the justices should be selected from "the most sufficient knights, 
 esquires, and men of the law." As a property qualification was not 
 determined until the reign of Henry VI., it follows that for about a 
 century good reputation and legal learning were the two necessary 
 and qualifying attributes of magistrates. Nor even did the property 
 qualification, fixed at the possession of lands or tenements of the 
 annual value of £20, abrogate the condition of legal learning. And 
 it was a condition which, as a matter of fact, continued down to the 
 days of George II., when the qualification was altered to its present 
 form — landed property of the clear annual value of £20, or the 
 immediate reversion of lands of the annual value of £300. 
 
 Those who are dissatisfied with the existing system of administra- 
 tion in the country districts affirm that there can be no guarantee of 
 impartial justice where the judges are personally acquainted with 
 the parties, and where the same persons practically do duty, both as 
 judges and as prosecutors. All county justices are ex officio guardians 
 of the union in which they reside ; the chairman of the Board of 
 Guardians being usually a squire. The same person who hears from 
 the Clerk of the Guardians the particulars concerning a defaulter 
 charged with neglect of his relatives, and orders the defaulter in 
 question to be prosecuted, may, as a justice, in a few days be sitting 
 in judgment on him. Again, it is urged, the justices being country 
 gentlemen, and game preservers, have a direct interest in putting 
 down poaching. But recent legislation (the objection continues) has 
 recognised the inexpediency of allowing magistrates to adjudicate in 
 special cases in which they have a class interest. Thus, no mill- 
 owner can hear a charge under the Factory Acts ; no mine-owner 
 under the Mines Inspection Act ; no miller can adjudicate under the 
 Bread and Flour Act ; no brewer or distiller can take part in the 
 granting of licences. Why then should game preservers try poachers ? 
 This, it is said, is an anomaly : and it is an anomaly which causes a 
 suspicion of and disrespect for what is sometimes stigmatised as 
 "justices' justice " in the rustic mind. 
 
 Further, it is asked, is it in human nature for an amiable, tender- 
 hearted country gentleman not educated in the stern traditions of 
 legal impartiality, to decide without any bias in favour of the man 
 whom he knows as an orderly, well-behaved, sober peasant, if the 
 case brought before him is that of a quarrel between such a one and a 
 dissolute " ne'er-do-weel ? " As regards the statement, which is 
 sometimes urged as a sufficient vindication of the institution of an 
 unpaid magistracy in country districts, that the cases disposed of at
 
 54 ENGLAND. 
 
 Petty Sessions are so plain and trivial as to render precautions for 
 insuring an absence of biassed opinion unnecessary, it must be 
 remembered tbat small cases do not necessarily make easy law, and 
 tbat a paltry perversion of justice may threaten the peace of a village. 
 A well-known Indian official, of great judicial experience, once re- 
 marked that " any fool could try a murder — the evidence was usually 
 so clear and direct — but that it took a born judge to distinguish 
 between the merits of a despicable squabble between two ryots for 
 possession of half an acre of land." This argument is eminently 
 applicable in the present instance, and it is certainly conceivable that 
 the presence of a carefully trained legal intellect at Petty Sessions 
 would be of material value. Of course the obvious and, as it may 
 turn out to be, conclusive answer to the suggestion of a staff of 
 stipendiaries in rural districts — going circuits after the fashion of 
 county court judges — is the burden which would be placed on the 
 rates or taxes. On the other hand, if this would afford us a guarantee 
 against the costly blunders now frequently committed — if it would 
 prevent the dispatch to prison of men only to be immediately released 
 by the Home Secretary — it is more than possible, — to say nothing of 
 the gain to the administration of justice itself secured by its conse- 
 quent freedom from suspicion, — that what was nominally additional 
 expenditure might really be retrenchment.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Local Boards — The New Relation between County Towns and Surrounding Neighbour- 
 hood — General Kesults of the Municipal Corporation Act — Relations between Muni- 
 cipal Governments and Central Government — The Mayoralty in London and in 
 the Provinces — Town Councils: their Jurisdiction and Offices— Trade Councils — 
 Debate in Town Council described — Educating Influences of the Life — Borough 
 Magistrates — Politics in Municipal Matters — Citizenship in London and the Pro- 
 vinces — The Government of London — Proposals for its Reform. 
 
 The connecting-link between rural and municipal government is to 
 be found in tbe institution known as the Local Board. This body is 
 frequently to be met with in what are called " populous places " — 
 districts, that is, in which some of the characteristics and feelings of 
 both country and town are combined — and it may be described as 
 standing midway between the Vestry, or the Board of Guardians, 
 and the Town Council. The members of the Local Board are, like 
 the guardians, elected by the ratepayers within its jurisdiction. It is 
 charged with some of the functions of the Board of Guardians, and 
 also, as is the case with the Board of Guardians, transacts most of 
 its business by committees. Upon these devolve the superintendence 
 of roads and highways, responsibility for the sanitary condition of a 
 district, for the removal of nuisances, and the general provision of 
 fresh air and pure water. It remains for us to advance a step farther 
 than this, and to cross the interval which separates rural adminis- 
 tration from genuine municipal administration — to quit the neigh- 
 bourhood where matters are managed nearly as much by tradition 
 and precedent as by principle, and visit the local capital, where the 
 authorities are guided at all points by written law, and which is itself 
 a miniature pattern of the realm. The village grows by imperceptible 
 stages into the town, and urban institutions are established almost 
 before one seems to have left the property of the squire. This inter- 
 fusion is increased by the paramount influence which some of the 
 great governing families of England exercise over its towns. The 
 shadow of the castle or the abbey is projected over the borough; its 
 political representation is often vested, and has been vested for gene- 
 rations, in the ruling house ; the chief hotel of the place takes its title 
 from the broad acres of the same great county house.
 
 56 ENGLAND. 
 
 And yet there is a very visible difference between country town and 
 country village life. There is scarcely a borough in England now 
 which is not something of a manufacturing centre as well. New 
 sources of mineral wealth are ever and anon being discovered beneath 
 the surface of the soil ; special virtues are found to reside in local 
 fountains ; sequestered vales are constantly proved to afford the most 
 eligible sites for textile factories or brick-yards. It is the tendency ot 
 towns of all kinds to develop into trading centres — depots, each ot 
 them, of some particular products. Whatever their produce may be, 
 it is an instinct with the producers to organise it, and to assert for 
 themselves a distinct position in the great hierarchy of English 
 traders. Thus, the place which thirty years ago was only the medium 
 of distribution for local products in the locality itself, is now a kind 
 of petty emporium of the empire, the head-quarters of whose business 
 no longer lie within the boundaries of the borough, but are in London. 
 The produce of the neighbourhood, whether fish, flesh, or fowl, milk, 
 butter, or cheese, goes to London as a kind of clearing-house, through 
 which it passes, sometimes before it finds its way to the local con- 
 sumers. Consequently many, even most, of the chief representatives 
 of the local business are immediately identified with London. As 
 might be expected, this development has greatly changed the relations 
 which once existed between the great county families and the county 
 town. Even in the most remote districts of England something like 
 an attitude of antagonism, or at least of self-assertion, seems to be 
 betrayed on the part of the town towards its rural neighbours. The 
 chief hotel-keepers and shopkeepers of the former are anxious to 
 conciliate the goodwill and secure the patronage of the latter. The 
 advent of the county people on market days, and on other occasions, 
 is still an event. But it is not the event. Town remains deferential 
 towards county, but, in the most inoffensive manner in the world 
 possible, it wishes to give county to understand that the tie of 
 dependence which once bound them together, making town the 
 creature of county, is permanently and considerably relaxed. 
 
 There is not, indeed, in most cases any real hostility between the 
 two. In very many country towns there will be found men engaged 
 in commerce or trade who have pedigrees that extend over centuries, 
 and who are directly or remotely connected with the most illustrious 
 of their county neighbours. But though this is to some extent a 
 sentimental tie of union, it is one of which the very affinity sometimes 
 acts as the provocative of rivalry. The townsman thinks of himself 
 as a member indeed of the county family, but as belonging to a 
 branch of it which has gone into a different line of life, and which has 
 created new centres and conditions of interest of its own. Insensibly 
 the most unsophisticated of country towns have become more or less 
 isolated from the purely rural districts surrounding them. There is a
 
 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT. 57 
 
 commercial traffic between the two — farmers and cottagers bring in 
 their goods and sell them. The great country folk, as has been said, 
 repair thither at stated intervals, though they do little towards 
 patronising the tradesman — a fact which is largely accountable for 
 the growing divergence and divorce between the two districts. And 
 there are blood ties as well as business ties uniting them. But the 
 prevailing sentiment in towns is a desire on the part of the citizens 
 to show that they are members of an independent community, capable 
 of choosing their own municipal authorities, and managing their own 
 concerns generally. 
 
 Legislation which is now nearly fifty years old has done much to 
 strengthen and encourage this feeling. The Municipal Corporation 
 Act of 1835 marked an epoch in the history of English local admin- 
 istration. The measure gave municipal government, as it now is, to 
 upwards of two hundred towns. It was adopted by Manchester first, 
 and there, as well as wherever it was afterwards adopted, it com- 
 menced to diffuse an entirely new spirit. It brought home, or it has 
 since served to bring home, the sense of citizenship to all who are 
 living under it. The institutions which have been its immediate 
 products have generated an intense spirit of corporate energy and 
 freedom ; a new motive has been supplied for local improvements, 
 and a fresh incentive to private and public beneficence. The Legis- 
 lature again affords a continuous stimulus to local activity. Not a 
 Session passes in which Parliament does not confer some new right, 
 or impose some fresh duty and responsibility on local authorities. 
 In some cases these measures are permissive, in others imperative, 
 but their number, and in many instances their magnitude and 
 importance, largely account for that steady growth of local expendi- 
 ture and local indebtedness which periodically excites the unreasonable 
 surprise of honourable members who have supported these various 
 proposals as they have been submitted to them, but presumably without 
 any notion of the cost which their execution would entail. There is 
 no appearance that this stream of legislation will cease to flow, and at 
 the present moment the municipal government of England is full of 
 possibilities. For its actual effects it depends almost entirely upon 
 the men who are its administrators. 
 
 Signs are not wanting that what the Municipal Corporation Act of 
 1835 was to the men of a past generation, the Education Act of 1870 
 will, in years to come, be considered by men who are not yet middle- 
 aged. The pride which many a citizen of Sheffield, Birmingham, and 
 Bradford takes in the institutions of his town is enhanced by the 
 circumstance that he can recollect the return of the first member for 
 the borough, and the first Mayor of the municipality. It does not 
 seem impossible that the time may be coming when the Education 
 Act will suggest in many places a similar sort of honourably gratifying
 
 58 ENGLAND. 
 
 retrospect. Precisely the same stamp of man who took an active 
 part in the assertion of municipal rights and privileges is now engaged 
 in the development of our educational system. School Boards have been 
 formed in many places where they are the only really representative 
 bodies of the district. By their means schools are raised everywhere 
 at the expense of the ratepayers, who are thus being educated in the 
 work of self-government. In the towns, where this experience is not 
 new, and where men have long been accustomed to take a broad vievv 
 of their civic duties, and have already tested the advantages of com- 
 mon action and co-operation for important common objects, energetic 
 citizens are doing their best to secure not merely an effective system 
 of primary education, but also of secondary instruction. It is with 
 this view that they have in some cases, with the consent of the Edu- 
 cation Department, travelled outside the letter of the Act of 1870, and 
 that they have also at their own expense made tours of Germany, 
 France, and Switzerland, noting down all that was best in the educa- 
 tional systems of these countries, with a hope of introducing it in 
 Leeds, or in Sheffield, or elsewhere. Nor is it necessary to suppose 
 that in these cases the local educational jurisdiction will always be 
 separated from the exercise of more general municipal powers. The 
 tendency is everywhere to increase the authority of the Town Council, 
 and it is even now a question whether the management of Board 
 Schools, which are institutions of quite as much local interest and im- 
 portance as markets, gas-works, and water-works, might not conve- 
 niently be entrusted to a committee of the Corporation. 
 
 The legislation of 1835 was, within certain limits, of an essentially 
 centralising character. It superseded the power of vestries by a Town 
 Council of which the jurisdiction has gone on increasing until at 
 present the Town Councillors, subject to the authority of the Mayor, 
 have absolute control over the government of a town. They have, 
 indeed, to ask the consent of Parliament when they contemplate any 
 changes which affect the tenure of property. They have to forward 
 their accounts to the Home Secretary, who in his turn has to lay 
 them before Parliament. But, with the exception of these general 
 limitations, they are the masters of their own actions. It is incumbent 
 on them to see that the streets are well lighted, that all quarters of 
 the town are well drained, that the thoroughfares are kept in decent 
 repair. They control the police, they have the election of the borough 
 coroner and of the stipendiary magistrate, and in some places their 
 recommendation is accepted by the Lord Chancellor in making 
 appointments to the commission of the peace. They manage the 
 baths and parks of the town, and its free libraries and museums ; they 
 superintend the markets and fairs, and levy tolls therein ; they main- 
 tain the lunatic asylum, the industrial school, and possibly the ceme- 
 tery ; they provido a borough hospital, and establish a borough fire 

 
 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT. 59 
 
 brigade. They are manufacturers of gas, purveyors of water, farmers 
 at the sewage farm, and chemists in the analyst's laboratory. The 
 whole district under their control is frequently inspected for sanitary 
 purposes ; nuisances are removed by their orders ; new buildings 
 surveyed, and old ones ordered to be repaired or pulled down. 
 Finally, they have their representation on many of the educational 
 and charitable foundations of the town, and possibly command by the 
 votes of their members the administration of the local grammar school 
 and other similar institutions. 
 
 The best way to gain an idea of the municipal administration of 
 the United Kingdom will be to watch its machinery in active motion, 
 i and this we shall most successfully do by visiting one of the great 
 I provincial capitals where it is at work. We are entering, the reader 
 i will suppose, a very handsome block of newly-erected buildings — the 
 municipal offices of a busy, prosperous community. The Town Hall 
 ' itself is accidentally, not necessarily, a separate edifice. The rooms 
 ! in this present structure consist of a spacious chamber in which the 
 Town Council holds its periodical meetings, of committee-rooms, of 
 the Mayor's private parlour, furnished in a style calculated to impress 
 visitors with a due sense of the dignity of the representative of the 
 citizens ; of clerks' offices ; of reception-rooms, and a smoking-room; 
 of a spacious kitchen at the top of the building, placed there that the 
 deliberations of the councillors and the occupation of the officials may 
 not be invaded by the odours of the cuisine. Under this roof are the 
 head-quarters of every department charged with the government of 
 the town and responsible for the well-being of its inhabitants. Here 
 it is that the architects and surveyors, with their several staffs, are 
 domiciled, here that the Town Clerk — an official who may be com- 
 pared to the Permanent Secretary in the great offices of State, the 
 Mayor being the temporary head of the system — is seated in his 
 bureau, transacts his business, and gives the council and the com- 
 mittees of the council the benefit of his legal acquirements. 
 
 To each of the departments of the public work there is assigned its 
 own special committee of, probably, eight in number. The entire 
 council, whence these committees are chosen, consists, let us say, of 
 sixty-four members, three being elected triennially by the ratepayers 
 of each of the wards into which the town is divided, making in all 
 forty-eight, and sixteen being aldermen, who are the nominees of the 
 Town Council, and have received that titular dignity in recognition of 
 some signal merit or distinguished service. The different committees 
 of the council are answerable to the general body for the superinten- 
 dence and execution of the tasks distributed among them. Before 
 any work is taken in hand, an estimate of its expenditure is submitted 
 to the council, is ratified or amended, as the case may be, and is not 
 to be exceeded without the council's special consent. In each com-
 
 60 ENGLAND. 
 
 roittee there is a finance sub-committee, which examines its accounts 
 and reports them to the finance committee of the entire council. The 
 exqenditure incurred through the instrumentality of these bodies sug- 
 gests one of the chief points of contact between the Imperial Govern- 
 ment at Westminster and the Local Government in the provinces. 
 Successive statutes, of which the most important are the Public Works 
 Act of 1875, and the Artisans' Dwellings Act of 1876, have materially 
 enlarged the independent jurisdiction of the municipalities. The most 
 fervent advocates of the principle of municipal autonomy would allow 
 that such centralisation as still obtains in the relations between the 
 provinces and Whitehall is indispensable for the protection of the in- 
 terests of provincial communities. As to the merits of that specific 
 measure of legislation which has transferred the control of the prisons 
 from the local bodies to a commission, different opinions exist, and 
 probably the time has not yet come when it is possible to express a 
 final judgment concerning them. The only thing which now seems 
 certain is that the local inspection which was reserved by the Prisons 
 Act to municipal authorities, is gradually being suffered by these 
 authorities themselves to become a dead letter. 
 
 Such interference as the Central Government exercises in the 
 municipalities is designed for the exclusive purpose of checking preci- 
 pitate action, or a recklessness of expenditure which might involve 
 generations of ratepayers as yet unborn in heavy financial embarrass- 
 ments. If the authorities of the large towns only display the same 
 prudence as the shareholders in a company demand from their trus- 
 tees and managers, they will have no reason to complain that their 
 action is hampered by the Local Government Board, to which they 
 are subject, and acquiescence by the Local Government Board in tho 
 proposals of the municipality may be expected as a matter of course. 
 Some great work, let us suppose, is in contemplation or progress, 
 which involves the sale or transfer of land, and probably in addition 
 (he borrowing of a considerable sum of money. What is the mode of 
 procedure which the municipality adopts ? Formal application with 
 full particulars of the scheme is made to the Local Government Board 
 to sanction the undertaking, to allow the expenditure, and to authorise 
 the loan. In a little while an official from Whitehall, having previously 
 made it known to all whom it may concern by the medium of adver- 
 tisements in the papers that he will attend on a particular day, at a 
 particular place, for hearing the objections which may be advanced by 
 dissentients from the enterprise, arrives in the town. He proceeds to 
 examine the nature of the contemplated work, weighs the arguments 
 which are advanced for and against the compulsory sale of particular 
 properties, judges for himself whether or not the security offered is 
 sufficient for the amount required, and duly reports the result of all 
 this to his department in London. In cases where the action of the
 
 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT. 61 
 
 municipality interferes with the rights of private property, it is the 
 approval of Parliament, expressed in legislative enactment, which has 
 i to be secured. "When, in addition to this, a sum of money is required 
 for the accomplishment of any enterprise, there are two modes of 
 I action which may be resorted to. In the first place, there is the 
 simple expedient of the municipality going into the money market, and 
 | starting a loan of its own upon the security of its rates and works, 
 which loan it can usually get at about four per cent. In the second 
 I place, resort may be had to the Public Works Loan Commissioners, 
 who are authorised to lend sums of money at not less than three and 
 j a half per cent., to be paid off in a period not exceeding fifty years, 
 to municipalities, with a view of facilitating improvements in the sew- 
 I age, gas, and water arrangements of big towns. It may be remarked 
 } that the theory underlying this procedure is, that the Commissioners 
 ; borrow on consols, payment of which might of course be indefinitely 
 | deferred. As a matter of fact they borrow on exchequer bonds, which 
 i very speedily fall due. There is a manifest disadvantage incidental to 
 this arrangement in that the sudden payment of these liabilities might 
 in times of great financial pressure involve considerable inconvenience. 
 It is, therefore, a question whether the sums lent by the Commis- 
 sioners ought not rather to be raised by terminable annuities. As 
 for the security which the municipalities in these contracts provide, 
 it is indisputably adequate. Seeing that the Commissioners never 
 lend more than the amount of the total value of two years' rating, it 
 is clear that nothing but the most scandalous carelessness can ever re- 
 sult in a realised loss. Even supposing that this neglect were at all 
 a likely contingency, there would still be the safeguard of that extreme 
 jealousy of local expenditure entertained by the representatives of the 
 Central Government. 
 
 These details, which, troublesome as they may seem, it is quite 
 necessary that we should not ignore, have kept us waiting for some 
 time on the threshold of the really gorgeous chamber in which the 
 members of the Town Council have assembled for debate. It is the 
 House of Commons in miniature, with some of the features that re- 
 mind one of the Chamber of Deputies at Versailles. Councillors and 
 aldermen are collected in little knots, discussing with each other, and 
 with their constituents, the ratepayers, the issues of the coming dis- 
 cussion, in the rooms and lobbies contiguous to the place of actual 
 deliberation. The apartment dedicated to this purpose is an exact 
 amphitheatre, Stout oak chairs, with stout oak tables, in con- 
 tinuous line before them, are ranged tier upon tier, and last of all is 
 a gallery with some half-dozen rows of seats, exactly resembling the 
 dress circle in a theatre. Opposite to them, at the other end of the 
 apartment, where in a theatre the stage would be, is a raised platform 
 or dais, in the centre of which sits on the chair of state the Mayor
 
 62 ENGLAND. 
 
 of the municipality, supported on the right hand by the Town 
 Clerk as his official interpreter of vexed points of municipal law or 
 deliberative procedure, and on the left by a couple of aldermen who 
 have been his immediate predecessors in office. 
 
 The orders of the day have now been read, and the active business 
 begins. A good deal of it is already cut and dried, prepared by the 
 different committees of the council at their several sittings, and only 
 waiting the final registration and formal sanction of the entire body in 
 full council assembled. Then the council, like the House of Commons 
 on analogous occasions, resolves itself into a committee, and, unlike 
 the House of Commons, appoints by a unanimous vote as its chair- 
 man, its ordinary speaker or president — in other words, the mayor. 
 A Bill is presented which it is proposed to ask Parliament to pass in 
 the ensuing Session. The clauses are gone through one by one with 
 some discussion, and then the council resumes, and the Mayor reports 
 that the committee has passed the Bill without amendment, where- 
 upon a resolution is adopted, authorising the Town Clerk to take, on 
 behalf of the council, all such proceedings as may be necessary to 
 promote the Bill in Parliament. 
 
 Not much excitement can be said to attach to these routine trans- 
 actions. It is evident, however, from the manner in which the seats 
 in the strangers' gallery are filling, that something in the nature of 
 a sensation is expected. Before long it comes. An important com- 
 mittee brings up a report involving recommendations the policy of 
 which has apparently been keenly contested outside the council. It 
 soon appears that the principle at stake is complicated by a purely 
 personal controversy. Mr. Councillor or Alderman Brown is vaguely 
 conscious of a grievance at the hands of Mr. Councillor or Alderman 
 Smith. He has nothing very specific to allege in the way of com- 
 plaint, but he has a distinct idea that the comments of his fellow- 
 townsman on his words or actions upon a recent occasion were 
 charged with a subtly caustic flavour, and had the effect of making 
 him appear in a rather ludicrous light to the local public. 
 
 This is true human nature. The Briton will forgive a direct insult, 
 and forget a well-planted find indisputable blow, but the rapier-thrust 
 of a phrase, which, apparently innocent or unobjectionable, in reality 
 hits him in a vital part, is an outrage that he cannot endure. His 
 wound is made worse because for a long time he hugs the weapon 
 which inflicted it. At last the moment has arrived when he must 
 liberate his soul. He watches his opportunity, rises to address the 
 assemblage, and is pronounced by the Mayor to be in possession ot 
 the house. The honest controversialist is too acutely sensitive of the 
 bitter sting of the viciously turned sentences of his critic, too indignant 
 at the accusations he can detect in them, to be epigrammatic or even 
 iclevant in his retorts. Instead, he is very prolix, very prosy, and is '
 
 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT. 63 
 
 perpetually wandering into themes not wholly akin to the subject in 
 hand. Reminded at not infrequent intervals by the Mayor or some 
 other member of the assemblage that he must be more pertinent in 
 his observations, he sits down for a moment, and rises, hot, angry, 
 and nervous, to renew the attack, which he is firmly persuaded is a 
 defence necessary to his honour as a citizen and as a man. Mean- 
 while, the occupants of the strangers' gallery are beginning to display 
 signs of sympathy or disapproval ; this, of course, is as much in 
 violation of the established rules of municipal procedure as the ap- 
 plause of spectators in a court of justice, or the cheers of an appre- 
 ciative phalanx of the recipients of orders to the Speaker's gallery in 
 the House of Commons. The Mayor interposes a mild but firm rebuke, 
 the intrusive shouts are silenced, and the excited rhetorician continues 
 his discourse. 
 
 This is only an incident, and by no means a common one, in the 
 debates of the Town Council. As a rule the proceedings of this body 
 are conducted in a severely business-like spirit and with a full sense 
 of the responsibility proper to a body which is entrusted with the 
 expenditure of a sum not much less than one million annually. An 
 ordinary Town Council displays an ability in debate quite equal to 
 that witnessed in the House of Commons when sitting in committee 
 on some question of domestic legislation. Naturally the political 
 influences and advantages of such municipal training as this are con- 
 siderable. The citizen who has served his apprenticeship to the 
 i active work of the corporation, who has borne a prominent part in 
 the criticism and advocacy of local measures in the council, who has 
 worked actively on the committees to which he has been elected, has 
 received a valuable preliminary training as a member of the imperial 
 legislature. On the other hand, though this very training may enable 
 him to take a broader and more comprehensive view of the wants aDd 
 institutions of England ; though it is quite certain that it will prevent 
 his ignoring, as there is always more or less of a tendency in members 
 of Parliament to ignore, that complex, provincial system which lies out- 
 side the metropolis, it is attended by certain manifest drawbacks. The 
 man thus educated grows up indeed with actively developed ambitions 
 and with invigorated capacities. But strongly convinced that the pro- 
 vincial corporation is the true unit of imperial government, he may be 
 apt to forget that the same positive certainty and precision are not 
 possible in imperial as in municipal affairs ; that when the complexity 
 of the subject matter is infinitely increased, the method of procedure 
 which was once applicable is applicable no longer, and that the burden 
 i of larger principles cannot be supported in the same attitude which 
 ! was adequate to sustain the affairs of a town. Yet, if he has a native 
 I elasticity of mind, he will soon adapt himself to the new conditions. 
 1 Municipal statesmanship will prove but a transient phase of his
 
 G 1 ENGLAND. 
 
 political development, and he will gradually become a power in the 
 House of Commons by the exercise of the self-same gifts, accom- 
 modated to the changed circumstances that have secured for him pre- 
 eminence in his own municipality. 
 
 Meanwhile, what of the functions of the personage who presides 
 over the deliberations of the council — his "Worship the Mayor ? The 
 Mayor of a great town is carefully to be distinguished, as to his posi- 
 tion and power, from the chief officer of the corporation of small pro- 
 vincial boroughs on the one hand, and of the City of London on the 
 other. Onerous and exacting as are all his labours, the Lord Mayor 
 of London has a host of duties to discharge, which, for the sake of 
 distinction, may be indicated by the epithet ornamental. "While, in 
 conjunction with the City aldermen, he is the chief administrator of 
 justice and law within the City precincts ; while almost every national 
 movement for the relief of national distress may be said to emanate 
 from the Mansion House, which is the Lord Mayor's palace ; while he 
 is the one officer of the realm whose initiative and sanction are the 
 main-springs of English charity, the decorative attributes of the post 
 are not less conspicuous and in their way important. Large inde- 
 pendent means have become essential for the maintenance of the state 
 in which the Lord Mayor is expected to live, and for the pageants and 
 hospitalities of which he has to bear the chief burden. Periodically 
 he entertains as his guests distinguished visitors from abroad, now an 
 Asiatic despot, and now a European prince. There are few days in 
 the week in which be has not, clad in the robes and ensigns of his 
 office, to take his place at some public meeting, or to occupy a promi- 
 nent position at some public dinner. In these duties he is frequently 
 accompanied by the sheriffs ; but they only enhance the ceremonial 
 effect, and do not relieve the chief magistrate of the City of any of his 
 actual work. 
 
 The mayoralty in provincial cities is a position not less coveted 
 and honourable than in the capital city of the empire. In small places 
 it may have sunk into disrepute, but in towns like Manchester, Liver- 
 pool, Bristol, Birmingham, and many others much inferior to them in 
 importance and influence, it is still regarded as a considerable mark of 
 distinction. In all these cases, with the notable exceptions of Liver- 
 pool and Dover, the ornamental attributes of the office are somewhat 
 in abeyance. At Liverpool, indeed, which as the great port of com- 
 munication with the New World, abounds in opportunities of doing 
 honour to illustrious strangers, the Mayor has to participate in enter- 
 tainments and pageants involving an expenditure that it is only par- 
 tially recompensed to him by the salary he is paid. Elsewhere in the 
 provinces the Mayor is generally an unpaid officer, and when his 
 yearly term is over he can scarcely hope to find himself less than 
 i'1,000 or £1,500 out of pocket. It is the chief function of the pro-
 
 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT. 05 
 
 vincial Mayor to be president of the Town Council ; and the feeling 
 of his fellow-townsmen is, that he should not sink his business work 
 in this capacity in the mere pomps and vanities of his office. The 
 routine labours of the post occupy his entire time, and if he happens to 
 be a member of any great business firm, he cannot hope to give more 
 than an hour a day to its affairs, and will probably have to make some 
 arrangement with his partners during his twelvemonth of office. He 
 represents the council and the town on deputations to ministers of 
 state, while if the Central Government want information on any local 
 matter, it is to the Mayor that they will apply. He presides over 
 public meetings of ail kinds, whether held for political or charitable 
 purposes. At purely town meetings he fills the chair in virtue of his 
 office. He takes his place on the rota of magistrates, and presides 
 over all their meetings. In addition to this, he is a member ex officio 
 of every committee of the council, and is thus held, as, indeed, from 
 the necessities of the case he must be, responsible for the general 
 working of the entire municipal machinery. 
 
 Passing to the administration of justice in municipalities, the Mayor, 
 as has been seen, is always the chief magistrate of the corporation. 
 Provincial aldermen, unlike London aldermen, have not any magiste- 
 rial power, while most of the practical duties of the magistracy are 
 often discharged by a stipendiary officer, whom it is optional with 
 every corporation to appoint. The borough magistrate differs from 
 the county justice in that he is not required to possess any property 
 qualification, and that he need not even be a burgess of the munici- 
 pality in which he acts. The sole legal qualification which exists is 
 that he shall reside within seven miles of the borough. On the other 
 hand, various practical disqualifications have gathered round the office 
 from time to time, at the discretion or caprice of different Lord 
 Chancellors, with whom — and not, as in the case of counties, with 
 the Lord Lieutenant — the appointment of borough magistrates rests 
 exclusively. Lord Westbury was the first keeper of the Sovereign's 
 conscience to exclude brewers from the commission, and this dis- 
 qualification has been subsequently extended to all persons engaged 
 in any branch of the liquor trade. It is also customary to disqualify 
 practising solicitors, and, sometimes, persons connected with the 
 local newspapers. The Mayor continuing to hold magisterial office 
 during the year succeeding to that of his mayoralty, it follows 
 that the borough bench is always occupied by two magistrates elected 
 by the burgesses — a fact which the champions of popular privileges 
 and the principle of popular representation naturally adduce as the 
 explanation of the general superiority of urban to rural justice. For 
 this superiority there is a further security in the circumstance that the 
 administrators of urban justice live in the full light of public opinion, 
 are subject to the criticism of an active and inquisitive press, and 
 
 F
 
 36 ENGLAND. 
 
 belong to a complex body animated by great diversity of interests 
 and convictions. 
 
 In one respect at least the borough magistrates are sometimes at a 
 disadvantage. Although a political bias, more or less strong, occa- 
 sionally possesses the county bench, it is kept discreetly in the back- 
 ground ; but in the case of the borough bench the appointments are 
 habitually made on political grounds. Hence arises much rough 
 criticism of a purely partisan character, which is not calculated to 
 promote a spirit of respect for either the administration or the 
 administrators of the law. The Lord Chancellor, unlike the Lord 
 Lieutenant, is not the incumbent of his office for life, and it conse- 
 quently happens that, as each successive Government acquires place 
 and power, a fresh batch of magistrates is made by the incoming 
 Chancellor, for the purpose of satisfying the claims of ministerial sup- 
 porters in the different boroughs throughout the kingdom. Town 
 Council debates, and occasionally debates in Parliament itself, show 
 how the vehemence of parties is aroused by these judicial appoint- 
 ments. In some instances — and it must be remembered that in such 
 things as these, which depend wholly upon an infinitely varying social 
 usage, it is impossible to lay down an absolute and comprehensive 
 rule — the Lord Chancellor allows the town councillors little or no 
 option in the matter, and the corporation has only a nominal veto 
 upon applicants, or finds that the list of names which it submits is 
 disregarded. To such a system certain abuses and disadvantages are 
 inevitably incidental. It does not add to the dignity of the magis- 
 trate's office, or to the popular regard for justice, that the commission 
 of the peace in boroughs should be bestowed as the reward of political 
 service, and that new magistrates should be indefinitely multiplied in 
 consequence of political exigencies. Three Town Councils, those of 
 Leicester, Worcester, and Rochester, during the first session of the 
 Parliament elected in 1874 succeeded in obtaining a discussion of 
 the alleged grievances which they had sustained by the appointment 
 of Conservative magistrates. On this occasion the representatives of 
 the Government admitted that the appointments were the results 
 of political necessity. The local feuds and mutual recrimination to 
 which this state of affairs gives rise, are at once unfortunate and 
 humiliating. 
 
 These facts will convey some idea of the difficulty of preventing 
 political considerations from extending themselves into other non- 
 political issues, and colouring purely municipal affairs. Hence the 
 question arises, whether it is not better to accept and make the best of 
 the inevitable. Much has lately been said against the introduction of 
 political influences into the candidature for municipal offices. The 
 object, it is urged with absoluto truth, in the case of the election of a 
 town councillor is that the choice shall fall upon the best man forth-
 
 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT. 67 
 
 coming, independently of his views as to the government of the State. 
 But it is much easier to protest against the confusion of qualifications 
 than it is to see precisely how the evil is to be remedied. Englishmen 
 have a way of thrusting their political beliefs and views into almost 
 every matter of daily life and business, and whenever a number of 
 Englishmen are gathered together they divide themselves by an irre- 
 sistible impulse into opposing political camps. When, therefore, the 
 charge is brought against the leading members of any municipal cor- 
 poration that they carry the spirit of political exclusion outside the 
 political sphere, it is open for them to reply that they are merely 
 endeavouring to turn to the best account a force which is not of their 
 creation. There is, further, some plausibility in the argument that if 
 the political issue was not introduced into the competition, some other 
 issue, of a less worthy kind, infallibly would be, and that it is better 
 for a municipal election to be decided by political considerations than 
 by considerations of social position. By identifying municipal with 
 political issues town councillors may consider that they secure men 
 more competent for the discharge of municipal duties, and that tbe 
 simple fact of a parochial office being the coveted prize of a political 
 competition raises its status above the level of vestrymanship, and 
 induces a better class of men than would otherwise come forward to 
 descend into the arena. 
 
 It is not only in the parliamentary and municipal institutions of 
 England that the representative principle is actively and beneficently 
 asserted. To such depositaries of the principles of local government 
 as Town Councils, Boards of Guardians, and Vestries, must in the 
 case of some cities, notably of Sheffield, be added another. What 
 Chambers of Commerce do for employers and capital, Trade Councils 
 in some degree do for the employed and for labour. The former 
 bodies are organisations of merchants and capitalists, whose purpose 
 it is by periodical intercourse and deliberation to ascertain what is 
 wanting to advance the best interests of the trade and commerce of 
 tbe neighbourhood, to see that these deficiencies receive proper con- 
 sideration at the hands of the legislature, to communicate special 
 wants to parliamentary representatives, and upon occasion to present 
 memorials or despatch deputations to the Imperial Government.* In 
 the Trade Council the principle of organisation may be seen in a like 
 state of activity. This council is really a confederation of working 
 men's delegates for industrial purposes. The members of each 
 industry choose by universal suffrage a parliament of their own, 
 whence some one individual is selected by vote to a place on the 
 general council of the collective industries, whose business it is to 
 
 * Here, again, it is impossible to lay down a universally applicable rule. Thus 
 Unionism, which, as is said in the text, is a politically powerful principle in Sheflield, 
 is almost politically non-existent in Birmingham. 
 
 f2
 
 C3 ENGLAND. 
 
 watch over the interests of labour and to bring the wants and griev- 
 ances of labour before the members of the Imperial Parliament, just 
 as the employers do in the Chambers of Commerce. Consequently, 
 the political representative in the case of every great industrial town 
 stands between employers and employed, each in confederated con- 
 clave assembled. As he will, if he is wise, be able to exercise a 
 wholesome influence with the employers, so also will he be able to 
 contribute much towards the political and economical education of tho 
 employed. 
 
 The Trade Council, in addition to its periodical meetings, usually 
 holds an annual dinner, and at this dinner one or other of the parlia- 
 mentary representatives of the borongh may be expected to take his 
 place as the guest of the evening. The dinner is not a luxurious 
 banquet. The apartment in which it is held is neither too roomy nor 
 too well ventilated. The diners number over a hundred, and they are 
 very closely packed away. During the daytime they have been occu- 
 pied with their different callings, some of them engaged in work 
 requiring only the mechanical exercise of brute strength, others in 
 the manipulation of the most delicate machinery. Now their working 
 dresses are laid aside, they have donned their suits of black broad- 
 cloth, and in point of decent presence, good manners, intelligent 
 looks, they are an exceedingly creditable company. The meal only 
 consists of a couple of courses, joints roast and boiled, tarts and 
 puddings, solid and satisfying. It is consumed with the swiftness 
 and appetite which one expects to see in English working men. 
 Good fresh meat is not, indeed, strange to their lips ; what is strange 
 is tho bulk in which they see it displayed. To those who only know 
 beef and mutton from the small morsels which it falls to their every- 
 day lot to taste, there is something of irresistible fascination in the 
 visible presence before them of the entire joints whence those morsels 
 are taken, and at which the diners may cut and come again. 
 
 But their intelligence is not dulled by the solidity of the repast and 
 the glass or two of beer with which it is washed down. They are 
 looking out for a speech — not on politics, but on matters connected 
 with trade and industry — from one of their borough members, who 
 happens to be among them. What they want is not flattery but 
 truth. They know very well that they are sometimes short-sighted, 
 and that many of the rules of their societies call for amendment. 
 They wish to be dealt with fairly, to be told when they go wrong 
 and why they go wrong, and if their mentor does this they will not be 
 satisfied merely, but grateful. It is difficult to leave such an assembly 
 as this without feeling that those members of the Houso of Commons 
 who represent large business constituencies have a daily increasing 
 responsibility. If our elective legislators fairly face the situation, 
 dealing honestly with the working men electors, neither neglecting
 
 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT. 69 
 
 their interests nor appealing to their vanity, they will have little reason 
 to complain that they are delegates and not free agents. The game 
 is almost completely in their own hands, and they will be acting most 
 unwisely if they neglect these opportunities of meeting their consti- 
 tuents and teaching them — for membership of the House of Commons 
 is not solely a political but also an educational responsibility — lessons 
 of something more than partisan fidelity. 
 
 If good citizenship ought to be the ideal of the individual, and if 
 the standard of good citizenship is the completeness with which the 
 duties of a citizen are discharged, it is to the provincial capitals, such 
 as those we have just visited, that we should go. In London itself 
 the active qualities of citizenship are, for the most part, imperfectly 
 displayed. The Londoner pays his rates and taxes, and says with 
 perfect truth that these are heavy enough to secure him every crea- 
 ture comfort outside and inside his home — good drainage, well-paved 
 and well-cleaned streets, pure water, unpolluted air, and gas of good 
 illuminating power. If such boons are not always forthcoming, the 
 Londoner vents his dissatisfaction on those whom he considers the 
 responsible officials, grumbles at his club or his home, or writes a 
 letter to the newspapers, but seldom attempts personally to take in 
 hand the redress of his own grievances. London, indeed, is so 
 hugely overgrown that its size eclipses the sense of private and per- 
 sonal responsibility. The Londoner is a ratepayer, a taxpayer, a 
 subscriber to charities, a voter at political and sometimes municipal 
 elections, but scarcely a citizen. There is no sense whatever leavening 
 the mass of the nation of London of a corporate life in which each 
 one is bound to take his share, and of the responsibilities of which 
 nobody can divest himself. This is one of the reasons that London 
 is probably the worst governed of English cities, and that publicans 
 and small tradesmen are the majority in those vestries which are the 
 local parliaments of the capital. The provincial Englishman, on the 
 other hand, lives in a more stimulating atmosphere ; he is not oppressed 
 by the same consciousness of vastness of space and number: He is a 
 unit, not a cipher. Invigorated by the knowledge that action is not 
 necessarily followed by failure, he nerves himself to action, and action 
 begets ambition. 
 
 London, again, is the most wealthy and one of the least commodious 
 capitals in the world, for the simple reason that only a very limited por- 
 tion of that aggregate of towns of which it is composed — namely, the 
 City — enjoys municipal rights. A municipality for London is what 
 generations of metropolitan reformers have been endeavouring to 
 secure. The vision that they have before them is that of an Hotel de 
 Ville, a group of buildings which should consist of the central offices 
 of all the departments of metropolitan government — Justice, Police, 
 Drainage, Gas, Water, Fire Brigade. This would be the harmonious
 
 70 ENGLAND. 
 
 blending into one organic whole of the fourfold empire from which 
 London as it is suffers — the City Corporation, the Westminster autho- 
 rities, the Vestries, and the Metropolitan Board of Works. The area 
 of London is divided into thirty-nine districts for vestry action as 
 well as for poor-law administration, and is partitioned anew, with no 
 regard for uniformity, for police, county courts, duties under the 
 Registrar-General, for militia, revenue, postal, gas, water, and par- 
 liamentary purposes. Divided and multiplied authority means increased 
 and unnecessary expense, and the annual pecuniary loss to London in 
 consequence of ill-regulated administrative expenditure may be esti- 
 mated at a quarter of a million, while that upon gas and water amounts 
 to half a million. 
 
 Nothing more costly, indeed, than the present system of London 
 local government under vestries can be imagined. Westminster, for 
 instance, has live Boards, equal in the aggregate to only one in Mai'y- 
 lebone, with five administrative staffs; and the multiplication of vestries 
 involves, of course, in such a case, a multiplication of official salaries. 
 In the same way, vestry halls are multiplied for small areas. The 
 action of medical officers is controlled by vestrymen, who are the 
 owners of house property, and it is painfully significant that the total 
 which the vestries have considered adequate to expend in sanitary 
 work for fifteen years is one shilling and sixpence per head of the 
 whole population. Gas companies, water companies, and parish 
 authorities act in the matter of repairs independently of each other — 
 a fact which affords some explanation of the phenomenon that two 
 hundred trenches are annually opened in Regent-street alone. In 
 that limited area, which is co-extensive with the jurisdiction of the 
 Metropolitan Board of Works, these inconveniences are minimised. 
 But even the Board of Works has no municipal status : in other words, 
 whereas Manchester, Liverpool, and every English town, under the 
 Municipal Act of 1835, can procure from a standing parliamentary 
 committee the permission for improvement — the application for such 
 permission being treated as unopposed private business — no kind of 
 substantial reform can be effected in the capital without the risk of a 
 long parliamentary debate. On the whole, London has reason to 
 be thankful to the Metropolitan Board of Works. It has improved 
 drainage, made new roads, cheapened and improved the gas supply. 
 
 The example of the Metropolitan Board of Works, in the successful 
 performance of its wide and varied range of duties, seems, indeed, 
 materially to have influenced the Ministers, and especially the Home 
 Secretary, in framing the measure providing for the future govern- 
 ment of London, recently under the consideration of Parliament. Of 
 the multitude of schemes for the civic reform or reconstruction of the 
 capital which have been advanced during the last half century, there 
 are two which have for a long time virtually divided the suffrages of
 
 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT. 71 
 
 all practical men between them. It was proposed by the one to 
 create a single municipality, of which the administrative jurisdiction 
 should be co-extensive with the whole of the existing metropolitan 
 area ; and by the other, to establish a series of separate and inde- 
 pendent municipalities, conterminous with the several parliamentary 
 boroughs into which the existing metropolitan area is divided for 
 political purposes. It was to the second rather than to the first of 
 these plans that the Royal Commission of 1854, over which Sir George 
 Cornewall Lewis presided, gave its adherence. "We think," say the 
 Commissioners in the report drawn up by their chairman, " that if 
 an attempt were made to give a municipal organisation to the entire 
 metropolis by a wider extension of the present boundaries of the City, 
 the utility of the present Corporation, as an institution suited to its 
 present limited area, would be destroyed, while at the same time a 
 municipal administration of an excessive magnitude, and therefore ill 
 adapted to the wants of the other parts of the metropolis, would be 
 created. But we see no reason why the benefit of municipal institu- 
 tions should not be extended to the rest of the metropolis by its 
 division into municipal districts, each possessing a municipal govern- 
 ment of its own." The mere fact that a single municipality for the 
 whole capital would have to supply the wants and protect the interests 
 of so vast a population as that of London in its entirety, appeared to 
 Sir George Cornewall Lewis and his colleagues a conclusive reason 
 against its introduction. But at present very different counsels are 
 in the ascendant, and the change is not altogether unjustified by the 
 enlarged experience of the last thirty years. Sir William Harcourt, 
 in introducing the London Government Bill into the House of Com- 
 mons last session, derided the notion that the civic well-being of four 
 millions of people could not be safely entrusted to a central authority 
 such as the abortive ministerial measure was designed to establish, 
 and he was able to appeal to the satisfactory discharge of the 
 multifarious and accumulated functions which have been from time to 
 time allotted to the Metropolitan Board of Works in support of his 
 contention. 
 
 It is not, however, on the ground that the administrative jurisdic- 
 tion of a single municipality for the whole of London would be 
 of unmanageable dimensions that the opposition to it has been 
 exclusively or even mainly based. It has been urged that any 
 project with such an aim in view would meet with the im- 
 'placable hostility of the vested interests, not simply of vestrymen, 
 but more particularly of the existing corporation ; that it would be 
 impracticable to secure, as members of a body of the kind in contem- 
 plation, a sufficient number of citizens whose zeal, honesty, public 
 spirit and private leisure would adequately qualify them for belonging 
 to it ; and that even supposing these preliminary difficulties to be
 
 72 ENGLAND. 
 
 overcome, and that a great local parliament were to be constituted in 
 London, especially were the police at its disposal and subject to its 
 authority, it might not impossibly, should the occasion arise, be able 
 to menace the independence of the Imperial Parliament at Westmin- 
 ster itself. The late Bill appeared, so far as the necessities of the case 
 would permit, very adroitly to steer clear of the more important of these 
 objections. The Common Council which it was to establish was to 
 have been an expansion of the existing corporation, while the District 
 Committees which were to act in subordination to it were to repro- 
 duce in an improved shape the chief of, at all events, the less objec- 
 tionable features of vestrydom. Nor were the police to be placed 
 under the control of the municipality, a point which will, however, 
 scarcely seem of the highest moment to those who reflect that in the 
 event of any great crisis it would be the command, not of " the 
 force," but of the guns at Woolwich, which would determine the fate 
 of the capital. Again, the eminently significant history of the London 
 School Board amply warrants the belief that fit and proper candidates 
 for seats on both the Common Council and the District Councils would 
 by no means be wanting when they were required. The fear that 
 there would be a dearth of them for the first has been signally falsified 
 by the result^ and it may be confidently anticipated that similar 
 apprehensions with regard to the second and the third would in due 
 course prove to have been equally without foundation. At the same 
 time it cannot be doubted that the London Government Bill, whenever 
 it again makes its appearance, will encounter, as it has encountered, 
 very determined opposition in many quarters, and that if it should 
 ever find its way into the Statute Book it will arrive there a very dif- 
 ferent measure from what it was when it was originally brought into 
 existence by the Home Secretary. 
 
 With corporate enterprise and private energy combined, London is 
 undergoing a triumphant process of rehabilitation. In the Albert and 
 Victoria Embankments it has the finest riparian boulevard in the 
 world. When the mansions which will stand upon what once were 
 the grounds of Northumberland House are finished a superb avenue 
 to the Thames will be opened. The new thoroughfare leading from 
 Sloane Street to Walton Street is rendered imposing by Queen Anne 
 mansions, not more spacious than picturesque. A complete trans- 
 formation has been wrought in the district which was once called 
 West Brompton, but which is now known as South Kensington, by 
 the mile after mile, the acre after acre of miniature palaces, whose 
 lowest rental is more than equal to a middle-class income. On every 
 side, in almost every quarter of the great city, something like this is 
 going on. Imagine the feelings of Addison, could his shade revisit the 
 earth, gazing down upon what once were the fields and woods of his 
 " Old Kensington," and seeing instead of sheep-cropped meadows and
 
 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT. 73 
 
 leafy trees an infinite expanse of houses, each of them rivalling in 
 splendour and dimensions the biggest and finest that he knew. 
 
 Nor are the triumphs won by the spirit of modern improvement in 
 London material only. We have made great advances of late years 
 in the matter of taste. There is visible in summer a large expanse 
 of well-diversified and well-distributed colour in the admirably-kept 
 flower-beds that fringe the road between Hyde Park and the Marble 
 Arch. Nor is it only the parks and the Thames Embankment which 
 have received a new grace by the care bestowed upon them. Collec- 
 tions of gay geraniums and scented mignonette, hanging gardens, as 
 fair as any which can have added their charm to the old Babylon, are 
 the common ornaments of the houses of the new ; and the horticulture 
 of windows is as much of a fine art as the horticulture of enclosures 
 in the London Squares. Kensington Gardens, indeed, demand more 
 attention than they receive, and a walk through what is really as noble 
 an urban pleasaunce as any in the world is too often, to ail who love 
 trees and know how they should be tended, a succession of melancholy 
 experiences. Before London can vie in natural beauties with such 
 capitals as Paris or Brussels, it is necessary not only that she should 
 be better supplied with trees, but that those trees which she already 
 has should be better cared for.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 TOWNS OF BUSINESS. 
 
 General Characteristics of Commercial and Manufacturing Districts of England — 
 Humanising and Educating Influences at work in the (ireat Towns of the North — 
 Employed and Employer in Lancashire and Yorkshire— Manchester and Liverpool 
 generaily compared — Aspect of Life in the Cotton Manufacturing Districts — JMew- 
 castle-on-Tyne — Birmingham. 
 
 Every city, it has been remarked, symbolises in concrete form some 
 great idea ; and the large commercial cities of the England of to-day 
 are the embodiments of human science applied to facilitate the pro- 
 cesses and augment the results of human industry. The external 
 aspect of these vast hives of toil is seldom picturesque. There is 
 little or nothing pleasing to the eye in the approaches to them, yet 
 there is much that is profoundly impressive in the appearance of their 
 outskirts as the traveller enters them by night. Looking forth from 
 the windows of the railway train, after having crossed miles of barren 
 moor and deserted fields, the passenger becomes suddenly aware of 
 the naming beacon-lights of a never-ending labour. In the distance 
 he descries pillars of flame, lost in huge spiral exhalations of murky 
 smoke. At first the glowing sentinels which guard the portals of his 
 destination are few ; soon they multiply, till at last his entire track 
 seems to be a line of fire. Above him are the same peaceful moon and 
 silent stars which he saw when he was being hurried through the 
 desolate levels of Yorkshire, with nothing save the mighty rushing 
 throb of the steam-engine, as it whirled him along, to violate the 
 serenity of the night. But everything else is changed, and as he is 
 shot across the giant bridge spanning a great river, he can not only 
 descry an endless vista of watch-fires of industry, but can hear also 
 the tremendous reverberation of forges mightier than those of the 
 Cyclops. 
 
 Yet though man, by his all-powerful enterprise, is perpetually trans- 
 forming the face of Nature, though it is this interminable series of 
 swift transformations which impresses the traveller through England 
 so strikingly, the continuity of national life and feeling is preserved 
 unbroken. This is mainly due to the very suddenness of the change 
 from manufacturing England to agricultural England. The denizens 
 of the two districts may have little in common, in the way whether
 
 TOWNS OF BUSINESS. 75 
 
 of personal characteristics or mutual acquaintance. Yet as an hour 
 and a half will take the traveller from the heart of the Black Country 
 to a typical agricultural neighbourhood, so, in the higher social influ- 
 ences dominating town and country, is there a near relationship. 
 The fact that the great country landlord is also, in many cases, the 
 great proprietor of mines and factories, is at once a guarantee and a 
 sign of the fusion between the different elements of English life, and 
 the diverse sources of our national power. The new is ever being 
 incorporated with the old, and the result of the process is a growing 
 identity of interests and of feeling. 
 
 If the visitor to the large manufacturing towns of the kingdom is 
 struck by the gloom of their atmosphere and by the squalor of some 
 of their quarters ; if he sees, or thinks that he sees, around him a race 
 of men, half of whom are preoccupied with the anxieties of opulence, 
 while the other half are consumed with the cares of poverty ; if he 
 finds upon the surface nothing but the worship of Mammon and the 
 desolating influences of want, — he has only to examine a little more 
 closely into the system, and he will find that there is no lack of 
 humanising influences at work. It is a population which may seem 
 to live for money and material success, but it is also stirred by higher 
 thoughts, and its dreams of the prosperity which is reckoned by the 
 ledger are abundantly tempered by tastes and pursuits of a more 
 softening and elevating kind. The teaching of art and letters is not 
 wanting to the members of these communities. Science has attrac- 
 tions independently of the power over Nature with which she invests 
 man. The workers may appear as wholly absorbed in the pecuniary 
 successes of their tasks as the artificers of Dido with the walls of 
 rising Carthage. But there are the instruments of culture as well as 
 the greed of gain ; and if Manchester is to England all that and more 
 than Carthage was to Africa, the graces and ornaments of Athens are 
 not quite forgotten. 
 
 A century ago the whole of Lancashire was in a condition little 
 better than barbarism. Life was unsafe ; property was insecure ; 
 strangers were attacked simply because they were strangers. Sixty 
 years ago the favourite sports of the inhabitants of Blackburn and 
 Oldham were bull-baiting and compelling old women to race in sacks. 
 The improvement which has taken place in the interval has been 
 confined to no single class of the population ; and if native refinement 
 of mind has not in all cases proved a grace within the reach of art, 
 there is at least a very considerable amount not only of material but 
 of intellectual civilisation. Such towns as Manchester and Liverpool 
 may be fairly described as being at once capitals of English commerce 
 and centres of English culture. There may be in them something of 
 that tendency to glorify the acquisition of wealth which is so common 
 in America, but this wealth is not exclusively sought for mere wealth's
 
 76 ENGLAND. 
 
 sake. Many thriving representatives of Lancashire trade and manu- 
 facture regard the pecuniary reward of their energy and enter- 
 prise as a means, not as an end — as huilding the edifice, but as 
 not crowning it. Their aim is not even mainly selfish, and the 
 Lancashire merchant hopes above all things to transmit the fortune 
 he has made to a son who will add to it the graces of an education 
 and a training which he himself has not. Music, painting, the drama, 
 collections of art-treasures, science, are regarded not merely as the 
 superfluous embellishments, but as the indispensable accompaniments 
 of prosperous existence. The Handel Festivals, and the other great 
 choral jubilees, are never so successful as when they are held in the 
 great cities of the north. Opera-singers and actors meet there with 
 the most sympathetic and the most critically appreciative audiences. 
 Without the patronage of these cities the studios of London would 
 languish. China, bric-a-brac, and the whole world of antiquarian 
 curiosities, find in them their most ready and generous purchasers. 
 The books which are read in the capital are read, not so much 
 simultaneously as previously, in the large towns of the north. 
 Lectures on science, history, and literature meet with hearers as 
 numerous and as attentive, if not as distinguished, as at the Royal 
 Institution in London. 
 
 It would be a mistake to suppose that the only type of the pros- 
 perous manufacturer is that of the showy and luxurious plutocrat, 
 with his picture galleries, his well-stocked cellars, his graperies, his 
 conservatories and their precious contents of delicate exotic plants. 
 There is an old proverb in Lancashire — " Four generations from clog 
 to clog" — which means that the cycle of gradual rise and fall, the 
 process of crowning the edifice of success and bringing it down to the 
 dust, are comprised within the lives of father, son, grandson, and 
 great-grandson. The adage probably had a good deal of truth in it 
 when the wealth and prosperity which followed the introduction of 
 free trade had the dangerous attractions of novelty. It is only verified 
 to-day in those instances in which the successful Lancashire manu- 
 facturer pays little attention to the education of his son, who in his 
 turn will beget a more ruinously reckless offspring. But spendthrifts 
 and profligates, wmether in spite of parental solicitude or in conse- 
 quence of parental neglect, are not confined exclusively to any one 
 portion of the population, and the proportion of young men who 
 squander the patrimony which they have inherited is not larger 
 among the manufacturers of England than among any other class. 
 It will be found that the fortunes of which the foundations have once 
 been laid in manufacturing families are often of an enduring character, 
 and undoubtedly the tendency is, not for the circular progress from 
 " clog to clog," but rather to the translation of a newly created family 
 to a higher social sphere.
 
 TOWNS OF BUSINESS. 77 
 
 It may be that for the simple thrifty manufacturer, who is as much 
 a representative man as the merchant living in princely state, we 
 should go rather to Yorkshire than to Lancashire. In some kinds of 
 manufacture, minute care, judgment, and frugality do the work which 
 is done in others by enterprise, courage, and money. Naturally 
 enough, these two distinct kinds of undertaking tend to develop two 
 corresponding kinds of character. We have glanced at the great 
 cotton lord and millowner living amid all the pomp of wealth, and 
 sparing none of the lavish expenditure which that pomp entails. Take 
 the case, which is equally real, of a manufacturer in a much smaller 
 way of business — a proprietor, it may be, of a gold and silver smelt- 
 ing factory — who realises, by dint of incessant care and unflagging 
 personal attention, something like £3,000 a year. He inhabits no 
 gilded mansion with marble staircase and corridors, decorated with 
 costly canvases ; his drawing-room is not furnished with the choicest 
 articles oivertu, and as you leave it to pass into the garden, you do 
 not find yourself in a fragrant grove of oranges, blossoming under a 
 crystal roof, nor are your ears lulled by the murmurous plash of foun- 
 tains. The establishment is not wanting in refinements, but they are 
 the refinements of a somewhat austere simplicity. The house is fur- 
 nished more in the style of the thrifty tradesman of fifty years ago, 
 or the clergyman of straitened means in our own day. Yet neither 
 education, nor culture, nor moral grace is wanting to the household. 
 Though the private expenditure of the head of the family is probabby 
 less than a thousand a year, no trouble or money is spared to secure 
 for his children the highest and most complete instruction which they 
 can have. The girls are under the care of the best governesses as well 
 as of their mothers ; and when the boys are old enough, they will be 
 sent to a judiciously selected public school. In such a household as 
 this there is no lavish dispensation of hospitalities, there is little visit- 
 ing of any sort, there is much severity of atmosphere, and there is, 
 perhaps, not enough of sweetness and light. It is probable that the 
 family is brought up on the principles of a rigid teetotalism, and that 
 wines, beer, and spirits are never seen upon the table. It is not less 
 likely that the whole household is dominated by a distinctly religious 
 spirit, and it will probably be found that the religion is one of the 
 creeds of Nonconformity. 
 
 Doubtless, whether in Yorkshire or in Lancashire, the prevailing 
 tendency is in the direction of an increasingly luxurious style of 
 life. As Manchester and Liverpool have their suburban palaces, 
 so are the environs of Bradford studded with the costly homes of 
 Bradford manufacturers, while at Sheffield, a couple of miles from 
 the heart of its busiest industry, the Eccleshall and Radmore 
 districts abound in really superb houses, solid stone structures, 
 placed in the midst of park-like grounds, splendidly furnished, highly
 
 78 ENGLAND. 
 
 decorated, often enriched with modern masterpieces of painting and 
 sculpture. 
 
 Again, though the traditions of primitive simplicity linger with a 
 more visible influence in Yorkshire than in Lancashire, there are tastes 
 and habits peculiar to the county and common to the Yorkshire mer- 
 chant and its territorial aristocracy. Every Yorkshireman loves a 
 horse. Most Yorkshiremen have no objection to a bet. Both 
 these attributes of the Yorkshire character are illustrated to a very 
 conspicuous degree in two of the towns of the county — Sheffield and 
 Doncaster. At Doncaster the race for the St. Leger is more of a 
 genuinely popular institution tban the race for the Derby on Epsom 
 Downs. It attracts Yorkshiremen from far and near, and especially 
 from the neighbouring great towns, where there is always an unlimited 
 indulgence in wagering. 
 
 But cricket and football are the pastimes of which Sheffield may be 
 considered the metropolis, as much as it is of cutlery and of iron and 
 steel manufactures. It is also the capital of pedestrianism ; running 
 matches and walking matches are. perhaps more plentiful here than in 
 any other town in England, and these matches provoke much gambling. 
 All the approaches to the ground which is the scene of the contest — 
 many of them miserably squalid and dirty — are densely crowded. 
 Hundreds of men throw up work for the day in order that they may 
 get a glimpse of the sport, and make their books, or have an oppor- 
 tunity of backing their fancy. The interest taken by the women is 
 scarcely less keen — though the mothers and wives of Sheffield work- 
 men can have small reason to feel pleasure in the match, for wages are 
 recklessly squandered in betting and drinking on these occasions, and 
 the natural consequences are hunger and want at home for a long time 
 afterwards. The more respectable working men of the place tell you, 
 with evident bitterness, that betting is one of the curses of their order. 
 In other respects, Sheffield, like other central towns in the districts 
 of the mineral industry, shows little of that thriftiness which is to be 
 seen in the cotton districts of Lancashire. The explanation probably 
 is that the fluctuations of prosperity and adversity are within much 
 narrower limits in the textile than in the metal trades. Lancashire 
 earnings are not so large and are much more regular than in mining 
 neighbourhoods ; consequently expenditure is much more carefully 
 made by textile artisans and their families than by miners, and, as 
 might be expected, the co-operative movement has never attained 
 in Yorkshire anything like the same successful development which 
 has fallen to its lot in Lancashire. While the balance of social and 
 economical advantages is thus rather on the side of the textile 
 workers, they do not fare equally well from a physical and sanitary 
 point of view. The great steel and iron works of Sheffield and 
 Middlcsborough, with the tremendous demands they make upon the
 
 TOWNS OF BUSINESS. 79 
 
 muscles of the workers in them, have been instrumental in giving 
 us a far finer race of men than the textile factories ; and as are the 
 men, so are the women. 
 
 There are marked points both of difference and similarity in the 
 social life of London and the social life of Manchester and Liverpool. 
 Like London, they have their suburbs and their clubs, their hansom 
 cabs, omnibuses, and tramways, their theatres and music-halls, their 
 mainly fashionable and their purely business quarters. But there is 
 infinitely less concentration of trade, industry, and their representa- 
 tives within certain districts, in the case of the capitals of the pro- 
 vinces than in the case of the capital of the empire. The sense of 
 labour and of poverty pervades these great towns to a much more 
 conspicuous degree than it pervades London. In London one may 
 spend the day in walking through streets, squares, and entire neigh- 
 bourhoods, without encountering any, or many, visible signs that the 
 wealthiest and most luxurious capital of the world is also the scene of 
 the most numerous and in the aggregate the busiest human industries 
 ever collected together. In Leeds # and Manchester, the presence of a 
 nation of toilers is much more generally perceptible, and the contrast 
 between squalor and splendour is sharper, more sudden, more ubiqui- 
 tous. It is possible in London, by a judicious ordering of one's 
 movements, to keep almost all that is suggestive of misery and desti- 
 tution out of sight. This cannot be done in cities where the haunts 
 of luxury and toil interpenetrate each other. The shadows of the 
 great factories and of those who work in them are cast over the whole 
 place, and at certain hours of the day there is no street which is not 
 more or less surrendered to the patrol of factory operatives. 
 
 It follows from this that in towns like Manchester and Liverpool 
 the working classes are a much more visible power than in London. 
 In other words, there is in these cities more of the impressive asser- 
 tion of a complex corporate life than in the capital. London may 
 have its working men's mass meetings in Hyde Park, and its sec- 
 tarian demonstrations in Trafalgar Square. Hundreds and even thou- 
 sands of London artisans and operatives assemble on occasion in the 
 East End, and make more or less of a triumphal progress to the West. 
 But none of these celebrations produce anything like the effect of a 
 gathering of Lancashire or Yorkshire working men in a Free Trade 
 Hall or Corn Exchange. The reason, of course, is that in London the 
 vastness of the adjoining area dwarfs the significance of the spot in 
 which the particular gathering is held, and the consciousness of the 
 almost infinite hosts around and about who do not participate in it, 
 prevents the imagination from answering readily or vividly to the 
 popular appeal. 
 
 The composition, character, and customs of the working classes in 
 their two representative capitals are entirely different. In each of
 
 80 ENGLAND. 
 
 these respects very distinctive peculiarities exist at Manchester, while 
 Liverpool possesses most of the features common to large towns. 
 What the mill-hands are to Manchester the dockyard labourers and 
 the sailors of all nationalities are to Liverpool. Both cities have neces- 
 sarily many occupations in common — the flour-mills, rice-mills, oil- 
 mills, refineries, and foundries, in which they abound, as well as the 
 trades of the ordinary artisan classes, bricklayers, carpenters, and 
 joiners. But in Manchester these classes seldom come prominently 
 before the eye, being to a large extent merged in the overwhelming 
 number of factory operatives. Few things are more remarkable in 
 Manchester than the vast crowds of mill-hands which dominate the 
 streets and monopolise the pavements when the hours of work are 
 over or suspended. The manner of these busy toilers is marked by 
 little of superficial polish. There is nothing in their address which 
 recognises the existence of social gradations. To touch the hat is a 
 thing unknown, while " Sir" is rarely used, even to their employers. 
 But, bluntness and roughness notwithstanding, these mill-hands are 
 a well-read, a thrifty, and an intelligent race, good citizens, and 
 kindly fellows. Their dialect is uncouth, but they take pride in it, and 
 are encouraged to do so by their masters. High wages, and the 
 adaptability of the work to women, girls, and boys, give them com- 
 paratively ample means, while improvidence and extravagance are 
 either exceptional, or come only in infrequent outbursts. When these 
 occur, the manifestations are often curious, sometimes taking the form 
 of a lavish indulgence on the part of men in the luxuries of school- 
 boys.* 
 
 The mill-hand is not seldom of diminutive stature, this physical 
 defect being the result, in some degree, of indoor and comparatively 
 sedentary employment, but more often of early marriages. A young 
 man of eighteen can earn 25s. a week, a girl of sixteen 14s. On 
 the basis of this income the two take each other for better or worse, 
 and continue to work at the mill until the woman is detained at 
 home by maternal cares. The pair will now find it difficult to make 
 both ends meet, until their children begin to earn wages ; and when 
 these in their turn have arrived at adult age, they will marry off-hand 
 as their parents did before them. The factory housewife is saving, 
 cleanly, loquacious, and very often extremely sbrewd. During court- 
 ship m Lancashire as in Cumberland, much laxity of conduct is con- 
 doned by general custom ; but the conventional immorality of great 
 towns is, as a rule, unknown among the factory classes. 
 
 Theatres, music-halls, and excursions round Manchester provide 
 ordinary amusements, while literary institutes and entertainments are 
 very popular with the mill-hands, who are often great readers and fre- 
 
 * I have myself seen in Manchester two factory hands (men) enter a confectioner's 
 shop, buy a niece of wedding-cake, price 4s., to eat with their mug of beer.
 
 TOWNS OF BUSINESS. 81 
 
 quently keen politicians. Some of the pastimes are sufficiently 
 primitive. At the fetes held in the Pomona Gardens, in Manchester, 
 on the Saturday half-holiday, men may be seen dancing together, 
 turning slowly round and round ; while others, mostly youths of 
 eighteen or nineteen, will stand face to face in couples, and do a limited 
 clog movement to a monotonous tune, their companions remaining on 
 the watch to take their turn. It is, in fact, the negro tom-tom dance 
 without the savage exuberance. For it is a necessity that, though 
 the average intelligence is high, there must be, among the stunted 
 produce of early marriages, a certain amount of congenital imbecility. 
 At Whitsuntide the mill-hands go in crowds to Liverpool, but mix 
 little with the inhabitants. The chief object is to cross the river, and 
 have a dip in the sea. The ordinary dress on these holiday occasions 
 is a drab moleskin, while men and women alike are much given to 
 bright silk neckties, scarves, and shawls. 
 
 But though in Manchester itself the masses of the mill-hands out- 
 number the representatives of all other trades, yet they are not so 
 completely lost to sight as in the adjoining districts. The ware- 
 houses in Manchester employ large numbers of "packers," whoso 
 business is the baling and casing of goods, as well as to act as porters 
 and carters. In the outlying manufacturing places, on the other 
 hand, at such towns as Hyde, Stalybridge, Blackburn, Bolton, and 
 Oldham, and in the scattered villages, the factory hand of the purest 
 type will be found, employed whether at a mill, a factory, a print- 
 works, or a bleach-works. Here there is not, as in the chief centre, 
 any degree of mixture, any blending with other social or industrial 
 callings. Coal-fields, indeed, are sprinkled throughout the neighbour- 
 hood, but colliers, wherever they may be, hold little general inter- 
 course with the surrounding population. If there be any perceptible 
 difference between the habits and ways of those residing in the smaller 
 towns and of those settled in the country villages, it is that there 
 may be observed in these districts all the independence characteristic 
 of the Manchester mill-hand in an unmitigated form. The result of 
 town life — at Blackburn, for instance — is to weaken the bonds of the 
 friendly association existing between master and man in the rural 
 districts. Though the operative may live in one of his employer's 
 cottages, and call him "John," there will be no personal cordiality. 
 On the other hand, in the village of Compstall, in Cheshire, for 
 example, the whole place belongs to one great concern, every inhabi- 
 tant being directly or indirectly in its employment. A church and 
 clergyman, schools and lecture-hall, are provided by the firm, who in 
 various ways personally interest themselves in the pursuits and 
 amusements of their people. 
 
 The daily life of the factory operative is nowhere so character- 
 istically seen as in these villages and towns. At six o'clock on a 
 
 G
 
 82 ENGLAND. 
 
 March morning, just as the sun, yet struggling through a bank of 
 clouds, catches the high roofs and taller chimnies, the loud clanging 
 of a bell summons the hands to work. The numberless windows, 
 facing eastward, of the group of gaunt buildings known as " the mill," 
 reflect back the bright rays as with the vivid glow of mirrors. 
 Beneath them, close under the wall, runs the canal, across which, 
 through the row of poplars fringing the towing-path on the farther 
 side, are seen undulating meadows and leafless woods stretching to 
 the hills beyond. Similar buildings, the windows looking out on the 
 streets of the busy little town itself, face north and west ; while to 
 the south the square is completed by a high wall, above which peep 
 the roofs of the engine-house and offices. Between these the wide 
 entrance-gates stand open, disclosing beyond the lodges the paved and 
 gravelled quadrangle within. Outside, and at a considerable distance, 
 seemingly unconnected with the buildings it serves, the great chimney 
 rises from a grassy mound to the height of ICO feet. 
 
 This, briefly, is the appearance presented by the exterior of one of 
 the great factories or cotton-mills of Lancashire, in which are carried 
 on both spinning and weaving — the two distinct processes that convert 
 the raw fibre into calico. Rows of neat cottages with grimy walls, 
 but scrupulously clean doorsteps, sills, and interiors, line the paved 
 streets without. Here and there the gayer window of a dwelling 
 turned into a shop adds variety ; and, in such small towns as we 
 are now describing, on one side will rise, storey upon storey, a huge 
 factory. 
 
 As the bell resounds, these streets are peopled with a moving throng 
 pressing in the direction of the entrance-gates. Men and boys, girls 
 and a few women, the former making the pavement ring with the 
 patter of their clogs, the latter protected against the raw air by a 
 shawl drawn over head and neck, form a crowd too eager to reach 
 the work of the day for idle talk. Nevertheless, there is not wanting 
 an occasional greeting to the housewife, who, through the open 
 cottage door with its footboard, is seen busy in the duties which have 
 taken her away from the occupation of girlhood and early married 
 days. The bright fire, the clean children, the chest of drawers with 
 its painted tray and array of books, the special pride of the good man 
 who has just risen to join the human stream without, reveal some- 
 thing of the comfort of the mill-hand's homo. 
 
 But the entrance is reached, and pressing past the lodge, not with- 
 out a friendly word to overlooker, foreman, or the watchful time- 
 keeper, the crowd disperses across the gravelled square. While some 
 go to the warehouse, the greater number enter the tall buildings 
 where the spinning is carried on, and others, chiefly women, cross to 
 the three-storeyed building ending in the low weaving sheds with 
 theii pointed semi-glass roofs.
 
 TOWNS OF BUSINESS. 83 
 
 Within the preliminaries are quickly completed, The operatives 
 have got rid of their superfluous clothing. In the various rooms for 
 scutching, lapping, carding, and roving the raw fibre which lies in a 
 snowy heap in the first of them, the spinner or minder has seen that 
 his mules and frames are in working order, and stands in the narrow 
 path which divides and gives access to the different machines. In 
 like manner in the shed the weaver is at her post beside the power- 
 looms which are her care. In both places the space above is full 
 of driving-wheels and enormous leathern bands to transmit the 
 motive power. In the engine-house, through whose long windows 
 the beam, crank, and fly-wheel of the machinery within are visible, 
 all is ready ; and as the finger of the clock touches the hour, the first 
 laboured beat of the engine proclaims that the work of the day has 
 begun. Inside the factory the giant strength which has lain quiescent 
 is, all at once, in motion. In mid-air the great leathern bands 
 commence their endless course. Below, mules and frames move 
 quickly backwards and forwards along the ground, cylinders re- 
 volve at various speeds, the countless spindles and bobbins turn 
 round and round ; while in the other department the looms work 
 up and down as the quick shuttle flies from side to side. In the 
 one place the minder narrowly watches the machines for which he 
 is specially responsible, and in the other the weaver is equally as 
 careful to control the action when any hitch shall threaten a flaw in 
 the work ; while their subordinates attend to their individual tasks. 
 
 And so, with a short interval for breakfast, the absorbing process 
 continues until the dinner-hour, when the mill is deserted and the 
 streets are again enlivened by a throng now inclined to linger and 
 chatter, and, in their broad dialect, crack their rough jokes. Home 
 has been reached, dinner eaten, the comforting pipe enjoyed by the 
 men as they saunter back, and once more work begins, to cease at six 
 o'clock. Then, as the clock chimes, the busy hive pours out its 
 workers — weary it may well be, but yet content as they plod home- 
 wards to the welcome that awaits them as the fairly-earned reward of 
 a long day of watchful toil. 
 
 Of Liverpool the marked feature in the industrial population is, 
 as has already been said, the nautical class. Quite distinct from 
 the longshore men are the sailors — many of them foreigners — engaged 
 in the real mercantile marine for long voyages. This is scarcely a 
 class of persons calculated to add respectability to a neighbourhood ; 
 and though a Sailors' Home has been provided for them, and other 
 attempts to reform them have been made, low public-houses, dis- 
 reputable lodging-houses, and other noisome dens still flourish. 
 Another prominent community in Liverpool are the Irish, who in- 
 habit a neighbourhood of their own, of which the centre is the locally 
 notorious Sawney Pope Street, a spot enlivened by perpetual dis-
 
 84 ENGLAND. 
 
 turbances. The Irish in Liverpool for a time increased at a very- 
 rapid rate. As each new hatch of immigrants found employ- 
 ment, they were followed by friends and relations from their native 
 land. But as Ireland has grown more prosperous, and an Irish 
 middle class has begun to develop itself, this movement has been 
 arrested, and it has ceased to be probable that the Irish may con- 
 stitute a preponderating element in the Liverpool population. Another 
 point to be noticed among the Liverpool working classes is the pre- 
 valence of the representatives of unskilled labour. Since the city on 
 the Mersey is the depot and point of departure of imports and exports, 
 it follows that the unloading and loading of ships and storing of ware- 
 houses is the principal labour employing lumpers, cotton porters, and 
 carters. No technical skill : required in this work, a fact which, 
 combined with the direct steam communication with Ireland, is mainly 
 responsible for the many emigrants from the other side of St. George's 
 Channel. Liverpool, as statistics and reports show, has by no means a 
 good character for morality and decorum. But, in judging of this evi- 
 dence, it is always necessary to remember that the repressive measures 
 enforced by the Liverpool magistrates are exceptionally severe, and 
 that the police often apprehend upon charges which would be deemed 
 trivial elsewhere. The shipwrights of Liverpool, who form a distinct 
 class, are an industrious, intelligent body of men. One or two regi- 
 ments of volunteer artillery, which in efficiency have few equals, are 
 exclusively recruited from their number. With these exceptions the 
 working classes of Liverpool have no characteristics that separate them 
 from the working classes of other large towns. Theatres and music- 
 halls, both thronged nightly with enthusiastic but more or less critical 
 audiences, provide the staple of their amusements. The town has 
 been beautified by the extension of a belt of line parks, well wooded 
 and admirably kept. Here in summer the inhabitants find their re- 
 creation, while there are other opportunities of enjoyment in the ex- 
 cursions easily made by the cheap ferries to the Cheshire side of the 
 river, where at Eastham rural, and at New Brighton seaside, pleasures 
 are within reach. 
 
 As Manchester and Liverpool, in respect whether of their working 
 classes or their superiors in the social scale, differ from London, so 
 they each of them differ from the other. Thus, though there are in 
 Manchester few families whose connection with the town in any 
 notable way could be traced back to the beginning of the century, yet 
 that city has more hereditary worthies still associated with it than 
 Liverpool ; in which in the course of a generation, not only are there 
 new faces, but changed names. There is an obvious reason for t^is 
 difference. Success in manufacture — the kind of success achieved 
 in Manchester — implies extensive property in building land, and 
 plant, a property not only productive but readily transmissible from
 
 TOWNS OF BUSINESS. 85 
 
 father to son. In the operations of mercantile business, of which 
 Liverpool is the seat, there is less permanence and more vicissitude. 
 The makers of a fortune bid farewell to the place in which they have 
 made it, or, dying, have no freehold to bequeath, but simply money 
 and credit. A disastrous fluctuation sets in, trade is bad, and the 
 money vanishes. This distinction between mere buying and selling 
 and manufacture is inevitable, and will always continue. Again, 
 Liverpool, one -of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world, may be 
 called the Marseilles of England. In a Liverpool morning paper, 
 a name such as Manuel Garcia or Christino Nicopoulos, sure evidence 
 of the nationality of its owner, will almost certainly be found figuring 
 in the lists of police-court celebrities of the previous day. Ascending 
 in the social scale, there will be seen in Liverpool something like a 
 reflection of the mixture of races which is visible in the migratory 
 nautical population. From Scotland and Ireland, from the United 
 States, from all parts of the continents of Europe and Asia, there is 
 a perpetual stream of new blood circulating through the community. 
 The aliens and foreigners soon become permanent settlers, and the 
 old Liverpool families are merged in the hybrid mass. This infusion 
 of new blood occurs to a very much smaller extent in Manchester. 
 Germans and Levantine Greeks are the most conspicuous among the 
 strangers who make that city their home. But these seldom become 
 assimilated with the native population. They, the second in particular, 
 form a distinct class, perpetuating the peculiar habits of their native 
 land in the country of their adoption. 
 
 A healthy, quickening, and instructive element in Liverpool society 
 is to be found in the number of men who, having been abroad in 
 India, North and South America, China, the colonies, and elsewhere 
 during part of their lives, come to end their days on the banks of the 
 Mersey. Often, as part of his commercial training, a Liverpool youth 
 will pass some years in a foreign land, necessarily having his wits 
 sharpened in the process. The very different character of the Man- 
 chester trade affords only a few accidental experiences like these. 
 On the other hand, there are more men, young and old, at Manchester 
 who have received a public school and university education than at 
 Liverpool. The very best society in Manchester or Liverpool is not 
 more accessible to residents than the very best society in London, 
 and is very seldom entered by families who have made fortunes by 
 shopkeeping, never by those whose fathers have been shopkeepers in 
 the town itself. The social antecedents of strangers are less critically 
 examined. Military or naval officers, clergymen, and barristers are 
 general favourites, and in Liverpool there has been of late years a 
 perceptible importation of scions of noble houses who have taken to 
 commerce. 
 
 There has existed in Liverpool for more than half a century a select
 
 86 ENGLAND. 
 
 and fashionable institution framed after the model of the old Almack's 
 of London, known as the Wellington Rooms. Election to it is by 
 ballot ; the claims and positions of candidates are closely scrutinised. 
 To be a member of the society is to obtain a sort of hall-mark of 
 social consideration. Dances are given once a fortnight during the 
 ■winter, and the building is used for no other purpose. Parties from 
 the different noblemen's seats in the neighbourhood attend frequently, 
 and always in the race week. In Manchester an attempt of the same 
 kind has been made in a series of balls given at the Free Trade Hall, 
 but the experiment has not proved equally successful. There are 
 other social attractions possessed by Liverpool which in Manchester 
 are wanting. The Manchester races are entirely given up to the 
 mill-hands ; but at Liverpool the Grand National, the Autumn Cup, 
 and also the Altcar Coursing Meeting collect brilliant assemblages of 
 fashionable sportsmen and the fair sex. Liverpool attractions are 
 further increased by its yacht clubs, the River Mersey thus helping to 
 give the town a social distinction of its own which Manchester lacks. 
 
 Liverpool and Manchester toilets are equally costly matters. The 
 young men of both places, ambitious of the reputation of dandies, 
 patronise London tailors. But ladies' dresses are abundantly provided 
 by local modistes, and it is only occasionally that costumes are pro- 
 cured from London or Paris. In consequence of commercial vicissi- 
 tudes and a floating population, Liverpool has never had the wealth 
 of Manchester. Liverpool life has been showy, Manchester extrava- 
 gance has been marked by a certain solidity. The ball-rooms of 
 Liverpool are always excellent and enjoyable. The invitations are 
 restricted to dancers, the music and appointments are good, and there 
 is plenty of available room. The form of entertainment most popular 
 in Manchester society is the dinner party, at which London hours are 
 kept, and the fruit and other table luxuries are purchased at London 
 prices. Probably there is little to choose between the dinner-parties of 
 the two northern cities. In both, the wines produced will usually be 
 of high excellence, since the habit of keeping a large cellar obtains 
 widely among those whose hospitalities are upon any considerable 
 scale. A two years' supply of wine, matured for drinking, in addition 
 to wine in the process of maturing, is usually to be found in the house 
 of the Manchester or Liverpool Amphitryon. 
 
 Of late years private carnages have become almost universal among 
 the richer classes in both places. In each of them the elite of society 
 usually inhabit fine houses, with conservatories and elaborate gardens, 
 in the outskirts, though in Liverpool some of those who are called 
 the "best people" live in the town. Many of the richer families 
 have houses in London, to which they come for the season ; and 
 some dwell all the year round at a considerable distance from the 
 city in which their business is, in the rural districts of Cumberland
 
 TOWNS OF BUSINESS. 87 
 
 and Staffordshire. The visit to London late in the season is equally 
 common to the local aristocracy of either town, as is the trip on the 
 Continent, often extending as far as Egypt. Fishing, shooting and 
 hunting are the regular pastimes of the men ; Liverpool has two 
 local packs of harriers, and, as has been said, its yacht clubs as well. 
 Cricket and football, which are common among all classes of the 
 youths of manufacturing and commercial England, are played as 
 much by the Irwell as the Mersey. Manchester is to-day the 
 county centre in cricket, while the palm at football may probably be 
 claimed by Liverpool. 
 
 The change of the hours of business in the two cities has resulted 
 in a species of social revolution. Formerly merchants were at their 
 work by nine in the morning, and seldom left it until eight or nine at 
 night : now the universal closing hour in Liverpool is five in the 
 afternoon ; and in Manchester, although the warehouses may be 
 open until seven, the principals leave about the same time. This 
 alteration has naturally proved favourable to the development of club 
 life, which is marked by special features of its own in the two places. 
 In Manchester there are many clubs, of which the chief — a very large 
 one, and a fair specimen of the remainder — is the " Union." Here 
 the old practice of dining early is still in force. Between one and 
 two, warehouses are universally deserted, and the club is full ; though 
 the early club dinner of some members may be only the substantial 
 lunch of a few, which is to support them during the interval that 
 has to elapse before a seven or eight o'clock dinner at home. For- 
 merly the wealthiest manufacturers coming in from the country on 
 market days (Tuesdays and Fridays) were accustomed to dine at inn 
 ordinaries between one and two, when, after dinner, spirit-bottles 
 would be put on the table, and long clay pipes produced. But to-day 
 the club coffee-room has taken the place of the inn ordinary. On the 
 market days business with many is supposed to be over at dinner- 
 time, and cards and billiards are played during the afternoon. But 
 on other days, and almost invariably in the evening, the Manchester 
 club-houses are deserted, except at this mid-day interval. In Liver- 
 pool it is very different. The " Palatine," a small and select club, 
 which takes precedence of all the others, has comparatively few 
 frequenters at the luncheon-hour. At seven or eight o'clock it is 
 always full, and both after and before dinner there is plenty of card- 
 playing and billiards. Loungers fresh from the theatre drop in, and 
 it is much frequented by officers of the garrison, who, as well as 
 the leading barristers of the Northern Circuit, are honorary members. 
 Altogether this club endeavours, not unsuccessfully, to imitate the 
 clubs of London. If there is thus more of social pretension at 
 Liverpool than at Manchester, such pretension is not without its 
 influence on social education. Clubs are the cradle of sound public
 
 88 ENGLAND. 
 
 opinion in matters appertaining to manners, if not to morals. Row- 
 dyism and club life cannot co-exist. It should be added that the Gun 
 Club and the Polo Club, make the resemblance between Liverpool 
 and London still closer. 
 
 It is a marked peculiarity of the Lancashire mill-owner, educated 
 and travelled though he be, to affect a certain humility or homeliness 
 in his native place. He will know all his mill-hands personally, call 
 them by their Christian names, nor be offended when he is saluted, 
 "How are you, John?" in return — a more respectful address, as 
 before said, not commending itself to the employed. The art con- 
 noisseur of Manchester — his cultivation often no mere pretence — will 
 in business affect the Lancashire patois : will answer his neighbour 
 when a bargain is being struck, " I'd loike to, but I canna do't." 
 This has probably given rise to the proverbial saying, " Liverpool 
 gentlemen and Manchester men." The extent to which freedom of 
 manner and independence of mien on the part of the mill-hands is 
 carried at Manchester is not without its disadvantages. A free and 
 easy mill-hand is apt in his sports to bear a disagreeably close like- 
 ness to the London rough. At the Manchester race-course, as 
 already observed, and at every open-air meeting, the mill-hands 
 muster in force; and the stranger fresh from the United States 
 might be disposed to compare the streets of Cottonopolis on the 
 Saturday half-holiday to New Orleans on Sunday, where the coloured 
 pedestrians monopolise the pavement, to the entire exclusion of the 
 shrinking whites. There may be no reason to suppose that the 
 morality of Liverpool is exceptionally high ; but the rigid system of 
 police inspection enforced at the great English seaports renders the 
 signs of public immorality few in number, and when visible not of a 
 kind to attract the fastidious voluptuary. Vice, when it is permitted 
 to flaunt itself for the allurement of mixed nautical nationalities in the 
 public streets, only on the condition that it shall submit to the surveil- 
 lance of the law, can scarcely fail to become a monster of a mien 
 sufficiently hideous to insure a very genuine amount of disgust. 
 
 Perhaps the least agreeable feature in the social life of Liverpool 
 and Manchester — and it is to the former town that the remark applies 
 with especial force — is the establishment of drinking bars, and the 
 extent to which they are patronised. This is an American impor- 
 tation, and it does not exercise a wholesome influence upon the young 
 men of the place. Wine-shades, bodegas, and saloons abound both 
 above and under ground. If they do not result in much actual 
 drunkenness, the amount of tippling to which they lead, and the 
 wanton waste of time which they involve, are deplorable. Twenty 
 years ago the habit of drinking during business hours was com- 
 paratively unknown at Liverpool ; now, it is so common as scarcely to 
 attract attention, and certainly not to carry with it an adeauate stigma.
 
 TOWNS OF BUSINESS. 89 
 
 The opportunities of the higher education are abundant and excel- 
 lent at each of the two cities. Liverpool has its College and Royal 
 Institution, Manchester its Grammar School and Owen's College. An 
 idea may be formed of the assiduity and success with which music, as 
 well as art and letters, is cultivated, from the attendances at fortnightly 
 concerts during the winter months at the Liverpool Philharmonic 
 Hall, and at the concerts under Mr. Charles Halle in the Manchester 
 Free Trade Hall. Debating societies and literary clubs are also 
 established, while both Liverpool and Manchester boast the possession 
 of a newspaper press which in ability, influence, and enterprise, is 
 scarcely second to the press of London. Generally, indeed, and in 
 Manchester in particular, at the present day the journalism of the 
 provinces is provincial only in name, and, both in purely literary 
 qualities and universality of well-digested intelligence, reaches the 
 highest standards of metropolitan excellence. Almost as much may 
 be said of the theatres of the two cities, which are the rehearsal 
 grounds of pieces destined for the London stage, and, on the occasion 
 of their frequent visits, are the profitable empyrean of London stars. 
 
 It is the stately river on which it stands that gives to Liverpool its 
 peculiar and in some respects unique position among the great towns 
 of England. The forests of masts, the spacious docks, the daily 
 despatch from its harbours of grand ocean steamers bound to all parts 
 of the world, the constant arrival of ships laden with treasures, the stir 
 and bustle of a thousand wharves, the incessant and audible throb- 
 bings in the machinery of a commerce conducted with every quarter 
 of the earth and every nation under heaven — these things are to be 
 seen at Liverpool as they are to be seen nowhere else in England. 
 Hull, Plymouth, and Newcastle-on-Tyne are mighty emporia of trade, 
 whence argosies are sent forth to all points of the compass, each with 
 some special trait of its own. Hull is identified with the spirited 
 business carried on by the descendants of Danish forefathers — the 
 stock which predominates in Yorkshire generally — and with happy 
 ventures in the Norwegian timber trade. Plymouth is identified with 
 military transports and emigrant ships. If the great capital on the 
 banks of the Tyne has a gloomy atmosphere, it is remarkable as the 
 battle-field on which some of man's mightiest triumphs over the 
 colossal obstacles which nature has opposed on his path, have been 
 won. For mile after mile stretches the long line of black factories, 
 [n that dark row of gaunt sheds, covering an area of upwards of two 
 nundred acres, the implements of destruction that annihilate armies, 
 the Armstrong cannon, are forged. Such as these continue to be the 
 ornaments of the banks on either side till Newcastle has been left 
 behind, and a place has been reached where operations are going on, 
 which, when completed, may bring a second Newcastle upon the 
 scene.
 
 90 ENGLAND. 
 
 But what we are chiefly concerned to see in thi3 coal-blackened, 
 antique Northumbrian capital, with its immemorial past, and its infinite 
 future — its old buildings, venerable churches, hoary traditions, its 
 inventions, improvements, and devices of yesterday, its busy plottings 
 and cunning contrivances for to-morrow — is the influence exercised by 
 science upon the course of the river. The Tyne is no longer the 
 stream which nature made it; its bed is deepened, its channel changed. 
 Headlands and promontories have been removed, and thousands of 
 tons of soil have been uplifted from its depths, in order that ships of 
 heavy and still heavier burden may float up to the very walls of the 
 town. The chronicle of the work accomplished under tbe auspices of 
 the River Tyne Commissioners alone is one of the most interesting 
 and significant of the narratives of modern energy and enterprise — 
 the record of a long war patiently and successfully waged against 
 difficulties that the mightiest machinery in the world, guided by clear 
 heads and steady hands, has alone surmounted. Fifty-one millions 
 of tons of material were dredged out of the river in the three years 
 between 1871 and 1873, were taken out to sea, and were finally 
 deposited two or three miles from the entrance of the river, in a depth 
 of water exceeding twenty fathoms at low tide. The width of the 
 river has been increased in different parts, from one hundred and fifty 
 to four hundred feet. A point, or cape, seventy-five feet above high 
 water, which was a most dangerous obstruction to navigation, and 
 which prevented those in charge of vessels from seeing vessels ap- 
 proaching on the inner side, has been cut away. Existing docks have 
 been enlarged ; and a new dock, with an enclosed water-space of 
 ninety-four acres, surrounded by 3,650 lineal feet of quays, has been 
 built. The commercial consequences of these colossal operations are 
 seen in the increased size of the vessels frequenting the port. In 
 twenty years the average tonnage of vessels has risen from 149 tons 
 to more than 500. 
 
 Of the great towns of the North, Leeds, perhaps, has the largest 
 future in store for it. For certain reasons, the counterpart of Leeds 
 in the Midlands may be said to exist in Birmingham. Birmingham 
 has made immense strides in wealth and importance during the last 
 fifty years, but in point of opulence it is behind both Manchester and 
 Liverpool. If there is in the Warwickshire capital a high average of 
 substantial fortunes, there are few of the colossal incomes which have 
 ceased to bo remarkable in Lancashire. The social life of Birmingham, 
 which gives a fair idea of the social life of Leeds, differs materially 
 from that of Liverpool or Manchester. The fashionable thorough- 
 fares of the capital on the Mersey, with their long queues of carriages 
 and footmen waiting in attendance about tho shops which ladies love, 
 present much the same appearance as the fashionable thoroughfares 
 of the West End of London. In Birmingham, equipages planned on
 
 TOWNS OF BUSINESS. 91 
 
 anything like the same scale as those of Liverpool are comparatively 
 scarce, and it maybe doubted whether, twenty years back, there were 
 more than a score of persons in Birmingham who kejitt their own 
 carriages. Again, even at the present day, men-servants, with the 
 exception of coachmen and grooms, are rare in the most opulent of 
 Birmingham households ; and where in Liverpool the front door is 
 opened by a butler out of livery, in Birmingham the visitor is 
 announced by a neat waiting-maid in her plain dress of black alpaca 
 or merino. Yet Birmingham is not without its comforts, its luxuries, 
 its great houses with handsome and gracefully laid-out gardens and 
 artistically decorated interiors. There are many good picture collec- 
 tions in Birmingham, but they have been slowly, lovingly, and appre- 
 ciatively acquired, not purchased ready-made as in Liverpool or Man- 
 chester. The Birmingham art connoisseur sets to work quietly and 
 deliberately, buys for himself, judges for himself. Thus, whereas in 
 a representative mansion in a great town in Lancashire paintings, 
 ornaments, and furniture are often without a history, in a corre- 
 sponding home at Birmingham these are the centre of many memories 
 and associations, and have been the object of a chase, itself more 
 pleasurable than possession. 
 
 Of the two there is more which Birmingham has in common with 
 Manchester than with Liverpool. The capital of cotton and the capital 
 of hardware supply materials both for parallel and contrast. As Man- 
 chester was the head-quarters of the National Educational Union, so 
 was Birmingham the home of the National Education League. On the 
 other hand, as Manchester — which also, by-the-by, first put forth the 
 programme of the Free and Open Church system, the abolition of pews 
 — is the cradle of Free Libraries, so is Birmingham the town in which 
 the experiment was adopted with conspicuous energy and very little 
 delay. Again, as Manchester has a reputation for picture-galleries and 
 institutions, so, too, has Birmingham. These are probably the two 
 towns in the kingdom in which these institutions — the most beneficent 
 that a great city can have — flourish best. The industrial products of 
 each capital are unlike. Manchester has few manufactures, but all of 
 them on an immense scale ; Birmingham many, some of them on an 
 exceedingly small scale. On the Irwell cotton is everywhere ; while 
 in the metropolis of the Midlands the industries and trades of the 
 entire earth seem collected. Everything that assists, graces, or 
 destroys life comes from its teeming warehouses. There is no kind 
 of implement used in war which Birmingham does not make, just as 
 it supplies the most delicately-pointed of needles and the coarsest as 
 well as the finest of locks, pins, jewellery, thimbles, watch-cbains, 
 caskets, awl-blades, buttons, screws, every variety of gun, and every 
 tool which the manual worker knows. The manufacture of many ot 
 these commodities requires an exceedingly modest "plant," and the
 
 92 ENGLAND. 
 
 consequence is that Birmingham ahounds in small, independent manu- 
 facturers, who contrive to make a living out of the work they can 
 carry on in the courts and alleys they inhabit. 
 
 As at Leeds so at Birmingham, ladies organise themselves into 
 social as well as religious missionaries for the benefit of the working 
 classes. They endeavour to inculcate the laws of hygiene, the rudi- 
 ments of wholesome cookery, the simple laws of domestic economy 
 upon the dwellers in the poorest districts of the town. Lectures, with 
 the same or analogous intentions, are given in the schools belonging 
 to the School Board at frequent intervals. In Birmingham, if nothing 
 else has been done, the secret seems to have been discovered of 
 utilising every available opportunity, and the entire sum of existing 
 human intelligence.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 TOWNS OF PLEASURE. 
 
 University Towns and Cathedral Towns— The New Oxfor d — Settlers in the Cathedral 
 Close — County Towns and Garrison Towns — Exeter, Plymouth, Clifton, Chelten- 
 ham, Bath— Peculiarity in the Social Life of English Watering-places— Essentials 
 of the English Pleasure Town — Sports and Games : their Influence upon English 
 Society — Rapid Multiplication of English Seaside Watering-places — The Genesis of 
 the English Watering-place — Common Features of these Towns — Scarborough — 
 Buxton. 
 
 Leaving now the great manufacturing centres of England, we may- 
 proceed to visit a few representative places, which, if not towns of 
 pure pleasure, are neither exclusively nor chiefly devoted to the pur- 
 suit of business or trade. Country towns, cathedral towns, scholastic 
 towns, and garrison towns — one very often uniting in itself the charac- 
 teristics of all — may be described as holding a position midway between 
 the abodes of pleasure and business. Of country towns and the 
 influences visible in them, something has been already said.* Tbe 
 cathedral towns of England are mainly pervaded, as might have been 
 expected, by the ecclesiastical element, and the visitor to such a city 
 as Salisbury has no sooner set foot within its boundaries than he is 
 conscious of something like that lingering medievalism, not yet com- 
 pletely expelled from Oxford. 
 
 Indeed, the ordinary English cathedral city has about it a more 
 distinctly old-world air than the great academic capital of the country. 
 The last few years have wrought a complete change in Oxford, and 
 have assimilated it in many of its social aspects to a London suburb. 
 When, several decades ago, it was first proposed to extend the Great 
 Western Railway line from Didcot to beneath the august shadows of 
 the spires and towers on the Isis, it was objected by the champions 
 of the old regime tbat irretrievable injury would be done both to 
 Oxford manners and Oxford morals, by bringing the place into imme- 
 diate contact with outside existence. The townsmen, it was urged, 
 would be less passively obedient subjects of the academic rule. Under- 
 graduates would be constantly relieving their studies with trips to tbe 
 capital ; even the common-room — that apartment consecrated to grave 
 talk or discreet humour, and crusted port — would soon acquire a 
 
 * See Chap. V., Municipal Government.
 
 94 ENGLAND. 
 
 perilous likeness to a London club. All that was feared, and more 
 than was feared, have been accomplished. Town and gown still lead 
 tolerably harmonious lives, but town has an independent existence and 
 trade of its own, which it had not in the pre-railway days. College 
 fellows, and even college fellows who are tutors, live almost as much in 
 London as in Oxford ; while among the guests at the high table in 
 college halls, London guests, very often of great distinction, may 
 frequently be seen. The institution of married fellowships has brought 
 to Oxford an element of domestic life which is entirely new. The 
 establishment at Oxford of a military depot has given Oxford a society 
 which it little dreamed of in bygone days. There are dinner-parties 
 and dances in nearly as great abundance during the term-time as at 
 Bath or Cheltenham. An entire colony of professors, tutors, and lectu- 
 rers, with their wives and children has sprung up on what twenty years 
 ago was vacant ground. Where once the pale student paced solitary are 
 nurserymaids and perambulators, while audacious engineers have even 
 dared to unite these outlying suburbs with one of the most picturesque 
 thorougbfares in Europe — the High Street — by a tramway such as runs 
 from Islington to Holloway, or from Westminster to Woolwicb. 
 
 In none of the typical cathedral cities of England is there anything 
 like this amount of busy, bustling, various life. Even in those where 
 there is a considerable quantity of business done, such as Chester, 
 Lincoln, Durham, and Peterborough, there is always a quarter of the 
 town that seems never to lose the deep charm of unruffled quiet which 
 an Oxford college garden seldom knows except in the heart of the long 
 vacation. Round the cathedral itself is a close — here an open expanse 
 of well-kept turf, and here dotted with a group of forest-trees. The 
 shadow cast by the tall Gothic tower extends to a row of houses, 
 ranging in space and design from the cottage to the mansion, but all 
 equally comfortable, dignified, and inviting to repose. These occupy, 
 perhaps, three sides of the entire enclosure. Some of them are in- 
 habited by the ecclesiastical officers of the place — canons, minor 
 cauons, and chaplains. Others, again, have as their inmates families 
 who are attracted by some tie of kinship or sentiment to the spot, and 
 have settled there tranquilly to spend the residue of their days. Few 
 echoes from the outer world break the calm of this hallowed precinct. 
 In the afternoon the noise of carriage-wheels is heard at intervals, and 
 perhaps in one of the corners of the close stands the cathedral school, 
 whither twice a day boys with their satchels go, and whence, 
 twice a day, they issue with clatter and laughter. But the 
 most familiar sound to those who have pitched their tents in this 
 peaceful spot, and that which chiefly strikes the stranger's ear, is the 
 note of the cathedral bell summoning worshippers to prayer, and the 
 musical chimes that ring out once or twice a day. The most notice- 
 able sight is the officiating clergyman walking to the cathedral, clad in
 
 TOWNS OF PLEASURE. 95 
 
 surplice and college cap. To some of the dwellers hard by these 
 spectacles are not only the best known, but, next to the cathedral 
 itself when service is being held, the only spectacle they care for. 
 There are many aspects of social life in a cathedral close, and more 
 than one novelist of the day has given us a series of clever and 
 effective pictures of the mutual jealousies and heartburnings which 
 are concealed in episcopal and decanal breasts. But Mrs. Proudie is 
 not necessarily the predominating spirit of the place, and here, under 
 the cathedral shadow, there could probably be found ladies to whom 
 the world contains very little but that cathedral and its sacred 
 functions. Life is to them but one religious exercise, and the great 
 fane, reared by the piety and devotion of centuries ago, is the only 
 earthly object which sorrow and affliction have left them as the visible 
 centre of their existence and aspirations. 
 
 The cathedral city may have indeed an aspect of its life very differ- 
 ent from this. It may be a great commercial city like Bristol, where 
 the consecrated fabric looks down upon a busy river, crowded wharves, 
 and thoroughfares choked with traffic ; or like Durham, where the 
 stately pile is blackened with the smoke from furnaces and factories ; or 
 like Exeter, which is a county capital and a garrison town as well. 
 Exeter, moreover, has not only a considerable trade of its own, but is 
 also a picturesque metropolis of western pleasure-makers. It is, to 
 begin with, a great centre for all West of England tourists, and it has 
 no lack of regular residents, many of them attracted from a great dis- 
 tance by the beauty and healthiness of the neighbourhood, many locally 
 associated with it, and possessed of friends, near whom they wish to 
 be, already settled in that part of the world. Clergymen, military and 
 naval officers, retired civilians, swell the list of residents. There is 
 much to do, to see, and to talk about. Even without the regiments, 
 or sections of regiments quartered here, there would still be plenty of 
 life and gaiety, for Exeter is as good a specimen of an English county 
 town, at once prosperous in business, and with a quiet air of aristo- 
 cratic distinction about it, as could be found within the four seas. There 
 are balls, concerts, flower-shows, and promenades, picnics, excursions, 
 and pleasure expeditions of every kind. Here, too, as elsewhere, the 
 military element coalesces happdy and closely with the local or purely 
 county element. Men who have been quartered in Exeter — and 
 what is true of Exeter is true of many other garrison towns — when 
 bearing Her Majesty's commission, have been so much struck by the 
 attractions of the place, that when their term of service has expired 
 they have become permanent inhabitants. There are various and sub- 
 stantial educational advantages for their children, and there are possible 
 alliances for their marriageable daughters. Of Plymouth it may be said 
 that all which Exeter has it also boasts. Indeed, Plymouth, of the two, 
 though it has not a cathedral, is a focus of even more social movement
 
 96 ENGLAND. 
 
 and variety, seeing that it is not only, like Exeter, a county town, 
 but in addition a great commercial, naval, and military centre. The 
 same conditions are forcibly realised in the cases of Canterbury and 
 York. Both are garrison towns and cavalry stations ; the second 
 also the head-quarters of the Northern District. There is a close 
 intimacy between officers and the county or city gentry, and these 
 cathedral towns boast always of a pleasant semi-military and official 
 society which keeps them generally full. 
 
 A majority of the purely pleasure towns of England are of very 
 modern growth. Their development in every instance presents nearly 
 the same features, and is marked by much the same incidents. The 
 cbief elements in their composition are identical, and the objects 
 which belong to one are common to all. It is indispensable that they 
 should possess certain physical qualifications and aptitudes, that they 
 should have a more or less organised machinery of amusement and 
 pleasure ; that they should be endowed with certain distinct hygienic 
 qualifications, such as mineral springs or a particularly fine climate ; 
 that they should have one or two tolerably good schools, a popular 
 preacher, a fashionable doctor, and that they should, if possible, be 
 within tolerably easy distance of the meets of a good pack of hounds. 
 Bath, Cheltenham, and Leamington are all indebted for much of their 
 prosperity at the present day to the qualification last named. They 
 are capitals of pleasure and also of health, but they are in addition 
 capitals of sport. Bath, indeed, is not quite so conveniently situated 
 for the fox-hunter, but Cheltenham and Leamington have each many 
 of the recommendations of Market Harborough or Melton, as well as 
 no lack of attractions for intending settlers all the year round. These 
 towns have, too, a reputation of some antiquity. Bath was for years 
 a national as well as a provincial capital, and still continues gallantly 
 to hold its own as one of the great inland spas of the kingdom. 
 Cheltenham and Clifton belong to the same category, but at Chelten- 
 ham there is probably more fashion, and at Clifton there is certainly 
 more wealth. Than these three towns, Cheltenham, Clifton, and 
 Bath, there are few more beautiful to be found in the United King- 
 dom. So far as picturesqueness of architecture and of situation is 
 concerned, there are few cities in the world with which Bath need 
 fear comparison. Its houses, considering the period in which they 
 were built, are as good as the houses of London. With the excep- 
 tion of Portland Place, there is no street in London which is as fine 
 as Pulteney Street, and no square or terrace to be compared with 
 the Circus in Bath. Nor are the natural and artificial beauties of 
 Clifton and Cheltenham much less striking. The great feature in 
 Cheltenham, in addition to its delightful public gardens, is the really 
 eupurb boulevard leading from the Queen's Hotel into the High Street, 
 known as the Promenade, with its shops and trees on either side. In
 
 TOWNS OP PLEASUEE. 97 
 
 Clifton there are not only the natural beauties of the Downs, with the 
 glimpses and breezes of the Severn Sea, but there are also stately 
 mansions, inhabited mainly by Bristol merchants, in their own per- 
 fectly ordered grounds, on the central highway leading to the table- 
 land beyond. 
 
 It is not enough that the English pleasure town should possess a 
 fine situation, good houses, picturesque views, and popular clergy- 
 men ; it must have also good schools and the favourable opinion of 
 eminent doctors. The medical profession can do more towards 
 making or marring the fortune of an English watering-place than 
 architects, land agents, or even nature herself. To give a place a bad 
 climate is to take certain steps towards inflicting a calamity of 
 undefinable extent upon the landlords ; and in any town once popular 
 in which rents have suddenly depreciated in value, it will usually be 
 found that the malignant influences of the medical profession have 
 been at work. Having obtained a favourable certificate from the 
 faculty, the watering-place which wishes to be popular must next 
 contrive to equip itself with one or two popular churches, and at least 
 one successful school. The proprietory college, whicb may or may not 
 subsequently succeed in obtaining a royal charter, is a stereotyped 
 feature in the modern watering-place. There may be the spa, the 
 boiling, hot, and tepid waters invaluable for rheumatic patients, the 
 chalybeate so unpleasant to the taste and so beneficial to the system ; 
 but unless there is the great school, it will be as idle to think of the 
 place prospering as it would be to dream of its existence without the 
 great hotel. Cheltenham, Malvern, Leamington, Clifton, Brighton, and 
 Bath — though in the last-named place there has not been the same 
 amount of concentration as in the others — are each of them names 
 suggestive not only of the hygienic value of waters and atmosphere, 
 but of schools which will compare not unfavourably with those of 
 older foundation. The significance of the fact is not affected by the 
 relation in which the school may stand to the prosperity of the place ; 
 whether, as at Cheltenham, it has been one of the efficient causes of 
 its prosperity, or, as at Leamington, Clifton, and Brighton, it has been 
 one of the material consequences ; tbe great thing is to have the 
 school. 
 
 Nor is the church, or rather the variety of churches, less essential. 
 Every English watering-place or town of pleasure is also a centre of 
 English religious thought, a representative battle-ground of English 
 theology. University professors and doctors, ecclesiastical contro- 
 versialists holding important offices, may preside over the evolutions of 
 the combatants from afar, and may supply the principles which are 
 the armoury whence the weapons of local disputation are drawn. It 
 is not the function of the great leaders to mix in the heart of tbe 
 vulgar fray. If hard fighting, dexterous tactics, skilful manoeuvring 
 
 H
 
 08 ENGLAND. 
 
 are to be seen, it is to the pleasure towns of England, where 
 there is enough of leisure, idleness, and spinsterdom for militant 
 ecclesiasticism, that one must go. Roughly speaking, there are two 
 demarcating lines which mainly divide the community in these places. 
 Both of them are of venerable antiquity ; one is the geographical and 
 the other is the religious. When Solon first took in hand the legis- 
 lation of ancient Athens, he found a state of things in which the 
 inhabitants of hill, plain, and vale were separated by the most em- 
 bittered contentions. There is hardly a pleasure resort in England 
 in which the outlines of an animosity based upon the same principles 
 may not be traced. The inhabitants of the crescents and terraces 
 may, for example, consider themselves superior to, or may be looked 
 upon as natural enemies by, those who have established themselves 
 on the plateau at their feet, or in the still lower ground lying beyond. 
 The religious sentiment is an even more prolific parent of cliques and 
 coteries. It has greater power than social rivalry or professional 
 jealousy. 
 
 Yet even thus, though supplied with its sanitary credentials, its big 
 hotels, it educational institutions, its local rivalries, its religious enmi- 
 ties, the English town of pleasure lacks something to be quite complete. 
 It requires an entire machinery of social amusements. Some account 
 will be given in another chapter of the pastimes and the recreations 
 of the great masses of the people. It is to the pleasure towns of 
 England that we must go to witness, in their most highly finished 
 shape, the amusements of which polite society is especially fond. 
 Every form of recreation which of late years has become popular in 
 England has, if not originated in, been cultivated with conspicuous 
 success at, these local capitals of select enjoyment. Lawn-tennis is 
 the amusement of the hour ; croquet and rinking have had their day, 
 and a long day too, at some one or other of these provincial pleasure 
 capitals of the kingdom. The immense popularity of each in suc- 
 cession serves to emphasise a fact, which in this busy, hard-toiling 
 age we may imperfectly realise, that there are among us a vast 
 number of persons of both sexes who are not merely ready but 
 anxious to make by their patronage and favour, the fortune of any- 
 body who will be good enough to invent for them a new mode of 
 agreeably, and more or less athletically, beguiling the passing hours. 
 Almost all the more important pleasure towns are in turn the scenes 
 of tournaments between proficients in some one of these pastimes. 
 Archery was a few years ago the favourite sport of society at 
 Cheltenham ; but we move quickly nowadays, and archery was soon 
 voted slow. Later there have been contests from time to time for 
 championships and grand prizes at lawn-tennis, just as a few years 
 before the game was croquet at every place at which pleasure-seekers 
 congregate.
 
 TOWNS OF PLEASUEE. 99 
 
 The secon.d noticeable fact suggested by the great development of 
 these recreations is the superiority which we are gradually establishing 
 over many of our insular prejudices. In these games English families, 
 whose members are at first mutually strangers, mix freely with each 
 other, and speedily find themselves on terms of more or less intimate 
 acquaintance. Naturally this process has had the effect of very 
 materially modifying the relations which formerly existed between 
 young English gentlemen and young English ladies. When a number 
 of young men and young women meet each other, day after day, on 
 the lawn-tennis ground, whatever the effort to keep parties distinct, 
 some amount of fusion is inevitable. The casual acquaintances 
 made at such games are perpetuated on the promenade, and improved 
 in the ball-room ; and the daughter of the English middle-class parent, 
 who, twenty years ago, was living in a state of almost vestal seclusion, 
 has now acquaintances on every side. Her parents may approve or 
 disapprove of this state and tendency of things, but it is very seldom 
 that they can hope successfully to fight against them. 
 
 Tbe social consequences of the insular position and the picturesquely 
 indented coast-line of England are quite as important in their way as 
 the political. The impulse which drove George IV. to Brighthelni- 
 stone, as it was then called, and Brighton, as it is called to-day, is the 
 same which now urges the entire English people to the shores of the 
 sea when summer has come. The desire animating all sections of 
 the population to scent the fresh odours of the ocean is so great 
 that wherever Nature presents the slightest opportunities and capa- 
 cities, there a watering-place is at once created. Where one of these 
 resorts is fairly established, a number of others are sure to follow in 
 an inconceivably short space of time. The consequence is that the 
 whole littoral of the island is, with occasional intervals, a fringe of 
 seaside towns of pleasure. On the north-west coast, Rhyl, Llandudno, 
 Penmaenmawr, Llanfairfechen, Bangor, Beaumaris, are presently 
 followed by Barmouth and Aberystwith. The south-western coast of 
 England, on the large inland bay made by the Bristol Channel, from 
 Portishead, at the mouth of the Avon, to the Land's End, presents 
 the same succession cf pretty and popular resorts. On the south 
 coast one passes Plymouth, Torquay, Dawlish, Teignmouth, Sid- 
 mouth, Seaton, and Beer, and only leaves Devonshire to find oneself 
 in a superb bay, with shining sands, with a magnificent breakwater 
 in front, and a handsomely built town inland. This town is Wey- 
 mouth. Passing thence eastward, one skirts the Hampshire coast 
 and the Isle of Wight, the bluffs of Sussex and the cliffs of Kent, 
 witnessing the repetition of the same picturesque phenomenon at 
 intervals of scarcely a league. Between the North Foreland and 
 Flamborough Head are situated at least fifty similar pleasure towns. 
 
 All this provision for the pleasure and health wants of the people
 
 100 ENGLAND. 
 
 represents a great deal of business enterprise, much profit, and some 
 loss. These new watering-places have often restored the fortunes of 
 the impoverished proprietors of neighbouring estates, or increased to 
 fabulous amounts the incomes of astute landed gentry, who have 
 realised the possibilities of the place and developed its capabilities with 
 much enterprise and judgment. Not seldom the advantage is reaped 
 by some go-ahead speculator, whether in bricks and mortar or in land. 
 The way in which the edifice of success has been reared is in many 
 cases the same. Having discovered some available locality, fronting 
 tbe sea, the watering-place creator at once sets to work to cover it 
 with houses. He has, at a venture, obtained the ground-rent of the 
 soil upon tolerably easy terms ; he has an infinite faith in the develop- 
 ment of his property — by advertisement. It is desirable to procure 
 from some recognised medical authority a certificate as to its singular 
 salubrity. If he can also discover a mineral spring in some unsuspected 
 recess, he will have materially improved the chances of the new experi- 
 ment. It is much to be wished that the scene of his operations should 
 be tolerably close to one or two thriving towns, and that it should be, 
 if possible, on the main line of railway to and from the metropolitan 
 terminus. If it has no railway station at all — and in this case be will 
 have been a bold man to have selected it — he will labour night and 
 day until he has secured the requisite railway extension Once the 
 new venture is fairly started, all will follow in due time, and in pretty 
 regular order of succession. The streets, shops, and hotels having 
 been built, and a promenade having been established, the next thing 
 is to secure the services of a band of fairly competent musicians. 
 Pleasure-gardens will then begin to be laid out, furnished probably 
 with a skating-rink, and certainly with the inevitable lawn-tennis 
 courts. Before long the admiring visitors and the inhabitants, hungry 
 after novelty, will perceive that a building, which is to consist of an 
 aquariam, winter gardens, and concert-room, commences to rise. It 
 will be finished with great prompitude, and covered with a crystal 
 dome. Standing on a lofty cliff, the edifice commands a fine view of 
 the sea ; and the next thing will be to establish, by subterranean pas- 
 sages, communication between the shore below and the terrace walks 
 above. Meanwhile, in the more frequented portions of the town, great 
 changes and improvements have been taking place. A town hall has 
 been built, which is alternately used for concerts, recitations, and 
 religious, literary, and scientific lectures ; a branch of Mudie's library 
 has been established at the post office ; the rows of pony-chaises and 
 donkeys for hire have increased ; and the lodging-house keepers are 
 doing a brisk business. There is a constant succession of arriving and 
 departing guests, and the place, if it prospers, is only quite deserted 
 in the depth of winter. If, however, the gentlemen who have autbority 
 over tbe spot are really as acute as they ought to be, they will at once
 
 TOWNS OF PLEASURE. 101 
 
 establish a winter season. This is being done now at most of the 
 chief watering-places of the United Kingdom. 
 
 Every well-to-do sea-side haunt is a faithful testimony to the bold 
 activity that has descended to this century from pre-historic times. 
 English watering-places are the most determinedly go-ahead places on 
 the face of the earth. No sort of improvement is introduced in archi- 
 tecture or drainage which is not immediately taken up. Very often 
 there are not merely new works to be done, but old abuses to be rooted 
 out. When a quiet fishing village is suddenly exaggerated into a large 
 pleasure town, there are many sanitary defects in existence to be 
 remedied, as well as new sanitary precautions to be taken. It is 
 curious to notice how in some of these cases the new town is visibly 
 an excrescence upon the older settlements. While at Hastings, 
 St. Leonards, and Brighton the development has been equable, the 
 old town spreading out in all directions, the Eastbourne of to-day is at 
 some little distance from the Eastbourne of old times, and in the 
 middle of the new streets there may be seen growing forest trees of 
 remote antiquity. There are other features which the seaside towns of 
 England generally possess in common. For most of their patronage 
 they are dependent on the middle classes — the highest have little to 
 say to the pleasure resorts of their own country. When the London 
 season is over they go abroad, or on a round of country house visits, 
 and this occupation is enough until the season for their return to Lon- 
 don arrives. Flying visits are indeed paid to Brighton, Folkestone* 
 Hastings, or elsewhere, by the most distinguished representatives of 
 English rank and fashion, and places of mainly sanitary resort, like 
 Torquay, have always a fair proportion of titled or patrician denizens, 
 ordered thither by their doctors. It is further to be noticed in con- 
 nection with the pleasure towns on the English coast, that, though 
 largely patronised by visitors from all parts of England, they con- 
 sistently preserve their local character. Scarborough is still mainly 
 the pleasure town of the North of England, just as Brighton is the 
 great holiday resort of London ; as Folkestone and Dover are mainly 
 peopled with the natives of Kent and the neighbouring counties ; or as 
 Morecambe Bay is with the representatives of Lancashire manufactur- 
 ing industry. There are also certain aspects and seasons common to 
 all these watering-places. However exclusive they may pride them- 
 selves on being, they are still scenes of periodical holidays and cheap 
 excursions, and Margate or Gravesend cannot upon certain occasions 
 boast a more genuinely cockney appearance than Brighton. They 
 have, too, their stated times for particular classes of visitors, and the 
 Scarborough or Brighton hotels or lodging-houses are full of very 
 different sorts of people in the early summer, the late summer and 
 autumn, and the winter months. 
 
 In their social life there are at once marked points of similarity and
 
 102 ENGLAND. 
 
 difference. They have all of them their clubs, their picturesque drives, 
 their promenades on the pier, and most of them have really noble 
 concert-rooms and institutions, which, without the card-playing, are 
 very much like the Etablissements of Continental watering-places. In 
 all there is pretty much about the same amount of flirtation and love- 
 making, of gallantry and scandal, of pleasure parties by sea and by 
 land. The same average of men inhale the inspiring virtues of the 
 sea breezes by the highly rational process of spending their days in 
 the tobacco-laden atmosphere of billiard-rooms. There are the same 
 eccentricities and extravagances of costume and possibly of conduct. 
 But in small matters of social etiquette each place has more or less a 
 definite code of its own, and as much may be said of social amuse- 
 ments upon a larger scale. The interchange of hospitalities, including 
 dances, between the inmates of different hotels, is hardly known except 
 at Scarborough. At Buxton something of the kind occurs, but not to 
 an equal extent. On the other hand, Buxton has advantages and 
 recommendations which are exclusively its own. Standing a thousand 
 feet above the level of the sea, it not only possesses a purer and clearer 
 atmosphere than is perhaps to be breathed on any other populated 
 spot in the .United Kingdom, and a warm mineral spring of virtue so 
 powerful that it is unsafe to batbe in it without having previously 
 taken medical advice, but public gardens of extreme beauty, in which 
 is situated a concert-room where music that is not surpassed in any 
 pleasure town of England or of the Continent is to be heard.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 COMMERCIAL AND FINANCIAL ENGLAND. 
 
 Capabilities of the Subject for Popular Treatment — Relations of Finance and Commerce 
 — Their Cosmopolitan Character — London the World-Centre — Representatives of 
 our Financial System— Bank of England and Lombard Street — The Stock Ex- 
 change — How Loans are granted — London the Centre of Commerce — Characteristics 
 of English Trade — Signs of Change — Possible Causes of Decline — Hope for the 
 Future. 
 
 The mechanism of the money market and the mysteries of the organi- 
 sation of credit may seem abstractions to the many, yet in some way 
 or other they make themselves felt as the most concrete of realities by 
 all. They constitute not merely a system of procedure, but an aggre- 
 gate of individual men. Above all things their growth has coincided 
 with the development of English influence and power in the world at 
 large. It is credit which lies at the foundation of English trade, and 
 which has chiefly enabled us to rear the edifice of national prosperity 
 that is the result of centuries. A practical investigation of the different 
 component parts of this colossal fabric will bring us face to face with 
 the changing aspects of our financial and commercial system, and will 
 reveal the fact that in this, as in other regions of activity and enter- 
 prise, England is now in a transitional state. 
 
 It is not necessary to thread the maze of causes that have contri- 
 buted to place England at the centre of the finance and commerce of 
 the world. Enough for our purpose that she is there ; and as London 
 is the heart of the British Empire, it is the heart of universal enter- 
 prise, which regulates and feeds the pulses of life that beat throughout 
 the whole vast framework. All roads may be said to lead to Lon- 
 don, and all impulses to trading activity, all outgoings of enterprise 
 and energy that build up markets in the most distant parts of the 
 earth, make their effects visible and palpable in the capital. An 
 abundant harvest in the wide sweeps of the Western States of America 
 cheapens wheat in Mark Lane ; famines in India and China, which 
 diminish the ability of the natives of those countries to purchase our 
 cotton goods, reduce the demand for our manufactures and make our 
 produce markets flat and stagnant ; bountiful supplies of the precious 
 metals, or scarcity in the output of the gold and silver mines of Cali- 
 fornia and Australia, affect in the first instance the money market, and
 
 104 ENGLAND. 
 
 afterwards, by their action on prices, carry their influence into the 
 whole range of the relations of supply and demand in the market 
 values of all sorts of commodities. There is a reflux of influence from 
 England and from London as well as an influx of mingled agencies 
 flowing from all parts of the globe towards the same common centre. 
 The movement is one of action and reaction ; but so closely are the 
 streams of counter influences intermingled that we cannot lay a finger 
 on any one spot and boldly affirm that here is the primum mobile; 
 at this point is the mainspring of the universal system. Efflux and 
 reflux, action and reaction, ebb and flow, are at work throughout 
 the entire fabric ; and so closely, pervasively, and intimately do they 
 co-operate, that no quickness or delicacy of discrimination can detect 
 the beginnings of their separate workings. We can only track them 
 in their multitudinous results. We find out sometimes, through the 
 sudden snapping of a weak link in the complex organisation, that 
 there has long been a flaw in one part or the other of the huge 
 machine. It may be the failure of a bank, or the collapse of some great 
 firm, bringing in its train ruin to thousands, and multiplying failures 
 throughout the length and breadth of the land. .We are then able 
 to trace the causes which have been slowly fretting against the weak 
 spot till at last it gives way with a crash. But it is alway difficult, if 
 not impossible, to isolate any one set of agencies and decide with 
 dogmatic assurance that they and nothing else have brought about the 
 interruption — that it has been the panic in the United States a few 
 years before, or the famine in the East, or the destructive wars in 
 the West, or the gradual reaction from over-inflation under a false 
 currency system, or the bad harvests of successive years, or changes 
 in the habits of communities that supplied markets for our goods, or 
 any other of the hundred and one causes which may have all contri- 
 buted in their degree to induce the final catastrophe. The streams of 
 commerce may have been flowing languidly to the common centre, 
 and in its turn that centre, with diminished powers of absorption and 
 reduced capacity to scatter the beneficent products throughout other 
 lands, may have failed to discharge the functions that were easy in 
 times of vigorous health. But we shall rarely be able to set apart the 
 intermingling currents and unravel the intertwining threads so as to 
 fix upon each its precise share of the responsibility. It is with com- 
 merce, and with the finance which is partly the creature and yet in 
 great measure the creator of commerce, as with the phenomena of life 
 —we can follow the processes by and through which it works and 
 produces its effects, but when we reach the border line between life 
 and death we are baffled, and the original obscurity remains as impene- 
 trable as ever. 
 
 Of late years in particular, the most prominent features of trade 
 and commerce, as of finance, have been their increasingly international
 
 COMMERCIAL AND FINANCIAL ENGLAND. 105 
 
 and cosmopolitan character. The laws under which they act, and the 
 tendencies they are ever striving to realise, are peculiar to no country 
 or people, for they are illustrated by all. To this fact is due the 
 universality of their effects and influences. This universality is in 
 great measure owing to their diversity ; so that what is lacking in the 
 forces and elements supplied by one nation is supplemented from 
 another. There must be a common meeting point for all these varying 
 and counterworking factors, and this is found in London ; not, how- 
 ever, in the whole metropolis, but only as to geographical extent and 
 locality in one comparatively small section of it. If England be the 
 heart of international trade and cosmopolitan finance, and London be 
 the heart of England, the City is the heart of London. The City, 
 too, has its peculiar nerve-centre. Within the superficial area on 
 which stand the Bank of England, the Stock Exchange, the various 
 edifices of which Lombard Street consists, and, on the other hand, 
 the several spots where dealers congregate, and which constitute the 
 metropolitan markets, may be said to be ranged the congeries of local 
 habitations and names that give regulations to the finance and com- 
 merce of the whole world. For the sake of distinctness, although, as 
 in regard to other phenomena already spoken of, the diverse series of 
 influences run into, overlap, and reciprocally act and react upon each 
 other, it may be useful to take the broad distinction, which we shall 
 work out into clearer detail, of Financial London and Commercial 
 London. All the facts, laws, influences, and tendencies of trading 
 enterprise, mercantile or monetary speculation, credit with its wide- 
 spread and multifarious ramifications, and exports and imports of 
 necessaries and luxuries, together with the means of their distribu- 
 tion, in virtue of which, in being made exchangeable, they become 
 economical phenomena, will fall into their places under one or the 
 other of these heads. 
 
 Without attempting to establish which of the two series has prece- 
 dence in the order of time — for it would be difficult, in regard to this 
 as to the other facts already adverted to, to draw any broad line 
 of demarcation — we select, for convenience sake, Financial London, 
 which will mean, it is hardly necessary to say, Financial England. 
 To give a vivid sense of reality to the subject, let us then take the 
 Bank of England, with its surrounding feeders and suckers in the 
 banking circle of Lombard Street, as the one leading representative ; 
 and the Stock Exchange, the great mart for dealings in all kinds of 
 stocks and shares, as the other. The Stock Exchange is pre-eminently 
 cosmopolitan. Among its members are brokers and "jobbers" of 
 many nationalities. Specially conspicuous among them are the decend- 
 ants of the great Semitic race. The Bank of England, on the contrary, 
 is, or is supposed to be, national, and as the agent of the Government 
 and the keeper of the Government balances it ought to be so. Yet
 
 100 ENGLAND. 
 
 little consideration is required to show that the Bank of England is 
 very much more — though in some respects it is also very much less 
 — than its name would seem to indicate. Outside and beyond the 
 specially national functions which the Bank is bound to discharge — 
 in being the banker of the Government, the issuer of notes that, 
 under certain conditions, are legal tender and therefore national 
 currency, in taking charge of Government securities and paying the 
 dividends thereon to the holders, and in performing the other various 
 offices of a bank for the public — there are other multifarious duties 
 which it is compelled by its position to fulfil. The Bank of England, 
 for example, is pre-eminently the bankers' bank. It keeps the 
 balances of all London and of most provincial banks under one form 
 or another. These sums make up on the average half what, in its 
 weekly balance-sheet, are called the " other deposits," to distinguish 
 them from the money of the Government. This function gives it a 
 paramount position at all times, and also enables it, in conjunction 
 with the Bankers' Clearing House, to facilitate all manner of debt 
 payments with a rapidity unknown anywhere else. The Bank of 
 England does not govern the money market merely through its 
 commanding position as the bank of the State. It would not endure 
 a year on that ground alone as the greatest and most powerful insti- 
 tution of the kind that the world has ever seen. 
 
 This point will be understood more clearly when we explain that 
 the essence of all good banking is economy and dispatch. Economy 
 in the use of the precious metals in the settlement of debts, and absence 
 of delay in completing transactions. Now the London banking 
 system, whose pivot is the Bank of England, excels all others 
 except, perhaps, the money market of New York in this particular, 
 and it is because this is so, almost as much as because those who 
 have debts to receive or to pay, know that gold can always be ob- 
 tained in London, that the " City " is the universal liquidating point 
 of international exchange. Bills are drawn from any centre of trade 
 in the world payable in London, and the daily mass of exchange 
 and banking transactions which are carried through the Clearing 
 House in consequence of this habit seldom falls far short of 
 £20,000,000 in the dullest time of the year. That this great turn 
 over of what is called money, this unexampled change in the owner- 
 ship of banking balances, should take place usually without affecting 
 the reserves of cash held by the Bank of England by more than a 
 few thousand pounds, is the best testimony possible to the efficiency 
 of the system of which it forms the base. And, as most ex- 
 cellent things are, the whole business is extremely simple. The 
 Bank holds the fund for all other banks, and the Bankers' Clearing 
 House is the institution where the leading banks all meet daily to 
 offset their accounts against each other. Suppose that an Indian
 
 COMMERCIAL AND FINANCIAL ENGLAND. 107 
 
 bank has in a given day to pay £200,000 on account of drafts 
 executed in the East. It deposits the funds with its London bankers, 
 either in the form of fresh securities, or of a cheque drawn on the Bank 
 of England, where it has a balance. In either case the payment 
 becomes available as an offset against some other debt which may be 
 due to this Indian bank or to its London banker. All the various 
 debts, in short, that arise in the course of a day out of the enormous 
 exchange business done in London focus in the Clearing House. One 
 debt is put against another and liquidates another, until, at the end of 
 the day, certain banks are found to have balances left to pay to one 
 or other of their neighbours. These they immediately settle by a 
 draft upon their balance at the Bank of England, which has the effect 
 of causing the necessary sum at the credit of the debtor to be trans- 
 ferred in the Bank's books to the institution in whose favour the draft 
 has been drawn. In this way not a single bank note or coin may 
 change hands the whole day, and at night the money in the Bank of 
 England lies untoucbed. Some of its cash has been transferred 
 from one set of people to another, and that is all. Country banks 
 and all foreign banks that are not in its Clearing House keep an 
 account with some other bank that is, and so through that institution 
 and the Bank of England, manage to get their business done with the 
 utmost facility. The Bank of England itself will act as " clearing " 
 agent to its customers if necessary. Hence promptitude, rapidity, 
 and accuracy in the settlement of debts, combined with the minimum 
 disturbance, or wear and tear of the bard cash, which forms the 
 ultimate basis of all credit. Hence, too, the jealousy with which the 
 rise and fall of the stock of bullion in tbe vaults of the bank are 
 watched by the money market. When the current of exchange 
 throws this country into the position of debtor to some other nation, 
 bullion comes into play, gold has to be deposited to liquidate this 
 debt, and if the outflow of gold be large, bankers take alarm lest the 
 total should sink below what is necessary for the daily requirements of 
 credit. Exports of large amounts of gold are therefore followed by 
 advances in the rate charged by bankers for accommodation, as the 
 inevitable effect of what is called dear money in London is to first 
 stop the outflow and then reverse its current. If money becomes 
 what is called " dear " with us, bankers elsewhere transmit their 
 spare cash for use in this market, or they send here the debts that 
 would otherwise be paid out in order to secure the extra profit. 
 Such, briefly, is the economy and method of the London money 
 market. Its medhanism is wonderful in its simplicity and efficiency, 
 and so long as it retains this pre-eminence in Europe, so long will 
 London be the place where the debts and borrowings of international 
 trade will in the main be arranged. It is not improbable that its 
 mere banking and brokerage profit upon this class of our business
 
 108 
 
 ENGLAND. 
 
 alone amounts to the revenue of a great kingdom, say to £50,000,000 
 per annum. 
 
 Turn now to the second representative of England's cosmopolitan 
 finance — the Stock Exchange. It is difficult for city men to conceive 
 a London without a Stock Exchange ; yet it is only half a century 
 since it became an institution of much magnitude, and very much less 
 than that since it assumed anything like its present dimensions. Pri- 
 marily — as already indicated— it is the great mart for the sale of 
 various classes of documentary securities. Its organisation is such, 
 that there is a ready market within its walls for all sorts of stocks and 
 shares which may be offered for sale ; and the intending buyer of 
 any particular kind of security may be reasonably confident that by 
 employing one of its recognised members, or brokers, he will get what 
 he wants. This is the main service which is rendered by the Stock 
 Exchange ; and it is facilitated through the presence in the building 
 of a class of middlemen called "jobbers," or wholesale merchants, 
 who are always buying and selling, and make their profits, as a rule, 
 out of minute "turns'' in the prices of the market. The jobber, if 
 disposed to deal at all, is bound to quote two prices to the broker ; 
 one, the price at which he will buy, and the other his selling price. 
 When the stock in question is one much dealt in, the difference be- 
 tween these two quotations is usually 2s. Gd., and never more than 5s., 
 but if one of the many securities seldom bought or sold be inquired 
 for, the "jobber" often quotes prices £5 or £10 apart. In these 
 latter instances the weak side of this otherwise excellent system makes 
 its appearance. When the jobber can hope to sell what he buys 
 the next minute, a 2s. 6d. or 5s. " turn " pays him ; but when the 
 market is so uncertain that what he may sell may not be buyable 
 again for weeks, and what he buys may not be saleable perhaps for 
 months, he protects himself by quoting what is called a " risk price." 
 The holder or buyer has then to pay dearly for this market facility. 
 
 Most people who read the newspapers must have formed in their 
 own minds some vaguo notion of what the Stock Exchange is like ; 
 but probably few who have done so would not feel their fancy-picture 
 sadly disturbed if they were to make their way any day to one of the 
 several entrances to the large building — in the immediate neighbour- 
 hood of the Bank of England — in which the business we have 
 described is carried on. The public are not admitted within the tur- 
 bulent precincts of " the House," and all the anxious inquirer can do 
 is to scan it from one of its several exits and entrances, at Capel 
 Court, or Hercules Passage, or Throgmorton Street. Stationed at the 
 open door, he sees busy men — the brokers and jobbers — thronging in 
 and out, occasionally stopping to speak to clients by whom they have 
 been "called" out — a process performed by attendants, who shout 
 with stentorian voices through a tube the name of the person wanted,
 
 COMMEBCIAL AND FINANCIAL ENGLAND. 109 
 
 until the word is taken up inside, and made by a second stentorian 
 voice to reverberate through the room. The building is parcelled out 
 so that separate quarters are assigned to the dealers in different 
 classes of securities ; thus we have the Foreign, the American, the 
 Home Railway Markets, and so on. The din and clatter inside are 
 deafening and confusing ; though in this respect the Paris Bourse 
 bears away the palm from the London Stock Exchange. 
 
 In this building, which has recently undergone great enlargement, 
 out of and into which flows almost uninterruptedly from eleven until 
 four o'clock each working day, except Saturday, when the hours are 
 shorter, the stream of brokers and jobbers and tbeir clerks, numbering 
 about 2,500 in all, dealings for the sale and purchase of all kinds of 
 securities are carried on ceaselessly within these hours. But, in 
 truth, we have gained a very partial conception of what the Stock 
 Exchange is and does when we have only learned to understand so 
 much as this. It, too, like the Bank of England, has other varied, 
 vast, and complicated work. In addition to men selling shares of 
 banks, railways, or gas companies, for which they wish to get the 
 value in money, and others performing the counter-process of buying 
 such securities for investment purposes, so as to obtain a good return 
 in the shape of yearly interest, there is a mighty array of operations 
 called speculative transactions. Speculative accounts are opened by 
 respectable brokers on behalf of clients, in whose ability to meet 
 possible losses they have confidence, or from whom, if there is any 
 shade of doubt, a sum of money is exacted, under tbe name of 
 " cover," to assure the broker that he shall not lose, however the 
 speculative business may turn out. Buying or selling speculatively — 
 being in Stock Exchange parlance a " bull " or a " bear" — does not 
 mean that the client for whom the broker buys or sells in the one 
 case wishes to purchase and pay for the stock he offers to buy ; or in 
 the other that he has a supply of the stock he offers to sell, so as to be 
 able to hand it over to the person who may have bid the highest price 
 for it. The " bull " buys in the hope that when the time for arranging 
 the next fortnightly account — at what is called the settlement — comes 
 round the price of the stock will have risen, in which case he will 
 pocket as his profit the "difference " between the price at which he 
 bought and the price on the account-day, minus the broker's com- 
 mission. And in like manner the "bear" sells, hoping that by 
 account-day the price of the stock he offered may have gone down, 
 when the " difference " between the two prices — again minus the 
 broker's commission — will go into his pocket. As however, instead 
 of rising the price may fall, or instead of falling it may rise, the 
 "bull" or the "bear" must pay the " differences " when they are 
 against him. So that in reality this kind of dealing by means of 
 speculative accounts comes to be a mere series of wagers that stocks
 
 110 ENGLAND. 
 
 •will fall or rise, and is justly held to be gambling by the law, so that 
 the " differences " cannot be recovered by legal process. But although 
 this introduces an additional element of uncertainty into the business, 
 since the law cannot be set into motion to enforce the completion of 
 gambling bargains, speculation is carried on in such a variety of ways, 
 and to such an enormous extent, through the machinery of the Stock 
 Exchange, that no description of our financial organisation would be 
 complete without some reference to speculative accounts. 
 
 In addition to being a market for investment and speculation, the 
 Stock Exchange is also the intermediary through which public loans, 
 home and foreign, are floated. This function has developed naturally 
 out of the other functions spoken of. The Stock Exchange is the 
 place where investors, having money which they wish to employ to 
 good purpose, meet and bargain, through agents, with those who have 
 securities to sell that yield returns in interest to their holders. Con- 
 sequently, it is part of the duty of those who have the regulation and 
 control of the Stock Exchange to arrange the conditions on which 
 stocks, shares, and other securities may be dealt in, so as to bring 
 them within reach of investors and speculators. As it is scarcely 
 conceivable that any loan on the part of a foreign state or a home 
 company would be taken up — that is to say, subscribed for — unless it 
 could be dealt in on the Stock Exchange, the authorities of that insti- 
 tution, who are represented by the committee for general purposes, 
 have large powers of promoting or frustrating the very largest financial 
 operations on the part of foreign governments and home corporations. 
 A foreign country in need of a loan, even if it go to Paris bankers 
 for assistance in the first instance, always tries to domiciliate it in 
 London, so as to have a Avider area from which to attract subscribers 
 than can be found anywhere else in the Avorld, and also to obtain a 
 quotation from the Stock Exchange which will make the scrip of such 
 a loan capable of being readily dealt in. 
 
 It may simplify matters yet further if we sketch in outline the steps 
 of the process of issuing a foreign loan. The enumeration of these 
 may suggest the necessity for reforms ; but it is no part of our 
 business to consider that matter here. 
 
 The first step taken -when a foreign state has applied to some well- 
 known financial house, whose name is a power of itself, is tho 
 drawing up of a secret " contract " between the Government wanting 
 the money and the London bankers, who will, on the faith of the 
 anticipated success of the loan, give advances on terms profitable to 
 themselves. A prospectus is then made ready by some competent 
 firm of London solicitors, setting forth in as glowing terms as 
 possible the advantages which will accrue to investors if they lend 
 their money in return for the bonds of the said foreign government. 
 Copies of this prospectus are forwarded several days in advance to
 
 COMMERCIAL AND FINANCIAL ENGLAND. Ill 
 
 an enterprising advertising firm having wide connections, which 
 undertakes to do the advertising for a consideration. But these 
 agents in London usually do a great deal more than the advertising. 
 In the heyday of the foreign loan mania, some of these firms — the 
 leading Jews especially — used to keep hacks to write newspaper puffs 
 for them, and regularly bribed the writers of city articles to secure 
 their insertion in the money market columns of the morning papers 
 on the same day that the advertisements appeared. The advertising 
 was itself in a great measure a means of bestowing hush-money on 
 newspaper proprietors, and fortunes were often wasted in this and 
 similar ways to " float " a loan. But much of that kind of thing has 
 now disappeared. The decoying of the outside world, however, has 
 still to be provided for, and the manipulations inside the Stock 
 Exchange are trusted to effect that. Two or more "jobbers" who 
 deal in the particular market the loan is connected with — foreign, 
 American, or home — are secretly employed by the " contractors " to 
 bid for the bonds 1 or 1^ premium ; that is, £ 1 or £1 10s. above 
 the price at which the loan is nominally issued — the price, that is, 
 named in the prospectus. The fact of this being done superinduces 
 the belief that these new bonds must be a valuable security, seeing 
 that habitual dealers on the Stock Exchange have already offered 
 more than the Government which is responsible for them itself asked 
 for. Outsiders are induced to apply to the contractors for a 
 number of the bonds, in the expectation of securing the premium 
 by afterwards selling at the higher price already quoted in the 
 market. Thus, by the help and with the co-operation of stock 
 brokers and "jobbers," the loan is gradually worked off upon the 
 public ; and English investors and capitalists may give their hard- 
 won earnings to construct some impracticable railway in the wilds 
 of South America, to feed the cravings of semi-barbarous Oriental 
 monarchs for Western luxuries, or do something equally wasteful. 
 The vast sums which have been lost in foreign loaus of late years 
 show that this is no exaggerated picture, though, of course, many of 
 their number are perfectly legitimate, and the proceeds applied to 
 useful purposes. 
 
 The art of loan-mongering has advanced to great perfection, and 
 has been raised almost to the dignity of a profession. But hard 
 times have of late made many minor and some important changes 
 in the way in which the business is carried on. Formerly, manipu- 
 lations on the market, bogus subscriptions, and sham dealings, paid 
 newspaper puffs and hush-money advertisements, were the means 
 chiefly resorted to. Nowadays, the continental system of forming a 
 " syndicate " is much more in vogue. A group of capitalists take 
 up a loan in the first instance — underwrite it, in fact — and wait 
 a favourable opportunity to launch it on the market. A few merchants
 
 112 ENGLAND. 
 
 and bankers, aided by wealthy brokers and jobbers, can, when combined 
 in tbis fasbion, keep a great mass of stock at a bigb price, and gradually 
 " feed " it out to tbe small investor. Tbe Stock Exchange is a perfect 
 vebicle for this kind of business. One of tbe witnesses examined 
 before the Foriegn Loans Commission stated, as bis opinion, that it 
 would be impossible to float a loan in London without the use of the 
 Stock Exchange machinery, because the real English investors, most 
 of whom live in the country, always look to the London market 
 quotations, and are guided by them in deciding what stocks and shares 
 to buy. And he was quite right. 
 
 It will thus be seen that the Stock Exchange is, for good and evil, 
 an essential part of the machinery of credit. It is indispensable as 
 an intermediary for facilitating purchases and sales of existing shares 
 and stocks; and its services are equally necessary in "floating" 
 the shares of new enterprises, or the stocks of new loans sought for 
 by foreign governments. The financial machinery would be incom- 
 plete without it ; indeed, it is difficult to conceive how borrowings 
 and lendings to any very large extent could be carried on without the 
 medium of tbe Stock Exchange. There are, in addition to the London 
 institution, provincial exchanges throughout the country ; but these 
 all look to London for guidance, and metropolitan prices regulate 
 their quotations. 
 
 Having explained the nature of the two leading representative insti- 
 tutions by which the accumulations of capital are stored up or lent out, 
 and by which, therefore, the double process is performed of collecting 
 the surplus earnings resulting from the profitable employment of in- 
 dustry, in order to divert them to other channels of enterprise, there 
 to fructify and fertilise, we shall have formed some general concep- 
 tion of the province and functions of finance in London and Eng- 
 land. It is through the discharge of these important duties that 
 London is the financial centre of the world ; for without its banking 
 system, of which the Bank of England is tbe head, we should not have 
 the head-quarters of international business here, and we could not, 
 therefore, be the financial centre. And in like manner without the 
 Stock Exchange the vast sums of money thus accumulated could not 
 readily be distributed for wide and varied use. 
 
 Yet financing, on however large a scale, with its twin agents of ac- 
 cumulation and distribution, is rather the efilorescence than the root of 
 true national prosperity. We can conceive of a state which is rich 
 and, in a sense, prosperous through finance alone. We can conceive 
 of our own country as an exclusively commercial state, having ceased 
 to cultivate agriculture, and being wholly dependent upon other com- 
 munities for the supply of tho wants of her population. It is con- 
 ceivable that England might in such a condition of things be rich ami 
 prosperous; but she would not be the England we have known in tho
 
 COMMERCIAL AND FINANCIAL ENGLAND. 113 
 
 past. We have attained to our pre-eminence among the nations 
 because we have cultivated self-dependence, and have secured a popu- 
 lation of skilled labourers who have been able to turn out goods of 
 lirst-rate quality. Agriculture and manufactures have gone hand in 
 hand ; and by developing the spirit of enterprise we have secured the 
 position we hold in the markets of the world. And we are likely to 
 retain that position for a long time to come, because our great Empire, 
 our vast accumulations of wealth, make us the largest lending and tri- 
 bute-receiving people on the face of the earth. The very fact that 
 every nation under the sun able to even scrape a semblance of stable 
 government together is in our debt, gives us a power of controlling the 
 trade of all nations that no otber country ever had. Therefore were 
 we to sink to the place of a greater Holland in politics, as gloomy 
 people say, we should for long continue to be great as bankers, the 
 international Stock Exchange and bill and bullion centre, and should 
 enjoy the profits derived from these sources. We might in that event 
 be reduced to live in a great degree upon our past accumulations of 
 capital, but if the interest alone sufficed for our wants we should do 
 very well with the exchange and international banking business 
 added. No such consummation of our greatness, however, is in 
 prospect. 
 
 It is as an industrial and commercial state that England has 
 prospered so wonderfully in the past, and that her wealth has ac- 
 cumulated from year to year. We have been a producing as 
 well as a lending community, adding to the sum of the general 
 wealth by enormous masses of manufactured commodities for the 
 supply of the wants of our own population in the first instance, 
 and then to be sent all over the globe for sale or exchange. Through 
 the enterprise of her merchants and the industry of her labouring 
 classes, England gained, for example, the command of the cotton 
 trade. The products of the looms and spindles of Lancashire 
 have provided fabrics for the inhabitants of India and the East, 
 as well as for those of countries nearer home. By adopting and 
 adapting all improvements in machinery, and by turning out of our 
 mills and factories articles of good workmanship, we were able to 
 take the lead of other nations. It was the same with regard to iron 
 and steel, and the innumerable objects which were made of iron and 
 steel. Sheffield cutlery became famous all the world over, just as 
 Lancashire cotton goods did. With our supplies of coal we could 
 manufacture cheaply, and as we had the start of other communities, 
 because we had an enterprising and industrious population, we began to 
 accumulate capital in advance of other nations, and the more capital 
 we had at command the greater became our facilities for carrying on 
 those industries, which came to be our staple exports to foreign 
 countries. Circumstances were favourable to England in many 
 
 i
 
 114 
 
 ENGLAND. 
 
 ways. The foundations of her prosperity were laid by the enterprise 
 and skill of her sons and by the industry which these sons were able 
 to direct and employ. Within the last thirty or forty years we have 
 reaped enormous harvests of profit by the adoption of the system of 
 free imports, through which we came to command the resources and 
 industrial products of other nations. The simultaneous vast extension 
 of the means of intercommunication by railways and telegraphs for a 
 time contributed to the further development of our trading activity. 
 The products of our manufactories were passed into all countries, and 
 all countries to some degree responded by sending us the articles 
 they could most advantageously produce. In this way came the 
 mighty commercial growth of the last quarter of a century, which cul- 
 minated in the excited prosperity of tbe years 1872, 1873, and 1874. 
 Under the system of free trade England opened her ports to the goods 
 and manufactures of all the world, but unfortunately she has not 
 been able, on the other hand, to secure the abolition of the protective 
 duties imposed by foreign nations. As it happened, first the American 
 Union and then the Continent of Europe were engrossed with war or 
 the expectation of war, which had the practical effect of a stringent 
 protective system in our favour ; for other nations had not the needful 
 time and energy to devote to competing with us in industrial efforts 
 while they were fighting the battle of self-existence, or struggling to 
 extend their national power under the promptings of ambition and 
 aggression. Little wonder if with the start we had we were able to 
 make such good use of our opportunities as immensely to extend our 
 commercial preponderance. 
 
 The prosperity of England thus rested on an industrial and 
 commercial basis. Her great financial system has grown out of 
 her commercial resources. We have spoken of our banking system 
 as one of the two most important factors in the financial mechanism 
 which is so delicately organised in Lombard Street. But though 
 this is true in regard to banking as the outcome and the instru- 
 ment of the complex organisation of credit, without which mercan- 
 tile transactions on a large scale would be difficult, if not impracti- 
 cable, banking comes into the field at a much earlier stage than 
 might be inferred if this were its sole function. No sooner, indeed, 
 does commerce by bringing in profits attain any considerable pro- 
 portions, than bankers are needed to transmit money from place 
 to place, and to keep in safety the balances that are accumulated as 
 the profits of trading, as well as to supply — it may be — the circulat- 
 ing medium which may bo used to supplement gold and silver 
 coin. In this aspect of banking, in an earlier phase of commercial 
 society, it is the inter-connecting link between commerce and 
 finance ; although in its complete organisation it is the culmination of 
 the matured financial system. The close connection between com-
 
 COMMERCIAL AND FINANCIAL ENGLAND. 115 
 
 ruerce and banking, and the degree in which they are interdependent,, 
 is illustrated by the effects produced by a bank failure upon the general 
 community. When a bank which has supplied loans to mercantile 
 firms and traders stops, the withdrawal of the usual facilities that 
 had been afforded by it to its customers tests the stability and resources 
 of the merchants who have been dependent on it ; and if its business 
 has been large the stoppage may induce a general loss of confidence 
 and consequent diminution of credit throughout the business com- 
 munity. When this is carried to a certain point we have what is 
 called a panic. 
 
 From what has been said regarding England's commercial and 
 financial systems, and the intimate connection there is between them, 
 it will now be intelligible to the reader how both are liable to fluctua- 
 tions and great changes. Such changes have already been witnessed 
 in this country, and there are many signs which appear to indicate 
 that we have yet greater changes before us. We have spoken of the 
 excited prosperity of the years from 1872 to 1874, and have shown 
 that it was due to a variety of causes wholly apart from the impetus 
 given to commerce by free trade. Since that period — which is fami- 
 liarly known as the time of " leaps and bounds " in our material pro- 
 gress — we have had a still more protracted era of depression. 
 
 Ten years have come and gone since then, and not only our trade, 
 but the trade of every civilised nation, has suffered from waves of 
 depression. Again and again banking and mercantile circles in this 
 country have passed through what had all the appearance of a crisis, 
 and every brief period of revival has been followed by one of aug- 
 mented depression. The results of the European and American credit 
 collapse of 1873 were hardly begun to be forgotten when, in 1875, 
 England was startled by some of the largest mercantile failures it 
 had seen since 1866. Millions of what had been esteemed as capital 
 disappeared in a day in the Collie group of bankruptcies, and for a brief 
 space the situation seemed to threaten here a repetition of the horrors 
 of 1866. But the credit institutions of London had gained strength 
 since then, and bore the strain in a manner that soon restored 
 them to the full confidence of the public. The trust then begotten 
 stood them in good stead when three years later, in 1878, the City of 
 Glasgow Bank failed, disclosing frauds and deficiencies greater than 
 any that banking credit ever before had to endure. This failure 
 spread ruin throughout the northern part of the kingdom, and reacted 
 upon English banking credit both in London and the provinces after 
 a fashion that twenty years before must have made many banks 
 succumb. As it was, only two or three of minor importance disap- 
 peared in county towns, and none in London. The nation therefore 
 again endured the strain with a power of resistance that spoke 
 volumes for its wealth and inherent prosperity. But for three vears 
 
 i2
 
 116 ENGLAND. 
 
 after 1878 the trade of the United Kingdom dragged along with 
 heaviness. Enterprise, that wholesome energy of speculation which 
 is the soul of prosperous business, was wanting. Those who had 
 means were afraid to risk it out of their sight, and most of those who 
 had little or none failed to obtain the necessary credit. They could 
 no longer borrow. Prices of commodities went to a comparatively 
 low ebb, and we had all the sequels of a " crisis " without the thing 
 itself; nor were we alone in this position. Complaint was universal, 
 because the mischiefs that affect credit in one country react on all, so 
 intimately has modern commerce tended to render their financial union. 
 To add to the difficulties of that time, there was a severe fall in the 
 value of silver, crippling all countries whose credit was based upon 
 that metal, and in Europe what proved to be a long series of bad 
 harvests commenced, whereby the wealthy and wealth-creating classes 
 were put to considerable straits. 
 
 Out of this last adverse feature, however, arose a new experience in 
 the history of international trade, over which the English people were 
 at first much alarmed. The failure of European, and especially of our 
 home wheat harvests, gave a prodigious stimulus to the production of 
 cereals on the new lands of the West and North-West territories in the 
 United States. There cheap lands were taken up and cultivated, 
 usually in the roughest way, at a speed altogether unprecedented, and 
 for a matter of three years the prospect was that the United States would 
 henceforth feed Europe cheaper than it could feed itself. Thus in 
 England land fell in value, and to some extent went out of cultivation, 
 by reason of this deluge of cheap cereals from North America, and on 
 all sides the cry arose that the country was going to ruin. Great 
 stress in proof of this assertion was laid upon the fact that whereas 
 our exports remained comparatively stationary, our imports bounded 
 upwards until they reached totals never dreamt of by the most 
 sanguine free-trader that ever lived. This could not happen, it was 
 urged, without denuding the country of its accumulated wealth. We 
 are selling or pawning our possessions for food, they said. Some 
 because of the fears thus engendered wanted to impose a new pro- 
 tective customs tariff upon the nation, partly to check this excess of 
 importation, and so restore prosperity to agriculture at home, partly 
 to retaliate upon the United States, which in defiance of all the laws 
 of fair play and prudent trading kept a " ring fence " of high duties 
 round their coasts ; others, more practically wise, laboured to create 
 competing producers either at home or abroad, and were to some 
 extent successful. 
 
 Events, indeed, have proved that the prosperity of the United 
 States was altogether ephemeral, at any rate as regards this source 
 of it. They tried to grow rich by exports alone, and have already 
 bogun to find out that the country v bich is able to prove its wealth
 
 COMMERCIAL AND FINANCIAL ENGLAND. 117 
 
 by the volume of its imports has the greatest stability. The outcome 
 of the past six years of apparently excessive importations on the part 
 of England has not been the national bankruptcy dreaded, nor are 
 there indications that the nation as a whole is poorer now than it was 
 then. Trade has again entered upon a period of depression with us 
 — indeed it never fully emerged therefrom ; complaints are as uni- 
 versal now as in 1878, but it is more obvious now than it was then 
 that the cause of this stagnation is much less in ourselves than in the 
 countries with which we trade. They have exhausted their strength 
 in no small degree through their efforts to cope with us, and first in 
 France, then in the United States, over-speculation of every description 
 has brought affairs to a state of collapse. 
 
 Few things are more interesting to the mercantile community of 
 England than the present condition of the United States. Their 
 brief hour of prosperity has proved utterly illusory as a promise of 
 better things to come. Their farmers were only able to produce 
 grain cheaper than other countries because they were ready to do so 
 and other countries were not. Directly, however, the speculative 
 mercantile mind became excited by the sight of this soui-ce of wealth, 
 it set to work to organise competition, and already India has become 
 a formidable rival to the American North-West. America, indeed, has 
 no longer the semblance of a monopoly, and at no distant date it 
 seems probable that the farmers in our farthest-off Australian colonies 
 will be able to sell wheat cheaper in Mark Lane than those of Iowa, 
 Minnesota, Dakota, and Manitoba. It is but natural that this should 
 be the case, for so long as the American tariff and navigation laws 
 compel the native producer to use foreign ships for the conveyance of 
 his goods and to pay charges thereon equivalent to freight both ways, 
 because the vessels go to American ports for the most part nearly 
 empty, every country whose people are less handicapped can outstrip 
 him. 
 
 The fact that the States are at the present time passing through a 
 credit storm — a cyclone of depression — of almost unexampled severity 
 is proof to no small extent of the weakness of their economic position. 
 They have nothing to depend upon to maintain the rush of prosperity 
 which began in 1880 except foreign demand for their raw produce, and 
 above all for their cotton, cereals, and dead meat or cattle. Cotton 
 they still have a pre-eminent position in, though it is a poor business 
 compared to what it was once, but in other respects every calculation 
 is liable to be upset by the mere accident, so to say, of a good harvest 
 in Europe. And it is at any rate consoling to Englishmen to find 
 that, so far, their excessive imports, about which so many fears were 
 excited, have not ruined them. They have seen a French financial 
 crisis break out and die away, and credit at home has not had its 
 serenity even rufiied. In like manner the New York crisis of May,
 
 118 ENGLAND. 
 
 1884 — a crisis which has thrown industry back five years at least all 
 over the Union — has not thus far raised an echo here. It is, there- 
 fore, possible to discuss now with more serenity the question whether 
 the trade of England is on the eve of a permanent decline or not. We 
 venture to think that no evidence exists indicative of this being the 
 case. There will be depressions ; one of great severity exists now, but 
 on the whole the tendency of English trade is to grow. It is far 
 larger in volume in 1884, exports alone considered, than it was in 1879, 
 when the gloomy feeling about the future was most prevalent, but its 
 greater bulk is hid by the fall that has taken place in prices. That 
 fall again is the simple result of an over-stimulus everywhere applied 
 to production, which will rapidly work its own cure. The chief 
 danger to business in these days is the rapidity with which all the 
 world gets to know what article is best paying its producer. Directly 
 this is ascertained, speculators set to work to produce that article to 
 excess, and thus in two or three years bring about a glut which could 
 not formerly have been created in ten. But that has its good side. It 
 means progress, and if all the world is on the march to greater heights 
 of prosperity, it is absurd to suppose that England, with its stores of 
 wealth, its magnificent industrial appliances, its trained workmen of 
 unrivalled capacity for labour, is to be left behind. The more other 
 nations produce, in short, the more they will have to sell, and the more 
 they sell the more they will buy. It is, therefore, well not to allow 
 the mind to be carried away by fear at the many histories of the indus- 
 trial progress made by other nations constantly retailed to alarm us. 
 By all means let them make progress, the more and the faster the 
 better, so long as it is solid progress and not spurts made under doses 
 of high stimulants. We do not at any time suffer from the ridiculous 
 tariffs so many nations think themselves wise in imposing as is alleged, 
 for a high tariff nearly always lowers the quality of the articles pro- 
 duced under its shelter, and weakens the industries it brings into being. 
 Our iron and coal industries, much as they have had to endure since 
 1873, have never once sunk to the pass that has more than once over- 
 taken those of Pennsylvania within the same period of time ; and low 
 as the ebb of profits may be in the cotton and woollen trades of 
 Lancashire and Yorkshire, they have never stooped to the production 
 of such low classes of goods as the average of those the manufacturers 
 in the States try to live by, nor are they afflicted with the same 
 periodical collapses. It w r ould be easy to find elsewhere telling 
 examples of the truth of what has here been said, but the proposition 
 is almost self-evident. So likewise is that which insists upon excess 
 of imports being proof of a country's wealth. All nations who 
 get back a less value of goods than they export are debtor nations. 
 They have more to pay away than they receive, else the mere profit or 
 increment of value upon the sales and qurehases of goods abroad would
 
 COMMERCIAL AND FINANCIAL ENGLAND. 119 
 
 insure the figures of the imports exceeding those of the exports. Hence 
 the words " trade balance," employed in speaking of the relative 
 value of the import and export sides of a nation's foreign trade 
 account, have no significance unless a consideration of this kind is 
 taken into account. On an average of years the fact that the im- 
 ports of England exceed her exports in value by from £100,000,000 to 
 £120,000,000 is tbe most striking proof that could possibly be given of 
 her abounding wealth and unexampled prosperity. Long then may 
 her trade returns continue to afford this satisfactory testimony to her 
 unimpaired commercial strength and manufacturing energy.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 COMMERCIAL ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 General Principles of Business Administration— Typical Instances selected: (1) Cotton 
 Mill, (2) Iron Works, (3) A Banking House— Gradation of Responsibility in the 
 Management of Cotton Mills— Different Responsible Officials and their Several 
 Provinces — The Managing Partner — Yorkshire Iron Works — Organisation traced 
 from Pit's Mouth to Sale of the Anicle — Business of a great Banking House in 
 London described — Functions of the Separate Partners — Capital employed, Political 
 Influences, and General Principles to be observed in the Management of each of 
 these Businesses. 
 
 It may be said of every great business, tbat it is in a measure the 
 embodiment of the same principles which are recognised in the con- 
 duct of the highest departments of State. It has been shown in an 
 earlier chapter that the possessions of the territorial nobility require 
 in their management not a few of those qualities which are displayed 
 in imperial administration. The conduct of the great commercial con- 
 cerns of England involves the same centralisation of authority, dele- 
 gated by regular gradations throughout the whole system. The cotton 
 and iron trades of Lancashire and Yorkshire and the chief banking 
 houses of the City of London afford the best instances of the organisa- 
 tion of that private enterprise which is the mainspring of English 
 commerce. 
 
 We will select our first illustration from the large cotton industries 
 of the north. The unbaled cotton, already mixed so as to secure 
 uniformity in quality, passes through a scries of machines, leaving 
 the first in the form of fleece and the second in rope-like coils, until it 
 is thoroughly cleaned and carded, or combed into rudimentary threads 
 of an even thickness. In this form it is twisted by the roving machines 
 and throstles and wound on bobbins or reels in its finished state as 
 yarn ; and as such is moved to the weaving shed, where it is woven 
 Into tho finished material. The whole process is done by machinery ; 
 for in the shed the threads are arranged in warps and dressed with 
 size, the loom is worked, the shuttle thrown, the warp unwound, and 
 the finished cloth wound on tho roller ready for the warehouse, by 
 steam-power. Except in the removal of the material from one machine 
 to the other, the intervention of man is restricted to supervision, to 
 the control of the speed of the machine, to an unceasing watchfulness
 
 COMMERCIAL ADMINISTRATION. J 21 
 
 to arrest it when any hitch threatens damage, and to the removal of 
 the obstruction. 
 
 With this supervision the responsibility commences. An individual 
 minder or weaver controls a certain number of hands, and is account- 
 able to the overlooker for the work turned out by so many mules in 
 the one case, or by so many looms in the other. Of these overlookers 
 there is one to each room, who, again, is responsible to the foreman of 
 the spinning or of the weaving department for the material delivered 
 from his room, the foreman himself being accountable to the factory 
 manager. The woven material, or cloth, when removed from the 
 looms to the warehouse, is inspected, and imperfect lots are rejected. 
 This is the duty of the warehouseman, who, too, will have already 
 examined the cotton on its arrival at the mill ; the bales (the original 
 packages shipped at New Orleans or Charleston) have been opened, 
 compared with sample, carefully examined throughout, all inferior 
 cotton, all stones and the like, being separated by the women or 
 young men employed under him. To his care, also, falls the due 
 delivery of the finished material to the canal or railway which takes 
 it to the warehouse in Manchester. Steam-power is under the control 
 of a foreman engineer, accountable for the true working and repair of 
 the machinery, for the supply of coal, for the lighting of the factory 
 where gas is made on the premises, and for the conduct of the engi- 
 neers and gasmen under him. The warehouseman and engineer, like 
 the foremen, are directly under the factory manager, as are the watch- 
 man and the timekeeper ; the former looking to the safety of the 
 buildings, the latter to the due attendance of the hands. 
 
 Here, so far as the actual production is concerned, ends the organi- 
 sation. If we follow the cloth to Manchester, we find a manager at 
 the warehouse, who sees to the delivery of the goods if to order ; or 
 sells them if made for stock. It is his duty to look to the prices 
 obtained, the orders he takes and their due transmission to the mill, 
 the collection of accounts, and the duties respectively performed by 
 the salesmen, clerks, and porters under him. But the counting-house 
 at the mill is under a separate head, responsible for the book-keeping, 
 the rendering of accounts, the due collection of money, the correct 
 disbursements in purchases and for wages, as well as for the efficiency 
 of his staff. 
 
 The chiefs of the three departments of manufacture and sale — the 
 factory manager and the heads of the Manchester warehouse and of 
 the counting-house — are in their turn severally responsible to the 
 managing partner, the supreme controller. But the purchase of the 
 raw material is so important a point, involving as it does two-thirds of 
 the whole expenditure, that it is very rarely entrusted to a subordinate. 
 It is one of the special occupations of the managing partner, who visits 
 Liverpool on market-days or, as occasion may require, goes round with
 
 122 ENGLAND. 
 
 his- broker, and buys such cotton as in quality, quantity, and price may 
 suit him. The cotton itself has been picked on the plantations of South 
 Carolina, baled, and sent down to the seaport, whence it is shipped 
 to Liverpool, either purchased by or consigned to, the merchant 
 at that place, — the merchant landing and warehousing it, and placing 
 samples in the hands of his broker, where it is seen by the buyer, in 
 the manner already described. Occasionally these intermediaries are 
 dispensed with ; an order for a certain quality of cotton being given by 
 the manufacturer directly to the merchant at Liverpool or Charleston. 
 But although in this case the expenses of brokerage and of the Liver- 
 pool warehouse are saved — no inconsiderable items where everything 
 is calculated to a nicety — this is not the rule. Such a transaction is 
 Legitimately the trade of the merchant. 
 
 It will thus be seen that the managing partner is the pivot on which 
 the organisation turns. All the departments are reviewed by him. He 
 settles all disputes, and specially sees that all transactions are carried 
 out with the scrupulous fairness that has made the reputation of the 
 house. He decides the proportion of each particular " make " of cloth 
 which the factor shall turn out, and instructs the salesman as to prices 
 and credits. He in his turn consults his partners as to a common view 
 of the future course of the markets, as to the advisability of restricting 
 or extending sales of cloth on the one hand, or of purchases of 
 cotton on the other, and as to the credit given to large customers. 
 Such is the system of central organisation characteristic of the wealthy 
 partnerships in the cotton trade. The cases in which the managing 
 partner is relieved of a portion of his responsibilities occur most fre- 
 quently when the supervision of the counting-house and Manchester 
 business is undertaken by some other member of the firni. 
 
 The aspect of one of the great ironworks of Yorkshire is very 
 different. The barren treeless waste, the lurid fires of the everlasting 
 furnace, the overhanging bank of smoke, the begrimed appearance of 
 the inhabitants, the railroad running into the works with coal, and 
 iron-laden trucks moving to and fro — these mark the neighbourhood. 
 Within are seen the numerous calcining ovens and conical blast-fur- 
 naces, the puddling furnaces and rolling-mills, with the great steam 
 hammer, vast stacks of coal, of coke, and of fire-bricks, the foundry 
 with its chimney, and the open spaces where lie the products of mill 
 and furnace. But the premises are not, as in a cotton manufactory, 
 self-contained. In adjacent parts of the country are situated the coal- 
 mines, the ironstone pits, the limestone quarries, which, the property 
 of the concern, produce almost everything required in the process of 
 manufacture, the chief exception being the fire-bricks, usually obtained 
 from Staffordshire. 
 
 The organisation commences at the seats of production — the mines, 
 pits, and quarries, each of which is presided over by a responsible
 
 COMMERCIAL ADMINISTRATION. 123 
 
 head. In the former, a manager controls his subordinates and the 
 miners, sees that the wages are duly paid, that production is on a fair 
 scale, that the coal is turned into coke in the ovens at the pit's mouth 
 in such quantity as may be required, and that both coal and coke are 
 sent off as wanted. His duties are, in fact, those of any other coal- 
 mine manager ; and in the same way, the foreman at the ironstone 
 pits, and the foreman at the limestone quarries, are responsible for 
 the work done by the miners and quarrymen severally. The transport 
 of the material to the works and of the manufactured iron for delivery, 
 by means of the short lines of railway which are owned by the concern, 
 is a matter important enough to require the special supervision of a 
 traffic manager. The locomotives and rolling-stock, the engineers and 
 firemen, again, are the separate charge of a chief engineer, to whom 
 also falls the superintendence of the extensive machinery used for the 
 blast-furnaces and rolling-mills. 
 
 The processes of manufacture at the works are ordinarily entrusted 
 to two distinct managers, whose general supervision in their respective 
 departments includes care that coal, coke, and material are supplied as 
 wanted, prevention of waste, the regulation of the order of work, and 
 the delivery of the goods according to contract, in proper time, and of 
 the specified quality. The one restricts his attention to the production 
 of pig-iron, having under him a foreman directly responsible for the 
 work done by the hands employed at the ovens, where the ironstone 
 goes through the first process, that of being calcined with coal, and at 
 the blast-furnaces, in which, with a due proportion of coke and lime- 
 stone, the calcined ore is smelted and run into pigs. This "pig-iron" 
 is sold as such, or converted into manufactured iron in one of its two 
 forms — malleable or cast. These latter processes involve, as has been 
 said, a separate department, distinctly under the charge of another 
 manager. Under the latter are two foremen. The first of these is 
 responsible for the out-turn of the puddling furnaces, steam hammer, 
 and rolling-mills, by means of which the iron is made malleable, and 
 manufactured into rails, sbip and boiler-plates, bars, angle and T-iron. 
 His duties are not light, because in the first operation he has to do 
 with the puddlers, the most independent of workmen. For a puddler 
 must not only be skilled in his work, but have exceptional powers of 
 endurance ; and he knows his value. He works or not, and for a 
 donger or for a shorter time, at his own caprice, and when work 
 presses, the humouring of these lusty sons of toil is not the least 
 difficult of the foreman's duties. It may perhaps be here explained 
 that the puddler, having first " fettled " his furnace, puts in a charge 
 of pig-iron, and works, or " puddles," it in a molten state into a ball, 
 which is taken to the steam hammer, and from it, as " a bloom," is 
 rolled by the mills into bars, when it is cut up, re-heated, and again 
 rolled into the marketable forms enumerated above. A second fore-
 
 124 ENGLAND. 
 
 man has the control of the foundry, of the smiths and their assistants, 
 of the forges for the casting of railway -chairs, and various other parts 
 of machinery. 
 
 The watchman and the timekeeper will be directly under the 
 managers, who, again, with the other head men (the managers of the 
 mines, pits, and quarries, the engineer and the traffic manager), are 
 responsible to the chief director or managing partner, to whose autho- 
 rity also, as in other manufacturing concerns, the head of the counting- 
 house at the works, entrusted with the care of the accounts, is subject. 
 The sale of the goods in London comes within the province of the 
 London representative of the house, who has a staff under his control, 
 charged with the supervision of the delivery and shipment of the iron, 
 and with the collection of accounts. But the London manager, as 
 well as the agents employed for similar purposes at the outports 
 (Liverpool, Hull, and other places), as a rule take all their orders from 
 the managing partner, the intercourse often — in the case of the agents 
 almost invariably — being carried on by correspondence. 
 
 It will be seen that here, as in a cotton mill, it is usual to place the 
 control in the hands of one man, who has a practical knowledge of 
 every department. To him fall the decision of the proportion of each 
 kind of iron to be made, the instructions as to sales, and the entire 
 supervision. He consults with his partners concerning the general 
 line of business and probable coarse of the market, and is sometimes 
 assisted in one or other special department, or replaced, in his absence, 
 by one of them. But, as a rule, he has less need of such aid than the 
 director of any other equally important business ; because in a wealthy 
 ironworks establishment the area of production is its own, and, its 
 manufacture being usually sold for cash on delivery, the necessity for 
 financial arrangements is of rare occurrence. 
 
 Much more tranquil, and presenting in its serene exterior a marked 
 contrast to the bustle and agitation which pervade these centres oi 
 manufacturing industry, is the scene that we may next visit. Quitting 
 one of the busiest thoroughfares of the busiest city of the world, we 
 turn through the corridor into a house which, in years gone by, has 
 been the dwelling of one of our merchant princes, but now is used 
 only in the day-time as the office of his successors. The quiet and 
 order of the great room first entered, with its thirty or forty clerks 
 separated from the public by a long mahogany counter and plate-glass 
 screens, gives a pleasant relief to the nerves wearied by the turmoil 
 outside. In both the previous cases the material employed and the 
 process of manufacture are visible enough. But here, the centre 
 whence radiates an even larger business than from either of the others, 
 the machinery is restricted apparently to pens, ink, and paper. It is, 
 in fact, a directing centre self-contained, and this principle is carried 
 from the highest to the lowest. For in the City, the business of the
 
 COMMERCIAL ADMINISTRATION. 125 
 
 present day is so subdivided — the railway and dock companies filling 
 the offices of carriers and warehousemen, the brokers and shipping 
 agents attending to the produce dealt in and its disposal — that in the 
 merchant's office itself there is hardly any sign of the nature of the 
 special trade of the firm. 
 
 Here, as in the other concerns, there are frequently partners who 
 visit the office, have their private rooms, interest themselves in special 
 departments, and are periodically consulted. For the most part, 
 however, they delegate their responsibility. As a consequence of the 
 more varied nature of the business, the delegation is not, in this 
 instance, entirely left to one person. There is a working or managing 
 partner of capacity and experience, such as are demanded in the other 
 administrations, on whom devolves, practically, the general control ; 
 but one department, the finance, is distinctly the charge of a single 
 partner gifted with a special aptitude. In wealthy manufacturing 
 concerns, finance, properly so called, is unknown. The premises 
 belong to the manufacturers themselves, who have ample working 
 capital, and are seldom confronted by a more imperious necessity than 
 that of a temporary overdraft from the banker on emergency. But 
 in a merchant's business, however large the capital, there are occa- 
 sions when transactions are entered into involving amounts of much 
 greater magnitude. In fact, a firm which would limit its operations 
 strictly within the amount of its capital, would not be availing itself of 
 its legitimate opportunities. Now, as it is a principle with the largest 
 and wealthiest bouses never to obtain advances on their produce, and 
 on the other hand always to keep a round balance with their bankers 
 and a large sum at call with one of the great discount houses, it is 
 clear that some special financial ability is required to provide for the 
 engagements of the future, so that this position of unassailable solidity 
 may be at all times maintained. This is the duty of the partner indi- 
 cated, who has directly under him the head cashier. The latter, pre- 
 siding over the cash department, is responsible for the correctness of 
 the acceptances and cheques which the partner signs, for the due 
 payment into the bank of all incomings, for disbursements of all kinds, 
 and specially, that an exact list of the acceptances of the firm is given 
 in to the bankers from time to time. 
 
 Another distinctive feature of a merchant's business is, that all 
 letters and documents must be signed, and all important visitors seen, 
 by a partner. As the managing partner is frequently out and occa- 
 sionally absent, it follows that it is, as a rule, arranged that one or 
 other of the less active members of the firm shall be present and 
 accessible when required. But with these exceptions, the centralisa- 
 tion of authority is the same as in other great business establishments. 
 Besides the duties enumerated, the managing partner has to review 
 all business, to read all letters before they go the round of the
 
 126 ENGLAND. 
 
 departments, to see the more important customers, and to consult 
 with the other partners on all special occasions. Responsible to him 
 for their respective departments are several chief clerks. The 
 head of the office takes charge of the general correspondence and all 
 matters that do not refer to a special department, and has under him 
 also the clerks entrusted with the postal and telegraph services. 
 Directly answerable to him, too, are such subordinates as the mes- 
 sengers, porter, and housekeeper. Then there is the chief of the 
 shipping department, accountable for all charters made and for all 
 matters connected with freightage. In the produce department, 
 again, another expert superintends the sale and due delivery of all 
 goods consigned to the house, though acting to a certain extent under 
 the immediate control of the managing partner, who as a rule treats 
 immediately with the brokers. For the convenience of communica- 
 tion with the controlling head, these departments are not infrequently 
 together in the one large room or general office ; but separate rooms 
 are generally allotted to the book-keepers, the order office, and the 
 insurance department. At the head of the first is the chief book- 
 keeper, responsible for the correct keeping of the books and rendering 
 of accounts by the numerous staff under him. The head of the order 
 department has charge of the clue execution and shipment of all 
 orders received by the firm, whether it be an order for a railroad or 
 for a case of wine, referring in only the more important transactions 
 to the chief. And lastly, the head of the insurance department is 
 entrusted with the important duty of seeing that all goods, at sea or 
 in warehouse, are fully covered in the one case by marine, in the 
 other by fire insurance. In each of the departments there are 
 clerks answerable to their several chiefs ; and it only remains to 
 be said that the latter are men specially qualified to secure the dis- 
 charge of the different services in the best and least costly fashion. 
 It is in the selection of fit men for these posts that the administra- 
 tive ability of the responsible head of all is proved. 
 
 This, then, is the organisation of a banking house. It will have 
 been observed that these firms have their special bankers, and it will 
 be expedient here to explain the difference existing between the two 
 classes of business — a banking house and a bank. Bankers proper 
 carry on a trade which is often larger in amount, and is made up of 
 more numerous transactions, but which knows nothing of the complex 
 operations familiar to the former. A banker mainly receives money 
 on deposit to lend it out on sufficient security, making his profit from 
 the difference of interest paid and received. The largest London 
 merchants entitle themselves banking houses, because their business, 
 although distinctly embracing that of a merchant, chiefly consists in 
 finding the means for the trade of other merchants, having houses 
 either in the colonies or in foreign countries, with remuneration by
 
 COMMERCIAL ADMINISTRATION. 127 
 
 commission and not by results. Of the nature of their dealings a fair 
 notion has been given, and it may be added, their business connection 
 is always carefully selected and exceptionally well treated. For in 
 great crises, when the value of produce threatens to fall below that of 
 the advance made upon it, such a firm will not sacrifice its customers 
 to save itself, but will hold the depreciated article for a recovery with 
 a foresight doing credit alike to its honour and courage. 
 
 The term millionaire might, without some explanation, give a false 
 impression as to the amount of capital embarked in the large industries. 
 It is a rare occurrence — such instances might, in fact, be enumerated 
 in a few lines — when an individual partner has so much as one 
 million sterling invested in his business. But applied to the richer 
 partners in wealthy concerns, the title is not a misnomer, for these 
 will have considerable property, in land and personalty, in other direc- 
 tions. In truth, manufacturing limits by its very nature the amount 
 of money that can be usefully employed in it. Thus in a cotton 
 factory it may be said that a capital of £500,000 actually invested 
 in buildings, plant, and current business, would represent one of the 
 very largest concerns, and in an ironworks establishment double this 
 sum. In the former trade, this limit is seldom exceeded ; in the latter 
 there are one or two cases in which the capital is greater. The 
 simplest way of giving a notion of the magnitude of the dealings of 
 such firms will be to remark that the capital invested is turned over 
 not less than twice in the year : this would represent a minimum 
 average daily expenditure for material and wages of over £3,000 in 
 the one case, and of over £6,000 in the other, and of receipts of like 
 amounts. And it may be added that a return of lh per cent, on the 
 total capital, or of £37,500 and £75,000 respectively, would represent 
 the amount which in ordinary times would be annually divisible 
 among the partners. It is more difficult to estimate the resources of 
 a representative banking house, because the opportunities which offer 
 of large operations hardly impose a limit on the amount that can from 
 time to time be made use of.^ The percentage of profits, too, has a 
 wider range from year to year. In one or two instances the means 
 employed are exceptionally large. Apart from these, a house with a 
 working capital of two millions would stand in quite the front rank ; 
 and as this capital is turned over more frequently, if at smaller profits, 
 than in manufacturing, and as the transactions are not confined to 
 cash — advances being frequently made by acceptances — it will readily 
 be perceived that the average daily volume of business of such a firm 
 will amount to a more than considerable sum. 
 
 A second notable peculiarity is, that although there may be many 
 partners, yet, as a rule, the practical management of a large concern 
 is left to one managing partner, responsible to the others for what 
 is done, and who is not only a man of proved capacity, but one
 
 128 ENGLAND. 
 
 thoroughly acquainted with the working of each and every depart- 
 ment. The exception is, as has been shown, in a merchant's business 
 where finance is required. There are instances where the different 
 partners take each his special department and its responsibility. In 
 many concerns, too, there is a senior partner whose stake is the largest, 
 and whose right of veto is almost absolute. But, generally speaking, 
 the partners, though present when they like, and consulted on all im- 
 portant occasions as well as on the general lines to be followed, and 
 probably interesting themselves in one or other department, do not in- 
 terfere with the working of the business in the hands of the one to 
 whom it is delegated. The veto and the right to interfere are not 
 surrendered ; they are held in reserve so long as it seems that, in 
 the interests of all, the directing control should be left to the ablest of 
 the number. 
 
 There are, necessarily, questions which will arise that cannot be 
 dealt with except by a consensus of opinion. National movements, 
 as they may affect the general interest, specially fall within this category. 
 Whatever may be the bias of the individual members of a firm, all can 
 keenly appreciate, not only fiscal measures, but the general policy of a 
 ministry as affecting peace or war. Although war may temporarily 
 benefit this or the other industry, yet a more lasting and necessary 
 element of prosperity is that security which alone guarantees a proper 
 outlet for the whole trade of the country ; for depression in one trade 
 will inevitably, sooner or later, re-act on the others. Manufacturers 
 have, in particular, to watch with jealous care the proceedings of their 
 continental rivals, so as to keep pace with them in all improvements : 
 and the spinner has specially to look to the state and prospects of 
 trade in the United States. But the merchant, it may be said, must 
 have steadily in view the position of affairs in all parts of the 
 world. Disturbances in the colonies or at home, anticipations of 
 continental warfare, a quarrel with the distant Chinese, revolutions 
 In South America, all these things mean to him limited trade, 
 lower prices, distrust, and loss. HefBaust also have an exceptional 
 power of gauging the movements of the money market ; so as not to 
 be led to mistake a warning indicating temporary disaster for one 
 which is the herald of that most terrible of mercantile evils, a crisis, 
 with its attendant perils — not only of heavy losses, but of absolute 
 collapse to even the strongest houses, if their ramifications be too wide. 
 
 Another special aspect of the matter is the advantage possessed by 
 the larger concerns over their smaller rivals. This is an important 
 element of their success. Their means and the amount of their 
 dealings give them the command of markets, while their old estab- 
 lished connection and repute for fair dealing secure them the best 
 customers. The proportion of their incidental expenses, and espe- 
 cially of the withdrawals of the partners, to the amount of business
 
 COMMERCIAL ADMINISTRATION. 129 
 
 done, is much less, and this tends to rapid accumulations. And lastly, 
 they are not forced to sell their goods, and so to accept purchasers of 
 doubtful solidity. They have thus immunity from bad debts, and 
 from the dire necessity to make both ends meet, which often in smaller 
 concerns takes up time urgently required in other directions. 
 
 In leaving the subject of the administration of the representative 
 businesses of the country, it is perhaps well to say that the systems 
 which superficially would appear to be severally the outcome of a 
 master mind are not so in reality. They have grown piecemeal from 
 small beginnings to the completed structure. The organisation which 
 turns out millions of pounds of cotton in perfect cloth, or from tons of 
 coal and ore produces our iron roads, or constructs a railway or a dry- 
 dock in a foreign country, has been built up bit by bit, as occasionhas 
 seemed to demand. Of recent years too, new developments have been 
 to some extent making way in the country, the ultimate result of 
 which may be a fusion instead of an antagonism of the interests of 
 capital and labour. A subdivision of profits between employers and 
 employed, such as prevails in the Paris firm of Leclaire, and elsewhere 
 on the Continent, has not as yet made much way in this country ; but 
 the coal miners, iron workers and other hands have more or less de- 
 veloped their " sliding scales " of wages, regulated by the profits 
 made. Boards of arbitration have likewise come into considerable 
 prominence in settling the disputes between capital and labour. Here 
 also in short the changes point towards higher development, greater 
 perfection in the organisation of our industries ; and the more solidarity 
 of interests is secured between masters and men, the more certain shall 
 we be of retaining the supreme position in manufactures we now 
 enjoy.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE WORKING CLASSES. 
 
 Numbers and Influence of English Working Men — Great Variety of the Working 
 Classes and Happy Results of the Variety — Attitude of the Working Classes towards 
 the State — Difference between French and English Working Men in Congress — 
 Principles on which the State in England interferes between Employer and 
 Employed — Factory Legislation — General Working of Factory Acts, and the Evils 
 which they have prevented — Relative Powers of Factory Acts and Education Acts — 
 Educational Reforms still wanted in Manufacturing Districts — Social and Indus 
 trial Reforms yet wanted — The Truck System not entirely removed by Legislation 
 — State of the Working Classes in the Black Country — Mining England : its General 
 Characteristics and Varieties — Special Types of Miners and Features of Mining — 
 Relations between Employers and Employed — The Good Side of Trade Unions — 
 Arbitration and Conciliation — Working Men in Parliament — Differences between 
 the Working Classes in London and the Provinces. 
 
 England, "which has been called the nation of shopkeepers, might with 
 equal truth be described as the empire of working men.* They bear 
 
 * The censusof 1881 showed the population of England and Wales to consist of 25,974,439 
 persons, 12,639,902 males and 13,334,537 females. During the decade 1871 — 1881,-the 
 rate of increase had been for the whole population 14 - 36 percent. — formales, 14 - 30 percent, 
 and for females 14-43 per cent. The total number of persons returned as engaged in 
 some specified occupation was 11,187,564 — males 7,783,646, and females 3,403,918 — or 
 7P5 per cent, of all the males and 29 - 4 per cent, of all the females enumerated as of 
 the age of live years and upwards. Put if the duties of women as wives and mothers, 
 and the assistance rendered by females to their male relations in their various avocations 
 lie taken into account, it is estimated that the proportion of occupied females is about 
 equal to the proportion of occupied males. Among occupied persons of all sorts the 
 '< professional class " numbered in L88] between six and seven hundred thousand, the 
 •• commercial class'' nearly one million, and the " domestic class" nearly two millions. 
 I 'nder the several headings placed together to form the "agricultural class" 1,383,184 
 persons were enumerated in lsM, being a decrease of 8 - 2 per cent, on the enumeration 
 for 1871. In the cultivation of farm lauds, including woods and gardens, 1,278,624 
 persons were engaged, showing a decline of 9 - 3 per cent, in the decade. Agricultural 
 labourers, indoor farm servants, shepherds, and cottagers amounted to 981,988, or, 
 allowing for superannuation, to 962,348 in 1871, while they amounted to only 870,798 
 in 1881, a decrease of almost 10 per cent. Between 1871 and 1881 the number of 
 general labourers had increased from 506,273 to 559,769, or by l<w; percent. ; of railway 
 navvies and platelayers from 44,169 to 58,847, or by 33*2 per cent.; and of road 
 labourers from 8,li!6 to 1D,!»I7, or by 34 - 6 per cent. The whole group of labourers, 
 exclusive of those engaged in specialised occupations, was 1,520,926 in 1871, and 
 1,500,361 in 1*M, whence it appears that this section of the population had at the best 
 remained stationary, while the population generally had advanced by 14 '36 percent. 
 Passing from the "agricultural class" to the "industrial class,"we find it comprising 
 all persons engaged as producers or distributors of commodities, or in other words all 
 "makers and shopkeepers." In 1881 it included 6,373,367 persons, equaling 57 per
 
 THE WORKING CLASSES. 131 
 
 a larger numerical proportion to the rest of the population in England 
 than in any other European country ; they have more freedom ; they 
 exercise more direct political influence. There is hardly a city in the 
 realm which, if they were resolutely minded to do so, they could not 
 overawe. A well-concerted rising on their part in any of the great 
 centres of manufacture and commerce would not merely terrorise a 
 district, but paralyse the trading system of the empire. As they are 
 
 cent, of the entire body of occupied persons, and 24 - 5 per cent, of the whole population 
 of both sexes and every age. In the preceding decade, however, it had increased by 
 only a little under 11 per cent., and thus had failed to keep pace with the growth of the 
 community at large. The textile industries gave employment to 1,053,648 persons. In 
 the cotton trade 530,261 persons, 310,374 females and 189,651 males, were engaged. 
 The proportion of the former to the latter had advanced from 148 to 100 in 1871 to 164 
 to 100 in 1881, and the entire number of persons employed had increased by 6 - 5 per 
 cent, in the decade. In the wool and worsted trade 233,256 persons were engaged, the 
 proportion of females to males being 102 to 100 in 1881 against 79 to 100 in 1871, 
 while the whole number had in the decade declined by 1*5 per cent. In the silk trade 
 63,577 persons were engaged, a decrease in the decade of 22'2 per cent., while the pro- 
 portion of females to males had risen from 208 to 100 in 1871 to 224 to 100 in 1881. In 
 the lace trade 44,144 persons were engaged in 1881, or 8 - 8 per cent, fewer than in 1871, 
 the proportion of females to males having also fallen from 83 to 74 to 100 in the decade. 
 The decrease was wholly among the hand lace makers, the machine lace makers having 
 increased by 36 per cent. In the hosiery trade 40,372 persons were engaged in 1881 
 against 41,197 in 1871, the proportion in which the two sexes are employed being exactly 
 reversed in the interval,' that is, from 114 males to 100 females, to 114 females to 100 
 males. In the hemp trade, which includes the manufacture of some other fibrous 
 materials, 22,471 were engaged, in the proportion of 60 females to 100 males in 1881. 
 In the linen trade 12,065 persons — 7,853 females and 4,212 males — were engaged in 1881 
 against 17,772 in 1871, a decrease of 32 per cent, in the decade. In the carpet and rug 
 trade, practically a branch of the wool and worsted trade, 13,985 persons — 8,795 males 
 and 5,190 females — were engaged in 1881, an advance on 1871 of 23 per cent, in the 
 entire number, and from 47 to 59 per cent, in the proportion of females to males 
 employed. The building trades — including not only builders, but also architects, 
 carpenters, joiners, bricklayers, masons, slaters, tilers, plasterers, whitewashes, paper- 
 hangers, plumbers, painters and glaziers— occupied 673,636 persons, an increase in the 
 decade 1871 — 18^1 of 21 per cent. Stone and slate quarriers and workers, cement and 
 plaster makers, and brick and tile makers, also increased from 81,928 is 1871 to 
 105,544 in 1881, or by 29 per cent. Upholsterers, cabinet-makers, French polishers, 
 locksmiths, bellbangers, gasfitters, hou^e and shop fitting makers and dealers, wood 
 carvers and gilders, furniture dealers, and carpet and rug manufacturers,, numbered 
 124,355 in 1881 against 106,108 in 1871, an increase of 17 percent. In the earthenware, 
 china, and glass trades, 74,407 persons were engaged in 1881, an increase of 8 per cent, 
 on the number returned in 1871. In the coach-building and harness-making trades 
 62,236 and 23,866 persons were engaged in 1881, an increase of 13-9 ami 5 - 8 per cent, 
 respectively on 1871. Ship and boat-building occupied 54,080 persons in 1881. But 
 the figures cannot be compared with those of 1871, since shipwrights anil others employed 
 by the Government were then returned merely as Government servants. Mining 
 operations in 1881 afforded occupation to 443,563 persons, including 437,670 miners, 
 2,291 mining engineers, and 3,602 persons engaged in mine service. The coal miners 
 numbered 381,763, or 87 per cent, of the whole; next to them come the ironstone miners, 
 26,110 strong, and then follow the tin miners 12,402 strong, the lead miners 11,226 
 strong, the copper miners 4,067 strong, and finally the miners of other or unspecified 
 minerals, 2,102 strong. In the decade 1871 — 1881, the tin miners had decreased by 34 
 per cent. But it is estimated that the coal miners had increased by at least 20 per cent. 
 and the mining community generally by 24 per cent. The workers and dealers in 
 metals and products consisting in the main of metals numbered 760,411 persons in 1881, 
 an increase since 1871 of 15 per cent. In 1881 there were eugiged in the iron and 
 
 K2
 
 IB 2 ENGLAND. 
 
 the ultimate depositories of physical, so are they also of political power. 
 The parliamentary suffrage has been carried into the squalid alleys and 
 the mean courts of our large towns — the abode of the compound house- 
 bolder and the lodger voter. It cannot be long before the humblest 
 cottagers in agricultural England will enjoy the same privilege, or claim 
 successfully the same right. Yet absolutely supreme as, in the last 
 resort, the working men of England are in the government of England, 
 
 steel trade 361,343, in the tin trade 36,023, in the copper trade 7,348, and in the zinc 
 trade 2,265 persons, an increase severally of 3 per cent., 40 per cent.. 30 per cent., and 
 34 per cent on 1871. In the lead trade 2,460 persons were employed in 1881, being a 
 decrease on 1871, of 27 per cent. Among the persons working and dealing in mixed and 
 unspecified metals, the largest number were engaged in the brass and bronze trade, 
 especially in the production of lamps, candlesticks, and chandeliers. In 1881 there were 
 30,918 of these, an advance of 36 per cent, on 1871. The white-metal, electro-plate, 
 plated ware, and pewter trades, occupied 5,629 persons in 1881, against 3,407 in 1871, 
 and the makers of bolts, nuts, rivets, screws, and staples had increased from 5,726 to 
 s.( il 7 in the same time. Burnishing and lacquering employed 2,687 persons, mostly 
 females, an increase in the decade of 30 per cent. The persons engaged in 1881 
 in the supply of animal food numbered 149,967, of bread and vegetables 159,008, and 
 of groceries," including tea and sugar, 134,397, an increase of 15-4 per cent., 12-5 pel 
 cent., and 18 - 8 per cent, on 1871. The persons engaged in the production and sale of 
 spirituous drinks amounted in 1881 to 135,158, a decrease on 1871 of 5-8 per cent., or, if 
 the growth of the whole population be taken into consideration, practically of 17"7 per 
 cent. At the same time the dealers in tobacco and smoking apparatus numbered 
 22,175 in 1881, an advance of 34 per cent, on 1871. In manufacturing and dealing in 
 machinery 267,976 persons, almost all males, were engaged in 1881, against 160,797 in 
 1871, an increase of 28 per cent. Of tool and implement makers there were 48,556 in 
 1881, an increase of 5 per cent, on 1871. The clock, watch, and scientific instrument 
 trades occupied 32,064 persons, showing an increase of 22 per cent, in the decade. In 
 the manufacture of weapons 8,227 persons were occupied in 1881, the gunmakers 
 having declined to 2,741 as against 11,576 in 1871, while the makers of electrical 
 apparatus had risen in the same period from 428 to 2,522. The clothing trades 
 employed, exclusively of 82,3(>2 drapers and mercers, and 14,933 hairdressers and wig- 
 makers, 1,048,534 persons, 404,096 males and 644,438 females. As compared with 1871 
 this was an increase of only 7'1 per cent, for the entire number in 1881. But milliners, 
 dressmakers, and staymakers, 360,932, had increased by 18-4 per cent., and tailors, 
 160,648, had increased by 94 per cent. Seamstresses and shirtmakers, 23,244, had 
 increased by 5-2 per cent., 7,524 persons enumerated as machine workers or machinists 
 being most of them seamstresses. Tutting the three groups together we have a total of 
 604,824 persons, an increase of 14-0 percent, on 1871. In the boot and shoe trade, not 
 counting 7,503 patten and clog-makers, 216,556 persons were engaged in 1881, against 
 219,213 in 1871. In those places where machine-made boots and shoes are principally 
 produced, the number of persons employed had increased by 41 percent, in the decade, and 
 the proportion of females to males had advanced from 13 to 20 to 100. In the hat trade 
 53,673 persons, of whom 30,1)84 were straw-hat makers, were engaged. Among the 
 makers of hats other than straw, 22,689, mostly males, there had been an advance in the 
 ten years of a little less than 7 per cent. But among the 30,984 makers of straw-hats, 
 almost all females, there had been a falling off of 35 per cent. In the glove trade 
 15,524 persons were engaged, of whom 85 per cent, were females, a decline of 31 per 
 cent, since 1871. But there had been an increase of 132 per cent, among drapers, 
 mercers, hosiers, and haberdashers, of whom there were 91,927. Altogether, including a 
 number of minor industries, rather more than a million persons were directly occupied 
 in supplying articles of dress to the community. In the production and dissemination 
 of literature of all kinds 159,094 persons were employed in 1881. Since 1871 there had 
 been an increase among papermakersof 13-3 per cent., among printers of 39 - 6 percent., 
 among bookbinders of 32*5 per cent, anions stationers of 30'7 per cent., and among 
 publishers, booksellers, and librarians of 7'7 per cent
 
 THE WORKING CLASSES. 133 
 
 our rulers, and the ruling classes generally, do not recognise in that 
 supremacy the source either of political or social peril. We have 
 agitators and firebrands about us who talk of a trembling constitution 
 and a tottering dynasty. But we think we have reason to know that 
 wild words like these awaken no responsive echo of insurrectionary 
 enthusiasm in the breast of the great majority of that audience to 
 which they are addressed. We believe in the stability of the regime 
 under which we live. In other words, we have faith in the good sense, 
 the good feeling, and the political docility of the English working man. 
 How is it that we have in England so well grounded a confidence in 
 the orderly conduct of that preponderating element in our population 
 which is the cause of alarm, danger, and restrictive legislation abroad '? 
 One answer is to be found in the very fact which makes a comprehen- 
 sive survey of the English working classes, in anything like a limited 
 space, almost impossible. There is as much variety of opinion and ox 
 ambition among the working classes in England as among those above 
 them. They include as many sections and schools, with differences as 
 wide, and divisions as deep, as the upper classes, or as that complex mul- 
 titude known as the middle classes. It is therefore impossible to label 
 them with any single epithet or any one characteristic, unless, indeed, 
 it should be said that they are law-abiding. This diversity of thought, 
 belief, and aim among the toilers of England is at once the conse- 
 quence and the cause of exceptional national advantages. It results 
 mainly from the absolute and unfettered freedom of opinion and speech 
 which is enjoyed in this country. The right of public meetings and 
 demonstrations is established. We have a press which may even 
 verge on licence with impunity. No attempt is made to check free 
 discussion and conversation on the part of working men who assemble 
 together in club-rooms or at lectures. There are associations of work- 
 ing men who take their stand upon the " true principles of democracy," 
 and who decline publicly, or in the printed declaration of their political 
 faith, to pledge their adherence to the existing constitution in Church 
 or State. They aim at " self-government in the fullest sense of the 
 term," in other words, at universal adult suffrage, and they propose to 
 consider "any system of representation upon a narrower basis to be 
 nothing less than disguised despotism." Since " virtue and capacity, 
 not wealth or birth, are to be recognised as the essential attributes of 
 the legislative body," it follows that "all hereditary privileges are to 
 be abolished."* After the enunciation of points of the new charter so 
 drastic and uncompromising as these, it will surprise no one to be 
 told that there are included in the programme such demands of minor 
 revolutionary import as the shorter duration of Parliaments ; payment 
 of members of Parliament from the Imperial taxation, and of election 
 
 * These words are taken from the prospectus of the Eleusis Club, Chelsea — a fairly 
 representative and well-managed institution.
 
 134 ENGLAND. 
 
 expenses from local taxation ; complete separation of Church and 
 State ; compulsory secular and free education. Such a propaganda 
 as this may sound appalling, but is in reality harmless. Its promoters 
 may speak daggers, but they use and desire to use none. The asso- 
 ciation itself which is 'committed to such principles is social rather than 
 political, and belongs to an order of institutions which, as we shall a 
 little later see, are a source of unmixed good to the working classes 
 themselves — the working man's club. The simple truth is, that the 
 somewhat full-flavoured prospectus acts as one of the many constitu- 
 tional safety-valves with which this favoured country is provided. In 
 a land of civil liberty, in which political discontent seldom advances 
 beyond the negative stage, or when it assumes a positive form, and 
 is not without some justification in fact, immediately commands the 
 attention and the action of the Legislature, words can have no alarm- 
 ing sound for the powers that be. They are the mere exhibition of 
 transient humours, or, at worst, exaggerations and caricatures of 
 fitful phases of the popular mind. 
 
 As this variety of feeling among the English working classes is the 
 result of a state of things under which free play is allowed to every 
 mind and to every tongue, so is one of our chief guarantees against 
 domestic troubles and democratic discontent to be found in its effects. 
 To coerce the multitude is too often to consolidate sedition. English- 
 men are law-abiding, because they are persuaded that it is the honest 
 intention of the law to be fair to all alike, and because they believe 
 that in the long run the Legislature does not neglect their true interests. 
 If this belief did not exist the spirit abroad would be that, not of 
 reverence, but resistance to the law, and there would be a real danger 
 lest the working classes should organise themselves into a compact 
 mass of antagonism to the existing order of things. Once destroy this 
 infinite complexity of thought and feeling, and a real step will have 
 been taken towards uniting these heterogeneous groups and loosely 
 coherent sections into one solid mass, which may form a serious menace 
 to the institutions of the State. 
 
 As English workmen differ in their opinions, so do they differ in their 
 worth. Thero is the honest toiler, who has his machine ready to begin 
 work on the first beat of the engine, and the saunterer who, as Mr. 
 John Morley in speaking of Lancashire puts it, " watches the minutes 
 like a lazy schoolboy." The best type of artisan in a mill is as good 
 as the best type of active humanity anywhere else, and the best type 
 abounds. The fact is that the British working man, however energeti- 
 cally the attempt may be made to lash him up into revolutionary 
 fervour, cannot divest himself of the conservative instincts of his race. 
 He may be liberal, or radical, or even democratic; but so long as the 
 shoe does not pinch he has no wish to change it for another which 
 perhaps will. This rough estimate of the English uuerier must be
 
 THE WORKING CLASSES. 135 
 
 accompanied — there are certain preachers of the industrial revolution 
 who would say corrected — by reference to particular traits. Both his 
 vices and his virtues have been unnecessarily and unwarrantably looked 
 at through a magnifying glass. He is no more uniformly sober than 
 he is uniformly drunken. He is no more exclusively the creature of 
 club life — important though the club be as a factor in his civilisation 
 — than he is of pot-house life. The tavern continues to be the house 
 of call for a too large percentage of his order, and the publican's 
 pocket the bottomless pit into which an undue proportion of his wages 
 finds its way. A socially and morally perfect and faultless working man 
 is as impossible as the irredeemably vicious baronet in novels, or the 
 spotlessly angelic child in nursery story-books. 
 
 There is much on which we may congratulate ourselves in the 
 conceptions which the working man entertains of the functions of the 
 State, and, in a general way, of the position of its governors. He may 
 call himself a democrat, but he is in practice a very good subject of the 
 monarchy. He may profess belief in the perfectibility of mankind as a 
 consequence of the establishment of a republican form of government, 
 but he has not the slightest wish to do violence to the tenure of the 
 Crown. There are, indeed, two things that have become customary 
 among us of which he does not approve, which it may be even said he 
 does not understand. He declines to admit that the re-settlement of 
 the financial relations between the people and the Crown, which was 
 made at the commencement of the present reign, justifies the grants 
 that are voted by Parliament to members of the royal family on such 
 occasions as marriage. He will, indeed, admit that this is preferable 
 to the periodical demands which were formerly presented to, and con- 
 ceded by, Parliament for the repayment of debts incurred by princes 
 of the blood, but he is not satisfied as to the justice or necessity of 
 these substitutes. He is equally unable or indisposed to see that 
 placemen and pensioners are anything else than abuses incarnated in 
 human shape. He wishes that high officials of State — Prime Minister, 
 Lord Chancellor, and the like — should be paid, and well paid. But 
 when the season of work is over he considers that their claim upon the 
 public funds is at an end. He applies the principle of a good day's 
 wages for a good day's labour in the most generous sense to the learned 
 professions, but he is emphatically opposed to the solid remuneration 
 of well-earned leisure. 
 
 Tenacious of his own rights, he is the last person in the world to 
 deny the possession of rights to his employer, and he displays no 
 inclination to impose fancifully exacting duties upon Government for 
 the enforcement of what is due to himself. Hereit is that the English 
 working man may be compared advantageously with the working man 
 of other countries. There is less tendency to socialism here than among 
 other nations of the Old World or of the New. The English working
 
 136 EN(iL,AND. 
 
 man takes, for the most part, a view admirably practical and temperate 
 of the functions of the State. The national workshops of revolutionary- 
 France have no attraction for him. He makes none of those extrava- 
 gant claims upon the protection of the State in the regulation of his daily 
 labour and of the rate of his wages which are current among the 
 working classes of America and Germany, and which cause a certain form 
 of socialism to be equally the pest of both countries. When a con- 
 gress of English working men discuss their condition, they do so 
 in its relation to the State. When a congress of French working 
 men meet, the State and its legislation are entirely ignored, and the 
 assumption which underlies the arguments of all speakers is that the 
 economic relations of society must be transformed if civilisation is to 
 advance. The difference between French and English working men 
 could not be better put than in a passage from an article on a French 
 working man's congress, contributed by Mr. Frederic Harrison to the 
 Fortnightly Review a few years ago : — 
 
 " The French Congress is in marked contrast to the English assemblies. With us the 
 discussions tarn entirely on matters of practical legislation; certain bills before Parlia- 
 ment are to be supported or opposed ; certain official inquiries, regulations, or concessions 
 are demanded. Nine-tenths of what goes on. in an English Trades Union Congress has 
 relation to the House or the Home Office. There is nothing of the kind at Lyons. 
 There not a single bill pending at Versailles is even mentioned throughout the discus- 
 sions; no reference to a single parliamentary party or even politician; there is not a 
 public man, not a single employer, not a public writer with whom the Congress has the 
 .smallest relation, or in whom it seems to put the slightest confidence. The Radicals, the 
 extreme Left, are all treated as being just as hostile as the extreme Right ; the most 
 ultra-republican journals, including that of M. Rochefort, are utterly repudiated ; indeed, 
 M. Rochefort is called the Red Jesuit ; nor is there a single capitalist who seems to be in 
 the slightest degree of contact with them. Now in England we know there are dozens 
 of members of Parliament, and even members of governments, and that on both sides, 
 from whom the bills of our workmen's congresses receive active support ; at every annual 
 meeting there are great employers and great capitalists, public men and public writers, 
 in constant intercourse with them. Men in the same position as Mr. Prassey, Mr. 
 Mundella, Mr. Forster, Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Samuel Morley, Lord Lichfield, Mr. 
 Hughes, and the like, are utterly unknown in the French movement. The idea of 
 popular Conservative employers is still more completely incomprehensible. Such a man 
 as Mr. Cross, a Conservative Minister of the Interior, legalising trades unions and 
 codifying the vast network of factory legislation, would indeed be a portent in France. 
 It is clear that the legislature in France is immensely behind that of England in its 
 interest in labour questions; that the political and powerful classes in France are in no 
 sort of real contact with the workmen ; and that great employers or great landowners 
 having their confidence can hardly be said to exist. One cannot fail to see how far 
 more truly the governing classes in England in their own way sympathise with, and 
 work at, the great social problems ; how much less sharp is the antagonism of class here ; 
 how much the English labourers owe to that mass of protective legislation against which 
 the men and women with a crotchet are so urgent in protesting. At Lyons, M. Garn- 
 lietta is simply a bourgeois politician ; M. de Marcere is simply a continuation of M. de 
 Fourtou ; Victor Hugo is simply a poet ; and Jules Simon is merely an intriguer. The 
 French workmen still cling to their old idea of fashioning the future by themselves 
 alone — though now, be it said without subversive measures, without legislation, and even 
 without the State." 
 
 In the course of the last fifty years we have had an entire series of 
 legislative enactments devised for the protection of women and children
 
 THE WOKKING CLASSES. 137 
 
 engaged in different kinds of industry. The form which this State 
 interference has assumed has heen of various kinds. It has prohibited 
 the working of women and children beyond a certain number of hours, 
 and in the case of children it has even enforced a certain qualification 
 of knowledge as well as of years. The principle on which the State in 
 these matters has throughout proceeded is that it is bound to protect 
 those who cannot protect themselves, and that within this category 
 children and women come. The observance of these laws is guaranteed, 
 so far as it is possible to guarantee them, by an elaborate system of 
 State inspection. Inspectors are continually paying surprise visits to 
 see that there is no infraction of the laws regulating the employment 
 of women and children, and that the sanitary condition of the factories 
 and the workshops in which men are employed is satisfactory. Thus 
 everything which could encourage the idea that the State is under the 
 most minute and positive obligations to the working man has been 
 done by the Legislature. Could there, then, be any more conclusive 
 testimony to the sanity of working men's views of the responsibilities 
 of the Government than the circumstance that in all this time not one 
 petition has been presented to Parliament praying for any interference 
 with the conditions of adult male labour ? Further, it must be remem- 
 bered that the demand for factory legislation came, not from the opera- 
 tives in factories themselves, but from eminent philanthropists outside 
 — Lord Shaftesbury and others. Public opinion among the working 
 classes does what it does not do in America, Germany, France, or 
 Switzerland ; it draws the line short of which legislative interference 
 must stop, at the daily work of full-grown men, and the right of free 
 contract between employed and employer. Wherever it has been tried, 
 interference beyond these limits has proved a blunder and a failure. 
 In the United States it has broken down. In Switzerland, where it 
 was introduced in 1877, it is the reverse of a success. In Germany 
 and in France it has paved the way for the propagation of Socialism. 
 It is contended by Mr. Fawcett and other authorities that the responsi- 
 bilities with which the law charges itself in the case of the labour of 
 women are an infraction of the right of free contract. Practically, the 
 vindication of such interference seems complete. In the first place, 
 it works well ; in the second, it cannot be asserted that the average 
 woman is at any period of her life a free agent in the sense that a 
 man is a free agent. Up to the age of eighteen she is subject to the 
 authority of her parents, and a very grinding despotism that authority 
 often is. If at the age of eighteen she marries — and early marriages 
 are the rule with the working classes — she becomes little more than 
 the chattel of her husband. 
 
 Though it does not come within the scope of this work to trace the 
 history of factory legislation, it is necessary briefly to summarise cer- 
 tain central stages in its progress. The factory legislation of to-day is
 
 183 ENGLAND. 
 
 the work of rather more than three-quarters of a century. Starting 
 from what was merely an Apprentices Act in 1802, when the factory 
 system was in its infancy, and nearly all for whom it provided employ- 
 ment were regularly apprenticed, it reached, in the Consolidation Act 
 of 1878, a culminating point of efficiency and comprehensiveness, 
 beyond which, in the present century, it is not likely to advance. The 
 Act of 1802, which provided for the better clothing, better sleeping- 
 rooms, and the separation of the sexes in the case of apprentices only, 
 was extended eight, and again twenty-three, years later to all boys 
 and girls engaged in factories, whether they were apprentices or not. 
 But none of these provisions, however admirable in design, accom- 
 plished much in practice, for the simple reason that the law did not 
 supply the means of enforcing them. It was a further defect that 
 they only applied to cotton, and not to woollen or worsted factories. 
 In 1833, all textile factories were included in the Act, inspectors were 
 appointed, and the hours of labour, of young persons and children 
 only, were limited to twelve a day, it being left entirely to the discretion 
 of the employer between what hours the work should be done, subject 
 to the one condition tbat it should not be carried on during the nigbt. 
 It was not until eleven years later, 18-14, that any legislation at all 
 adequate to the complexity and vital importance of the matter became 
 an accomplished fact. In that year the principle was asserted that 
 the law owed the duties of protection to women as well as children, 
 and since that date factory legislation has applied to female workers 
 as well as to their youthful sons and daughters. At the same time 
 the machinery guaranteeing obedience to the law was improved ; 
 regular holidays were established, in addition to Good Friday and 
 Christmas Day. It was also enacted that the machinery should be 
 fenced. Yet even thus the statute was frequently evaded, and, as tbe 
 employers worked by relays of women and children, the inspectors 
 could never certainly know what was the precise hour at which the 
 operations of a particular group had commenced. Meanwhile the 
 Factory Act had been extended to print works, and the ten hours' 
 movement had made great advances. But ten hours as the limit of 
 time for the employment of men, women, and young persons was not 
 conceded till twelve years later, and, instead, a compromise of ten 
 and a half hours daily was admitted. In 1861, bleach works, and 
 in 1864, paper-staining, lucifer-match making, potteries, cartridge- 
 making, and all deleterious employments, were brought under the 
 operation of the Act. In 1867, the Factory Acts Extension Act and 
 the Workshops Regulation Act were both passed — the practical effect 
 of the two combined being to bring all occupations in which women 
 and young persons are employed under regulation and restriction. 
 Especially was the influence of the Act boueficial in its effect upon 
 the employment of young women in the dressmaking trade. Still,
 
 THE WORKING CLASSES. 139 
 
 one great defect in factory legislation remained — the Workshops Act 
 was entirely in the hands of the local authorities. In 1870 this 
 shortcoming was remedied, and henceforward the Workshops Act was 
 enforced by the Government factory inspectors. Four years later in 
 every kind of textile factory the number of hours a day was limited to 
 ten. It was further enacted that no child should be employed under 
 ten, and that no young person under thirteen should be employed full 
 time without an educational certificate. Although, up to this time, 
 attendance at school had more or less been enforced upon the half- 
 time principle between the ages of eight and thirteen, no certificate 
 had been required, and in the case of many trades — such as print 
 works — children were permitted to keep their half-time attendances 
 when and how they pleased — an option which frequently resulted in 
 school being systematically shirked. 
 
 The Factory and Workshop Act of 1878, which was amended and 
 enlarged in the session of 1883, while it repealed or consolidated 
 upwards of a hundred different statutes, brought all kinds of factories, 
 iron and hardware as well as textile, within the province of legisla- 
 tion, but did not extend to them the ten hours' limit, the reason 
 being that the proportion of women and children employed in these 
 industries is much smaller than in the case of textile mills. Legis- 
 lation, however, seems scarcely wanted to enforce the ten hours' rule. 
 Practically, custom has already fixed that as the period beyond which 
 neither men, women, nor children should work. When on sudden 
 emergencies — such as the necessity for executing an order before a 
 given time, or of anticipating a fall in the market — employers arrange 
 with their hands to prolong the usual spell, they find that the rate of 
 extra production is not such as to repay the expenditure of the extra 
 wages. There is overwhelming testimony on all hands to show that 
 the men have acquired the habit of putting forth all their energy 
 within the limits of the ten hours. It is the same with the women, 
 children, and young persons engaged in bookbinding and other trades 
 to which special immunities are granted. The labour may be con- 
 tinued, but the spirit and care with which it is performed are relaxed. 
 Exhausted nature refuses to respond to the undue demand.* 
 
 * It may perhaps be as well succinctly to summarise the chief heads of the factory 
 legislation now in force. A factory is defined to mean any premises in which 
 mechanical power is used in a manufacturing process, or in which certain trades, 
 such as lucifer-match making, percussion caps and cartridge-making, bookbinding, 
 letterpress printing, tobacco and cigar manufacturing, are carried on. It follows from 
 the above definition that all corn-mills and nearly all breweries and distilleries have now 
 become factories. The number of protected persons employed in such establishments as 
 these — that is to say, of women, children, and young persons — is not large, and the 
 chief value of inspection as applied to them will consist in the additional protection 
 which will be thereby given to the people employed from dangerous machinery or from 
 preventible dust and effluvia arising either from the process of manufacture itself, or 
 from defective sanitary arrangements. " Factories " under the Act of 1878 are classi- 
 fied as " textile" and" non-textile." There is no change made in the number of hours
 
 140 ENGLAND. 
 
 For the full results of factory legislation we shall yet have to wait 
 some time. It is impossible to make the effect of a law coincident 
 with its passing. But the work already accomplished by the Factory 
 Acts is immense. While they have certainly cured all the evils 
 existing in the first half of the century, they have, in addition, created 
 a strong public feeling in favour of their humanising agency. They 
 have been the foundation of the Factory Acts of all other countries ; 
 and if it is wanted to know what are the evils which the existence of 
 such measures prevent, a notion may be derived from the condition of 
 the factories of Belgium and India. In each of these countries many 
 of the revelations made in the Report of the Children's Employments 
 Commission (1862), long since happily obsolete in England, are 
 matters of daily experience. In the pottery districts of the United 
 Kingdom, less than fifteen years ago, 11,000 children and young 
 persons were employed under conditions fatal alike to mental and 
 bodily health. They commenced work in childhood — some between 
 six and seven, and others between seven and eight, eight and nine, 
 and nine and ten. Their hours of labour were from five in the 
 morning to six in the evening, but in numberless instances they were 
 required to work on till eight, nine, or ten at night, and this in an 
 atmosphere varying from 100 to 120 degrees, and in a few instances 
 as high as 148 degrees, in rooms, or rather " stoves," about thirteen 
 feet square, and from eight to twelve feet high. In the winter these 
 children were sent abroad on errands, with the mercury twenty degrees 
 below freezing point, without stockings, shoes, or jackets, and with 
 the perspiration streaming from their foreheads. As might have been 
 expected, numbers of them died from consumption, asthma, and acute 
 inflammations. This condition of things is absolutely non-existent 
 
 in which women, young persons, and children may be employed in either case. 
 In textile factories it remains at fifty-six and a half hours a week, as fixed by 
 the Factory Act of 1874, while in non-textile factories it will continue sixty hours 
 a week, as" fixed by the Act of 1867. The provisions of the Act of 1874, which apply 
 to the employment of children and young persons, are now extended to all non-textile 
 factories and workshops. A child cannot legally be employed in future under any 
 circumstances under ten years of age. At thirteen a child may be employed full 
 time, provided that it can produce a certificate of having passed the fourth standard 
 fixed by the Committee of the Council on Education. In the event of a child not being 
 able to produce such a certificate it must continue at school half time till it reaches the 
 age of fourteen. The choice is given under the Act of 1878 to all occupiers of factories, 
 whether textile or non-textile, to work throughout the year either from six to six or from 
 seven to seven, as they may select. The privilege of working from eight to eight is 
 given to a limited number of trades and occupations, which do not appear to embrace all 
 which enjoyed it under the old Act. The Secretary of State has power to give this per- 
 mission to a trade when the necessity for it is proved, but a representation to him on the 
 subject must be forwarded through the chief inspector. Various modifications relating 
 to holidays and meal-times are granted to meet the special emergencies of particular 
 trades. The occupier of a factory is bound to send notice to the inspector should he fail 
 to be visited or to receive official notice. By the Factory and Workshop Amendment 
 Act of 1883, too, some very important and salutary provisions were made for the regulation 
 of white-lead works and bakeries.
 
 THE WORKING CLASSES. 141 
 
 now. Children of tender age are to be found employed at this wort* 
 no longer. The law has given toilers in these places protection to life 
 and health generally, improved ventilation, and respite from toil at 
 regular intervals. Employers have discovered that improved ventila- 
 tion means economy in production, and that unless provision is made 
 for the escape of the moisture from the clay the articles are not 
 properly dried. Defective ventilation there, of course, still is, and for 
 some time must remain. Whether in the pottery districts or else- 
 where, the old workshops were seldom constructed upon sound prin- 
 ciples, and until these have been replaced by new workshops built 
 upon an improved plan some abuses must continue to exist. Mean- 
 while a vital reform has been effected by the construction in every 
 instance of the stove outside the workshop, and the factory inspectors 
 bear witness to the laudable readiness with which all the larger 
 employers are adopting the newest and most effective improvements. 
 
 In the same way the scandals which once disgraced the paper trade 
 are no longer to be met with. We shall look in vain now for parents 
 who have to carry children of seven years old on their backs through 
 the snow, to work sixteen hours a day, kneeling down to feed them 
 at the machine. The business is at the present moment in the hands 
 of large employers, who have carried out the provisions of the law with 
 equal fidelity and promptitude. The same process of improvement 
 has been going on in the lucifer-match trade. Factory legislation 
 has killed the small manufacturers, whose establishments were the 
 hot-beds of systematic abuse. Thus one factory, employing six men 
 and fifteen boys, consisted of two small sheds, one of them being 
 about 20 by 11 feet, with no ventilation whatever. This place served 
 for both " dipping " and drying l-oom, as well as for mixing and 
 heating the sulphur and the phosphorus composition. The other 
 shed, also without ventilation, was about 30 by 10 feet. Here all the 
 remaining processes were carried on, the number of processes varying 
 altogether from about ten to twenty. Hither children brought their 
 meals, and there they ate them, suiting the time of eating to their 
 work. While in London there were, ten years ago, between thirty 
 or forty match manufactories of this kind, there are probably at the 
 present moment not more than half a dozen on a small scale, and 
 even these are well conducted. The large manufacturers being able 
 to produce the article more cheaply, the smaller ones have inevitably 
 gone to the wall. 
 
 In the brick-making trade there were, for some time after the above 
 abuses had been remedied, from 20,000 to 30,000 children employed 
 between the ages of three and seventeen. George Smith, of Coalville, 
 has said of himself that at the age of nine he was employed in con- 
 tinually carrying about forty pounds of clay upon his head from the 
 clay-heap to the table on which the bricks were made. This work
 
 142 ENGLAND. 
 
 had to be performed, almost without a break, for thirteen hours daily. 
 One night, after his customary day's work, he was compelled to carry 
 1,200 nine-inch bricks from the maker to the floors on which they 
 harden. The distance thus walked by the child was quite fourteen 
 miles, seven of which were travelled with eleven pounds' weight of 
 clay in his arms, and for this labour he received sixpence. It is only 
 quite recently that brickyards have been brought within the operation 
 of the Factory Acts. Until that was done the factory inspectors bad 
 no power of enforcing the Workshop Act, and many brickyard pro- 
 prietors purposely subjected themselves to the operation of the second 
 of these measures by keeping the number of their hands below fifty. 
 At the present day the employment of girls under sixteen is absolutely 
 forbidden in brickyards : in point of fact, very few girls are employed 
 in them at all ; and pending the settlement of the question, whether 
 the employment should not be forbidden to all women also, the num- 
 ber of women thus occupied is decreasing daily. 
 
 There is one gross blot upon the social condition of industrial 
 England which has yet to be entirely removed. It has been estimated 
 that there are about 22,000 men, 22,000 women, and 72,000 children 
 floating up and down the country on its rivers and canals. It also 
 appears that some 2G,000 of the 44,000 men and women are living in 
 an unmarried state, and that about 40,000 of the 72,000 children are 
 illegitimate.* Although these barges, for sanitary purposes, are by 
 the Public Health Act considered houses, it is quite impracticable to 
 exercise due supervision over such a floating and fleeting population ; 
 and thus when disease is on board, which is frequently the case, 
 barges act as centres whence infectious maladies are propagated 
 throughout the country.! 
 
 In the condition of workers in shops there is still room for con- 
 siderable improvement. Here the factory inspectors have great 
 obstacles to encounter, and are called upon to exercise much judg- 
 ment. It is exceedingly hard to prove, without a degree of inquisi- 
 torial interference which would enlist public sympathy on behalf of 
 the breakers of the law, that the law has been infringed. Magistrates 
 have a strong objection to interfering with people who are engaged in 
 
 * Factory Reports for the half-year ending October 3] , 1875, page 128. 
 
 t According to the census of 1881, 8,978 persons— 6,225 males and 2,753 females — 
 formed the population of barges and boats on canals and rivers on the night to which the 
 enumeration related. It appears from the General Report that a comparison of this 
 with earlier returns shows that the number of such persons has been progressively 
 decreasing. In L85] the number returned as living, on barges arid boats was 12,- r >(>2, in 
 1MI1 it bad fallen to 11,915 ; in 1871 it had still further fallen to 10,976, and lastly in 
 188] was reduced to f\(>7. s . But this represents only those who slept on board on the 
 night of the census, and taking the bargemen, lightermen, and watermen who slept on 
 shore as well as on board, there was no diminution in 1881 as compared with 
 1871, although there had been a considerable diminution in each of the two preceding 
 decades. The numbers were 3-3,120 in 1851, 31,428 in 1861, 2 ',S(i-i in 1871, and 30,223 
 in 1381.
 
 THE WORKING CLASSES. 143 
 
 the making of a livelihood. The signal success of the Factory Acts 
 is in a great degree due to the discretion with which they have been 
 administered. It is because the inspectors have been uniformly will- 
 ing to hear both sides, to act as arbitrators between employers and 
 employed, before proceeding summarily to arraign the first, that they 
 have produced among the class of employers generally a disposition 
 to obey and assist the Acts. The Saturday half-holiday, prescribed 
 by the law, has in some instances given rise to considerable practical 
 difficulty. The employer, when it has been pointed out to him that 
 the law requires him to give all the young women in his establishment 
 the benefit of the Saturday half-holiday, has replied that this would 
 inevitably compel him to increase the number of his hands. In these 
 cases the inspectors have sometimes been able to recommend a com- 
 promise. The Saturday half-holiday has been taken alternately by 
 the different employees, with entire satisfaction to all concerned.* 
 
 The consideration of the working of the Education Acts of 1870 
 and 1876 must not be separated from the working of the Factory 
 Acts. Both have been indispensable agencies in the great task of 
 reforming the condition of the manufacturing districts ; and while 
 the number of instances in wbich they are systematically infringed 
 is shown by the report of the inspectors to be annually diminishing, 
 the feeling against those guilty of such infractions is more pronounced. 
 The law as it now stands prohibits and penalises the employment of 
 all children under ten years of age, and the employment of children 
 as half-timers of less than thirteen, and who have not passed in the 
 fourth standard — who cannot, in other words, read and write, com- 
 pose a simple essay or letter on a familiar subject, who have not 
 mastered the chief rudimentary facts of the history of their country 
 
 * The Shop Hours Labour League has been recently established for the purpose of 
 securing by legislation the observance of reasonable hours of work and a weekly half- 
 holiday for shopkeepers and their assistants. It is affirmed on behalf of this organisa- 
 tion that though in the more fashionable quarters of London the shops are closed com- 
 paratively early, and those engaged in them are only moderately worked, yet in the out- 
 lying districts of the capital, as well as in the great centres of population throughout the 
 country, the larger number of shops are open from thirteen to fifteen hours on five days 
 of the week, and from fourteen to seventeen hours on Saturdays. Hence the weekly 
 hours of labour of the assistants in them frequently range from eighty to ninety ; 
 the time accorded to them for sleep and meals being wholly insufficient not only for their 
 comfort but also for their health. Under the patronage of the Shop Hours Labour 
 League a Bill was drafted and introduced into Parliament last Session providing that 
 all persons employed in shops shall be allowed half an hour for breakfast, for dinner, and 
 for tea each ; that young persons under twenty-one years of age shall not be required to 
 work for more than four hours and a half without the interposition of half-an-hour for 
 refreshment, and that they shall not work in any one day for more than twelve hours, 
 inclusive of the hour and" a half allowed to them for meals; that no shop shall remain 
 open after eight in the evening on five days in the week, or after ten at ni^ht on Satur- 
 days ; and that every shop assistant shall be entitled to a weekly half-holiday. Several 
 of the leading tradesmen in the west end of London have given their countenance 
 to this movement, and it has received the support of a large number of benevolent and 
 influential people.
 
 14-4 ENGLAND. 
 
 and the geography of the world, as well as the art of keeping plain 
 accounts. How satisfactorily this system works may be judged from 
 the reports of the school inspectors. " The Factory Apt of 1874," 
 writes one of the inspectors in his report to the Education Office for 
 187G, "contains a clause which is directly educational, and is likely 
 to work important results. Hitherto every child might, at the age of 
 thirteen, cease attending school, and commence working full time at 
 the mill, without any question being asked about the state of his 
 education, and, accordingly, thousands of children have passed 
 through their half-time career without rising higher than Standard I. 
 or II., or even without passing any standard." It is further the 
 opinion of many who are entitled in such a matter to be considered 
 experts, that the wits of children working half-time are sharpened, 
 and that they can compete not unsuccessfully with the whole-timers. 
 The reason probably is that the half-timer is compelled to be regular 
 in attendance, and it thus often happens that a cbild who spends not 
 less than thirteen or fourteen hours a week all the year round at 
 school, derives greater benefit than the child who is at school twenty- 
 five hours a week with indifferent regularity. Add to this that the 
 influence of the school teaching continues when the teaching itself is 
 not actually in progress, and that the half-timer is unceasingly exer- 
 cising his receptive powers when he is at work in the factory. 
 
 Although the Factory Acts have from the first contained educational 
 clauses, they have never primarily had an educational purpose. It 
 was their object to prevent the child from working before a certain 
 age, and, as the best of all proofs that he was not at work was the 
 fact that he was at school, school attendances were required by law. 
 Thus, from one point of view, the provisions of the Education Acts of 
 1870 and of 1876 may be regarded as supplementing the educational 
 clauses of the Factory Acts. The School Boards can do anything not 
 contrary to the Factory Acts ; they may exceed the letter of those 
 laws, but they cannot violate their spirit ; they may go beyond them, 
 but they must not fall short of them. Where the Factory Act pre- 
 scribes a certain standard, the School Board may raise it, but cannot 
 reduce it. Thus, the School Boards can override the labour laws, but 
 only on condition that their edicts go farther in the direction in which 
 the labour laws lead. Considerable discretion in industrial matters is 
 thus conferred on the School Boards ; they frequently refuse to grant 
 certificates to half-timers unless they are satisfied that the circum- 
 stances of the parents are such as to render the labour of the children 
 necessary. 
 
 It is clear, however, that on the educational side of the Factory 
 Acts certain reforms are still wanted. In the first place, it is desirable 
 that permission to begin to work at the age of ten should depend on 
 a certain educational standard having been reached. This condition
 
 THE WORKING CLASSES. 145 
 
 is imposed by some School Boards, but it is very far from being 
 universal. Secondly, except in cases in which factories and schools 
 are far apart, only one form of half-time attendance should be allowed 
 to count — namely, attendance on the morning or afternoon of every 
 day. The obvious disadvantage of the alternate, or whole-day system, 
 is that when they are not at school children are employed for a 
 length of time entirely unsuited to their strength, and for which no 
 compensation is forthcoming in the comparative physical rest of an 
 entire day's schooling. 
 
 There is a third and more serious abuse of which the possibility 
 will always remain until some considerable alteration has been made 
 in the existing law. In many parts of England, especially the 
 midland counties, agricultural and manufacturing districts mutually 
 overlap. Parents living in such neighbourhoods as these are not 
 slow to take advantage of the difference between the educational 
 legislation of manufacturing and of agricultural England. So long as 
 this difference is not removed there will be a natural temptation to 
 the parents to send their children at the age of ten years to work on 
 farms and in the fields, having, of course, satisfied the modest require- 
 ments of the educational standard fixed in the case of rural labour. 
 At the end of three or four years the child will be of an age which 
 qualifies him to obtain the higher wages paid in manufacturing 
 labour. But since his school days have come prematurely to an end 
 he will not have reached the educational standard prescribed by the 
 Factory Acts. By bringing a child under the jurisdiction of the 
 Agricultural Children Act in the first instance, and of the Factory 
 Acts in the second, the parents have satisfied the letter of both laws, 
 while defeating the general purpose of each. It is difficult to see 
 how this is to be obviated, unless complete uniformity between the 
 educational standards in town and country is established. 
 
 The truck system is another of the abuses which legislation has aimed 
 at removing, and for whose removal the legislative machinery exists, 
 but which, in consequence of the difficulty of putting that machinery 
 in motion, lingers on in some few districts. It may be justly urged 
 that the expense of prosecution under the Truck Act should not be 
 borne by the workman, who would be sure to lose his employment, 
 while the penalties for breaches of the statute by the masters are too 
 small to counterbalance the influence of considerable profits. Truck 
 is a mischief of long standing, and is in its origin contemporary with 
 the growth of the staple manufactures of the country. Some notion 
 may be formed of the lucrativeness of the system to those who are, 
 or were, its promoters from a single typical example. At the branch 
 establishment of a company in Wales, of the entire wages earned, 
 amounting to about £200,000, £130,000 was paid before pay-day in 
 advances, of which sum £62,000 was taken to the shops ; while the
 
 146 ENGLAND. 
 
 total purchases of the shops was £70,000 for the year, and the sales 
 £84,000, leaving a gross profit of £14,000. 
 
 It would be, perhaps, safer to say that truck is steadily dying, than 
 that it is actually dead. There are collieries of the midland districts 
 in which what is practically truck, though the name is not used, is 
 far from unknown. When stoppages of wages are made for com- 
 pulsory club and school payments, which are in the hands of the 
 proprietors, and out of which the proprietors sometimes make a profit; 
 when deductions are made from wages if children fail to attend 
 church or chapel schools on Sunday, it is impossible to speak of truck 
 as entirely non-existent. On the other hand, it is probable that 
 flagrant violations of the Truck Act are restricted chiefly to the nail 
 trade. The petty nail masters, in many instances, keep provision and 
 other shops, at which their hands are expected to deal ; the wives get 
 into debt at these establishments, and the debt is liquidated by the 
 stoppage of a certain portion of the weekly wages. Instances, more- 
 over, could be mentioned in which employers still give orders on these 
 shops in lieu of wages. In an area of some fifteen or twenty miles 
 round Dudley in Staffordshire, about 25,000 hands are employed, and 
 speaking roughly, about 14,000 are trucked. The average wages for 
 a nailer making common nails, working fourteen hours a day, would 
 be 9s. to 10s. a week, and where there is a wife and children to help 
 him, 12s. a week may be earned. These people live in hovels, and 
 are perpetually in distress. They complain to this day that they have 
 to pay 5d. for soap which could be got elsewhere for 3d., and lOd. for 
 bacon which, of better quality, elsewhere costs 7d. Unable to obtain 
 cash, these men re-sell at a loss articles purchased at the " fogger's " 
 shop. They have been known to pay rent by re-selling flour to their 
 landlord. The state of things disclosed by truck in the watch-making 
 trade is not less lamentable. One of those employed in this industry 
 remarks, " If men did not take watches from their employer tbey 
 would get no work. He himself had been in the habit of taking 
 £5 watcbes and getting £2 10s. for them." Another workman says, 
 
 " I have had three watches from . He charged me £6 10s. for 
 
 the first — a gold Geneva watch. I kept it for some time, and then I 
 pledged it for £1 10s., and I sold the pawnticket for 10s." 
 
 In spite of the beneficial effects of factory legislation and the vigilant 
 system of factory inspection, there are other specific abuses which have 
 yet to be rooted out. Until quite recently, those attendant on the 
 manufacture of white-lead were peculiarly serious and conspicuous. It 
 is true tbat many precautions had been from time to time voluntarily 
 adopted by the manufacturers for the purpose of reducing the risk of 
 contracting the well-known malady incidental to the process by the 
 workpeople in their employment, and by this means its frequency and 
 prevalence had been much diminished. But here as elsewhere, incal-
 
 THE WORKING CLASSES. 147 
 
 culable mischief was caused by the absence of any definite and uni- 
 versally enforced rules. It was practically left entirely to the discretion 
 of the masters whether tbe sanitary condition of their establishments 
 should be good or bad. Under the Factory and Workshop Amendment 
 Act of 1883, however, a new order of things has been introduced into 
 this dangerous industry, and it is now unlawful to prosecute it unless 
 a certificate has been first obtained from an inspector of factories to 
 the purport that the requirements of the statute have been complied 
 with. By these it is rendered imperative that the stacks and stoves 
 in every white-lead factory shall be efficiently ventilated. Sufficient 
 means for frequently washing the hands and feet must be afforded to 
 all the persons employed, and for the women baths must also be pro- 
 vided, with hot and cold water, soap, brushes, and towels. A proper 
 room, away from that part of the factory where any work is carried 
 on, must be set aside for the meals of the workpeople, and there must 
 be accessible to them a sufficient supply of acidulated drink, as an 
 antidote to the poison they are constantly taking into their systems. 
 Moreover, there must be provided for every person working at any 
 tank an overall suit with a head-covering ; for every person working 
 at any white-bed a respirator or covering for the mouth and nostrils, 
 and a head-covering ; and for every person working at any dry stove 
 or rollers an overall suit with a head-covering, and a respirator or 
 covering for the mouth and nostrils. It may be hoped, therefore, that 
 for the future the manufacture of white-lead has now been made as 
 safe an occupation as the necessities of the case will allow. Mr. Red- 
 grave, the Chief Inspector of Factories, states in his last report that 
 he has considered it his duty to see the occupiers of all the white-lead 
 works within his jurisdiction, and to consult with them as to the best 
 means of giving effect to the provisions of the Act, and especially as to 
 the nature of the particular rules it may be requisite to lay down for 
 the purpose. He adds that he found them on every occasion anxious 
 to do their utmost to co-operate with him and his assistants, and that 
 by their readiness to adopt the suggestions made to them they amply 
 testified to their anxiety for the preservation of the health of their 
 workpeople.* 1 As the rules by which white-lead works are to be regu- 
 lated have to be submitted to and sanctioned by the Home Office, it 
 may be expected that they will be rendered at once uniform and 
 efficient ; and with respect to this dangerous industry, it may be 
 assumed that nothing more remains to be done except to insure the 
 full and systematic observance of the law. But there are other employ- 
 ments which are almost as perilous in their surroundings and disastrous 
 in their consequences as the manufacture of white-lead, and for the duo 
 control of which legislation, although often and vehemently called for, 
 has still to come. Among these the silvering of looking-glasses and 
 * Report of the Chief Inspector of Factories and Workshops, 1884, p. 38. 
 
 l2
 
 14S ENGLAND. 
 
 the cutting of millstones occupy a leading position. " In a shop "where 
 millstones are prepared," Mr. Redgrave says, for example, in his 
 Report for 1875, " are to be seen men in every stage of suffering. The 
 robust young countryman, attracted by good wages, thinking probably 
 that he may be able to weather the storm ; then he who was robust 
 but is now pale, and harassed by cough ; then through the various 
 phases, up to the shrunken hectic invalid, whose frail body is actually 
 wrenched by that cruel cough, and as to whom we are told, ' Oh, he 
 won't last above two months.' " Mr. Redgrave's practical conclusion 
 is that Parliament will not have discharged its full duty until it has 
 insisted upon the universal use in these establishments of gloves, respi- 
 rators, special clothes, caps, and boots. * 
 
 Factory legislation, as we have already seen in the case of shops, if 
 it is to be either just or effective in its working, must be conducted 
 upon elastic principles. It is impossible to apply the same restrictions 
 to all kinds of industries, and it is therefore necessary to accord to the 
 inspectors a considerable amount of discretion in making recommenda- 
 tions which are to carry with them the force of law. Thus, one of the 
 inspectors, Mr. Baker, says that in the case of woollen mills where 
 cloth is manufactured or finished, several of the processes can only be 
 carried on in daylight, and therefore in the winter months, when the 
 days are very short, and all such work is done by piece, he has given 
 permission that the meal-hours of such workers shall not be limited to 
 the general meal-hours of the rest of the workers. He has further 
 permitted the same alteration in a few other works, with satisfaction 
 to both masters and workers. Again, at a meeting of the sub-in- 
 spectors of Birmingham and the surrounding country, it was decided 
 a few years ago, that there were no industries to which the clause 
 of the Factory Extension Act of 1867, making from six to six the 
 compulsory working hours during the summer, and from seven to 
 seven the optional working hours during the winter, should be applied ; 
 but that whether from six to six or seven to seven should be left to 
 the choice of the workers all the year through. The Manchestei 
 sub-inspectors were also of opinion that in the case of the various 
 departments of the clothes manufactories the option should be given 
 of working from eight to eight. These recommendations of the officers 
 of the law have since become part of the law itself. 
 
 Speaking generally of the practical results, and the actual working 
 of factory legislation at the present moment, it may be said that the 
 
 * Mr. Redgrave says that "during the inquiries made in respect to the disease in 
 white-lead factories, another form of ' plumbism ' came under notice," which attracted 
 the attention of Captain Smith, one of the inspectors of factories resident at Shelliehl. 
 It is prevalent chiefly among the file-cutters, but it appears, from a memorandum from 
 Dr. Porter, of the Sheffield Public Hospital and Dispensary, to affect file-hardeners, type- 
 founders, plumbers, and other workmen as well. — Report of the Chief Inspector of 
 Factories and Workshops, 1884, p. 39.
 
 THE WORKING CLASSES. 14i> 
 
 latest reports of the inspectors point conclusively to two things : first, 
 it is plain that the portion of the law which provides for the fencing of 
 machinery, as a protection to the workers, requires to be more pre- 
 cisely worded and more stringently and uniformly enforced. Secondly, 
 the unanimous testimony of the reports of the inspectors of factories 
 proves that the law restricting the hours of employment of women 
 works well, that it has recommended . itself both to employers and 
 employed, and that none of the evils or inconveniences or injustices 
 which were anticipated as its possible results by Mr. Fawcett and 
 other competent critics have actually arisen. " I have found," writes 
 Mr. Redgrave, " the limitations imposed upon the hours of work by 
 women most cordially approved, and the greatest anxiety and positive 
 alarm entertained at the prospect of any relaxation which would expose 
 them to the irregular and uncertain hours of work that prevailed prior 
 to the passing of the Factory Act of 1867." Mr. Redgrave quotes 
 many testimonies of working women in support and illustration of this 
 view. "I decidedly prefer," says one, "to work the hours fixed by 
 the Factory Acts. I never had any illness since the Factory Act came 
 into operation." " I certainly do not wish," says another, " to see 
 the Factory Act repealed, and permission given to women to work 
 later." "The Factory Act," says a third, "is regarded as a great 
 boon by all the women that I know in the trade. I find I can earn 
 more money under the Factory Act than when we had no regulations." 
 " That the Factory Acts have a direct tendency to encourage morality 
 and steady behaviour," says Mr. Redgrave, speaking of the moral effects 
 of these statutes, " I can establish very clearly. More than once letters 
 have reached me from parents of young girls employed in factories, 
 complaining that they did not reach home till long after the legal time 
 for closing. On tracing these complaints to their foundation, the fault 
 was found to rest with the girls, and not with the employers. To 
 parents who exercise a watchful care over their children the factory 
 regulations, it is obvious, must be of great value, as they cannot be 
 deceived by the excuse that such children have been kept late at work. 
 The argument that the tendency of the Factory Acts is to place an 
 artificial restriction on the employment of women, and thus to depre- 
 ciate the market value of their labour, is refuted on every hand by 
 practical experience in the textile manufactories. Here the restrictions 
 upon women's work are the most stringent ; and yet the tendency for 
 a long series of years has been the opposite, the proportion of women 
 employed has steadily increased. The same observation applies to 
 many of the trades and occupations carried on in London. As for 
 the rate of wages paid, there is not an employer in the metropolis 
 who will hesitate to acknowledge that there has been during the last 
 ten or fifteen years a very substantial and important advance in the 
 remuneration given to women for their work."
 
 1 .50 ENGLAND. 
 
 The social and moral condition of the manufacturing classes, and 
 the physical deterioration of factory workers, are facts as lamentable 
 as they are indisputable. Physical deterioi-ation must be attributed 
 quite as much to the vicious habits of parents, to the intemperance 
 which transmits enfeebled constitutions to the next generation, as to 
 the actual employment in factories. Thus, while it is true that " the 
 physical strength and appearance suffer much in factories from con- 
 lined, heated atmospheres, loaded with fine cotton fibres, fine flinty 
 sand, and cutaneous exhalations ; the number of gaslights, each light 
 destroying oxygen equal to one man ; and transitions from the mills 
 and their temperature to their dwellings," on the part of the hands, 
 there is no doubt that injury quite as serious is done by the injudicious 
 dieting of infants, who instead of being fed from the breast of their 
 mothers are nurtured on pap made of bread and water, and a little 
 later on coffee and tea. It is bad enough that, as competent medical 
 authorities tell us, the skin should secrete all the noxious qualities of 
 an Indian climate, but it is even worse to hear that " the offspring are 
 reared with the bottle and drugged by the mother. No doubt factory 
 physique is not good, but it is made worse by factory associations of 
 vice and iniquity." 
 
 The culminating point of social scandal is probably reached in the 
 Black Country. As a consequence of a state of things under which we 
 read of publicans sallying forth to a township not far distant to " court 
 and corrupt the girls of the place," it is not surprising to hear that 
 bastardy is extremely common. The following are a few illustrations 
 of the current abominations of the neighbourhood. Nine people of 
 both sexes and of all ages have only two bedrooms. A man and his 
 wife, with three lodgers — two men and the other a woman within two 
 months of her confinement — have two bedrooms. Working men on 
 leaving the public-house have exchanged wives on the road home ; the 
 bargain has been adhered to, and their neighbours have not been 
 shocked by the circumstance.* These are incidents in the contemporary 
 life of the Black Country which clearly indicate a state of things calling 
 for further legislative interference in such matters as women's and 
 children's labour, overcrowding, and the arrangement of houses. The 
 State has already decided that such matters come within its province, 
 while they obviously belong to a category in which legislative ma- 
 chinery has been found by experience beneficent and effective. Every 
 improvement in the Black Country during the last forty years, we are 
 told by Mr. Baker, " has been either originated or at least fostered and 
 helped forward by the law — e.f/., the repeal of the old Poor Law, the 
 suppression of bull-baiting, of women's work in coal-pits, the partial 
 abolition of the truck system. If under a revised or new law a man 
 finds he cannot screw as much out of his wife's and children's work, 
 * Factory Reports for the half-year ending October 31, 1875, pages 120 et seq.
 
 THE WORKING CLASSES. 151 
 
 he will be compelled to work on Monday and Tuesday instead of going 
 out to amuse himself. Doubtless the wives and mothers among nailers 
 will recover strength from having their hours of labour curtailed, and 
 be able to keep house and nourish their babies. In short, English 
 homes and English families might again become the rule instead of the 
 exception." 
 
 Improvements similar to those accomplished in manufacturing Eng- 
 land have been effected by legislation in mining England. By 
 successive measures of reform which have become law since 1850, it 
 has been provided that each colliery shall have a certified manager, 
 who, with the owner and agent, is responsible for the due observance 
 at the pit of the regulations prescribed by law. Government inspec- 
 tors have been empowered to visit the mines and report upon their 
 condition ; the working hours of boys, and of women and girls, have 
 been restricted ; the employment of women and girls underground has 
 been absolutely prohibited, and, with certain limited exceptions, the 
 double shaft has been made obligatory. The compulsory appointment 
 of a certificated master was a reform of much importance. That offi- 
 cial now passes an examination which, though it varies materially in 
 different districts, is always thoroughly effective. Sometimes the 
 examiners base their decision on the candidate's qualifications as a 
 mining engineer ; sometimes on his general intelligence and education ; 
 in other cases on the extent of his experience in coal-mines. The sys- 
 tem of inspection is an exceedingly important one, though it is not 
 universally, and, indeed, very rarely, carried to the extreme point 
 originally contemplated. Existing legislation, however, has about it 
 an indefiniteness which it is most desirable should be remedied, and 
 the fact that different " readings " of the Act are current in the same 
 districts affords strong evidence of the need of revision. 
 
 Once we have made our acquaintance with the mining population 
 of England, we shall find ourselves amid many contrasts and startling 
 varieties. The conditions under which the pitmen work are far from 
 uniform ; their scale of pay, their condition, tastes, and character 
 differ almost as much as the localities and the circumstances of their 
 labour. The Welsh miner is unlike the Staffordshire pitman, while 
 Derbyshire, Yorkshire, and Lancashire each has its peculiar type of 
 subterranean toiler — the Lancashire miner being for the most part a 
 keen politician, and the Yorkshire miner a keen sportsman. Going 
 northwards, we shall encounter tribes of men equally distinct in 
 Northumberland and Durham ; while, if we were to cross the border, 
 and to make our way into Scotland, we should be in another world 
 of fresh experiences. Generally it may be said that the miners of 
 Northumberland and Durham are the best specimens of their order, 
 the most intelligent, the most enlightened, humane, thrifty, and 
 devout. In Northumberland there will be found a greater purity of
 
 152 ENGLAND. 
 
 stock ; in Durham there is to be seen a larger admixture of foreign 
 blood. The one county is aboriginal and exclusive ; the other, 
 though it adjoins it, is cosmopolitan and comprehensive. From the 
 south, east, and west of England, from Scotland, and from Ireland, 
 and even from the Continent of Europe, the great army of Durham 
 miners is perpetually being reinforced. In Northumberland, on the 
 other hand, there is to be seen no such continuous and voluminous 
 stream of immigrants. Yet, though these facts cannot fail to have 
 made themselves felt in the ways of life and thoughts of the miners in 
 the two counties, there are many resemblances to be observed between 
 them. Both in Durham and Northumberland — as for the matter of 
 that in other counties where mining is carried on — the external 
 appearance of the mining settlements does not greatly differ. Here, 
 as elsewhere, there is the same incrustation of coal-dust upon the 
 stunted vegetation ; the same long, straight, parallel rows of one- 
 storied houses, the dwellings for the most part studiously neat within, 
 and the gardens well and tastefully decorated without, for scrupulous 
 tidiness seems a general characteristic of the miners of England. As 
 a rule, too, the pitmen in all parts keep themselves distinct from the 
 rest of the population, a fact which is partly to be attributed to the 
 distance of many colliery colonies from towns. Even where they 
 are in the immediate suburb of a considerable centre of industry, the 
 miners show little disposition to amalgamate with the rest of the 
 community. 
 
 It is a hard and perilous life, though humanity and science have 
 done not a little to mitigate its severity and diminish its dangers. If 
 the average age of the miner is considerably less than that of the 
 worker in textile factories, it is not so much because he is the victim 
 of diseases as because he is, in a special degree, exposed to accident. 
 On the contrary, although the average life of the miners, which may 
 be generally computed at thirty years, is considerably shorter than 
 that of the factory workers, which may perhaps be estimated at 
 thirty-eight and forty, which, again, is ten years less than that of 
 professional men ; they seem to suffer from few serious maladies. 
 Among the miners asthma, bronchitis, and other affections of the 
 lungs do not prevail to anything like the same extent as among the 
 factory workers. If their labour itself is exhausting, it must be 
 remembered that not only is it not continuous throughout the week 
 — never engaging more than eleven days out of fourteen, frequently 
 not more than eight, and in bad times not more than six — but also 
 that their domestic life is marked by much healthiness and comfort. 
 In the large collieries of Durham and Northumberland, the owners 
 provide cottages for the men in addition to their wages, to each of 
 which a little garden is attached, wherein is usually a pigstye. The 
 pigs are the objects of friendly rivalry and competition among their
 
 THE WOBKING CLASSES. 153 
 
 proprietors, who sometimes parade them on holidays and in leisure 
 hours down the streets of the little colony. Again, among the miners 
 it is a point of honour as well as of duty for the wife — who very 
 seldom, unless in the neighbourhood of big towns, goes out to work 
 — to look after the house and to keep it wholesome and comfortable. 
 The colliery districts, too, are well supplied with medical men, while 
 in many cases the infantile diseases which were caused by want of 
 milk have been extirpated by the introduction of dairies established 
 by the men themselves, and in a few instances kept by the foreman 
 or manager of the mine. 
 
 It is no small thing, too, that these strenuous workers should be 
 as abundantly supplied as they are with the means of recreation and 
 amusement. It is a mistake to suppose that the miner, the whole of 
 whose affections are centred in his dog, and who feasts on cham- 
 pagne and spring chicken while his wife and children starve, is a 
 representative specimen of his order. As a matter of fact, the 
 Durham or Northumberland pitman is frequently a teetotaler, and 
 has no more favourite place of occupation for his leisure hours than 
 the reading-room or the mechanics' institute, which is sure to be 
 found in every mining district. The mining youth are also given to 
 athletic games, and are often good cricketers and quoit players. They 
 organise brass bands successfully, and often exhibit considerable taste 
 and skill in music. Again, the humanising influences of religion, 
 science, and literature have been signally displayed among the mining 
 population. Bishops and clergy of the Established Church have 
 borne testimony to the elevating and purifying effect of the religious 
 tenets of that Primitive Methodism which is tbe spiritual faith of 
 hundreds of the colliers of Northumberland and Durbaru. As for 
 secular culture, they are earnest politicians and keen newspaper- 
 readers. Here one of the advantages of unionism may be seen. While 
 part of the action of the unions has been shown in the opportunities 
 they have afforded their members in times of pressure, when work has 
 been scarce, to migrate to neighbourhoods where it was more plentiful, 
 so their influence has not been less signally or satisfactorily displayed 
 in tbe inducements which they have offered to their members to closely 
 watch the events of the day, and to deduce from them sound political 
 conclusions. All the natural sciences are more or less popular with 
 the miners, geology especially being a favourite. 
 
 The working life of the miner may be said to begin when he is twelve 
 years of age. Before the Mines Regulation Act came into force the 
 age was often ten, and ten still is the number of hours a d;iy which he 
 is on duty, beginning work at six in the morning and leaving off at 
 four in the afternoon. The phases of industry to which the miner's 
 existence is at successive stages devoted are pretty nearly as follows : 
 He serves his apprenticeship for the first three years, being charged
 
 1 54 ENGLAND. 
 
 dining this time with the duty of driving the horses which draw away 
 the loads of coal from beneath the axes of the men who detach it in 
 huge blocks. This is technically described as "putting." Really 
 exhausting work is seldom begun until the physical system is fairly 
 set, and at the age of eighteen or twenty the lad who has hitherto 
 been fulfilling comparatively light duties as "putter" will be pro- 
 moted to the more arduous calling of a "hewer." Hewing is the 
 normal business of the full-grown miner, and he continues at it in the 
 ordinary course of things until he has arrived at or has exceeded the 
 limit of middle age. Sometimes he continues a " hewer " until he is 
 upwards of threescore years and ten, but it is exceedingly seldom that 
 his system stands the prolongation of the strain beyond the age of fifty 
 or sixty. Even when he is superannuated there is still work for him 
 to do on the establishment of the mine ; thus he may be employed as 
 a shifter when he is too old to do active work as a hewer, and in this 
 capacity he will have to clear the ground for the hewers after the 
 regular day's toil is over. It is difficult to speak comprehensively 
 concerning the wages of the miner, which vary not only according to 
 localities, but according to the state of trade, which is itself a very 
 fluctuating quantity. The "putters," who are paid by the score, earn 
 from 2s. 6d. to 3s. 6d. a day; the "hewers," who are paid by the 
 piece, may make as much as 5s. a day ; the " shifters " are seldom 
 remunerated at a higher rate than the " putters." It is to be noticed, 
 however, that in those cases in which, as in Northumberland, the daily 
 wages are higher, it very often happens that the total annually made is 
 lower, because the work is less continuous. 
 
 Something has already been said of the general attitude of the 
 English working man towards his employer. Though daily experience 
 testifies to a great and growing improvement in the relations between 
 capital and labour, we are still a long way from the ideal which the 
 admirable resignation of the operatives of Lancashire during the cotton 
 Imiiine consequent upon the American civil war led some persons pre- 
 cipitately to expect. The truth is, that the Lancashire working classes, 
 during Ibis great struggle, curbed their discontent, because their political 
 instructors told them to recognise the issue between two grand prin- 
 ciples in the war — liberty and slavery. The want and suffering which 
 they experienced, they were taught to believe, were the inseparable 
 incidents of a contest which could only end in the triumphant asser- 
 tion of the rights of human nature and the sanctity of human freedom. 
 On the other hand, whenever the attitude of the working classes, under 
 pressure of sore distress, has been less tranquil it is illogical and unjust 
 to recognise the motive or source of trouble in unionism, and to look 
 lnul; regretfully to the period when the laws prohibiting combination 
 were in force. Rigid restrictions were imposed upon industrial com- 
 bination until within tho last half century, but with results that can
 
 THE WORKING CLASSES. . 155 
 
 scarcely be considered advantageous to the relations of employer and 
 employed. In 1811, the town and county of Nottingham were ter- 
 rorised by gangs of operatives in the hosiery trade on strike, who went 
 about destroying frames at the rate of two hundred a week. They 
 made their attacks in parties of from six to fifty, armed with swords, 
 pistols, sledge-hammers, and axes. On one occasion they held the 
 town against the regular soldiers, who were called in to quell the dis- 
 turbance, and peace was barely maintained by the concentration of a 
 military force of about 800 horse and 1,000 foot around Nottingham. 
 Still the destruction of frames increased. At the Nottingham March 
 Assizes, 1812, four frame-breakers were sentenced to fourteen, and 
 three to seven years' transportation. In the same month an Act was 
 passed punishing with death any person deliberately breaking a frame, 
 a measure memorable, if on no other account, for the protest which it 
 elicited from Lord Byron. " Whilst," he said, speaking in tbe House 
 of Lords, " these outrages must be admitted to exist to an alarming 
 extent, it cannot be denied that they have arisen from circumstances 
 of the most unparalleled distress. The perseverance of these miserable 
 men in their proceedings tends to prove that nothing but absolute want 
 could have driven a large and once honest and industrious body of the 
 people into the commission of excesses so hazardous to themselves, 
 their families, and the community." Meanwhile the outrages con- 
 tinued. In October, 1814, the house of a man who had caused the 
 apprehension of a " Luddite " was attacked, and an encounter ensued 
 in which one of the assailants was shot. Altogether about 1,000 
 stocking frames and 80 lace machines were destroyed during this period 
 of popular frenzy. Disturbances almost as serious were repeated more 
 than twenty years later, with the additional accompaniment of incen- 
 diarism upon a formidable scale. There are many persons living who 
 can well recollect the ominous spectacle, visible from Nottingham 
 Castle, of nineteen ricks simultaneously in flames ; and the great 
 feature in all this is that it did not provoke any strong outburst of 
 public indignation, as trade outrages of all kinds have done of late 
 years. 
 
 In the present day, if ten men are on strike in any manufacturing 
 town in the United Kingdom, the circumstance is immediately re- 
 ported, probably commented upon, in the newspapers, and gloomy 
 prognostications are made of an impending war between capital and 
 labour, and its possible results. It is not to be claimed on behalf of 
 trade unions that they have wrung from the working classes a rigid 
 determination to recognise in their demands and in their acts the 
 undeviating operation of inexorable economic laws, or that they have 
 exorcised completely the evil spirit of violence and outrage. But in 
 recent times there have only been two notable instances of unionist 
 scandals — the first, that of the Broadhead riot at Sheffield in 1867 ;
 
 156 ENGLAND. 
 
 the second, that which culminated in the firing of Colonel Jackson's 
 house in Lancashire eleven years later. In both cases it is no 
 exaggeration to say that these crimes were bitterly regretted and 
 unequivocally condemned by the majority of the class which had to 
 bear the burden of their reproach. 
 
 To what is the undoubted improvement in feeling between em- 
 ployers and employed in England to be attributed ? It may be 
 inferred from the few but essentially typical data given above, that 
 whatever may be the charges of conspiracy and violence brought 
 against unionists and unionism, they are entirely eclipsed by the out- 
 breaks of popular frenzy in those days in which no such organisations 
 as trade unions existed. The fact is, that though the trade union is 
 comparatively speaking an institution of modern growth, it is in every 
 way an improvement upon its predecessor, the secret society. Com- 
 bination is an instinct which, as the law cannot eradicate it, it is 
 sound policy on the part of the law to recognise. It exists in pro- 
 fessions as well as in trades and industries ; in the learned professions 
 as well as in the unlearned; in the medical, legal, and clerical 
 professions, as well as in the commercial. The trade union is, in 
 fact, only an application of that principle of association which is part 
 of human nature. This the Duke of Argyll has pointed out with 
 considerable force in his chapter on association in the " Reign of 
 Law." Combination has its origin in the inborn impulse of self- 
 defence. Take the case of Preston, or Blackburn, or any other 
 centre of the cotton industry. All the employes are engaged in much 
 the same kind of labour, fine spinning or coarse spinning, as the 
 case may be — for it is a notable proof of the length to which the 
 principle of the division of labour has been carried, that not merely is 
 the same kind of labour concentrated in given districts, but the same 
 qualities of work is produced in them. The hands in one mill are 
 threatened with a reduction of wages by an employer, who thinks he 
 sees his way to a substantial increase in his profits. Why, is the 
 natural question, should they work for less than their neighbours ? 
 AVhen this state of feeling is once arrived at, and this question asked, 
 you have potential trade unionism. One mill communicates with 
 another, and the next thing is its actual existence. There is no 
 resisting the contagious sense of united interest which is generated. 
 Employers may like it or dislike it. It is the inevitable response on 
 the part of the labourer to a sentiment which is quite as natural and 
 quite as sure in some way or other to assert itself on the part of the 
 capitalist. Society being subdivided as it now is, unionism and the 
 spirit of unionism are its certain and necessary outcome.* 
 
 * It is somewhat remarkable that the numerical strength of trade unionism among 
 ii- lias never been accurately ascertained, and hence that all the estimates which have 
 been made of it have been confessedly founded on inference and even on mere guess-
 
 TIIE WORKING CLASSES. 157 
 
 How is this resullant force to be met ? How is the crash of the 
 collision between the two antagonistic interests to be removed ? 
 Just as in human nature the instinct of sympathy is the compensating 
 principle to the instinct of selfishness, so in the system of trade and 
 industry do arbitration and conciliation act as the counterpoise of 
 unionism. In arbitration, as it is perpetually exercised in industrial 
 England, there may be found a practical fulfilment of the " Conseil 
 des Prud'hommes." Twenty years ago the idea was first suggested 
 by Mr. Mundella, a little later was actively espoused by Sir Rupert 
 Kettle and Mr. David Dale, and after twenty years of trial it may be 
 pronounced a fact. It was, indeed, at first equally opposed by 
 masters and men. Mutual jealousies and resentments threatened 
 permanently to bar the way to anything like friendly settlement and 
 peaceful compromises, nor was it till after the report of the Trade 
 
 work. As usual in such cases, the general tendency has been towards exaggeration, and 
 it can scarcely be doubted that the lowest figures at which it was customary until quite 
 recently to place it were more or less considerably in advance of the facts. A quarter of 
 a century ago it was commonly supposed that there were not fewer than between six and 
 seven hundred thousand trade unionists in the three kingdoms, and eight or ten years ago 
 the number was pretty confidently asserted, on what appeared to be trustworthy authority, 
 to be not less than from fifteen to sixteen hundred thousand. It cannot be questioned, 
 however, that these computations were exceedingly wide of the mark, and attributed to 
 the movement far more formidable dimensions than any to which it has yet attained or 
 is likely to attain for some time to come. According to the latest report of the Chief 
 Registrar of Friendly Societies, that for 1SS2, 194 unions, with 216,408 members, were 
 then registered at the central office of his department. But this of course conveys only a 
 very inadequate notion of the actual proportions of trade unionism in this country. At 
 the sixteenth Trade Unions Congress, held at Nottingham in the autumn of 1883, 173 
 delegates attended, representing 135 societies, with an aggregate membership of 561,091 
 persons. Mr. Trant, in his recent work on Trade Unionism, takes the statisticsof the Notting- 
 ham Congress as the basis for a general calculation, and expresses his conviction that " the 
 number of trade unionists at the present time does not exceed eight hundred thousand " 
 He adds, however, that it is " rapidly increasing," and states in illustration that " the 
 Amalgamated Society of Engineers increased in 1883 alone by 2,030 members, the 
 Amalgamated Carpenters by 2,274 in the last four years, the United Society of Boiler- 
 makers and Iron Shipbuilders by 12,558 in the last four years. Last year the Amalga- 
 mated Society of Railway Servants added no less than 1,756 names to its list of members, 
 and other societies have increased in like proportion. The five largest societies have 
 doubled the number of their members in sixteen years." But since, as Mr. Trant 
 observes, there are upwards of six millions of working men in the aggregate, there 
 is " ample room for further development." At the Nottingham Congress, by the bye, 
 three female delegates were present, representing three women's unions. Of these 
 organisations nineteen have been already established under the patronage of the 
 " Women's Protective and Provident League," of which ten are in London and nine in 
 the provinces. "The principal societies," Mr. Trant says, " are among the bookbinders, 
 the upholsterers, the shirt and collar makers, the tailoresses, and the dressmakers, 
 milliners, and mantle-makers. In these unions there are women of all ages, from six- 
 teen to seventy, married as well as single, and all the associations are steadily, though 
 not very vapidly, adding to their several reserve funds, and are thus gaining in stability 
 ind in efficiency for dealing with some of the evils of overwork and under payment." 
 But of the three millions of women who are earning wages in England and Wales, only 
 a few hundreds, Mr. Trant states, are as yet in union. - Trade Unions, their Origin ana 
 Objects, Influence and Efficacy. By William Trant. London : 1884, p. 107 and pp. 115 
 —117.
 
 158 ENGLAND. 
 
 Union Commission that the experiment made any very marked degree 
 of progress. Since then the new idea that trade disputes can be 
 settled, without resort to strikes, by mediation and negotiation, has 
 strongly possessed the working men of England, till now it may fairly 
 be said that a strike, instead of being the first expedient for obtaining 
 industrial rights, is regarded as the last. It is to be remarked that 
 it is of the essence of this scheme that conciliation and arbitration 
 should go hand in hand, that the conference between the represen- 
 tatives of the two interests should not be deferred until the struggle 
 has actually begun, but that periodical meetings, whenever occasion 
 may seem to render them desirable, should be held between associated 
 workmen and associated employers. The most intelligent of the 
 unionists perceive that many of their laws have been thoroughly bad, 
 unjust, and therefore impolitic, both in their results to labour and 
 their political bearing. The wisest of the unionist teachers, on the 
 platform and in the press, do not fail boldly to point out where the 
 defects of such laws lie, and what must be their consequences. Thus 
 the regulations and conditions of unionism have been gradually 
 brought into something more like accord with economic laws, and 
 the tendency has been established to regard the natural relations 
 between employed and employer, not as a state of suppressed war 
 ultimately to be decided on the starving-out principle, in which full 
 freedom to fight to the bitter end was the privilege and the right of 
 either combatant, but as a condition in which there is much real 
 identity of interest, while apparent differences can be adjusted without 
 any abrupt declaration of hostilities. 
 
 The progressive development of this idea can be traced geographi- 
 cally. It asserted itself successively at the three great centres of the 
 iron trade : first, among the Cleveland, or the northern iron-workers ; 
 secondly, among the Staffordshire iron-workers ; thirdly, among the 
 iron-workers of South Yorkshire. In the case of the northern iron- 
 workers its results have been visible upon a very conspicuous scale. 
 Actively adopted by these exceedingly intelligent operatives about 
 fourteen years ago, it has stood the test of the two extremes of un- 
 common commercial prosperity and depression. Since its adoption it 
 is to be noticed that there has been no repetition of the desolating 
 strikes, such as in 1805 spread misery and havoc throughout the dis- 
 trict for the space of eleven months. In every serious strike of recent 
 years the mep have either asked for arbitration, or a resolution in 
 favour of arbitration has never been met by a counter-resolution. 
 Tbus in the South Wales strike of 1873 the men implored arbitration, 
 and the fact is the more significant seeing that it was the employers 
 who ultimately lost the battle. Again, in the masons' strike of 1877 
 there was the same undoubted desire for arbitration ; while it was 
 believed by the best authorities that the Lancashire cotton strikes of
 
 THE W0KKING CLASSES. 159 
 
 1878 could have been entirely prevented if the proper maomnery for 
 arbitration had existed ; for if the machinery is to be effective in time 
 of trial, it must be because it has been carefully prepared beforehand. 
 
 As regards the masons' strike of 1877 in London, one of its least 
 agreeable features was the violence offered by the English workmen to 
 the foreign workmen whom the masters had imported from the Con- 
 tinent. Hence the inference was drawn that the English workman 
 was animated by a fierce desire not to tolerate the presence of an alien 
 rival upon any consideration, and that the demand was for the pro- 
 tection of native industry at any cost. Yet examples of British and 
 foreign working men labouring in perfect peace and harmony side by 
 side are not rare, and it may be doubted whether the outrageous 
 manner in which the London masons resented the presence of the 
 continental recruits was inspired by any deeper feeling than irritation 
 at the beginning of a new order, or genuinely British prejudice against 
 the stranger. The English working man is in these matters much as 
 his social superior. He does not like foreigners in the mass, and he 
 is particularly jealous of the introduction of any individual foreigner. 
 But after a time he accepts the inevitable. The multiplied opportuni- 
 ties of higher and technical education which he enjoys render him the 
 more disposed to do this. The lectures on various subjects connected 
 with art and industry given in our great towns — many of them local 
 centres of university teaching — the various other agencies of secondary 
 education, the study not only of books but of the contents of ait 
 museums, have largely extended the industrial horizon of the English 
 working man, have been as the key which has unlocked to him a new 
 world, and are gradually impressing upon him the possibility ami 
 expediency of increasing the value of the labour of his hands by the 
 application to it of the finish and graces of art, and of thus utilising 
 art as a new source of industrial wealth. 
 
 Of the political questions which periodically agitate the working 
 classes, there are three that may here be mentioned. The working 
 man likes the idea of a big England rather than a small, for he sees in 
 it the assertion of the dignity and power of his countiy on a scale 
 worthy of its historical antecedents, and he sees in it also a long vista 
 of increased opportunities for his order. It is an idea which gratifies 
 his pride as a patriot, and commends itself to his interests as a 
 labourer. But there is something that is of more immediate concern 
 to him than a big England. Trade and labour — such is the burden of 
 his complaint — are too generally ignored by the whole body of Par- 
 liament. Why, he sometimes asks, does not the Government create 
 a Ministry of Commerce — a portfolio whose holder shall be specially 
 charged with the transaction and the superintendence of whatever 
 affects the well-being of trade, commerce, capital, and labour ? Again, 
 he inquires, how long will labour continue to be handicapped by the
 
 1GU ENGLAND. 
 
 unequal burdens which the repudiation of free-trade by America, by 
 the great nations of continental Europe, by the chief of our own 
 colonies, imposes ? If it is asked how far the working classes sincerely 
 look to Parliament to remedy these and other grievances, the answer 
 is not quite easy to give. There is undoubtedly a disposition on the 
 part of working men of many shades and varieties of political thought 
 to promote the movement for the direct representation of the interests 
 of labour in the House of Commons. But it cannot be said that 
 working men are fundamentally agi'eed as to the probable efficacy of 
 this scheme. On the contrary, working men do not as a rule seem to 
 believe in working-men members of Parliament. They are also apt 
 to be somewhat jealous of leaders who belong to their own number. 
 If their man gets into Parliament they are troubled with a misgiving 
 that he will in some undefined way or other be " got at ; " that he 
 will not be permitted to vote " straight ; " that social pressure will be 
 brought to bear upon him; that he may prove a renegade to the good 
 cause. Yet the dream still vaguely flits before the vision of our 
 English workmen of sending to Parliament a number of repre- 
 sentatives who shall form a Labour party at Westminster, just as there 
 is already a Home Rule party. 
 
 When one comes to the personality of the English working man in 
 towns, one is met not only by the fact which has been already noticed 
 — the multitude of typical varieties — but by the noticeable difference 
 between the working man as he exists in London and in the provinces. 
 One great distinction is that, whereas in the majorily of instances the 
 provincial working man leader is more or less prominently identified 
 with some form of religion, the leaders of the London working men 
 are more often professed secularists. Taking the industrial classes of 
 England as a whole, there is no reason to think that the influence of 
 religion is declining among them. Whatever may be their own pro- 
 fessions, they have no notion of educating their children in infidelity, 
 and when mortal sickness comes, they will ask the ministration of 
 some church or other for themselves. Mr. Bradlaugh and other " free 
 thought " lecturers seldom command in the provinces anything like 
 the audiences they secure in London. On the other hand, whereas a 
 lecture on political economy, or some other subject of commercial or 
 industrial interest, would be listened to by two or three thousand eager 
 hearers in Blackburn or Preston, Sheffield or Manchester, it would be 
 addressed to little better than an array of empty benches in London. 
 Generally it may be said that in the matter of religion, as in so many 
 others, the working classes reflect the condition of their superiors. If 
 there is more active aggressive disbelief in England at the present time 
 than formerly, there is also more active and genuine religion. It is the 
 profession of belief which is quite as characteristic of tbis age as the 
 spread of disbelief. Sides are actively taken and the battle of the
 
 THE WORKING CLASSES. ; 161 
 
 creeds is fought where formerly the belligerents were lulled in an 
 indolent neutrality. 
 
 The London working man possesses many of the best points of his 
 order, while at the same time he has not a few of their failings. He 
 is proud of living in the metropolis of the kingdom. He is sensible of 
 a geographical superiority over his provincial brethren. He is very 
 often ludicrously self-conscious and grotesquely vain. He is, at the 
 same time, exceedingly plausible, and not less shallow — quick to per- 
 ceive those features in any subject of the day which are calculated to 
 affect him most, and in answering questions, skilful in making his 
 replies subservient to the interest of his own case, and very careful to 
 conceal all which he considers can in any way tell against that case. 
 In matters relative to organisation he is, as we have already seen, at 
 a great disadvantage as compared with his provincial brother. The 
 immense number of industries collected together in London, the corpo- 
 rate feeling of the men engaged in which is exceedingly strong, go far 
 to neutralise each other. In addition to the diversity of employments, 
 a further force of -segregation is due to the distance at which those 
 engaged in them live from the scene of tbeir labour, and above all to 
 the competing attraction of the legion of popular amusements. 
 
 Another cardinal distinction between the working man in London 
 and the working man in the provinces is that in the former he is 
 very frequently a lodger, and in the latter, with very few exceptions, a 
 householder. At Sheffield, or Birmingham, or in any of the manu- 
 facturing towns or mining districts, it would be considered scarcely 
 creditable to the workman, unless he was a bachelor, if he did not 
 inhabit a house of his own. Built of red brick or grey stone, tbese 
 houses are for the most part kept astonishingly neat and clean, and 
 frequently the lodging of the London workman is as well ordered as 
 the home of his provincial brother. In some of the London suburbs 
 — such as Chelsea or Kensington — it is no uncommon thiDg to call 
 upon the mason or joiner who is making thirty shillings a week, and 
 to find him settled in the basement of a roomy house, let out in 
 lodgings, the window of his sitting-room commanding a view of a 
 fernery improvised in the area, which is made picturesque with flowers 
 and evergreens. But even thus the domestic sentiment bas but slight 
 influence among the working classes of London, in comparison with 
 that which it has in the country. Music-halls and other entertain- 
 ments are as popular among the working men of London as they are 
 the reverse with the better stamp of working men out of it, and these 
 distractions, added to the circumstance that their homes are often 
 very widely separated from one another, render the concentration of 
 the working classes of London, upon any given occasion and for any 
 given purpose, exceedingly difficult. To post on the hoardings of 
 London enough bills to reach the bulk of the working population 
 
 H
 
 102 ENGLAND. 
 
 would cost over £100, and the consequence is that the attempt ia 
 very seldom made. Hence one of the reasons why co-operation, 
 which has succeeded so well in the great towns of the north, has 
 never proved successful among the working classes of the capital. 
 Frequent periodical meetings, during its earlier days, and continued 
 concentration of interest afterwards, are necessary for the success 
 of such an enterprise. These are just what cannot be had in 
 London, where the complaint is that the working classes cannot be 
 got to act together and keep together. On the other hand, there is 
 perhaps more sociality and good fellowship among the working classes 
 in London than in the country, though the institutions of the Sunday 
 dinner and Sunday tea are common both to the capital and the pro- 
 vinces. The first is a function of some importance. The second is a 
 meal less ceremonious, but equally important in its way, since it is 
 found by experience to furnish the chosen opportunity of the matri- 
 monial diplomatist.
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 the working classes [continued). 
 
 General View of Changes and Improvements in the Condition of the Agricultural 
 Labourer — Type of the English Feasant — His Career traced from Cradle to Grave 
 — His Daily Life — Different Kinds of Farm Labourers — Meals and Food of the 
 Class — Various Specimens of Peasant Population in English Villages— Changes 
 which have come over Village Life — The Co-operative Store — The Dawn of Know- 
 ledge — How the English Peasantry are Domiciled — Scandals removed and Evils 
 remaining — Allotments : their Uses and Danger — Different Modes of Hire and 
 Manners of Rural Population — Hiring of Families — Labour of Women — General 
 System and Progress of Agriculture in England — Mutual Relation of Tenant Farmers 
 and Landlords — Property nf Tenant Farmers — Wages of Agricultural Class — Im- 
 provement and Fluctuations — General Position and Prosperity of the Rural Working 
 Population. 
 
 The combined influences of science and commerce have scarcely 
 more transformed the surface of the earth than modern rural improve- 
 ments, whether they have had their origin in legislative action or in a 
 growing sense of the responsibilities of ownership, have changed the 
 moral and physical aspects of the country villages of England. That 
 neat new building, with the courtyard round it, and a compact as well 
 as picturesque dwelling-house in a carefully cultivated garden hard 
 by, is the new village school. Many thousands of these structures 
 dot the length and breadth of rural England. Well ventilated and 
 well equipped with school furniture, maps, and educational apparatus 
 generally, they answer other purposes than that of being places for 
 the instruction of boys and girls during the day. It is as likely as 
 not that night classes are held in them throughout the winter months 
 for the benefit of unlettered adults. The secular village school on 
 week-days is probably the religious school on Sundays. Lectures, 
 penny readings, and concerts will also be given within the same 
 building. The schoolroom is often the assembly-room of the district, 
 as well as the symbol and the centre of its intellectual enlightenment. 
 Nor is the improving hand of time seen less plainly upon the cottages 
 round about. The peasant's home is gradually ceasing to be the 
 human sty in which for generations he dwelt. The squalid cottages, 
 constructed and inhabited in defiance of every known sanitary prin- 
 ciple, are disappearing, and their places are being taken by neat rows 
 of brick houses, mostly built in sets of two, each being nearly the 
 exact counterpart of the other, with kitchen, pantry, and sitting-room 
 
 m 2
 
 1G4 ENGLAND. 
 
 on the ground floor, and above three well-ventilated bedrooms; a yard 
 behind, and in it a small outhouse for the stowage of fuel. In no part 
 of the country probably does the rent of these cottages exceed three 
 shillings a week. In tbe rural districts of East Anglia it is rarely on 
 large estates more than eighteenpence a week, and never more than 
 two shillings. In addition to a house, and a garden yielding enough 
 vegetable produce for a family, our labourer may perhaps have within 
 an easy distance of his dwelling an allotment of a quarter of an acre, 
 held on a rental, it may be, of half a sovereign a year. Here he 
 grows more vegetables, or maintains a cow or a donkey upon the 
 pasturage. Such allotments frequently adjoin one another, and it is 
 a sight not unknown in some more favoured districts to watch, on 
 Sunday evening, the tenants of these slips of ground walking round 
 their property and inspecting its condition with evident satisfaction 
 and pride. 
 
 The ordinary hours of day labour are ten, though in the haymaking 
 season and harvest-time, when extra pay is given, or the work is put 
 out by the piece, the hours are longer. But in winter eight hours, 
 aud in some cases only seven, represent the daily average of toil. The 
 diet of the cottager and his family consists chiefly of bread, potatoes, 
 bacon, and cheese. He has usually a cup of tea and a piece of bread, 
 with bacon as a relish, before he leaves home in the morning. At his 
 early dinner he has vegetables and pickled meat, and if you enter his 
 cottage about the hour of supper, your nostrils will detect a savoury 
 appetising smell, and your ears will catch the suggestive sound of 
 frying. In many parts of England, notably in the north and in the 
 midlands, there has been a sensible improvement during the last few 
 years in the art of rustic cookery. The wives and daughters of the 
 clergy and resident gentry have done much towards carrying the prin- 
 ciples of scientific cookery into the homes of the poor, by giving 
 friendly lessons and hints, by writing out receipts for them, and 
 practically illustrating their execution on the occasion of their periodical 
 visits. Nor must the beneficent influences of the spread of cheap and 
 instructive publications be forgotten. " Hints on Cookery" are a 
 regular feature in the journals which make their way into the dwell- 
 ings of the rural poor. 
 
 That the reader may easily learn who and what manner of man 
 the English country working nmn is, it may be well personally to 
 introduce him without further delay upon the stage, to accompany 
 him not merely through his ordinary round of daily toil, but also 
 through the successive vicissitudes of his career from infancy to old 
 age. Here, then, let it be supposed, he stands before us, long ere he 
 has arrived at the threshold of his actively working existence — a 
 sturdy little urchin, with face reddened and browned by the combined 
 intluences of wind and sun. The distinctively rural dress which
 
 THE WORKING CLASSES. 165 
 
 children in agricultural districts once used to wear is seldom seen now. 
 The small boy we are looking on is not clad in the rough smock-frock 
 with which we were formerly familiar, but in a suit consisting of a little 
 round jacket and knickerbockers, bought at the market town. His 
 sister, who is at his side, wears a costume which has equally little 
 that is specially Arcadian about it, and is composed of a cheap 
 material made up after the London fashion. The great ambition of 
 this small girl will be, before her schooling days are over, to go into 
 domestic service, and then to find a husband in some gentleman's 
 footman or butler, attaining finally to the dignity of landlady of some 
 country town inn or thriving public-house. For the boy a different 
 future is reserved. At the present moment he is, let us say, eight or 
 nine years of age, and in the old days, before Education Acts were 
 heard of, he would have been already at work as a bird-tender or 
 scarer in the fields. He would have grown up wholly unlettered, but 
 before he was twelve he would have mastered many a valuable 
 lesson from the book of nature ; would have the names of all the 
 horses employed on the farm, and the peculiarities and strength of 
 each, by heart ; would have become an authority on the homes and 
 habits of the birds of the air and the beasts of the field ; would have 
 been able to tell, at a distance that defied the penetrative power of 
 ordinary eyes, the spot on which the hare was couching or the bird 
 had settled. Night-schools and Sunday-schools might have taught 
 him something, but if he grew up to manhood tinctured with the 
 simplest rudiments of reading and writing he was esteemed a paragon, 
 and spoken of as a " rare fine scholard." 
 
 All this is now changed. Our future agricultural labourer is 
 prevented by law from being sent to work at all before he is ten years 
 old, and the tendency of School Boards and Boards of Guardians, who 
 in some rural districts have practically the powers of School Boards, 
 is to impose as a qualifying condition of work a standard not only of 
 age but of attainments. On every day of the week, except Saturday 
 and Sunday, he is, or ought to be, at school from nine in the morning 
 until midday, and from two until half-past four in the afternoon. At 
 Christmas there are two weeks of holidays, and during harvest-time a 
 month or more, in order that the children may assist in the in-gather- 
 ing of the grain. When he commences life as an agricultural labourer, 
 it will probably be not in the capacity of scarer — bird-scaring is now 
 generally done by inanimate scarecrows — but of driver of horses, or 
 ploughboy. In some parts of England he will, during the stage of 
 his apprenticeship, lodge upon the farm where he is employed, receiv- 
 ing perhaps £13 a year in addition to board and lodging. For the 
 most part he will not be resident under the roof of his employer, but 
 will be placed in the cottage of the hind. In the performance of 
 these duties he will continue for some years — not the less fortunate
 
 160 ENGLAND. 
 
 if he does not happen to be promoted out of the ordinary routine of 
 a farm servant's duties. Indeed, the ordinary day-labourer on an 
 English farm, who is expected to put his hand to any work which may 
 present itself, is, by comparison, the best paid, as he is also the most 
 independent, of all agricultural workmen. The shepherd is really 
 never off duty. He is liable to be summoned from his sleep at any 
 hour of the night, and when he is once out he knows not when he may 
 expect to return. The carter, too, is up and about betimes with the 
 first grey of the summer dawn, and long before the stars have disap- 
 peared from the heavens on the winter mornings. Again, the milk- 
 man has to be at his post with undeviating regularity when the day is 
 in its infancy throughout the year. Each of these labourers has pro- 
 bably left home breakfastless, and has been busy for two or three 
 hours before the rank and file of the farmer's staff are astir ; if they 
 have broken their fast it has merely been with a piece of bread, and 
 perhaps a drink of cold tea or of milk-and-water. But the general 
 hands are not necessarily bound to these hardships ; there is nothing 
 in the hour at which their duties begin to prevent them from having 
 had a satisfying meal before they have left home. 
 
 But we are anticipating the development of our typical labourer. 
 He has now reached the age of two or three and twenty. He stands 
 five feet eight inches in his shoes ; he is spare but well knit of 
 figure, healthy in look, and singularly deliberate in manner and 
 mien. The English agricultural labourer, indeed, is never known to 
 be in a hurry. His costume is corduroy or fustian ; probably he 
 wears knee-gaiters ; a cotton handkerchief is tied round his neck ; his 
 head is surmounted by a slouch hat ; and his boots are of immense 
 thickness, studded with heavy nails. Such is his external person, 
 which has sufficiently commended itself to some village maiden to 
 secure for him a wife. Even if he be a little younger than two or 
 three and twenty, the chances are that he is married, and has a home 
 of his own. Nor does his home see much more of him than those of many 
 professional gentlemen. At six he is up, and busied with preparing 
 for himself such breakfast as he can snatch. At half-past six he is off, 
 carrying perhaps in a basket or handkerchief his provisions for the day 
 — a loaf of white bread (the quality of the loaf of the agricultural 
 labourer is remarkably good, and it is a maxim with his wife tbat " the 
 better it is the farther it goes "), a piece of bacon or beef, a little cheese 
 or butter, and a bottle of cold tea. He will either proceed to his work 
 direct — to the stables, or to the business of hedging and ditching, as the 
 ease may be — or will have an interview with the farmer or the farni- 
 bailiff, whose business it is to allot the day's labour to the different mem- 
 bers of the staff, and will work on until nine o'clock. Then comes the 
 first break, and a second breakfast from the contents of his basket. At 
 noon he will devote another spell of rest to the consumption of dinner,
 
 THE WORKING CLASSES. 167 
 
 the materials of which he either finds in the basket already mentioned 
 or receives from home, sent by the hands of his children — one of the 
 urchins already mentioned — for it is seldom that he goes home till 
 work is done. The meal over comes a pipe or a nap, or possibly both, 
 and at half-past one he is busy again. Four hours pass, the business 
 of the day is over, and the agricultural labourer turns homeward, bent 
 on supper, which is " the one real family meal of the day." * 
 
 Before supper, however, he will, we may expect, look round bis 
 garden, and perhaps do a little bit of work, or examine the fattening 
 progress of his pig. Thus engaged, he receives the summons to the 
 supper-table. The children have already taken their places. Possibly 
 he has a daughter home from service as a guest, who will contribute 
 out of her wages to the domestic treasury. Under any circumstances, 
 if times are fairly prosperous and the household is tolerably well 
 managed, the meal will be substantial. There will be mutton and 
 vegetables, or beef — not a prime cut, but still, eatable and nourishing 
 — for the master of the household and the elders, or a mess of bacon 
 and potatoes, or a savoury mixture of chopped meat, sage, and onions, 
 and whatever other vegetables the garden produces. As for the 
 children, they will have pudding, and bread and treacle, or bread and 
 dripping. When this, which is really the late dinner, is disposed of, 
 our agricultural labourer may, if it be summer, and he is not com- 
 pletely fagged out, do a stroke more of work in his garden ; or if he 
 takes an interest in the news of the day, or rather of several days ago, 
 dip into the local journal, or else have the print read aloud to him. If 
 he is less domesticated there is the public-house, a fascinating attrac- 
 tion which hard-toiling humanity cannot always resist. But there is 
 less intoxication and disorderly conduct than formerly, and there is 
 also the frequently successful competition of the village club. The 
 hay and wheat harvest are the great events of the year, and the most 
 profitable seasons of his industry. Then he is up early and out in 
 the fields till late. His children are near him at work too. Money 
 passes into the domestic exchequer, and his financial year comes 
 to an end when the last waggon-load of wheat is conveyed to 
 the threshing-floor. The bills which his social betters liquidate at 
 Christmas he defrays at harvest-tide, if he has received credit from 
 any local tradesman. Thus the year runs its course, and as it is 
 with one year so is it with its successor. His children grow up, are 
 put to school, go out to work if they are boys, marry in their turn, 
 and set up for themselves ; go into service if they are girls, or take 
 employment in the native industries of the town hard by, or with the 
 sewing machine. To bring up his family well is the greatest merit 
 
 * So called by Mr. H. J. Little, of Coldhouse Hall, Wisbech, to whom I am indebted 
 for many facts in the account here given of the agricultural labourer. See " Journal of 
 the Royal Agricultural Society," Vol. xiv., 1878.
 
 1G8 ENGLAND. 
 
 which the English agricultural labourer can claim. Even when this 
 has been done years of work may yet be before him. Nor, as old age 
 grows upon him, will he be helpless. He can still do odd jobs. He 
 is in receipt of an annuity from the benefit society. He is not likely 
 to be neglected by the squire or the parson. " If he can possibly 
 manage it," says Mr. Little, " he now contrives to put a trifle by for 
 the decent performance of the last offices connected with his earthly 
 career ; but if this be impracticable, it does not give him much con- 
 cern that the parish will be called upon to pay a portion of these 
 expenses. His wages have not been excessive, and if his old 
 employers have once more to put their hands in their pockets on his 
 account, it is only a just fulfilment of his final dues. So, not without 
 a touch of sardonic philosophy, he passes away." 
 
 Independently of his comparative indifference to much that is to 
 the town artisan invested with paramount intei'est, there are several 
 respects in which the country working man differs from his urban 
 brother. As regards house-room and lodging, he enjoys the advantage 
 conferred by the quit-rent system of staying on in his cottage while 
 he is out of work, and of thus gaining an interval for looking about 
 him. The village fair, or harvest-home festival, or benefit feast, are 
 the chief breaks in the continual routine of work. Cricket clubs and 
 football clubs are indeed increasing in number and popularity, but 
 these are pastimes which are not much pursued after early manhood. 
 He differs, also, from the town workman in knowing less of the 
 pleasures of the regular holiday. Of the Saturday half-holiday of 
 town workers he knows little or nothing. Sunday, indeed, is with 
 the peasant emphatically a day of rest. He may or he may not go to 
 church or chapel, arrayed in solemn black, or else in a waistcoat and 
 necktie of gorgeous colours ; but whether he performs or neglects his 
 religious duties, he will sedulously refrain from all kinds of labour — 
 unless he is employed in connection with live stock — and if he 
 saunters about will remain all day within a stone's throw of his 
 cottage. 
 
 If the majority of English rural villages have as their inhabitants a 
 working population such as that of which a specimen has just been 
 given, and if these toilers for the most part conform to the type that 
 we have delineated, there are certain exceptions in the English village 
 system, certain stock deviations in individual character from the 
 normal standard, which may be briefly glanced at. In many villages 
 there may be found groups of cottages which constitute a settlement 
 of some distinct class, or aggregate of families who have lived on 
 there from generation to generation, and of whose legal claim to their 
 holdings nothing is known. It is a sort of no-man's-land, and the 
 human beings who have fixed themselves upon it lead an anomalous, 
 precarious, and somewhat predatory life. They work for the farmers
 
 THE WORKING CLASSES. 169 
 
 during the hay and wheat harvest, but for the rest of the year they 
 subsist visibly on the produce of their not too well tended gardens. In 
 reality, they must have other resources than these. The men of the 
 settlement are more than suspected of being habitual poachers, and 
 the women and children have the stigma resting on them of being 
 systematic practitioners of various kinds of petty larceny. Even if it 
 cannot boast the presence of these aboriginal squatters, the English 
 village is seldom without some special characteristics of its own. 
 Thus, in addition to the chronic drunkard who already shows signs of 
 softening of the brain, there may almost always be found among the 
 population the clever, active labourer, who, after having worked with 
 great regularity and success for weeks together, has a fit of drinking, 
 and disappears for two or three days. 
 
 Then there is usually to be found the incorrigible scamp of the 
 community, who never did an honest day's work in his life, whom 
 farmers would be reluctant to employ, who is an abomination to the 
 squire, and who is considered past reclamation even by the parson. 
 The more reputable village inn closes its door agaiDst him, but there 
 is a low beerhouse — a sink of mischief and iniquity — of which he is a 
 regular customer. He could tell how the landlord of that establish- 
 ment contrived to get so many luxuries — fish, flesh, fowl, and vegetable 
 — into the filthy back-kitchen of the den, sempiternally reeking with 
 the fumes of bad drink and vile tobacco. He is seldom to be seen 
 abroad in the village in the full light of day, but he prowls about at 
 nightfall, as if bent upon some sinister purpose. He is a master in 
 the art of tickling trout and of snaring pheasants ; he is, in fact, the 
 recognised village poacher, who has hitherto by marvellous good luck 
 escaped the clutches of the law. Justice, however, overtakes him at 
 last, or if it fails to overtake him in the village whose pest he is, it is 
 only because he shuns its approach, and contrives to flee while yet 
 there is time. 
 
 We have already noted in the dress of the men and children of rural 
 England the abandonment of the distinctly agricultural garb. Some- 
 thing even more noticeable still is the change which has occurred in 
 the dress of the women. Even in those parts of England where, as 
 in Northumberland, much out-door labour, especially in the fields 
 during harvest-time, is done by mothers and daughters, the clothes 
 worn approximate with remarkable closeness to the prevailing urban 
 fashion of the period. Dress and musical airs seem to travel only a 
 little less quickly than ill tidings. The new ditties which the panto- 
 mimes popularise in the capital are dispersed throughout the provinces 
 by itinerant organ-grinders before many months or weeks are over. 
 It is the same with feminine apparel. The last new mode finds its 
 way to the neighbouring market town very nearly at the same time 
 that it does to the metropolis ; and cheap bonnets of the latest shape,
 
 170 ENGLAND. 
 
 or ribbons of the most approved tint, are displayed in tbe window of 
 tbe village sbop a very little while after they have been first exposed 
 to the view of the buyers of Regent Street. 
 
 Nor is the village shop the only emporium of these goods. A con- 
 spicuous and salutary innovation in the economy of English villages 
 in the course of the last few years has been the co-operative store. 
 Fourteen or fifteen years ago a certain small village in the midland 
 counties, which will serve as a type of many others placed in similar 
 circumstances, made a sudden jump towards prosperity. A hosiery 
 manufactory was started ; it was a success, and gave profitable employ- 
 ment to the wives and children of the tillers of the soil. There was 
 plenty of money to spend, but the shops in the village were justly 
 deemed not quite satisfactory. The place was fortunate in the pos- 
 session of a clergyman who had a strong idea of reducing the rules of 
 Christianity to practice, and who was a good man of business into the 
 bargain. He took counsel with the farmers of the place, offered a few 
 suggestions to the labourers and factory hands, and as a result of 
 those deliberations and preparatory measures, the Framley Industrial 
 and Provident Society, Limited, as we shall call it, was founded, and 
 duly certified by the Registrar of Friendly Societies of England as 
 having rules which were in conformity with the law. The capital of 
 the society was raised in one pound shares, to which each member 
 subscribed at the rate of threepence per week, or three and sixpence 
 a quarter, until the whole sum was paid up. The business is carried 
 on under the control of a committee of management of nine persons, 
 a treasurer, a secretary, two auditors, and five arbitrators. It is 
 conducted on the most rigid of ready-money principles. The accounts 
 are rendered and audited each quarter day. Some idea of its early 
 progress may be formed from the statement that the society began 
 business with thirty-three members and a paid-up capital of .£27 2s. 
 At the first quarterly meeting it consisted of twelve stockingers, 
 thirteen agricultural labourers, one lock-keeper, one carpenter, one 
 carrier, one brickmaker, one hawker, one retired tradesman, two 
 farmers, and two clergymen. It boasted already a disposable balance 
 of £3 4s. 4d. Seven years later the society numbered ninety-one 
 members — among them twenty-four agricultural labourers, of whom 
 two were the largest investors in the funds of the institution. The 
 goods in stock were valued at £21G ; £180 was invested at interest ; 
 there was a balance in the bank of £105 ; and every day the clergy- 
 man of the parish was receiving small sums from his parishioners to 
 invest in the association. Of course the plant of the society had pro- 
 portionately increased. A cottage adjoining the original warehouse 
 had been annexed for the purpose of additional storage. Seven acres 
 of land were rented, and also a barn, where the crops were threshed. 
 All the necessaries, and some of the luxuries, of existence are for sale
 
 THE WORKING CLASSES. 171 
 
 in this establishment, which is as much a feature in the village as the 
 school : groceries, bread, butter, hosiery, haberdashery, stationery, 
 drugs of all kinds, tobacco, and beer. The sale of ale was considered 
 an experiment of doubtful expediency. It has, however, proved an 
 entire success. It has been accompanied by a marked diminution of 
 drunkenness, and by the disappearance of the last remnants of the 
 truck system. 
 
 This is only one instance of the new spirit which has so largely 
 reformed and quickened the life of the rural working man. Enter his 
 house and you will see the aesthetic tendencies of the age illustrated 
 in the decorations of his dwelling. There are familiar and sometimes 
 graceful chromo-lithographs on the walls, there are ornaments on the 
 mantelpiece, though very often these are of a far worse design, more 
 vulgar in idea and tawdry of colour, than they used to be. Neither 
 books nor newspapers are wanting ; and, indeed, the wide circulation 
 of the daily and weekly news-sheets among the rustic labourers of 
 England is one of the signs of the times. It is no longer the rector of 
 the parish, the squire, and the more important farmers who receive 
 daily the contemporary history of the world as recorded in the columns 
 of the London or the larger provincial newspapers. These make their 
 way into the smaller farmhouses and the wayside inns. Means for 
 their distribution have multiplied immensely during the last few years. 
 The milk-carts, which make a journey twice in every twenty-four hours 
 to the local town, are often called into requisition ; and there is the 
 parcel from the London agent, either dropped at the remote railway 
 station, or, if there be no station in the neighbourhood, thrown 
 out of the window of the train as it flies past, by the guard, at some 
 fixed spot. It is no mere speculative interest in current events which 
 has popularised the growth of journalism in the homes of the country 
 poor. What chiefly interests the agricultural student of the hebdo- 
 madal press is that which seems specially to affect his personal con- 
 dition. He would sooner have a smart attack on the policy of the 
 Poor Law Guardians of his district than a slashing criticism on the 
 conduct of diplomatic negotiations of incalculable moment. Similarly 
 his literary appetite is whetted by a desire to know all that concerns 
 the position and the prospects of his own industry. The agitation of 
 labour versus capital has invested the columns of the newspaper with 
 a fresh attraction, and the country working man is beginning to find 
 satisfaction in reading of emigrants and emigration, scarcely second to 
 that which he might formerly have experienced in sensational reports 
 of accidents and crimes. Book-hawking societies constitute another 
 agency to which a word of grateful recognition is due. Once these 
 are established on a broad basis they often flourish admirably with 
 very little eleemosynary assistance. 
 
 In all this may be seen progress, beneficent, considerable, and well
 
 172 ENGLAND. 
 
 defined, in the condition of the agricultural labourer. But there are 
 evils which have no more ceased to attend his lot than misery, sin, 
 want, starvation, and disease have died out of the land. Granted that 
 legislation has done something, that the measures which followed upon 
 the inquiry of the Agricultural Commission of 1867, the Truck Acts, 
 and modern sanitary laws, have provided a machinery for ameliorating 
 his condition, against which there is, from a theoretical point of view, 
 nothing to be said, how, it may be asked, does the machinery work ? 
 Because the labour of children below a certain age, and without a 
 certificate that they have satisfied a fixed educational standard, is for- 
 bidden, does it therefore follow that no such children are employed ? 
 Because there is no corner of England which is not subject to a recog- 
 nised authority, is our worship of the goddess Hygeia a universal act 
 of practical; homage ? If some landlords would no more tolerate the 
 existence of the causes of pestilence in the homes of their poor than 
 they would a public nuisance in their own parks, are we therefore to 
 conclude that the Arcadian glimpses given above of the labourer's 
 cottage are typically faithful revelations of the average state of its 
 interior ? The true answer to these questions is that the tendency of 
 the times is in the direction of social and sanitary reform. What is 
 now generally wanted on the large estates is not so much an improve- 
 ment in the kind of cottages as an increase in their number. It was 
 one of the hardships of the rural labourer that he had a considerable 
 distance to walk to his work. Houses, therefore, have, in many cases, 
 been built on the spot or near the farmstead. The labourers now 
 frequently object to live in them, and prefer the independence and 
 sociability of the village. They dislike the rules of the estate, which 
 prohibit lodgers and overcrowding, and which insist on the ventilators 
 being kept open. The women complain of solitude — they are not 
 near enough to the shop ; the men of dulness — they are too far from 
 the public-house. The report of the Commission of 1867 made it 
 tolerably clear that the habit of letting cottages in connection with the 
 farms was decidedly mischievous in its operation. " I am clearly of 
 opinion," says the Reverend Lord Sidney Godolphin-Osborne, " that 
 the landlord should hold all the cottages in his own hands, under his 
 own direct control." "In all my inquiries," says Mr. Edward Stanhope, 
 " on this point, I never yet met a man who preferred to live ' under a 
 farmer,' as they call it. The apparent advantage in point of income 
 enjoyed by a man in Dorset who is a yearly servant, and lives in a 
 house attached to the farm, is great, and yet even there the labourer 
 had the strongest objection to the system. With great reluctance 
 I have been forced to the conclusion that there is no system 
 more fatal to the independence and comfort of labourers than that 
 of letting cottages with the farms." On the other hand, it would 
 scarcely do to make the occupancy of the cottages entirely inde-
 
 THE WORKING CLASSES. 173 
 
 pendent of the tenure of the farm, and the farmer would certainly find 
 it extremely inconvenient to have men living on his premises who were 
 not working for him. Substantial as are the improvements which have 
 taken place in the condition of the cottages of the agricultural labourers 
 since the Commission of 1867 concluded its investigations, the report 
 of that body is not yet an entirely obsolete document. The first great 
 defect in the cottages of rural England is now, as it was then, the 
 absence of proper bedroom accommodation. Many of these buildings 
 contain only one sleeping-room ; more only two. In a village of the 
 midland counties, the writer has himself become cognisant of tbe fact 
 of there being crowded nightly into a single sleeping-room, the mother 
 — a widow — a young man of nineteen — her son — her daughter, and 
 the illegitimate child of her daughter. Frequently, the site chosen for 
 the cottage is some damp, marshy place ; or the building" is erected 
 with its back hard against a hill, or on ground probably a foot or two 
 below the surface of the surrounding soil, and without any attempt at 
 drainage or ventilation. Nor is a less dire evil to be seen in the pollu- 
 tion of the atmosphere outside the doors, not so much or necessarily 
 because the drainage is defective, as because the women are unable 
 to understand that there is any harm in permitting heaps of rotting 
 vegetable and other refuse to accumulate in the little garden. Gene- 
 rally, indeed, the English working classes in agricultural districts have 
 not the slightest knowledge of the most elementary laws of healtb, and 
 if education in these were included in the course of the village school 
 a good work would be done. 
 
 Of course existing sanitary laws ought to prevent much of this. But 
 the difficulty of enforcing them is extreme, and their full execution 
 would often involve wholesale eviction. Nor would the cost of eviction 
 end where it began. There is a clause in the Sanitary Act empowering 
 the shutting up of cottages in the outskirts of towns. If acted upon, 
 the clause would result in the overcrowding of houses in towns ; for 
 the legislation has this further deficiency, that it does not authorise 
 the building of fresh houses in the place of those wbich are practically 
 demolished. A great complaint against the Act is that there is nothing 
 to set it in motion, and hence it bas been compared to " a watch 
 without a mainspring." Dr. Fraser, the Bishop of Manchester, one 
 of the Commissioners of Agriculture in 1867, remarked of the then 
 existing Sanitary Act, "that it was quite ineffective, owing to the 
 local influence by which it is hampered," and suggested the appoint- 
 ment of an independent officer like an exciseman. That the Act should 
 have failed may be accounted for in a great degree by the fact that the 
 authorities are elected by the ratepayers and the representatives of 
 ratepayers, who are for the most part busy men. No doubt a further 
 extension of State action has evils, and tends towards pauperisation. 
 But if there is no reason why Boards of Guardians should not be
 
 174 ENGLAND. 
 
 empowered to pay the school fees of children whose parents are help- 
 lessly poor, and if the receipt of such assistance does not constitute 
 pauperism, why should it be stigmatised as "pauperisation " if a man 
 receive State aid in order to make his house habitable by his family ? 
 
 The consequences of such a state of tbings — of which the end has 
 yet to be seen — are, whether from a physical, social, economical, moral, 
 or intellectual point of view, equally disastrous. " Physically," to quote 
 Dr. Fraser's report, " a ruinous, ill-drained, overcrowded cottage gene- 
 rates any amount of disease, as well as intensifies tendency to scrofula 
 and phthisis. Socially, nothing can be more wretched than the con- 
 dition of ' open ' parishes, into which have been poured remorselessly 
 the scum and off-scour of their 'close neighbours.'* Economically, 
 the imperfect distribution of cottages deprives the farmer of a large 
 portion of his effective labour-power. The employer who has no 
 cottages to offer those whom he employs must either attract labourers 
 by the offer of higher wages, or must content himself with refuse." 
 Morally, what is to be expected, save that, as Dr. Fraser says, 
 " modesty must be an unknown virtue, decency an unimaginable 
 thing, where in one small chamber, with the beds lying as thickly as 
 they can be packed, father, mother, young men, lads, grown-up girls 
 — two, and sometimes three generations — are herded promiscuously ? " 
 " We complain, "continues the report, " of the ante-nuptial unchastity 
 of our women, of the loose talk and conduct of the girls who work in 
 tbe fields, of the light way in wbich maidens part with their honour, 
 and how seldom either a parent's or a brother's blood boils with 
 shame — here, in cottage herding, is the sufficient account and history 
 of all." f 
 
 That many of these evils still exist — are likely, for the matter of 
 that, to exist for a long while to come — among us must be admitted. 
 But there is a reverse side to the picture, which has been indicated at 
 the beginning of the present chapter, and which is equally historic 
 fact. It may be that more legislation is wanted ; it may be that the 
 action of the legislation which at present exists is not as certain or 
 speedy as could be desired. But, for all that, there is movement, ami 
 that movement is pre-eminently in the right direction. The low mud 
 
 * One of the consequences of the new Poor Law has been that the distinction between 
 close and open villages has to a great extent disappeared. Villages are called close when 
 they are the exclusive property of a single owner; open when there is a plurality of 
 ownership. Under the old I'oor Law, when every village was charged with the support 
 of its own poor, the landlord had naturally an object in admitting as few potential 
 paupers into his village as possible, and therefore kept down the number of his cottages ; 
 but after, by the Act of 1834, the support of the poor was charged upon Union areas, 
 the motive for the preservation of the close village system disappeared. 
 
 t I quote thus from a report that is perhaps, in a sense, out of date as showing how 
 urgent was the need for legislation. In some respects, the Public Health Act of 1875 
 has already effected a beneficial change, although much remains to be done, and primarily 
 supervision should be made both searching and ceaseless.
 
 THE WORKING CLASSES. 175 
 
 and straw- thatched tenement, with its two rooms on the ground floor, 
 has to a very great extent disappeared. The responsibilities of 
 proprietorship have been recognised, and the very circumstance that 
 the possession of land in England is valued quite as much for the 
 power it confers as for the revenue it yields — "almost in all cases," 
 as Mr. Little remarks, " a very poor return upon the capital invested " 
 — is a favourable influence. Landlords are, for the most part, 
 ambitious of the reputation of having good cottages on their properties, 
 and the rivalry of the landlords is reflected in the competion of their 
 agents. Nor is it less fortunate, from this point of view, that estates 
 have gradually passed, and are still passing, out of the hands of 
 impoverished squires and squireens into those of the owners of 
 domains which are principalities, or into the hands of the wealthy 
 members of the mercantile community. Again, if it be admitted 
 that the law still falls short of what it ought to be, we must remember 
 that indirectly it has done much. The abolition of the old Poor Law, 
 and its replacement by a system under which the landlord is no longer 
 only charged with the relief of the poor in his own village — no longer 
 obtains a portion of his rental at the expense of his neighbours — has 
 convinced him of the expediency of generally improving their 
 condition. 
 
 But it must be remembered that, valuable as the reform is, it is not 
 necessarily an unalloyed benefit to the agricultural poor. It is a great 
 thing that the peasant should inhabit a commodious, comfortable 
 building of brick and slate, consisting of kitchen, parlour, and pantry 
 on the ground floor, and three well-ventilated bedrooms above, 
 instead of the mud hovels of old, with their two rooms not removed 
 above the level of the soil. The cost, however, of such a structure as 
 this is not much, if at all, less than £210 ; and, seeing that the rental 
 is not more than £5 a year, it is manifest that the owner is left with 
 a loss. If he is to make the loss good, he must do so out of the rent 
 paid by the farmer; and the advantage conferred upon the farmer is 
 represented by the fact that he has his labourer close to his farm, 
 and in good health instead of in bad. 
 
 Let us now quit the actual dwelling of the agricultural labourer, 
 and see how he is situated immediately outside it. We have already 
 watched bim engaged in the cultivation of his garden or allotment, or 
 else in gazing on it on Sunday afternoons. At once it must be said 
 that, as regards the relative value to the peasant of gardens and 
 allotments, some difference of opinion exists. With a garden of thirty 
 rods of ordinary land, it was decidedly the opinion of the Bishop of 
 Manchester, when a member of the Agricultural Commission of 1807, 
 that a labourer would scarcely care about an allotment, probably at 
 some distance from his cottage. The garden, he points out, is close 
 under his eye, and can occupy many spare ten minutes of the man's
 
 176 ENGLAND. 
 
 time. It is easily manured, and "there is a reciprocal and a bene- 
 ficial connection between it and the sty : the garden half keeps the 
 pig, and the pig in turn more than half keeps the garden." On the 
 other hand, it is beyond question that the allotment system is one 
 which has proved full of benefit, and especially in particular districts. 
 In Dorsetshire, where wages have been exceptionally low, the 
 labourers occupy an amount of land which provides employment for 
 the whole family. " The redeeming feature," says Mr. Edward 
 Stanhope, " of rural life here is the amount of land held by the 
 labouring class ; indeed, but for this the wages would sometimes 
 hardly be sufficient to support life." One thing is quite certain, that 
 if extended beyond a limited size, allotments are a source of danger 
 and of loss to the peasant, and practically create the evil they are 
 designed to remedy. In some parts of the country, what is known as 
 Fergus O'Connor's Act is still operative. Where this is the case — as, 
 for instance, in the west of England, near Yeovil — there may be seen 
 a row of some half-dozen cottages, each with two or three acres of 
 land attached. These were designed for the benefit of the agri- 
 cultural labourers. As a matter of fact, they were almost all occupied 
 by small tradesmen. If the allotment be just big enough to take up a 
 man's odd time, it will be an immense boon ; if, on the other hand, he 
 devotes himself entirely to it, he may prosper for a season, but he 
 will find that in the long run he cannot hold his own, and he will feel 
 acutely the want of the weekly wages, paid more or less regularly 
 every Saturday. When the creation of a race of peasant proprietors, 
 such as those who exist in France, is talked about, it is forgotten or 
 ignored that the English peasant is not like the French peasant, has 
 not the same innate faculty of thrift, cannot live on the same simple, 
 unsubstantial fare. The land, too, if it is to be made to pay, requires 
 to be manured, and the labourer is not in a position to possess himself 
 of this mode of artificial fertilisation. Again, in the case of a minia- 
 ture farm of two or three acres, no provision can be made for the 
 necessary alternation of crops ; consequently the land is exhausted, 
 while even if the cottager succeed in growing upon it a pretty regular 
 supply of vegetables, he will find it impossible to guarantee a suf- 
 ficiency of regular customers. The only way in which, as experience 
 shows, the labourer who looks to live entirely by his allotment can 
 hope to be successful is by having his home in the immediate neigh- 
 bourhood of some town, where he can sell his produce and command 
 a tolerably regular succession of gardens to look after, carpets to beat, 
 and similar odd jobs to do. 
 
 There remain to be considered various other circumstances to a 
 great extent affecting the condition of the agricultural labourer. The 
 subject of wages may be reserved to the end of the chapter, while of 
 the mode of their payment only a few words need be said. In
 
 THE WORKING CLASSES. 177 
 
 Northumberland they are paid in kind. Generally labourers are 
 unwilling to forego their privilege of taking part of wages in beer and 
 cider. The following anecdote illustrates the dominion which drink 
 can thus obtain over a man's mind. A labourer having earned at a 
 piece of task-work a considerable sum of money, left off for several 
 days, and during that time was incessantly drinking. One morning, 
 when all his money had been expended, he set off to resume his work 
 at a distance of three miles from his home. On reaching the place, he 
 took off his coat and threw it on the ground, but as it fell, a forgotten 
 sixpence dropped out of his pocket, upon which he put it on again, 
 and walked back the three miles to finish the sixpence before he would 
 begin work again. 
 
 Though it is to secondary remedies, such as a keener sense of self- 
 interest, and to the creation of a public feeling unfavourable to the 
 vice, that we must look for the ultimate and solely effective guarantee 
 against drunkenness, there are certain primary measures which might 
 certainly be tried. Again and again has it been pointed out that 
 public-houses are apparently allowed to multiply far beyond the legi- 
 timate needs of the community. The police state that those licensed 
 under the new system, that is, where beer cannot be drunk on the 
 premises, are worse to deal with than those where customers can go 
 in and drink. Much may be said in favour of giving the licensing 
 power to the magistrates. If it continues to reside with the Excise, 
 the standard of the qualifications in the ratepayers who sign the 
 petition for the licence might be raised until it was something like a 
 guarantee of character. Meanwhile it may be well to point out that 
 the farmers themselves, much as they condemn the beerhouse system, 
 are apt in their good nature to encourage in their men a taste for 
 liquor, by remunerating extra jobs in drink, and supplementing wages 
 by beer and cider. 
 
 Women and ordinary day labourers are hired by the day, and 
 generally paid once a week. The rate of wages for women is usually 
 fixed by the day, but of the men, when employed on day-work, at so 
 much a week. The liberal class of farmers feel themselves bound to 
 find their men work "wet or dry," but there is another class of farmers 
 of, as Dr. Fraser puts it in his report, " harder natures and tighter 
 purse-strings," who will send a labourer away on a wet morning, if 
 there happens to be no directly remunerative job which they can set 
 him to do. If a labourer is hired by the week, it is clearly reasonable 
 that work by the week should be found for him. The system of 
 monthly hiring is confined to the solitary instance of the harvest. 
 Those who are emphatically called farm servants — that is, labourers 
 without whose services the farm could not be carried on for a single 
 day ; shepherd, carter, stockman, ploughboy, and dairymaid — are 
 hired for the most part by the year. The usual periods of " hirings " 
 
 N
 
 178 ENGLAND. 
 
 are in spring, or more commonly in the autumn, and where those 
 abominations exist, the transaction takes place at the " mop " or 
 "statute fair." The agreements are generally verbal, "but what 
 weighs most in the mind of the farm recruit .... is the mystical 
 shilling which passes from the palm of his new master into his own, 
 which may be regarded as the agricultural sacramentum ." These 
 yearly hirings operate badly. The "statute fair," which is one of 
 their accompaniments, is a demoralising institution, and one, happily, 
 ■which, though it still flourishes in a few districts, may be generally 
 described as dying out. 
 
 A child's day and a woman's day are much the same ; nine hours, 
 with an hour and a half for meals. The almost unanimous opinion of 
 the labouring man is, that if the parents can manage to dispense with 
 his earnings, a boy should not go out to work before he is twelve or 
 thirteen. Medical opinion, too, is not generally favourable to the em- 
 ployment of child-labour in agriculture. To expose a boy of ten or 
 twelve years of age for nine hours a day to the cutting English winds 
 is pronounced by competent medical authorities as sure to develop the 
 seeds of any disease that may be latent in the constitution. In some 
 parts of England, notably in Dorsetshire, the system of hiring whole 
 families prevails.* In these cases, when a labourer is hired for a year, 
 the size of his family and the vigour of his wife and children are all 
 points which are carefully investigated by the employer. There are 
 of course many abuses incident to the employment of women in the 
 iields, but the system is by no means one on which an unqualified 
 condemnation can be passed. The Bishop of Manchester argues that 
 it not only unsexes a woman in dress, manners, and character, making 
 her masculine, but unfits or indisposes her for a woman's proper duties 
 at home. Anybody, however, who has visited the county of North- 
 umberland, who has seen the Northumbrian women out in the fields 
 and by their own firesides, will scarcely accept this view. In this the 
 most prosperous of English counties, the labour of women, which 
 consists of clearing the land, picking stones and weeding, turnip- 
 hoeing, hay-making and harvest-work, barn-work with threshing and 
 winnowing machines, is considered absolutely essential for the culti- 
 vation of the soil ; yet the Northumbrian women are physically a 
 splendid race. Their work in the fields is justly considered to be 
 conducive to health. " I shall be glad," writes Mr. Harlcy, of those 
 
 * The following advertisements are quoted by Mr. Stanhope from the Dorset County 
 ( 'hronicle : — 
 
 (1) Wanted, a farm labourer, with a working family ; apply to Mr. G. Tett, Chisel- 
 borne. 
 
 (2) Wanted, a shepherd, with a grown-up sou or two; apply to Mr. G. A. Ingram, 
 Uagber. 
 
 Wanted, ;it Lady-day, a thatcher, with twoor three boys from 9 to 14 years of age; 
 apply to Mr. G. Mayo, L'uddlehinton.
 
 THE WORKING CLASSES. 179 
 
 who hold the opinion that field-work is degrading, " if they would 
 visit these women in their own homes after they become wives and 
 mothers. They would be received with a natural courtesy and good 
 manners which would astonish them. Let the visitor ask to see the 
 house ; he will be ' taken over ' it with many apologies that he 
 should have seen it not ' redd up.' He will then be offered a chair 
 in front of a large fire, with the never-absent pot and oven, the 
 mistress meanwhile continuing her unceasing family duties, baking, 
 cooking, cleaning, &c. Not one word of complaint will he hear ; but 
 he will be told that, though ' working people,' they are not poor ; 
 and a glance at the substantial furniture, the ample supply of bacon 
 over his head, the variety of cakes and bread on the board, and 
 the stores of butter, cheese, and meal in the house, will convince 
 him of the fact. When he inquires about the children he will hear 
 that, though they have not much to give them, the parents feel it 
 to be their sacred duty to secure them the best instruction in then- 
 power, and ' that they are determined they shall have.' The visitor 
 will leave that cottage with the conviction that field-work has no 
 degrading effect, but that he has been in the presence of a thoughtful, 
 contented, and unselfish woman." Dr. Cahill, of Berwick-on-Tweed, 
 states " from his knowledge of the town and country population " that 
 " the women of the latter are far more healthy than the women of 
 the former, and tenfold less affected by female complaints. He 
 considers that their field-work fits them to be good bearers of children, 
 and the strength of the population is kept up by them ; and that 
 the surplus of the agricultural population that enters the large towns 
 maintains the standard of health and strength by marriage with the 
 inhabitants of towns." 
 
 Having thus described some of the most important details in the 
 condition of the agricultural classes, it remains to say a few words 
 on the general relations of employers and employed, and, in passing, 
 of the nature of our agricultural system. What are called Acts of 
 Husbandly vary in various parts of England, according to the 
 character of the soil. Their object is to regulate the scale on which 
 money is paid to the out-going by the in-eoming tenant for crops 
 sown and for work and labour done. In all parts of England there 
 is a regularly prescribed order in the rotation of crops ; and the 
 general rule is that arable land is cultivated in the proportion of 
 one half corn and one half roots — thus: first year, turnips; second, 
 barley ; third, mangel-wurzel ; fourth, wheat. It is, too, the universal 
 custom, and may be spoken of as the foundation of English agriculture, 
 that whatever is produced on the farm, and is available for the 
 purpose of manuring the soil, shall be devoted to the soil. As might 
 be supposed, this development of agricultural enterprise implies a 
 series of striking improvements in agricultural processes. There is, 
 
 n 2
 
 180 ENGLAND. 
 
 indeed, in the agricultural system of the England of to-day almost as 
 little of what one can identify with the agriculture of a century ago 
 as with that of the ancient Italians, as sung by Virgil in his Georgics. 
 The farmer who succeeds now-a-days is scientific, or he is nothing, 
 and the danger rather arises from his staking too much capital upon 
 the ground than from his putting into it too little. His farming 
 apparatus bears the same relation to that of his predecessors as the 
 floating factories known as ironclads bear to the wooden walls of the 
 old-fashioned men-of-war. He has learnt the use of reaping and 
 mowing machines, each of which can do the work of ten men ; of 
 steam ploughs — costly implements, not within the reach of the smaller 
 farmers — which do the labour of ten men and twenty horses ; of steam 
 machines of other kinds for threshing corn, cutting straw and hay, 
 and similar purposes. In addition to these, chemical assistance, 
 ammoniacal and phosphatic manures, have rendered the farmer com- 
 paratively independent of the alternate system of cropping ; and Mr. 
 Caird calculates that these artificially fertilising agencies would enable 
 the United Kingdom to bear an additional wheat crop equal to our 
 supplies from Russia, with no perceptible strain on our agricultural 
 system. Nor has a less signal advance been made, even though no 
 new principle has been discovered, in the matter of drainage, the con- 
 struction of farm buildings, and the breeding of stock. The system 
 may be upwards of half a century old, but its extension and develop- 
 ment are comparatively new. One of the results of this extension is, 
 that whereas in the middle of the century not more than one-third of 
 the people consumed animal food more than once a week, it is now 
 eaten by nearly all of them, in the shape of meat, or cheese, or butter, 
 once a day. Add to this the increase of the population, and it may 
 be estimated that the total consumption of animal food in this country 
 has trebled in the last thirty or forty years. 
 
 The total area of the United Kingdom is 76,300,000 acres, of which 
 20,800,000 consist of mountains, rough pasture, and waste, while 
 50,000,000 are crops, meadows, permanent pasture, and woods and 
 forests. Most of this land is in the hands of the large landowners ; 
 excluding the proprietors of less than an acre, one-fourth is held by 
 1,200 persons, each averaging 16,200 acres ; another fourth by 6,200 
 persons, at an average of 3,1 50 acres ; another fourth by 50,770, at an 
 average of 380 acres ; while the remaining fourth is held by 261,830 
 persons, at an average of 70 acres. The cultivation of this land is 
 mainly in the hands of tenant farmers, of whom there are 561,000 in the 
 United Kingdom, each holding an average of 56 acres. The tendency is 
 for land to become concentrated in the hands of large landlords, small 
 proprietors being bought up. Thus the small squire is becoming 
 gradually extinct, while the yeomen, or small landowners farming 
 their own land, have almost entirely disappeared. How rapidly we
 
 THE WORKING CLASSES. 181 
 
 in England have passed from an agricultural to a manufacturing people 
 may be judged from the fact, that whereas fifty years ago a fifth of 
 the working population of England were engaged in agriculture, those 
 now occupied in this manner are less than a tenth. 
 
 We have already seen something of the general principles on which 
 the great estates of the country are managed. The agricultural 
 hierarchy may be said to consist of three — or, if we count the land- 
 agent, of four — grades : the landlords and their agents, the farmers 
 and their labourers. Each of these classes is being constantly altered 
 in its composition. Landed property, to the value of several millions, 
 changes hands annually ; the tenants of farms are changed at Lady- 
 day or Michaelmas, while the labourers are far more locomotive than 
 formerly, and are perpetually acquiring the fresh knowledge that urges 
 struggling men afar. Large drafts of these perpetually pass off to 
 other industrial callings at home, and to the colonies ; and the effect 
 of this process is seen in the weakening of the tie between the agricul- 
 tural labourer and the parish in which he was born. 
 
 The only point of contact between the State and our agricultural 
 system is the Enclosure Office, whose chief duty now is to improve 
 suburban commons under a system of regulation by which the land 
 may be drained, planted for ornament and shelter, and the surface 
 may be improved for pasturage, without excluding the public from its 
 enjoyment. The administration of the Drainage and Land Improve- 
 ment Acts is in the hands of the Enclosure Commissioners, the purpose 
 of the Acts being to permit landowners to borrow money for permanent 
 improvements, and to charge their lands with the cost of these, to be 
 liquidated by annual payments which, within a fixed period, reimburse 
 both principal and interest. Again, the Commissioners are authorised 
 to carry out exchanges and partitions of lands, and with their assist- 
 ance any two landowners can at very trifling expense correct whatever 
 irregularity there may be in the boundaries of their several estates, or 
 even exchange entire properties. The conditions upon which the 
 sanction of the Commissioners is obtained are, first, that the exchange 
 shall be demonstratively beneficial to the two estates ; secondly, that 
 the exchange shall be fair and equal ; thirdly, that due notice is given, 
 and that the order of exchange is not confirmed until three months 
 afterwards. 
 
 If the production of bread and meat within these islands has nearly 
 reached its limits, the dairy and market-garden system is extending. 
 The country, in fact, is becoming less of a farm and more of a garden. 
 Meanwhile the population is increasing at the rate of 350,000 a year, 
 or nearly a thousand a day. The consumption of food is becoming 
 prodigious, and now represents imports of one hundred millions ster- 
 ling. Twenty years hence, we may have not 35,000,000 but 
 45,000,000 of people to feed, and, of course, there will have been a
 
 182. ENGLAND. 
 
 proportionate increase in the importation of provisions. Whether and 
 in what degree the advantage of being on the spot will enable the 
 tenants to pay the imperial and local charges and rent to the owners, 
 is the question of the future. The supply of foreign grain from 
 America, and in a less degree of meat, yearly endangers his profits. 
 J lut the tenant can leave his farm with more or less loss, while the 
 landowner must remain and solve the problem. The speculative 
 remedy proposed for the loss at which farmers may conduct their 
 operations is the redistribution of the soil, and the creation of a class 
 of small proprietors. Independently of the fact that in England no 
 overwhelming desire for land exists, it is more than doubtful whether 
 its advocates themselves are persuaded that such a scheme is prac- 
 ticable. Thus it is admitted by many of those who are in favour of 
 it, that it would be necessary for tenants, should such a system ever 
 be established, to co-operate for many of the more costly processes of 
 industry. While we are on the subject of the general relation of 
 landlords and tenants, it may be observed that though, as pointed out 
 in the chapter on estate management, the same method of administra- 
 tion is generally observed both in the properties of individual owners 
 and of corporations, the position occupied by the farmer is not pre- 
 cisely the same in each. In the first place, the individual owner, be 
 he peer or commoner, looks for political power, and directly or 
 indirectly influences the votes of his tenants at parliamentary elections ; 
 corporations, on the other hand, have no political influence, and the 
 farmer who rents his land from a corporation is conscious of a certain 
 superiority over the agriculturist who is the tenant of a personal land- 
 lord. In the second place, as corporations have no souls, so have 
 they no impecuniosity ; there is always money for repairs, and one 
 of the consequences of this is that the position of the agricultural 
 labourer is often better on the estate of a corporation than on those 
 of individual owners, since, when cottages and other repairs are 
 wanted, money is always forthcoming to supply them. 
 
 In prosperous times the wages of the agricultural labourer through- 
 out England average little less than 17s. a week, varying from 13s. a 
 week in the south to 18s. in the east, and 20s. or 21s. in the extreme 
 north, where not only is the rate increased by the competition of 
 manufacturing and commercial employment, but the work done is 
 generally regarded as of a higher quality. These weekly wages by no 
 means exhaustively represent the earnings of a capable or active 
 labourer, much less of his family, supposing the family to be of work- 
 ing age. Loth at the time of the wheat and the hay harvest there are, 
 as we have seen, longer hours of labour and higher rates of pay. In 
 the midlands and in the south of England there is the opportunity of 
 supplementing the regular weekly payment by odd jobs of hedging, 
 ditching, and draining, given out as piece-work. Add to this that the
 
 THE WORKING CLASSES. 183 
 
 waggoner, herdsman, shepherd, and any other labourer, who, being 
 charged with the attention of the live stock of the farm, to use the 
 expression already employed, is never off duty, is frequently furnished 
 with a cottage and garden rent-free, and it will be seen that the agri- 
 cultural toiler is not without substantial perquisites.* It is not the 
 case that the introduction of machinery into the processes of harvest- 
 ing has reduced the available earnings of the labourer. " In the fen 
 districts of Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire " — Mr. Little is again our 
 authority — "a strong man will consider himself very ill paid if he 
 cannot earn 9s. or 10s. a day in following the reaper, and 7s. or 8s. 
 when housing the corn." Thus in the autumn of 1877, a family, con- 
 sisting of a man, his wife, a girl aged sixteen, a boy aged fourteen, and 
 two other children of, respectively, eleven and nine, earned in that part 
 of England during a period of five weeks just £25, to which must be 
 added sixteen bushels of gleaning corn picked up by the wife and two 
 girls, and valued at 5s. a bushel. Thus we arrive at a total of near 
 £29. The nominal wages of this man were 15s. a week. As a matter 
 of fact, working for forty-seven weeks out of the fifty-two, he made an 
 average of 17s. a week, and the entire earnings of his family between 
 Michaelmas 1876 and Michaelmas 1877 were £97 0s. 9^d. Mr. Clare 
 Sewell Read once remarked to the writer, that a fair day's work 
 secures its worth in money all England over. Mr. Little's opinion is 
 similar, for he says, " I shall content myself with the assertion that 
 as a rule the average amount of weekly wages paid in the country 
 may be taken as no very unfair index of the actual amount of work per- 
 formed by the average labourer of such districts. Whether the 
 nominal weekly wages are 13s. or 18s., the amount of actual labour 
 performed bears something like a relative proportion to these sums." 
 
 But it may be urged that since 1876, and even since 1877, there 
 has been a great decline in the rate of agricultural wages. It there- 
 fore occurred to the writer to endeavour to secure an exact return of 
 the wages paid in different parts of England to farm labourers during 
 the week ending February 1, 1879. This, by the kindness of a gentle- 
 man who has exceptional facilities for securing such information, he 
 was enabled to do. The question was put to more than sixty farmers 
 in various counties, " What weekly wages do you give this current 
 week to an ordinary farm labourer on your farm ? " The replies pro- 
 duced results which may be depended on as entirely trustworthy. 
 
 In the last week in January, 1879, it appears that the wages of an 
 ordinary agricultural labourer may be taken to have been, in Essex, 
 Suffolk, and Norfolk, 12s. to 13s. a week; in the counties of Hertford, 
 
 * In Northumberland the labourer generally has a cow kept for him by his employer, 
 at a charge of £8 a year. " As far," writes Mr. Little, "as the children of his house- 
 hold are concerned, he is, therefore, almost independent of supplies of animal food ; and 
 I cannot but attribute some of the tine physical powers of the northern race to the use 
 of this nourishing and strengthening diet."
 
 184 ENGLAND. 
 
 Bucks, Berks, and Oxford, 12s. to 14s. a week; in Cambridgeshire 
 13s. ; in the central counties, and from Bedfordshire northwards, at 
 13s. to 15s. ; and in Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire, 15s. ; in 
 Yorkshire it ranged from 15s. at the southern end to 16s., 17s., and 
 18s. proceeding northwards ; and in Durham the rate may be taken 
 as 19s. to 20s. ; and in Northumberland as 21s. a week. In Cumber- 
 land the rate was reported as 20s. a week, and immediately adjoining 
 to the haematite mines, 24s. both in Cumberland and Lancashire. In 
 the rest of Lancashire and in the manufacturing districts and near 
 large towns the rate varies very much according as the population is 
 more or less employed. In the agricultural parts of Cheshire the rate 
 was 15s. ; in Staffordshhe and Salop it was 14s. to 15s. ; in Worcester- 
 shire, 13s. to 14s. ; and in Herefordshire, 12s. a week. In Dorsetshire 
 and Wiltshire the rate may be taken as 12s. a week, and in some cases 
 lis.; in Somersetshire as 13s. to 14s.; and in Devonshire 12s. 
 Along the south coast, through Hants and Sussex, the rate was about 
 14s. ; in Kent it ranged from 14s. in the Weald to 17s. or 18s. near 
 Rochester and Sittingbourne. At the beginning of the current century 
 the wages paid for agricultural labour — supplemented, as we shall 
 presently see, very largely in every case out of the rates — was, on an 
 average, 9s. a week ; wheat being at £5 13s. 7d. a quarter — nine and 
 a half days' work representing the price of a bushel — and meat at 9d. 
 a pound. In 1878 the average wages have been calculated at 15s. ; 
 wheat being at £2 7s. a quarter, a bushel being earned by the 
 pecuniary yield of two and one-third days' work, and meat being at 
 6'i d. a pound. To this 15s. must be added, from what we have seen 
 ubove, the extra money earned during harvest-time, and allowances of 
 beer or milk. 
 
 Further, it must be remembered that although rents are higher, 
 all articles of food and clothing are very much cheaper than they 
 were forty years ago. Eradicate drunkenness, practically incul- 
 cate the virtue of thrift, encourage emigration, and the agricultural 
 labourer ought never to be upon the rates from the cradle to the 
 grave. On the whole, drunkenness is diminishing, while as for thrift, 
 there is reason to believe that it will come as education improves 
 :md prosperity grows. After all, want of thrift and increase in 
 expenditure on the material comforts of life are not the evils peculiar 
 to a class, but are common to the whole community ; and there is good 
 reason to doubt whether the agricultural labourer is relatively more 
 thriftless than tho artisan or the professional man. There is, indeed, 
 in his household more, perhaps, of deliberate waste and of prejudice 
 against economy than in the social level a little above him ; certainly 
 more reluctance to make experiments in new and economical foods ; 
 less dread than might be wished of an old age of pauperism, and of 
 dependence on the bounty of others. But then let us remember what
 
 THE WORKING CLASSES. 185 
 
 are the agencies and influences of which the agricultural labourer is 
 the outcome. It is not merely that his life in the south of England, 
 where he is simply for the most part the passive instrument of the 
 orders of the bailiff or the farmer, calls into play none of those 
 faculties, none of that nerve or power of mental initiative displayed 
 among the shepherds of the north, "the isolation of whose lives," 
 writes Mr. Little, " and the difficulties of whose calling, have so con- 
 tributed to thoughtfulness and reflection upon the matters which 
 concern their every-day life and the welfare of their charges, that it 
 would, perhaps, be difficult in any country to find a class possessed of 
 greater natural intelligence and sagacity." The agricultural labourer 
 generally throughout England is at the present day the victim of 
 vicious usages and legislation, which have made his comparative 
 degradation hereditary. Seventy or eighty years ago wages were, as 
 the above-quoted figures prove, generally low, the price of provisions 
 was high, the labour market was overstocked. The great wars from 
 which we were just emerging had dislocated and paralysed the entire 
 commercial and industrial system of the country, and the immense 
 majority of the labouring population could find employment only in 
 agriculture. The state of the agricultural community — itself the bulk 
 of the nation — bordered closely upon general starvation. The ex- 
 pedient was resorted to of giving relief to every English peasant out 
 of the rates, quite independently of his being in or out of work. 
 This was nothing less than a system of wholsale compulsory pauper- 
 ism, of direct discouragement to the virtues of prudence, thrift, self- 
 help. The revenues of entire parishes went to the relief of their 
 poor, and cases were not unknown in which the owners of estates 
 were without a shilling of their income, which was swallowed up in 
 this quicksand of debasing and mischievous expenditure. In 1834 
 came the new Poor Law, which created union districts, and gave a 
 direct motive to the collective inhabitants of the enlarged area, instead 
 of to the dwellers in a small village, to check the tendency towards 
 pauperism. Other causes, equally beneficent to the British peasantry, 
 were at work. Manufacturing and other industries became developed 
 in the south of England, as well as in the north, and the introduction 
 and extension of railways enabled the peasant to transfer his labour 
 from places where it was not wanted to markets in which a demand 
 for it existed. Still the improvement in the peasant's condition was 
 much more rapid in the north than in the south, and in Scotland 
 wages were 18s. and 20s. a week, long after they were not more than 
 10s. in Devonshire and in Dorsetshire. Yet agriculture in the south 
 was far from- stationary ; on the contrary, it was making marked 
 advances, and that wages did not rise in a corresponding manner is 
 only to be accounted for by the fact that in the south there was more 
 labour available, and that labour of a worse quality, than in the north.
 
 1 86 ENGLAND. 
 
 Up to this time the farmer had been absolutely master of the 
 situation. He regulated the rate of the daily wages of his labourers 
 by the price of wheat, with little or no reference to the prices of the 
 other necessaries of life. When, however, free trade had generally 
 reduced the price of wheat, this became impossible. Still, there was 
 no kind of organisation among the rural labourers of England, as 
 against their employers the farmers, which at all corresponded with 
 the unions that had grown up in urban industries. A great inno- 
 vation, however, in this respect "vas at hand. Founded in 1871, with 
 the avowed purpose of increasing wages, the Agricultural Labourers' 
 Union soon covered the entire country with its organisation.* It at 
 once sent up wages, but it also changed very generally the relations 
 between agricultural labourers and farmers. The years 1872, 1873, 
 and 1874 were a period of fierce struggle in the agricultural com- 
 munity, the last of these years being marked by the vigorous resist- 
 ance to the demands of the Union, which may be described as a great 
 machinery for the encouragement of strikes, in the east of England. 
 Yet, on the whole, the Agricultural Labourers' Union must be allowed 
 to have accomplished much of its programme. It has stimulated 
 emigration both to the colonies and to the manufacturing districts of 
 England, and it sent up wages in 1875 thirty percent. Co-operat- 
 ing and coinciding with the extension of cheap literature, the circu- 
 lation of newspapers, the growing contact between town and country, 
 the Union has generally stimulated the mental activity and perception 
 of the working man. It has not confronted us with any immediate 
 revolutionary perils, but it has left the labouring classes in rural 
 districts better able to take care of themselves than they were, and it 
 has done this because it has been only one of many movements of 
 the time towards the same goal. If it has diminished the willingness 
 of the labourers to place implicit and childlike confidence in the 
 justice and generosity of their employers, it can scarcely be said 
 permanently, or to any great degree, to have embittered the relations 
 of the two. It is not against the tenant farmers that the agricultural 
 labourers profess for the most part any grievance. In the west of 
 England, throughout those districts in which their social condition is 
 still deplorably bad, the cottages being little better than mud hovels, 
 and the filth and squalor indescribable, the admission is made by the 
 suffering peasants that the lowness of the wages is not the fault of 
 the farmers. " The landlords," is the burden of their conversation, 
 " are hard." 
 
 That there are obvious disadvantages connected with the Union 
 cannot be denied. Its political teachers often inculcate vicious and 
 
 * At the Trade Unions Congress last year the delegate of the Agricultural Labourers' 
 Union represented 20,000 members, and the delegate of the Labourers' Union 12,500 
 members.
 
 THE WORKING CLASSES. 187 
 
 unsound principles of economy — pretend, for instance, that the owners 
 and holders of land enjoy in the matter of taxation privileges denied to 
 manufacturers ; the truth being that the heaviest land-tax of all is paid 
 by the corn-producing counties of England, and the lightest by the 
 mineral and manufacturing districts of the north. It is urged, too, 
 tbat the Union has deteriorated the quality of the labourers' work. It 
 is certainly opposed to piece-work, which is the chief, perhaps the only 
 mode of raising inferior labour to a higher standard. By insisting on 
 a uniform rate of day-work and short hours it brings the best labourers 
 down to the lowest level. " Upon this farm," writes a well-known 
 agriculturist in an eastern county, " of 420 acres, I pay away annually 
 over £1,000 in manual labour, exclusive of the skilled labour employed 
 in steam-ploughing and threshing which I hire, and yet my work is 
 badly done, and also in arrear. I cannot get any piece-work done, 
 unless I happen to be on the spot, and coerce them into it, and even 
 then the work is scamped." 
 
 " The day has now come," writes Mr. Little, " when the labourer, 
 if he is to rise in the social scale, must look mainly to himself. If in 
 the dark days of the past the laws seemed against him, it is no longer 
 so. He is a free man, free from conscription or compulsory service 
 in the army, and the equal of those about him. Legislation has done 
 its best for him and his children. He is at liberty to move wherever 
 he can get the best return for his labour. He is practically the only 
 untaxed man in the community, since (except in the article of tea, on 
 which a small duty is still paid) he can, if he chooses, by abstinence 
 from those articles, avoid the imposts on beer, spirits, and tobacco." 
 An admirable and practically free education is granted to his children. 
 This education, when its effects have had time to make themselves 
 felt, will no doubt give us a new order of British peasantry. Nor is it 
 the only machinery at woi'k which is gradually improving his position 
 and extending the horizon of his views. While ploughing matches, 
 prizes for draining, hedging, ditching, stacking, and other operations 
 of husbandry, cottage-garden shows, and other institutions, tend to 
 make him a better labourer, the general influences of the time are all 
 in the direction of improvement. The agricultural labourer feels that 
 he, too, like his urban brother, is a man. He has acquired a con- 
 sciousness of power, a growing sense of enlightenment, a widening 
 perception of rights and duties, which may be used as powerful levers 
 for his future amelioration. Talk to the average country labourer to- 
 day, and you will find him no longer the dull, despondent being that 
 he was only a few years ago, the limits of his views and know- 
 ledge being the boundaries of his parish, or the field in which he 
 was plying his task. His senses have been quickened, his moral and 
 intellectual nature has been breathed upon with the breath of life."
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 PAUPERISM AND THRIFT. 
 
 General Appearance of the Workhouse and its Inmates — Paupers out tor a Walk — Com- 
 position of the Pauper Class — Tendency towards Pauperism not peculiar to the 
 Lower Orders — Out-door Relief — General View of Difficulties of its Administration 
 — Social and Moral Consequences of Out-door Relief — Out-door Relief and Pau- 
 perism — Remedies for Pauperism- — Effect of Out-door Relief upon Wages and 
 Character— The Poor Law and Socialism — Should the Workhouse Test he made 
 universal? — Antidotes to Pauperism: Voluntary Help and Friendly Societies — 
 Attitude and Duties of the State to Friendly Societies — Penny Banks — Further 
 Requirements for teaching Thrift — Co-operation. 
 
 Of the predisposing causes of pauperism something has been said in 
 the last chapter. Of its existence it is impossible to be long in any 
 great town, or indeed in any country district, without being forcibly 
 reminded. That gaunt, graceless, red-brick building yonder, with the 
 long narrow windows, placed in an enclosure of grass-plot, gravel-walk, 
 and flower-bed, is the new workhouse. Everything about it seems 
 to tell of leanness, depression, misery, and want. The walls are 
 naked ; the herbage is stunted ; the recently planted poplars and 
 other trees decline to thrive in so poverty-stricken a soil ; as for the 
 flower-beds, no seed has ever been sown in their mould, or, if sown, 
 has ever dared to put forth its tender sproutings, which tell of 
 coming bud and blossom. Inside this joyless edifice the guardians 
 are engaged in examining and adjudicating on the claims of the 
 needy throng whose members have just passed in through the iron 
 gates, to the relief that does not involve residence in the "house" 
 itself — relief consisting of three shillings a week, and three loaves of 
 bread ; or, if it be later in the day, the master and matron may be 
 passing in review before them the luckless tramps of both sexes who 
 have applied for a night's lodging in the casual ward. There are few 
 sadder sights than this muster, and it is conducted upon principles 
 which have about them painfully little of the associations of charity. 
 The authorities aforesaid commence their examination of the necessitous 
 applicants on the assumption that each one is an impostor, an habitual 
 tramp, who spends his or her life in travelling up and down the weary 
 roads, now begging and now stealing, as opportunity may offer. Hence 
 master and matron alike hesitate to admit that any particular face 
 which comes before them is new. They may ask the question, 
 " Where do you come from?" but they place evidently no faith in
 
 PAUPERISM AND THRIFT. 189 
 
 the answer; and there always comes the inquiry, " When were you 
 last here ? " Now in the majority of cases it may be admitted that the 
 official mind is right, and that the professional pauper who is also an 
 habitual tramp is not more honest than tbe obsolete highwayman. 
 On the other band, there are instances — and when the times are hard 
 these instances are not few — in which the industrious mechanic or 
 artisan, who has no funds to travel by railway, performs his journey 
 from one centre of industry to another on foot, and is compelled at 
 nightfall to betake himself to that shelter wbich is the common refuge 
 of the penniless. But there is no distinction of persons possible to 
 official eyes. Deserving and undeserving, the vicious, the drunken, 
 and dishonest, the sober, the unfortunate, and the industrious, are all 
 relegated to one category, all subjected to the same ordeal. The 
 internal discipline and management of workhouses vary, but in the 
 case of the greatest number the occupant of the casual ward has, during 
 his residence inside its walls, a rougher time than many a prisoner in 
 a convict gaol. 
 
 Who are the habitual inmates of this house, which has not, and 
 which ought not, perhaps, to have any of the comforts or suggestions 
 of home about it ? * If you were to spend a couple of hours under its 
 roof, you would find there men and women of all ages, and of condi- 
 tions of life originally widely apart. There, too, are children who have 
 only just come into the world, and whose mothers have fallen into 
 hopeless, helpless want, or into sin and shame, or into both simulta- 
 neously. Yet it is better for a boy or girl to look upon light first in 
 a workhouse than in one of the vile alleys or pestiferous slums which 
 are the nurseries of crime and criminals. The guardians will at least 
 not permit these waifs and strays of humanity to grow up absolutely 
 neglected and ignorant. Directly they can learn anything there is the 
 workhouse school, and as soon as their hands can hold any instrument 
 of industry, they are taught the rudiments of an occupation which may 
 help them to get an honest living. Contrast with the children the 
 group of men and women, most of them well stricken in years or pre- 
 maturely aged, weak and tottering, who have just shuffled out of the 
 workhouse yard. These are the resident paupers of the union, and 
 they have received permission to visit their friends and relatives in 
 the neighbourhood, not without a stringent word of warning against 
 mendicancy and intoxication. The true light in which to regard this 
 throng, whose members walk on by twos and threes, is as represent- 
 
 * At the census of 18S1 the pauper inmates of workhouses, including workhouse 
 infirmaries, the Metropolitan Asvlum hospitals and pauper schools were 179,620, again.st 
 148,291 in 1871, 125,722 in 1861, and 120,978 in 1851. The proportion of indoor 
 paupers to 100,000 of the population was 676 in 1851, 627 in 1861, 652 in 1871, and 
 692 in 1881. The increase in the number and proportion of indoor paupers was, the 
 Kegistrar-General points out, undoubtedly due in great measure to the action of Boards 
 of Guardians in applying the " house test."
 
 190 ENGLAND. 
 
 ing the failure of our civilisation. They ought to have saved a com- 
 petence, or to be supported by grateful children, or to be spending the 
 residue of their days in climes where the struggle for existence is less 
 keen than in England. At any rate they ought not to be here. Here, 
 however, they are, and here for some time yet to come they are likely 
 to continue a familiar and, to those who are alive to all that their 
 presence means, a melancholy sight. There is no mistaking their 
 identity. The men are clothed in a low felt hat, jacket and trousers 
 of fustian, or coat and trousers of brown cloth or velveteen, according 
 as it happens to be a week-day or a Sunday ; the women are conspi- 
 cuous by their uniform of coarse dark blue cotton dress, poke bonnet 
 of rough straw, and thin woollen shawl of shepherd's plaid thrown 
 across their shoulders. It is curious to observe how some of those 
 who had appeared the most hopelessly infirm before the workhouse 
 authorities and in the immediate precincts of the building, proceed 
 at a comparatively rapid rate, and assume naturally a more or less 
 agile manner, when these are out of sight. For the most part, how- 
 ever, the paupers of both sexes pick their way slowly, keeping their 
 eyes fixed on the ground, and walking as near the edge of the pavement 
 on the side of the gutter as possible, mumbling inarticulately the 
 while. There is a reason for this. There is not only the chance of 
 their finding an odd coin at their feet — you may see the men trailing 
 their sticks in the gutter itself to recognise by the sound the possible 
 piece of copper or silver — but it will be hard if they cannot find some 
 of the cigar-stumps and shreds of tobacco which they love, and from 
 the enjoyment of which they are not deterred by an admixture of niire 
 and filth. 
 
 Of this mixed band of dependents on the law-exacted charity of the 
 ratepayers, some have been gravitating more or less rapidly in the 
 direction of pauperism throughout their whole life. Educated in 
 squalor, in shiftlessness, in sin, accustomed from the first to regard 
 the " house " as the not illegitimate goal of existence, they have never 
 seriously struggled to avoid the necessity of entering it. They have 
 worked fitfully, intermittently, squandering their earnings on periodical 
 debauches at the beerhouse at frequent intervals. Sickness has come, 
 or they have been out of work, or they could not pay their rent, and 
 there were no friends to help them. First they have managed to 
 exist on the dole allowed them weekly by the guardians without 
 residing beneath the workhouse roof. But they have found infirmity 
 grow on them apace. Their sons, daughters, and kindred have closed 
 their doors against them, and the choice has been between the union 
 and absolute homelessness. Not unfrequently it happens that many 
 of the aged inmates of the workhouse have not only seen what are 
 conventionally known as better days, but have been nurtured in com- 
 fort and ease, in luxury and wealth.
 
 PAUPERISM AND THEIFT. 191 
 
 There are few villages in England in which families are not to be 
 found for whom the workhouse seems a bourne as inevitable as the 
 grave itself. When one enters a cottage, passively surrendered to 
 destitution, and notes how completely men, women, and children have 
 abandoned themselves to the paralysing influences of want; not hope- 
 less alone, but indifferent to any chance of amelioration ; sunk in a 
 stupor alike moral and physical ; ignorant whence the next mouthful 
 of bread is to come, and, as one may think, nearly as callous on the 
 subject as they are ignorant ; when one notes all this, one witnesses 
 the genuine material out of which paupers are made. Again, that 
 drink leads to beggary as well as to crime is a commonplace. It is 
 doubtless an exceedingly frequent cause of pauperism, but there is 
 another cause less specific and definite, but certainly not more rare. 
 In all grades of life one meets with people who, from their infancy 
 upwards, are impotent to help themselves. They are morally inverte- 
 brate — without energy, without spirit, without ambition. When such 
 persons are independent of their own exertions for the necessaries of 
 life no evil happens to them. But if a calamity comes, if the enter- 
 prise in which the capital on whose interest they live is embarked 
 collapses, they are altogether without resource. They become pen- 
 sioners on relatives or friends, if they have them, or they disappear 
 from view if they have not. Now this temperament is unhappily far 
 from unknown among the working classes. It is the baleful inheritance 
 of generations, and is perpetuated from father to son. These are the 
 drones of the hive. They are not the exclusive incumbrance of any 
 class ; they belong to all alike. The only difference is that in the 
 higher walks of life they are spoken of with contemptuous pity as 
 unlucky, and in the lower as paupers. 
 
 Thus, roughly speaking, pauperism consists of two sections, the 
 first composed of those who are paupers by no fault of their own ; 
 the second of those who have adopted pauperism as their vocation in 
 life, because Poor Law relief enables them to exist without working. 
 For the former, the Poor Law and the workhouse, if they are to enter 
 it, should be a relief and a refuge, for the latter it ought to be a punish- 
 ment. Hence the severe regimen of work and discipline enforced in 
 many unions — a regimen perfectly just in the case of sturdy tramps, 
 but painfully harsh in the case of those who have been dragged down 
 by a destiny which they could not resist. Before pauperism became 
 the subject of legislation by the State, there existed in those doles and 
 charities, which represented the munificence of previous generations, 
 the means of relieving the more deserving members of the pauper 
 class. Gradually these endowments became a machinery for dissemi- 
 nating pauperism among the working classes. Hundreds of men and 
 women were drawn from the paths of honest labour by their partici- 
 pation in the almsgiving. It was the development of the habitual
 
 192 ENGLAND. 
 
 pauper class, those who steadily refused to work for their living, 
 which rendered a Poor Law necessary, and which naturally gave to 
 such a measure much of its disciplinary and punitive character. Pro- 
 vision for the meritorious and helpless poor was a secondary purpose 
 of this Poor Law, and it is the fusion of two purposes in one system 
 which creates an anomaly and a hardship. Our method of dealing 
 with the exceedingly complex aggregate of pauperism can scarcely be 
 satisfactory so long as the workhouse is at once a place of punishment 
 for hardened and wilful paupers, and an almshouse and infirmary for 
 the old, the sick, the infirm, or the victims of sudden and unavoidable 
 calamities. The problem to be solved, and which as yet has defied 
 solution, is how, while not refusing relief which is at once Christian 
 and economical for those who really want and deserve it, we may 
 stamp out the pauperism which is preventable, and, therefore, so far 
 morally criminal. 
 
 One of the questions that chiefly engages the attention of Boards of 
 Guardians has been indicated in a previous chapter — whether resi- 
 dence in the workhouse shall or shall not be the condition of relief 
 from the rates.*' We will now proceed to examine the reasons that 
 may influence our guardians in the decision at which, on this matter, 
 they may arrive. In other words, we have to confront the whole 
 momentous problem of the expediency or inexpediency of out-door 
 relief. On the first view of the matter it may seem impossible to refuse 
 assent to the proposition that it is at once more merciful and more 
 economical to subsidise a household with a few shillings a week, 
 enabling the family with the aid thus granted to hold itself together, 
 and to keep a roof above its head, than peremptorily to destroy this little 
 centre of domestic life, and to insist upon supporting those who belong 
 to it at the expense of the ratepayers. When Christian charity and 
 worldly wisdom point unmistakably the same way, what need, it may 
 be asked, or what excuse can there be for hesitation ? If humanity is 
 a virtue that resides in the hearts of Boards of Guardians, why should 
 they doubt for a moment which of the alternatives — on the one hand 
 the destruction of a home at a large expense, on the other, its preser- 
 vation at a smaller — they are bound to adopt ? But the fact remains 
 that guardians do hesitate very much indeed in this matter, and that 
 there is a gradually growing belief among men that of the alternatives 
 just specified it is on the whole better to choose the more drastic and 
 the less apparently humane. Unless, therefore, we are prepared to 
 contend that there is something in the office of a guardian which 
 poisons the stream of humanity at its source, we must admit that 
 there arc probably good and sufficient reasons for a hesitation which 
 is prima facie inexplicable. 
 
 H it could be ensured tbat out-door relief was only given for the 
 
 * Chapter iv.
 
 PAUPERISM AND THRIFT. 19 
 
 o 
 
 succour of the severest want or of absolute destitution, in cases -where 
 destitution and want were, humanly speaking, not preventible — were 
 the results of continued illness, death, or some other desolating calamity 
 — though all grounds of objection to it would not be removed, the 
 system would not be as severely attacked as it now is. When out- 
 door relief is given, it must necessarily be given to the undeserving 
 as well as to the deserving, to tbose who are beggared by thoughtless- 
 ness, improvidence, drunkenness, as well as to tbose who have fallen 
 victims to relentless and unavoidable fate. Theoretically, the line 
 might be drawn by adequate investigation. Practically, the scrutiny 
 is not only extremely difficult, but is seldom insisted on. There are 
 three authorities concerned in the inquiry : the relieving officer, the 
 medical officer, and the guardians. The first of these is charged with 
 a multiplicity of duties, which prevent him from acquainting himself 
 with the details of the different cases which come before him. " With 
 perhaps several hundred persons," remarks Professor Bryce in a 
 paper read at the Northampton Poor-Law Conference, January, 1876, 
 " receiving weekly payments, and new applications continually arriv- 
 ing, he has no time to inquire particularly into the character or 
 resources of the applicants, what relatives they have, whether they 
 are secretly receiving aid from some other quarter, whether they keep 
 their houses in a healthy state, whether they send their children to 
 school." The doctor is frequently deceived, and, indeed, self-interest 
 may naturally prompt him to be " a little blind." " The guardians, 
 however fervent their zeal, have generally no means of ascertaining 
 for themselves what the circumstances of the pauper are. If one 
 member advocates the claim of some pauper from his own neigh- 
 bourhood, the rest are disposed to accede, and thus a bad example 
 is often set. Now," continues Professor Bryce, " a close personal 
 scrutiny, such as is given in Elberfield or Boston, is more efficient 
 and more just than the rough-and-ready application of the workhouse 
 test. But that test is far better than such inquiries as our Boards 
 can commonly make." 
 
 If we say that there is a total of 800,000 paupers in England and 
 Wales, representing one in thirty-four, or rather less than three per 
 cent, of the population, we shall not be far wrong. Of these 75,000, 
 exclusive of those who are not able-bodied or are insane, are in receipt 
 of out-door relief. The cost represented by the aggregate of the entire 
 pauperism of England and Wales was, in 1883, £8,353,000, that by 
 those who are not in the workhouse but are upon the rates, £975,000. 
 What does this mean for the social and moral welfare of the country ? 
 What is the commentary which these facts and figures constitute upon 
 the condition of the wages-earning class ? 
 
 Before we address ourselves to the general question of poor relief, 
 it will be advisable to say a few more words on the particular depart-
 
 194 ENGLAND. 
 
 ment of it represented by the out-door system. A guardian, let it be 
 supposed, honestly entertains the opinion that out-door relief has the 
 superior economical advantages which on the first blush of the matter 
 would certainly seem natural to it, and that such relief reaches dis- 
 tress which, were it not for that beneficent agency, would remain 
 uncared for. The cost of each family in the workhouse is, he will 
 compute, ten shillings a week ; outside the workhouse the cost is only 
 five shillings. Here, then, he may argue, is a clear gain to the rates, 
 in other words, to the community, of more than fifty per cent. But 
 experience proves this sort of reasoning to be fallacious. The 
 guardian who is opposed to out-door relief in all cases says with 
 unanswerable force that the universal compulsory application of the 
 workhouse test stimulates the poor to exertion and self-help, keeps 
 them clear of the degradation of pauperism, and is as economically 
 effective as it is morally salutary, while experience shows that the 
 offer of relief in the workhouse is refused in nine cases out of ten. 
 On the other hand, he observes, many of the labouring classes to 
 whom the stigma of pauperism is intolerable, when emphasised by 
 residence in the workhouse, are unreluctant and successful applicants 
 for out-door relief. Mr. Doyle, in one of his Poor-Law Reports, 
 draws attention to the fact that of 647 applicants for out-door relief 
 only twenty-seven accepted the condition of workhouse residence, 
 from which it may be inferred that there cannot have been bona fide 
 distress in all the cases. Not less significant is the circumstance that 
 in Whitechapel weekly out-door relief was reduced in about five years 
 from 2,55G to 209, or that in St. George's-in-the-East the rate has 
 fallen from 1,200 to 85. It is impossible to suppose that these 
 statistics merely indicate a suppression or concealment of pauperism 
 impotent to relieve itself, and that however the figures may have 
 changed, the facts remain the same, the total of misery and suffering 
 just as real and hopeless. The answer to such an assumption is that 
 the cry of suffering hundreds, if ignored by the guardians, would compel 
 a hearing from the public. Of course the reduction of pauperism has 
 not been and cannot be accomplished without special provisions and 
 much expenditure of personal trouble. First, each relieving officer 
 must have, as he has had in the two parishes just named, a district 
 whose limits will enable him to learn whatever can be learned about 
 the applicants for out-door relief. Secondly, the children of widows, 
 who form thirty-three per cent, of the metropolitan paupers, must be 
 taken into district schools, a practice which has been followed out 
 upon a large scale in Whitechapel and St. George's-in-the-East. 
 Thirdly, there must be close and systematic co-operation with such 
 institutions as the Charity Organisation Society, societies for the 
 formation of shoe-black brigades, emigration societies, and other such 
 associations. If it is asked what is to be done when the workhouse
 
 PAUPERISM AND THRIFT. 195 
 
 is made the condition of the receipt of relief, and the needy applicants 
 decline it, alleging that they would rather starve in the street, the 
 answer may be given in the words of the Rev. S. A. Barnett, a 
 clergyman of great experience at the East End of London, who says 
 that they will not refuse when they know that without the workhouse 
 no relief is possible. If, again, it is objected that the workhouse test 
 involves a violent and unnatural separation between children and 
 parents, the answer is that the children will be better attended to in 
 the workhouse and district school than in a squalid and destitute 
 home. 
 
 Now, if it can be shown, as the facts just enumerated certainly 
 seem to show, that out-door relief has a tendency to act as a premium 
 on pauperism, and as a discouragement to thrift, exertion, and inde- 
 pendence of character, it follows that whatever objections can be 
 urged against a Poor Law — against, that is, the relief of the indigent 
 and destitute out of contributions to the State made by those who are 
 comparatively well-to-do — can be urged with additional force against 
 the practice of out-door relief. Another appeal may be made to the 
 experience of the East End of London in support of this view. So 
 long as the East End widows were subsidised by payments from the 
 rates they were able to compete with the seamstresses on terms 
 advantageous in a certain miserable way to themselves, but absolutely 
 ruinous to the professional needlewoman. Since out-door relief has 
 become the rare exception, the wages of the class for whom Hood 
 evoked so precious a stream of sympathy by the " Song of the Shirt," 
 have materially increased. This suggests a law of universal applica- 
 tion. Successive reports of the Local Government Board show that 
 " relief in aid of wages" exposes the independent few to an unfair 
 competition in the labour market from those who, relying for part of 
 their support on the poor-rate, can afford to sell their labour at a 
 lower price. Now, as Mr. J. R. Pretyman, in an able and compre- 
 hensive treatise on the whole subject, under the title of " Dispau- 
 perisation," shows, this is what mathematically, and on a priori 
 grounds we might expect. " If wages were left to be regulated wholly 
 by an adjustment between the wants of the wages-giver and the 
 wants of the wages-taker, with no element like that of poor-rates or 
 other taxation to disturb the transaction, wages would naturally be the 
 higher. Agricultural labourers, in particular, cannot fairly expect that 
 their wages should be as high as they might be if there were no poor- 
 rates, since land, out of which both their wages and these rates are 
 paid, can only bear a certain amount of charges, and has to remunerate 
 three parties — the owner, the occupier, and the labourers upon it. 
 Now, the owner on the average obtains no greater interest on the 
 value of his land than from two to three per cent. — that is, not more 
 than he could obtain by investment in the public funds. The occupier 
 
 o 2
 
 196 ENGLAND. 
 
 makes no more than the ordinary mercantile profit on the capital and 
 skill which he employs in agriculture ; indeed, it would seem that 
 his gains are less than those of successful trade, for seldom in com- 
 parison is a rich farmer to be found, and seldom in probates of wills 
 is the estate of a farmer ' sworn under ' amounts such as those for 
 which the estates of merchants and other tradesmen weekly figure in 
 the newspapers. There remains a third portion of the proceeds of 
 land, and from this portion come wages and poor-rates. If, therefore, 
 the landowner is to have his moderate interest, and the occupier his 
 fair profit, all that is paid from the land in poor-rates will be in 
 diminution of what is paid in wages. What is plus in rates will be 
 minus in wages." * 
 
 Nor is what may be called the a posteriori evidence on this point 
 less conclusive. Reliance on the poor-rates operates in much the same 
 way with the working classes as reliance upon the indulgence of a 
 wealthy father does with a spendthrift son. It is very well to dilate 
 upon the humiliation of dependence upon the rates to a day labourer, 
 to urge him to contribute to a friendly society, so that he may be able 
 to walk erect before his fellows with the proud consciousness of being 
 a self-supporting institution. But these arguments are deficient in 
 practical cogency, and the reply of the sturdy son of toil to these 
 counsels is too often virtually identical with the remark which Sir 
 Stafford Northcote once placed in the lips of the habitual pauper, that 
 " there can be no friendly society so good as that into which you put 
 nothing and take out everything" — the rates. Education, political 
 knowledge, and other salutary agencies may modify the views prevail- 
 ing among the working classes on these matters. At the present 
 moment the possibility of relief from the rates, and especially of out- 
 door relief, enters as much into the calculation of thousands of English 
 labourers who are about to marry, or, for the matter of that, about to 
 get drunk, as would the possession of a series of good investments in 
 railway- stock to the professional man who was making his future 
 arrangements. Anticipatory reliance on the poor-rates acts as a stimu- 
 lant to illicit intercourse and to early and improvident marriages. 
 Pauperism begets pauperism as surely as crime and drink make 
 criminals and drunkards. A new generation of paupers is thus ever 
 springing up. The influence which reduces the rate of wages con- 
 tinues, the demand for the necessaries of life increases, and their cost 
 is raised. Wages are not only kept down, but the purchasing power 
 of wages is steadily lessened. These facts will sooner or later be 
 clear to the working classes themselves. " I have reason," said Mr. 
 George Houlton, himself a guardian, speaking at a Poor-Law Con- 
 ference a few years ago, " to believe that some of the best men 
 who have emigrated from North Lincolnshire have done so from a 
 
 * " Dispauperisation," pp. 27, 28.
 
 PAUPERISM AND THRIFT. 197 
 
 determination to separate themselves from a burden consequent on 
 the administration of the Poor Laws, rather than for any dissatisfac- 
 tion on the labour question. One of the best men, who had not less 
 than 3s. a day all last winter, left me in the spring, and told me he 
 was determined to leave a country where the law compelled men will- 
 ing to work to maintain those who could but would not do so." The 
 relations between the poor-rates and labour wages are not now so 
 scandalous as they were before the Poor Law Act of 1834. The 
 report of the Commission which preceded that measure made it abun- 
 dantly clear, first, that the pressure of the poor-rates threw a great 
 deal of land out of cultivation — in one instance, that of the parish of 
 Lenham, in Kent, the poor-rate on 420 acres of land amounting to 
 £'300 a-year ; secondly, that the reduction of poor-rates at once 
 leads to the raising of wages. But the principle remains the same 
 now as it was half a century ago. 
 
 Facts are only too plentiful to show the systematic manner in 
 which, to the ruin of their own independence and the jeopardy of the 
 finer and tenderer feelings implanted in them by nature, the working- 
 classes trade upon the existing provision for poor-relief. The Rev. 
 George Portal, of Burghclere, Hants, told his hearers at a recent 
 Poor-Law Conference of a particularly acute and audacious tramp, 
 who, on finding himself in a casual ward, at once insisted on having 
 a warm bath. He was refused. " Refer," was his immediate com- 
 ment on the refusal, "to Consolidated Order So-and-So, and you will 
 see I must have my hot- water bath. Give me your name, please ; I 
 shall write to the Local Government Board." If the tramp was 
 within his legal right, no blame, it may be said, can attach to him 
 for enforcing it. But the same astute spirit is often exhibited in an 
 attempt not to enforce the law but to evade it. In a large percentage 
 of applications made by women for out- door relief the women are 
 deserted wives. Now the reports teem with proofs that very often 
 the alleged desertion is an act of collusion between wife and hus- 
 band. Take the following, which is quoted by Mr. Pretyman from 
 Mr. Wodehouse's report for 1871-2 : " At Plymouth, where deserted 
 wives are as a rule given out-relief, one of the relieving officers 
 informed me that he had found cases in which a wife had for several 
 weeks been receiving relief while her husband had never been out of 
 town, and many other cases in which the wife, whilst in receipt of 
 relief, has been receiving remittances from her husband. Such re- 
 mittances are very easily made without the knowledge of the 
 relieving officer." The door is open to a host of frauds of this 
 description, and lax administration constitutes a direct inducement 
 not only to unthrift and idleness, but to deceit, trickery, and im- 
 posture. It is an equally repulsive and indisputable feature in the 
 system that it weakens the ties of natural duty, destroys the sense of
 
 198 ENGLAND. 
 
 mutual responsibility among the members of a common household, at 
 the same time that it degrades, brutalises, and hardens. " The 
 burden," says Dr. Magee, Bishop of Peterborough, at the North 
 Midland Poor-Law Conference, held in 1875, " of maintaining an 
 aged parent or a sick parent is resented by children, who return to 
 the supplication for help, the answer, ' Go upon the rates.' ' Dr. 
 Magee might have added, what the Rev. S. A. Barnett subsequently 
 pointed out, that nowhere is filial affection stronger than among 
 Dr. Magee's countrymen, in Ireland, where relief is scarce. Mr. 
 Pretyman cites another illustration of this spirit from the Report 
 of the Poor-Law Inspectors to the Local Government Board for 
 1874-5 :— 
 
 " ' On the day on which I attended a meeting of the guardians of 
 the West Firle Union, an application was made under the following, 
 circumstances. The family desiring relief consisted of the following : 
 an old man, aged G7, confessedly past work ; his wife, ten years 
 younger, earned 4s. a week ; an unmarried son, aged 23, living with 
 his parents and earning 13s. 6d. a week ; another son, aged 17, also 
 living in the (parents') house, and earning 10s. a week ; two children 
 under eight years of age. It appeared to me,' continues the 
 Inspector, 'to be a case in which the workhouse ought to be offered, 
 iind that in the case of its being accepted, legal proceedings ought to 
 have been taken against the eldest son. The guardians, however, 
 granted a weekly allowance of 2s. and two gallons of flour. I was 
 surprised to find that in several other unions the guardians informed 
 me that if a similar case was brought before them, they would not be 
 unwilling to grant out-relief.' Such is the Inspector's statement; 
 upon which it may be observed that had legal proceedings been taken 
 against the eldest son, who was living with his parents, and receiving 
 13s. Gd. a week, he might have defeated the purpose of those pro- 
 ceedings by marrying, and pleading his inability to aid in the main- 
 tenance of his parents." * 
 
 To a similar effect is the testimony of Canon Willes. " I know that 
 in many cases people have looked with astonishment, as if they were 
 injured, by being called upon to support those who had given them 
 birth. It was brought to my notice the other day that in one of our 
 hirge manufacturing towns there is actually an association formed 
 for bringing about a repeal of the law which ' most unjustly and 
 cruelly,' as they allege, calls upon children to support their parents." 
 The Scotch Poor Law was introduced in 1845. How has it worked ? 
 " A peasantry," says Mr. McNeil Caird, "who in my recollection 
 were sensitive in the highest degree that any of their kindred had 
 received parish relief, now too often claim it with eagerness if given 
 in moDey, though they still look upon the poor-house as degrading. ' 
 
 * " Dispauperisation," pp. 48, 49.
 
 PAUPERISM AND THRIFT. 199 
 
 "The change," says a former overseer of an East London parish, 
 " that is made in the character and habits of the poor by once 
 receiving parochial relief is quite remarkable. They are demoralised 
 ever afterwards." Now it would seem as if this demoralisation had 
 a tendency to be hereditary. " The regular applicants for relief are 
 generally of one family. The disease is handed down from father to 
 
 son Whether in work or out of work, when they once 
 
 become paupers, it can only be by a sort of miracle that they can 
 be broken off." 
 
 The tendency, then, of the present Poor Law, both in its actual 
 operation, and in the opinion of experienced judges, is the reverse 
 of beneficial. It is inevitable, but it is inevitable as an evil, not as 
 a good. On the other hand, there are some who argue that the Poor 
 Law has distinct social and political advantages. " We believe," writes 
 the Spectator, for instance, " that the secret of the comparative placa- 
 bility of the English peasantry, and the little success that socialism of 
 any formidable type has attained among them, is that the Poor Law 
 has kept absolute starvation at least from the door of the poorest class, 
 and has prevented the kind of scenes and the kind of sufferings which 
 make the life of the poor one long dread of famine, and transform 
 humility into hate." It is admitted by those who think in this way 
 that the Poor Law is a concession to socialistic feeling, but it is urged 
 that its influence in bridging over the gulf that separates class from . 
 class, and in creating a mutual sentiment of charity and good will, 
 must more than neutralise any of the politically perilous views which 
 it may seem to sanction. But how if for the mechanical charity of 
 the State there should be substituted the living charity of the individual? 
 How if in the place of compulsory relief — in other words, of contribu- 
 tions which, in the shape of rates, cause the moderately well-to-do to 
 divest themselves of any responsibility for the poor — there could be an 
 organised system of voluntary assistance ? With the great bulk of the 
 people it cannot be supposed that a Poor Law is an effective instrument 
 for eliciting a sentiment of Christian charity and benevolence. Its in- 
 fluence, indeed, upon the human mind will at best be found like that of 
 a snow house, which sometimes succeeds in raising the temperature up 
 to zero. The ordinary British ratepayer is certainly disposed to feel 
 that he compounds for the charity of primitive times by a lump sum 
 under the heading of rates. 
 
 But whether the principle of a Poor Law be inherently mischievous, 
 as most, or inherently salutary, as a very few believe, it is not likely 
 that we shall hear of any proposal for its abolition, or that we shall 
 find the imperial legislature issuing any absolute prohibition of the 
 system of out-door relief. As regards the latter, there is an over- 
 whelming preponderance of actual testimony and of skilled opinion 
 against it. Its discontinuance has, wherever it has been attempted,
 
 203 ENGLAND. 
 
 been followed by an immense decrease in the annual rate of pauperism, 
 and in process of time there does not seem any reason why, assuming 
 that the remedial agencies of pauperism are properly developed, out- 
 door relief should not become a dead letter. At present its summary 
 stoppage would involve a serious blow to popular feeling in every 
 district, and, for a reason suggested by Mr. Stansfeld, might even prove 
 inexpedient. " Once," says this gentleman, " make the workhouse test 
 universal, and you will have the masses accepting it as a matter of 
 course. It is only the circumstance that under the existing system there 
 is a distinction between kinds of pauperism, making the ' house ' the 
 badge of the most hopeless pauperism, which causes so many to shun 
 it and keep out of it." As matters are, so runs Mr. Stansfeld's argu- 
 ment, " people make an attempt to get out-door relief. If they succeed, 
 well and good; if they fail, they hesitate before they find an asylum 
 in the ' house,' " for the simple reason that such an asylum is an accept- 
 ance of an alternative which the world stigmatises as humiliating. It 
 will be seen that this opinion of Mr. Stansfeld presupposes that the 
 Poor Law is satisfactorily and strictly administered by the guardians. 
 It is the lax administration of the law, the negligence of the guardians 
 themselves and their officers, which aggravates all the costs of out-door 
 relief. It is noticeable that some of the most uncompromising oppo- 
 nents of out-door relief, if not converted by the success of the Elberfield 
 experiment to a belief in its efficacy, have confessed that the workhouse 
 test can, where there is a rigid system of personal supervision and the 
 merits of every case are thoroughly sifted, be dispensed with, very 
 greatly to the public gain. 
 
 The two chief antidotes to pauperism are the organisation of volun- 
 tary help and the organisation of thrift. The former movement has 
 resulted in the establishment of Bureaux de Bienfaisance abroad, in 
 France, Germany, and in other countries where no Poor Law exists. 
 The latter is embodied in England in the various friendly and provident 
 societies. The one represents the principlo of help and dependence ; 
 the other, that of self-help and independence. So far as the Continen- 
 tal Ihinait.r de llienfttisance are concerned, their action seems to be 
 identical with that of the Poor Law itself. If the Poor Law dis- 
 courages thrift, and is not favourable to provident societies, so also are 
 the Bureaux. " Though provident societies," writes Sir Henry Barron, 
 the English Secretary of Legation at Brussels, " are making progress 
 in Belgium, it is found very difficult to induce Belgian workmen to lay 
 by a sum for the future, so long as the Bureaux de Bienfaisance. offers a 
 certain provision for old age." "It is found," we read in the con- 
 sular reports from Copenhagen, " that pauperism increases in proportion 
 to funds provided for its relief, and tho richest provinces have most 
 paupers." 
 
 It is calculated that the friendly societies save the ratepayers of the
 
 PAUPERISM AND THRIFT. 2(jl 
 
 United Kingdom at least two million pounds sterling a year. These 
 friendly societies are the clubs of the villages, having their periodical 
 audits and their annual festivals. They are to the English working classes 
 in town and country what life and accidental assurance societies are to 
 the middle class. But they are more than this. In addition to the 
 occasional assurance of annuities for life, or payment of a lump sum 
 at death, they guarantee also the payment of a fixed periodical sum in 
 illness. A new element thus enters into the calculation of the actuaries 
 who regulate the proportion of premium to policy. Not only the chances 
 of death, but of disease or mishap incapacitating for work, have to be 
 estimated, and unless the rates of contributions are based upon sound 
 calculation the society is doomed to insolvency. It is a further 
 necessity that the funds of these associations should be judiciously 
 and remuneratively invested. The great life assurance societies of 
 London would not be so prosperous as some of them are if their 
 money was put out in the Post Office Savings Bank at 2^ per cent., or 
 even in Consols at 3. Every halfpenny must in fact be productive. 
 As a check upon such expenditure or investment, there must be 
 periodical valuation and examination by an actuary into the position 
 of the society. The Friendly Societies Act of 1875 has made this 
 valuation obligatory every five years. The same measure has also 
 empowered the Government to appoint public accountants and actuaries 
 to audit accounts, as well as to value the assets of these societies. 
 Unfortunately they are allowed to select their own auditors and 
 valuers, and this privilege may be, and sometimes is, so exercised as to 
 rob the quinquennial valuation of its virtue. 
 
 The late Mr. Macdonald, the first special parliamentary represen- 
 tative of the wages-earning class, gave it as his opinion that " friendly 
 societies may be of great use in teaching the people to dispense with 
 the Poor Law." It is not long ago that some Somersetshire coal- 
 miners, when urged to join a club, refused because they " preferred 
 the parish pay." If the alternative of membership of a friendly 
 society had not been parish pay, but the " house," there is little doubt 
 which would have been selected, and that the ratepayers would have 
 been spared the burden which the west-country colliers determined 
 deliberately to impose on them. Just as it is the business of the 
 State to offer every inducement it can, without undue interference 
 with individual freedom, to the working classes to join these societies, 
 and thus at the same time that it inculcates the virtue of prudence, to 
 do what will almost certainly have the effect of reducing the pressure 
 of the rates, so may the employers of labour be expected to co-operate 
 in this matter with the State. In Germany insurance against sickness 
 is compulsory on all persons employed in factories, mines, and the 
 like, the workpeople paying two-thirds and the employer one-third of 
 the premiums, while the employer is responsible for the whole. In
 
 202 ENGLAND. 
 
 Austria large employers are required to create an assistance fund for 
 their workmen, and in England many employers have done this of 
 their own accord. The London and South- Western Railway Com- 
 pany has established a friendly society to give relief in cases of sick- 
 ness or death which counts several thousand members. The same 
 principle may be seen actively recognised and operative in certain 
 departments of professional life. There are pension funds for the 
 Indian military and civil services, to which it is compulsory to con- 
 tribute. Why, then, it may be asked, should it not be compulsory for 
 the working classes to contribute to friendly societies ? Why should 
 not the employer make membership of one of these associations a 
 condition of entering his service ? In the first place, no employer 
 would consent to do anything of the kind. If he were to pledge him- 
 self to such a principle, or to act on it, he would infallibly find that 
 he was left in the lurch, and caused serious loss and inconvenience at 
 some critical stage in the competition for labour. In the second place, 
 were the State to insist upon such a condition as has been suggestel, 
 it would manifestly be necessary also for the State to guarantee the 
 solvency of the society. In the third place, if the State were to carry 
 its prerogatives thus far, it would be an encroachment upon the 
 sensitive spirit of English liberty but little acceptable to the English 
 character, and calculated to promote an attitude of passive dependence 
 on the State, entirely antagonistic to the idea of self-help. 
 
 It has before now been suggested that the responsibility of protect- 
 ing the members of friendly societies should rest with the guardians 
 of the poor. The proposal is open to the same objection as that of 
 the State guarantee, and to additional objections also. It is true that 
 to some extent the purpose, and to a great extent the effect, of these 
 associations is to make their members independent of the rates. -But 
 it is quite certain that the patronage of the Poor Law would deter 
 many working men with an independent spirit from joining them, and 
 would degrade them to the resort of a pauperised residuum. 
 
 The attitude of the State towards friendly societies, indeed, supplies 
 a curious exception to that active interference which has become the 
 rule in many other cases of scarcely greater moment and urgency. 
 During nearly a century Parliament has been more or less constantly 
 making and unmaking laws about them, and has on the whole passed 
 or repealed upwards of a score of measures directly affecting their 
 constitution and interests. In the same period, too, their condition 
 and prospects have been the frequent subjects of public investigation, 
 and have from time to time engaged the attention of no fewer than 
 five select committees — four of the House of Commons and one ot 
 the House of Lords — and of a Royal Commission whose researches 
 were prosecuted continuously from 1870 to 1874, and whose volu- 
 minous reports, occupying over a dozen large Blue Books, furnished
 
 PAUPERISM AND THrJFT. 203 
 
 the foundation for the consolidating and amending statutes of 1875 
 and 1876. But in spite of all this inquiry and legislation, the actual 
 status of friendly societies has been practically very little changed. 
 
 It is probable that the modern friendly societies are tbe descendants, 
 as well as the representatives, of tbe mediaaval guilds. The appearance 
 of the one, and the disappearance of the other, may both be referred 
 to the earlier half of the seventeenth century. The records of tbe last 
 guild can be traced down to 1628, and the records of the first friendly 
 society can be traced up to 1634.* Of existing friendly societies there 
 are still some which were established close on two hundred years ago, 
 while tbere are many, including tbe great and widespreading organisa- 
 tions of tbe Oddfellows and the Foresters, which are a good deal more 
 than a hundred years old. Originating entirely in voluntary effort, 
 and founded on the primary civil right of private association for lawful 
 purposes, it is only accidentally, so to speak, that they have been made 
 tbe objects of statutory regulation and official supervision. Hence the 
 essentially persuasive nature of tbe treatment which they have for the 
 most part experienced at the hands of the Legislature, and the delibe- 
 rately permissive character of the administrative regime which has 
 been devised for their welfare, and is now in operation on their 
 behalf. As long ago as 1793 their antecedent legality and prospective 
 advantages were formally recognised in what is commonly called 
 " Rose's Act," and their protection and encouragement were declared 
 to be matters of national concern and solicitude. f Under that statute 
 
 * See Brabrooke's " Law relating to Friendly Societies." 
 
 t The prejudices against which the friendly societies had to contend in the earlier 
 period of their history are expressed with his usual vigour by William Cobbett, in one 
 of his papers in Twopenny Trash. It is entitled, " To the Labourers — On the Foil}' of 
 their putting their money into Clubs." "It is the general practice of those who invent 
 something to delude and cheat other people," Cobbett says, " to give a good name to 
 the thing which they invent, and accordingly those who have invented this scheme 
 for inducing you to give up your earnings to prevent them from paying poor-rates 
 have christened these clubs ' Benefit Clubs,' instead of calling them, as they ought to 
 have done, clubs to wheedle money out of the hard-earned pence of the working people, 
 in order to spare the purses of the landowners, big farmers, and other rich men.'' 
 He adds that " every penny that a labouring man pays into these clubs is a penny- 
 given to the rich, and besides that it is a penny given to uphold Stnrges Bourne's 
 bills, and to pay hired overseers, and, in short, to pay for causing himself and his 
 neighbours to be put into harness and to be made to draw carts and waggons like 
 beasts of burden. If you could have any doubt in your minds about the tendency of 
 these clubs you would only have to look at the persons who are most eager to pro- 
 mote such clubs, and to uphold them and perpetuate them. There was a fellow, some 
 years ago, a Scotch fellow, named Old George Rose, who had been a purser in the 
 navy, who was a famous tool of the famous Mr. Pitt. From a purser he became a 
 right honourable Privy Councillor ; he received for many years not less than ten 
 thousand pounds a year of the public money; he got a sinecure place settled upon 
 him for life of three thousand pounds a year, and settled upon his son, George Rose, 
 for his life also. This man became, about forty years ago, the great promoter of 
 benefit clubs. He lived at Cufnells, in the New Forest, in Hampshire. He was him- 
 self a member of a club there ; he used punctually to pay his pennies; he used to dine 
 with the club, and thus he drew in, thus this cunning Scotchman humbugged all
 
 204 ENGLAND. 
 
 any number of persons were empowered to join together for the pur- 
 pose of providing, by means of contribution or subscription, a fund for 
 their mutual relief and maintenance in sickness and old age, or in the 
 event of their decease, for the succour and support of their widows 
 and families. Authority was given to a committee of every such 
 association to frame rules for its governance, which, after they had 
 been accepted by a majority of the members, were submitted to the 
 magistrates in quarter sessions, by whom, if they were found to be 
 conformable to the law of the land and the true intent and meaning of 
 tbe Act, they were confirmed, and after being enrolled by the clerk of 
 the peace, became binding on the whole body of contributors or sub- 
 scribers. On this basis the process of establishing and registering 
 friendly societies continued, with little or no material alteration, until 
 1829, when the first step was taken by Parliament towards the intro- 
 duction of a system of central control, in the place of the system of 
 local control to which they had been originally subjected. By a 
 statute of the previous year it had been provided that the rules of 
 savings banks, which since 1817 had been legislatively dealt with on 
 terms similar to those applicable to the rules of friendly societies, 
 should, before they were confirmed by quarter sessions and enrolled 
 by the clerks, of the peace, be certified by a barrister appointed for the 
 purpose by the Commissioners for the Reduction of the National Debt. 
 It was now provided that the rules of friendly societies should be 
 authenticated in the same way and by. the same official. But they had 
 still in the last resort to be confirmed by the magistrates and enrolled 
 by the clerks of the peace, and if they were sworn to as copies of 
 others already on record they might be so confirmed and enrolled, 
 despite the disallowance of the barrister. A second approach to cen- 
 tralisation was made in 1831 by an Act which virtually reduced the 
 authority of the quarter sessions to a mere matter of form. Hence- 
 forth the magistrates were required to confirm without motion all 
 rules sanctioned by the barrister, these rules becoming valid in virtue 
 of his certificate alone, and their alleged identity with the old rules 
 being a question for his decision. In 1840 the last remains of the 
 system of local control instituted in 1793 were swept away. By an 
 Act passed in that year the certifying barrister at the National Debt 
 Office was transformed into the Registrar of Friendly Societies, and 
 his jurisdiction was definitively substituted for the earlier jurisdiction 
 of the magistrates in quarter sessions and the clerks of the pe.ice. In 
 the meantime — namely, in 1835 and 1830 — Parliament had placed 
 loan societies and building societies under his superintendence, and 
 
 the poor chopsticks about that country, taking good care never to tell them that his 
 carriages ami horses ami line park and deer, all came out of their labour." The Savings' 
 Banks, "invented by thai same cunning Scotchman, Old George Rose," are attacked with 
 equal acerbity bv Cobbett in the same paper. Twopenny Truth, No. 7, January 1st, 1832, 
 Vol. U., pp. 154—161.
 
 PAUPERISM AND THRIFT. 205 
 
 afterwards — in 1852 and 1871 — extended it to co-operative associa- 
 tions and trade unions. In 1861 the Registrar was invested with 
 important administrative and judicial functions in relation to the 
 Post Office Savings Banks and the system of Government assurance 
 and annuities; and, finally, by various legislative provisions of 1875 
 and 1876, the department over which he presides was rendered co- 
 extensive with the whole framework of thrift and providence among 
 the humbler classes of the community, in so far as it is legally consti- 
 tuted and officially acknowledged. In all, the Chief Registrar, as he 
 has been designated since 1875, aided by an Assistant Registrar for 
 each of the three kingdoms, and an actuary has, at the Central 
 Registry Office in Westminster, to transact the public business of 
 about eighteen thousand registered societies of one kind or another, 
 with more than six millions of members, and nearly £68,000,000 of 
 funds. Nor do these figures afford any adequate conception of the 
 extent to which the principle and practice of friendly and industrial 
 association have spread and are spreading throughout the country. It 
 is estimated that the number of unregistered societies largely exceeds 
 the number of registered societies, although the registered societies 
 comprise all the wealthier and more important organisations. Ten 
 years ago the Royal Commission on Friendly Societies came to the 
 conclusion that of friendly societies properly so called only, irre- 
 spective of such other societies as are loosely and popularly classified 
 with them, there were in England alone, including both the registered 
 and unregistered, not fewer than thirty-two thousand, with over four 
 millions of members, and four millions of persons more who were 
 beneficially interested in the funds at their command, which funds 
 amounted to not less than £11,000,000. It should, however, be 
 remembered that a considerable proportion of the members of friendly 
 societies, whether registered or unregistered, are members of two, or 
 even of several, of them at the same time. It is certain, for example, 
 that a great number of co-operators are trade unionists, and that a 
 great number of both co-operators and trade unionists are Oddfellows 
 or Foresters as well, and when they are enumerated in returns or 
 allowed for in estimates, it follows that they are counted twice, or it 
 may be oftener. We may assume that substantial deductions should 
 be made on this score from the nominal strength of all the principal 
 varieties of association, especially if savings banks and building societies 
 are taken into consideration. But after every reasonable allowance 
 the actual residue remains sufficiently formidable, and can hardly fall 
 short, at any rate, of the ascertained membership of the registered 
 societies. 
 
 Under these circumstances the general soundness or unsoundness 
 of friendly societies becomes a question of deep and pressing impor- 
 tance. When they originally received the sanction of Parliament no
 
 206 ENGLAND. 
 
 steps whatever were taken for securing their solvency by the esta- 
 blishment of any rational proportion between the payments they 
 demanded and the benefits they promised to confer. The conse- 
 quence was that friendly societies were started in all directions, 
 which, predestined from their beginning to bankruptcy, were prolific 
 sources of loss and suffering to those who were induced to invest their 
 money in them. But although the statute of 1793 was on several 
 occasions amended and enlarged in other ways, it was not until 1819 
 that the Legislature insisted on the introduction of some sort of 
 guarantee of the probable financial sufficiency of the associations to 
 which it applied. An Act was then passed which required the 
 magistrates in quarter sessions to withhold their confirmation from all 
 rules relating to the payments and benefits of friendly societies unless 
 they were such as had been approved as fit and proper by at least 
 " two persons known to be professional actuaries or skilled in cal- 
 culation." As a matter of fact, however, no real effect was produced 
 by this well-meant provision. Actuarial science was still in its infancy, 
 and the statistics requisite for the efficient treatment of the risks to 
 be computed were not in existence. Even the profession of an 
 actuary remained undefined with any approach to precision, and the 
 " other persons skilled in calculation," on whose judgment the magis- 
 trates w 7 ere in the habit of relying, were usually " petty schoolmasters 
 and accountants." By the Act of 1829 the law of friendly societies 
 was entirely recast, and the magistrates themselves were directed to 
 ascertain that any scale of payments and benefits which they con- 
 firmed " might be adopted with safety to all persons concerned." In 
 addition to this every registered association was required to render 
 an annual account to its members of its funds, receipts, and expendi- 
 ture, and to make quinquennial returns of its sickness and mortality 
 to the clerks of the peace, by whom they were transmitted to the 
 Secretary of State to be laid before Parliament.* By the Act of 1846 
 a further change was made, and the Registrar of Friendly Societies 
 was forbidden to sanction any rules as to payments and benefits until 
 they had been certified by the actuary of the National Debt Office, or 
 by a person who had been for five years at least an actuary to some 
 insurance company in London, Edinburgh, or Dublin. In 1850 a 
 consolidating and amending Act was passed by which an attempt was 
 made to distribute recognised friendly societies into two classes, first 
 
 * The provision as to quinquennial returns of sickness and mortality has been intro- 
 daced into all the consolidating and amending Acts on friendly societies since passed. 
 In 1881 the actuary at the Central Registry <>(lice reported that the statistics already 
 supplied were sufficient, and the societies were relieved from the duty of making the 
 returns by Parliament in 1882. I understand that an enormous number of these 
 quinquennial returns, containing some millions of facts, are now being utilised by 
 Mr. Sutton, the nllieial actuary, in the preparation of model tables of payments and 
 benelits.
 
 PAUPERISM AND THRIFT. 207 
 
 " certified societies," of which the rules and tables had been approved 
 by an actuary or supplied by the Registrar; and, secondly, " registered 
 societies," of which the rules and tables had not been so approved or 
 supplied. But after a trial of five years, the distinction between 
 certified and registered societies was abolished by another cosolidating 
 and amending Act, passed in 1855, under which the leading elements 
 of the law of friendly societies assumed the shape which they 
 retained until they were once more consolidated and amended by the 
 Acts of 1875 and 1876. On each of these occasions the certificate of 
 an actuary was reserved as a condition precedent to the registration of 
 societies undertaking to grant fixed annuities. But with this excep- 
 tion, every expedient formerly resorted to for ascertaining the probable 
 solvency of these institutions by official means has been abandoned. 
 It is no doubt the duty of the Central Registry Office to prepare and 
 circulate model rules and tables for the instruction and guidance 
 of those concerned in their foundation and management. But there 
 is no way in which the adoption of these, either in whole or in part, 
 can be enforced. It is, moreover, entirely within the discretion of 
 any society whether it will or will not be registered. All that the 
 State does is to offer certain advantages, chiefly with regard to the 
 holding, investment, and transmission of their property, to registered 
 societies and their members which it denies to unregistered societies 
 and their members. And that these are not unappreciated is evidenced 
 by the fact that between 1876 and 1882, the first and last years to 
 which the published reports of the Chief Registrar refer, nearly three 
 thousand additional societies, representing a membership of almost 
 two millions, and funds to the amount of more than i'39,000,000. 
 appear to have made returns. Very ample opportunities also are now 
 afforded to the members of registered societies for their own protection 
 against mismanagement or fraud on the part of their officers. The 
 officers of every registered society are bound to keep the members 
 fully informed of its affairs and of their rights and obligations in rela- 
 tion to it and them. Annual returns of receipts and expenditure, and 
 quinquennial valuations of assets and liabilities must be made and for- 
 warded to the Central Registry Office, where they are examined and 
 preserved. On the application of a comparatively small proportion of 
 the members of a registered society, the Chief Registrar may appoint 
 an inspector to inquire into and report on its condition, or may con- 
 vene a general meeting to consider and determine all matters touching 
 its interests. On the same terms it may be dissolved and its funds 
 distributed if it is proved that it is unable to meet existing claims 
 against it, or that the rates of payment are insufficient to cover the 
 benefits assured. But in all these cases the initiative must be taken 
 from among the members themselves, of whom the requisite number 
 may be, and often are, too ignorant or too careless to exercise the
 
 208 ENGLAND. 
 
 powers reserved to them, and in that event there is no independent 
 authority whatever for the correction of even the gravest and most 
 obvious abuses. 
 
 Within the last few months the results of the first series of quin- 
 quennial valuations under the new system of valuation have been 
 published.* The assets and liabilities of between six and seven 
 thousand societies have been subjected to actuarial comparison, and the 
 facts arrived at in the process are certainly striking if not altogether 
 unexpected. About fifteen hundred of the valuations show a surplus 
 amounting in the aggregate to some £885,000, while the other five 
 thousand and odd valuations exhibit a total deficiency of upwards of 
 £5,000,000. Hence it appears that of the whole number of societies 
 valued, five-sixths are in a state of insolvency owing to a want of 
 balance in their payments and benefits. Taking the solvent and 
 insolvent societies together, their existing capital falls short by over 
 one-half of what it ought to be, which is equivalent to an increase in 
 tbeir payments of nearly nineteen per cent., or to a reduction in their 
 benefits of nearly thirteen per cent. But if the insolvent societies 
 alone are considered, their funds are insufficient by no less than a 
 hundred and eighteen per cent., and it would require an increase of 
 about thirty-two per cent, in their payments, or a reduction of about 
 twenty-one per cent, in their benefits, to make them solvent. It is 
 only natural that such a condition of affairs should give occasion to 
 uneasiness, and even to alarm, in many quarters. Canon Blackley, a 
 conspicuous advocate of the interests of the working classes, affirms 
 that " behind the societies which have for the most part availed them- 
 selves of the services of skilled actuaries to make their valuations, 
 there are numbers of registered societies which have employed utterly 
 incompetent men who have given them favourable reports or false 
 bases, and that behind all these again there are literally numberless 
 other societies so deliberately and consciously in the minds of their 
 promoters fraudulent and rotten, that they have never dared to 
 register them at all, and so are under no consequent compulsion to 
 make valuations." " Hence some idea may be formed," he adds, " of 
 the widespread misery which must result to five-sixths of our provi- 
 dent poor as one after another all these unsound societies collapse, 
 and leave their deluded dupes in the end to the miserable workhouse 
 dole they struggled all their lives to be independent of, and to a treat- 
 ment in their disappointed old age in no respect better than is assured 
 by the compulsory national insurance of the Poor Law to the most 
 drunken, vicious, depraved, inveterate ruffian who ever refused to lay 
 by a shilling for himself, or ever helped to populate, corrupt, and 
 
 * The valuations of branches of the "affiliated societies," such as the Oddfellows, 
 Foresters, Druids, and the rest, registered prior to 1881, are not included in the present 
 report, and have yet to make their appearance.
 
 PAUPERISM AND THRIFT. 209 
 
 putrefy a slum."* As bearing on this forecast, however, it is well 
 that we should recall some evidence which appears very much to the 
 point, preserved in the Chief Registrar's Annual Report on Friendly 
 Societies for two or three years ago. It is admitted on all sides, we 
 believe, that the financial position of these associations is at any rate 
 no worse now than it was formerly, and consequently that there is no 
 greater probability of a larger proportion of them coming to grief in 
 the future than in the past. It is, therefore, encouraging to find 
 from a couple of special returns, the one for 1867 and the other 
 for 1881, published in the Report to which reference is made, that 
 the number of paupers in the Unions of England and Wales who 
 had been members of friendly societies was absolutely less at the 
 later than at the earlier date. Of such paupers there were, in 1867, 
 4,015, and in 1881 3,913 — not a great difference in itself, but signi- 
 ficant enough when the growth of the population and the multiplica- 
 tion of friendly societies in the interval are allowed for. At the 
 same time it is to be observed that the diminution in the number 
 of paupers of all kinds, if those receiving out-door as well as those 
 receiving in-door relief are taken into account, was very much more 
 considerable. 
 
 It ought also to be borne in mind that in relation to friendly 
 societies, actuarial insolvency and commercial insolvency are, in truth, 
 altogether different things. Commercial insolvency in their case would 
 imply that their actual resources were inadequate to meet the actual 
 demands made on them. In other words, it would mean that they 
 were unable to pay their debts, and were to all intents and purposes 
 bankrupt. But their actuarial insolvency implies nothing of the kind. 
 What it means is, that certain principles of computation being con- 
 ceded, the estimated present value of their existing funds and future 
 contributions amounts to less than the estimated present value of the 
 existing and future claims they have undertaken to satisfy. If, for 
 example, in any particular society all the members were to pay down 
 at once the whole of the contributions they were likely ever to pay to 
 it, and all the members were to claim at once the whole of the benefits 
 they were likely ever to claim from it, and the first plus its existing 
 capital were insufficient to discharge the second plus its other liabili- 
 ties, the society would be actuarially insolvent. But it would notbe, 
 and might never become, commercially insolvent. Its experience might 
 well be an example of those exceptionally favourable experiences which 
 are balanced against exceptionally unfavourable experiences when an 
 average of experience is arrived at. In the recent quinquennial valua- 
 tions there is reason to believe that the tables almost invariably used 
 were what are known as <J Ratcliffe's Experiences," which embody the 
 results of the sickness and mortality experiences of the Manchester 
 * " The Robbery of Poor Men's Providence."— Times, Jan. 7 th, 1884. 
 
 P
 
 210 ENGLAND. 
 
 Unity of Oddfellows from 18G5 to 1870. The official valuers are pro- 
 hibited from employing any others, and it is stated that the great 
 majority of the unofficial valuers also employed them, while it is 
 observed by the Actuary to the Central Registry Office, in a memo- 
 randum attached to the Report on the Valuations, that in " no less 
 than 70 per cent." of them " there is nothing to show that the valuer 
 has made the slightest endeavour to ascertain how far the tables 
 used require, judging from the past experience of the society, to be 
 modified to give a probably more correct anticipation of the society's 
 future experience." And he subjoins the by no means superfluous 
 caution, that " it should never be forgotten that the statistics upon 
 which sick-pay tables are based are nearly always derived from the 
 aggregate experience of societies differing widely in their constitution 
 and general surroundings, and that although the tables might perhaps 
 be used without modification, were all the societies massed into one 
 for valuation purposes, yet this would be of little service to any par- 
 ticular society." We have here, probably, the explanation of the 
 singular circumstance that a number of the so-called insolvent societies 
 have been practically in the full enjoyment of all the attributes of 
 solvency, not merely for thirty or forty years, but for as many as fifty, 
 seventy, or even a hundred years and more. With actuarial deficits, 
 which if they had been commercial deficits would have necessitated 
 their immediate dissolution, they have continued regularly and with- 
 out apparent inconvenience to discharge their liabilities and meet the 
 claims of their members for several generations ; and this is as much, 
 we should imagine, as could reasonably have been expected from them 
 had their accounts exhibited a surplus instead of a deficiency.* It is, 
 too, always within the power of a friendly society to establish its 
 solvency by a timely readjustment of its scale of payments and benefits. 
 In the case of the confederated or affiliated orders, such as the Odd- 
 fellows or the Foresters, again, the expedient of a general levy is 
 constantly in reserve for the ready and effectual adjustment of their 
 accounts. When the Manchester Unity of Oddfellows instituted an 
 inquiry into their affairs thirteen or fourteen years ago, it was dis- 
 covered that they were actuarially deficient to the amount of about a 
 million and a third. They faced their difficulties with resolution and 
 promptitude, and most of the associations of their connection are now 
 
 * The Loyal Regis Lodge of Oddfellows, at Tettenhall, in Staffordshire, established in 
 
 18-<>, has 51 members and a deficiency of £1,056. The Friendly Society of Hastings, 
 in Sussex, established in 1 ,s 1 ."» , lias JM7 members and a deticiency of £4,. r )08. The 
 Friendly Society of Kingsley, in Staffordshire, established in 17o\ s , has 173 members 
 and a deficiency of £1,056, If these, and many other societies like them, had really been 
 bankrupt they must have come to an end long ago. But they still go on, and goon nn- 
 refotmed, after fifty-four, sixty-five, and a hundred and twelve years of experience. And 
 almost any number of illustrations of the distinction between actuarial and commercial 
 insolvency might be extracted from the Chief Registrar's summary of the Valuations, 
 1875—1880.
 
 PAUPERISM AND THKIFT. 211 
 
 actuarially as well as commercially solvent.* How far a similar course 
 would be possible for smaller, poorer, and less informed bodies it is 
 not, of course, easy to determine. But if an intelligent interest in tbe 
 question is once aroused among tbe multitude wbo are pecuniarily con- 
 cerned in tbe soundness of our friendly societies, it may be fairly 
 conjectured tbat tbey will not long delay tbe initiation and consum- 
 mation of sucb reforms as tbey may be convinced are necessary for 
 their safety. Canon Blackley, and many wbo tbink witb bim, seem to 
 believe tbat it is hopeless to expect tbe general mass of tbe members 
 of friendly societies to do anything for themselves. His proposal, 
 therefore, is that it should be made unlawful to establish any friendly 
 society for the future without actuarial certification of its scale of 
 payments and benefits, leaving all existing societies as they are at 
 present.! The result of an enactment to this effect would, he main- 
 tains, be that the bad societies would in due course die out, and only 
 the good ones, either now at work or to be started under the new 
 system, would ultimately occupy the field. Other reformers — among 
 them Mr. Edwards, a very competent authority — are desirous of still 
 more extensive intervention on the part of the State, and would be 
 satisfied witb nothing short of, first, the compulsory registration of all 
 societies ; secondly, the compulsory adoption by them of a fixed scale 
 of payments and benefits ; thirdly, their periodical audit and valuation 
 by a Government official ; and fourthly, the immediate winding up of 
 all societies shown to be in a really insolvent condition. J And it must 
 be admitted that there is much to be said in favour of some better 
 provision than has hitherto been forthcoming for the protection of 
 the ignorant and unwary. These societies, it should be remembered, 
 afford, witb the exception of the Post Office Savings Bank, almost 
 tbe only opportunities for the investment of capital which the working 
 man has. Tbey give him an income in sickness, and they give his 
 widow enough to start her on a new way of life at his death. If the 
 State offered the working man an alternative investment, it would be 
 a different matter. Tbe only alternative that it does offer is Poor-Law 
 relief. Thus tbe State steps in with an inducement to pauperism, but 
 not, as it would do if it indirectly put down rotten friendly societies, 
 with an inducement to thrift. In France there have long existed 
 facilities for the investment of the smallest sums in public securities 
 or land. In England the initiatory steps to popular investment in the 
 
 * The quinquennial valuation made in the year 1884, shows an actuarial defi- 
 ciency in the accounts of the Manchester Unity nf Oddfellows to the amount of 
 £627,820. A letter read at the annual meeting of the society at Reading in June, from 
 Mr. Lyulph Stanley, and recorded on the minutes, recommends a resort to a " general levy 
 of one shilling per head per annum as a subsidy in aid of local increased contributions 
 in the older lodges and to keep alive the older districts, whose dearly bought experience 
 has educated the younger lodges and members." 
 
 t " The Juggernaut of Poor Men's Providence," Fortnightly Review, March, 1884. 
 
 \ The " History, Functions, and Prospects of Friendly Societies," Contemporary Revietr, 
 January, 1877- 
 
 P 2
 
 212 ENGLAND. 
 
 funds are a novelty. Since 1881 a Post Office depositor has been 
 enabled to invest a sum (not being less than £10) in the Consolidated, 
 Iicduced, or New Three per Cent. Bank annuities. On his application, 
 the authorities purchase or subsequently sell the stock for hint at the 
 average price certified for the day, an investment certificate being fur- 
 nished to the purchaser. In country districts the inducements to thrift 
 are diminished by the fact that the working man or woman who has a 
 shilling or two to put by often has to go three or four miles before a 
 Post Office Savings Bank can be found, although in this direction also 
 the enactment permitting savings by means of penny stamps affixed to 
 a form should afford some sensible relief. If the State declined to 
 interfere generally in matters relating to the personal welfare of the 
 working man, the objection of successive Governments to compel the 
 registration of friendly societies would be intelligible. Such compul- 
 sion, be it said, would not involve any more responsibility than the 
 State has already taken, if responsibility it can be called, in the case 
 of life insurance societies, which, when they are starting for the first 
 time, it requires shall deposit £20,000 before business can be legally 
 carried on. Again, as a matter of fact the State does, in these matters, 
 habitually interfere. It interferes to prevent a man from employing 
 his wife and children to support him by factory labour ; it compels him 
 to send his children to school ; it places certain restrictions on the sale of 
 intoxicating liquors, of drugs and poisons, on the adulteration of food. 
 On what ground, then, can it be denied that the State would be justi- 
 fied in restricting the opportunities which dishonest speculators now 
 have of cheating the working man, or how can it be said that the same 
 guarantee which, by insisting on the deposit above-named, the State 
 exacts from life insurance societies in the interests of the middle 
 classes, it should not exact also in the interests of the lowest class of all ? 
 
 The popularity of the Penny Bank seems to show how real is the 
 anxiety of the working classes to save, and how genuine is the want 
 which it supplies. In the case of one of these institutions the number 
 of deposits during a single year increased by 71,802, the amount 
 deposited by£187,911. Forty-four additions were made to the number 
 of branches, and in some instances applications for branches had to be 
 refused, in consequence of the applicants living beyond the limits fixed 
 by the articles of the association. How minute in its sums, and how 
 largo in its extent was the business done, may be seen from the fact 
 that in twelve months 791,873 deposits were made, their aggregate 
 reaching a total of £050,714. Each depositor thus must have saved 
 on the average something less than a sovereign, and it can scarcely be 
 doubted that but for this bank these small amounts would have found 
 their way to the public-house till. 
 
 It cannot be seriously disputed that the working classes are now 
 a great deal better off than they ever were before. As Mr. Giffen has
 
 PAUPERISM AND THRIFT. 213 
 
 recently demonstrated by detailed statistical argument, their condition 
 is at present almost immeasurably superior in every way to what it 
 was half a century ago.* It has been urged, indeed, that the point 
 of departure which Mr. Giffen has selected for the purpose of his com- 
 parison is unduly favourable to the conclusions which he has under- 
 taken to enforce. It is affirmed that fifty years back tbe country was 
 passing through an exceptional period of industrial depression and 
 economical trial. An unwise and oppressive system of taxation 
 cramped the energies of the people, and hampered trade in all direc- 
 tions. Pauperism had attained to such proportions that the pressure 
 of the poor-rates was driving land out of cultivation in every part of 
 the kingdom. In the manufacturing districts misery and discontent 
 prevailed to an unprecedented degree, and were just giving birth to 
 the Anti-Corn-Law League as they had already given birth to the 
 Chartist movement and its formidable train of outrages and insurrec- 
 tions. It is contended, in short, that half a century ago the condition 
 of the working classes was as bad as it could be, and since it could 
 not become worse, it could only remain as it was or become better. 
 Rut Mr. Giffen foresaw the objections likely to be raised against 
 him on such grounds as these, and has replied to them by anticipation. 
 " If," he says, " we had commenced about twenty to twenty-five years 
 ago we should also have been able to show a very great improvement 
 since that time, while at that date also, as compared with an earlier 
 period, a great improvement would have been apparent." But, as he 
 observes, " it would have complicated the figures too much to intro- 
 duce intermediate dates," and he has therefore omitted them. What 
 he has endeavoured to prove, and has succeeded in proving, is that 
 there has been a steady and continuous advance in prosperity among 
 the mass of the population, and he has failed to mark each successive 
 stage of it, because it would have overloaded and not because it would 
 have weakened his case. 
 
 It is at all events certain from the records of the Board of Trade 
 that there has been during the last half century, to use Mr. Giffen's 
 words, " an enormous apparent rise in money wages." It has been 
 a rise, in the great majority of instances, of from 50 to 100 
 per cent., in a few of only 20 per cent., and in some of more than 
 100 per cent. But all round the rise has exceeded 70 per cent. ; and 
 this, in Mr. Giffen's opinion, " understates the real extent of the change 
 which has taken place." Moreover, while money wages have been 
 increasing the hours of labour have been decreasing. It is difficult to 
 ascertain the exact reduction which has been made in them. But 
 Mr. Giffen's estimate is that it has been, as a rule, about 20 per 
 cent., and it has been at least 20 per cent, in the textile, engineer- 
 
 * The Progress of the Working Classes in the Last Half Century. By Robert 
 Giffen, Esq., LL.D., President of the Statistical Society, London, 1884.
 
 211 
 
 ENGLAND. 
 
 ing, and house-building trades, in which the bulk of the industrial as 
 distinguished from the agricultural community are employed,* Hence 
 the working classes are now receiving from 50 to 100 per cent, 
 more wages for 20 per cent, less work than they were half a century 
 ago ; or, put differently, have gained in fifty years from 70 to 100 per 
 cent, in money return for their labour. In the interval, again, there 
 bas been little or no material alteration in the prices of commodities 
 generally. Making every allowance for fluctuations in the value of 
 gold, Mr. Gitfen affirms that, taking things in the mass, the pur- 
 chasing power of the sovereign is fully as great at present as it was 
 before the importations from Australia and California commenced. 
 "When, however, we turn to the commodities of which the working 
 classes are chiefly and more particularly the consumers, we find that 
 the prices of almost all of them, instead of being in any degree 
 higher, are considerably lower than they used to be. Bread is an 
 element of expenditure in working-class households of which the 
 importance is out of all proportion to the position it occupies in that 
 of the households of the middle and upper classes. It is therefore a 
 fact of which it is not easy to over-rate the significance, that during 
 the decennium ending 1884 wheat has been on the average cheaper 
 by some 10s. the quarter than it was during the decennium ending 
 184G.f And the cost of nearly every other article of food has also 
 
 * "The records," Mr. Giffen says, "do not include anything relating to the agricul- 
 tural labourer, but from independent sources — I would refer especially to the reports of 
 the recetit Royal Agricultural Commission— we may perceive how universal the rise in 
 the wages of agricultural labourers has been, and how universal at any rate is the com 
 plaint that more money is paid for less work. Sir James Caird, in his " Landed In- 
 terest" (p. 65), puts the rise at 00 per cent, as compared with the period just before the 
 repeal of the Corn Laws, and there is much other evidence to the same effect." — (Progress 
 of the Working Classes, p. 7.) 
 
 t " Comparing the ten years before 184(5 with the last ten years, what we find is that 
 while the average price of wheat in 1837-40 was 58s. 7d., it was 48s. 9d. only in the last 
 ten years — a reduction not of .' s. merely, but 10s. The truth is, the repeal of the Corn 
 Laws was not followed by an immediate decline of wheat on the average. The failure 
 of t he potato crop, the Crimean War, and the depreciation of gold, all contributed to 
 maintain the price, notwithstanding free trade, down to 18(52. Since then steadily 
 lower prices have ruled ; and when we compare the present time with half a century 
 ago, or any earlier part of the century, these facts should be remembered." Mr. 
 Giffen further remarks on the disastrous fluctuations in the price of wheat from 
 year to year which were common in the days of Protection: "In 1836 we find wheat 
 touching 36s. ; in 1888, 1839, 1840, and 1841, we find it touching 78s. 4d., 81s. 6d., 
 72s. l()d., and 70s. Id., in all cases double the price of the lowest year, and nearly 
 double the 'average' of the decade ; and in 1847 the price of 102s. 5*d., or three times 
 the price of the lowest perio.l, is touched. If we go back earlier we find still more 
 startling extremes. We have such figures as 100s. 5d. in 1810; 120s. 0d. in 1812; 
 109s. 9d, in 1813, and 90s. lid. in 1817; these figures being not merely the extremes 
 touched, but the actual averages for the whole year. No doubt in the early part of the 
 century the over-issue of inconvertible paper accounts for part of the nominal prices, 
 but it accounts for a very small part. What we have to consider then is, that fifty years 
 ago the working man with wages, on the average, about half, or not much more than 
 half, what they are now, had at times to contend with a fluctuation in the price of bread 
 which implied sheer starvation." — (Progress of the Working Classes, pp. 9. 10.)
 
 PAUPERISM AND THRIFT. 215 
 
 very largely diminished. The only exception is what is vulgarly 
 called "butcher's meat," and "butcher's meat" is, no doubt, 
 sensibly dearer than it was formerly. But fifty years ago it was not 
 an ordinary article of food among the working classes, and it affords 
 further evidence of their improved circumstances that it should now 
 be with them, despite its enhanced price, the usual staple of at least 
 one of their daily meals. Bacon was the only kind of meat which 
 was then commonly accessible to them, and it has not become dearer 
 since to any appreciable extent.* Again, clothing is both cheaper 
 and better than it was, and domestic furniture and appliances of a 
 sort and quality which either did not exist or were altogether beyond 
 their reach, are now well within their means. It is true tbat house- 
 rent is far higher than it was formerly, and assuming that the rental 
 of houses of under £10 has risen in proportion to the rental of 
 houses of over £10 a year, Mr. Giffen computes that the rise has 
 been equal to one and a half times the rental of half a century 
 back. Thus, a working man who then paid £3 would now pay 
 £7 10s. annually for his house-rent. But Mr. Giffen contends that 
 even if rent were a fourth part of his earnings, then he would still 
 be much more advantageously placed now. His rent has increased 
 one and a half times while his wages have doubled, and no part of 
 his necessary expenditure as understood fifty years ago has been 
 augmented. If fifty years ago he was earning £1 a week in wages, 
 and paying 5s. a week in rent, he would now be earning £2 a week 
 in wages and paying 12s. 6d. a week in rent. In the one case he 
 would have had a balance of 15s. and in the other case he has a 
 balance of 27s. 6d. a week in hand, while " butcher's meat " is 
 the only thing for which he has to incur any greater expense. The 
 inference consequently is inevitable that the increase which has 
 occurred in the money wages of the working classes represents a real 
 and substantial gain to thein.f 
 
 * " I do not know," says Cobbett, " that I ever experienced more pleasure in all my 
 life than I did upon finding that the working people in the bunch of little flinty parishes 
 in Hampshire now get a sufficiency of bacon and bread. The whole of my journey into 
 Hampshire, all the circumstances considered, was the pleasantest I ever took in my life. 
 The havoc made in those parishes amongst the labourers has been dreadful ; the victims 
 have been numerous ; but those who remain have bacon and bread and beer, and never 
 will they again go into the fields with cold potatoes in their satchels. Mr. Dedam, shoe- 
 maker, of Sutton Scotney, told me that the labourers were well-off and contented; that 
 the farmers adhered faithfully to their promises, and that harmony reigned in the villages 
 such as lie had never known before. ' Do they get bacon and bread ? ' I said ; and 
 when they told me that thev did, I said, ' That is enough.' " — Twopenny Trash, No. 10, 
 April 1st, 1831. Vol. i., p. 228. 
 
 t " The increased price in the case of one or two articles — particularly meat and house- 
 rent — is insufficient to neutralise the general advantages which the workman ha? 
 gained. Meat formerly was a very small part of hisconsumption, and allowing to house- 
 rent a much larger share of his expenditure than it actually bore, the increase in amount 
 would still leave the workman out of his increased wage a larger margin than he had
 
 216 ENGLAND. 
 
 In the meantime, while under a reformed fiscal system the cost of 
 government to the working classes has been greatly reduced, there 
 has been a large increase in the public expenditure for various useful 
 purposes, of all of which they reap the advantage. Nearly fifteen 
 millions are now annually disbursed by the State in making provision 
 for national education, the postal service, the inspection of factories 
 and mines, and the rest, by which they are both more directly and 
 more widely benefited than any other portion of the people. And if 
 this is so with regard to general expenditure, it is so even more 
 markedly with regard to local expenditure. In Great Britain the local 
 expenditure now amounts to about sixty millions a year as against 
 some twenty millions a year mainly for poor relief and other ancient 
 charges half a century ago. At present these old burdens remain 
 pretty much what they then were, and the additional forty millions are 
 spent in meeting a number of new demands, sanitary, educational, and 
 the like, which formerly had no existence. Half a century ago foul 
 and overcrowded dwellings were the rule, not the exception, in all 
 the large centres of population, and such things as public baths and 
 washhouses, free libraries, and people's parks were practically unknown. 
 Thus, while paying much less in taxation of every description, the 
 working classes now receive much more from both national and local 
 expenditure than they did at any earlier period. One leading and 
 very striking result of their generally improved condition — their higher 
 wages, more abundant food and clothing, cleaner habits, and more 
 salubrious habitations — is demonstrated by the unerring testimony of 
 the bills of mortality themselves. An addition has been made to the 
 average duration of life of no less than two years in the case of males 
 and of nearly three years and a half in the case of females, and what 
 is more, by far the greater part of the addition is to be credited to the 
 period of maturity and vigour, and not to that of childhood or old 
 age.* " No such change," Mr. Giffen justly insists, " could take place 
 
 before for miscellaneous expenditure. There is reason to believe also that the houses 
 are better, and that the increased house-rent is merely the higher price for a superior 
 article which the workman can afford." — Progress of the Working Classes, p. 13. 
 
 * " Do the people live longer than they did? Here I need not detain you. A very 
 effective answer was supplied last session by i\Ir. Humphreys, in his able paper on ' The 
 KecentDeclinc in the English Death-Rate' (Journal of the Statistical Society, vol. xlvi., 
 p. 195 — 9). Mr. Humphreys there showed conclusively that the decline in the death- 
 rate in the last live years, l!S7b'-80, as compared with the rates on which Dr. Farr's Eng- 
 lish Life Table was based — rates obtained in the years 1832-54 — amounted to from 28 to 
 32 per cent, in males at each quinquenniad of the twenty years 5 — 25, and in females at 
 euh qninqnenniad from 5 — 35 to between 24 and 35 percent. ; and that the effect of 
 this decline in the death-rate is to raise the mean duration of life among males from 
 39*9 to 41*9 years, a gain of two years in the average duration of life, and among 
 females from 41!) to 45-3 years, a gain of nearly three and a half years in the average 
 duration of life." Mr. Giffen adds: "I should like also to point out that the im- 
 provement in health actually recorded obviously relates to a transition stage. Many of 
 the improvements in the condition of the working classes have only taken place quite
 
 PAUPERISM AND THRIFT. 217 
 
 without a great increase in the vitality of the people. Not only have 
 fewer died, but the masses who have lived must have been healthier 
 and have suffered less from sickness than they did." Of course this 
 effect is in some measure due to the contemporaneous advance of 
 medical science and surgical art. But in the main it must be attri- 
 buted to the general amelioration of the physical surroundings among 
 which the bulk of the people perform their work and otherwise pass 
 their lives. The figures are of such magnitude that they would have 
 been virtually unaffected if only a small section of the community had 
 been in question, and it is therefore impossible to avoid the conclusion 
 that the decline in the death-rate has been common to the whole popu- 
 lation. What an alteration has been made in the diet of the working 
 classes during the last half century is vividly illustrated by the official 
 returns relating to the consumption of imported and exciseable articles. 
 With the single exception of coffee, the increase in these quantities is 
 fairly surprising. In 1880, for example, four times as much tea and 
 sugar were consumed per head of the population as in 184:0. Among 
 several of the imported articles — such as bacon and hams, butter and 
 cheese — the increase has practically been from nothing, the consign- 
 ments of bacon and hams alone now received from abroad equalling 
 the total supply of them from all sources half a century ago. And 
 none of the articles to which special reference is made by Mr. Giffen 
 are such as increased consumption by the rich would have brought 
 into the market in greatly augmented quantities. 
 
 Nor have the moral consequences of improved material circum- 
 stances of the working classes been slight or insignificant. Both crime 
 and pauperism have largely decreased, and children who are counted 
 by millions are now obtaining a good education, whereas, half a cen- 
 tury ago, they received no education at all. Again, between 1831 
 and 1881 the savings' banks returns show an increase of tenfold in 
 the number of depositors and of more than fivefold in the aggregate 
 amount of the deposits, while the fact that the amounts of the indivi- 
 dual deposits have decreased, proves that habits of thrift and provi- 
 dence have penetrated to a humbler and less well-to-do stratum 
 of society than formerly.* In part, however, the change is unques- 
 
 recently. They have not, therefore, affected all through their existence any but the 
 youngest lives. When the improvements have been in existence for a longer period, so 
 that the lives of all who are living must have been affected from birth by the changed 
 conditions, we may infer that even a greater gain in the mean duration of life will be 
 shown." — Progress of the Working Classes, pp. 16 — 17. 
 
 * Mr. Giffen gives the subjoined table for the whole kingdom — 
 
 1831. 1881. 
 
 Number of depositors 429,000 4,140,000 
 
 Amount of deposits £13,719,000 £80,334,000 
 
 „ per depositor £32 £19 
 
 In 1882 the amount of deposits was £83,650,000: in Post Office Savings Banks 
 £39,037,000, and £44,612,000 in Trustee Savings Banks.
 
 218 ENGLAND. 
 
 tionably due to the wise facilities which have been accorded by 
 Government to the thrifty and provident poor in recent years. Of 
 these a very important extension has been made within the last few 
 months. Under the new arrangements effected by the Post Office it 
 may be hoped with some confidence that a fresh impulse will be given 
 to the system of insurance and annuities which up to the present time 
 has not been so largely successful as was expected. It is the opinion 
 of Mr. Fawcett, and there is abundant ground for believing he is right, 
 that " the chief reason which has hitherto prevented annuities and 
 policies of life assurance from being obtained in any considerable num- 
 ber through the Post Office, is that so many cumbrous and troublesome 
 formalities had to be gone through. For instance, each time that a 
 payment for an annuity or for a policy of insurance had to be made it 
 was necessary to go to a particular post office, and no annuity of less 
 than £5 or policy of insurance of less than £20 could be purchased."* 
 In future, however, this will not be the case. All insurers and annui- 
 tants will become ipso facto depositors in a Post Office Savings Bank, 
 and all that they will have to do is to give a written order that a cer- 
 tain sum standing in their name shall be devoted, whatever its amount 
 may be, to the payment of the annual premiums. In the same way 
 those who are now merely depositors may dedicate the interest of their 
 deposits to the purchase of an annuity or policy of insurance. Annui- 
 ties, either immediate or deferred, may be purchased by or for any 
 person of five years and upwards, for any sum from £1 to £100. 
 But no insurance can be effected for less than £5 or more than £100, 
 or on the life of any person who is under eight or over sixty-five, 
 while between the ages of eight and fourteen the maximum amount 
 to be insured is £5. By means of the stamp deposit - slips 
 supplied at all the post offices under the regulations of a few 
 years back, as little as a penny a week may be put by, and when 
 the accumulated stamps reach a shilling may be added to the 
 depositor's account. A penny a week paid on and after the age of 
 twenty-one, or 4s. 4d. a year, the interest of £9 in the savings 
 bank, will secure the payment of £10 on death or an annuity of 
 £1 at the age of fifty -four for men and sixty -two for women. 
 Annuities are granted on joint and several lives, so that husbands 
 may secure them for their wives as well as for themselves, and 
 the proceeds of policies of insurance may be bequeathed by simple 
 nomination in the post office books. Again, insurances may be 
 effected on a scale providing for the cessation of premiums at 
 the age of sixty, or for the payment of the amount insured either 
 on the attainment of the age of sixty or on death, whichever 
 
 * Speech at the Post Office, May 28th, 1884.
 
 PAUPERISM AND THRIFT. 219 
 
 may occur the sooner. Besides this a sum may be insured at the 
 expiration of from ten to forty years, or on death, by the payment 
 of a single premium, and under a special scale of premiums the return 
 of the purchase money of an annuity may be secured either on 
 the death of the purchaser or at the desire of the purchaser at any 
 time before the annuity becomes payable. And further, policies for 
 under £25 may be issued without any medical examination of the 
 persons insured, on condition that should they die before the second 
 premium is due, the amount of the first premium, or before the 
 third premium is due one half of the amount insured only, will be paid 
 to their representatives, while after the payment of two annual pre- 
 miums arrangements for the surrender of a policy of insurance may be 
 made on terms to be settled by the National Debt Commissioners. 
 These are some of the more prominent points in the new scheme of 
 Government insurance and annuities, and it may be anticipated that 
 it will in time have a very material influence on the fortunes of the 
 large class of friendly societies commonly known as " burial clubs," 
 as well as of the various agencies which issue policies of insurance on 
 lives for small amounts, and the sheet anchor of whose trade consists 
 in lapsed premiums and forfeited policies. If the Post Office could see 
 its way to insurance against sickness, it would cover the whole of the 
 ground now occupied by friendly societies as distinguished from trade, 
 building, and loan societies. It would only be another step, although 
 a long and important step, in the direction in which the State has been 
 advancing steadily and deliberately for nearly a quarter of a century. 
 But to all appearances the difficulties which are opposed to such a 
 course in the shape of wholesale fraud on the one hand, or on the 
 other of what would be tantamount to wholesale pauperisation, are at 
 present insurmountable. 
 
 It is, however, much that Penny Banks and Post Office Savings 
 Banks should be as numerous as they are in England. Thrift is a 
 virtue which, strengthened by practice, is pre-eminently inculcated by 
 example. The English working classes are singularly quick to catch 
 up the ways of their social superiors. They not only imitate, but 
 they caricature. It is in matters economical as in others — the 
 man reproduces the extravagance of the master, the maid of the 
 mistress, the employed of the employer. Can it be said that rela- 
 tively the English working classes are not as thrifty as any other 
 portion of the population ? Grant that they are a little less saving ; 
 have they not greater temptations to and excuses for improvidence ? 
 It is in the prospect of a definite reward as a compensation for self- 
 denial that the inducement to small economies is to be found. This 
 prospect the English working classes either have not, or do not suffi- 
 ciently realise.
 
 220 ENGLAND. 
 
 But may we not hope that the necessary reforms are on the high 
 road towards accomplishment ? Co-operation, which will be con 
 sidered in the next chapter, is as yet comparatively speaking a new 
 thing, hut already co-operation has worked, as we shall see, marvels. 
 The saving which co-operation has secured to the working classes 
 has been calculated from 10 to 20 per cent. And this economy 
 only represents a small part of the advantages of the system, 
 which, as will be seen from the survey of it, are quite as much moral 
 as material.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 CO-OPERATION. 
 
 Two Illustrations of the Co-operative Principle : Victoria Street, London, and Toad 
 Lane, Rochdale — General Comparison between the Conduct of different Co-opera- 
 tive Stores — Feelings to which the Co-operative Principle amongst the Working 
 Classes in England originally appealed — Nature of the Enthusiasm which it 
 created — Views advanced at the first Co-operative Congress in 1852 — Co-opera- 
 tive Wholesale Society — Co-operation among the Middle and Upper Classes — 
 The Civil Service Supply Association : Its Origin, Organisation, and Progress — 
 Other Co-operative Societies and their Development — The Civil Service Co- 
 operative Society — The Army and Navy Co-operative Society — Effect of Co- 
 operation upon the Labour Market — General, Social, and Moral Advantages of 
 Co-operation — Educational Influences of the Movement — How far Co-operation 
 is applicable to Production as well as Distribution — The Exceptional Success 
 of the Assington Experiment — General View of Progress and Position of Co- 
 operation. 
 
 The two scenes which we are now about to witness are bound 
 together by a definite connecting-link. The social and local con- 
 ditions in each case may be widely different, but the principle 
 illustrated is the same. Few greater contrasts could exist, so far as 
 appearances are concerned, than between Victoria Street, West- 
 minster, and Toad Lane, Rochdale. Nor are the particular buildings 
 in the two thoroughfares, which we shall successively enter, fre- 
 quented by persons between whose exterior or whose conditions of 
 life much resemblance can be traced. At the same time the patrons 
 of each are animated by a common motive, and have discovered that 
 the end in view can be best secured by nearly identical methods. 
 The method is that of co-operation, and though the manner in which 
 it is carried out in the capital and in the manufacturing town varies, 
 while it represents in the latter more of social advantage, and more, 
 also, of moral enthusiasm than in the former, the different aspects of 
 the enterprise may still not inappropriately be placed side by side. It 
 is about three o'clock in the afternoon, and in the course of a walk 
 from Victoria Station towards the Houses of Parliament, down a long, 
 gaunt street, with huge mansions containing flats, or lawyers' offices, 
 or the chambers of colonial and parliamentary agents, one notices 
 midway, on the right-hand side, rows of carriages and cabs, two or 
 three deep, drawn up in front of a handsome block of buildings. 
 Every kind of vehicle that can be bought or hired in London is here
 
 222 ENGLAND. 
 
 — from the open barouche or closed brougham, with their thorough- 
 bred horses, to the carriage jobbed by the month, or let out by the 
 hour, as well as the hansom or four-wheeler. Footmen, grooms, and 
 pages are stationed at the doors, through which there pass ladies and 
 gentlemen — some on the point of transacting their business, others 
 having completed their purchases, which are carried by servants to 
 the purchasers' carriages. 
 
 The establishment is not only an emporium, but a lounge, a place 
 of gossip and pleasure as well as of business. One enters and finds 
 grizzled warriors seated at a table, drawing up, with much delibera- 
 tion, a list of their intended purchases. Close beside there is a young 
 matron, new to housekeeping, whose husband has just received his 
 promotion, and who is intent upon making a limited sum go as far 
 as possible. Around and about these, passing to or coming from the 
 different counters, are groups of well-dressed buyers, who have been 
 giving orders for every sort of article that their households or drawing- 
 rooms can need. There are many, too, who seem to have no thought 
 of buying anything, or who, if they have fulfilled the object with 
 which they ostensibly came hither, linger on, with no other visible 
 aim than to meet their friends and discuss the news or scandal of 
 the day. Precisely the same thing is going on upon the storey above, 
 and above that again, until the third or fourth floor is reached. The 
 goods sold vary according to the elevation of the department above 
 the level of the street. In each there is the same mixed crowd of 
 buyers, the same social chatter, the same interchange of compliments, 
 the same applications to the cashier to make out bills. There is also 
 a refreshment room on the premises for tbe benefit of customers who 
 may require a light lunch ; or, if it be afternoon, as we are now sup- 
 posing it to be, may like to sip the comforting cup of " five o'clock 
 tea." The place, in fact, discharges not a few of the purposes of a 
 club for ladies and gentlemen ; it gratifies the prevailing passion for 
 combining pleasure and business, and gives the customers of the store 
 the satisfaction of knowing that at the same time they meet their 
 friends they are getting their wares — whether it be an ormolu clock 
 or a jar of pickles — at a cheaper rate and of a better quality than they 
 could elsewhere. 
 
 Let us now turn to Toad Lane, Rochdale. The hour is seven 
 o'clock on Saturday evening. There are swarms of factory hands, 
 with their wives and children, passing and re-passing from one shop to 
 another, for in Toad Lane there is not, as there is in Victoria Street, a 
 concentration of many shops into one. All, however, belong to tho 
 same society, and the Rochdale Pioneers do a business as comprehen- 
 sive in its way as that of the naval and military co-operators or the 
 Civil Service in London. There are no luxurious carriages waiting 
 outside the premises in Toad Lane, no footmen, powdered or un-
 
 CO-OPEEATION. 223 
 
 powdered, standing sentry at the door, no commissionaires calling for 
 cabs, or smart page-boys laden with parcels bringing up the rear. 
 Though here, as in Victoria Street, there is much general conversation 
 between the buyers, there is little loitering about, and it is easy 
 to see that the dominant spirit of the place is one of business. 
 Ai the counter of one shop there are attendants drawing treacle, 
 packing parcels of sugar, and refitting the empty shelves ; on the 
 pavement outside are at least a dozen persons waiting to take their 
 turn, and a similar spectacle may be noticed at intervals throughout 
 the whole street. Immediately opposite the grocery store is one 
 for drapery, where a dozen women of varying ages are selecting 
 articles ; next door but one is a still larger shop, in which 
 huge joints of meat are being cut and sold ; while in another depart- 
 ment of the same house, flour, potatoes, and butter are being weighed 
 out. Close by tailors and shoemakers are attending to their cus- 
 tomers. Next door to the butcher's shop is a watch club, and im- 
 mediately adjoining this is the library, whose officers are hard at work 
 exchanging, renewing, and delivering books. A marked feature in the 
 scene, and a significant commentary upon the real value of the institu- 
 tion, is the number of children. The working classes seldom or never 
 send children to shops on errands of an important character, for the 
 simple reason that they are afraid lest the sellers should impose upon 
 their ignorance and innocence. In the stores all have confidence, and 
 they know that no distinction of persons is made. 
 
 There are many points of difference, other than those which relate 
 to the personnel of their patrons, between the London and the Roch- 
 dale co-operative establishments. Even the co-operative stores in 
 London themselves are not uniformly conducted upon one principle. 
 Though the business done by the Army and Navy Stores is professedly 
 of the same character as that of the Civil Service Supply Association, 
 there is in the former instance more of the ordinary trading system 
 than in the latter. It is practically open to any person to become a 
 member of the Victoria Street establishment. At the present day, no 
 new-comer to the Civil Service Supply Association, if he is not a civil 
 servant, can obtain the enjoyment of all its privileges ; nor, indeed, will 
 it be easy for him to belong to them on any terms unless he is nomi- 
 nated by a shareholder. There are other so-called co-operative stores in 
 London, which have nothing whatever in their management to entitle 
 them to the name. They are simply the enterprises of private indi- 
 viduals or companies, who believe that the name co-operation is one to 
 conjure with, and who employ it as a synonym for cheapness. That 
 co-operation has often been the cause of cheapness in other establish- 
 ments which have nothing really co-operative about them cannot be 
 doubted. The effect which the institution of these stores has had 
 upon tradesmen has redounded greatly to the advantage of all classes
 
 2^1 ENGLAND 
 
 of buyers. They have introduced a new element of competition, and 
 have compelled tradesmen largely to reduce their prices for ready- 
 money customers. 
 
 While every dealer at the Rochdale stores is a shareholder, there 
 are many members of the London stores who have no vested interest 
 in the concern whatever. Tbey have purchased their admission ticket 
 to it on the recommendation of a friend, who, perhaps, is a share- 
 holder, and the only practical disadvantage at which they find them- 
 selves is, that they have no claim to participation in the profits, or to 
 the gratuitous conveyance of their purchases to their homes. A further 
 and very important distinction between such co-operative societies in 
 London as those at which we have glanced and a co-operative society 
 like the Equitable Pioneers is that, in the case of the latter, there is 
 none of the necessary antagonism which, in the case of the former, 
 exists between the store and the ordinary tradesman. In London the 
 object of the store is to undersell the tradesman ; in the provinces, at 
 Rochdale and elsewhere, it is not to do this, but to sell at the price 
 current in the neighbourhood, the advantage offered by the store 
 being, in the first place, the best goods which the money paid can 
 command ; in the second, a strong inducement to thrift. For example, 
 the Rochdale stores are not only an aggregate of well-supplied, well- 
 conducted shops, but are actually or potentially savings banks as well. 
 Every member being a shareholder, shares in an equal degree in the 
 profits, and the only surplusage which at the end of the year there is 
 to be divided among the shareholders is that to which every member 
 is proportionately entitled. It follows that there are greater induce- 
 ments to economical management in Rochdale or Halifax than in 
 London. At either of them every sixpence spent upon salaries and 
 wages represents an increase of expenditure upon the article pur- 
 chased. So, no doubt, it does in London, but where all do not share, 
 as in London they do not, in the margin of profit left outside working 
 expenses, this fact can scarcely be practically realised with the same 
 degree of force. 
 
 Perhaps the best way of stating the difference between co-operation, 
 as it exists among the higher and the lower orders of English society, 
 will be to say that in the former it represents the principles of expe- 
 diency and economy, and nothing more ; and that in the latter it is 
 at once associated with, and symbolical of, a very material advance 
 in the general condition of the working classes. The naval or military 
 officer, the civil servant, the nobleman, the distinguished official, a 
 whole host of gentlemen who, in the London season, divide their 
 days pretty equally between their offices, clubs, and other resorts of 
 business, fashion, or pleasure, go to the stores, because they believe, 
 or profess to believe, that in going thither they are making their 
 purchases, in a not disagreeable way, in the cheapest market. The
 
 CO-OPERATION. 225 
 
 doctrine which they thus recognise is one simply of personal con- 
 venience ; there is no more moral fervour about the whole pro- 
 ceeding than there is about the calculations of a party whip in the 
 House of Commons, while a party debate is in progress. At the estab- 
 lishment of the Civil Service Supply Association, the economical idea 
 may be pronounced wholly in the ascendant ; at the Army and Navy 
 Stores, in Victoria Street, there is a strong focus of social attraction 
 as well. In both instances it cannot be doubted that the stores are 
 patronised by many people, especially ladies, who really like the excite- 
 ment of the atmosphere, and the occupation given by shopping under 
 exceptionally agitating conditions. Others there are who fail to find 
 any allurements in a more pronounced degree of bustle and disturb- 
 ance than they would encounter at those shops where their personal 
 identity is not in imminent danger of being lost amid a chaotic multi- 
 tude of customers. Yet these in many instances go to the stores, for 
 the simple reason that they know that by purchasing for ready money 
 their goods in person, they are not charged, as in some shops they prac- 
 tically are, interest on the outstanding accounts of credit customers, 
 or the cost of the commission which, in the shape of Christmas gratuity 
 or quarterly fee, the tradesman often pays the head servants of large 
 private establishments. But even among the hard-worked civil ser- 
 vants of the Crown there cannot be anything like the consuming enthu- 
 siasm which is the soul of the co-operative movement among the 
 labouring classes. The truth is, that the planes on which co-operation 
 moves in either instance differ as greatly as does the social position 
 of its votaries. To live cleanly, soberly, and honestly is confessedly 
 regarded as a mark of distinction among the working classes. When 
 one goes higher in the social scale, the conventional assumption is that 
 it is no distinction at all. Thus it is with co-operation, thrift, and the 
 power of responsible management. With the well-to-do they are either 
 not exceptional virtues at all, or if they are it is polite to ignore the 
 fact. With the working man it is admitted by his condescending 
 patrons — who might sometimes be his pupils — that they constitute a 
 distinct claim to admiring recognition. 
 
 Nothing more need here be indicated than the chief principles, or 
 the central episodes and stages, of that co-operative movement which 
 has a history and a literature of its own.* In estimating the influences 
 of English co-operation, it is necessary to remember that it had its 
 origin in something very like fanaticism, and that its first apostles 
 held out to their followers an ideal too visionary for actual attainment. 
 It is these historical associations which have given to the movement 
 that degree of moral impetus without which it could scarcely have 
 been driven onward as rapidly as it has been. If co-operation in 
 
 * " The History of Co-operation," in two volumes, by Mr. George Jacob Holyoake : a 
 very valuable work, to which I am much indebted in this chapter. 
 
 Q
 
 226 ENGLAND. 
 
 England had known no other motive than the economical, if the only 
 appeal which it had made to its votaries had been based upon unsenti- 
 mental considerations of supply and demand, it could never have 
 acquired so strong a hold upon the working classes. A fanatical or 
 an exaggerated enthusiasm lies with Englishmen at the bottom of 
 every great popular cause ; the fanaticism passes away, but a genuine 
 residuum of energy remains. Long before the Rochdale Equitable 
 Pioneers opened their store in Toad Lane in 1844 with £20 worth of 
 goods, Owen had made his experiment, and that experiment had been 
 generally stigmatised as a failure. But if its influences are retro- 
 spectively estimated, it cannot be considered as a failure in any way, 
 for it really generated the enthusiasm without which co-operation 
 would never have been taken up. Then it was that the doctrines 
 which Owen held, and which he endeavoured to translate into practice, 
 were destined to yield a posthumous harvest. 
 
 Just as in the human constitution, selfishness and sympathy are the 
 two mutually compensating principles, so has co-operation acted in 
 civil society at large as the counter-influence to the principles of trade 
 unionism. Competition, it was said in the Leader newspaper thirty 
 years ago, as developing in England, must destroy in the end both 
 family life and industrial prosperity. It was this apprehension which, 
 quite as much as the obvious economical doctrine that it would be to 
 the advantage of the working classes to buy their wares in the cheapest 
 market, caused several gentlemen and clergymen of the Church of 
 England energetically to promote the movement. These claimed sup- 
 port for it on the ground that it represented nothing less than the 
 practical application of Christianity to the purposes of trade and 
 industry. In the official reports of the earlier meetings of the Central 
 Co-operative Society — the Association for Promoting Industrial and 
 Provident Societies — one finds resolutions couched in language of 
 which the sincerity is above suspicion, and which sufficiently testifies 
 to a high elevation of moral aim. Thus at the conference held on the 
 state of the society in Great Castle Street, London, in July, 1852, 
 it was unanimously resolved by its delegates " that this conference 
 entreats all co-operative establishments ... to sell all articles for 
 exactly what they know them to be, and to abstain . . . from the 
 sale of articles known to be adulterated, even if demanded by their 
 customers." The following year it was formally laid down that the 
 principles of the association were — "That human society is a body 
 consisting of many members, not a collection of warring atoms. That 
 true workmen must be fellow-workers, and not rivals. That a prin- 
 ciple of justice, and not of selfishness, must govern exchanges." 
 
 Nor did more prosaic and practical points fail to receive their due 
 measure of consideration and discussion. Chief among these was the 
 payment of managers and of labourers employed by the associations.
 
 CO-OPERATION. 227 
 
 The resolution was arrived at — that " the principle 01 giving a share 
 of the profits to all who had shared in the work was essentially just," 
 and that if this were not done the chief characteristic of co-operative 
 societies would be lost. It was upon this occasion that at the festival 
 which followed the conference, the president, the late Frederick 
 Denison Maurice, observed that "human nature, Christianity, and co- 
 operation, alike taught that men must be controlled by moral law, 
 and until that was acknowledged the continual fighting of man against 
 man, employer against employed, would never cease. As soon as 
 the law was proclaimed and observed that men should help one 
 another, and live for one another, and that so only could they live 
 for themselves, society would be kept in union by a power mightier 
 than selfishness, industrial associations would be the instruments of 
 the moral education, translating those principles into the business of 
 practical life." Twelve years later, the machinery of co-operation 
 was supplemented by the promotion of a Co-operative Wholesale 
 Society, to which it was intended that local stores should be affiliated, 
 procuring thence the articles which they retailed to their customers. 
 Starting with a capital of £999, it made a small loss of £39 in its 
 first half-year, followed in the next by a profit of £306. At the end 
 of last year its capital amounted to £186,692, and its profit to 
 £47,885. Its membership comprised 659 societies representing about 
 500,000 individual members, and its annual sales had reached 
 £■4,546,891. The Wholesale Society has in fact become the com- 
 mercial backbone of the movement, and is a crucial instance of the 
 capacity of the working classes for managing large affairs. In 1883 
 there were in Great Britain no fewer than 1,241 co-operative societies 
 of one kind or another, with 667,463 members. Their share capital 
 was £7,585,996, their loan capital £1,416,829, and their reserve fund 
 £308,506. The value, when the year closed, of their stock-in-trade 
 was £3,194,881, of their land and buildings, £3,692,474 ; and of 
 their other investments, £2,334,629. Tbey had received on the sale 
 of goods in the twelvemonth, £27,865,054, on which the profit was 
 £2,305,887, and they had paid a dividend of £2,167,585. 
 
 It was at the time when the Wholesale Society was established, 
 that a co-operative movement in another direction took place, and that 
 the attempt which we have already noticed to organise consumption 
 for the upper and professional classes on the same lines was made. 
 The Civil Service Supply Association, which was the first set on foot 
 for this purpose, commenced operations in 1866. Its origin was 
 simple, and in a great degree the result of a happy accident. The 
 excessive retail price charged for tea induced a gentleman in the Post 
 Office to obtain a chest of it on wholesale terms. This he kept in a 
 cellar below the office, and distributed its contents as wanted to a 
 few of his personal friends in the department. Comparison of quality 
 
 Q2
 
 228 ENGLAND. 
 
 and price not only was followed by a much larger demand for the 
 article than it was convenient to supply in this primitive fashion, but 
 brought into prominent relief the advantages that would be secured 
 if the system were extended. In consequence, a few of the officials 
 combined to start the Post Office Supply Association, its members 
 being strictly limited to employes of the department. The project 
 was found to work so advantageously that very soon it was deter- 
 mined to diffuse its advantages throughout the entire service ; and in 
 February, 18G6, the Civil Service Supply Association, Limited, was 
 established under " Tbe Industrial and Provident Societies Act, 1862." 
 The capital was restricted to £2,250, in 4,500 shares of 10s. each, and 
 although modifications have been frequently entertained, tbe amount 
 of capital stock still remains the same. From its commencement tbe 
 association has progressed steadily. Tbe sales, which in the first 
 year (1866) amounted to £21,322, increased in the next to £83,405, 
 in 1877 bad passed £1,000,000, in 1883 had reached a total of 
 £1,600,000. Nor did the fact tbat in the second year of the enter- 
 prise two of the directors seceded and successfully set on foot another 
 store, appreciably arrest this rapid development. On this large turn- 
 over the gross profit (i.e. the difference in the price paid to the 
 producer and that charged to the member) averages 8^ per cent. Of 
 this percentage 6£ to 7 per cent, goes in working expenses, leaving 
 l£ to 2 per cent, for profit to the shareholders. The expenses of 
 working, estimated in the dealings of 1883, come to no less than 
 £150,000 ; but when it is explained that the amount paid in that year 
 for salaries of the employes was very little short of £85,000, some 
 notion will be formed of the vastness of the organisation and tbe 
 economy of its management. In this connection it may be said that 
 not only is everything, as a matter of course, bought for cash, but the 
 producer is invariably treated with directly. This system, when 
 combined with that of keeping the percentage of profits at the level 
 named, gives rise to certain anomalies. The producers of certain 
 articles, known throughout the world, whatever advantage in price 
 they may be willing to concede to the Society, in consideration of 
 tbe extent of the transactions, stipulate that their goods shall not be 
 resold at less than certain market quotations. Hence, on such goods 
 a very large profit is made, and, as a consequence, the prices of otber 
 articles are reduced so as to equalise the percentage of profit through- 
 out the department. On the other hand, there are well-known goods 
 winch cannot be sold at prices below those quoted by retail traders, 
 who, selling such articles without profit, seek to impress their cus- 
 tomers with the belief tbat their prices generally are on a level with 
 those of the co-operative stores. As an example, the familiar custom 
 of selling sugar at or under cost price is not adopted by the associa- 
 tion, whose quotations for this article are consequently comparatively
 
 CO-OPERATION. 229 
 
 high. But in all articles of food the purchaser at the stores has the 
 great advantage of a guarantee of purity. It is a special feature of 
 these institutions that everything is examined by a qualified analyst, 
 permanently employed for the purpose. 
 
 In the sum named as the annual turnover, no estimate has been 
 included of the sales made by the tradesmen affiliated to the society 
 who deal directly with the members, allowing on purchases a discount 
 varying from 10 to 25 per cent. It is calculated that these come to 
 between £3,000,000 and £4,000,000 annually, there being about 400 
 firms so affiliated, some of which have individually sold more than 
 £60,000 worth of goods in a given twelve months. The disposition 
 on the part of the shopkeepers to avail themselves of the privilege does 
 not diminish ; but of the many desirous of admittance to the society's 
 list only those who are able to satisfy a most rigid scrutiny of their 
 standing are successful, and more than half the applicants are as a rule 
 rejected. It should be added that some of the very first West End 
 firms have shown no wish to identify themselves with the movement. 
 
 The direction is composed of fifteen members, who each receive as 
 remuneration 200 guineas a year. They are all employed in the Civil 
 Service, and take an active part in the management of the stores, 
 generally attending every afternoon, when they divide themselves into 
 committees for different purposes. To the secretary, who acts also as 
 general manager, falls the chief superintendence, and he has directly 
 under and responsible to him the departmental managers — invariably 
 highly competent men, in receipt of annual salaries varying from £300 
 to £600. It will be obvious that the original capital of the association 
 would be totally inadequate to work a business of this extent, pri- 
 marily turning on cash payments. The necessary means are provided 
 by accumulations of profits. The reserve fund at the end of 1874 
 showed such an accumulation of nearly £100,000 ; and a later one, 
 to the end of 1878, called the guarantee account, an additional sum 
 of £100,000. These two sums, added to the capital stock, gave a 
 total of £202,250, about the half of which was invested in buildings, 
 the other being available as working capital. The question of a 
 division in whole or part of these accumulated profits among the share- 
 holders was for a long time a difficulty. The accumulations were set 
 apart, as has been shown, because the opinion of eminent counsel con- 
 curred that it could not be distributed. As the matter now stands, 
 additional fully-paid shares to represent the amount of the accumula- 
 tions have been created and allotted among the shareholders, the whole 
 share capital amounting on the 30th of June, 1884, to over £345,000. 
 The original 10s. shares are transferable to qualified persons in the 
 same way as any ordinary shares, and consequently have a high value, 
 which has been considerably higher since a solution of this question 
 of disposing of the accumulation of profits has been found.
 
 230 ENGLAND. 
 
 Naturally, the association has had many followers in the path which 
 it has struck out. The operations of even the most successful of these 
 have not in any way impeded the progress of the original society, 
 which numhered on June 30th, 1884, 37,000 members, of whom 
 32,000 pay annually 2s. or 5s., the remainder consisting of share- 
 holders and their special nominees. The Civil Service Co-operative 
 Society was originally formed, as has been said, by the secession of 
 some directors of the Supply Association. Its offices are in the Hay- 
 market, and its organisation and general features are identical with 
 those of the society of which it is an offshoot. In the first year of its 
 career the turnover was £15,000, in 1883 £532,000. The number of 
 members is at present about 12,000 — 721 shareholders and 11,000 
 • and odd life and annual subscribers, and it should perhaps be observed 
 that these, whether share or ticket -holders, are strictly limited to 
 qualified persons. The original capital, as in the other society, was 
 extremely small, being nominally £5,000, of which only £2,000 was 
 paid up, and in the same way it finds its working funds from accumu- 
 lated profits. On 31st December, 1883, those placed to the assets 
 amounted to £199,500, of which nearly half is invested in buildings. 
 The scheme which the original association has in view has already 
 been partly carried out by its younger sister. The reserve fund has 
 been apportioned in bonus shares among the shareholders, but as yet, 
 it is understood, the payment of a dividend on these new shares is 
 only under consideration. The average net profit is the same as that 
 realised by the Supply Association ; the working expenses are perhaps 
 fractionally higher, but not more so than might be expected from the 
 cost of the staff of a more limited business. 
 
 The progress made by the Army and Navy Co-operative Society is 
 not less proportionately rapid. The sales during the first year of its 
 existence amounted to £130,280 ; during the twelfth year, that which 
 ended January, 1884, they reached a total of £2,38(3,193, when the 
 association consisted of over 15,000 shareholders, nearly 5,000 life 
 members, and 17,500 annual subscribers. The dividend paid to share- 
 holders in this society is only 5 per cent., and the surplus funds are 
 devoted to a constant reduction of prices, as well as to the extension 
 of their premises and business. If we are to consider the effect of tbis 
 and kindred institutions, not only upon their members, but on the 
 community at large, two things are clear : in the first place, the 
 money saved is not lost to circulation, but diverted into other channels, 
 though sometimes, perhaps, of less productive expenditure ; in the 
 second place, there is the same demand for labour under the co- 
 operative regime as there would be if the monopoly of the tradesmen 
 had never been challenged. Many luxuries, which were inaccessible 
 to the possessors of fixed incomes so long as they paid credit prices 
 for necessaries, are now placed within their reach, and there is pocket-
 
 CO-OPERATION. 231 
 
 money to spare for amusements and indulgences — the concert, the 
 theatre, the hire of cabmen and gardeners. As to the relations between 
 co-operative stores and national industry, there is in the former plenty 
 of employment for the latter. There are heads and foremen of depart- 
 ments, who but for the stores would, no doubt, have set up as trades- 
 men on their own account — as a matter of fact, many have been 
 tradesmen. Further, to some extent these associations co-operate not 
 merely in the work of distribution, but of production as well. Tbe 
 Civil Service Supply Association has long made its own drugs, chemi- 
 cals, and a few other articles. Tbe Army and Navy has gone much 
 further, and has large workshops for the manufacture of portmanteaus, 
 dressing-bags, purses, and other leather goods, tin-work, japanned 
 ware, cabinets, as well as printing and die-sinking works. In all, 
 employment is thus provided for close upon two thousand hands. 
 " The society," says the secretary, " has been compelled to adopt this 
 expedient by the difficulty, and almost in some instances impossibility, 
 of procuring really sound and good articles that could be confidently 
 warranted to its members, owing to the system of scamping and 
 concealing defects. The results have quite kept pace with the most 
 sanguine expectations. The prices have been reduced, the members 
 are satisfied, and the working men, many of them the best in their 
 respective trades, are well content. As an illustration of this it may 
 be related that a director conversing with one of them, inquired how 
 he liked his employment, and received the reply, 'Very much.' ' Why 
 so ? ' he then asked. ' Because, sir, I have regular work. Before I 
 came here I made bags which I sold to a factor. He would put on a 
 large profit and sell them to a shopkeeper, and before they reached 
 the regular customers my price was more than doubled. And then I 
 often had two or three idle days at a time, as I could not sell my 
 work. But now, owing to the small profit put on by the stores, I 
 suppose there are a hundred bags sold where there used not to be 
 ten ; and I have regular employment and no idle time.' • But how 
 do you like the rule which prevents beer being taken into the work- 
 shops ? ' ' Well, sir, I didn't like it at first ; but now I am used to it, 
 and it has saved me a lot of money.' " * 
 
 There is, however, another side to this particular question. While 
 co-operative manufacture secures the immense advantage of a uniform 
 excellence in quality, the means at the command of the larger manu- 
 facturers, their experience and personal interest, enable them to pro- 
 duce goods which offer little margin for competition. 
 
 Independently of the great economical boon which co-operation in 
 distribution has been to the working classes, it has brought with it 
 moral, intellectual, and political advantages of the highest value. It 
 
 * See an article by Mr. J. H. Lawson, entitled " Co-operative Stores," a reply to shop- 
 keepers, in the Nineteenth Century, February, 1879.
 
 232 ENGLAND. 
 
 has taught working men how to act together, to differ on details with- 
 out disagreeing as to principle, to dissent without mutual separation, 
 and, in spite of sundry divergencies of opinion, steadily to combine 
 together with a common purpose in view. The periodical meetings of 
 the shareholders in these stores are sometimes agitated by stormy 
 debates, but the discussion ends in a schism far less frequently than 
 in the practical recognition of the truth that toleration is a necessity 
 of life. Again, all efforts at self-improvement and self-reform having 
 an elevating tendency, co-operation, as belonging to this class of enter- 
 prise, has raised the views of, and implanted healthy ambition among, 
 the labouring population. " The improved condition," writes one of 
 the chief leaders of the co-operative movement, "of our members is 
 apparent in their dress, bearing, and freedom of speech. You would 
 scarcely believe the alteration made in them by their being connected 
 with a co-operative society." " The whole atmosphere," says Mr. 
 Holyoake, "is honest. Those who serve neither hurry, finesse, nor 
 flatter ; they have no interest in chicanery ; they have but one duty to 
 perform — that of giving fair measure, full weight, and a pure article." 
 Teetotallers recognise in the store an agency of incalculable worth for 
 teaching the virtues of sobriety. Husbands who never knew what it 
 was to be out of debt, and wives who previously never had a spare 
 sixpence in their pockets, now go to market — the market being their 
 own property — with well-filled purses, and with a belief in their own 
 capacities to ameliorate their condition. " Many married women," 
 continues Mr. Holyoake, " become members because their husbands 
 Avill not take the trouble, and others join the store in self-defence, to 
 prevent the husband from spending their money in drink. Many single 
 women have accumulated property in the store, which becomes a cer- 
 tificate of their conjugal worth, and young men in want of prudent 
 helpmeets consider that to consult the books of the store is the best 
 means of directing their selection." Briefly, a share in a co-operative 
 store is calculated to give its holder a consciousness of some definite 
 aim and purpose in life. Every member of the society is something 
 of a capitalist; the share has an ascertained mercantile value; and, 
 over and above that, there are the dividends, paid quarterly, on the 
 purchases. 
 
 The co-operative movement has also taught the working classes of 
 England what mutual confidence can do. With few exceptions, the 
 business of these stores is conducted upon the strictest ready-money 
 principles. When societies have given credit they have often been 
 wrecked, and the mischief which one such failure has done to the 
 entire movement can scarcely be exaggerated. The confidence which 
 the working classes now repose in their stores has received striking 
 and sometimes rather pathetic illustration. Mr. Holyoake tells the 
 story of a shopkeeper who came to a woman, a member of the Equit-
 
 
 CO-OPERATION. 233 
 
 able Pioneers, admonishing her to draw out the £40 which she bad in 
 tbe society at once, as it was sure to break. The answer was, " Well, 
 if it does break it will break with its own ; it has all been saved out 
 of my profits ; all I have it has given me." 
 
 The educational value which these stores possess is not only moral 
 and social, but intellectual and literary. While they have united the 
 working classes in beneficent efforts for their own improvement, they 
 have generated a new sense of citizenship, they have even been utilised 
 as a machinery for providing instruction of the higher kind for tbeir 
 members. To the reading-rooms and lending libraries — such as we 
 have seen in the course of our visit to the Equitable Pioneers in Toad 
 Lane — there have been added classes in French, science, and art. 
 Only in a few cases, however, are these co-operative societies doing a 
 distinctly educational work, and it may be doubted how far, in view 
 of the numerous independent educational agencies, such as university 
 extension, lecture societies, institutes, and the ladies' improvement 
 associations such as exist in Leeds, Birmingham, and other towns — 
 associations, as the name implies, for teaching the women of the 
 working classes the rudiments of household economy and domestic 
 hygiene — it is practicable that these further responsibilities should be 
 at all generally assumed. 
 
 As to the future of co-operation in England, there are two distinct 
 sets of opinions. On the one hand, it is maintained that it is not 
 likely to render any fresh specific service ; that in having supplied 
 the working population, as well as their social superiors, with an 
 exceedingly effective machinery for the economical distribution of the 
 necessaries and luxuries of life, it has done all that could reasonably 
 be expected ; that if to this we add its success in inculcating the 
 virtues of frugality and thrift, we have entirely exhausted the list of 
 its possible good works. On the other hand, experienced enthusiasts, 
 like Mr. Thomas Hughes and others, who have made co-operation their 
 special study, are persuaded that the movement, if not in its infancy, 
 is still in its youth, and that there are before it great opportunities of 
 usefulness as yet undeveloped. Tbe prime question is, whether it is 
 in the nature of things possible that the principle of co-operation should 
 be applied to production with anything like the same results which are 
 obtained in the case of distribution. The experiment, indeed, has 
 often been made, but scarcely with sufficient success in any consider- 
 able number of cases to warrant the assertion that the co-operative 
 principle is destined to solve tbe problem of labour versus capital. The 
 mutual distrust which is too often the characteristic of the working 
 classes, and which offered serious obstacles to the successful manage- 
 ment of the co-operative stores in their earlier days, has not yet been 
 overcome in the matter of co-operative production. A fair day's wages 
 for a fair day's work is their motto, and the working man prefers to
 
 234 ENGLAND. 
 
 labour for an employer whom he holds responsible for his pay, and 
 from whom he knows that when the day's work is done he will receive 
 it, to engaging in a venture with his fellows, on the chance that success 
 in their efforts, in the more or less remote future, will enable them 
 handsomely to remunerate themselves. Thus it is that when co- 
 operative mills have been started, each worker being entitled to share 
 equally in tbe profits, they have generally ended by becoming joint- 
 stock companies, in which only a very limited number have been 
 proprietors. 
 
 The co-operative principle has been applied with the happiest results 
 to agriculture, and a wide extension of it in this direction may now be 
 confidently anticipated. Fourteen years before the commencement of 
 the enterprise of the Rochdale Pioneers, a Suffolk squire, Mr. Gurden, 
 of Assington, selected sixty acres of land of medium quality, furnishing 
 them with a homestead, and letting them out to a company of share- 
 holders — all taken from the class of farm-labourers — who put £3 
 a-piece into the concern, while Mr. Gurden himself advanced £400, 
 without interest, on loan. In 1807 the number of shareholders had 
 risen from fifteen to twenty-one, the land held had increased from 
 00 to 130 acres, and each of the shares was worth £50. In addition 
 to this, the company had repaid Mr. Gurden all his money, and the 
 stock and implements on the farm — the former consisting of six 
 horses, four cows, 110 sheep, thirty or forty pigs — were the exclu- 
 sive property of the co-operators. The rent of the land was £200 
 a year, and the farm was held on a fourteen years' lease. The 
 business was and is managed by a committee of four, some of whose 
 members could not even read or write, but the practical direction 
 of the farm rests with the bailiff — himself a co-operator — who is 
 paid a shilling a week above the ordinary rate of wages. 
 
 In 1854 Mr. Gurden, encouraged by the success of his first experi- 
 ment, started a second co-operative farm on his property. The new 
 association commenced with seventy acres of land and thirty-six mem- 
 bers, each subscribing £3 10s. by way of capital, to which £400 was 
 added as a loan without interest by the landlord, as on the earlier 
 occasion. When the Bishop of Manchester visited them a few years 
 ago, the company was out of debt, occupied 212 acres at a rent of 
 6825, and was possessed of stock valued at £1,200, while the original 
 £3 10s. shares would sell freely for £30 * Within the last year 
 another venture of the same kind, but on a larger scale, has been 
 launched with every prospect of success at Radbourne, in Warwick- 
 shire, on the estate and under the patronage of Mr. King, a disciple of 
 
 * A full account of the ill-fated co-operative farm at Ralahine, in the county of 
 Clare, ami some notice of a co-operative farm at Blennerhaaset, in Cumberland, one 
 M.irt.Ml 1830 and the other 1862, will be found in Mr. Parr's " Co-operative Agriculture." 
 London : 1S7U.
 
 00-OPEEATION. 285 
 
 Mr. Hughes and Mr. Dyke-Acland.* In the autumn of 1883 an asso- 
 ciation was formed, of which the committee of management consisted 
 of Mr. David Johnson and two members elected, and to be annually- 
 elected, from among the labourers belonging to it. At Michaelmas 
 they entered into possession of the Manor Farni of 350 acres at Rad- 
 bourne, on a yearly tenancy, paying a rent of £356, or about a pound 
 an acre, in half-yearly payments. They hired of their landlord stock 
 and implements to the value of £3,304, and borrowed cash of him to the 
 amount of £200, paying on both sums interest at the rate of 6 per 
 cent. The associates, under Mr. Johnson's direction, are twelve men, 
 two youths, and two boys, who receive in wages, the first two and 
 sixpence, the second one and eightpence, and the third tenpence a day. 
 Their annual expenses, including the interest on their hired stock and 
 borrowed capital, is some £3,300, or roundly speaking, £10 an 
 acre. All this they have paid, and at the end of last year divided an 
 extra £70 in clear profit among them, while it is contemplated that the 
 dividend which will be at their disposal at the end of the current year 
 will not be less than £200. Their farm includes 146 acres of arable 
 land cropped with wheat, oats, winter beans, spring beans, clover, 
 mangolds, swedes, and turnips, and 200 acres of meadow and pasture 
 land, and in the early summer comprised fifty-six ewes, eighty-six lambs, 
 and forty-three other sheep, twenty-seven milking- cows, thirteen heifers, 
 nine steers, four feeding cows, two young bulls, and thirty reared calves, 
 thirty-three swine, and a large quantity of poultry. They had also nine 
 working horses, one mare and foal, and nine cart colts, a nag and a job- 
 bing horse. Almost everything consumed by the associates and their 
 families is raised by themselves, from the hams and bacon which they 
 cure and store, to the oatmeal which mixed with water they prefer to 
 beer as both a summer and winter beverage while they are engaged 
 in their labours. " I do not think," Mr. Johnson said, speaking at 
 the Co-operative Congress at Derby last June, " that anyone could 
 imagine the intellectual and social advancement that has taken place 
 in my fellow associates and workers. I believe that co-operation in 
 farming under a good and sound agreement, and such rules as we 
 have, will do more good for the proper cultivation of the soil than any 
 Act of Parliament that could be framed. Under a good system of co- 
 operative farming the land would produce a great deal more than it 
 does now, and a great benefit would be conferred on the country 
 at large and especially upon the rural population, which would profit 
 morally, socially, intellectually, and financially I believe the system 
 would be equally good for the landowner and capitalist." It is at 
 least certain that the Manor Farm at Radbourne, on which a prosperous 
 
 * "Co-operative Farming," by David Johnson. London : 18S4. It is a reprint of a 
 paper read b\- Mr. Johnson at the sixteenth Co-operative Congress, held at Derby, June 
 lbth, 1884.
 
 236 ENGLAND. 
 
 and happy community seems now in a fair way to flourish, was very 
 far from favourably circumstanced. It is six and a half miles from 
 the nearest railway station and twelve miles from the nearest market 
 town. Moreover it was in an extremely neglected condition before 
 the Association entered on their tenancy of it.* "The ploughed and 
 arable land," Mr. Johnson states, " was foul with switch and weeds — 
 as bad as could be. The hedges ran wild, and the ditches and brooks 
 were full of mud, so that the drains were choked. New draining had 
 to be done, and where practicable the old drains taken up, cleaned, 
 and put in again. All the turf land was foul with rushes, thistles, and 
 rough grass. A large quantity of ant-banks were on the pastures. 
 The arable, pasture, and meadow land was completely worn out 
 and waterlogged. The buildings, fences, and yards were in a very 
 dilapidated state — so bad that I do not think a farm could be worse. 
 People said it would never be worth cultivating again. It was also in 
 a very isolated position, being a long way from any village, and most 
 of my associates have to walk about two and a half miles night and 
 morning. We had to contend with a very strong clay-land, blue lias 
 clay — a very tenacious and obdurate soil — just the kind in fact that 
 all agricultural writers have been denouncing for years past, being 
 quite unanimous as to its not being worth cultivating." To make this 
 farm fit for occupation and to clean and crop the land not merely effec- 
 tually but profitably as well, was, it is manifest, no light or easy task. 
 It would have been difficult, we suspect, to find any tenant farmer 
 who would have undertaken it at a rent of five shillings, much less of 
 something over a pound an acre. Yet at such a rent it has been 
 accomplished by a body of men who only the other day were neither 
 better nor worse than the ordinary run of Warwickshire labourers, 
 working under judicious guidance and with the assurance that they 
 would share equitably in the fruits of their additional zeal and exertion. 
 Already, we are informed, another and slightly bigger farm has been 
 rented to Mr. Johnson from Balliol College, and here, a few miles dis- 
 tant, in the same county, it may be reasonably hoped that the 
 experiences of Radbourne will be repeated under more promising con- 
 ditions and with like success. At the last Co-operative Congress it 
 was determined to start co-operative farms in Lancashire and Scotland 
 on the Warwickshire model, and it can scarcely be doubted that they 
 will in due course make their appearance in other parts of the country. 
 It is Mr. Johnson's opinion that they should not be less than about 
 four hundred acres in extent, and their introduction would therefore 
 entail no departure from the system of largo rather than small farming 
 which bas now become established among us. The methods of culti- 
 
 * Mr. Johnson :i 1 1 < 1 the majority of the labourers were, he stated, working on the 
 farm for a year and nearly ten months before they entered into possession of it as an 
 association.
 
 CO-OPERATION. 237 
 
 vation adopted would be not less scientific, and the rents paid would 
 be as high as they are at present ; the great difference would be in the 
 amount and quality of the work which would be put into the soil. 
 Altogether it is not too much to say that a new future seems to be 
 opening to co-operation as applied to farming, and that the enlightened 
 example set so many years ago by Mr. Gurden may at no distant 
 period have many imitators, and may ultimately lead to great and un- 
 expected changes in our agricultural organisation. 
 
 But even if it be held that the success of the Assington and Radbourne 
 experiments is, in the nature of things, exceptional, and that co-opera- 
 tive production upon any large scale is impracticable, all such under- 
 takings may claim the credit of an undoubtedly beneficial tendency, and 
 are necessarily calculated to promote an improvement in the relations 
 between capital and labour. Workmen who take part in such enter- 
 prises acquire the habit of looking at industrial problems from the 
 employers' point of view, gradually perceive that there are many 
 difficulties in trade and manufacture to which they have hitherto been 
 strangers, and that to such questions as piece-work, overtime, hours 
 of labour, there are two sides. Thus co-operation in its productive 
 not less than, as we have seen, in its distributive aspect, may be 
 regarded as the compensating principle to unionism. 
 
 On the whole, it is well that we should estimate co-operation rather 
 by the work it has actually done than by that which sanguine vision- 
 aries consider it may still accomplish. It is enough to know that it 
 has organised and elevated the life of the masses, has immensely 
 improved their social position, has implanted in them the germs of a 
 new morality, and a disposition which is fruitful of promise in the 
 future relations of capital and labour. Further, co-operation has made 
 the struggle for existence easier, existence itself happier and better 
 for half a million of Englishmen, in the course of twenty-five years. 
 A sum of upwards of £10,000,000 of capital forms the stock of the 
 working-class co-operative societies. These societies not merely sell 
 goods of the best quality on reasonable terms, but, in many cases, as 
 we have seen, have been accompanied by the institution of libraries, 
 wholesale bank and trading societies, conferences and congresses, and 
 in some cases productive concerns. It is further to be remembered 
 that since 1852 — when the first Industrial and Provident Societies 
 Act was passed — all this development has been perfectly natural and 
 spontaneous, has taken place in the open market, subject to the full 
 and keen competition of other industrial organisations. If the believers 
 in an agency which has done thus much think that more than is likely 
 to be witnessed yet remains for it to do, the delusion is at least par- 
 donable ; and if these are called fanatics, it must be remembered that 
 with such fanatics co-operation had its first beginnings.
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 CRIMINAL ENGLAND. 
 
 Definition of Crime — Difficulty of arriving at Exact Estimate of Amount of Crime — 
 Figures apt to mislead ; yet much has been done during the Century — Direction 
 of Reform — Prisons, Police, Reformatories — Constitution of the Army of Crime — 
 Categories of Criminals — Congenital Crime — High Flights of Modern Burglars 
 — Habitual Criminals — Prevention of Crimes Act — Accidental Criminals — 
 Colossal Criminals — Police Organisation : its Defects — Recent Reforms — Ma- 
 chinery of Detection — New System in London detailed — Treatment of Criminals 
 after Apprehension — Imprisonment — Local Prisons and New Organisation 
 described — Penal Servitude — Convict Prisons described — Discharged Prisoners — 
 Difficulties they have to face — Assistance given by Prisoners' Aid Societies, and the 
 Results these probably achieve. 
 
 Crime in the body politic has often been compared to some mysterious 
 malady in the human frame, of which the cause and symptoms fairly 
 baffle medical skill, and serve only to provoke the proverbial dis- 
 egreement among doctors. It is at any rate certain that sociologists, 
 statisticians, and philanthropists are extremely prone to difference in 
 opinion as to the nature, origin, and treatment of crime. Some there 
 are who hold that it is hereditary, like gout or consumption ; that the 
 tendency to wrong-doing is transmitted from generation to generation, 
 and that if we would effectually arrest its progress we must isolate the 
 criminal classes, and reduce their opportunities of reproduction to their 
 lowest term. Others hope to counteract the effects of the ancestral 
 taint by the removal of incipient criminals from the contamination of 
 evil surroundings, and the substitution of healthy and beneficent con- 
 ditions in their place, before it has had time and occasion to manifest 
 itself in active operation. Others, again, and they constitute a numerous 
 and influential body, do not despair of reformation even when the 
 criminal is full grown, and hardened in a career of iniquity. They 
 pin their faith on the moral efficacy of penal discipline, and they see in 
 a judicious scheme of punishment and prison management a sure and 
 certain means for the reduction, if not the extinction, of crime and the 
 propensity to crime. Even about the meaning and significance of our 
 criminal statistics themselves conflicting views are taken and expressed 
 in many quarters. To some, and especially to those who are of an 
 official turn of mind, the imposing figures of the parliamentary returns 
 are convincing enough. Innumerable columns of carefully compiled 
 and calculated statistics establish to their entire satisfaction that the
 
 CRIMINAL ENGLAND. 239 
 
   
 
 growth of population is steadily and rapidly outstripping the develop- 
 ment of criminal tendencies among us, and that every successive year 
 continues to be. marked by what in a well-known phrase is described 
 as " a gratifying diminution of crime." On the other hand, however, 
 there are a great number of people who stoutly deny that this is the 
 case. They admit that figures cannot lie, but they affirm that they 
 very frequently mislead. It is not sufficient, they contend, to show 
 that indictments and convictions are decreasing, it must be further 
 shown that every crime is discovered and that every criminal is 
 brought to justice. Is it not the fact that many offenders escape scot 
 free ? that even the crimes they commit remain undetected long after 
 their perpetration ? Is it not also undoubtedly true that honest folk 
 often submit tamely to injury and depredation sooner than be mulcted 
 in heavy sums to carry out prosecutions whereof the expense, it may 
 be urged, should fall upon the State ? 
 
 Where views and opinions are so various and conflicting, it might 
 seem at first difficult to come to any conclusion upon the general 
 question. But if we can once clear ourselves of the intricacies of 
 mere detail, and, unbiassed by partisan spirit, take a calm and 
 comprehensive survey of the subject, we shall arrive at certain broad 
 facts which will immensely facilitate the task. The actual condition 
 of crime and the measures which deal with it may not be as yet 
 absolutely satisfactory, but it cannot be denied that criminal legis- 
 lation generally has improved vastly since the commencement of the 
 current century. It may be that the prevention of crime, the removal 
 of temptations to commit it, and its treatment in its first beginnings, 
 have not yet reached the scientific stage ; that the machinery of 
 detection is still imperfect and uncertain ; that the theory and prac- 
 tice of repression, the pains and penalties, retributive or deterrent, 
 imposed to maintain the majesty of the law, continue, in spite of 
 earnest endeavours to understand them, illogical and incomplete. 
 Be it so ; it is still certain that in all these matters we have taken 
 enormous strides in recent years. Our penal code has lost its 
 ancient savage and ruthless character. It is not so long ago that 
 the theft of a spoon was enough to hang a man, and that after 
 every assize the gallows were loaded with victims guilty of the 
 most venial offences. Little less barbarous was the system of 
 secondary punishment meted out to those who escaped the capital 
 sentence of the law. It was underlaid by the same principle of 
 extirpation. Transportation beyond the seas was established as a 
 means of ridding the community of its criminals for as long a time as 
 possible, perhaps for ever. Never was a more anomalous and incon- 
 sistent scheme of penal repression devised. It was extremely unequal 
 in its incidence. Some suffered severely, others were rapidly trans- 
 formed into millionaires. The punishment, again, such as it was,
 
 24.0 ENGLAND. 
 
 was inflicted at so great a distance from home that it failed to act as 
 a warning to those who remained hehind. Presently, with increased 
 means of intercommunication, the penalty of expatriation ceased to 
 be effective, till at last, as the colonies themselves advanced to- 
 wards material wealth and prosperity, the strange spectacle was seen 
 of honest artisans emigrating of their own accord to spots where 
 felons also were relegated for their offences. Anomalies such as these 
 have now altogether disappeared. Transportation has been replaced 
 by penal servitude, and that the whole scheme of imprisonment and 
 gaol management is certain in its operation and fairly effective is 
 shown by the results it obtains. Equally marked have been the changes 
 and reforms in police organisation. The existing elaborate machinery, 
 embracing every corner of the kingdom, in England and Wales alone 
 employing some thirty thousand men, and costing a couple of millions 
 a year, is barely half "a century old. People who, not too gratefully, 
 accept the ubiquitous policeman of to-day as an established institution, 
 should compare him, and the system of which he is the representa- 
 tive, with the ancient Charlie or the Bow Street Runner of the past. 
 It is no longer necessary to raise the hue and cry in order to bring 
 great criminals to justice ; soldiers do not now act as thief-catchers, 
 nor is it often that they are called out in aid of the civil power. The 
 prevention of crime, again, may be a problem which will remain un- 
 solved for many centuries, but exceedingly praiseworthy efforts at its 
 solution have been made in recent years. It is coming to be more 
 generally understood that crime must be dealt with in the rudimentary 
 stage. To reform hardened offenders has proved almost impossible, 
 but their offspring with care may be preserved from contaminating in- 
 fluences and turned into the right path. Much has been already 
 accomplished in this direction by reformatories and industrial schools, 
 the number of which are increasing from day to day. Through them 
 it may yet be possible to cut off the supply which feeds and keeps alive 
 the great army of crime still existing among us ; a vast force of 
 wrongdoers warring constantly with society, achieving few successes, 
 suffering many reverses, but exhibiting a vitality equally deplorable 
 and tenacious. 
 
 This army is strangely constituted, and very variously recruited. 
 Tbere are many categories of criminals. Some are born criminals ; 
 some achieve crime ; others have crime thrust upon them. The 
 wretched urchin, whether nameless or owning a known parentage, who 
 first sees the light in the purlieus of Whitechapel, in Seven Dials, or 
 Drury Lane, takes in thievish and other evil propensities with his 
 mother's milk. He learns to look upon the well-to-do classes as his 
 natural prey. He is taught to reverence the successful depredator as 
 a glorious being ; to despise the policeman — the " copper," in his own 
 slang — as his natural foe. His education, except in the nefarious
 
 CRIMINAL ENGLAND. 241 
 
 processes of the occupation which with him is hereditary, is utterly- 
 neglected. He grows up with ideas of right and wrong not so much 
 perverted as non-existent. As soon as he is able to move his fingers or 
 act for himself, he joins the seminary of some modern Fagin, and in 
 the companionship of an Artful Dodger rapidly passes through the 
 curriculum, choosing at its close the career in which he continues for 
 the rest of his life. He soon becomes familiar with all the ups and 
 downs of his precarious calling. For a time he may enjoy immunity, 
 may remain unknown to the police, and with this continuous oppor- 
 tunity of plying his trade, he may pass a year, perhaps several years, 
 in comparative comfort, doing no work, and yet receiving an abundance 
 of ill-gotten wages. At this period he consorts with his "fancy" of 
 the opposite sex, and enters into a^Mfls-J-matrimonial partnership, which 
 results in the perpetuation of his species by children who will, unless a 
 special Providence intervene, follow in his footsteps. Sooner or later he 
 falls, as he euphemistically calls it, into trouble. It may be his evil luck 
 to become familiarised with the inside of a gaol even in his tenderest 
 years ; on the other hand, he may long escape capture, but sooner or 
 later he is certain to come within the grip of the law, and once a gaol- 
 bird, a gaol-bird he generally continues to the end of his days. 
 
 To reclaim such unfortunates as these in the earlier stages of then- 
 downward course is the praiseworthy object of numerous missions, 
 refuges, and other reformatory institutions, which silently, and with 
 but little show, are now working strenuously among us. What mea- 
 sure of success attends their estimable efforts cannot be very accurately 
 determined. It is at least certain that the training-ships and industrial 
 schools return annually to the general population many thousands of 
 lads and girls who have been transformed from vagabonds of the most 
 unpromising kind into decent creatures, weaned from their predatory 
 instincts, and willing to work honestly for their daily bread. These 
 numbers, however, represent but a fraction of the whole mass of crimi- 
 nality from which they have been rescued. The large balance which 
 remains continues unreclaimed, and passes from bad to worse with 
 rapid strides. The pickpocket and the area sneak, who are the rank 
 and file of the criminal profession, if they display proper aptitudes soon 
 promote themselves to its higher walks. Their strangely developed 
 astuteness, the fertile brains and nimble fingers which are such marked 
 characteristics of the dangerous classes, serve them in good stead when 
 they come to be engaged in larger operations, playing for bigger stakes, 
 and risking longer periods of forfeited liberty upon each throw. The 
 patient and minute care which the habitual burglar bestows upon 
 his plans is worthy of the great general preparing or prosecuting an 
 important campaign. He approaches his quarry by circuitous routes ; 
 gathers information from eveiy available source, undermines insidiously 
 the honesty, or boldly secures the co-operation, of the servants of the 
 
 E
 
 242 ENGLAND. 
 
 establishment -which he has marked down as his prey. He does not 
 itttempt to pluck the apple till it is ripe, and by that time all his 
 arrangements have been carefully matured. He has decided upon the 
 best plan of committing the deed. If the job be one which, for mani- 
 fest reasons, he does not wish to execute personally, the services of 
 a comrade, an equally adroit cracksman, not so well known in the 
 neighbourhood, are secured. The light vehicle — a tax-cart, with a 
 fast-trotting pony — is ready to transfer the booty rapidly from the 
 scene of action to a more distant spot, where the scent is weak 
 or suspicion not yet aroused. Chief of all, a convenient "fence," 
 or receiver of stolen goods, is advised of the approaching coup ; 
 his melting-pot is ready to turn the plate into " white soup," his 
 emissaries wait only his orders to make themselves scarce with the 
 jewels, which cannot be disposed of nearer than Vienna or Amsterdam. 
 Thus from the first conception of the robbery, through all the prepa- 
 rations which have preceded its committal, to the skill displayed in 
 execution and the subsequent astute cunning of the agents employed 
 to remove all traces and destroy every clue, the whole affair has been 
 managed in a masterly and thoroughly artistic fashion. It is the 
 perfection thus visible in the plans of modern burglars that has led to 
 those repeated successes on a large scale which will explain how, at 
 certain seasons, a whole country side is devastated by these human 
 pests ; how mansion after mansion, country house after country house, 
 can be ransacked with impunity, and in the teeth of the local police ; 
 how in London, in the broad daylight, and in busy thoroughfares, 
 enterprising thieves can enter and despoil private dwelling-houses 
 under the very noses of their owners. It may also account for other 
 mysterious and still undetected crimes ; may explain how the jewel- 
 box of a countess can be abstracted under the eyes of servants and 
 officials at a great London terminus ; how a world-renowned picture 
 may be spirited away from a well -watched and strongly-guarded 
 picture-gallery in the very heart of the West End. 
 
 But it is not only as a burglar on a large scale, whether top-sawyer 
 and chief, or merely an individual unit in a widespread confederacy 
 and the trusted agent of others, that the greatest criminals nowadays 
 achieve success. There are other methods of rising to eminence in 
 their nefarious trade. Although continually beaten up and hunted 
 from pillar to post by the police, numbers of clever rascals, who sit 
 still themselves, contrive to do a roaring trade upon the active mis- 
 deeds of less experienced rogues. These are they who employ pick- 
 pocket and burglar as catspaws to pull the chestnuts out of the fire. 
 The receiver of stolen goods, whatever their description — handker- 
 chiefs, milk-cans, forged bills, or banknotes embezzled — does more 
 1<> foster crime tban those who actually practise it. But although 
 infinitely more criminal, he often escapes scot free. Justice may in
 
 CRIMINAL ENGLAND. 243 
 
 the long run overtake him, but not before he has had opportunities of 
 amassing considerable wealth. How far-reaching and cunningly-laid 
 are the nets spread by the experts of this branch of crime is seen as 
 often as their evil practices are discovered and laid bare. It is then 
 shown that some master-mind has woven a web and planned schemes 
 upon a gigantic scale. In a very notorious case which once occupied 
 much of the attention of the public — that of the Long Firm — it was 
 found that the fraternity embraced all manner of men and women in 
 all parts of the country ; that operations of unusual magnitude were 
 manipulated by rogues with great financial skill and uncommon apti- 
 tude for business ; and that the traffic had prospered, undetected and 
 unchecked, for several consecutive years. The same breadth of treat- 
 ment, accompanied by minute knowledge and mastery over details, 
 was exhibited by the transatlantic forgers who a few years ago com- 
 mitted frauds upon the Bank of England which, if undetected, would 
 have involved tbe loss of a hundred thousand pounds. 
 
 But it is not given to all to succeed, although many conspicuous 
 examples may be cited of successful crime. These are the leaders 
 and generals ; there remain the common men, the rank and file of the 
 army of crime, who have not originally possessed the talent to rise, or 
 who through bad luck or bad management have gravitated still farther 
 downwards, and whose misdeeds are of a more prosaic and common- 
 place character. Their thieving, and their malpractices generally 
 when they act for themselves, are always on a second-rate scale ; if 
 they fly at higher game it is as the tools or instruments of others, and 
 in such cases luck seldom brings them more than a tithe of the pro- 
 ceeds, while they have often to bear the whole brunt of failure. Still, 
 whatever their degree and precedence in the order of iniquity, they all 
 belong to the class of habitual criminals. This is an alarmingly numer- 
 ous force. There are some 40,000 thieves and depredators continually 
 at large ; of the 23,000 persons apprehended annually on suspicion of 
 indictable crimes, of whom about 14,000 or 15,000 are committed for 
 trial, nearly half come under this category — as do many thousands of 
 the half million of people summarily convicted every year. It is with 
 this race of outcasts that our gaols and convict establishments are 
 principally filled ; it is they who are the objects of unremitting 
 solicitude on the part of the police, whether living prosperously in the 
 suburbs, or congregating in thieves' kitchens at the East End. They 
 are all more or less familiar to tbe police, and if " wanted " can 
 generally be produced without loss of time. It is on their account, 
 and to facilitate their ready identification, that huge ledgers, known 
 as the Habitual Criminals Register, are kept with admirable care and 
 minuteness at the Home Office, and posted up from day to day. 
 Against them severe enactments have of late years been made. The 
 law known as the Prevention of Crimes Act is directed mainly against 
 
 r2
 
 244 ENGLAND. 
 
 habitual crime ; not only does it lay down that a repetition of offences 
 brings those who commit them within the definition and renders them 
 liable to the penalties of habitual criminals, but it provides for such 
 subsequent supervision as may watch over possible depredators and 
 keep them in check. If none of these measures have as yet 
 appreciably diminished the number of habitual offenders, it must be 
 admitted that only a comparatively short time has elapsed since their 
 introduction, and that it is still almost too soon to look for very deci- 
 sive results. 
 
 Although the foregoing categories of criminals account for a large 
 proportion of the whole number, there remains a considerable fraction 
 of evil-doers in whom the taint is neither hereditary nor habitual, but 
 who represent distinct types of crime peculiar to the present day. 
 These include the accidental, the almost involuntary criminal, and those 
 who, cursed from the beginning with a weak moral fibre, have gradually 
 succumbed to temptation, and degenerated from bad to worse. The 
 foolish spirit of social competition which permeates even the the lower 
 middle classes, and which shows itself in unnecessary ostentation and 
 culpaple extravagance, has been at the bottom of much misery and 
 mischief. The low-salaried clerk or the struggling tradesman is egged 
 on by his wife and daughters, who are eager to hold their heads above 
 their neighbours, and live beyond their means. When evil days come 
 upon him, surrounded by difficulties and harassed by importunate 
 claims, the lapse into dishonesty is unhappily only too easy. He may 
 make a desperate effort to retrieve his fortunes by speculation. If he 
 can find a stockbroker to trust him, he may try his hand in Capel 
 Court on a small scale. More probably he puts his trust in betting- 
 men, and hopes for a big windfall from backing the right horse. As 
 these dangerous expedients probably plunge him ere long deeper and 
 deeper in the mire, the transition to misappropriation, to embezzle- 
 ment, to fraudulent trading and betrayal of trust whether to employers 
 or to relatives and friends, becomes almost inevitable, and he is hence- 
 forth a ruined man. The waters close over him, he is engulfed in the 
 stream, and the chances are a thousand to one that he never regains 
 dry land. 
 
 Criminals of this description are to be pitied almost as much as they 
 must be blamed. No such consideration can be extended to others 
 encountered only too frequently at the present day in a lower stratum 
 of society. Crimes the most brutal and atrocious are unhappily very 
 prevalent among a certain class : the collier, toiling artisan, and work- 
 man, to whom a recent rise in wages may have brought a sudden and 
 unexpected accession of means — for which they can find no employ- 
 im m but in satisfying a lust for drink. The widespread drunkenness 
 among such people, embracing as it does ranks and classes above them, 
 has grown into a national evil. A constantly increasing percentage of
 
 CRIMINAL ENGLAND. 245 
 
 crimes of violence are committed by soddened and brutalised ruffians 
 in their cups. The besotted toper returns to his home, barren and 
 cheerless, because all supplies have been diverted to gratify his artifi- 
 cial thirst. Angry altercations follow, quarrels, mutual recriminations 
 between the long-suffering wife, who in her misery has sought solace 
 in the same debasing vice. At last the stronger sex, goaded and 
 maddened to fury, asserts its mastery by cowardly blows, delivered 
 with the first weapon to hand — with knife, hobnailed boots, or bare 
 fist — and the newspapers are furnished with a paragraph, headed 
 "Brutal Wife Murder." Sometimes children are included in tbe 
 deed. Sometimes the affray follows a pothouse quarrel, and the 
 victim is a drunken associate, possibly an unoffending spectator- who 
 has essayed to act as a peacemaker, and brought upon himself the 
 murderous wrath of both parties to the fight. Wretches who have 
 been thus transformed by drink into wild beasts are not habitual 
 criminals. They belong rather to the class of chance criminals, of 
 those who by weak surrendering to vicious habits have had crime 
 thrust upon them. 
 
 But no picture of crime in modern England would be complete 
 which lacked a portrait of those who may be said to have achieved 
 crime. The well-educated criminal, as expert as he is daring, as 
 trusted as he is deceitful, well born possibly, and highly esteemed, 
 who pursues, nevertheless, for years a course of systematic fraud on 
 the most colossal scale, is essentially a product of these later times. 
 He is another remararkable instance of that tendency to exaggeration 
 which is one of the notes of our age. The names of these giants in 
 guilt are familiar to all. The Bedpaths and Bobsons of a few years 
 back were but the prototypes of men who outdo them in shameless 
 depravity. The recent immense extension of commercial enterprise, 
 the magnitude of modern financial operations, have opened up to these 
 evil geniuses opportunities which their predecessors seldom obtained. 
 They work out their nefarious schemes with so much skill that they 
 commonly secure for themselves a long enjoyment of prosperity. 
 When the crash comes, everybody is taken by surprise. Yet the facts 
 as they become known are found to be nearly always identical. There 
 have been the same circumstances of great wealth displayed, the 
 sources of which are unexplained ; the same carelessness in super- 
 vision, the same blind trustfulness on the part of directors and 
 employers, which has accepted fraudulent figures and audits incom- 
 pletely performed. 
 
 There is a strong family likeness in the careers of these great com- 
 mercial criminals, and one may be taken as the type of all. The scene 
 opens in counting-house or bank, in which as junior clerk or subordi- 
 nate employe the future prince of rogues displays such undoubted 
 capacity for business that he soon gains commendation. Advance-
 
 246 ENGLAND. 
 
 ment follows ; but it is probably too slow for bis ardent and avaricious 
 spirit, and bis fertile wits begin to plan more expeditious methods of 
 obtaining at once by fraud what only long years of patient industry 
 would bring bim with honour. It may be that bis schemes are assisted 
 by the confidence his employers place in him, or by their neglect of 
 simple precautions ; it may be that he is surrounded by innumerable 
 checks, and that his successful progress is hampered and hindered ; 
 but if he is of the true type he will triumph over all such difficulties. 
 He has genius enough to carve out a line for himself. Perhaps he 
 depends upon systematic falsification of figures, perhaps he forges 
 freely, perhaps he manufactures and circulates spurious securities ; 
 but in one way or another he rises rapidly in wealth and esteem. So 
 soon as his hollow bark is launched upon the great waters of credit 
 his operations increase, he becomes widely known, and he draws more 
 fish into his net. Now, too, he begins to enjoy life. He revels upon 
 the fat of the land. He has town house and country house, a yacht, 
 a shooting-box, a moor. His stables are filled with carriages and 
 costly hunters. He aspires to be styled a modern Maecenas, is a 
 liberal patron of the fine arts, is much esteemed by dealers and 
 Academicians. Not infrequently he adopts the cloak of piety as the 
 best antidote to suspicion. He subscribes liberally to all charities, is 
 himself churchwarden or elder, is often seen on the platform at Exeter 
 Hall, and is quoted as a shining light among Revivalists and other 
 Latter-Day Saints. Surprise that so excellent a man should have gone 
 astray is one of the first of the shocks which accompany the sudden 
 discovery of his guilt. Regret and compassion for him are probably 
 expressed at first, until fuller revelations prove how wide-reaching have 
 been his guilty practices, and how his collapse brings numbers of 
 innocent persons to beggary and ruin. Then we have an outburst of 
 indignation against all who permitted him to escape detection, and for 
 so long. 
 
 What measure of success has attended our police organisation since 
 its establishment cannot be very accurately determined. Many people 
 deny that it has accomplished much ; some protest against the modern 
 tendency to rely altogether upon the police, as entailing the loss of 
 personal independence and self-reliance. This spirit is often exagge- 
 rated into unfriendliness to the force. Every unfavourable circum- 
 stance is quoted to its discredit. Its members are sometimes charged 
 with exceeding their powers, sometimes with condoning offences when 
 it has been made worth their while to be conveniently blind. More 
 commonly the police are twitted with their failures in following out 
 clues and bringing to justice the perpetrators of heinous and other 
 sensational crimes. The discovery made a few years ago, that certain 
 hitherto trusted detectives had made common cause with the enemies 
 of society, threw grave suspicion on the rectitude of the whole con-
 
 CRIMINAL ENGLAND. 247 
 
 etabulary. Nevertheless, it would be grossly unfair to ignore what 
 the police have done and still do. Their existence is a bulwark 
 against crime, a standing menace to evil-doers. The fact that serious 
 offences now and again pass undetected may prove that police machinery 
 is imperfect, but against the crimes which defy their attempts at detec- 
 tion may be set those which through their intervention, active or 
 passive, are never committed. The constable on his beat is like the 
 sentinel watching over the welfare and safety of the sleeping town. 
 He is always on the alert, and gives instant alarm on the approach of 
 danger. 
 
 At the same time it cannot be denied that our detective police 
 achieves smaller successes than that of our Continental neighbours. 
 This is in part to be traced to the repugnance of a free people to any- 
 thing approaching to espionage — a sentiment which insists that some- 
 thing more than mere guesswork shall exist to warrant any infringe- 
 ment of the liberty of the subject. These limitations naturally circum- 
 scribe the action of the police, hampering their efforts, and rendering 
 them often barren of results. Yet the system as now constituted 
 cannot well be found fault with. In all the large towns an elaborate 
 machinery exists which works with the precision of clockwork. 
 
 In London, for example, Scotland Yard is the centre of the detec- 
 tive system ; and here are gathered together the threads of a vast 
 network which embraces the whole metropolis and its ramifications. 
 Early every morning reports are received at this head-quarters, from 
 all out-stations, of the crimes committed during the night. It is the 
 business of a responsible official to examine these without loss of time. 
 Should there be among the lists any crime of unusual magnitude and 
 importance, full information thereof is telegraphed forthwith to the 
 chief detective. If he is still in bed, the electric bell is at his side, and 
 he can himself read off from the instrument the news as it comes, 
 and reply with necessary instructions. All the reports are at once 
 set up in type upon the premises. Within an hour they are struck off 
 and circulated by the police messengers in light tax-carts throughout 
 the police stations of the metropolis. These " informations," as they 
 are called, contain full particulars of the crimes, with a full signale- 
 meni of their perpetrators, and the whole document is read aloud to 
 the reliefs of bluecoated constables as they go on duty. The same 
 process is repeated four times a day ; fresh reports are made the 
 groundwork of fresh informations, and thus every policeman over a 
 wide area of many square miles is made aware of what mischief is 
 afoot. When the case is more serious, immediately on the receipt of 
 the morning reports, telegraphic communications are sent simul- 
 taneously to all the chief detective officers at out-stations, who in 
 turn warn their immediate subordinates to be on the alert. In such 
 a case, too, the chief will have promptly intervened, either personally
 
 248 ENGLAND. 
 
 or by wire. Acting under his orders the experts — detective officers 
 have each their speciality — have been summoned to Scotland Yard to 
 confer. The chief of the department meets them, listens to their 
 advice, discusses the case in all its bearings, and decides upon the 
 course of action. Perhaps the job is entrusted specially to some par- 
 ticular man, perhaps to several. It may be that the whole machinery 
 is set in movement, and a general hue and cry is raised throughout 
 and beyond the metropolitan boundaries, by prompt intercommunica- 
 tion with the police of the seaports and principal provincial towns. 
 As the day passes scraps of news probably come in, and are at once 
 distributed to the sleuth-hounds who are drawing the vast covert. 
 The scent grows stronger in consequence on tbis side or on that ; one 
 hound has struck it, and his whimper — transmitted by wire — is taken 
 up by the pack ; ere long, if all goes well, the leading pursuers break 
 from scent to view, and before night the quarry has been run into and 
 secured. 
 
 When a great crime has been committed in the country the same 
 course is followed. We will suppose a bishop's palace has been 
 broken into, a quantity of plate and valuables carried off. The 
 county constabulary communicate at once by telegraph with the 
 metropolitan police : the stolen property is described, and also the 
 person of the tbief, who was observed leaving the house. Perhaps 
 he tumbled down stairs, or fell out of the window, and is supposed 
 to have injured himself. " Look out for a small man, or a tall man," 
 as the case may be, " with a broken arm or a broken leg." 
 This is the cmisiyne sent from Scotland Yard: "Look out at tbe 
 pawnshops and the known receivers for the stolen valuables." " Short 
 account herewitb," flashes next. An hour or two afterwards tbe 
 printed informations are circulated in tbe manner already described. 
 All the hospitals and infirmaries have been visited, and inquiries 
 made of newly-received cases with fractured or injured limbs. The 
 London chief investigator has had a long colloquy, by wire, with 
 the local chief constable. " Can you give me more details ? How 
 was the deed done ? What instruments used ? How was entrance 
 obtained, and so forth ? " The replies to these queries are so many 
 clues to tbe experienced metropolitan detective. One or other of tbe 
 old officers called in to confer says directly, " That is Blustering Bob's 
 style of work," or, " I could swear to Jemmy the Tinman's modus 
 operandi" or, " Tbe Black-faced Poacher had a hand in tbat, I'll go 
 bail." Witbin an hour the detective who has this valuable special 
 knowledge is on the track of his old friend. Blustering Bob or Jemmy 
 tbe Tinman is " wanted." It is on the informations, it is wired right 
 and left, favourite haunts arc drawn, and before the day is out the 
 culprit is discovered, witb the bishop's signet ring in his waistcoat 
 pocket and his arm in a sling.
 
 CRIMINAIi ENGLAND. 249 
 
 Of course these pursuits are not always successful. But it is at least 
 certain that the system has been greatly improved since the noto- 
 rious trials when Kurr and Benson turned Queen's evidence, and 
 the public attention was aroused to the inefficiency of the detective 
 police.* Until the new organisation was introduced, the detective 
 department at Scotland Yard was closed from midnight to ten in the 
 morning. The argus eyes of the law were shut, the whole machinery 
 was stopped, and until within an hour or two of noon did not re- 
 commence work. The criminal, therefore, who - did his business in 
 the night watches was certain always of a few hours' start, knowing 
 full well that no pursuit would be set on foot except during the 
 regular hours. It is far otherwise now. A superior officer remains 
 on duty at the central office all night. He has full discretionary 
 powers ; he is a linguist, and can communicate, if necessary, with all 
 the capitals of Europe ; he is authorised to rouse the chief at any 
 moment of the night ; he is expected to send out myrmidons promptly 
 in pursuit, to direct the out-stations to set a special watch upon the 
 great railway terminuses ; to wire also to Liverpool, Dover, Folke- 
 stone, Southampton, and other principal points of departure for 
 other countries. The various units of the detective force are also 
 kept more rigidly in hand. Every man is obliged to enter in a journal 
 a detailed account of his proceedings from hour to hour. If at the 
 moment engaged on a particular "job," and it is rarely that he is not 
 so, he has to describe his operations, his movements from place to 
 place, the steps by which he conducts his investigations. These 
 journals and diaries are closely scrutinised week after week by the 
 divisional inspectors and superintendent, and every month they are 
 submitted for the examination of the chief himself. Very careful 
 measures are taken to prevent subordinates from falling into temp- 
 tation. Private persons for whom criminal inquiries are set on foot 
 are not now at liberty to give rewards to individual officers. All 
 moneys must be paid to the Chief of the Department, and it rests 
 with him to distribute the sums in such portions and to such officers 
 as he considers most deserving. For instance, the reward offered 
 may be high in one case, where the victims are wealthy ; in another, 
 where the ends of justice are equally concerned, no reward may be 
 forthcoming. The system now in force provides one general fund, 
 which is administered with due care by the responsible head of the 
 department, and the door is thus closed to much of the dishonesty 
 and chicanery which was possible when the subordinate dealt directly 
 with private persons. 
 
 Having thus briefly indicated the manner in which crime is 
 
 * Although it seems to have been considered desirable to abolish the office of Director 
 of Criminal Investigation on the retirement of Mr. Howard Vincent, the system over 
 which he presided remains practically the same as it was during his tenure of the post.
 
 250 ENGLAND. 
 
 pursued and hunted down, let us follow the culprit from the time of 
 his arrest through the various stages of discomfort to which he is 
 now subjected by the law, not only as a punishment for his mis- 
 conduct, but as a warning to others. The apprehension has been 
 made by virtue of a warrant on sworn information, and the offender 
 when captured is lodged, if necessary, for safe custody in a police 
 cell, but removed thence with all possible despatch to one or other of 
 Her Majesty's prisons. He is next taken before the magistrate, one 
 or more, in a police court or in petty sessions, who hear evidence and 
 decide the case. If within their powers, they deal summarily with 
 it ; if more serious and seeming to require more exemplary punish- 
 ment, the culprit is sent for trial to sessions or assizes. But in 
 almost every instance, unless acquitted, he finds himself for a longer 
 or shorter period sentenced to incarceration in one or other of our 
 gaols. If the term ranges from two years downwards to a week or a 
 few days, the sentence is endured in what, until 1878, were known 
 as the borough or county prisons scattered up and down the country ; 
 if the crime must be dealt with more severely, the penalty is penal 
 servitude in a convict prison, the shortest period of which is for five 
 years, and the longest for life. The last-named prisons have been 
 invariably in the hands of the Government, but those first named 
 were, until a few years ago, controlled by the local magistracy, and 
 the cost of their maintenance fell principally upon the local rates. 
 But since the passing of the Prison Act of 1877, the whole of these 
 prisons have been brought under the direct supervision of the State ; 
 they are altogether supported by the imperial exchequer, and their 
 administration, except where the protection or punishment of the 
 criminal inmates is concerned, is vested exclusively in a body of 
 Prison Commissioners, who, with their inspectors and assistants, 
 occupy a portion of the Home Office, and act under the immediate 
 orders of the Home Secretary. 
 
 Although the measure was not passed without some opposition, it 
 was based upon such sound principles that even its foes could only 
 fiud fault with it on sentimental grounds. The arrangements which 
 it was proposed to replace were open to much criticism. The various 
 prisons were very variously managed. In one county the rules were 
 needlessly stringent, in the next foolishly lax. Here the prisoner spent 
 half his time on the treadmill, there he never climbed a step. He 
 might be dieted quite differently ; he might in this prison perforin 
 double the amount of work which he did in that. Again, the local 
 position of the prisons was often the result of chance; they did not 
 follow population, but remained where they had been planted years 
 and years before. There were in some districts too many prisons, in 
 others too few. Here the prison authority had to hire cell accom- 
 modation at a distance, and incur the expense of removing their
 
 CRIMINAL ENGLAND. 251 
 
 prisoners thither ; there the prison was habitually half empty. Full 
 or empty, the same staff had to be kept up, because of the uncertain 
 influx of prisoners. Consequently, in some of the small prisons, the 
 proportion of officers to prisoners was as five to one. Above all, the 
 expense of maintenance was unfairly laid entirely upon land and 
 house property, while incomes derived from other sources did not 
 contribute a sixpence, although benefiting equally from the protection 
 prisons are supposed to afford. Moreover, in these days of rapid 
 locomotion, one district, probably, had to pay for the imprisonment 
 of criminals belonging to another. There was, therefore, very good 
 reason indeed for making the cost of prisons a charge on the imperial 
 rather than on the local exchequer. 
 
 To remedy these anomalies and establish one uniform system has 
 been the primary object in view, both with the framers of the Bill and 
 those who, since it passed, have been entrusted with the enforcement 
 of the Act. A prisoner's life, from first to last, in one of Her Majesty's 
 local prisons is now much the same everywhere. He is bathed and 
 cleansed on reception ; the doctor sees him and certifies to the class 
 of labour he is fit to perform ; the chaplain makes a note of his 
 antecedents, of his education, and of his religious knowledge. He is 
 then passed into tbe main prison, and inducted into his cell ; the rules 
 are explained, the task he must perform pointed out to him. This 
 cell, except for chapel or exercise, whether in the yards or upon the 
 treadwheels, he does not leave for a month, if his sentence extends 
 to that period. During that month he is allowed bed-clothes, but no 
 mattress ; his diet is restricted, and his labour — of the kind known as 
 first-class — continues for ten hours. At the termination of a month 
 he is permitted to pass on to second-class labour, he may commence 
 to acquire a trade, he may occasionally leave his cell to work with 
 others like himself, but in strict silence, and only during good beha- 
 viour. After the first three months he may see his friends once, and 
 write to them once ; his diet becomes fuller and more varied ; he may 
 earn a few shillings to help him on his release. All this time, how- 
 ever, he is liable to forfeit any privileges he has earned, and to suffer 
 other inflictions for misconduct. He may have a few hours in a dark 
 cell, may be restricted to bread and water fare for two or three days, 
 and for longer periods to short commons, of which Indian meal and 
 potatoes form the staple food. His health the while is carefully 
 tended. He is continually weighed ; if he falls away in flesh, or 
 suffers from bodily ailments, he is prescribed for or admitted into 
 hospital. His moral welfare is equally regarded : he has to attend 
 daily service in the chapel, must attend school, and accept the minis- 
 trations of the chaplain in the privacy of his cell. If at the time of 
 his release he is destitute, he is clothed decently, provided with food, 
 and a railway warrant to pass him on to his home, if it is far from
 
 252 ENGLAND. 
 
 the prison. This treatment under the new regime may not differ in 
 general outlines from that pursued under the old ; hut it is at least 
 uniform in every respect. The prisoner sentenced in Northumberland 
 finds in Morpeth and Newcastle gaols precisely the same punishment 
 as the prisoner in Coldbath Fields. The hours and class of labour are 
 now everywhere the same, as well as the diet, the forfeitures for mis- 
 conduct, the marks to be earned by industry, and the gratuities in cash 
 so earned. Other advantages may be expected to follow from this 
 unified administration. There is the reduction in expenditure gained 
 by closing nearly half the whole number of prisons and concentrating 
 all prisoners in those that remain, there having been for many years 
 cells available in excess of numbers to fill them, which, however, were 
 wasted, and could not be utilised from want of powers to transfer pri- 
 soners from prison to prison. There is also the increased earnings of 
 prisoners from the more scientific adaptation of their labour, from the 
 facility of gathering together convict artisans in special trade prisons, 
 and generally from the development of the industrial instruction of pri- 
 soners, which a strong central authority is almost certain to bring about. 
 There has been no strongly-marked alteration in the manner of 
 carrying out a sentence of penal servitude in recent years ; but the 
 system is, notwithstanding, little known, and there are people who 
 still talk of the hulks and transportation as though these old-fashioned 
 outlets for criminality were now in existence. As a matter of fact, no 
 convict — the name is reserved for those sentenced to death or penal 
 servitude — leaves the kingdom. Penal servitude is inflicted at the 
 great convict establishments. The convict, as soon as convenient, 
 is removed from the local prison where, since the assizes, he has 
 remained in durance, to Millbank or Pentonville. Here he is sub- 
 jected to precisely the same process as in the local prisons ; but at 
 the end of nine months, according to the doctor's decision, he passes 
 on to a public works prison — to Chatham, Dartmoor, Portsmouth, 
 Portland, or the like. Arrived there, he is turned out with hundreds 
 of associates to labour on fortifications, breakwaters, dockyard exten- 
 sions, and so forth. How substantial is the work thus performed may 
 be judged by all who have seen these monuments of convict labour at 
 the various stations above named. Life in a convict prison is certainly 
 not cheerful. Labour begins at daylight, and is continued, with an 
 interval for dinner, until sundown ; the fare is in quality excellent, but 
 in quantity not too full. An absolute submission to authority, the sur- 
 render of all personal volition, unhesitating obedience, constant clean- 
 liness and orderliness, are not the least irksome of the restraints the 
 criminal has to endure. But with all this there is no unnecessary 
 harshness; the discipline is firm, but never arbitrary; the well-being 
 of the prisoner, and his protection from ill-usage, are carefully pro- 
 vided for by the constant supervision and inspection of superior
 
 CRIMINAL ENGLAND. 253 
 
 authorities. Nor is the element of hope entirely absent. The " mark 
 system," as it is called, which has been in force for upwards of four- 
 teen years, puts it into the power of every man to gain a certain 
 remission of his sentence by his own industry. How powerfully this 
 incentive acts in encouraging a man to use his whole skill and energy 
 is seen in the high-class work turned out in the convict prisons — in 
 the beautiful stone-dressing, the intricate carpenter's and smith's 
 work, in the employment of convicts as bakers, painters, engineers, 
 sawyers, fitters, and the like. A more substantial test, perhaps, is the 
 money value of the work done, which for a series of years has averaged 
 over £260,000 annually. 
 
 The superintendence of our whole prison system is now confided to 
 the Convict Prison Board and the Local Prison Commission, both 
 bodies being under the presidency of the Surveyor-General, and 
 assisted by a staff of inspectors, who frequently visit and report on 
 the establishments they have in charge. The average number of 
 convicts in prison during the last ten years has been about 10,000 in 
 each year, in the proportion of 9,000 males to 1,000 females. Between 
 6,000 and 7,000 are under sentences for five or seven years, rather 
 more for seven than for five, and between 2,000 and 3,000 are under 
 sentences for ten, fifteen, or twenty years, the great majority of them 
 for ten. Sentences for intermediate periods, or for specific periods in 
 excess of the longest of these terms, are very rare. But some 300 
 convicts are undergoing penal servitude for life. In our convict prisons 
 the "mark system" is chiefly relied on for the maintenance of order 
 and discipline, and it is found as a rule to be amply sufficient for the 
 purpose. Of late years it has been the custom to separate hardened 
 and repeated offenders from the rest, and also to form into a class by 
 themselves, called the " star class," such carefully selected prisoners 
 as are ascertained by minute inquiry into their antecedents to be free 
 from all suspicion of habitual criminality. Owing to these measures, 
 the chances of insubordination have been materially diminished, and 
 many — that is, between 500 and 600 in every year — who are com- 
 parative novices in crime, have been freed from the risk of being 
 lured into a lower depth of depravity by the evil counsels of com- 
 panions more experienced in wickedness than themselves. In round 
 numbers, only 200 or 300 of our 10,000 convicts fail to earn, or 
 forfeit after earning, the marks by which in return for good conduct 
 they secure some remission of their punishment. About 1,600 are 
 annually discharged or liberated on licence, and their places are taken 
 by about 1,600 others, either newly sentenced or recommitted on the 
 revocation of their " tickets-of-leave," as they are still commonly 
 designated. In all from 120 to 130 die. But on an average it seems 
 beyond question, in spite of popular prejudice to the contrary, that 
 only one escapes. When it is remembered what manner of men our
 
 254 ENGLAND. 
 
 convicts usually are, and the cunning and audacity by which a great 
 many of them are characterised, this fact speaks volumes for the vigi- 
 lance with which they are guarded and kept in subjection. Although 
 during the last decade the number of our convicts has remained prac- 
 tically stationary, the general population has increased by between 
 4,000,000 and 5,000,000, and the proportion of those who are under 
 thirty years of age is something like a third less now than it was at 
 its commencement. Sentences to penal servitude are at present, too, 
 fewer by almost a half than they were a quarter of a century ago, 
 and for a couple of years have been fewer than they ever were 
 before.* As to the population of our local prisons a series of diagrams, 
 published in the annual reports relating to them, has given prominence 
 to the curious circumstance that it has risen and fallen with marked 
 regularity since the middle of the century in cycles of six or eight 
 years. The indicating lines reach their highest points in the columns 
 allotted to the years 1851, 1857, 1863, 1869, and 1877, and touch 
 comparatively low levels in the spaces representing the years which 
 precede and follow them. But from 1877 onwards the tendency has 
 been to fall, with the exception that there was an insignificant rise in 
 1883 as compared with 1882. When the Prisons Act came into 
 force the population of our local prisons numbered 21,000, and it 
 now numbers a little more than 17,000. The reduction among 
 prisoners as among convicts is greater among those who are under 
 than among those who are over thirty years old, the percentage being 
 some 55 in the former to 45 in the latter. Among those whose age 
 is less than sixteen the decrease is more remarkable, the number 
 being now not much in excess of half what it was four or five years 
 ago. Of between 13,000 and 14,000 prisoners under sentence, the 
 large majority are committed for one, two, three, six, twelve, and 
 eighteen months, and only about 250 for two years, the extreme 
 limit of imprisonment with or without hard labour, as distinguished 
 from penal servitude. Whatever its severity may be, it is manifest 
 that the regime of our local prisons is at all events not unhealthy, 
 for the death rate in them is only eight in the thousand, and that the 
 management has sensibly improved is shown by the circumstance 
 that there has been a sensible diminution in prison punishments, 
 particularly corporal punishment, for several years, t 
 
 There is another and a last stage through which the criminal passes 
 — one which is too often only the short breathing-space between the 
 termination of one sentence and the commencement of another — the 
 period when he is once more at large. This has been the subject of 
 his dreams, sleeping and waking. What port is to the homeward- 
 bound sailor, such is the day of release to the prisoner, only intensified 
 a thousandfold in the eagerness of its anticipation. The slow sad 
 
 * Seventh Report of the Directors of Convict Prisons. London, 1S84. 
 t Seventh Report of the Commissioners of Prisons. London, 1884.
 
 CRIMINAL ENGLAND. 255 
 
 hours bring it round at last. His hair and beard are no longer clipped 
 by the prison barber, who cuts both with the same scissors. He has 
 at length bridged over the great gulf which has so long separated him 
 from the rest of the community, and he will soon resume his place in 
 the world to fight upon his own account ; to be tempted, no doubt, 
 perchance to succumb only too easily again. The attitude of the world 
 towards him when he is once more free is perhaps a little too absolutely 
 repellant and unrelenting. It is not only that he has been photo- 
 graphed and his sir/nalement widely distributed among the police, that 
 he has had to submit to inspection at the hands of the detective, and 
 that he may expect further continuous surveillance, but he will in 
 most cases find it extremely difficult to earn an honest living, however 
 desirous he may be to do so. His old honest associates — if he has any 
 — will shun him, employers will not care to engage him lest their other 
 workmen should take offence. Most doors are closed to him ; he is a 
 suspicious character, not to be trusted even when in sight. What 
 wonder that he soon again falls away ! That he does so less often 
 now than heretofore is very largely due to the philanthropic efforts of 
 the Discharged Prisoners' Aid Societies, notably that of London, 
 which is now under royal patronage, and which does a vast amount 
 of good. This society deals entirely with ex-convicts from the con- 
 vict establishments ; but there are others in the provinces which 
 work with much the same goodwill for the" prisoners from the local 
 prisons. In London, shortly before a convict is due for release, his 
 case is submitted to the society and duly considered. If accepted — 
 as it generally is, save in the case of some few notorious criminals, 
 upon whom all good offices would be entirely wasted — when the day 
 of release arrives the emancipated prisoner is conducted privately, in 
 plain clothes, to the society's office, whence he is passed on to some 
 situation, as labourer or handicraftsman, according to his qualification. 
 The employer and the society are usually the only two in the secret ; 
 the society answers to the police, and there is no need for the usual 
 supervision ; the man carries therefore no stigma, he has had a fair 
 start, and it is mainly his own fault if he again falls away. This 
 beneficent treatment is certainly not the least efficacious among the 
 various measures which have contributed to reduce crime. By-and- 
 by, the reformatories and industrial schools may convert the raw 
 material, before it has had time to degenerate into the lowest forms ; 
 improved police arrangements may render property more and more 
 safe, and the commission of crime more dangerous ; but these are 
 rather remote ameliorations. Meanwhile the Aid Societies, which 
 seek to rehabilitate criminals who have served their time or are 
 released on licence, which endeavour to give them a fresh start and a 
 new opportunity of leading honest and respectable lives, are actually 
 achieving beneficent and satisfactory results day after day among us.
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 TRAVELLING AND HOTELS. 
 
 General View of the English Railway System — The Block System — Extent and Expen- 
 diture of Railway Lines — Speed and Comfort — Pullman Cars — A Journey due North 
 from London — The Railway Commissioners — Refreshment Rooms — Travelling bv 
 Coach — Different Kinds of Coaching— Posting — Bicycling— English Hotels — Ab- 
 sorption of Small Hotels — Typical Frequenters of Hotels — Hotels which are Sur- 
 vivals of the Past — Their Questionable Comfort. 
 
 Almost the entire length of Great Britain may now be traversed for 
 a few pence under three pounds sterling. The price of a single third- 
 class ticket from London to John o' Groat's — from King's Cross to 
 Wick or Thurso station — is two pounds nineteen shillings and four- 
 pence. The distance is as nearly as possible six hundred and fifty 
 miles. The time spent upon the journey will be something less than 
 twenty-five hours, and the journey itself will be accomplished, what- 
 ever class the traveller may choose, with comparatively slight fatigue. 
 On the whole the management of the English railways is excellent. 
 The speed is great ; there is little overcrowding ; the companies' ser- 
 vants are, though frequently overworked, for the most part civil ; and 
 if, in spite of the announcement forbidding gratuities, " tips " are 
 expected, railway porters are abundantly satisfied with vails of the 
 most modest amount. Much of the discomfort which the English 
 railway traveller experiences is inflicted on him by disagreeable tra- 
 velling companions. Yet for one who comes under this category, how 
 many are there, whatever class the traveller may choose, who are not 
 merely unobjectionable but welcome associates ? Let it be assumed 
 that, in common with many excellent and respectable personages of a 
 frugal turn — officers of both services, substantial agriculturists, and 
 minor dignitaries of the Church — the passenger selects third class, he 
 will be singularly unfortunate if he finds himself in society to which 
 he can reasonably take exception. No doubt there is plenty of rowdyism 
 in the train, but then rowdyism is, of its essence, gregarious. It has 
 an ineradicable tendency to gravitate to a special part or parts of that 
 street in motion which a train may be regarded as being. There is a 
 kind of Alsatia in every steam locomotive bound on a long journey, 
 and there is much to be thankful for in the fact that its area is rigidly 
 localised. The father of a family need be under no apprehension that
 
 TRAVELLING AND HOTELS. 257 
 
 he must choose between first and second class on the one hand, 
 and on the other hand the risk, or rather tbe strong probability, of 
 a personal encounter with much that is offensive and disreputable. 
 Railway guards are quick judges of character — many of them, too, 
 with quite as much a character of their own, as keen a sense of 
 humour and wit, as the guards of the old stage coach — and they 
 may be trusted to save decent folk who travel third class on long 
 journeys from exposure to any serious annoyance. It may be added 
 that British exclusiveness, which shows itself pretty plainly in the 
 first-class carriage, has a tendency to disappear in the second and 
 third. 
 
 The railway system of England and Wales consists of 13,000 miles 
 of line, of which two-thirds are in the hands of the six large com- 
 panies — the Great Western, London and North- Western, North 
 Eastern, Midland, Great Eastern, and Great Northern.* Amalgama- 
 tion very early became the order of the day, and is steadily on the 
 increase, although it is not possible without an Act of Parliament. 
 The centre of the system is London, and every company which can 
 possibly make its way to the capital does not fail to do so. At first 
 railways were worked without fixed signals, nor was it until 1838 
 that any regular code of signals was adopted. Now the semaphore 
 fitted with these, one for the up and one for the down line, is in use 
 at all stations and junctions. When the arm is raised to the full 
 extent the line is stopped ; when it is at an angle of forty-five 
 degrees the need of caution is indicated to the driver ; when it is at 
 rest the driver knows that he can proceed at full speed. At night 
 " line clear " is expressed by a white light, " caution " by green, 
 "danger" by red. The block system provides that no two trains 
 shall be between any two block signal-boxes — these boxes being 
 distant from each other from two to eight miles — at the same time on 
 the same line. It is to be seen in its highest perfection on the Mid- 
 land, and it may best be described in Mr. Parsloe's own words : A, B, 
 and C are supposed to represent three block posts, and the process of 
 signalling is thus carried on. On the approach of a train to A, tbe 
 signalman will call the attention of B, and then give the " Be Piendy " 
 signal on the bell and the proper "Train Approaching " dial signal. 
 The signalman at B, after having ascertained that the line is clear 
 for the train to run upon, must repeat the signals, and when he has 
 received the necessary intimation from it that he has repeated them 
 correctly, he must ply the needle to " Line Clear." As soon as the 
 train has passed A, the signalman there must give the bell signal 
 "Train on Line" to B, and the signalman at B must acknowledge 
 
 * For most of the fact^ contained in this brief account of the English railways I am 
 indebted to Mr. Joseph Parsloe's instructive little work on " Our Uaihvay System.'' 
 
 S
 
 258 ENGLAND. 
 
 the signal and employ the needle. The signalman at A must then 
 give to B the proper "Train on Line" dial signal; and when the 
 signalman at B has acknowledged that signal and received the neces- 
 sary intimation from A that his acknowledgment is correct, he must 
 ply the needle on to " Line Blocked," and then call the attention of 
 and give the " Be Ready " and " Train Approaching " signals to C. 
 When the train has passed B, the signalman there must call the 
 attention of A, and give the proper signal indicating that the line is 
 clear of the train, which must be duly acknowledged by the signalman 
 at A, and so on throughout the block. 
 
 Of the railways of the United Kingdom in 1882, the total working 
 expenditure was £36,170,430, and the total receipts from all sources 
 £69,377,124. Hence the expenditure amounted to about half the 
 receipts. But the goods traffic, including as it does the carriage of 
 minerals, is frequently asserted to be far more costly than the pas- 
 senger traffic. Besides season-ticket holders — of whom the number 
 was 540,811— there were 30,777,736 first class, 58,787,900 second 
 class, and 497,124,194 third class passengers, or 587,230,641 pas- 
 sengers of all kinds. The weight of goods and minerals conveyed 
 was no less than 256,215,833 tons. The receipts were from passenger 
 traffic £28,796,813, and from goods and mineral traffic £37,740,315. 
 The authorised capital was £877,711,005, and the capital paid up and 
 raised by loans and debentures £767,899,570. The mileage was 
 18,457, the capital paid up and raised per mile £41,605, and the 
 receipts per mile £3,633. The rolling-stock consisted of 14,12S 
 locomotives, 31,250 carriages for passengers, 11,760 luggage vans, 
 carriage-trucks, and horse-boxes, and 419,051 waggons for coals, 
 merchandise, and live stock ; or, in all, 462,061 vehicles. In the 
 service of the companies there were between three and four hundred 
 thousand officials and employes. Between eleven and twelve hundred 
 trains travelled every day over between two and three hundred 
 thousand miles in the course of the year. In the process of signalling 
 during the twenty-four hours it was calculated eight years ago that 
 160,000 operations were performed by about 13,000 hands, and as 
 some two thousand miles of line have since been opened, the number 
 of both must now be considerably augmented. Coming to accidents, 
 it seems that 7,722 persons were returned to the Board of Trade in 
 the middle of 1883 as having been killed or injured on the railways 
 of the United Kingdom in the preceding twelve months, of whom 
 1,121 were killed, and 4,601 injured. Of the whole number, of killed 
 127, and of injured 1739, were passengers. But of these only 18 
 were killed and 803 injured in consequence of accidents to or col- 
 lisions between trains The deaths of the remaining 109 and injuries 
 to the remaining 936 passengers were duo to a variety of causes, and 
 among them, according to the official report, " more especially to a
 
 TRAVELLING AND HOTELS. 259 
 
 want of caution on the part of the individuals themselves."* Of the 
 further 991 killed and 2,862 injured, 553 of the first and 2,57G of the 
 second were railway officials or employes, and 441 of the first and 
 286 of the second were principally suicides, trespassers, and persons 
 who were knocked down at level crossings. In addition to this, 
 42 persons were killed and 4,367 were injured on the premises of 
 the companies owing to causes unconnected with the movement of 
 railway vehicles, and, therefore, these cases are not regarded as 
 railway accidents in the proper sense of the term. The proportion 
 of passengers returned in 1882 as having been killed or injured from 
 causes beyond their own control was one in 36,379,905 killed, and 
 one in 815,489 injured.! The proportion of railway servants killed 
 and injured was of course enormously larger, probably not less than 
 one in 600 of the former and one in 120 of the latter. But the 
 exact figures are not accessible. The most dangerous occupations 
 seem to be those of permanent-way men, porters, breaksmen, goods 
 guards, and shunters ; engine-drivers and firemen are comparatively 
 safe, and passenger guards appear to be ten times as secure as goods 
 guards. | 
 
 As regards speed, if not comfort, in locomotion, we have reached 
 a point beyond which we are not likely to go. From Bristol to 
 Aberdeen, a distance of 800 miles, which in the old coach times 
 would have occupied ten days, is performed in eighteen hours ; from 
 London to Holyhead, 260 miles, in six hours and forty minutes ; 
 from London to Plymouth, 247 miles, in six hours and a quarter. 
 The average rate of speed at which the quickest express on each 
 of the great lines travels is 47f miles an hour. On two lines this 
 pace is exceeded. On the Great Northern, the train leaving London 
 at 10, and arriving at Peterborough at 11.30, a distance of 76^ 
 miles, goes at the rate of 51 miles an hour. On the Great Western, 
 the "Flying Dutchman" leaves Paddington at 11.45, reaches Swindon, 
 a distance of 77J miles, without a single stoppage, at twelve minutes 
 after one o'clock, the uniform pace being thus 53J miles. The 
 journey on this line is, indeed, as far as Bath, the quickest in the 
 world. The distance is 106f miles, and is performed in two hours 
 and thirteen minutes, including ten minutes stoppage at Swindon ', 
 the actual time, therefore, spent in travelling is two hours and three 
 minutes, and the pace is therefore something over fifty-two miles 
 an hour. As regards comfort and ease, the quality of many of the 
 first and second class carriages on the Great Western leaves nothing 
 
 * Keport to the Board of Trade on Railways of the United Kingdom. London. 1883. 
 
 t If season-ticket holders are included, who are estimated to take 120,000,000 
 journeys in the year, the proportion of killed would be one in about 43,000,000. 
 
 J In 1882 the investigated railway accidents were 118, against 111 in 1881. Of these 
 13 occurred on the Great Eastern, 11 on the Great Western, 10 on the London and 
 North-Western, 7 on the Midland, and 7 on the Great Northern. 
 
 s2
 
 260 ENGLAND. 
 
 to be wished. The Pullman's cars were introduced into England 
 just ten years ago, but the experiment has not proved quite as 
 successful as might have been expected, and as it deserves. These 
 cars were first used on the Midland line, and contain both drawing- 
 rooms and sleeping-rooms. In the former there are eighteen chairs, 
 which can be turned on their axles in such a way as to face either the 
 window or the centre of the apartment; in the latter there are 
 >ixteen beds in the main compartments, and six in two private 
 compartments. These rooms on rails are decorated in a very finished 
 and artistic manner, and at the touch of a spring by the side a table 
 flies out, on which the passengers can have a meal spread. Whether 
 the traveller prefers the sociability of the Pullman cars or the com- 
 parative privacy of ordinary English carriages, he cannot fail to 
 recognise the superior smoothness of motion obtained on Mr. Pull- 
 man's springs. 
 
 An expedition from the south to the north of Great Britain such 
 as that referred to at the beginning of this chapter, will give the 
 traveller a comprehensive idea of our railway management in its 
 practical working, and will acquaint him with the many varying rates 
 of railway speed. When he has passed the fringe of the metropolitan 
 suburbs — that vast reticulation of houses, and streets, and townships 
 which is overspreading the home counties — he will fly forth with the 
 swiftness of an arrow shot from the bow. Onward he will be borne 
 at the same tremendous pace. Only one stoppage between London 
 and York — at Grantham — where engines are replenished, and pas- 
 rSj if they wish it, refreshed ; after York straight through to 
 Newcastle without another check. When the train is on Scotch soil 
 it proceeds circumspectly. By the time that it has advanced into the 
 heart of the wilds and fastnesses of Caledonia its advance is not so 
 much circumspect as dilatory. In a little time it commences a series 
 of stoppages, quite irrespective of the existence of stations, till at last 
 the guard puts on the break and the train is at a standstill for no 
 other reason apparently than that he wants the engine-driver to 
 accommodate him with a pipe-light. These are the inevitable inci- 
 dents of railway travelling in the far north of Great Britain, and if 
 one does not happen to be in a feverish hurry they give picturesque- 
 ness and variety to the trip. Take them altogether, and we have 
 marvellously little with which to find fault in the conduct of our rail- 
 way companies. There is no other country in the world in which the 
 three great conditions of railway travelling have been so perfectly 
 secured — multiplication of lines, concentration of communications, 
 and rapidity of movement. In point of punctuality much remains 
 to be desired, especially on the southern lines. Let there be the 
 slightest increase of traffic, and an English train-is pretty sure to be 
 late. This is probably owing to the practice of setting the time-bills
 
 TRAVELLING AND HOTELS. 261 
 
 with too little allowance for inevitable accidents, and to the necessit}- 
 of keeping a sharp look-out for goods trains, an inconvenience which 
 is being gradually re-moved on the more crowded parts of many 
 railways by the costly process of laying down an extra double line 
 of rails. 
 
 These advantages have not been secured to the public entirely by 
 the free action of the railway companies. Entrusted with vast 
 responsibilities and possessing monopolies which are practically un- 
 disputed, the railway companies of England have naturally been made 
 the subjects of special legislation. An entire code of railway laws, 
 full of anomalies and absurdities, has been created in the course of 
 the last forty years, and in 1878 there were upwards of 4,000 special 
 Acts of Parliament relating to railways, in which Acts, and in extracts 
 from them posted up at every station, can be found the amounts cf 
 fare which each company is authorised to charge.* Of these the first 
 is more than a century old, bearing date 1758, and authorising a 
 railroad — not worked by steam, of course — for the carriage of coals 
 to Leeds ; while the first passenger railway — the Stockton and Dar- 
 lington — was authorised by an Act passed only so recently as 1825. 
 Not one of the entire number has reference to any single railway 
 company in its integrity, and after a few miles of line have been 
 traversed we suddenly find ourselves under a changed jurisdiction. 
 In 1814 a parliamentary committee was appointed, under the presi- 
 dency of Mr. Gladstone, to consider the legal status of the railway 
 companies. As one of the consequences of their report, an Act was 
 passed, sanctioning the purchase of railways by the State at any time 
 after the expiration of 21 years, and providing that every railway 
 company should convey passengers by at least one train each way 
 daily at a charge not exceeding a penny a mile.t Ten years later 
 the Act of Mr. (now Lord) Cardwell was passed, of which the dis- 
 tinguishing features were to subject rival railway companies to the 
 legal obligation of joint action within certain limits for the public 
 convenience, and to define the liability of the companies for damage 
 or loss of goods during transit. Fourteen years later it was enacted 
 that the price of fares should be prominently displayed at railway 
 stations ; that in every passenger train consisting of more than one 
 carriage of each class there should be a smoking compartment ; and 
 that the companies should furnish, when applied to, particulars of 
 their charges for goods, enabling the public to distinguish the relative 
 cost of conveyance and loading. 
 
 But the most important piece of railway legislation has been the Act 
 
 * The state of the laws on this and kindred subjects is fully given in Hodge's " Law 
 of Railways," sixth edition, by J. M. Lely. (H. Sweet. 187»>.) 
 
 t A Royal Commission appointed in 1865 reported against the policy of Government 
 purchase/ The scheme embodied in the Act of 1844 is impracticable.
 
 2G2 ENGLAND. 
 
 of 1873, which created a special court with exceptional powers for 
 the exclusive purpose of taking cognisance of a certain class of railway 
 cases — not those in which pecuniary compensation is asked from a 
 company, but those in which it is demanded that a company shall do 
 some specific act for the benefit of the petitioner or abstain from 
 giving an unfair advantage to some one else. The ordinary law 
 courts of the country had proved unsuitable for compelling railways 
 to prefer on proper occasion the public advantage to their own, and 
 it was the conviction of this unsuitability which found expression in 
 the report of 1872, recommending the appointment of the Railway 
 Commissioners. This court, one of whose members must be a person 
 of experience in railway management — represented at the first appoint- 
 ment by Mr. Price, formerly chairman of the Midland Railway — and 
 another of whose members must be experienced in law — represented 
 in the first instance by the late Mr. Macnamara, an eminent lawyer — 
 is primarily entrusted with the powers given by Lord Cardwell's Act 
 to a court of law. But it has many secondary powers tending in the 
 same direction, its principal purpose being to control, and, so far as 
 they involve public inconvenience, to counteract, the effects of the 
 monopoly acquired by railway companies. The commission is, in 
 fact, a technical tribunal for the redress of popular grievances, the 
 jurisdiction of which extends to Ireland and Scotland ; and in view of 
 the great expense attendant upon railway litigation, it has been 
 expressly provided that municipal and other corporations may insti- 
 tute proceedings before it. The commissioners themselves, however, 
 have no power of initiative, and in one important point — the enforce- 
 ment of through rates — it is only a railway or canal company which 
 can set the commissioners in motion. 
 
 The powers of the commissioners are as extensive as they are 
 unique. They have rights of interference wider than those vested in 
 other bodies, when the lives and well-being of the public are threat- 
 ened. They have the power of arbitrating both between the dif- 
 ferent companies and between the companies and the public ; the 
 right of this or that town to necessary accommodation, better waiting- 
 rooms, platforms, and covered spaces ; the complaints of one trader 
 as to preferential rates or superior facilities accorded to another ; the 
 demand of one company for running powers over the lines of another 
 — these are the kinds of cases in which the intervention of the com- 
 mission is invoked. Thus we learn from one of the reports of the 
 commission, that in a particular year fourteen distinct judgments of the 
 commissioners were pronounced. Three of these cases were local 
 complaints of the insufficient convenience afforded by the railways. In 
 six cases the commission had to consider the application of manufac- 
 turing firms who had a grievance against railway companies. In five 
 the issue was a dispute between railways themselves. Here we have
 
 TRAVELLING AND HOTELS. 263 
 
 three distinct classes of questions which it is infinitely better should 
 be decided without coming into the law courts. When once a question 
 of law arises, the commissioners are bound to state a case for a court of 
 law, although they are themselves entrusted with the delicate duty 
 of determining whether a particular question is or is not one of law. 
 Nor could there be a better proof of the soundness of the opinions 
 given by the commissioners than the fact that in almost every case 
 in wbich an appeal has been made the courts have confirmed their 
 award. 
 
 But the real question is, not so much whether the jurisdiction of the 
 railway commissioners sha-11 be extended, as whether the entire control 
 of the railways shall or shall not be handed over to the State. " Our 
 railways," writes Mr. Parsloe, " are in the hands of a number of 
 separate bodies with conflicting interests, each striving to pay the best 
 dividend to the shareholders as purely commercial concerns. Many 
 of the companies professedly compete with each other, and the result 
 is most of the disadvantages with very few of the advantages of com- 
 petition."* For instance, one of the Midland Company's express 
 trains from the north is due to arrive at Gloucester at 6.48 p.m. ; the 
 Great Western train for the Swindon district leaves at 6.45 p.m., and 
 there is no other train till 12.20 a.m. If, therefore, as is almost in- 
 evitable, the train is missed, there is an interval of nearly six hours 
 waiting. As matters are, there can be no doubt that the public, sub- 
 ject to the beneficent action of the commissioners, and the enlightened 
 common sense of the directors, are at the mercy of the railway com- 
 panies. It is also indisputable that the extent to which railway 
 competition is carried, giving us, instead of one uniform organisation, 
 a complex and chaotic mass of disorganisation, involves the profitless 
 expenditure of much energy and money. If we are to have a perfectly 
 harmonious and a truly economical railway S3 r stem, it must be one 
 dominated by the principle of central control. Granted, that the 
 companies agree to a method of amalgamation and unity among them- 
 selves, all that would have been done would be to substitute a single 
 colossal monopoly for several monopolies, of which the great object 
 would still be, not to promote the public convenience, but to put money 
 into the pockets of the shareholders. If it is admitted that tbe transi- 
 tionary state in which our railway system now is must ultimately 
 result in the establishment of a complete scheme of amalgamation, it 
 is certain that this can only be by the introduction of State control. 
 The success of the governmental administration of the Post Office and 
 the Telegraphs is of course cited as a precedent for the great change 
 now proposed. If the State management of the railways were to 
 answer equally well, there is no doubt that we should have an immense 
 increase of efficiency and economy. In 1865, Mr. Stewart, for twenty 
 
 * " Our Railway System," p. 261.
 
 2G4 ENGLAND. 
 
 years Secretary to the London and North-Western Company, stated 
 in his evidence before the Royal Commission, that were the whole 
 traffic of the cou> try worked in unison, a saving of twenty per cent, 
 in expenses would at nee be effected. Again, under State control the 
 greater part of the legal and parliamentary costs now incurred, amount- 
 ing annually to considerably over a quarter of a million, would be 
 saved. Thirdly, the number of stations might be reduced, towns in 
 which there are at present two stations close to each other having one. 
 In country villages, the offices of railway, post, and telegraph might 
 be concentrated, the functions belonging to each being discharged by 
 the same person ; and finally, it would be possible materially to reduce 
 the fees now paid to railway directors. 
 
 Pending the accomplishment of changes so radical as these in our 
 railway system, there are minor reforms which it may be practicable 
 to institute with comparatively little trouble. It is much to be wished 
 that the Railway Commissioners could turn their attention more particu- 
 larly than they have hitherto done to our refreshment-room system. 
 Nothing can be better than the luncheon baskets with which one is 
 occasionally provided for a small payment on the Midland and some of 
 the south of England lines. There are excellent dining or luncheon 
 rooms at Derby, Crewe, Leicester, York, and other great railway 
 centres, and a capital meal may be obtained at either, it being always 
 understood that one reaches these spots at the proper hours when 
 passengers are expected and the viands are ready to be served. The 
 unfortunate traveller who is behind time or who comes by a slow train 
 often finds himself left out in the cold. If he has left London without 
 having dined at 5.15 p.m., and reaches York between ten and eleven 
 — where he is told that twenty minutes are allowed for gratifying the 
 inner man — his case is hard indeed. He enters the palatial saloon 
 ravenous. But there are no waiters within call. Those who presently 
 make their appearance walk about with the dazed air of men roused 
 out of a heavy sleep, mechanically inquire what the famished pilgrim 
 will take, and automatically fall to work to hew the well-worn joints 
 and the bony chickens that are upon the table. The passenger, if he 
 is wise, will eschew these ready-made suppers, and will content him- 
 self with a sandwich and a couple of hard-boiled eggs at the refresh- 
 ment bar in a corner of the room, if only he is able to gain his way 
 thither through the group of young men, inhabitants of the town, who 
 make it their favourite lounge. And there is a lamentable want of 
 variety in the refreshment bill of fare ; very scant is the ingenuity 
 of the refreshment-room cook. Here and there soup may be had 
 — scalding hot water which removes the skin from the palate, and 
 destroys all power of taste for hours — but with this exception 
 there is little relief from the weary round of ham and beef sand- 
 wiches, pork pies, sausage rolls, stale buns, and fossil cakes. None
 
 TRAVELLING AND HOTELS. 265 
 
 of those appetising dainties which greet one at Amiens, Dijon, or 
 Macon, the fresh roll neatly bisected and filled with a cold cutlet or 
 a slice of galantine. No fruit but sour oranges, no drink but delete- 
 rious spirits or British beer. The stony-eyed damsels make it a 
 favour to wait upon you, the charges are exorbitant, the food must 
 generally be bolted standing, amid the cry, " Take your seats for the 
 north," and loud ringing of bells. No wary traveller will nowadays 
 risk present discomfort and future indigestion by trusting to railway 
 bars for refreshment. He will rather take with him all that he re- 
 quires from home. 
 
 But there are other modes of travelling in England than by steam. 
 It is remarkable that the hansom cab flourishes in England and some 
 of its colonies only, and thus it was with some degree of special pro- 
 priety that Lord Beaconsfield once described it as the " gondola of 
 London." In New York, the streets of which are practically flat, 
 hansoms are not used, and tramway cars take the place of all kinds of 
 cabs. Possibly the same thing may some day be witnessed in London, 
 and though the City of London uncompromisingly opposes all legisla- 
 tion of this kind, the number of bills for procuring tramways brought 
 into Parliament increases every session. Meanwhile, though a perfect 
 roadway has still to be found — asphalte being too slippery for safety — 
 our vehicles on wheels travel almost as smoothly, when the springs 
 are in good order, over the surface of the London streets of to-day as 
 if they were upon rails ; and in both tbe capital and the great provin- 
 cial towns the omnibuses and cabs are as satisfactory as is consistent 
 with the low fares charged. The coach — not, indeed, the mail coach 
 — still exists as an institution. The north of England, Scotland, 
 Wales, and the West of England, are the parts in which coaching 
 mostly survives. Ten years ago the distance between Thurso and 
 Golspie — about a hundred miles — was only to be traversed by coach. 
 There was then a famous Jehu in those regions, by name Tom 
 Brown, whose Northumbrian " burr " must still dwell in the ears 
 of many a Scotch tourist. He managed his team in true artistic 
 fashion, and he was never without an excellent team to manage. 
 The roads, though often steep, and even precipitous in the neighbour- 
 hood of Helmsdale, were generally kept in first-rate condition. 
 Relays of differently built, bred, and trained steeds awaited the 
 traveller, according to the natural characteristics and difficulties of 
 the coming stage. The last, which lay for several miles along a 
 perfect and almost level road — equal to any one of the Queen's 
 highways in the south of England — was accomplished by four horses, 
 nearly thoroughbred, which would not have discredited a Hyde Park- 
 drag in the season. The appointments of the coach, as of the steeds 
 which drew it, were faultless. The harness was bright, polished, and 
 complete, down to the minutest particular. The guard was no ragged
 
 2GG ENGLAND 
 
 tatterdemalion perched up behind, who blew a born with the feeble 
 squeaky effects produced by one who is a stranger to that instrument, 
 but an official who had scientifically studied its music. There was no 
 such " turn out " from the stables of a coaching company or a com- 
 mercial proprietor within the four seas. 
 
 But the period of railway extension came. It was no longer 
 necessary to go by the high road across the Ord of Caithness, with 
 the cutting breezes of the German Ocean blowing full in your face. 
 For the most part the vehicles which are now called coaches are 
 coaches in very reduced circumstances ; or it would be more accurate 
 to say that they are not really coaches at all, but have rather the 
 appearance of cast-off chariots, which in better days may have 
 figured in the triumphal procession of travelling circus companies. 
 In many portions of Wales, coaching of a kind still goes on. But 
 when once the coach is considered only as a convertible term for a 
 tourist's van ; when it ceases to be essential to the regular traffic of 
 the district ; when, above all things, it has lost the official dignity of 
 carrying Her Majesty's mails, you know what to expect. The in- 
 side is not too clean and not too sweet. The passengers clamber up 
 to the roof anyhow. There is no longer any prestige attaching 
 to the occupancy of the box-seat. The charioteer is a casual 
 postboy, and not a coachman ; the team is made up of odd horses, 
 and neither driver nor traveller takes any pride in tbe business. It 
 will be generally found that the coaches, which a glance at Bradshaw 
 is sufficient to show are announced to run short or moderately long 
 distances in various regions of England, belong to railway companies 
 that have not yet succeeded in carrying their lines to the extreme point 
 which tourists desire to reach. There are some obstacles which even 
 modern engineering science fails to overcome ; hence the survival of 
 the coach as a confession of the limitations imposed by nature on 
 human enterprise. From Bideford in Devon to Bude in Cornwall is a 
 fair run for a well-appointed coach — a coach which is on the whole as 
 favourable a specimen of its kind as any to be found in England — and it 
 is but a very short time since other coaches fully equal to it were com- 
 mon enough in North Devon and West Somerset. They have either 
 disappeared entirely or, obeying that law of deterioration which seems 
 the destiny of the public vehicle, they exist merely as tourists' vans 
 during the excursionist season, to begin where the steam locomotive 
 ends. They would not, indeed, give quite so severe a shock to those who 
 will never lose their devotion to the ideal of the Regulator and the 
 Quicksilver Mail as the conveyances which pass for coaches in the Isle 
 of Wight. These may do their best to struggle against the lot which is 
 relegating them to the category of the omnibus and the carrier's cart, 
 but their appearance bewrayeth them, and they are melancholy con- 
 fessions that the coach has no longer an independent existence of its
 
 TRAVELLING AND HOTELS. 2G7 
 
 own ; that it, or something which affects its name, and makes a vain 
 show of perpetuating its traditions, is useful to enable the traveller to 
 perform the fag end of a journey, but that it is an adjunct, and not an 
 essential feature in the traveller's programme. Perhaps it is needless 
 to say that if it is desired to see a coach which is a faithful and not 
 an unflattering reproduction of the artistic stage coach of the old 
 regime, it is necessary to go no farther than to the White Horse 
 Cellars in Piccadilly. Nor can a short summer holiday be spent more 
 pleasantly than by securing an outside seat on one of these, under the 
 skilled pilotage of Sir Henry de Bathe, Captain Candy, or some other 
 amateur whip, enjoying the drive to Dorking, St. Albans, Leather- 
 head, Sevenoaks, or Windsor. Pleasant companions, a team of 
 spanking horses, changed every ten miles, England in full bloom of 
 leaf and flower, will combine to make many a modern spirit regret 
 the methods of locomotion of the past. 
 
 The gaps in our railway system cause a very comfortable posting 
 business to be done in different parts of England, and there are certain 
 towns and villages where the excellence of the horses may still fairly 
 surprise the traveller. In the neighbourhood of all great houses one 
 may be sure of a capital one-horse chaise or carriage and pair within 
 call of the railway station. The proprietor of these vehicles makes a 
 very good thing of it during the visiting season. The most liberal of 
 English hosts is apt to entertain a decided objection to sending his 
 horses out of his stable to fetch his guests ; it would indeed be impos- 
 sible for him to do so, for if he entertains on any considerable scale 
 his visitors are incessantly coming and going. In a country town 
 which has in its neighbourhood the residence of a great county mag- 
 nate and other men of position, there is always abundance of posting 
 ■work out of the London season ; and posting masters frequently make 
 a point of keeping an enlarged stable during this period of the year. 
 The same remark is applicable to the hotels in the heart of districts 
 much affected by tourists. Side by side with the coaching revival we 
 have seen the institution of the driving tour popularised to a high 
 degree. But the driving tour is not for every one, and there are 
 crowds of travellers who make a point of enjoying as much as they 
 can of the pleasures of the road in the roomy barouches and other 
 open vehicles which are on hire at the hotels or the livery stables of 
 the pleasure resorts they chiefly affect. It is not, indeed, a cheap 
 mode of enjoyment, but then the holiday outing is only an annual 
 event. Altogether it is possible to get more comfort and pleasure on 
 wheels in England than in any country in the world, and the manner 
 in which we still combine the locomotion which is as old as civilisation 
 with that which dates back from the utilisation of steam, ensures us a 
 certain variety and picturesqueness which the holiday traveller will 
 be loth to surrender.
 
 208 ENGLAND. 
 
 The bicycle fills a place too important to be omitted from any 
 survey of the various modes of travelling in England. In some 
 country districts it is the locomotive on which the postman performs 
 his long and weary round, and on which the Inland Revenue official 
 makes his circle of inspection. Holiday tours in all parts of the 
 United Kingdom are taken on it by the young men of our complex 
 and prosperous middle class ; and so popular have these bicycle trips 
 become, that many a wayside inn which was doing a brisk business in 
 the old coaching days, and which the railways had deprived of its 
 customers, has commenced to revive under the influence of the new 
 movement on wheels. There are bicycling clubs in every part of 
 England, which have their periodical meetings. A favourite 
 rendezvous in the neighbourhood of London is Bushey Park, and 
 there, when the weather is fine, as many as a thousand bicyclists 
 congregate. During the summer, too, in the heart of the city, when 
 the business traffic of the day is done, and the streets are clear, an 
 active scene may often be witnessed by gaslight. Under the shadow 
 of the Bank and the Exchange, the asphalte thoroughfare is covered 
 with a host of bicycle riders, performing a series of intricate evolutions 
 on their iron steeds. 
 
 For some years past the simple English inn has been gradually 
 disappearing. Much of the change is due to the influence of rail- 
 ways. The typical English hotel of the period is a huge caravan- 
 serai, like that at Charing Cross or the St. Pancras Railway Station, 
 situated nearly always close to, or forming part and parcel of, the 
 terminus itself. The small hotels, which are the survivals of an 
 earlier period, scarcely contrive to eke out a precarious existence. 
 The chief characteristics of the new hotels are the ubiquitous German 
 waiters and the sameness of the food. With two highly commend- 
 able qualities they may be credited. In the first place, they are 
 uniformly well ventilated and clean ; in the second place, no fault can 
 be found with bedrooms, beds, and bed-linen, and it is always possible 
 to obtain a sponge-bath for the asking. Although in England there 
 is nothing like the organised hotel life of New York, there are certain 
 distinct types of English hotel habitues ; thus in London there are 
 certain establishments which are patronised for the most part by 
 regular customers, among whom, it may be remarked, a personal 
 acquaintance and a certain sort of social freemasonry exist. The 
 military element is common to most of these, particularly in the 
 principal garrison towns. The house which is the head-quarters of 
 the London coaching movement has among its regular visitors every 
 sort of man who takes an interest in the road and its resuscitated 
 glories. Another institution belonging to the same class — that of the 
 liotel which is a connecting-link between the extinct tavern and the 
 latter-day club — is a great place of resort for fashionable Americans
 
 TRAVELLING AND HOTELS. 2G9 
 
 and for opulent foreigners. There is, too, the hotel which is the home 
 of diplomatists, just as there are hotels which are specially frequented 
 by members of municipal bodies, who have come up to London on 
 business connected with their towns. Country solicitors, especially 
 from the north, put up at the older hostelries in Covent Garden. In 
 the provinces, artists and sportsmen affect the smaller hotels, while 
 the bigger find a regular succession of customers in young men of 
 means, who, before they settle down to domestic life, wish to see a 
 little of the world, and like to see it in hotels ; in middle-aged 
 bachelors, who beguile their celibacy by travel, and shrink from the 
 cares of housekeeping ; in husbands and wives who are without 
 children, or having children, have seen them fairly started in life; 
 and, above all, in widows who have money, and who are fond of the 
 excitement of travel. The commercial traveller is of course to be 
 found in all classes of hotels, according to his pretensions, but for the 
 most part in hotels where he reigns supreme. 
 
 Hotel life is not yet fully naturalised among us. We have bid adieu 
 to the old regime, but have not become thoroughly accustomed to the 
 new. Only a small percentage of Englishmen and Englishwomen 
 really enjoy the tumultuous existence which is passed amid the 
 hubbub of departures, arrivals, and tables d'hote. The table d'hote 
 system is carried to an extent that scarcely suits the English nature. 
 It is well enough to take our dinners at a common table, at which, 
 after an awkward interval of blank silence or jerky utterance, we 
 begin to feel that our next-door neighbour is of a humanity like unto 
 our own, and that we have not committed any unpardonable breach 
 of the proprieties in opening a conversation. There are yet plausible 
 reasons for maintaining the old-fashioned and much-abused British 
 reserve. Most of us feel that opening up conversational acquaintance 
 with strangers is a terrible risk. There is no fear, of course, of insult, 
 or that our pockets will be picked, but there is the possibility of being 
 bored. The stranger may be diametrically our opposite : Conservative, 
 while we are Liberal ; garrulous, while we hate to listen; above all, he 
 may be indiscreet, and may tempt us into the expression of opinions 
 which we do not care to wear upon our sleeve. Our privacy is thus 
 intruded upon, we find ourselves talking to the table, and in the midst 
 of a dead silence confessing that we don't like haricots blancs, or 
 recording our enthusiasm for small beer. These are the dread reasons 
 which seal the lips of so many in a strange company, especially at a 
 strange table d'hote. And if this be true at dinner-time, it is a thou- 
 sandfold more so at nine in the morning. We Englishmen are not 
 gregariously disposed at breakfast-time. The attempt to accommo- 
 date the British breakfast to the manner of the French dejeuner is an 
 experiment of doubtful wisdom. The Englishman who hears that 
 the first meal of the day is served only between half-past eight and
 
 270 ENGLAND. 
 
 eleven o'clock, is conscious of an interference with his liberties, which 
 he resents. Nor, at this early hour, is he the most companionable of 
 creatures. He has not got rid of a sort of moral goose-skin. He is 
 often not much more than half awake. He is far from disposed to 
 enter into conversation with casual acquaintances. He is, to speak 
 the plain truth, a trifle sulky, and a great deal preoccupied. He may 
 have a fine appetite for ham and eggs, broiled soles and rashers of 
 bacon, but he has a wish to avoid the scrutiny of his fellows while he 
 gratifies it. He has the contents of his letters to digest, or he has the 
 campaign of the day which lies before him to meditate. 
 
 But if, as regards the table d'hote arrangement, we experience 
 some of the difficulties and inconveniences incidental to a period of 
 transition, the student of human nature is indebted to it for a thou- 
 sand diverting and edifying opportunities. He enters the hotel draw- 
 ing-room, and he discovers a miscellaneous assembly, of which each 
 member is conspicuously failing in the attempt to seem thoroughly at 
 ease. There is a recently married couple affecting to take an interest 
 in the newspapers of the day, betraying the while a consciousness of 
 the insincerity in a little giggle. There is the family group — father, 
 mother, two daughters, and a son — exchanging commonplace remarks 
 in a whisper. There are two maiden ladies who ask each other 
 whether to-morrow will be fine in an awed undertone. There is the 
 senior resident of the establishment, who has taken up a position on 
 the hearthrug, and who speaks in a voice ostentatiously loud but de- 
 cidedly uneasy, nevertheless, for the purpose of proclaiming that he is 
 quite at home. Finally there are numerous other gentlemen and ladies 
 who are doing nothing particular, but trying how to look indifferent 
 to all that is going on around them. Dinner is announced, and the 
 senior resident — who is a sort of dean of the establishment, and who 
 takes the place of honour on the same principle that the ambassador 
 of longest standing at a European Court presides at a conference — 
 leads the way. Anything like a flow of mutual confidence at table is 
 exceptional, and the prevailing attitude is one of unsociability, inten- 
 sified by profound distrust. Gentlemen and ladies who are seated 
 next to each other are in painful doubt as to whether it is or is not 
 the right thing to speak. Even when the decision has been taken, 
 and the "May I trouble you for the salt" has been followed with 
 some remarks on the actual state of the weather to-day, and its pos- 
 sible condition to-morrow, the interlocutors have not entirely shaken 
 off the native influences of suspicion and constraint.
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 EDUCATIONAL ENGLAND. 
 
 Past and Present — Education Acts of 1870 and 1876 — What these have done and 
 how received by the English People — Educational Machinery previously in Use 
 in England — The Gradual Awakening to Educational Wants — Working of School 
 Board System described — A Visit to a National Elementary School — General 
 Character of Teaching — Visit of Inspector — The Passage from Primary Schools 
 to Secondary Schools — Endowed Schools — How Affected by Recent Legis- 
 lation — Social and Moral Results of New System — Public Schools, Old and New 
 — Effect of Competitive Examinations upon the Schools — The Public Schools 
 and the Public Service — Schools and Universities — Academic Reforms Accom- 
 plished and Pending — National Work done by the Universities — The Profession 
 of Teacher — Bad Secondary Schools and Proposed Remedies — Are more Inspectors 
 wanted ? — Duties of Parents — Our Public School System — The English School- 
 boy — General Improvement in the Type — Feminine Education — General Review 
 and Questions for the Future. 
 
 The national machinery which now exists in England for placing a 
 career of some kind within the reach of ail may be said to date from 
 1870. :;: Before then clever and industrious boys born in lowly 
 stations became powerful and distinguished men, and were the more 
 respected because they were self-made, but the discipline and instruc- 
 tion which helped them to the accomplishment of these results were 
 not supplied by the State. Their success was the result either of 
 their own enterprise and effort, or of the private and voluntary assist- 
 ance which their talents and perseverance secured. The lad of 
 exceptional brightness, who was a cottager's son in the village school, 
 attracted the notice of the parson or the squire, or of some member of 
 the family of either. News spread of the intellectual promise of the 
 boy, and a philanthropic patron interested himself in his case. If it 
 was the clergyman, he perhaps instructed the rising prodigy for a few 
 hours every week in the rectory study, in Latin or Greek, history or 
 mathematics. By-and-by the time came when it was desirable that 
 the spur of competition should be applied, or that the young scholar 
 
 * The parliamentary grant for public education in England and Wales was not much 
 more than seven hundred thousand pounds in 1870. It was about two millions and a- 
 half a decade later, and at present it is in excess of three millions. Under this head 
 the national expenditure has advanced by no less than three hundred and eighteen per 
 cent, in fifteen years. It is estimated that almost exactly a sixth of the population are 
 now on the registers of schools of various kinds, including workhouse, industrial, and 
 military, as well as elementary and cerliiied efficient schools.
 
 272 ENGLAND. 
 
 should have the advantage of a deeper and a wider training than the 
 rector could give. The good man enlisted the sympathy of friends on 
 behalf of his protege, secured him a nomination to the foundation of 
 one of our big schools, or else undertook, in conjunction with others, 
 to be responsible for the costs of his teaching. The lad grew in 
 favour and in knowledge ; he rose in quick succession through the 
 different forms of the school, won a scholarship, and went to Oxford 
 or Cambridge, the laureate of the freshmen of his year. Then his 
 fortune was as good as made. He might be independent of his bene- 
 factors from that time, might even trust to repay them in the future 
 the money they had expended on him in the past. He would finish 
 up his college course with a First Class, or a Wranglership and a 
 Fellowship, would go into the Church or to the Bar, would make 
 himself a name as a classical editor, would perhaps climb by a long 
 ladder of learned works to the episcopal bench, or embracing the law 
 as a career, would justify the help and the expectations of his friends 
 by ending his days as a Lord Chancellor or a judge. 
 
 On the other hand, if our ideal village youth failed to attract the 
 notice of some generous and discriminating patron, or if to mere 
 cleverness he did not add an indefatigable power of taking pains, he 
 probably lived out his life in obscurity, and if he was known as more 
 intelligent than his fellows might be known also as less well-conducted. 
 It was thus simply a matter of accident whether the cottager's clever 
 son ever rose to the place which his abilities entitled him to fill ; and 
 what was true of the country cottager was true of the town artisan. 
 In town and country alike there were indeed schools for all who cared 
 to attend, or for all who had means and leisure to attend. But there 
 was no scheme of national and systematised teaching — nothing of that 
 educational apparatus supplied or guaranteed by the legislature which 
 we have now, and which almost justifies the boast that the son of the 
 peasant or mechanic may carry a bishop's mitre or a judge's wig in 
 his school satchel. Children were sent to school or doomed prema- 
 turely to depressing and toilsome labour, or left to play about the 
 streets to develop into pickpockets and thieves, fearing no other 
 authority but the constable, according to tbe whim of their parents, 
 and the degree of regard paid to the parental commands. 
 
 Contrast with this the state of things which prevails to-day. At 
 the corner of a street, in some crowded alley or reeking court, half a 
 dozen children are playing, when suddenly a respectably dressed 
 man, with a grave countenance, steps up, asks a question which 
 causes them to flee on every side, not however before one or two of 
 the unkempt and generally uncared-for urchins have been fairly 
 caught in his grasp.* Or, threading his way through a labyrinth of 
 small thoroughfares, and looking in at the doors of the wretched tene* 
 * Women are also in some places largely employed as visitors.
 
 EDUCATIONAL ENGLAND. 273 
 
 ments which line them on either side, he stops at one, where he sees 
 two or three children of tender years unwashed and ill dressed. He 
 proceeds to interrogate their mother, or the woman who is in charge 
 of them, and notes down her replies in a pocket-book. This is one of 
 the special visitors selected by the School Board within whose district 
 the truant or absentee children may happen to be. 
 
 If the reply given is that the child is attending a Board School, 
 then there can be no doubt as to its efficiency, and the only question 
 asked is as to the reason of absence. If the establishment is not under 
 the jurisdiction of the School Board, it is probably a public " elemen- 
 tary school within the meaning of the Act," and in that case, too, 
 nothing more will be said. If, on the other hand, it is a private 
 venture school, whose character there is reason to doubt, an inquiry 
 is instituted ; but, as a matter of fact, it is seldom that any school is 
 pronounced hopelessly inefficient. The machinery by which the com- 
 pulsory by-laws are enforced is simple. Every School Board employs 
 a certain staff of visitors, each of whom keeps a schedule of all the 
 children of school age in a certain district. It is the visitor's duty to 
 ascertain that all those boys and girls whose names are on his list are 
 being regularly educated. If any cases in which they are not, come 
 before him, he reports them to the committee to which these matters 
 specially belong ; the case is inquired into, and the next step is the 
 despatch of a notice (A) to the parent, admonishing him to send the 
 boy or girl to school. If this is not acted upon, a second notice (B) 
 requires the parent to attend and explain the reasons of his neglect 
 before the divisional committee, the members of which have then for 
 the first time cognisance of the matter. If extreme poverty is 
 alleged the matter is investigated, and the School Board may 
 order the payment of a portion of the fees. If, after receiving the 
 second warning, the parent takes no heed, he is summoned to appear 
 before the magistrate, who may impose a fine not exceediug in amount 
 five shillings, inclusive of costs. 
 
 Such, at least, is the law, and it is due, on the one hand, to the 
 good sense of the School Board authorities, on the other hand, and 
 more particularly, to the law-abiding qualities of the English people, 
 that it works with so little friction. The principle of compulsion 
 which was implied in the Education Act, and has since been explicitly 
 asserted by the School Boards and school attendance committees, was 
 one which, if not in theory new to the English people, had in practice 
 received the anticipatory condemnation of those who in such a matter 
 might claim to be considered experts. Compulsion, indeed, under a cer- 
 tain shape, existed in the workhouse, in the industrial school, in the 
 training-ship, and in the half-time system ; but the general adoption of 
 the compulsory principle was pronounced impracticable by many well- 
 known and experienced members of Parliament, while one of the 
 
 T
 
 274 ENGLAND. 
 
 School inspectors declared his opinion that if attempted to be carried 
 out it " would produce a national commotion not much less dangerous 
 than that which attended a poll-tax." Again, a stipendiary magis- 
 trate of the midland counties said that " if compulsory attendance at 
 school should become the law he would refuse to administer it." 
 "What has happened ? The Education Act of 1870 came into force 
 twelve months after it was passed ; that of 1876 began to be applied 
 in 1877. These two measures have already covered the country with 
 a network of School Boards and of attendance committees, appointed 
 by town councils in urban districts, and boards of guardians in 
 rural districts. Attendance committees are invested with the same 
 power of enacting compulsory by-laws as the School Boards, and 
 although they do not so effectually avail themselves of it as School 
 Boards, they had succeeded, in 1878, in bringing another million and 
 three-quarters of the population under direct legal compulsion to send 
 their children to school. In all, there were in 1878 two-thirds of the 
 population of England and Wales under the operation of compulsory 
 education. 
 
 It must always be remembered that the Education Act of 1870 was 
 not, like the Reform Act of 1867, a second instalment of legislation of 
 which the firstfruits had already been tasted ; but that, in its strange- 
 ness and novelty to the English people, it was absolutely revolutionary, 
 that it has signally interfered with the innate and traditional English 
 love of personal independence, and that it has involved a heavy in- 
 crease to the rates which Englishmen pay. The legislation of 1870 ap- ( 
 plied the theory, and to some extent the practice, of the State system of 
 education in force in Prussia to free and independent England. No 
 such organised intervention between parent and child, no such syste- 
 matic inquisition into those private affairs which Englishmen are in the 
 habit of keeping religiously to themselves, had ever been attempted in 
 this country. Until the passing of this Act, not merely had the State 
 made no attempts to regulate the amount and kind of teaching pro- 
 vided for English children, but it had declined to recognise the existence 
 of the schools except when they appeared as applicants for its pecuni- 
 ary aid. Then, and only then, the State sent agents of its own to see 
 that the conditions upon which this aid was granted were not violated. 
 Not merely the foundation of the educational edifice, but the entire 
 fabric, consisted of the organisations of voluntary enterprise. The 
 Christian Knowledge Society had established schools for more than a 
 century ; the National Society had promoted the education of the poor 
 in the principles of the Established Church since 1811 ; the British 
 and Eoreign School Society, an anti-sectarian body, had been at work 
 since 1814 ; Nonconformists, Roman Catholic and Protestant, notably 
 the Wesleyans, had their own schools, governed by their own special 
 committees. Add to this the municipal schools, the parochial schools,
 
 EDUCATIONAL ENGLAND. 275 
 
 the private venture schools, and the public schools for the higher and 
 middle classes, the schools of the Ragged School Union for the lowest 
 of all, and the account of the educational machinery of the country 
 before 1870 is complete. 
 
 It is true that an essay by John Foster, in 1819, " On the Evils of 
 Popular Ignorance," appealed by its arguments and revelations to the 
 fears of statesmen and to the philanthropy of the benevolent. 
 Lord Brougham lent the weight of his eloquence and influence in the 
 same direction, and the commission known as Brougham's Commission 
 was issued. The report of this inquiry, with its disclosures of igno- 
 rance and depravity, shocked and alarmed the nation. Brougham, by 
 picturing the social degradation of the country, exposing the "mis- 
 direction, waste, and plunder of educational endowments," and by 
 arguing that education was the best security for order and tranquillity, 
 succeeded in arousing the authorities, who bad been hitherto hostile, 
 indifferent, or sceptical. Still twelve years passed before the tide in 
 favour of education set in. Statesmen were opposed to the move- 
 ment. Lord Melbourne characteristically " questioned the advantage 
 of general education as a means of promoting knowledge in the world, 
 since people got en without it." The Bishop of Durham " believed 
 that education was not likely to make its way among the poor;" and 
 the Bishop of Exeter said that if, when rector, he had started a school 
 in his parish, the squire would have laughed in his face. 
 
 For the first time, in 1833, the private societies received subsidies 
 from the State. One year later a commission to inquire into scholastic 
 matters was appointed. In 1839 the Committee of the Privy Council 
 on Education was formed. Grants were thenceforth given only on 
 conditions which the Government laid down, but though some of our 
 public men ventured to anticipate a centralised educational adminis- 
 tration for the whole of England, religious differences and popular 
 jealousy of State interference hopelessly barred the way. Subsequent 
 advances, indeed, were made in the direction of that goal which was 
 ultimately arrived at in 1870: first, by the strong but unsuccessful 
 manifestations of parliamentary and public opinion in 1817 ; secondly, 
 by the old code of the Committee of Council ; thirdly, by the new 
 code of 1861 ; but no step had been taken to establish the doctrine of 
 the right of the State to step in between parent and child. 
 
 The work done by the Education Act of 1870 may be very briefly 
 sketched, and represents the actual educational machinery under which 
 we are now living, and are likely to live for many years to come. The 
 whole of Great Britain south of the Tweed is covered with a network 
 of school districts. Of these districts there are some under School 
 Boards and others under school attendance committees.^" Even in 
 
 * According to the Report of the Committee of Council on Education for 1883, there 
 were last year, of the population of England and Wales 16,0Sl,bl8 under School Boards, 
 
 T 2
 
 276 ENGLAND. 
 
 School Board districts there are plenty of schools under voluntary 
 management, and in all districts "where there is no School Board the 
 alternative is a species of voluntary management. School Boards 
 have, within certain limits, and subject to the approval of the Com- 
 mittee of Council and the royal sanction, plenary powers — they may 
 make school attendance compulsory or permissive, deciding what 
 excuse shall be accepted as valid. The School Boards have also 
 authority to regulate, subject to the Education Department, what 
 extra subjects shall be taught, and whether religious instruction of 
 any kind shall be given. At Birmingham there is a strong feeling 
 against any religious teaching at all, the simple reading of the Bible 
 not excepted. In the capital there exists what is called the London 
 compromise, identical in principle with the rule of the British and 
 Foreign School Society, allowing the Bible to be read, instruction to 
 be given from it, and the use of prayers and hymns. More than 
 83 per cent, of the School Boards throughout England have sanctioned 
 the reading and the simple undenominational teaching of the Bible. In 
 theory, education is not gratuitous, although the fees of the poorest 
 children may be remitted by School Boards, or paid by the guardians 
 in voluntary or Board Schools. 
 
 The points of contact between the local School Board and the 
 
 and 0.892,821 under school attendance committees. In England there were 1.865 
 School Boards to a population of 15,101,634, and in Wales 292 School Boards to a 
 population of 97^,984, or in all 2,157 School Boards. In England 101 boroughs, 72 
 urban sanitary district*, and 534 unions, with a population of 9,512,299, and in Wales 
 7 boroughs and 45 unions, with a population of 380,529, were under school attendance 
 committees. In 1883, 18,540 day schools in England and Wales were inspected, which 
 furnished accommodation for 4,670,304 pupils. On the registers of these schools there 
 1,273,304 children, of whom 1,336,920 were under seven years of age; 2.743.383 
 i.i-tween seven and thirteen ; 150,245 i between thirteen and fourteen ; and 42,747 above 
 fourteen years of age. On the day of inspection 3,705,388 pupils were present, and 
 3,127,214 were on an average in daily attendance throughout the year. Of these pupils 
 *_.^'7* >.' *1 ± were actually presented for individual examination ; and while 1,483,269 passed 
 the prescribed test in all the three subjects — reading, writing, and arithmetic — a fraction 
 over 89 per cent, passed in the first, over 82 per cent, in the second, and over 77 per cent, 
 in the third. In the schools inspected 37,2S0 certificated teachers, 12,390 assistant 
 
 hers, and 26,428 pupil-teachers were employed. During the year the school accom- 
 modation had increased by 132,123 places, the average attendance by 112.0(13, the pupils 
 on the register by 83,692, and the pupils individually examined by 156,640. The local 
 effort which has resulted in this improvement, the Report says, may be estimated by the 
 continued support derived from voluntary contributions, amounting to £717.i' s '.( from 
 2 17,82] subscribers, and by an advance in the contributions from rates to £840.947 from 
 
 (8,121. The sum received in scl 1 pence also rose from £1,5S5,928 to £1,659,743, or 
 
 by more than £73,000; while the annual grant rose from £2,393,394 to £2.522 511, or 
 from 15s. In. 1 ,!, tn 16s. l.'.d. per pupil in average attendance. J he cost of maintenance 
 per pupil in average attendance was in Board Schools £2 Is. 3§d., and in Voluntary 
 Schools £] 1 Is. ]<>jd.. a decrease of 3d. in the first and an increase of 3-Jd. in the second 
 eompared with the previous vear. The Education Estimates for England and 
 Wales For L884-1885, it may be observed, amount to £3,016,167, as against £2,938,319 for 
 L884. The total estimates for the United Kingdom for the current year on account 
 
 ducation, science, and art fall little short of £5,000,000, while in 1870 they amounted 
 to not more than between £160,000 and £170.000.
 
 EDUCATIONAL ENGLAND. 277 
 
 central authority of the Education Department at "Whitehall are frequent, 
 and the control exercised by the latter over the former is close and 
 constant. No School Board has the power of erecting any new building 
 unless in the first place the department gives a general approval of the 
 scheme. The second step is the approval of the site, and the third of 
 the plan of the proposed new building. After these preliminaries have 
 been settled, the department may proceed to give its approval to the 
 application of the School Board for permission to borrow money from 
 the Public Works Loan Commissioners. Finally, no School Board can 
 enforce its compulsory by-laws unless these have received the sanction 
 of the Education Department. 
 
 It also rests with the Education Department to decide, from time 
 to time, upon what conditions grants are to be made to schools from 
 the Treasury. These grants, at present, are given indifferently to all 
 schools, whether Board or denominational, which satisfy certain con- 
 ditions, and are, in legislative phraseology, public elementary schools 
 within the meaning of the Act. In the first place, religious instruction 
 is not to be obligatory on any child attending school ; secondly, reli- 
 gious instruction, if given at all, must be given either at the end or 
 the beginning of school-time ; and thirdly, the school is always to be 
 open to Her Majesty's inspector. The principle upon which these 
 grants are estimated is as follows : Four shillings a year may be claimed 
 by the school managers for every boy or girl who has attended the 
 requisite number of times, another shilling is allowed if singing forms 
 part of the ordinary course, and a shilling more if the discipline and 
 the organisation are pronounced satisfactory. The grant may be raised 
 above these figures, provided that the standards in which the children 
 pass their examination are sufficiently high. These standards, which 
 were formerly six, are now seven in number, and roughly correspond 
 to the years of age between 7 and 14. The average fees charged in 
 Board Schools are from Id. to Gd. a week, and in no case is a School 
 Board allowed to charge more than 9d. 
 
 Let us enter one of these Board Schools, and see the educational 
 machine at work. The building is handsome and roomy, and it is 
 only one of thousands scattered throughout the country. Closely 
 adjoining it is the house of the schoolmaster and the schoolmistress, 
 both of them duly certificated teachers, who are in receipt of £200 
 and £150 a year respectively.* The bell is ringing, and the children 
 
 * In 1883 there were more than eleven hundred certificated masters in Board Schools 
 in receipt of £200 and upwards, and nearly two hundred in receipt of £300 and upwards, 
 per annum. Of certificated mistresses in Board Schools, more than six hundred were in 
 receipt of £150 and upwards, and more than two hundred were in receipt of £200 and 
 upwards, per annum. The average salary of certificated masters and mistresses, both 
 principal and assistant, was in the year £119 for the one and £72 for the other. In 
 addition to their pay, 6,138 out of 14,827 masters, and 5,317 out of 21,270 mistresses, were 
 provided with residences rent free. In the metropolitan district the average salary of 
 about three hundred Board School masters was over £250, and of between five ami six
 
 278 ENGLAND. 
 
 are swarming into the class-rooms. Perhaps, as you enter the great 
 central chamber of the structure, you will meet one or two ministers 
 of different denominations, who have been giving, in the half-hour 
 immediately before the school-work of the day begins, religious 
 instruction to the sons and daughters of parents whose creeds they 
 respectively represent.* There is a clattering of desks thrown open, 
 of slates thrown down, and all the noise attendant upon two or three 
 hundred boys and girls — the girls being in another but contiguous 
 part of the building — settling down into their places. The children 
 of both sexes are clean and well-clad, to a degree which is really 
 surprising, when it is remembered that with scarcely an exception 
 their fathers are mechanics or artisans. If much in this respect is 
 due to the care and attention of their parents, something also is to be 
 attributed to the supervision exercised by the teacher. The school- 
 master who has the art of management will very soon create among 
 his pupils a feeling favourable to decency and cleanliness, and you 
 may know a well from a badly administered school, not only by the 
 results of examinations, but by the general appearance and manners 
 of the children. 
 
 Lessons proceed according to the plan indicated on the time-table — 
 a complete programme of the educational arrangements for the classes, 
 which are both numbered and regulated according to the standard in 
 which they are taught — displayed in a conspicuous position, and 
 approved of by the Education Department in London, and by the 
 district inspector. Possibly before the morning is over this official 
 will pay one of his visits without notice. His purpose is to see that 
 the prescribed regulations are being duly obeyed, that the principle 
 upon which both boys and girls are being taught is sound, and that 
 discipline is efficiently maintained. He will perhaps test the general 
 intelligence of the children by asking them questions, not immediately 
 out of their books, but rather suggested by the subjects of study, and, 
 pointing to the coloured maps, diagrams, and illustrations of animals 
 and natural phenomena which hang on the walls, will endeavour to 
 ascertain how far an acquaintance with words implies any correspond- 
 ing appreciation of facts. It is by this kind of test that he will judge 
 the quality of what are known in our elementary schools as " object 
 lessons." Here it is but too likely that he will discover that it is not 
 so much ideas which have been acquired as names which have been 
 mechanically learnt. The boys and girls, from frequent hearing of 
 
 hundred Board School mistresses over £175; the average salary of nearly four hundred 
 Voluntary School masters being some £150, and of more than eight hundred Voluntary 
 School mistresses being some 1'87. It is remarkable that 59 per cent, of certificated 
 teachers, 68 per cent, of assistant teachers, and 71 per cent, of pupil-teachers, are females, 
 and that the proportion has long been and is still increasing. 
 
 * In London, and in some other places, this religious teaching may be, and usually 
 is, given by the "responsible teacher" of the school.
 
 EDUCATIONAL ENGLAND. 279 
 
 the stereotyped explanatory phrases and formulae of the pupil-teacher, 
 can give a conventional description of certain animals or objects, but 
 only in such a way as shows that these animals or objects are 
 regarded less as existences in nature than as scholastic abstractions. 
 It may be that the inspector, himself constructing a verbal picture of 
 some beast of the field, bird of the air, or product of the soil, elicits 
 from the child the information that it applies to some entirely different 
 species of animal or phenomenon. Of a want of glib familiarity with 
 words the school inspector has no reason to complain ; it is the 
 rational assimilation of the knowledge conveyed by text-books that he 
 too often discovers to be entirely wanting. Nor are the text-books 
 themselves uniformly satisfactory. In the case of reading manuals, 
 the letterpress often consists of silly or extravagant stories, instead 
 of enshrining, as it might do, the narrative of events of real interest and 
 importance. The key-note of the complaint made by the school inspec- 
 tors in their periodical reports is a general want of intelligence pervad- 
 ing the whole system — want of intelligence on the part of the pupils, 
 want of intelligence in the application of the instruments of teaching. 
 
 It may be anticipated that the effect of the new code, which came 
 into operation in the second half of last year, will be to discourage the 
 taking up of optional subjects to a much more considerable extent than 
 was the case under the old code which it superseded. In all of them 
 there has been a marked falling off in both the examinations and the 
 passes. Nor does it appear that this has been, or is likely to be, 
 attended by any appreciable improvement in the proficiency of the pupils 
 in the obligatory subjects. Almost all the inspectors in their reports for 
 1883 complain of the way in which reading, writing, and arithmetic, or 
 one or other of them, are being taught in the schools under their charge. 
 We are warned, for example, that " reading is still the weakest point in 
 almost every school;" that teachers seem seldom to realise that "children 
 cannot write properly without being taught," and " that there are, as 
 usual, more failings in arithmetic than in any other subject, carelessness 
 being the most fruitful cause;" that " improvement in reading has 
 been rather in quantity than in quality ; " that " spelling has improved 
 much more than handwriting," and that " there is still great room for 
 improvement in the answers given to the arithmetical questions which 
 require thought ; " that the writer is " often surprised to find how very 
 possible it is for a class to have read a book under a teacher's direction 
 and yet to have learned nothing from it;" that there is no " sub- 
 stantial improvement in reading, but it remains as before, the one 
 subject that is as a rule badly taught in elementary schools," and that 
 although there is in arithmetic improvement in neatness of arrange- 
 ment and accuracy of working, " simple problems requiring a slight 
 exercise of intelligence are for the most part either unattempted or 
 misunderstood;" that it is "eminently unsatisfactory that about ten
 
 280 ENGLAND. 
 
 per cent, of the children examined fail in reading, and the more so 
 because of the successful ninety per cent, a very large proportion 
 barely satisfy the requirements of the code ;" that " with penmanship 
 generally the writer is not satisfied," and that he is " disappointed 
 rather than surprised at the small progress noticeable in arithmetic ;" 
 that " writing is not so well taught as it was many years ago," and 
 that " the use of fingers in counting is still noticed more frequently " 
 than he could wish, while in reading " the answers to questions show- 
 ing a knowledge of the general drift of the passages read might improve 
 with advantage;" that "words are mastered, and there is little fault 
 to find as regards fluency — the defects are in' expression, intelligence, 
 and comprehension of the words and phrases," and that "ability to 
 work a sum demanding some trifling mental arrangement is not com- 
 mon, and is much considered in awarding the merit grant;" that in 
 reading the writer has " known children stop at the simplest words 
 because they have not met with them before ;" that " in writing the 
 commonest words are misspelt, especially in composition," and that 
 " the mechanical sums are as a rule correctly and neatly worked out, 
 but those requiring a little thought are not well done ; " that " so much 
 has lately been said about the teaching of reading" that " it may be 
 hoped some radical change of method will result;" that about six 
 months ago the writer "put a new reading-book into the hands of 
 thirty-eight picked children who had just passed very well as readers 
 in the two books provided for their examination," and found that 
 " they blundered over such common words as ' each,' ' no,' ' on,' 
 ' feel,' &c, because they appeared in sentences with which they were 
 not familiar;" that "in reading there is no improvement — the per- 
 centage of mere passes is a shade lower than in 1876, while the general 
 quality of these passes is no higher," " even where great fluency and 
 a considerable amount of good modulation have been attained, ques- 
 tions on the meanings often disclose a mental state of almost Cim- 
 merian darkness;" "a diplomatist" is defined as "him who acts 
 plays," " a Zulu " as "a native of New Zealand," " an alderman " as 
 " a native of Alderney," and so on; that after "six or more years" 
 of schooling " it is quite refreshing to meet with a class that can read 
 at sight really intelligently and with good expression " an ordinary 
 paragraph from a newspaper, and that " the children are taught to spell 
 the words that occur in the books from which the dictation lessons are 
 liable to be taken, and here their knowledge of spelling ends ; and 
 while they can for the time spell a multitude of words they are not 
 likely to want to spell after leaving school, they are quite unfamiliar 
 with many words of common occurrence." Again, we are informed 
 that " grammar is often well done on paper, though it does not seem 
 to affect the popular speech ;" that in grammar " the upper standards 
 sometimes show grotesque results;" that "grammar seems to exer-
 
 EDDCATIONAL ENGLAND. 281 
 
 cise some kind of fascination for pupil-teachers, judging from the 
 frequency with which they choose it as the subject of lessons to be 
 given before her Majesty's inspectors ; they make a point of insisting 
 on elaborate classifications of different parts of speech to the utter 
 bewilderment of their pupils, leaving them devoid of any knowledge of 
 or respect for their mother tongue ; " and that " in grammar the pars- 
 ing is generally the least satisfactory part of the work." As to sing- 
 ing, we are told that " the chief faults are still want of expression, 
 bad enunciation, and imperfect intonation ; " that " though in a few 
 schools singing is performed with spirit and good taste, it is in a large 
 number a barren and by no means pleasing exercise," and that " sing- 
 ing is but very little better in style or quality, nor is enough care given 
 to the choice of songs as to either words or music ; the former are 
 often trashy or even gloomy. Dickens's ' The Ivy Green ' does not 
 make an inspiriting school song, nor will a cheerful tune ever make 
 ' Away to School ' sound a delightful theme even to the ears of a 
 twentieth century schoolboy." One inspector approves of the custom 
 of drawing plans of the schoolhouse as likely to "do more than any- 
 thing else, if properly used, to get rid of the common impression, often 
 strengthened by the loose phraseology of the pupil-teachers, if not 
 directly taught by them, that the north is higher than the south." 
 Another affirms that dependence on geographical text-books " often 
 makes children conversant with the names and exact length of rivers 
 and heights of mountains, and able to repeat lists of headlands and 
 seaports, but it rarely gives them much real working knowledge of 
 their own country or the world in which they live." Another states 
 that in needlework " the instruction hitherto has been a farce," that 
 the scientific subjects do not flourish, that he has " only one school 
 where physiology has been taught ;" that " physical geography, which 
 used to be very popular, has died out altogether," and that " domestic 
 economy has also been dropped." Another observes that " specifics 
 continue to be offered in many schools without the justification of 
 success, and only too frequently with disastrous effects upon the other 
 and more important branches of instruction." Another remarks that 
 " the amount of attention given to specific subjects does not show 
 much response to the inducements to teach them held out by the 
 Code." Another announces that "of specific subjects" he "cannot 
 speak, as hardly any of his schools attempt them," in which he thinks 
 "the managers are wise;" and another, while pointing out that 
 " specific subjects have never been taken to any great extent " in his 
 district, predicts that under the New Code "they will be taken less 
 frequently than ever." 
 
 That such should be the general tenor of the official reports on 
 a system of national elementary education which has been established 
 for fifteen years, and which costs the country between four and five
 
 282 ENGLAND. 
 
 millions annually in rates and taxes, is not very satisfactory or 
 encouraging. And what has been already said by no means repre- 
 sents the full extent of its shortcomings. Imperfect as the instruction 
 is which at best it offers them, there is a general disinclination on the 
 part of parents to make anything like the best of what it affords 
 for their children. As one of the speakers at the recent International 
 Congress on Education, Mr. Heller, a member of the London School 
 Board and Secretary of the Teachers' Association, justly said, " the 
 minimum standard of age and attainment which exempts the children 
 from compulsory attendance has come to be regarded by the parents 
 as the maximum point to which education need be carried." The 
 pupils, as he added, leave earlier and earlier in each year, and thus 
 the attainment of a higher level of education which improved methods 
 and appliances should and might secure is prevented. Under the 
 legislation of 1876, school attendance is, in certain circumstances, 
 compulsory on children until they have completed their fourteenth 
 year. But with the sanction of the Education Department, local by- 
 laws make it possible, in a large majority of cases, for children to 
 become free from school attendance on passing the fourth standard, 
 which is easily done by them in their tenth or eleventh year. Thus 
 of the whole number of 4,273,000 children on the school registers 
 last year only 946,000 were of eleven years and upwards, and only 
 192,000 were of thirteen years and upwards. On the whole, therefore, 
 it is pretty evident that a small percentage alone of children of the 
 working classes receive any instruction at the period when they are 
 most likely to be able to profit from it, and that while their acquire- 
 ments in the obligatory subjects of their education are usually ex- 
 tremely superficial and inadequate, their acquirements in the optional 
 or class and specific subjects practically amount in all save a minute 
 minority to nothing, or worse than nothing. 
 
 The great failing of the English working classes is their disregard 
 of the economies of life. The great cause of their wastefulness is 
 their ignorance. Cases are not unknown in which a labourer's wife 
 has been seen to throw a piece of mutton, sufficiently good for human 
 consumption, to the cat, for the simple reason that she did not know 
 how to cook it.* Again, the only way of reconciling parents to the 
 
 * Under the existing Code, the " principles of agriculture " and " domestic economy " 
 are among the "specific subjects" for which grants may be earned. Hut no pupil may 
 be presented for examination in any specific subject who is not also presented for 
 examination in elementary subjects in the fifth, sixth, or seventh standard. Where, 
 however, an inspector reports that special and appropriate provision is made for the 
 practical teaching of cookery, a grant of four shillings is made on account of any girl 
 who has attended not less than forty hours during the school year at the cookery class 
 ami is presented for examination in elementary subjects in the fourth or any higher 
 standard. In London and several of the large provincial towns eliicient cookery classes 
 arc now cst.iliri-.bcd in the Board Schools and are very favourably mentioned in the 
 School Inspectors' Reports for 1883.
 
 EDUCATIONAL ENGLAND. 283 
 
 loss of the money value of their children's labour is by appealing to 
 the unselfish against the selfish principle, and convincing them, if 
 possible, that while they are poorer by their children's school attend- 
 ance, their children will in the end be richer. But in agricultural 
 districts there is little in the instruction given in elementary schools 
 to make the parents feel that their children are likely to be gainers by 
 school attendance. They may admit the necessity of reading and 
 writing, but they will contend that much else is taught which is 
 superfluous. It may be allowed that there is something in this. To 
 gain the parliamentary grant is naturally a paramount consideration 
 with the teacher, and that is only to be done by educating the 
 children up to the point and in the subjects prescribed by the Edu- 
 cation Department. The teaching thus too often lacks any direct 
 reference to the occupations in which the children will engage after 
 they leave school ; it is not, in other words, calculated to give them a 
 greater interest in their work, and, therefore, to make them better 
 workmen.* 
 
 Of the intimate connection between an improved system of educa- 
 tion and the repression of crime, nobody who takes the trouble to 
 consider the subject can entertain any manner of doubt. It is trne 
 that a considerable amount of instruction may, and often does, co-exist 
 
 * In this connection it is desirable that due weight should be given to certain of the 
 suggestions contained in the Second Report of the Royal Commission on Technical 
 Instruction, which was published a few months ago. In them are embodied the results 
 of three years of patient and exhaustive investigation prosecuted by Sir Bernard 
 Samuelson and his colleagues and assistants, not only in the United Kingdom, but in almost 
 all parts of Europe and America as well. At present the subjects for which grants are 
 made by the Education Department, on account of pupils in public elementary schools, 
 are either obligatory or optional, and the optional subjects are divided into such as are 
 taken up by classes throughout the school, and such as are taken up by individual 
 pupils in the upper classes of the school. These several orders of subjects are also 
 officially described as" elementary," "class," and "specific." The Commissioners are of 
 opinion that rudimentary drawing should be incorporated with writing as an elementary 
 subject; that instruction in drawing partly from casts and models should be given in all 
 the standards ; that modelling should be made a subject for encouragement by grant ; 
 that in the lower standards object lessons for teaching rudimentary science should 
 include geography, so that there may be two instead of three class subjects in them ; 
 that proficiency in the use of tools for working in wood and iron should be paid for as a 
 specific subject, arrangements being made for the work to be clone as much as practicable 
 out of school hours ; and that in rural schools instruction in the principles and facts of 
 agriculture, after proper introductory object lessons, should be rendered obligatory in the 
 higher standards. They further think that after reasonable notice no school should be 
 deemed to be provided with sufficient apparatus of elementary instruction unless it is 
 furnished with an adequate supply of casts and models for drawing ; that special grants 
 should be made to schools in aid of collections of natural objects, casts, drawings, and 
 so forth, suitable for school museums ; and that the provision at present confined under 
 a recent statute to Scotland, which prescribes that children under the age of fourteen 
 shall not be allowed to work as full-timers in factories and workshops unless they have 
 passed in the fifth standard, should be extended to England and Wales. They also pro- 
 pose that School Boards, or where they do not exist the local authorities, shall be 
 empowered to establish, conduct, and contribute to the maintenance of, classes for young 
 persons or adults, being artisans, under the Science and Art Department.
 
 284 ENGLAND. 
 
 with criminal tendencies. It is further true that there are some 
 crimes — for instance, forgery, and certain varieties of murder, and 
 fraud — which imply instruction, and, occasionally, instruction in an 
 eminent degree, in those who commit them. But the acquirement of 
 even the rudiments of education is always accompanied by a measure 
 of moral training and discipline, of which the ordinary effect is to curb 
 the impulses and supply the deficiencies to which breaches of the law 
 commonly owe their origin. It cannot be regarded as a mere accident 
 that, as we have already noticed, our criminal population, so far as the 
 graver offences are concerned, has remained stationary, and so far as 
 the slighter offences are concerned has absolutely diminished during 
 the last decade, while between three and four millions have been 
 added to our general population. Still less can it be regarded as a 
 mere accident that, among both convicts and other prisoners, a very 
 marked falling ofi' is observable in the number of those who are under as 
 compared with the number of those who are over thirty years of age, 
 or, in other words, in those who have been afforded educational oppor- 
 tunities which were denied to their older companions. Despite the 
 unquestionable progress which has been made in the dissemination of 
 education in the interval, the proportion of uneducated to educated 
 criminals is at present a shade larger than it was before 1870. It 
 was then about 95, and it is now about 96 per cent., among men and 
 boys, and it was then about 97, and it is now about 98 per cent., 
 among women and girls. Of 129,000 males and 49,000 females 
 committed to prison in 1882, only 5,000 of the first and 1,400 of the 
 second could read and write well. Only 140 of the first and seven of 
 the second were persons of what is described as " superior instruc- 
 tion," while 40,000 of the males, and 20,000 of the females, could 
 neither read nor write, and 83,000 of the males, and 28,000 of the 
 females, could read, or read and write, imperfectly. Hence the 
 inference may be drawn with some confidence that the inhabitants of 
 our gaols and convict establishments are becoming more and more 
 distinctly identified with the ever dwindling residuum of educational 
 pariahs among us, and that, at all events, a very appreciable part of 
 the reduced ratio which is now established between our general and 
 our criminal population is to be credited to the spread of education, 
 and its moral as well as its intellectual consequences, in the course of 
 the last fourteen or fifteen years.* 
 
 That our educational machinery works perfectly, or that the princi- 
 ples on which the attempt to work it is made are uniformly sound, it 
 would be a great deal too much to affirm. We have not apparently 
 quite decided what wo want and what we ought to do. Are we pre- 
 pared to institute a vast system of free education in England, which 
 
 * Journal of the Statistical Society, vol. xxx. p. 137, and Judicial Statistics, 1883, 
 p. 239.
 
 EDUCATIONAL ENGLAND. 285 
 
 would mean an immense addition to the rates ? In 1883 the State 
 paid more than £29,000 for grants to elementary schools in aid of 
 extra subjects, such as French, German, Latin, physical science. 
 What has been said above as to the expediency of giving to children 
 in agricultural districts a teaching that is likely to benefit them when 
 they are apprenticed to their work, certainly applies here ; and if 
 these extra subjects are to be maintained, they should be as much as 
 possible industrial. 
 
 Many and loud complaints are now heard that a distaste, even a 
 contempt, for manual labour is being widely propagated among the 
 children of the working classes. The impression has got abroad, and 
 is gaining ground, that it is " more respectable " to be a clerk than an 
 artisan, although the work of the first is often as hard and is generally 
 worse paid than the work of the second. Candidates for clerkships 
 trained in the elementary schools are multiplied beyond all prece- 
 dent, and the process will no doubt continue until measures are taken 
 to impress the rising generation with the fact that situations in work- 
 shops or factories are neither less reputable nor less desirable on other 
 grounds than situations in offices and counting-houses. Already 
 some progress has been made in this direction by the School Boards 
 in certain of our great centres of population, and preparation for, or 
 actual instruction in, handicrafts is receiving a degree of attention which 
 was never before conceded to it. In London special arrangements 
 have recently been made for the teaching of rudimentary science, the 
 indispensable preliminary to sound technical training. At Liverpool 
 and Birmingham for several years past scientific demonstrators of 
 ascertained capacity have been appointed, whose duty it is to pass from 
 school to school and deliver experimental lectures on general physics. 
 Every week from eighteen to twenty of such lectures are given, 
 and are followed by recapitulatory lessons from the ordinary school 
 teachers and periodical examinations of the pupils. At Manchester 
 workshops, appropriately fitted up with lathes and joiners' benches, 
 have been attached to some of the Board Schools, in which classes are 
 familiarised with the use of tools and the mechanical manipulation of 
 wood and iron. In several of the larger manufacturing towns higher 
 or graded elementary schools, connected with and supplemental to the 
 primary schools, have been established. Into these the more advanced 
 and promising pupils are drafted, and are instructed in the sub- 
 jects adapted to their intelligence and acquirements more effectually 
 and economically than could be the case were they mingled with 
 younger or more backward children. Both at Manchester and at 
 Huddersfield there are schools of this kind of which, particularly in 
 their scientific and technical departments, very satisfactory accounts 
 are given. But it is at Sheffield that the best and most complete 
 example is to be found. At the Central School 5U0 pupils are in
 
 286 ENGLAND. 
 
 daily attendance, all of them with a few exceptions promoted from the 
 primary schools of the town. Only those who can pass an entrance 
 examination in at least the fourth standard — and if their age exceeds 
 eleven in a higher standard — are admitted. Both the boys and the girls 
 are taught French throughout the school, while some are taught 
 German or Latin as well. All the girls are practiced in cookery and 
 needlework and a few of them are instructed in chemistry. For the 
 boys the science course comprises practical plane and solid geometry ; 
 machine construction and drawing ; mathematics ; chemistry, the- 
 oretical, and practical ; magnetism, and electricity. The art course 
 includes freehand, model, perspective, and geometrical drawing ; draw- 
 ing from the cast ; modelling in clay, and wood- carving. Practical 
 work in the workshops embraces the production of simple but perfect 
 geometrical forms in iron and wood, such as the cube or the hexagonal 
 prism, the construction of models in wood suitable for employment 
 in schools as models for drawing, and of various kinds of wood joints, 
 models of doors, and so forth. Also the construction of apparatus to 
 illustrate by experiment the principles of levers, of levers in combination, 
 pulleys, wheel and axle, the crane, and strains on beams with different 
 positions of load. All the models are made from drawings prepared by 
 the pupils themselves, the aim being to supply a systematic course of 
 practical instruction in the science of mechanics. The ages of the 
 boys varies from ten to sixteen, the majority remaining under tuition 
 until they are between fourteen and fifteen years old.* It is manifest 
 that the sort of training which is here indicated is fitted only for those 
 whose after career is to be that of skilled artisans of the first order. 
 It would be unsuited to the requirements of the rank and file of 
 manual labourers even if the consumption of time which it implies did 
 not effectually put it beyond the reach of the children of all save the 
 very well-to-do among the working classes. What particular scheme 
 of technical instruction should be pursued in any given elementary 
 school must be determined in the main by local considerations : the 
 nature of the industries prosecuted in the vicinity and the circum- 
 stances and prospects of the pupils under training. It is only in 
 exceptional districts that any considerable number of them can be ex- 
 pected to remain at school until they are fifteen or sixteen years old. 
 It would be absurd to pass the future agricultural labourer and the 
 future mechanical engineer through the same practical course in the 
 
 * The Commissioners on Technical Instruction state that they "were much impressed 
 with the excellence of the drawing, including that for industrial work," at the Sheffield 
 CCntral School, and add that "it is greatly to be desired that the Government would 
 support this practical workshop instruction, without which the continuance of the scheme 
 is scarcely possible." — Second Report, p. 407. Of the Ducie Avenue Board School at 
 Manchester they say that the grants earned from the Science and Art Department, 
 together with the school pence, more than cover its working expenses. — Second Report, 
 p. 427.
 
 EDUCATIONAL ENGLAND. 287 
 
 workshop. It would be ridiculous to suppose too that the general 
 run of children in the primary schools could within due limits of age 
 even be qualified for admission, or could be admitted with advantage 
 to the higher or graded elementary schools. As it is, an outcry has 
 been raised against " over-pressure" which is neither without founda- 
 tion nor likely to be without effect. In spite of much exaggeration 
 and some absolute fiction, enough is on all sides allowed to be true to 
 indicate the existence of a real and very serious danger. The latest 
 reports from the inspectors of schools, as well as the questions which 
 have been put, and the answers which have been returned to them, in 
 Parliament, all tend to prove that although " over-pressure " is com- 
 paratively rare and is nearly always the result of mismanagement on 
 the part of the teachers, or mental deficiency and bodily weakness on 
 the part of the pupils, it is far more common than it is either necessary or 
 creditable that it should be.* It may well be feared that a thoroughly 
 effective system of elementary education leading on to a course of special 
 technical instruction would transcend the natural powers as well as the 
 pecuniary resources of the vast majority of the children who are in 
 attendance at our primary schools. But there is no reason why 
 throughout the whole process of their training in them, such as it is 
 and can be, their intended or probable callings should not be steadily 
 kept in view, and every available opportunity seized for imparting to 
 them the particular sort of knowledge which is most likely to be of 
 service to them in the business of life. 
 
 What becomes of the boys and girls after their training in one of 
 the elementary schools of the country — whether a Board or a volun- 
 tary school ? The vast majority of both sexes proceed to get their 
 living as best they can ; the girls procure domestic employment, the 
 boys are apprenticed to manufacturers or tradesmen. But as among 
 the girls there is a small percentage who become pupil-teachers, and 
 who subsequently go to training colleges, so among the boys there 
 may be one or two who are destined to rise by their abilities and 
 industry above the position to which they were born. Here, no 
 doubt, there yet remains a great work to do. In some primary 
 schools scholarships have been founded by private benevolence, as 
 well as by the munificence of the great City companies, who, it should 
 be noted, are also doing much to assist the development of technical 
 and industrial teaching. These prizes are competed for annually, and 
 they enable successful candidates to pass on to secondary schools and 
 complete or mature their education. In a few towns, such as Bed- 
 ford, there is a graduated system of schools ; and a boy may pass from 
 the lowest class in the school which is at the bottom of the scale to the 
 
 * Report of the Committee of Council on Education, 1883-1884, pp. 293, 304, 316, 336, 
 340, 350, 380, 388, 406, and 414. See also Transactions of the Social Science Association 
 1883, p. 234 seq.
 
 288 ENGLAND. 
 
 highest in that which is at the top, from which he may proceed to the 
 university, with more educational and scarcely fewer social advantages 
 than he would have enjoyed at Eton after an expenditure of £1,500.* 
 In most towns, and in many places which are little more than 
 villages, there are endowed schools, grammar schools, and others of 
 different grades, and if the pupil can afford to spend further time 
 upon the business of education, he will be able to procure admission 
 to one of these. The third grade of endowed schools are on a level 
 with the elementary schools of the country ; in the second grade, 
 boys learn Latin as well as rudimentary Greek, remaining at them till 
 about the age of sixteen. In schools of the first grade boys receive 
 the highest liberal training known in England, and remain till eighteen 
 or nineteen. Each of the institutions which these classes comprise is 
 now as genuinely national as the Board School itself. It is, however, 
 only in recent years that they have acquired this character. Before 
 the time of the Endowed Schools Commission and the legislation 
 which followed it, these institutions did exceedingly little work, and 
 the endowments were generally monopolised by members of the 
 Church of England. The effect of the new legislation was to make 
 them independent of creeds, both as regards the benefits of their 
 endowments and the appointment of their teachers, wherever the 
 original statutes of the founders did not specifically prohibit such a 
 change. In addition to this, provision was made for the teaching of 
 the natural sciences and modern languages. The reorganisation of 
 these schools by the Government with the new schemes of teaching in 
 them has resulted in an educational revolution, second only to that 
 represented by the Elementary Education Acts, and has provided such 
 connecting-links as can be said to exist between the rudimentary 
 schools of the country and its highest academic training. 
 
 "What the Government did for those institutions, specifically known as 
 endowed schools, by Act of Parliament, it did also for what are called, 
 
 * Attached to the Central School at Manchester there are twenty scholarships for 
 necessitous boys and girls, from the primary schools. " These," the Commissioners on 
 Technical Instruction say, " are of the greatest service, as they form the first step in the 
 ladder by which a talented boy may climb from the board school to the university. 
 Other scholarships take the boy from this higher elementary to the Manchester Grammar 
 School, and others again from that to the university. Several boys have already 
 accomplished this feat." — Second Report, p. 4^6. " When I was a member of the 
 London School Board," Professor Huxley wrote a few years ago, " I said, in the course 
 of a speech, that our business was to provide a ladder reaching from the gutter to the 
 university, along which every child in the three kingdoms should have the chance of 
 climbing as far as he was fit to go." He also pointed out the national importance of 
 opening to any lad of genius — the one in a million, according to Mr. Galton's computa- 
 tion —the highest and completest training the country can afford. " I weigh my words,' 
 he adds, " when I say that if the nation could purchase a potential Watts, or Davy, cr 
 Faraday at the cost of a hundred thousand pounds down, he would be dirt-cheap at the 
 price. It is a mere commonplace and everyday piece of knowledge that what these three 
 men did has produced untold millions of wealth in the narrowest economical sense of the 
 wu rd." — " On Technical Education," in the Fortuiyhtly Review, January, 1878.
 
 EDUCATIONAL ENGLAND. 289 
 
 by way of distinction, public scbools. A Royal Commission, appointed 
 in 1861, inquired into the condition of tbe nine large endowed scbools 
 of Eton, Winchester, Westminster, Cbarterbouse, St. Paul's, Merchant 
 Taylors', Harrow, Rugby, and Shrewsbury. It is to these that the 
 Public School Acts have exclusive reference, while the great multitude of 
 the remainder — upward sofa thousand institutions in all — are provided 
 for by the Endowed Schools Acts, based upon the reports of different 
 commissions of inquiry. Both in the case of the nine schools specially 
 mentioned, and of the others, governing bodies were appointed, in 
 which the masters and pupils, as well as the great body of the 
 parents, the universities, and the learned societies are represented. In 
 all cases an under-master has, in the case of any dispute with the 
 head-master, the right of appeal to the governing body. The govern- 
 ing bodies have also the power to alter the qualifications of age and 
 knowledge required of a pupil entering the school, to award scholar- 
 ships and exhibitions as the result of competitive examinations, to 
 provide for exemption from religious instruction, and to abolish a 
 clerical qualification as compulsory upon head-masters and under- 
 masters. The new relations thus established between governing 
 bodies, head-masters, and their subordinates, did not at first work 
 uniformly well ; the transition from the old regime to the new was 
 attended by much friction and by some collisions ; there were troubles 
 at Rugby, there were differences which did not become quite 
 so famous at Eton. Happily these things now seem to belong 
 to past history ; the schools are doing their work fairly, and the 
 masters, pupils, and parents have settled down under the changed 
 conditions.* 
 
 The great public schools have felt the upward educational movement 
 of the time, just as they have admitted, in the re-arrangement of their 
 governing bodies, the supremacy of the State. In the last thirty years 
 there have sprung up throughout the country a host of new claimants 
 for the honours and prestige which the nine public schools used 
 to divide among them. Marlborough, Cheltenham, Leamington, 
 Brighton, Bath, Malvern, and Clifton have each of them become the 
 centres of teaching which gives them a claim to be practically con- 
 
 * The Select Committee of the House of Commons nominated " to consider how the 
 ministerial responsibility under which votes for education, science, and art are adminis- 
 tered may be secured," have recently presented their report. Of this Committee the 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer acted as chairman, and among the members were Sir Lyon 
 Playfair and Sir John Lubbock. The general effect of their recommendations is that 
 the existing arrangements in the Education Department should be superseded by placing 
 at the head of it a President, who shall be answerable for all educational matters in 
 Great Britain, that he shall be assisted by a parliamentary secretary and a council or 
 board, and that he shall be invested with authority for dealing with all primary and 
 endowed schools and all universities in the receipt of public grants in England and 
 Wales and Scotland. With Ireland the Committee did not propose to meddle, and 
 there does not appear to be any immediate prospect of the introduction of the reforms 
 they advocate in the other parts of the United Kingdom. 
 
 II
 
 290 ENGLAND. 
 
 sidered upon the public school level. These new seats of learning 
 owe their rise partly to the immense development of the middle class 
 which has been witnessed of late years, partly to the extension of 
 the competitive examination system. It is this competition which has 
 had much to do with the efforts at reform made by the authorities of 
 our older public schools, and with the attention given to mathematics, 
 modern languages, and physical science. 
 
 For some years after the institution of army entrance examinations, 
 and the application of the competitive system, either in a free and 
 unrestricted or a modified form, to the Civil Service, both at home 
 and in India, the entire work of the preparation of candidates for 
 these ordeals was in the hands of private tutors, better known by the 
 generic name of "crammers." A "modern side" had indeed been 
 instituted at many public schools, in which special attention was given 
 to modern languages, mathematics, and physical science. But the 
 work in these departments was generally done in a perfunctory 
 manner, and the experiment during its earlier stages was only partially 
 successful. The crammer was the recognised and necessary supple- 
 ment to the schoolmaster. Boys who were destined for the army 
 were systematically idle at school, because they knew, or confidently 
 hoped, that they would be able to make up for their idleness by six 
 months' or a year's work under the crammer's auspices. The tendency 
 of this state of things was to establish an extremely undesirable divorce 
 between the public schools and the public service ; the effects of this 
 divorce still remain, though in one or two ways the attempt 'has been 
 made to remove them, and to increase the inducement for lads to go 
 to the universities after leaving school, instead of to crammers. Thus 
 at the present day, special privileges are offered to candidates for the 
 Indian Civil Service who may have gone to Oxford or Cambridge, and 
 a certain number of commissions in the army are annually reserved 
 for undergraduates at these universities. Again, as regards the Indian 
 Civil Service, the reduction in the standard for the age of entrance 
 was intended to have the effect of bringing up candidates straight 
 from school. Most of the great schools of the country have readily 
 and effectually availed themselves of the opportunity thus offered, and 
 special classes for the benefit of candidates for the Indian Civil Ser- 
 vice, and since the English Civil Service has been reorganised and its 
 most remunerative positions thrown open to competition, for that also 
 have been set on foot. But as yet there is nothing to make one think 
 that the crammer's occupation is likely to disappear altogether. The 
 spirit of the age is favourable to specialists and experts, and the 
 crammer is simply an educational practitioner who has made certain 
 examinational requirements his particular study, just as the medical 
 
 eialist has concentrated his thoughts and experiences upon a single 
 variety o£ disease.
 
 EDUCATIONAL ENGLAND. 291 
 
 The fact, however, remains, that much has been done towards 
 bringing the curriculum of the great schools of England into harmony 
 with the requirements of special public examinations instituted 
 by the State. It is an attempt at organisation, the success of which 
 we cannot expect suddenly to witness, an honest effort to provide that 
 valuable and important machinery of which before we had nothing. 
 In other respects, too, there may be seen signs of the endeavour to 
 secure something like uniformity in our system of higher education. 
 The two universities have instituted an examining board which, on 
 payment of a comparatively small fee, is willing to test annually the 
 proficiency of the pupils of every school that cares to enter into an 
 arrangement with it. Success in this examination is accepted by the 
 authorities of Oxford in lieu of passing the Little-Go examination. But 
 so far as the universities are concerned, this is only one of many 
 proofs which they now afford of their anxiety to adapt themselves to 
 the altered conditions of the times. Nor are the colleges idle : they 
 are altering their statutes in the direction which the commissioners 
 may probably recommend, are endowing new professorships out of 
 their funds, and have, in some cases, abolished clerical restrictions in 
 the case of their headships. Already, too, they had done more than 
 this. In 1858, local middle-class examinations were established, con- 
 ducted by members of Oxford and Cambridge, and entitling those who 
 passed in them to the degree of Associate of Arts. Since then several 
 colleges, both at Oxford and Cambridge, have given scholarships and 
 exhibitions to the most distinguished of the successful candidates in 
 these provincial tests, as an inducement for them to go to the uni- 
 versity and reside. Ten years later, the scheme of unattached students 
 was adopted, and young men were henceforth enabled to enrol them- 
 selves members of the university without being members of a college. 
 The scheme was recommended on its earliest introduction by motives 
 of economy, and has since proved wonderfully successful in practice. 
 The colleges themselves have done much to help this attempt ; they 
 have, in many instances, opened their lectures to unattached students, 
 and they have been frequently willing to receive such members of this 
 body as cared to enter themselves upon their books on excep- 
 tionally favourable terms. As the universities have done much to 
 adapt their distinctions to the necessities of practical life by founding 
 new examination schools in such subjects as modern history and law, 
 physical science, and theology, so the colleges have increased their 
 educational efficiency by combining their tutorial staff for collective 
 instruction. 
 
 Far outside their own geographical limits, from one end of Great 
 Britain to the other, both universities are doing a great educational 
 work. The university extension movement is gaining ground daily. 
 As by the middle-class examinations boys who had not the whance of 
 
 tj 2
 
 292 ENGLAND. 
 
 going (o Oxford and Cambridge had it placed within their power to 
 gain a certificate of academic excellence, so Oxford and Cambridge 
 have brought their harmonising influences within the reach of those 
 whose schooldays have come to a premature close. In almost every 
 great town of England there are lectures, given periodically by 
 graduates of high standing belonging to one or other university, not 
 merely in Latin and Greek, history, philosophy, and literature, but in 
 political economy, and the various branches of physical science. 
 The course of lectures on these subjects is followed by examinations ; 
 nor is it an unknown thing to find a Sheffield or Birmingham artisan, 
 dud in his working dress, who has gained an Oxford or Cambridge 
 certificate in political economy. 
 
 In the new alliance established between English schools and uni- 
 versities by means of the examining board, of which mention has 
 already been made, indications of an effort may be observed on tbe 
 part of schoolmasters — for it was to the schoolmasters as much as to 
 the university authorities that the new scheme was originally due — 
 to secure for themselves a more accurately defined position. There 
 are, indeed, two features especially prominent in the relations which 
 have been developed during the last few years among schoolmasters 
 as a body on the one hand, and in schools in their connection with 
 the universities on the other. The schools have been increasingly 
 putting themselves into a sort of clientship to a university ; school- 
 masters have more and more been organising themselves with a view 
 of attaining something like uniformity in their educational systems, 
 and the power of making their voice heard in scholastic matters 
 generally. The periodical conferences of head-masters have been one 
 important step in this direction. These meetings are now about four- 
 teen years old, and in the last five or six years assistant-masters have 
 been admitted to them. Further progress along the same line has been 
 made, and the idea has been realized of holding educational congresses, 
 open to all teachers and examiners of first and second grade schools, 
 and to all professors and teachers of the universities. Much work 
 has also been done by the College of Preceptors — an association of 
 which the aim is to prove the quality of teachers, principally in 
 middle-class schools, and which grants diplomas to schoolmasters 
 who have not been at universities, after they have been specially 
 examined in the theory and practice of education. It also gives 
 certificates to schoolmistresses. These examinations have been held 
 half-yearly since 1854, and between two and three thousand teachers 
 of both classes are now annually submitted to them. Delegates of 
 the college also examine entire schools. The distinguishing feature 
 of the body, however, is that it exists for the benefit and instruc- 
 tion of the teachers themselves. Education is studied, and lectures 
 are given on education as a science and an art. For a long
 
 EDUCATIONAL ENGLAND. 293 
 
 time the college has been endeavouring to obtain registration by the 
 Government for teachers in public and private schools. This would 
 virtually amount to a legal enactment that no person should be 
 accepted as a teacher who does not possess a certificate from some 
 recognised board of examiners. 
 
 On all sides the complaint is made that our supply of middle-class 
 secondary schools is defective alike in quantity and quality. One 
 remedy, that suggested by Mr. Matthew Arnold, is an organised system 
 of State inspection such as now exists in our primary schools, and, 
 by means of the new university examinations, in some of our public 
 schools as well. To hope that this would cure the evil is perhaps to 
 expect too much from the machinery of inspection. No doubt the 
 condition of things recorded in the reports of local delegates of the 
 University of Oxford, as existing in our grammar schools and others, 
 is sufficiently unsatisfactory. " The results of these matriculation 
 examinations," write the delegates, " prove that the education of 
 boys is very inefficient in English schools ; that their ignorance is by 
 no means confined to classical subjects, but is equally marked in 
 mathematics." Hence the inference is that there is need for a 
 superior authority to interfere on the behalf of the middle-class 
 parents of England, and that this can only be done by a Minister ot 
 Education sending forth his inspectors to see how the work of educa- 
 tion is carried on, not only in the case of the clever boys who get to 
 the top of the school, but of the many who are allowed to drop behind 
 and to do no real work at all. Let it be granted that the facts are as 
 they are described to be, and that the parents are quite right in 
 attributing them to the unsatisfactory teaching in the middle-class 
 schools of the United Kingdom ; does it follow that the cure is fresh 
 legislation and more school inspection ? 
 
 The report of the Endowed Schools Commission drew attention to 
 many instances of systematically careless and imperfect teaching in 
 middle-class schools. The public did not, however, require to master 
 the contents of all these volumes to know that some of those who had 
 embraced the profession of education had no educational zeal, taste, 
 or capacity. Sometimes the pedagogue was an extremely agreeable 
 specimen of the English clergyman and gentleman, fond of society, 
 fond of shooting, a capital conversationalist, perhaps something of an 
 aesthetic dilettante. He took an active part in the local cricket club, 
 and was a leading spirit in a resuscitated toxopholite society. He 
 was one of the most delightful persons in the world to fill a vacant 
 place at a picnic party, and he had an abundant repertory of songs, 
 which he sang with great feeling and judgment. But in an evil hour 
 for himself and others he had taken to schoolmastering. When he 
 was elected to his position by the governors — the present governing 
 bodies had not then come into existence — the school was fairly well-
 
 291 ENGLAND. 
 
 to-do. There were plenty of day-boys, and a considerable number of 
 boarders. Nothing more than management, industry, and energy 
 were wanted to perpetuate its success. These were attributes pos- 
 sessed by neither the new head-master nor his wife. Socially they 
 were each of them great acquisitions. There was nothing in the 
 world for which the pair were less adapted, however, than the 
 drudgery, or slavery as it seemed to both of them, of perpetually 
 having the responsibility of boys on their hands. The result, of 
 course, was that which might have been expected. The school went 
 down, the boys learned nothing, were plucked in every examination 
 for which they presented themselves, and finally the head-master 
 himself considered it advisable to accept a small living. 
 
 Provincial England at one time abounded in such experiences as 
 these. Frequently the schoolmaster was something more than a man 
 of pleasure — was really a scholar, or had a pretty turn for physical 
 science, or archaeology, or metaphysics. The unimpeachable character 
 of the pursuit did not, in practice, much mend matters. The boys 
 were neglected, and the fame and fortune of the school began steadily 
 to decline. It would be too much to say that such cases as these are 
 altogether unknown at the present day. They are certainly much 
 less common than they were, and equally certainly it is very much 
 easier tban it was for the ordinary parent to procure a sound training 
 of the higher sort for his boy. Of course all ground for the complaints 
 of indignant parents is not removed. The doubt is whether it is 
 necessary or desirable to attempt to remove them by Act of Parlia- 
 ment. It is, and it will remain to the end of the chapter, just as 
 impossible to improve unsatisfactory schools and bad systems of 
 teaching — or systems of teaching which are in reality no teaching at 
 all — off the face of the earth by adding to the army of school inspec- 
 tors at present scattered over the surface of the United Kingdom, as 
 to eradicate criminal propensities from the minds of the lower classes 
 by indefinitely reinforcing the ranks of police superintendents. There 
 are two kinds of school inspection, the direct and indirect. The latter 
 is, or should be, quite as effective as the former, and may be enforced 
 in all cases in wbich the former does not exist — that is, in every kind 
 of school which is a grade or two removed above the primary school. 
 There are the Oxford and Cambridge middle-class examinations. 
 There are the periodical examinations conducted by members of a 
 regular staff of University examiners, which secure, as has been 
 explained above, for the successful candidate immunity from the 
 ordeal of " Responsions " when he has matriculated. There are 
 innumerable examinations for Civil Service appointments, commissions 
 in the army, Ceylon writerships, scholarships, and exhibitions at the 
 different seats of learning in the United Kingdom. Now, each one of 
 these really does the duty of an indirect school inspector, and if the
 
 EDUCATIONAL ENGLAND. 295 
 
 parent wishes to have presumptive and, as he may fairly regard it, 
 almost positive proof of the efficiency of any school, he has only to 
 find out what its representatives, in other words its pupils, do in their 
 public trials. Here are data on which any parent can base his judg- 
 ment, and they are data available to all who care to have access to 
 them. The standard is one by which no schoolmaster will think it 
 unjust that the merits of his school should be gauged. Occasionally 
 he may be afflicted with an exceptionally stupid set of schoolboys ; 
 but the doctrine of averages holds good, and in the long run the 
 dullness and cleverness of schoolboys bear the same mutual pro- 
 portions. 
 
 The truth is, that it is the parents themselves who decide how 
 much education is to be given to the boys, and of what kind. Money 
 will do much, but there are certain things which it is not to be wished 
 that it should do. It is not, for instance, to be desired that the pay- 
 ment by the father of a sum, very likely a considerable sum, of money 
 should relieve him of the obligation of personally ascertaining what 
 progress his boy is making, and what are the influences, mental and 
 moral, under which he is growing up. 
 
 If the subjects taught at school are tabooed at home, on the ground 
 that they are of little practical utility and do not pay, is it likely that 
 a boy will work hard at them ? These are the questions which the 
 proposal of inspection for grammar schools very naturally suggests to 
 schoolmasters. Says a schoolmaster: "A. parent consulting me a 
 few days ago, about his son, a boy of some ability, but very much 
 afraid of exertion, concluded by saying, ' I don't want my lad to 
 grow up a fool, but I don't care for him to work very hard. It is not 
 necessary, for he will have plenty of money.' " Well may the school- 
 master ask, " Whom would an inspector blame for this boy's ignorance 
 and backwardness ? " The parent above referred to probably belonged 
 to that class of parents who send their boys to school not so much 
 to learn as to make acquaintances. The purely social mission of 
 school life is often enlarged upon in the present day by parents before 
 boys to a very ill-advised extent. And though we hear more about 
 education now than at any former period, it must always be remem- 
 bered that there is much in the spirit of the age which is distinctly 
 anti-studious. To play in the University Eleven, or to row in the 
 University Eight, carries with it more of popular prestige than to have 
 won a JBaiiiol or a Trinity fellowship. 
 
 The general principles on which the great English public schools 
 may be described as being administered are, first, that of recognising 
 and' organising the natural tendencies of boys ; and, secondly, that of 
 appealing to their good feeling and honour. Each of these principles 
 finds its expression in what is called the monitorial or the prefectual 
 system. This system is really one of government by the governed,
 
 29G ENGLAND. 
 
 and, as perfected by Dr. Arnold, is the distinguishing feature of our 
 public schools. It is, we are told, natural and inevitable that big boys 
 should control small ones, and an organised system prevents abuse of 
 this control. Again, it is part of education to learn to rule. And 
 further, it is a waste of power not to utilise the governing instinct of 
 tbe senior boys for work which they can do as well as, or better than, 
 paid masters. We thus have three distinct lines of discipline ; first, 
 that of the head-master ; secondly, that of the assistant-masters ; 
 thirdly, that of the boys. It is impossible to put down fagging by 
 any laws. Human nature prompted strong boys to exercise an autho- 
 rity wbich was very often despotic over the weak. The question, 
 accordingly, with which schoolmasters were confronted presented 
 itself as one of regulating this authority among boys in such a way as 
 to prevent its degenerating into bullying, and to establish some com- 
 pensating principle to that of " might is right." Hence our school- 
 masters have officially recognised fagging by the one or two upper forms 
 of their schools. In this manner they have to a great extent succeeded 
 in turning possible and probable bullies into actual disciplinarians. 
 Tbe head-master officially acknowledges the jurisdiction which the 
 bigger boys have over the smaller, and in return for this sanction, the 
 bigger boys are held by the head-master responsible for the moderate 
 exercise of their powers, and by way of further reciprocity, pledge 
 themselves to promote order and discipline throughout the school. 
 This system has no doubt certain disadvantages. Boys, it may be 
 argued, do not choose tbeir leaders on the same principle as head- 
 masters choose their prefects ; there is, thus, a danger lest the deposi- 
 tary of the delegated authority of the head-master should not be 
 identical with the wielder of the actual authority among his school- 
 fellows. Again, it is contended by some critics that the monopoly of 
 schoolboy responsibility by a limited number causes the remainder, 
 who are the great majority, to ignore the fact that they have any 
 responsibility at all. 
 
 On the whole, however, fagging and the monitorial or prefectual 
 power do not work badly at our public schools. Scandals occasionally 
 tbere are, but the worst scandals do not occur in schools where the 
 jurisdiction of the prefects or monitors is openly recognised, and where 
 fagging is most freely sanctioned, but rather in those schools where 
 the limits within which the former is kept and the latter is not allowed 
 to exceed are very narrow. At Eton, though the prefectual system 
 bias not been nominally adopted, the head boy of each boarding-house 
 is expected to keep things straight chiefly by setting a good example. 
 Sixth-form boys generally are trusted to preserve order, and have tbe 
 rigbl to fag. In almost all schools where the monitorial system does 
 exist its representatives are allowed to use the cane. At Winchester 
 a prefect may cane on his own responsibility, but in serious cases the
 
 EDUCATIONAL ENGLAND. 297 
 
 head boy of the school is consulted. At Harrow no grave offence is 
 punished, whether by chastisement or otherwise, without a meeting 
 of the head boys of the boarding-house and their common approval 
 of the steps taken. At Westminster no monitor can cane or punish 
 in any way, unless in the presence of and with the approval of the 
 head boy of the house, or of the entire school, according to the nature 
 of the offence committed. In all cases appeal lies to the head-master. 
 No monitor may punish for an offence against himself; the monitors, 
 as a body, are formally invested with power by the head-master, and 
 promise in writing to act faithfully. At Marlborough there is also an 
 appeal to the head-master ; two prefects must be present at a caning, 
 and the strokes must not exceed twelve. At Shrewsbury no caning 
 or imposition is given, except upon the adjudication of the whole body 
 of prefects. 
 
 Such, in brief outline, being the English public school system, what 
 is its product ? The first thing which strikes one in the schoolboy of 
 to-day is that his views of life are much wider than those of the 
 schoolboy of earlier times. He seems to be much more in contact 
 with its actual cares and responsibilities. There is no diminution of 
 freshness or of capacity for healthy enjoyment, but he is manifestly 
 not without a sense that existence has its business, and that that 
 business he will sooner or later be called on to transact. The happy- 
 go-lucky temper, the vague belief that all will come right in the. end, 
 is more or less superseded by an intelligent recognition of the circum- 
 stances that how this may be very much depends upon himself. The 
 lad begins of his own accord to discuss the possibilities of a career, 
 the chances of schoolfellows who are reading for examinations, or the 
 merits of those who have actually gained appointments. In all this 
 one may witness some of the results of the competitive system. If 
 competitive examinations had done nothing more than bring home to 
 the minds of English boys a sense of the necessity for prolonged 
 individual effort, they would have done much. They may be some- 
 times unfair in their operation, they may often fail to secure for us 
 the qualities which we want, but they have at least not so much 
 modified as revolutionised the schoolboy's whole conception of life. 
 
 There are many other agencies tending in the same direction at 
 work with the English schoolboy. As competitive examinations for 
 scholarships, Civil Service clerkships, for the army and the rest, have 
 opened up to him a novel view of the responsibilities of existence, so 
 have the studies which these examinations involve immensely enlarged 
 his general intellectual experience. Modern and ancient history, 
 English and French literature — he looks at these from a standpoint to 
 which he was once a stranger. There is, he at last perceives, some 
 practical significance in them, and they bear a definite, tangible rela- 
 tion to the affairs and conduct of life. Nor does the impulse proceed
 
 208 ENGLAND. 
 
 only from above. In many ways the modern English schoolboy does 
 a great deal for his own enlightenment. Boy politicians and philoso- 
 phers there have always been, but they have been of the nature of 
 portents and prodigies. Till recently schoolboys have displayed, for 
 the most part, an indifference to the history of their own times, as 
 it may be learned from newspapers and from conversation. Every 
 school and every school boarding-house have now their library and 
 reading-room. The boys themselves, though as far removed from 
 being prigs as, it is to be hoped, young Englishmen will ever be, have 
 their miniature Parliaments, and discuss the public questions of the 
 day. Their remarks may not be very edifying, but that such remarks 
 are made, and such discussions are held at all, testifies to an educa- 
 tional fact of no small value — educational, indeed, in the best and 
 truest sense of the term, since the process is the gradual drawing out, 
 strengthening, and exercising of faculties which, in the old state of 
 things, were allowed to rust in desuetude. 
 
 The English public school system has become as much a national 
 institution as household suffrage or vote by ballot. That it is supposed 
 to suit the English character may be inferred from its adoption at the 
 newer public schools which are springing up. How strong is the hold 
 which universities and public schools together have upon the English 
 mind, to what an extent their influences dominate the men who in 
 turn, are entrusted with the administration of the country, may be 
 judged by the following estimate : In the House of Commons elected 
 in 1880, 237, or more than a third of the members, were Oxford or 
 Cambridge men, while about 200 were public school men, of which 
 total close upon a hundred came from Eton, and rather more than 
 half a hundred from Harrow. 
 
 Nor has female education in England among the middle and upper 
 classes failed to make a very perceptible advance of late years. There 
 are ladies' colleges, not only at Cambridge, but in most of the large 
 and fashionable towns of the United Kingdom. There is an elaborate 
 organisation of lectures of all kinds for female students. There are 
 high schools for girls of a younger age, where much study is given to 
 many subjects. But while in many instances it cannot be doubted 
 that the young ladies of the day are gradually developing into intel- 
 lectual and cultivated women, we are experiencing some of the dis- 
 advantages attendant upon an era of reform at high pressure, and 
 female education in fashionable finishing schools is often far too pre- 
 tentious to be sound. We have seen the British schoolboy; let us 
 briefly glance at his sister, the English schoolgirl, as we may frequently 
 meet her. She has a considerable acquaintance with text-books and 
 manuals. She can answer questions on a host of minute incidents and 
 irrelevant details connected with great historical events and involved 
 in salient historical principles. But of the principles or events thorn-
 
 EDUCATIONAL ENGLAND. 299 
 
 selves, of their connection with what preceded them, and of their 
 bearing on what came after them, she has too often no kind of con- 
 ception. In the same way she is tolerably well informed as to the 
 vegetable and mineral products of different districts in the United 
 Kingdom, and it may even be of the various countries of the world. 
 That these districts have ever been prominent in the national annals 
 for other reasons, that grave political issues have ever been decided 
 within them, or that precisely the same order of things, so far as civil 
 and religious polity is concerned, does not obtain indifferently in each 
 of these countries as in England, are facts which she does not always 
 seem to understand. 
 
 Is it wonderful that the young ladies thus trained ripen into wives 
 and mothers, paragons of their sex very likely, but with intellects 
 imperfectly developed, or not developed at all. They have been 
 instructed, not educated. No attempt to educate them, save in the 
 particular matter of music and dancing, has been made. They bave, 
 in other words, been crammed with the letter of text-books ; they have 
 not been taught in subjects. So long as parents are satisfied with 
 this, so long as the examinations to which these young people periodi- 
 cally submit — and their success in which is cited by the lady principal 
 of the school as conclusive proof of the excellence of her establishment 
 — proceed upon their present method, are mere tests of book-learning 
 and not of general -intelligence, such will continue to be the case. The 
 worst of it is that there are few counterbalancing advantages to the 
 system of which the modern schoolgirl is too frequently the victim. 
 Although her mind is not being enriched with philosophical views of 
 history, it is not necessarily turned towards the theory and practice 
 of domestic management. 
 
 Here this general review of our educational state may close. It 
 has necessarily been little more than a mere summary of leading 
 points ; it has been the narrative of changes in the course of accom- 
 plishment quite as much as of reforms actually achieved. It has often 
 revealed tendencies rather than results. The key-note of the entire 
 system, whether as applied to teachers or to taught, is organisation ; 
 better provision for the pupils, more effectual guarantees that the 
 schoolmasters shall be competent for their work, and shall have the 
 opportunity of proving that competence to the public. In this work 
 of organisation, so far as it has affected the higher education through- 
 out the country, the University of London, it should be said, has 
 taken a great part. It stands in relation to University College and 
 King's College as the University of Oxford or Cambridge stands to 
 Balliol or Trinity, and its degrees are academically as valuable as 
 those of Oxford and Cambridge. 
 
 It is, indeed, with education as it is with the question of labour 
 and capital, or of pauperism, or of co-operation. The system is not com-
 
 300 ENGLAND. 
 
 plete, the different duties to be performed by its component parts are 
 not yet determined, the connecting-link between these different parts 
 does not always exist. On the other hand, what was once a void is 
 now filled by complex and more or less successful machinery. The 
 law ensures to every subject in the United Kingdom a certain modicum 
 of education ; it does not guarantee that every boy who deserves such 
 promotion, or who is capable of profiting by it, shall rise, by a series 
 of gradual ascents, to the highest academic training ; but supplemented 
 as our educational system is by private enterprise and voluntary orga- 
 nisation, it renders it exceedingly improbable that such a boy should 
 not have the wished-for chance. Something of what we have done in 
 the case of our manufacturing industries we have done in the case of 
 education. We have economised force. The great machine for the 
 improvement of humanity has at last been fairly put in motion. Its 
 different parts may not be united so compactly as we shall some day 
 see them, and the scale on which its labours are performed may be 
 enlarged in the future ; but even as matters are, the masses in this 
 country have had the means of self-elevation opened to them, and we 
 know that there is springing up around us a new generation which 
 will not be like its predecessors, or which will, at least, have had at 
 its disposal advantages which its predecessors never knew. Elemen- 
 tary schools, secondary schools, public schools, universities, private 
 teachers, private and public societies, are now putting forth their 
 utmost efforts, and many of them are working in unity and accord. 
 That the fundamental principles of a complete system of national 
 education are entirely settled it might be too much to say. It is for 
 the future to show whether the State will ultimately recognise the 
 duty of supplying, at the cost of the ratepayers, the children of all its 
 subjects with instruction ; whether, in other words, the " free school" 
 programme will be realised. Finally, it is yet a moot point how long 
 the compromise between such a system of public secular and private 
 denominational teaching as was embodied in the Education Act of 
 1870 will endure. Every public grant accorded to any sectarian school 
 for proficiency in non-religious subjects involves the principle of deno- 
 minational endowment, and it has still to be seen whether in the 
 course of years this principle will be formally sanctioned or definitely 
 condemned.
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE SOCIAL DEVOLUTION. 
 
 The English Character gradually losing its Insularity — Why? — How English Accessi- 
 bility to Foreign Influences exhibits itself — -The Results of Closeness and Frequency 
 of Communication between England and France, especially as manifested in English 
 Domestic Life — The " Flat " System — Gallicised English Households— Some of the 
 Results and Dangers to be expected from this Emancipation from National Pre- 
 judices — Modern Cynicism — Modern Cosmopolitanism — Change in Ideas and Prac- 
 tice of Domestic Life — The Old Country Gentleman and the New — Society v. Home 
 — Parents and Children — Husbands and Wives — Marriage and Independence —   
 Tendency to Free and Equal Intercourse of the Sexes: how favoured and illustrated 
 by the Usages of Modern Life — The Fashionable Englishwoman's Day — Change in 
 the Bearing of Men towards Women— And in Country Life. 
 
 The English character is gradually losing the insularity that has long 
 been the moral heritage of our geographical situation, and is divesting 
 itself of the tastes, prejudices, and habits which have been regarded 
 as inseparable from the race. The social relations established between 
 England and France exist more or less intimately between England 
 and other European countries. The summer vacations of the average 
 Englishman are spent abroad — at French watering-places, which are 
 not more expensive than English, and which have a charm of novelty 
 that English watering-places do not possess : in Brittany ; in the 
 Bavarian Tyrol ; at the German spas ; under the shadow of the Alps ; 
 by the shores, no longer solitary, of the lakes of Switzerland. Or he 
 will go farther afield, and, performing the grand tour on a scale 
 worthy of the larger notions of these later days, will traverse a hemi- 
 sphere in his arduous pilgrimage of pleasure. He studies life under 
 a republic in the United States, or he watches the working of the 
 machinery of empire in India ; or he endeavours to mark, by personal 
 investigation, the differences between constitutional government as it 
 exists in England and constitutional government as it is transplanted 
 to our Australasian dependencies. If he is unable to accomplish all 
 this in a single expedition, he still frequently contrives to leave the 
 well-worn Alpine tracks far behind, and sets his face in the direction 
 of the Scythian steppes or the snowy crown of Ararat. Not a year 
 passes in which adventurous Britons do not achieve feats hitherto 
 unattempted, the influence of which is never lost. Tbe names 
 of such men as Macgregor, Burnaby, Bryce, Grove, Freshfield,
 
 302 ENGLAND. 
 
 become the watchword of the rising generation of Englishmen, and 
 their exploits the standard of true British adventure. 
 
 It is, however, the intimacy hetween England and France the effects 
 of which are chiefly manifested upon the well-to-do classes of English 
 society. Hitherto international political relations have been mainly 
 confined to diplomatists and statesmen actually in office. It was a new 
 experience to find gentlemen who sit below the gangway, or on the front 
 bench on the Opposition side of the House of Commons, exchanging visits 
 with members of the French Chamber of Deputies. Nor is it only the 
 increased space and attention given to French affairs in the English 
 newspapers which cause a growing section of newspaper readers to 
 take as much interest in the debates in Paris as in those at West- 
 minster, and to understand, perhaps, scarcely less about them. A 
 practical experience of the conduct of parliamentary business in the 
 Chamber of Deputies has ceased to be confined to a limited number 
 of those whose business it is to lead and enlighten English public 
 opinion in the press ; and many a man who a few years ago would 
 have had no other object in a trip to Paris than to eat dinners, visit 
 theatres, or see the races at Chantilly, finds himself impelled to pick 
 up what he can of French political knowledge by witnessing French 
 political institutions actively at work. 
 
 The consequences of all this meet us in England at every turn. 
 English theatrical managers go to French dramatists for their new 
 pieces, just as Roman playwrights went to Greek. Our daily way of 
 life is largely accommodated to French practice ; our bills of fare are 
 drawn up in the French language. In some instances our servants 
 are French, Swiss, German, or Italian. The " flat " system, borrowed 
 from France, has now existed on a considerable scale in London 
 during twenty years, and is in great and growing favour. In the course 
 of a few years the rents of flats have doubled. Victoria Street, West- 
 minster, is about equally divided between the offices of parliamentary 
 lawyers, colonial agents, engineers, and domestic dwellings. These 
 last consist in every case of flats. The sum paid annually for a suite of 
 eight rooms on the ground floor is not less than £250. The drawing- 
 room floor commands a still larger sum ; and unless the tenant chooses 
 to ascend to the lofty level of the garrets, no set of apartments can be 
 procured in this quarter of the town for less than £150. At Queen 
 Anne's Gate there has sprung up a colossal block wherein reside an 
 immense aggregate of families. Here attendance and cookery are 
 forthcoming as well as honse-room, with, of course, a proportionate 
 charge for both. Dinners and other meals maybe taken in the private 
 apartments of the occupiers, or in the public saloon. The rents paid 
 arc fixed at figures which might be thought prohibitory; yet few sets 
 of rooms ever remain long vacant. No arrangement can be imagined 
 more diametrically antagonistic to the tastes with which Englishmen
 
 THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION. 803 
 
 are general!}' credited. A flat, it may be said, is merely a house, with 
 this difference, that the rooms are arranged not on the perpendicular 
 plan, but on the horizontal. It also possesses what may well seem 
 a great advantage to busy men or women who are anxious to purchase 
 the seclusion of domestic life at the cost of as little inconvenience as 
 possible. The tenant of a flat is able to compound for all the various 
 petty charges incidental to the householder by payment of a lump 
 sum. The flats belong to a company ; the company has a secretary, 
 and it is the business of that officer to see that the fabric of the apart- 
 ments of each tenant is kept in proper order, and that no just com- 
 plaint remains without attention. There are other advantages connected 
 with the flat system of which the English paterfamilias is fully as con- 
 scious as the Continental. He can leave London at a moment's notice 
 with his wife, children, and servants ; or he can take his children and 
 his wife with him, sending his servants on a holiday, secure in the 
 knowledge that his abode is hermetically sealed behind him ; that 
 there is danger neither from the street burglar nor from the char- 
 woman — the traditional custodian of the London house when the 
 family is out of town — and the strange relatives and unsavoury 
 friends whom that person may invite into the drawing-room during 
 the period of her occupancy. 
 
 For all this we are mainly indebted to the force of French example, 
 and the new regime suggests the necessity of modifying the conven- 
 tional conceptions of the English character. It is not an argument to 
 drive too far ; but one is induced to draw from it the inference that 
 the ice of English reserve is gradually melting, and that the time may 
 be coming when the English table d'hote at hotels and elsewhere 
 shall seem less artificial and strange than, as we have seen, it does at 
 present. As it is, we English are now in a transition state. We 
 have adopted many of the outward observances of the country which 
 is separated from us by the Straits of Dover — French cookery, French 
 wines, French art. We have still completely to assimilate some of 
 the qualities of French manners. The attempt to reproduce the 
 Continental household is not quite unknown in England. In some 
 cases the effort is an affectation, in others it is made from a conviction 
 that it is the most effectual way of securing domestic comfort, with a 
 certain amount of domestic elegance. English servants are not in good 
 repute. They are often idle, exacting, thankless, incompetent, waste- 
 ful, and dishonest. There are a few English households in which not a 
 single English servant is kept, and in which, except when company 
 are entertained, not a single word of English is spoken. The children 
 are taught to prattle French and German in advance of their native 
 tongue. There are German and French nurses, the cook is Belgian, 
 the housemaid Swiss, the footman Italian. You have no sooner 
 entered the home managed upon such principles as these than you
 
 804 ENGLAND. 
 
 find English ways, habits, furniture, are left behind. The ornaments 
 visible are French. The manner in which the furniture is arranged 
 is French also. Eminently French, too, are the polished wooden 
 floors, the fireplaces, and the decorations in the neighbourhood of the 
 fireplace. It is the same at table — a good dinner, but not an English 
 one. Such households as these are exceptional, but they exist, and 
 they illustrate the tendency of the time. 
 
 Naturally there is a rather ridiculous side to this systematic 
 acclimatisation of foreign modes. There has been developed a type 
 of character confined to no particular age and to neither sex, of which 
 the chief feature is an adventitious aversion to everything distinctively 
 English. Such people, having visited the Continent two or three 
 years in succession, return possessed by a spirit of profound intoler- 
 ance for the institutions and ways of their fatherland. They find the 
 English theatres temples of dulness, the English press a scheme of 
 organised platitudes. They prefer bad French cookery to sound 
 English fare. Ihey discover that the British breakfast is a barbarous 
 and indigestible meal, and straightway they substitute the " dejeuner 
 a la fourchette." They patronise French bootmakers and dress- 
 makers. They profess a sudden ignorance of the good qualities of 
 Great Britain. They boldly avow their inability to understand 
 British prejudices. This is a social variety which has indeed become 
 so common as scarcely to attract notice. 
 
 Influences more important than those which the process of gradual 
 and partial emancipation from English prejudice and habit hasexercised 
 upon the English character are at work. Our stage, as has already 
 been said, is inundated with comedies and farces of which the motive, 
 the plot, and the moral are purely French. There is no doubt that many 
 of our ideas of social propriety are as directly of Gallic origin as the 
 dramas enacted behind the footlights. French literature, and foreign 
 travel, familiarity with the more liberal views of Continental society 
 — above all, the influences of the Second Empire — have caused us to 
 regard many of our old-world notions of right and wrong, the venial 
 error or the unpardonable sin, as ridiculously narrow and obsoletely 
 puritanical. Especially are these views, as well as their practical 
 results, apparent in the relations which nowadays obtain between the 
 jexes. The truth seems to be that in this matter, as in others, we 
 have shaken off the constraints which were once accepted in English 
 society without question, or rebelled against with much peril, and 
 have not yet learned by practice what are the corresponding or com- 
 pensating constraints in foreign society. Further, this kind of cosmo- 
 politanism engenders a more or less cynical disbelief in the reality and 
 value of many old-fashioned virtues and institutions. We are still a 
 nation of patriots ; but what is the result which a systematic habit of 
 depreciating the sentiments which lie at the root of patriotism must
 
 THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION. 305 
 
 have upon a patriotic people ? English patriotism, too, was always 
 nurtured by the substance of local attachment. The love of country 
 in the abstract has been resolvable into definite concrete constituents 
 — the love of English institutions, of the principles of English liberty 
 and justice, of the beauties in the English landscape, the richness of 
 English woodlands, the varied tints of English hills and English plains ; 
 and not only the love of these, but the belief in them as objects worthy 
 of admiration, and as objects to be found only in our island home. 
 This is a truth which English history and which English literature — 
 itself the record and expression of English history — attest. But the 
 homage it implies, and the devotion it points to, are they not diminish- 
 ing now ? Is it a healthy sign that we should be passing, if we have 
 not indeed already passed, from patriotic enthusiasm and self-exaltation 
 to a mood of indifference and disparagement ? English tourists and 
 holiday-makers are apt to cultivate and to know all countries save 
 their own. There is even a tendency among the English aristocracy 
 to regard England as a country chiefly important because it supplies 
 their rentals, and furnishes them with good shooting and the best 
 hunting in the world. 
 
 The change that has taken place in the English view of life is not 
 confined to a mere extension of the horizon of our daily experience, 
 to a large toleration of the stranger and the alien, to new modes of 
 thought, and to fresh topics of conversation. The domestic life of 
 England has undergone a complete metamorphosis, for the nation is 
 only an aggregate of households. Modern society is possessed by a 
 nomadic spirit, which is the sure destroyer of all home ties. A section 
 of the English aristocracy pass their existence in a perpetual round 
 of visits. They flit from mansion to mansion during the country- 
 house season ; they know no peace during the London season. They 
 seldom endure the tranquillity of their own homes in the provinces 
 for more than a month at a time, and then they temper their rural 
 solitude by a succession of visitors from the great city. Existence 
 for the fashionable and the wealthy is thus one unending whirl of 
 excitement, admitting of small opportunity for the cultivation of the 
 domestic affections, no time for reflection, or the formation of those 
 virtues which depend upon occasional intervals of seclusion and 
 thought. 
 
 Here and there in some out-of-the-way corner of the country may 
 be found a survival from the old school of country squires, who is 
 regarded with only an antiquarian interest by his descendants of 
 to-day. He is not a great landlord ; he is what, in the present age 
 of immense fortunes, would be regarded even as a poor man. He has 
 a rental of some four thousand a year, he has never speculated, and 
 he is content if he can transmit this fortune, not largely augmented 
 but not diminished, to his son. His whole being is absorbed in his 
 
 x
 
 306 ENGLAND. 
 
 acres, his farms, his tenants, and his dependents. He lives among his 
 own people, and the thought has never occurred to him that he might 
 spend half his time elsewhere. Thirty years ago he took his eldest 
 hoy to Eton, and on the occasion of that memorable event he accepted 
 the hospitality of a friend and contemporary, a fellow of the royal 
 foundation. But with this exception he has not once slept away from 
 home in the course of those three decades. Well stricken in years, he 
 is still hale and vigorous ; he can walk over several miles of his own 
 ground in a day, and is fully equal to longer excursions on the back 
 of his stout, sure-footed cob. The life which he leads now is the life 
 which he has always led, not that necessitated by the infirmity of 
 years, but the result of circumstances and custom. When he was 
 twenty years younger he had as little taste for protracted absences 
 from home as he has now. He remained where his lot had placed 
 him and his forefathers before him, and he was content. He is hos- 
 pitable, and knows every family in the county. If you visit him you 
 will meet none but country folk, unless it be the friends whom his 
 sons have brought with them from London. The hospitality, meted 
 out with generous hand, is there for all to enjoy. But with the 
 exception just named, the company is the same as regards its general 
 composition as that which congregated there a century ago. And 
 the talk, too, is purely old-world talk. The young men, fresh from 
 Pall Mall clubs, or Temple chambers, or regimental messes, may 
 discuss some of the events and scandals of the hour — what is doing 
 at the theatres, what will be the next political combination at West- 
 minster, what the next elopement in Mayfair. Such gossip as 
 this only brings into stronger relief the themes which furnish the 
 staple of the general talk ; and as you sit and listen to the two sets 
 of speakers by turns, you begin to realise that they are separated 
 from each other by the gulf that divides two eras of our social 
 history. 
 
 Compare now with this specimen of a bygone age the English 
 squire a la mode, opulent commoner, or peer, whether he is or is 
 not in the front rank of the territorial aristocracy. He has inhe- 
 rited a fine estate, possibly more estates than one, and he takes a 
 pride in it or them. He has travelled much, been round the world, 
 and on his return to England went into the army, just in the same 
 way that a few years earlier he went to Eton or to Oxford. Or he 
 may have lived among more stirring scenes. Instead of having passed 
 ten years in the Guards, and been a great campaigner in London, he 
 may have seen active service in India and in the Crimea. But he has, 
 as he calls it, settled down now. He is a keen sportsman, and he is 
 something of a scientific farmer. He breeds and is an excellent 
 judge of stock of all sorts. He has indeed a passion for cattle, 
 and has been known to give as much as £4,000 for a shorthorn. In
 
 THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION. 307 
 
 a word, he has all the tastes and knowledge of a country gentleman, 
 and that is what he calls himself. But the country house of which he 
 is proprietor probably does not see him for more than two or three 
 months out of the twelve, and never for more than two or three weeks 
 at a time. There is always business, social, political, and financial, 
 or some pleasure scheme as urgent as business, which requires his 
 presence in London. He spends a week in November at the fine old 
 place which he has inherited, and then the thought strikes him that 
 he will take the train to the capital and see a theatre or two. London, 
 it is true, is conventionally empty, but there are sure to be acquaint- 
 ances at the club. During the season he is, of course, in London more 
 or less continuously. There is an occasional run across to Paris, and 
 when the season is over, there are Goodwood and Cowes, and a little 
 Continental trip. Before settling down for the winter he braces his 
 system and invigorates his family by a fortnight at some English 
 watering-place. This brings him to the first month of winter, and he 
 beguiles the period of his duty as country gentleman by the reception 
 of a series of guests from London. But he does not neglect the county 
 society, and, indeed, in spite of his nomadic existence, looks closely 
 after his affairs, and exercises a general and real supervision over 
 everything. He is a good landlord and, when he is at home, a good 
 neighbour. His peculiarity is a constant and insatiable desire for 
 change — change, that is, of scene, for of the same companions he 
 never seems to weary. The truth is, that for those who live, as it is 
 called, " in society," there is but one society all the world over, abroad 
 or at home, in town or in country. A modern country house is prac- 
 tically the same as a London house transplanted to a park girdled 
 with trees and hills, and commanding extensive views of rich level 
 meadows. The men and women are the same who met each other 
 daily a few months ago in Rotten Row, at the opera, at dinner-parties, 
 receptions, public balls. It is conversation, for the most part, in 
 which those who do not live the same life can feel small interest and 
 take no part. It is not provincial chatter, but it is local and personal, 
 the locality being London, and it is not readily comprehended by the 
 provincial neighbours who happen to be present. 
 
 The influences of the time are not favourable to domesticity, and in 
 our progress towards cosmopolitanism the taste for the family life 
 which was once supposed to be the special characteristic of England 
 has to a great degree been lost. The claims of society have con- 
 tinually acquired precedence of the duties of home. The heart of the 
 modern mother may in reality yearn with the same fondness as of old 
 towards her offspring ; but she does not permit herself, or events do not 
 permit her, the same opportunity of indulging it. She has her own 
 position to assert in the great world ; she has the ambition of her 
 husband to remember and to advance. Society has become the fetish 
 
 x2
 
 308 ENGLAND. 
 
 before which women prostrate themselves, and the mothers who 
 used to live for their children now live for their acquaintances. 
 This tendency and this resolve act — as they cannot fail to act — as the 
 solvent of household ties and domestic obligations. Neither father 
 nor mother would allow that parental duties were neglected, but they 
 might confess that they were vicariously discharged. They would 
 urge apologetically the multiplicity of their social engagements, and 
 the imperious necessity of attending to them. They would proceed to 
 assure you that all which human care could do towards seeing that 
 their children enjoyed every advantage had been done ; that they 
 inquired in the most searching manner as to the character of the 
 nurses and governesses whom they engaged, and always impressed 
 upon their sons the paramount necessity of keeping out of scrapes — 
 " Do as I say, not as I do" — and making desirable acquaintances at 
 school. All this may be true and creditable enough, but it rests on 
 the assumption that a parent can satisfactorily delegate to tutors or 
 governors the sum of those duties which he owes to his child. The 
 natural outcome of this is that the fashionable parents of the present 
 day have little more than a mere superficial acquaintance with their 
 own children. If this acquaintance is not cultivated early, it cannot 
 be cultivated late. If the father or mother does not invite and train 
 the confidence of the son or daughter when the quality of truthfulness, 
 which with children is an instinct, has not been abused or blunted, it 
 will not be won in after life ; and if a son or daughter make shipwreck 
 of his or her future, the parental grief, however deep, and the disap- 
 pointment, however sincere, will not get rid of the heavy responsibility 
 which this negligence has entailed. 
 
 There are other points at which manifestations may be observed 
 of the change the domestic system of England is undergoing. The 
 ultimate guarantee, the sole, sure condition of domestic unity, is the 
 identity of interest between husband and wife. Conjugal fidelity has 
 not in times past been confined to this country, and the sanctity of 
 the marriage tie has not been an exclusively English notion. It is, 
 however, a notion on which a very remarkable degree of emphasis has 
 been laid in England. It is impossible to deny that the relations 
 between husband and wife often show an increasing laxity. Here, as 
 in other things, we have qualified our native views by comparison 
 and contact with French examples. The very phrases by which, in 
 the French vernacular, marriages of different sorts have long been 
 spoken of, have become naturalised in the English language. The 
 flirtations of girlhood are perpetuated or reproduced in what was 
 once the staid and decorous period of matronhood. Nor is it merely 
 that such things are ; they are conventionally recognised as existing, 
 and when recognition has been once won for a fact or a custom, it has 
 practically obtained a social sanction.
 
 THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION. 309 
 
 Marriage is, as it will continue to be, the grand aim in life of every 
 young Englishwoman ; it is only the theory of marriage which has 
 been altered. The central idea, the very type of marriage with the 
 English girl used to be — with tens of thousands of English girls is 
 still — home. But in the higher strata of society girls marry in a large 
 proportion of cases, not that they may become wives, mothers, mis- 
 tresses of households, but mistresses of themselves, and are often 
 goaded to marriage by a sense that a fashionable mother finds them 
 inconveniently in the way. An establishment, horses and carriages, 
 dresses and jewellery : these, of course, are ends which need no 
 justification. What we are now chiefly concerned with is the ace pted 
 ideal of uxorial independence. The mere command of money is indeed 
 a fascinatingly novel experience to most English girls, and it is pro- 
 bable that a more liberal supply of pocket-money than is given, even 
 to the daughters of wealthy parents, would do them no harm. As it 
 is, girls in this position in life are apt to get into debt, and debt 
 means the indulgence of improvident and extravagant habits. But 
 many English girls have other tastes than the simple and perfectly 
 legitimate pleasure which the anticipatory control of pocket-money 
 gives. They are fond of paintings, of art, of playing the hostess, of 
 admiration. It may be, if their temperament is of the severer kind, 
 they are fond of politics, literature, or science. In any one of these 
 cases the wife speedily creates for herself a little world of her own, 
 in which the husband only figures as an occasional visitor. 
 
 Even when the spirit of feminine independence after marriage does 
 not assume quite so emancipated a form as this, it very often asserts 
 itself in a manner comparatively new to English society. The accep- 
 tance gained by the rite of five-o'clock tea is the symbol of the 
 ascendancy of the softer over the sterner sex. The incense of 
 knightly worship easily blends itself with the fragrance which the 
 delicate china cups exhale, and the world, touched at the sight, 
 admits the propriety of the homage. The increased popularity of 
 garden-parties, water-parties, and those al fresco banquets which 
 retain their original name of picnics ; of Hyde Park as a lounge and a 
 promenade ; of such pastimes as lawn tennis and croquet — if indeed 
 croquet anywhere survives ; of Hurlingham as an afternoon resort 
 during the season; of the Orleans Club, whether in its Twickenham 
 or its London house, as a meeting-ground for ladies and gentlemen ; 
 of the exhibitions which the past two years have witnessed, and which 
 will be repeated during the next two years, at any rate, in South 
 Kensington, are all indications of the undoubted tendency to multiply 
 as far as possible the opportunities of reunion, friendly or formal, 
 between women and their actual or potential admirers. 
 
 The daily life of a modern English girl or matron — it makes little 
 difference which, for the former will be duly chaperoned, and as to the
 
 810 ENGLAND. 
 
 latter, her husband has his own affairs to attend to — in the full swing 
 of the London season, will show something of the extent to which we 
 have cast off the old-fashioned restraints, and the perseverance with 
 which we war against the shyness that has long been the Briton's 
 reproach. There is the morning's ride in the Kow from noon to two. 
 All London is there, and it is a sight unique in the world. But, if 
 you are a stranger, you should have a cicerone who is tolerably trust- 
 worthy and omniscient. The beauty and the splendour of the scene 
 you can admire without such instruction. The trees, London trees 
 though they are, are masses of well-grown greenery, and grateful 
 indeed is the shade they afford under the July sun. The footpaths, 
 which have the iron rails on the one hand, are lined with shrubs and 
 flower-beds on the other. The rhododendrons have not yet lost their 
 bloom. There is the scent of roses in the air, the perfume of 
 mignonette, and now and again you catch the aromatic odour of tbe 
 fir-trees lightly blown on the summer air. Hyde Park adds to its 
 attractions as the most entertaining promenade in the world all tbe 
 charms with which successive landscape gardeners have been able to 
 enrich it. There are not fewer than ten thousand men and women on 
 the paths which fringe the ride, alternately gazing at the beauty of 
 flowers and herbage, and at the dazzling variety of the human panorama. 
 Every nation may say that it is represented. There are ambassadors 
 from every civilised kingdom in existence, attaches taking their 
 morning ride before the diplomatic toils of the day begin. India and 
 Japan send their contingents to the equestrian array — Japanese who 
 have come from a home already Anglicised to acquire the finishing 
 touches of an English education, and Hindu youths who have 
 defeated English undergraduates on tbeir own ground. There are 
 pretenders to foreign crowns, mounted on steeds as faulty as their 
 own monarchical claims ; and there are foreign merchants — Greeks, 
 Armenians, Spaniards, Italians — careering on horses which are the 
 most perfect specimens of their kind that money and breeding can 
 procure. Many members of the two Houses of the English Parlia- 
 ment are there too, not a few men of business, more of pleasure, 
 and more still who are both. There are ladies of every age, posi- 
 tion, degree of beauty and virtue, rank, circumstance, and position 
 in life — fair girls to whom the whole scene is a novelty, and one 
 fraught with an excitement half painful, half bewildering ; girls on 
 whom it is beginning to pall, and who go through the whole thing 
 mechanieally ; mere happy children scampering and exercising their 
 ponies. 
 
 As our imaginary heroine enters the Row she is not alone, and 
 before sbe has gone half a dozen paces she falls in with a pbalanx of 
 friends of both sexes. A walk gives place to a canter, and then a 
 canter to a walk. And so with gossip and exercise the morning passes
 
 THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION. 811 
 
 away, and the lady on whom we are in attendance turns her horse's 
 head towards home. There, in all probability, one or two early 
 visitors have already come, and the chatter of Rotten Row is 
 exchanged for the precisely similar chatter of the luncheon-table. 
 Afterwards may come an hour's pause, unless indeed there is some- 
 thing to be done before live-o'clock tea is served, and the hour 
 for the evening's drive in the Ladies' Mile arrives. Very possibly, 
 however, some engagement has been formed for the afternoon, and 
 lunch is little more than well over ere the world again claims the 
 presence of our ideal dame or demoiselle. It is, perhaps, one of the 
 Saturdays on which the tournament of doves is held at Fulham, 
 and a drive thither has been arranged on the box-seat of the coach 
 of an amateur but eminent whip. Two ladies and three or four gen- 
 tlemen are the complement of passengers, and Hurlingham is their 
 destination — a spacious enclosure fenced round by trees, with tents, 
 pavilions, and a semicircular ring of spectators. There are the traps 
 from which presently the blue rocks, strong of wing and hard to kill, 
 will be let loose. There are the noble sportsmen, and there beyond 
 is the knot of betting-men engaged in making their books, and laying 
 or taking the odds with the noble sportsmen. In a few minutes busi- 
 ness will commence, and you will hear nothing but alternately, or 
 simultaneously, the inarticulate murmurs of polite talk, the successive 
 cracks of the guns, and anon the hoarse roars of the gentlemen of the 
 betting-ring. 
 
 Theoretically this advance which we have made in the direction of 
 a system of social intercourse between the two sexes, conducted, as 
 nearly as may be, on terms of complete equality, may be considered 
 an improvement. But the equality is not yet entirely established ; 
 the process is not without certain hitches and awkwardnesses, and 
 some of the evils of a state of transition have to disappear. The 
 liberty is still a little new, and it may be that the deep draughts of it 
 which are taken are a trifle too powerful for our as yet unseasoned 
 social system. Intoxicated with a sense of their recently acquired 
 privileges, the emancipated victims of outward restraints may be led 
 to extravagances and extremes which they should be careful to avoid 
 when they know better what it is not to wear the yoke. If social 
 scandals are more common now than was once the case, it must be 
 attributed, charitably, not to the new system, but to the fact that the 
 system is new. When the novelty is worn away so will be the peril, 
 and young men and maidens, recovering the conventional balance, 
 will exhibit only the fair side of the social revolution. 
 
 One more contrast between the social life of the present and of the 
 past remains to be noticed. Society seems to have pronounced sen- 
 tence of perpetual exile upon repose. A country house of the altered 
 type, as has been said, is but a London house, with a change of natural
 
 812 ENGLAND. 
 
 environment and pursuits. Yet there was a time when the country- 
 house season was really a change from the life of the London season, 
 and the finest ladies and gentlemen consented for some months in 
 every year to lead a genuine country life. Nowadays nobody lives 
 in the country. The tranquil country existence which people were 
 once not ashamed to enjoy after the London season, and which many 
 enjoyed all the year round, is as extinct as the Plesiosaurus or the 
 Phoenix. One must look to the novels of fifty years since if one wishes 
 to form a notion of this vanished and most peaceful regime : of the 
 comparatively simple fare, the rationally early hours, the general 
 repose of the house and of its inmates, the absence of all dissipation 
 except an occasional dinner-party of a sort that would now be voted 
 provincial, a picnic one week and a garden-party the next. These 
 were the days in which the country gentleman was satisfied to fulfil 
 the duties of that station to which it had pleased God to call him, 
 when he took a patriarchal interest in parish politics, and concerned 
 himself with the affairs of the whole country-side. He may have been 
 in the habit of passing three weeks or three months in London. But 
 he shook off the dust of Babylon long before he planted his foot on 
 his estate in Arcadia ; and as for the smart parties and the big shoots 
 of these latter clays, he would have shrunk from the very idea of them. 
 It is the age of exaggeration, and the battues are as Brobdignagian as 
 the weapons with which the quarries are slain are precise. The sport 
 of destruction is compressed into a few weeks or days, according to 
 the capacities of the estate. The birds brought home are reckoned 
 not by the few modest brace, but by the hundred or thousand head. 
 Of these just enough are kept for the house-party. The rest are 
 packed off to the poulterer, and so it comes to pass that game which 
 was once a very rare luxury, is now bought and sold like beef or 
 mutton. One of the consequences of the new order of things is that 
 the habit of despatching presentation boxes of game is becoming anti- 
 quated. Place, in imagination, by the side of the sportsman of the 
 period at the conclusion of his day's campaign — with the birds and 
 hares that have fallen before his breechloader piled up around him — 
 his ancestor. It is only from paintings of the old school that we can 
 get an idea of the sport of the old order. There, depicted on some 
 pleasant canvas, is the country gentleman of the pre-central-fire epoch, 
 with his single-barrel lying beside him, resting under a tree and gazing 
 with a look of triumph, that is probably reflected in the faces of the 
 two chubby boys at his side, upon the hard-won spoils of a laborious 
 day. A couple of hares, two brace and a half of partridges, a pheasant 
 or two if October has come, and an odd rabbit make up the total. But 
 then these have been in many cases stalked, and before the gentleman 
 in the picture has picked up his partridge he has walked many a yard, 
 perhaps many a mile. Now there is no picking up at all, and every-
 
 THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION. 313 
 
 thing is left to the beaters. As for the spirit which animates the 
 gunner of to-day, what has it in common with that which filled his 
 predecessors, to whom shooting implied a mastery of the art of venery 
 and woodcraft ? But Nature brings not back the Mastodon, nor we 
 these times ; and the big shoot has taken the place of the small by the 
 same inexorable law as that by which large landlords have swamped 
 little ones, and, in business, limited liability companies have swallowed 
 up industrial traders on a modest scale.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE STRUCTURE OF ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 Three Elements in English Society — Fusion between the Aristocracies of Birth and 
 Wealth — Results of the Process — Patricians in Trade — Gratification of Democratic 
 Instinct and Maintenance of Aristocratic Principle — The State of Things thus 
 brought about favourable to Plutocracy — Absence of a Noblesse in England — Results 
 of this Absence contrasted with Consequences of its Presence in Austria, &c. — Table 
 of English Precedence, and the Principles on which it is arranged — Gradations in 
 English Society — New Social Era in England dates from Reform Bill of 1832 — The 
 Decline of Dandyism — Essentially Solid and Serious Character of the Foundation 
 on which English Society rests — How this Fact affects the English Estimate of 
 different Professions and Callings — Social Position of Merchants, Stockbrokers, 
 Lawyers, Authors, Artists, Doctors — Importance of State Recognition and Reward of 
 Professional Men. 
 
 In the constitution of English society at the present day, the three 
 rival elements — the aristocratic, the plutocratic, and the democratic — 
 are closely blended. The aristocratic principle is still paramount, 
 forms the foundation of our social structure, and has been strengthened 
 and extended in its operation by the plutocratic, while the democratic 
 instinct of the race has all the opportunities of assertion and gratifi- 
 cation which it can find in a career conditionally open to talent. 
 
 The antagonism between the aristocracy of wealth and birth has 
 long been disappearing. The son of the newly-enriched father is 
 identified in education, social training, habits, prejudices, feelings, with 
 the scions of the houses of Norman descent. At all times there has 
 been a tendency Qn the part of birth to ally itself with wealth, and it 
 would be found upon examination that for the greater part of their 
 princely rentals many a noble English stock is indebted to purely 
 commercial sources. Judicious matrimonial alliances have largely 
 .i>sisted in identifying the two principles of wealth and birth. This 
 has continued down to the present day, and the consequence is that 
 though English society may be divided into the higher classes, the 
 middle classes, the lower middle, and that vast multitude which for 
 the sake of convenience may be described as the proletariat, the feud 
 between the aristocracy of lineage and of revenue is almost at an end. 
 There are typical country gentlemen in the House of Commons and in 
 society, but the country interest is no longer the sworn enemy of the 
 urban interest. Our territorial nobles, our squires, our rural land-
 
 THE STRUCTURE OF ENGLISH SOCIETY. 315 
 
 lords great and small, have become commercial potentates ; our mer- 
 chant princes have become country gentlemen. The possession of 
 land is the guarantee of respectability, and the love of respectability 
 and land is inveterate in our race. 
 
 The great merchant or banker of to-day is an English gentleman 
 of a finished type. He is possibly a peer, and an active partner in a 
 great City firm ; if he is not a peer, the chances are that he is a 
 member of the House of Commons. He is a man of wide culture, 
 an authority upon paintings, or china, or black-letter books ; upon 
 some branch of natural science, upon the poLtics of Europe, upon 
 the affairs of the world. Does he then neglect bis business ? By no 
 means. He has, indeed, trus Avortby servants nnd deputies; but he 
 consults personally with his partners, gentlemen in culture and taste 
 scarcely inferior, it may be, to himself; he goes into the City as 
 punctually as his junior clerks ; and when he returns from the City 
 he drops for a few minutes into the most exclusive of West-end clubs. 
 His grandfather would have lived with his family above the counting- 
 bouse, and regarded a trip to Hyde Park as a summer day's journey. 
 As for the descendant, his town-house is in Belgravia or Mayfair. 
 He occupies it for little more than six months out of the twelve, and 
 during the rest of the year lives in his palace in the country, takes a 
 keen interest in the breeding of stock, the cultivation of the soil, aisd 
 the general improvement of his property. There is, in fact, but one 
 standard of " social position " in England, and it is that which is 
 formed by a blending of the plutocratic and aristocratic elements. If 
 it is realised imperfectly in one generation, it will be approximated 
 to more closely in the next, and thus it will go on till the ideal is 
 reached. 
 
 There is a rush just now equally on the part of patrician and 
 plebeian parents to get their sons into business, and noblemen with 
 illustrious titles and boasting the most ancient descent eagerly embrace 
 any good opening in the City which may present itself for them. It 
 is perhaps the younger son of an earl or a duke who sees you when 
 you call on your broker to transact business ; it may be the heir to a 
 peerage himself who is head partner in the firm wbich supplies the 
 middle-class household with tea, puts a ring-fence round the park of 
 the Yorkshire squire, or erects a trim conservatory in one of the 
 villa-gardens of suburban Surrey. It may also be remarked tbat an 
 institution which is the great object of menace and attack on the part 
 of the radical reformers of the age has greatly assisted to knit 
 together the various parts, sections, and interests of the social system, 
 and at the same time that it has dispersed the aristocratic leaven has 
 proved to be a distinctly popularising agency. Primogeniture, the 
 bulwark of an hereditary nobility, is one of the guarantees of the 
 alliance between the upper and the middle classes which has con-
 
 31 G ENGLAND. 
 
 tributed to give us the social stability that other nations have lacked. 
 Imagine primogeniture abolished, and the French system, as a possible 
 alternative to primogeniture, adopted — an equal division of property 
 among the various members of the family. The distinction between 
 elder and younger brothers would disappear. Most of the sons of 
 our great landlords would have a competency, and as a probable con- 
 sequence they would combine together to form an anti-popular and 
 exclusive caste, would intermarry to a much greater extent than at 
 present, would cease to go forth — since the necessity would cease — 
 into the world to make their fortunes, and would erect a hard and 
 fast line of demarcation between classes. 
 
 If we look at polite society in England as an entire system we shall 
 find that it diners in one very important respect from polite society in 
 certain other countries and capitals of Europe. It has a nobility, but 
 it has not, and it has never had, a noblesse. The peerage and the com- 
 monalty are the only two political orders into which the State is legally 
 divided, and among us all men who are not peers are commoners. As 
 it is now, so it has been throughout the whole period of our constitu- 
 tional history. Speaking of England in the middle ages, Macaulay 
 uses language which with little alteration might well be applied to 
 England in the present day. " There was," he says, " a strong 
 hereditary aristocracy, but it was of all hereditary aristocracies the 
 least insolent and exclusive. It had none of the invidious character 
 of a caste. It was constantly receiving members from the people and 
 constantly sending down members to mingle with the people. Any 
 gentleman might become a peer. The } r ounger son of a peer was but 
 a gentleman. Grandsons of peers yielded precedence to newly made 
 knights. The dignity of knighthood was not beyond the reach of any 
 man who could by thrift and diligence realise a good estate or could 
 attract notice by his valour in a battle or a siege. It was regarded 
 as no disparagement for the daughter of a duke, nay, of a royal duke, 
 to espouse a distinguished commoner. Thus Sir John Howard (the 
 historian should have written Sir Robert Howard) married the 
 daughter of Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk. Sir Richard Pole 
 married the Countess of Salisbury, tho daughter of George, Duke of 
 Clarence. Good blood was, indeed, held in high respect ; but between 
 good blood and the privileges of the peerage there was, most fortu- 
 nately for our country, no necessary connection. Pedigrees as long 
 and scutcheons as old were to be found out of the House of Lords as 
 in it. There were new men who bore the highest titles. There were 
 untitled men well known to be descended from knights who had 
 broken the Saxon ranks at Hastings and scaled tho walls of Jerusalem. 
 There were Rohuns, Mowbrays, and De Veres, nay kinsmen of tho 
 house of Plantagenet, with no higher addition than that of esquire, and 
 with no civil privileges beyond those enjoyed by every farmer and
 
 TIIE STRUCTURE OF ENGLISH SOCIETY. 817 
 
 shopkeeper." * Hence in this country there was never established a 
 barrier between the patrician and plebeian sections of the community, 
 such as that which grew up and still in some measure exists on the 
 Continent. With the exception of the peers themselves, whose privi- 
 leges belong to them as hereditary legislators and councillors of the 
 Crown, the second has always been in all substantial tbings on an 
 equality with the first. And even as regards merely honorary dis- 
 tinctions, the line which separates them is slight and evanescent. 
 Between the son of the younger son of the greatest duke in the land 
 and tbe son of a successful trader no titular distinction whatever is 
 recognised. In the whole of the three kingdoms there are only sixteen 
 or seventeen hundred persons, from the premier peer to the junior 
 baronet, who are in possession of hereditary dignities ; while abroad, on 
 the contrary, " foreign counts and barons " — to use a familiar phrase — 
 are numbered not by hundreds, but by hundreds of thousands, t With 
 us no "title of courtesy" — that is, no title which, being neither a 
 peerage nor a baronetcy, is enjoyed by anybody as the son or daughter 
 of somebody else — is capable of transmission by inheritance, or can 
 consequently endure for more than a single generation. It is, no 
 doubt, customary to accord to the children of the sons and heirs- 
 apparent of dukes, marquises, and earls the same style and designation 
 as they would have if their fathers instead of being nominally were 
 really peers. It is also usual when the sons and heirs-apparent of 
 dukes, marquises, and earls die before their fathers, leaving sons, for 
 those who so become tbe heirs-apparent to their grandfathers to be 
 assigned some inferior titles belonging to their grandfathers, which may 
 or may not be the same as those formerly assigned to their fathers. 
 But such prolongations of " titles of courtesy" are strictly confined 
 to the lineal course in which the peerages they are attached to are 
 destined to descend. While on the one hand the absence of per- 
 petuity in honorary distinctions divests English society of much of 
 tbe exclusiveness characteristic of society on the Continent, on the 
 other hand it exacts for them while they are in existence the most 
 rigid and jealous observance. In our Indian empire, the Dominion of 
 Canada, and some other of the colonies, personal precedence, in so 
 far at all events as local rank and station are concerned, has been 
 abolished, and in them, as in France and Italy, official precedence has 
 
 * History of England, vol. i. pp. 37, 38. 
 
 t "The Chevalier F. de Tapies, in his work 'La France et l'Angleterre,'" says Sir 
 Bernard Burke, "states that in Russia there are five hundred thousand nobles;" that 
 " Austria numbers two hundred and thirty-nine thousand ;" that " Spain in 1780 reckoned 
 four hundred and seventy thousand ;" and that "France before 1790 had three hundred 
 and sixty thousand, of whom four thousand one hundred and twenty were of the ancienne 
 noblesse." The Ulster King-of-Arms gives the number of persons with transmissible titles 
 in the United Kingdom as one thousand six hundred and thirty. But he adds that there 
 are among us some two hundred thousand " who are nobles in the Continental sense of 
 the term." — Reminiscences Ancestral, Anecdotal, and Historic, p. 112.
 
 318 ENGLAND. 
 
 been introduced in its place. Precedence in Eussia is military and 
 bureaucratic ; in Austria, Spain, and Germany, military and personal ; 
 wbile among ourselves tbe considerations by wbicb it is determined 
 are partly personal and partly official, although the former are far 
 more numerous and influential than the latter. In England the 
 homage paid to the aristocratic principle is, in fact, still as genuine 
 in spirit, if it is not so severe in form, as it used to be in Austria, 
 once the aristocratic country of Europe par excellence. Within the 
 Austrian emperor's dominions there existed, and continues to exist, a 
 great hereditary noblesse : the titles of prince, count, and baron in the 
 masculine or feminine gender being transmitted in perpetual succession 
 from the father to both sons and daughters. Society, in the approved 
 sense of the term, was thus, so to speak, a close corporation absolutely 
 unapproachable by all who lacked in their cradles the requisite creden- 
 tials of position. Neither ability, nor worth, nor great political power 
 and eminence furnished an adequate claim for promotion to the highest 
 level. Within its sacred limits official rank was of course recognised. 
 But it was never permitted to supersede or to supply the want of the 
 distinctions of birth. So far was this formerly the case that until 
 recently even the Austrian Prime Minister, if he had been born out- 
 side of the charmed circle, was not admitted to certain select cere- 
 monies of State. It used to be said that the Princess Nicholas Ester- 
 hazy, the daughter of that grande dame, the late Countess of Jersey, 
 was excluded from several privileges in Austria for no other reason 
 than that her great-grandfather was Mr. Child, the eminent banker. 
 But even if there had been no Mr. Child in the way among Lady Sarah 
 Villiers' ancestors, her marriage with Prince Nicholas Esterhazy could 
 only have been " morganatic," although of course valid enough. The 
 Esterhazys of Galantha were once a reigning and are now a mediatised 
 house, and can match in full and complete matrimony with the mem- 
 bers of other reigning or mediatised houses alone. * It is for a similar 
 reason that the wife of Prince Edward of Saxe- Weimar, the sister of 
 
 * " A morganatic marriage is a marriage perfectly legal between a member of a reigning 
 or of a mediatised family and one not of a reigning or mediatised family. By tbis 
 marriage tbe wife is excluded from tbe family name, arms, and title, and the children, 
 though legitimate, lie under the same disabilities, and are incapable of inheriting or 
 transmitting a right of succession to the titles, sovereign privileges, and entailed posses- 
 sions of the family. They are entitled merely to whatever may be settled on them by 
 contract. All the houses which held directly and immediately of the Holy Roman Empire 
 at its break up, and which had then a seat and voice among the Herren in the Diet, are 
 either still reigning or mediatised. They are all considered on an equality as to blood, 
 and an emperor of Austria may, if be please, choose an empress from among the 
 lientincks, Fuggers, Platen-Walmodens, Wurmbrands, dec. In Germany morganatic 
 marriages are called also left-handed marriages, because at the nuptial ceremony the 
 left band is "iven. The word morganatic is derived from the fact that the wife onlv 
 receives a gift on the morning after the nuptials." — Burke, Reminiscences Ancestral, 
 Antctltital,nntl Historic, p. -V-<. Sir Bernard Burke adds to these remarks a "catalogue 
 of the mediatised princes and counts of the Empire, in which the name of Esterhazy 
 of Galantha will be found."
 
 THE STRUCTURE OF ENGLISH SOCIETY. 6VJ 
 
 the present Duke of Richmond, is formally described as Countess of 
 Dornberg, and that Prince Victor of Hohenlohe assumed the designa- 
 tion of Count Gleichen when he married the sister of the late Marquis 
 of Hertford, who could not become Princess Victor of Hohenlohe. 
 Neither in Austria nor in Germany is this a mere matter of etiquette. 
 It is a matter of law, affecting the succession to great estates, and 
 even to sovereign authority. Where the question is simply one of the 
 proper number of "quarters" — that is, of "noble" descent in all 
 directions for a certain number of generations — the punctiliousness of 
 earlier times has almost entirely disappeared.* If a lady of high 
 rank, the wife of a man occupying a distinguished position, should 
 now suffer heraldically from the unequal marriage of one of her pro- 
 genitors, it would no longer operate as a bar to her admission to court 
 — that is to the society of the great world — even without the special 
 grace of the Emperor. And there are also many other instances of 
 marked exception in our day to the primitive exclusiveness formerly 
 prevalent in Austria. 
 
 In English society the chief fundamental fact is, as already indi- 
 cated, the absence of a noblesse — a fact which has its disadvantages as 
 well as its advantages, and which has probably a deeper and wider 
 effect on our national character than is generally supposed. The 
 highest society in Austria is, perhaps, even now more agreeable to 
 aristocratic Austrians than the society which most nearly corresponds 
 to it in England is lo aristocratic English people. It is, in fact, a kind 
 of family party on a large scale — a magnified edition of the patrician 
 cliques and coteries the majority of whose members are bound together 
 by the ties net only of acquaintance and community of tastes and 
 sympathies, but also of relationship in one shape or another. There 
 is, consequently, just that absence of restraint and reserve in the 
 " great world " of Austria which might be expected where tbe pos- 
 sibility of encountering any " doubtful person " is out of the question. 
 In England, where the antecedents of many of those who are admitted 
 to the " best society" are obscure, and where the connections between 
 the families of the peerage and the commonalty are infinite and 
 invisible, it is natural, and it is right, that considerable caution should 
 be exercised. Hence, in a great measure, the proverbial reserve for 
 which English men and women are celebrated. As it is impossible to 
 tell exactly who any given person may be, or to whom related, so 
 there is a tendency on the part of the many aspirants to social station, 
 if not to affect kinsmanship, at all events to pretend to intimacy with 
 personages of rank and importance. Comparative strangers addressing 
 one another can never feel quite sure of their ground, and are apt to 
 be a little agitated as to their respective positions. The prosperous 
 
 * The " Seize Quartiers " consist of a descent from sixteen great-great-grandparents, 
 all entitled to bear a coat of arms, which implies " nobility " all over the Continent.
 
 320 ENGLAND. 
 
 merchant into whose family the heir to a dukedom marries will pro- 
 bably have near relations who belong to the lower stratum of the 
 bourgeoisie. These strange contrasts and associations are impossible 
 in such a country as Austria, where outside " society" there is scarcely 
 any distinction between the bourgeois and his footmen, just as inside 
 " society" in England there is practically no distinction between the 
 man who was the day before yesterday in a counting-house and the 
 peer whose ancestors were at Ascalon or Runnymede. In England 
 the wife of a distinguished politician or soldier shares the status of her 
 husband. Ubi Clodius ibi Clodia. Where he goes there she goes also. 
 But the wife of an Austrian minister or general who was destitute of 
 the qualification of birth would hardly feel aggrieved if she failed to 
 receive an invitation to enter the social paradise of the elect, and if 
 she did enter it she would almost certainly experience the discomfort 
 that arises from strangeness and novelty. 
 
 It is an old saying that the code of precedence which governs 
 English society is nothing more nor less than "a system of rank con- 
 fusion." It must be confessed that, having regard to the deference it 
 commands, it is by no means so free from anomalies, incongruities, 
 and omissions as might be reasonably desired and expected. It is, in 
 truth, like our "glorious Constitution" itself, the result of gradual 
 growth rather than of deliberate manufacture, and in almost every 
 portion of it traces are to be discovered of the occasional and piece- 
 meal way in which it has assumed its existing shape. But such as it 
 is, it would be a mistake to suppose that it is the product merely of the 
 officious zeal and frivolous ingenuity of Kings-of-Arms and Masters of 
 the Ceremonies. Its rules and regulations, as the Heralds are fond of 
 reminding us, are part and parcel of the law of the land : they are set 
 forth in the " Institutes " of Chief Justice Coke, and are explained in 
 the "Commentaries" of Mr. Justice Blackstone.* In the old time 
 questions of precedence came under the cognizance and jurisdiction 
 of the Court of Chivalry, over which the Constable and the Marshal 
 of England jointly presided. But towards the end of the reign of 
 Henry VIII. they were made the subject of express statutory pro- 
 vision, and an "Act for the Placing of the Lords "was passed by 
 Parliament in 1539. By this statute, which was followed by another 
 of William and Mary in 1G89, and the Acts of Union with Scotland 
 and Ireland in 1707 and 1800, together with certain ordinances of 
 James I* in 1612 and 1G1G, the scale of general precedence 
 was practically settled as it now stands. But where it has not been 
 fixed by parliamentary enactment, as in the statutes already men- 
 tioned, and some others creating judicial offices and determining the 
 rank of the holders of them, precedence is a matter wholly within the 
 discretion and prerogative of the Sovereign. 
 * Coke, Institutes IV ., cap. 77. Blackstone, Commentaries, Book I., chaps, iv. and i:ii.
 
 THE STRUCTURE OF ENGLISH SOCIETY. 321 
 
 The " Act for the Placing of the Lords " was based on ancient usage 
 and established custom, of which there are five authentic records 
 preserved in the Heralds' College, which have been privately printed 
 by the late Sir Charles Young, Garter King-of-Arnis.* The earliest is 
 the " Order of All Estates," issued in 1399 by the direction of Ralph 
 Nevill, Earl of Westmoreland, Earl Marshal, for use at the coronation 
 of Henry IV., and the next is the " Order of All States of Worship 
 and Gentry,'' drawn up in 1429 for the coronation of Henry VI., 
 under the sanction of the Lord Protector Humphrey Plantagenet, Duke 
 of Gloucester, and the Earl Marshal John Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk. 
 Two others are the "Orders according to ancient statutes" for "the 
 Placing of All Estates," by John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, Constable 
 of England, and the " Order of All Estates," by Anthony Widvile, 
 Earl Rivers, Constable of England, dated severally 1467 and 1479, 
 and both of the reign of Edward IV. The last, which is particularly 
 referred to by Sir Edward Coke as a "record of great authority," 
 is shortly described as the "Series Ordinum," and was the work of a 
 Commission under Jasper Tudor, Duke of Bedford, appointed for its 
 preparation by Henry VII. either just before or just after his marriage 
 in 1486. As evidence also of " ancient usage and established custom," 
 as it was understood subsequently to the passing of the statute of 
 Henry VIII. , Sir Charles Young has added to his collection a couple 
 of documents to which much weight is attached at the College of 
 Arms.f The first is an "Ordinance or Decree made by the Com- 
 missioners of the Office of Earl Marshal of England for the Precedency 
 of all Estates according to their Birth and Calling," in 1594, the Com- 
 missioners being Lord Burleigh, Lord High Treasurer ; Lord Howard 
 of Effingham, Lord High Admiral ; and Lord Hunsdon. Lord Cham- 
 berlain of the Household. The second is the " Roll of the Proceeding 
 of King James the First from the Tower through London to White- 
 hall," on the eve of his coronation in 1603, " ordered by the Lords 
 Commissioners for executing the Office of Earl Marshal " — namely, the 
 Earl of Dorset, Lord High Treasurer; the Earl of Nottingham, Lord 
 High Admiral ; J and the Earls of Suffolk, Worcester, and South- 
 ampton. Anybody who takes the trouble to turn to the introduc- 
 tory portion of Sir Bernard Burke's or Mr. Foster's " Peerage and 
 Baronetage " will discover the combined effects of these various statutes 
 and ordinances duly set forth in the tables of " general or social pre- 
 cedence," one for men and another for women, at present in force 
 among us. At first sight, probably, the somewhat complicated arrange- 
 
 * Order of Precedence ; with Authorities and Remarks. By Sir Charles G. Young, 
 Garter King-of-Arms. London : 1851. 
 
 t Ancient Orders of Precedency. Printed by Sir Charles George Young, Garter King- 
 of-Arms. Not dated, but later than the memoir of 1851. 
 
 \ Charles, second Lord Howard of Effingham, Lord High Admiral, had been created 
 Earl of Nottingham in 1596, and was a Commissioner on both occasions. 
 
 Y
 
 322 ENGLAND. 
 
 ments they are intended to formulate will appear to the uninitiated to 
 be destitute alike of order, design, and symmetry. But a little exami- 
 nation will show that the "mighty maze" is "not without a plan," 
 and that it has been put together witb at least a certain amount of 
 regard for definite principle and logical consistency. Two things, at 
 all events, will be made manifest on the slightest and most cursory 
 survey of it ; first, that with rare exceptions, official rank is always 
 postponed to personal rank ; and secondly, that the extraordinary pre- 
 ferense which is accorded to titles of courtesy goes far towards com- 
 pensating the possessors of them for the unsubstantial and transitory 
 character of the distinctions they enjoy. Among women official rank 
 can hardly be said to exist at all. Neither the Mistress of the 
 Robes, nor the Ladies of the Bedchamber, nor the Ladies-in-Waiting 
 have any precedence in virtue of their offices. And the case is the 
 same, it may be observed in passing, with respect to the ladies and 
 dames of the " Royal Order of Victoria and Albert " and the " Imperial 
 Order of the Crown of India." The only exceptions are the Maids oi 
 Honour, who are given the prefix of "Honourable" when they are 
 not already entitled to it or a higher description, and are ranked 
 immediately after the daughters of barons, and before the wives of 
 knights of the garter, of knights bannerets made by the sovereign, and 
 of the younger sons of viscounts. Nor do the wives or daughters 
 of the great officers of State, of archbishops or bishops, of privy 
 councillors or judges, take any precedence which is not indepen- 
 dently due to them on account of their own personal rank, or the 
 personal rank of their husbands or fathers. And it is only in the case 
 of peeresses in their own right, by either creation or inheritance, that 
 women have any personal rank which is not derived from their hus- 
 bands or fathers, save under special grant andconcession from the Crown, 
 or can transmit any personal rank to their sons and daughters.* But 
 the wives of the eldest sons and the daughters of dukes take prece- 
 dence of countesses ; the wives of the eldest sons and the daughters 
 of marquises, and the wives of the younger sons of dukes, take pre- 
 cedence of viscountesses ; and the wives of the eldest sons and the 
 daughters of earls, and the wives of the younger sons of marquises, 
 
 * " Widows of peers and baronets and of knights, on marrying commoners, continue 
 by the etiquette of society, though not bylaw, to retain their titles and precedence after 
 a second marriage with persons of inferior rank. At a coronation or other btate cere- 
 monial widows of peers who have married commoners are not summoned to attend. This 
 rule was followed at the funeral of the late Duke of Wellington. In society it is different, 
 and the widows of peers, baronets, and knights married to untitled commoners 
 generally adhere to the titles acquired by their first marriages, although the practice is 
 not derived from right. Widows of ' llonourables,' who subsequently marry commoners, 
 not the sons of peers, are not allowed, even by the courtesy of society, to retain their 
 prefix of ' Honourable' after such subsequent marriage. Dowager peeresses and baro- 
 nets' widows take precedence of the wives of existing peers and baronets of the same 
 creation, from their being senior in the dignity, from their husbands having been nearer 
 the succession." — Burke, Book of Precedence, p. 7.
 
 THE STRUCTURE OF ENGLISH SOCIETY. 323 
 
 take precedence of baronesses. Hence among women there are no 
 fewer than eight separate categories of persons possessing titles " of 
 courtesy" merely who take precedence of peeresses, whether in their 
 own right or by marriage. Yet in the eyes of the law the former are, 
 in spite of their superior rank, to all intents and purposes commoners, 
 while the latter belong to a distinct order in the State, and are entitled 
 to all the privileges of the peerage except sitting and voting in Par- 
 liament. If, for example, of two daughters of a duke one married an 
 earl and the other an esquire, the esquire's wife would take prece- 
 dence of the countess. But if both of them should happen to commit 
 bigamy, the first would be tried at the Old Bailey and the second 
 by the House of Lords. 
 
 In the tables of precedence the sovereign and the royal family 
 stand at the head, and the royal family includes all the lineal and 
 collateral relations of the sovereign as far as grandsons and grand- 
 daughters, and nephews and nieces. But it extends no further, for 
 as Sir William Blackstone says " after these degrees are passed" — 
 which as he shows are always to be reckoned from the king or queen 
 actually reigning — " peers or others of the blood royal are entitled to 
 no place or precedence except what belongs to them by their personal 
 rank or dignity ; " * and thus, for instance, during the present and 
 next reigns, if the Prince of Wales should succeed her Majesty, the 
 children of the Duke of Edinburgh or the Princess Christian would 
 be placed before all dignitaries of the Church, great officers of State, 
 and peers and peeresses. If, however, Prince Albert Victor were 
 to be the Queen's successor, they would have no place whatever 
 among the royal family. In like manner the Duke of Cambridge and 
 the Duke of Cumberland, who are the Queen's first cousin and first 
 cousin once removed, have now no ascertained position as princes of 
 the blood. \ By letters patent in 18G5, the style or attribute of 
 
 * " Which," adds Sir William Blackstone, " made Sir Edward Walker complain that, 
 by the hasty creation of Prince Rupert to be Duke of Cumberland, and of the Earl of 
 Lennox to be Duke of that name, previous to the creation of King Charles's second son 
 James to be Duke of York, it might happen that their grandsons would have precedence 
 of the grandsons of the Duke of York." — Commentaries, vol. i., p. 224. Sir Edward 
 Walker was Secretary at War to Charles I., and Garter King-of-Arms, and one of the 
 Clerks of the Privy Council to Charles II. It was not the Earl of Lennox who was 
 created " Duke of that name," but James, third Duke of Lennox in Scotland, who, in 
 1641, was created Duke of Richmond in England. He was the King's kinsman through 
 his grandfather, Lord Darnley, and Prince Rupert was the King's nephew. But that 
 does not affect the argument. — See Walker, Historical Discourses, p. 301. 
 
 t " When his late Majesty King George II. created his grandson Edward, the second 
 son of Frederick Prince of Wales, Duke of York, and referred it to the House of Lords 
 to settle his place and precedence, they certified that he ought to have place next to the 
 late Duke of Cumberland, the then King's youngest son, and that he might have a seat 
 on the left hand of the cloth of estate. But when on the accession of his present Majesty 
 (George III.) those royal personages ceased to take place as the children, and ranked 
 only as the brother and uncle of the King, they also left their seats on the side of the 
 cloth of estate; so that when the Duke of Gloucester, his Majesty's second brother, took 
 
 y2
 
 324 ENGLAND. 
 
 " Royal Highness" was assigned to the children of the sons of any 
 sovereign of Great Britain and Ireland, and in virtue of this authority 
 the Duke of Cambridge and his sisters are entitled to be called " Royal 
 Highnesses." But the Duke of Cumberland and his sisters are only 
 the grandchildren of the son of a sovereign of Great Britain, and were 
 it not that their father was King of Hanover they would not in 
 strictness be royal highnesses at all.* Next after the royal family 
 comes the Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of all England, then the 
 Lord High Chancellor, and then the Archbishop of York, Primate 
 of England, their several positions being fixed by the Act of Henry 
 YIIL, for " the placing of the Lords." Here the Lord Chancellor 
 is placed, because at the time at which that statute was enacted he 
 was the chief minister of the Crown, as he is still the keeper of the 
 principal symbol and instrument of executive authority — the Great 
 Seal. Afterwards follow in order the Lord High Treasurer, the 
 Lord President of the Council, and the Lord Privy Seal, who if they 
 are peers take precedence of all dukes, even if they themselves are 
 only barons, f Then come the Lord Great Chamberlain, the Lord 
 High Constable, the Earl Marshal, the Lord High Admiral, the Lord 
 Steward of the Household, and the Lord Chamberlain of the Household, 
 who if they are peers take precedence of all other peers of their own 
 degree — if dukes of all other dukes, if marquises of all other mar- 
 quises, if earls of all other earls, and so on. Of these great offices 
 of State those of the Lord Treasurer and the High Admiral are now 
 
 his .seat in the House of Peers he was placed on the upper end of the earl's bench on 
 which the dukes usually sit, next to his Royal Highness the Duke of York." — Blackstone, 
 Commentaries, vol. i., p. 225. Hence every demise of the Crown degrades the position 
 of the collateral relations of the sovereign, until in two removes at most they altogether 
 pass out of the limits of the royal family, in so far as precedence is concerned 
 
 * " Ambassadors yield precedence only to members of the royal family of the Court 
 to which they are accredited, and to the sons and brothers of crowned heads. Foreign 
 Ministers ami Envoys have no real claim to precedence. The question was raised and 
 settled at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. But of late years precedence has been 
 allowed them in this country after dukes and before marquises." — Burke, Book of 
 Precedence, p. 8. 
 
 + By 31st Hen. VIII. c. 10 it is enacted that "if the Lord Chancellor, Lord Trea- 
 surer, Lord President of the Council, Lord Privy Seal, or Chief Secretary be under the 
 degree of Baron of Parliament by reason whereof they can have no interest to give any 
 assent or dissent in the said House (of Lords), then "they shall be placed at the upper 
 part of the sacks in the midst of the said Parliament Chamber, the one of them above 
 the other, in order as is above rehearsed." Speaking of this statute, Sir Charles Young 
 -ays that "although it refers more particularly to the placing of the Lords in Parliament 
 and Conferences of Council, yet it has been held to confer a precedency on the great 
 "Hirers of State and the Lords temporal and spiritual, which has been generally observed 
 upon all public occasions out of Parliament, and to the extent only thus prescribed, has 
 been considered as restraining the royal prerogative in regard to precedence." But he 
 adds that " it seems to la- the better opinion that the rank of the great officers elsewhere 
 than in Parliament is not affected by their not being peers. In the Commission for the 
 trial of Mary Queen of Scots (a record of great authority) Sir Thomas Bromley, Knight, 
 Lord Chancellor, is accordingly named immediately after the Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury." — Young, Order of Precedence, p. 19.
 
 THE STRUCTUBE OF ENGLISH SOCIETY. 325 
 
 executed by commission, the last Lord Treasurer having been Charles 
 Talbot, Duke of Shrewsbury, in 1714, and the last High Admiral, 
 William Duke of Clarence, in 1827, who succeeded to the throne as 
 William IV. But no official rank belongs to the Lords Commissioners 
 of either the Treasury or the Admiralty, although in our days the 
 First Lord of the Treasury is always the Prime Minister, and the First 
 Lord of the Admiralty is always a member of the Cabinet. The 
 offices of Great Chamberlain and Earl Marshal are hereditary. The 
 former is now held jointly by alternate reigns by Baroness Willoughby 
 de Eresby and the Marquis of Cholmondeley, as coheirs of the 
 Berties, Dukes of Ancaster, who derived it by descent from the De 
 Veres, Earls of Oxford, with whom it had been from the reign of 
 Henry I. The latter is held by the Duke of Norfolk under a grant 
 from Charles II. But it had been conferred by Richard III. on John, 
 the first Howard Duke of Norfolk, and had been held as of inherit- 
 ance by his ancestors, Thomas of Brotherton, Earl of Norfolk, younger 
 son of Edward I., and the Mowbrays, Dukes of Norfolk. The office 
 of High Constable of England, which was originally an office by tenure, 
 once hereditary in the families of Bohun and Stafford, Earls of 
 Hereford, and Dukes of Buckingham, is now revived only on the 
 occasion and for the purposes of a coronation, the Duke of Wellington 
 having discharged it at the coronations of George IV., AVilliam IV., 
 and the Queen. But the Earl of Errol is hereditary High Constable 
 of Scotland, although no special place is assigned to him in the general 
 scale of precedence.* Another great office, in fact the greatest office 
 of all, that of the Lord High Steward of England, is entirely omitted 
 from it, " because," Sir Edward Coke says, in noticing the absence 
 of his name from the statute of Henry VIII. , " it was intended that 
 when the use of him should be necessary he should not endure 
 longer than hac vice." The High Stewardship became merged in the 
 Crown on the accession of Henry Bolingbroke as Henry IV., who 
 inherited it with the Earldom of Leicester and Barony of Hinckley, 
 to one of which it was feudally attached from his maternal ancestor, 
 Edmond Crouchback, Earl of Lancaster and Leicester and Baron of 
 Hinckley, the younger son of Henry III. Since then it has been 
 called into independent existence by special commission only for a 
 coronation or for a trial by the House of Lords. The Marquis of 
 
 * " The question of the precedence of the great officers of State of Ireland and Scot- 
 land with reference to similar officers in England is not provided for in the Acts of 
 Union, and has never yet been definitely settled, unless indeed the placing of the Lord 
 Chancellor of Ireland next to the Lord Chancellor of Great Britain at the coronation of 
 King William IV. be deemed a royal settlement of the point." — Burke, Book of Prece- 
 dence, p. 6. But at the coronation of George III. the Lord High Constable of Scotland 
 was placed next to the Lord High Constable of England, and at the coronation of 
 George IV. the Lord High Constable of Ireland was placed next to the Lord High Con- 
 stable of Scotland, who had precedence as before. The same order was observed at the 
 coronation of the Queen.
 
 826 ENGLAND. 
 
 Anglesey was Lord High Steward at the coronation of George IV., 
 and the Duke of Hamilton at the coronation of William IV. and of the 
 Queen. In Scotland and Ireland, however, the office is still heredi- 
 tarily represented, in the first by the Prince of Wales, who is 
 hereditary Great Steward, and in the second by the Earl of 
 Shrewsbury, who is hereditary Grand Seneschal. None of the other 
 great offices have ever been inherited in England, and the great 
 offices which we have named exhaust the list of those which in any 
 way affect the precedence of the higher grades of the peerage. All of 
 them are ancient and many of them are practically obsolete. The 
 Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, the Viceroy of India, the Governor- 
 General of Canada, the Commander-in-Cbief, tbe Lord-Lieutenants of 
 Counties, the Governors of Colonies, Field Marshals, and Admirals 
 of the Fleet, together with all other officers of the army and navy 
 have no official rank whatever. And as to the Prime Minister, his 
 place, if he is a commoner, is according to his seniority among Privy 
 Councillors after the younger sons of earls, the eldest sons of barons, 
 and such Knights of the Garter as are not peers or are without any 
 higher precedence. 
 
 Among peers there are, as everybody knows, five classes and five 
 orders: peers of England, Scotland, and Ireland, Great Britain, and 
 the United Kingdom, and dukes, marquises, earls, viscounts, and 
 barons. Peers of England, created before the Union of 1707, take 
 precedence of Peers of Scotland : thus the Duke of Rutland, creation 
 1703, ranks before the Duke of Hamilton, creation 1643; and Earl 
 Poulett, creation 1706, ranks before the Earl of Crawford, creation 
 1398. Peers of England and Scotland and of Great Britain, created 
 liefore the Union of 1801, take precedence of peers of Ireland : thus 
 the Earl of Malmesbury, creation 1800, ranks before the Earl of Cork, 
 creation 1620, and Lord Ribblesdale, creation 1797, ranks before 
 Lord Kingsale, creation 1397. Otherwise all peers have precedence 
 according to the seniority of their peerages in each degree. Dukes 
 take the lead, and are immediately followed by marquises, who are 
 succeeded by the eldest sons of dukes. Then come earls, the eldest 
 sons of marquises, and the younger sons of dukes ; viscounts, the 
 eldest sons of earls and tbe younger sons of marquises.*" Here 
 tbe bishops are interposed, headed by those of London, Durham, and 
 Winchester. Next follow barons, led by the Secretary of State if he 
 is a peer and of no higher degree, and succeeded by the Speaker of 
 the House of Commons, the first "commoner" in the United King- 
 
 * What was known among the old heralds as "Tiptoft's Rule," so named after John 
 Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, and Constable of England, " because it was of his devising," 
 provided that the eldest son of every one of a created degree is tanquam the next 
 degree under him, but is to take place after the next created degree, as for example the 
 eldest 800 of a duke, which ia the first created degree, is tanquam a marquis, which is the 
 next created degree to a duke, but he is to take place after a marquis; and so down- 
 wards." — State Papers: Domestic Series, James I. vol. lxvii., art. 119.
 
 THE STRUCTURE OP ENGLISH SOCIETY. 827 
 
 dom. After several Household offices which are now always held by- 
 peers or the sous oi peers with titles " of courtesy ''comes the Secre- 
 tary of State if under the degree of a baron, the singular standing for 
 the plural, and including the Secretaries for the Home, Foreign, Colo- 
 nial, Indian, and War Departments. Then follow the eldest sons of 
 viscounts, the younger sons of earls and the eldest sons of barons, 
 Knights of the Garter if they are commoners come next. Both Mr. 
 Pitt and Sir Robert Peel were offered the " Blue Riband," and this 
 would have been their place had they accepted it. During two cen- 
 turies, however, only three commoners have been elected into the 
 order, and of them only Sir Rohert Walpole, afterwards Earl of Orford, 
 ranked merely as a knight. Of the other two, one — Lord North — was 
 the eldest son of the Earl of Guildford, and the other — -Viscount Castle- 
 reagh — was the eldest son of the Marquis of Londonderry. Practically 
 the Garter has been long restricted not to the peerage simply, but to 
 the higher grades of the peerage. Lord Godolphin, Queen Anne's 
 Lord Treasurer, was the last baron who had the order, and he was 
 subsequently advanced to an earldom. Since the beginning of the 
 eighteenth century only four viscounts have received it : Viscount 
 Townshend, from George I. ; Viscount Weymouth, from George 
 III.; and Viscounts Palmerston and Stratford de Redcliffe, from the 
 Queen.* To Knights of the Garter succeed Privy Councillors and the 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lan- 
 caster, the Lord Chief Justice of England, the Master of the Rolls, and 
 the Lords Justices of Appeal, all of whom are invariably members of 
 the Privy Council, and in practice have their precedence among them. 
 Afterwards come the judges of the various divisions of the High Court 
 of Justice ; "bannerets made by the sovereign in person under the 
 royal standard displayed in open war," and the younger sons of 
 viscounts and barons. Baronets are placed next to these, a position 
 specially assigned to them by their founder, James I., after along 
 and memorable controversy, wherein the baronets claimed precedence 
 of the younger sons of viscounts and barons, and the viscounts and 
 barons indignantly repudiated their pretensions on behalf of their 
 younger sons before the King and the Privy Council.! Then follow 
 a number of knights, beginning with " bannerets not made by the 
 sovereign in person," a degree which, like that of " bannerets made 
 by the sovereign in person," has been extinct certainly for two, and 
 probably for three centuries. | But no precedence is given to knights, 
 
 * Twenty-two Howards ; thirteen Greys, Percys, and Stanleys ; ten Talbots and Sey- 
 mours ; nine Nevilles, Somersets, Cecils, Russells, and Cavendishes; eight Herberts, 
 Maunerses, and Spencers; and six Hastingses, Clintons, Saekvilles, Lennoxes, nl 
 Leveson-Gowers, have been Knights of the Garter since the institution of the order by 
 Edward III. to the present day. 
 
 t Selden, Titles of Honor, Part II., chap, xl., p. 748 — 9 ; and see Herald and 
 Genealogist, vol. i., for several articles on the Baronetage. 
 
 I " A banneret, or knight banneret," Sir Harris Nicolas says, " was a knight who, 
 being possessed of considerable lands or revenues, and having distinguished himself in
 
 328 ENGLAND. 
 
 cither of the Thistle or of St. Patrick; the only orders of chivalry 
 noticed being the Bath, Star of India, and St. Michael and St. George 
 before we arrive at knights bachelors. After which come Serjeants - 
 at-Law and Masters in Chancery, both of whom are virtually extinct, 
 who are followed by the Companions of the orders already named, and 
 of the Indian Empire, the eldest sons of the younger sons of peers,, 
 of baronets, of Knights of the Garter, and of knights bannerets, and 
 bachelors. Then come the younger sons of baronets and knights, and 
 finally the rear is brought up by esquires and gentlemen. But no 
 precedence is conceded to the Attorney-General, the Solicitor-General, 
 or Queen's Counsel; to deans, archdeacons, or canons; to the 
 sheriffs of counties, to members of the House of Commons, to gra- 
 duates of any of the universities, or to a host of political and profes- 
 sional persons whose official position is sufficiently eminent to confer 
 a distinct public individuality on them, although it is not of the highest 
 dignity or importance. Hence, as Sir Bernard Burke has observed, 
 although our laws of precedence are as strict as the laws of the Medes 
 and Persians, they are, as adapted to present times and circumstances, 
 very far from being sufficiently comprehensive.* It is always possible 
 indeed for exceptions to be made in them, but only if the company in 
 which they are made are willing that it should be done, and at an 
 ordinary London dinner-table the adherence to them is very rigid. 
 Sometimes they conflict with each other in a rather ludicrous manner, 
 and a conjuncture is not inconceivable in which, if all of these per- 
 sons insisted on their proper precedence, it would be doubtful if any 
 of them could ever leave the room. Imagine the Speaker of the 
 
 war, was elevated to that rank, whereby he became entitled to bear in the field a square 
 banner containing his arms, and to command such knights, esquires, and soldiers as he 
 had furnished for his sovereign ; so that a banneret was, in fact, the commander of a 
 body of oificers and soldiers raised by himself serving under his banner and paid by the 
 Crown." He also says that bannerets could only be created when the king's banner 
 was displayed, and mentions the picturesque description of the ceremony given by 
 Froissart in reference to the cases of Sir John Chandos and Sir Thomas Tryvet. " The 
 last time when a banneret was made in England," Sir Harris Nicolas continues, " has 
 not been precisely ascertained, but it is supposed by some that Sir Ralph Sadler (so 
 created by the Protector Somerset after the battle of Pinkney, in September, 1547), and 
 by others, that Sir John Smith, who was knighted by King Charles I. at the battle 
 of Edgehill, in October, 1G42, for having rescued the royal standard, was the last person 
 created to that dignity. Unless, however, Sir John Smith's banner was delivered to him 
 by his Majesty with the usual formalities (which is very doubtful) he could not have 
 been made abanneret."— Nicolas, History of the Orders of Knighthood, Introduction, 
 pp. xxxii. — xliii. It was supposed that Sir John Ligonier, afterwards Earl Ligonier, 
 and Commander-in-Chief, had been made a knight banneret, because he was knighted 
 under the royal standard at the battle of Dettingen in 1742, and that the same honour 
 had been conferred on certain admirals and captains also knighted under the royal 
 standard at " Portsmouth and in the camps," in 1773, 1778, and 1797, and they were 
 always styled knights bannerets. But there is not the slightest doubt that whatever the 
 intention" of the King's Lieutenant or the King himself may have been, they were none 
 of them created anything more than knights bachelors, and that the order of knights 
 bannerets may safely be regarded an altogether extinct. 
 
 * lleminiscences ; Anecstral, Anecdotal, and Historic, p. 218.
 
 THE STRUCTURE OF ENGLISH SOCIETY. 329 
 
 House of Commons, a baron, the son of a duke or marquis, to be 
 placed in the same apartment, and requested to leave it in their rela- 
 tive order of rank. The Speaker has place before all commoners ; 
 the baron, as a peer, has place before the Speaker ; the son of the 
 duke or marquis, who is a commoner, has place after the Speaker, 
 but before the baron. The social conundrum here presented for 
 consideration may best be left to rare experience perhaps for prac- 
 tical solution. 
 
 An anecdote is recounted by Sir Nathaniel Wraxall concerning the 
 eccentric Charles Duke of Norfolk, which serves to throw considerable 
 light on the strangely mixed constitution of English society. In 1781 the 
 latter, who was then Earl of Surrey, was breakfasting with the former 
 at the " Cocoa Tree " in St. James's Street, when he told him that he 
 had purposed at one time to give an entertainment in the year 1783, 
 in order to commemorate the tercentenary of the creation of the duke- 
 dom of Norfolk in the family of the Howards. " He added," Sir 
 Nathaniel Wraxall states, " that it was his intention to invite all the 
 individuals of both sexes whom he could ascertain to be lineally 
 descended from the body of ' Jockey of Norfolk ' (the first duke of 
 that name, killed at Bosworth Field)." "But having already," said 
 he, " discovered nearly six thousand persons sprung from him, a great 
 number of whom are in very obscure or indigent circumstances, and 
 believing, as I do, that as many more may be in existence, I have 
 abandoned the design." This may be taken as an illustration of 
 what is always possible in a country where, as in England, a noblesse 
 does not exist. It is, however, certain that if the humblest of the 
 Duke's kindred had suddenly risen to distinction he might have found 
 his way into much the same society as the head of his house was 
 entitled to enter, and he would have done so not because he was 
 remotely connected with a duke, but because he had established for 
 himself a claim to social consideration. 
 
 Subject to given conditions, the parvenu in England may associate 
 with peers, even though he feels some constraint in their presence, 
 while the son of the parvenu might be the equal of peers — nay, very 
 possibly be a peer himself. This free development of social promotion 
 is responsible for a large amount of petty social jealousy. Mr. and 
 Mrs. Dash are a couple whose place by birth is a respectable one in 
 the great middle class. But they have gradually risen superior to it, 
 and without legal rank have acquired a valuable prescriptive rank in 
 what is called " society " jiar excellence. The husband has inherited 
 a fortune, or has made his mark in politics, or has possibly distin- 
 guished himself in some other way ; the wife is a perfectly well-bred 
 lady, conspicuous for her accomplishments and tact. They are, there- 
 fore, made welcome in the most select drawing-rooms, and have a visit- 
 ing list with which a duchess might be satisfied. But there is no rose
 
 330 ENGLAND. 
 
 without its thorn, and the social triumphs of this agreeable pair have 
 aroused the envy of not a few households which in point of birth and 
 worldly circumstance are fully their equals. The Dashes decline the 
 invitations which they receive from these worthy persons, and the 
 worthy persons accordingly declare that the Dashes are offensively 
 elated by their promotion. On the other hand, the Dashes have a 
 considerable amount of reason on their side ; they are under no kind 
 of antecedent obligation to visit houses which are unacceptable to 
 them ; they have really gained a degree of consideration in more dis- 
 tinguished quarters, with which there is no harm in their being, and 
 with which it would be strange if they were not, gratified. This fact 
 is not understood in the region which lies outside their world, and if 
 they were to enter that region they would find themselves in a 
 thoroughly false and therefore more or less disagreeable position. 
 
 The era of the enlargement of English society dates from the 
 Heform Act of 1832, and if it has brought with it some contradic- 
 tions, anomalies, and inconveniences, it has also been instrumental in 
 the accomplishment of great and undoubted good. It has substituted, 
 in a very large degree, the prestige of achievement for the prestige of 
 position. The mere men of fashion, the fops, dandies, and exquisites, 
 the glory of whose life was indolence, and who looked upon anything 
 in the way of occupation as a disgrace, have gone out of date never to 
 return. Both Brummell and D'Orsay, the second especially, concealed 
 sterling qualities beneath the polished affectation of their exterior, but 
 the kind of fame which each of these acquired in his day would be an 
 anachronism and impossibility now. Before the eventful year 1832, 
 there existed a society in England very like the old exclusive society 
 of Vienna. The chief and indeed almost only road to it lay through 
 politics, politics being for the most part a rigidly aristocratic pro- 
 fession. Occasionally men of the people made their way out of the 
 crowd, and became personages in and out of the House of Commons ; 
 but most of the places under Government were in the hands of the 
 great families, as also were the close boroughs, and the tendency was 
 to fill each from among the young men of birth and fashion. The 
 Reform Bill admitted an entirely new element into political life, and 
 threw open the whole of the political area. A host of applicants for 
 parliamentary position at once came forward, and as a consequence 
 the social citadel was carried by persons who had nothing to do with 
 the purely aristocratic section which had hitherto been paramount. 
 The patrician occupants of the captured stronghold, if they were 
 somewhat taken aback by the blow which had been dealt them, 
 accepted the situation, and decided upon their future tactics with equal 
 wisdom and promptitude. If the new comers were to be successfully 
 competed with, they saw that they must compete with them on the 
 new ground, and must assert their power as the scions of no faineant
 
 THE STRUCTURE OF ENGLISH SOCIETY. 331 
 
 aristocracy. The impulse given to the whole mass of the patriciate 
 was immense, and the sum of the new-born or newly displayed 
 energies as surprising as it was satisfactory. The man of pleasure 
 ceased to be the type to which it was expected, as a matter of course, 
 that all those born in the purple should conform. 
 
 The activity thus communicated directed itself into an infinite 
 number of channels, and it has continued operative ever since. 
 Many of our aristocrats of to-day are fired by a robust ambition. 
 Some take up statesmanship as the business of their lives, and work 
 at its routine duties as if it were necessary to the support of existence. 
 Others, whose tastes do not incline them in the direction of the senate, 
 write books, paint pictures, or carve statues. Possibly, even pro- 
 bably, they are of a theatrical turn, and subsidise a theatre, or even 
 manage a company. They go into business, or they dedicate their 
 existence to agricultural enterprise. At least they do something. 
 Society, in fact, has bidden adieu to its ideal of gilded and inglorious 
 ease, and in strict conformity with the spirit of its new departure, 
 selects its proteges and favourites upon a new principle. The question 
 asked about any new aspirant to its freedom is not only, Who is he ? 
 or How much has he a year ? but, in addition, What has he done ? and 
 What can he do ? The heroes and lions of society are not handsome 
 young men, who can do nothing more than dress well, or dance well. 
 They are seldom even those whose fame is limited to the hunting-field 
 or the battue. They are men who have striven to solve the secret of 
 the ice-bound pole, who have tramped right across the arid sands of a 
 strange continent, who have scaled heights previously deemed inacces- 
 sible, who have written clever books, painted great pictures, done 
 great deeds in one shape or other. It is surely a considerable social 
 advance to have substituted for the exquisites of a bygone period, as 
 ideals of life for the rising generation, men who have followed in the 
 track of Xenophon, or who have been the pioneers of civilisation on a 
 continent. 
 
 Thus it may be fairly inferred that whatever its levities and frivo- 
 lities, the foundation on which English society rests is essentially 
 serious, the result of the traditional and pre-eminently English habit 
 of taking grave and earnest views of life. Religion is not now spoken 
 of ; what is meant is, that pure enjoyment is not the ideal of the 
 typical Englishman in whatever class. He takes his pleasures heartily 
 indeed, and with gusto, if he finds them in his path. Occasionally, as 
 before shown, he may make the mistake of forsaking the true path of 
 his career and following the phantom of pleasure till it lands him 
 in disaster. These are our failures. The ordinary Englishman has 
 ambitions, social and professional, and he subordinates all other things 
 to them. He is bent upon improving hi? position, or immortalising 
 his name. His dominant motive is the desire to rise, or the resolu-
 
 332 ENGLAND. 
 
 tion to do to the utmost his duty in the sphere of life in which his lot 
 has been cast. The plan of existence, thus regarded as the great and \ 
 only opportunity for the accomplishment of a definite work, acquires 
 an energising s-olemnity. The Englishman may stumble sometimes, J 
 but after the fall he picks himself up and pushes on to the goal. 
 
 A hundred illustrations might be given of the development of this 
 inborn national tendency in the march of an English generation from 
 the cradle to the grave. At school the boy who does nothing has 
 neither popularity nor respect. He is without any recognised status 
 in the little world which is the reflection in miniature of the great 
 world to which he will presently be introduced. He may shine at his 
 studies ; he may excel in the cricket-ground or on the river. The one 
 essential condition is, he must do something if he wishes to have any 
 rank or consideration among his equals and contemporaries. This 
 destiny pursues him throughout. At college the mere loafer is a 
 nonentity ; the reading man or the athlete is a personage. In the 
 army no young officer ever yet made a reputation which one of his 
 compeers envied by elegant dawdling. He has devoted himself to 
 professional studies, and secured a place in the ranks of coming men. 
 Or he has been of a less studious turn, and knows more of the stud- 
 book and the racing calendar than of Jomini or Hamley. But he has 
 established his reputation in the hunting-field or on the steeplechase 
 course, and he has extended or maintained the reputation of his regi- 
 ment. It is the same whatever the pastime he may have made the 
 business of his life ; his character will be assessed by the degree of 
 earnestness and success with which he has taken it up. 
 
 The gradations of esteem allotted to the different English profes- 
 sions are exactly what might be expected in a society organised upon 
 such a basis and conscious of such aims. Roughly it may be said 
 professions in England are valued according to their stability, their 
 remunerativeness, their influence, and their recognition by the State. 
 These conditions may partially explain the difference which English 
 society draws between the callings of the merchant and the stock- 
 broker. Stockbrokers make immense fortunes ; but there attaches 
 to them a suspicion of precariousness infinitely in excess of that which, 
 in some measure, necessarily attaches to all fortunes accumulated by 
 commerce or trade. The merchant represents an interest which is 
 almost deserving of a place among the estates of the realm, and with 
 the development of which the prosperity and prestige of England are 
 bound up. His house of business is practically a public institution, 
 and the speculative element — the fluctuation of prices and the uncer- 
 tainty of markets — enters as little as possible into it. Merchants have 
 from time immemorial been the friends and supporters of monarchs — 
 have taken their place in the popular chamber of the legislature, have 
 been elevated to distinguished stations among the titular aristocracy
 
 TTTE STRUCTURE OF ENGLISH SOCIETT. 333 
 
 of the land. We have had not only our merchant-princes, but our 
 merchant-peers and merchant-statesmen. The calling has been recog- 
 nised in our social hierarchy for centuries, and if not exactly a liberal, 
 is an eminently respectable and dignified one. Nor is the merchant, 
 as a rule, so much absorbed in the affairs of his own business as to be 
 unable to devote as much time as is requisite to the pursuits of society 
 and the affairs of the country. His operations run in a comparatively 
 equal and tranquil channel, and to hint that he lives in an atmosphere 
 of feverish excitement is equivalent to insinuating a doubt of his 
 solvency. It is different with the stockbroker, whose social position 
 is so quickly acquired that it cannot yet be looked upon as assured — 
 whose wealth, though great, has the garish hue of luck and glories 
 which may dissolve themselves at any moment into thin air, like 
 Aladdin's palace, and who himself is popularly supposed to be moro 
 or less on the tenterhooks of expectation and anxiety from morning 
 to night. The merchant drives to his place of business in a family 
 brougham or barouche ; the stockbroker drives to the station, where 
 he takes the morning express to the City, in a smart dog-cart, with a 
 high-stepping horse between the shalts and a very knowing-looking 
 groom at his side. 
 
 Such, at least, is the conception formed by the public of the two 
 men of business, and it indicates not incorrectly the corresponding 
 view of English society. The British merchant, as has been said, is 
 very probably a member of Parliament ; the instances in which stock- 
 brokers are members of Parliament at the present day might be counted 
 as something less than the fingers of one hand. The life of the ideal 
 stockbroker is one of display ; that of the ideal merchant, one of 
 dignified grandeur or opulent comfort. Possessed of a certain amount 
 of education, often acquired at a public school, sometimes both at 
 Eton and Oxford, the stockbroker of the period has decided social 
 aspirations. He makes his money easily, and he spends it lightly in 
 procuring all the luxuries of existence. He marries a handsome wife, 
 sets up a showy establishment, lays in a cellar of choice wines, and 
 hires a French cook. He has carriages and horses, a box at the opera, 
 and stalls at theatres and concerts innumerable. He belongs to one or 
 two good though not always first-rate clubs. He has acquaintances in 
 the highest circles, and congratulates himself on being in society. 
 But the blissful experience is not one in which his wife shares. She 
 has to be content with all the talk, stories, and scandal of society 
 which she hears retailed at her husband's table by the young guards- 
 men and other patrician guests who readily accept the invitations to a 
 house where cook and cellar are both excellent, where the hostess 
 and such other ladies as may be present are pretty or attractive. As 
 a consequence of this, there is a copious stream of male visitors at 
 the residence of the fortunate speculator in scrip and shares while
 
 834 ENGLAND. 
 
 the lord and master of the household is occupied in the City. Perhaps 
 an uncharitable world begins to talk ; at any rate, the glitter and show 
 of the menage acquire a certain flavour of Bohemianisni, between which 
 and the animating spirit of English society the only sympathy that 
 exists is of a purely superficial kind. 
 
 Let as continue to apply the test which has been indicated to other 
 departments of English professional life. We live in an age the boast 
 of which it is that it can appreciate merit or capacity of any kind. 
 Artists and actors, poets and painters, are the much-courted guests of 
 the wealthiest and the noblest in the land — to be met with at their 
 dinner-tables, in their reception-rooms, and in their counting-houses. 
 To all appearance, the fusion between the aristocracy of birth, wealth, 
 and intellect is complete, and the representatives of each appear to 
 meet on a footing of the most perfect and absolute equality. Still 
 the notion prevails that the admission, let us say of the painter, into 
 society is an act of condescension on society's part, none the less real 
 because the condescension is ostentatiously concealed. Nor does the 
 fact that artists occasionally not only amass large fortunes, but con- 
 tract illustrious matrimonial alliances, militate against the view. It is 
 only possible, where an entire class is concerned, to speak generally, 
 and to this, as to every other rule, there are exceptions. Why should 
 the rule — always assuming that it is a rule — exist, and what is the 
 explanation of it ? As regards painters, there is this to be borne in 
 mind : their calling is a noble one ; but in view of the genius of Eng- 
 lish society, it labours under certain disadvantages. A vague and 
 unreasoning prejudice still prevails against the profession of the artist. 
 The keen-scented, eminently decorous British public perceives a certain 
 aroma of social and moral laxity in the atmosphere of the studio, a 
 kind of blended perfume of periodical impccuniosity and much tobacco- 
 smoke. This laxity, moreover, is to a great extent a tradition of art, 
 which artists themselves do not a little to perpetuate. They are, or 
 they affect to be, for the most part a simple-minded, demonstrative, 
 impulsive, eccentric, vagabond race, even as Thackeray has drawn 
 them in his novels. As a matter of fact, many, perhaps most of them, 
 are the reverse of this — shrewd, hard-headed men of business, with 
 as clear a conception as the most acute trader of the value of twenty 
 shillings. But social verdicts are based for the most part on general 
 impressions ; and the popular view of the painter — speaking now, as 
 always, of the guild, not of any individual member of it — is that the 
 calling which he elects to follow lacks delinitiveness of status, and 
 that it is not calculated to promote those serious, methodical habits 
 which form an integral part of the foundation of English society. 
 
 If this sentiment were to be exhaustively analysed, it would be 
 found that there entered into it considerations which apply to other 
 professions. Solicitors, general practitioners, and even illustrious
 
 THE STRUCTURE OF ENGLISH SOCIETY. 335 
 
 physicians in the daily intercourse of society lahour under nearly the 
 same disadvantages as artists. It is therefore natural and logical to 
 ask what is the social differentia of this group of professional men ? 
 It is to be found, unless we greatly mistake, in the fact that they are 
 each of them in the habit of receiving money payments direct from 
 those with whom they consort nominally on a footing of social equality. 
 All professional men make their livelihood out of the public in some 
 shape or other. The only thing is that some of them receive the 
 money of the public through an agent or middleman, and that others 
 do not. A barrister has no immediate pecuniary dealings with his 
 client. An author has no immediate pecuniary dealings with those 
 who read his books or articles. A beneficed clergyman is indepen- 
 dent of his congregation for his income. Artists, solicitors, surgeons, 
 dentists, physicians, are paid by fee, or they send in their account 
 and receive — or at least look for — a cheque in settlement. But this 
 is exactly what a tailor, a wine merchant, a butcher, a grocer, or any 
 other retail dealer does. Thus we arrive at the conclusion that what- 
 ever the social disadvantage at which artists and the rest may find 
 themselves, it arises from precisely the same cause as that which 
 exists in the case of persons who derive their income from occupations 
 which can in no sense be called either liberal or learned. 
 
 To pass on to two of the conditions which, at the outset of this 
 argument, were loosely enumerated as tests of professional dignity. 
 The sphere of the influence exercised by artists, as by actors and 
 musicians, is necessarily restricted within comparatively narrow limits. 
 Neither great paintings, nor good acting, nor musical masterpieces 
 exercise a very appreciable power on our everyday life and the 
 conduct and current of affairs. A fine picture makes a stir in the 
 artistic world ; but it does not mould the thoughts, or regulate the 
 aspirations, or inspire the mind of the world outside. Excellence in 
 the performance of a leading character in a clever play is the theme 
 of much conversation in society ; but it is impossible to say that 
 influence attaches to the merit thus displayed. The sentiments to 
 which the actor gives expression on the stage may produce a deep 
 result, and have before now given an impulse to movements which 
 have almost culminated in revolutions. In the same way, the language 
 with which the singer accompanies the melody may convey the most 
 profound, the most tragic effects. But in each of these cases it is the 
 author, the dramatist, or the poet who speaks, and the actor or the 
 singer, so far as the sentiment to the eliciting of which he contributes 
 his share, but only his share, is concerned, is little more than the 
 organ which the soul of literature inspires, and through which it speaks. 
 In a scarcely less degree it may be predicated of the professions of the 
 solicitor and the doctor that they are without those opportunities of 
 moving the mind of the thinking public in any given direction. A
 
 336 ENGLAND. 
 
 physician, who is a great authority in his consulting-room, acquires a 
 considerable position ; and from the pedestal of that position he may 
 speak with the certainty of being listened to on many non-professional 
 subjects. But he has not gained this authority as doctor. A solicitor 
 again, may be an election agent, and thus affect the destiny of parties 
 in the State. But this branch of the profession is only a rare and 
 accidental development of his calling. The more closely the matter 
 is looked at, the more apparent does it become that none of the pro- 
 fessional classes — as professional classes — can be said to have the 
 same power of appealing to the intellect and the moral convictions 
 which supply rules for the guidance of everyday life, and of colouring 
 the views of the people on religious or political matters, as the writer, 
 the clergyman, the barrister who takes a prominent place in his pro- 
 fession. The barrister who practises in court, much more the judge 
 who sits on the bench, materially and perceptibly assist in the manu- 
 facture, modelling, and remodelling of the public law, which is a 
 distinct department of public ethics. The author assists his readers, 
 sensibly or insensibly, in their verdicts on public men and public- 
 questions — in their formation of those ideas of right and wrong of 
 which the conscious or unconscious effect is the good or the evil 
 genius of their moral existence. Of the clergyman — the preacher — 
 there is no need to speak. 
 
 We have said that the esteem in which society holds these different 
 orders of professional labourers is closely proportioned to the extent 
 and character of their influence on the public mind. We may go 
 farther, and say that the State in the recognition of their services 
 judges them by the same standard. Those who rise to the highest 
 titular rank by their own efforts, when they are not chosen on the 
 ground of convenient political ability or party service, or immense 
 wealth expended in a cause of which the Government of the day 
 approves, or of brilliant exploits on the sea and on the field — exploits 
 which decide the fate of nations — are selected from some one or other 
 of the classes that we have just been considering. Artists are occa- 
 sionally advanced to the honour of knighthood or to the dignity of 
 the baronetage ; so are doctors ; and such fortune sometimes may 
 come to solicitors. But, unlike the barrister, no solicitor can be said 
 to carry the wig of the chancellor, or the robe of the peer, in his 
 bag.* Has the coronet which the distinguished author may bequeath 
 to his children ever been placed upon the painter's head ? t Can 
 
 * On the recommendation of Lord Beaconsfield two solicitors were created baronets: 
 Sir Philip Rose in 1874, and Sir Gabriel Goldney in 1880. Knighthood has been con- 
 ferred on a multitude of solicitors. 
 
 1 Lord Tennyson is the lirst person who has received a peerage as the reward of lite- 
 rary merit alone. Lord Macaulav and Lord Lytton, although they are now remembered 
 and will be remembered by posterity exclusively for their contributions to the literature
 
 THE STRUCTURE OF ENGLISH SOCrETY. 837 
 
 iEsculapius himself, in his. most sanguine moments, anticipate any 
 dignity analogous to the bishop's mitre, which every clergyman may 
 consider he potentially packs up in the portmanteau that he takes with 
 him when he leaves home to do duty for a friend, and possibly to preach 
 before a royal or illustrious personage ? No doubt it may be said 
 with truth that in these days representative members of all professions 
 consort together, and are treated in society on a footing of perfect 
 equality; but we have attempted here to go a little beneath the 
 surface, and to hazard a possible explanation of what are perhaps 
 foolish prejudices and superstitions. 
 
 of their country, were statesmen, or at least active politicians, of very considerable emi- 
 nence in their day.
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 SOCIETY AND POLITICS. 
 
 Gradual Diminution of Social Influences upon Politics — The Aristocratic Principle still 
 a powerful one — English System of Statesmanship essentially Aristocratic— States- 
 manship in Families favourable to this Tendency — Place of the Country House in 
 our Political System — Clubs: their General Aspect and Political Significance — 
 Peculiar Excellences of the Conservative Club System — Explanations of this — Social 
 Structure of Conservative Party — Political Salons : their Decline, and Reasons for 
 this Decline — Lady Palmerston's Drawing-room — Prospects of the Salon. 
 
 It is the fashion to say that, since the English people have been taken 
 into partnership in the work of National government by the Reform 
 Acts of 1882 and 1867, and we have fairly entered upon the broad 
 road which is thought to lead to pure democracy, the influence of 
 rank and fashion, in other words of wbat is called " society," upon 
 
 /"politics has ceased to exist. Before 1882, the history of English 
 politics was largely identical with the history of English society. It 
 is within the last half-century that the members of the great English^ 
 families have perceived that they can no longer, by judicious alriances, 
 keep the game of government to themselves. Somewhat more than a 
 
 TTundred years ago, Burke was indebted for his entrance to Parliament 
 to Lord Rockingham, who, seeing that his Administration was, as 
 Charles Townshend puts it, " mere lutestring, pretty summer wear, 
 but quite unfit for winter," made the young Irishman — then chiefly 
 known, as Macaulay reminds us, " by a little treatise in which the 
 style and reasoning of Bolingbroke were mimicked with exquisite 
 skill"— his private secretary. Pitt, Chatham's son though he was, 
 commenced his parliamentary career under the aegis of a great 
 governing house, the Lowthers. Canning was the brother-in-law and 
 protege of the Duke of Portland. " One of the most curious features," 
 remarks a writer in Blackwood's Magazine,* " of this obsolete day is 
 the manner in which the country was disposed of. No game of whist 
 in one of the lordly clubs of St. James's Square was ever more 
 exclusively played. It was simply a question whether His Grace of 
 Bedford would be content with a quarter or half a cabinet, or whether 
 the Marquis of Rockingham would bo satisfied with two-fifths, or the 
 Earl of Shelburne should have all or shoidd share the power with the 
 
 * No. cccl., p. 754.
 
 SOCIETY AND POLITICS. 309 
 
 Duke of Portland. In all these barterings and borrowings we never 
 bear the name of the nation. No whisper announces that there is 
 such a thing in existence as the people. No allusion ever proceeds 
 from the stately lips or offends the ' ears polite ' of the embroidered 
 conclave referring to either the interests, feelings, or necessities of the 
 nation." Nor is less curious testimony to this vanished state of 
 things contained in a letter addressed by Burke to his original patron, 
 Lord Rockingham : " Lord Shelburne," he writes, " still continues in 
 Administration, though as adverse and as much disliked as ever. The 
 Duke of Grafton continues to bear the old complaint of his situation 
 and his genuine desire of holding it as long as he can. At the same 
 time, Lord Shelburne gets loose too ; I know that Lord Camden, who 
 adhered to him in the late divisions, has given him up and gone over 
 to the Duke of Grafton. The Bedfords are horribly frightened at all 
 this, for fear of seeing the table which they had so well covered, and 
 at which they sat down with so good an appetite, kicked down in the 
 scuffle. They find things not ripe at present for bringing in Grenville, 
 and that any capital move just now would only betray their weakness 
 in the closet and in the nation." 
 
 Absolutely antiquated, of course, such a state of things as this has 
 long since been. Nevertheless, it would be a great mistake to conclude 
 that the great houses are without influence on the formation of cabinets, 
 or that there are no points of contact between aristocratic drawing- 
 rooms and a Parliament in which the popular chamber is elected by 
 household suffrage. That the English masses can secure at the head of 
 an Administration any statesman upon whom they have set their hearts, 
 and that the Government which is to have the national confidence 
 must be composed of men approved by the constituencies, is certain. 
 Still there is left a fair margin in which the machinery of society may 
 be brought to bear upon the politics and politicians of the day. In 
 the case of a Liberal Government taking office, the Whigs may hold the 
 balance between the left and right wings, and the Whigs have eminent 
 social resources at their disposal. In the same way with the Conserva- 
 tives, the Tories of the old school are not yet an extinct race ; and a 
 moderate Conservative Premier would hardly venture to form a cabinet 
 without consulting the feelings of his patrician Tory supporters, or to 
 decide upon a legislative programme for a single session that had not 
 been previously considered by the same illustrious depositaries of 
 aristocratic power. Neither Whig nor Tory nobles would, indeed, any 
 longer dream of opposing to the last a popular demand earnestly and 
 resolutely made. On the other hand, no representative of the people 
 would commence with defying the power of the great titular and 
 territorial magnates. Negotiation, compromise, mutual concession 
 are the notes of modern statesmanship. The privileged classes consti- 
 tute a powerful organisation, and they know that if these privileges are 
 
 z2
 
 340 ENGLAND. 
 
 to be preserved, there must be the tacit understanding that whatever 
 in the last resort the multitude wills it shall have. 
 
 But because it recognises in this order of things the decree of mani- 
 fest destiny, it has no notion of surrendering everything to the popular 
 impulse. Democratic as our tendencies may be, there never was a 
 time when rank and fashion, when everything which is comprised in 
 the single word position, had so signal an opportunity of influencing 
 the popular mind. The reason for this has been to some extent explained 
 in the preceding chapters. The process that has been going on for years 
 is that of levelling up. The increase of the wealth of the middle classes, 
 and their intermarriage with their social superiors, have caused them 
 to assimilate the tastes and prejudices of their new connections. Pro- 
 perty grows, and the holders of property naturally take the colour of 
 their views from those who are above them, and not from those who 
 are below. The consequences of this, whether socially or politically 
 considered, are identical. It is the aristocratic principle which domi- 
 nates our political as it dominates our social system. The states- 
 man who was indiscreetly to proclaim the truth from the housetops 
 might probably suffer for his communicativeness. 
 
 Hence, it is not surprising that statesmanship should have a ten- 
 dency to become as much a tradition in some families as the gout, a 
 quality subtly communicated from father to son. The most valuable 
 political training which a young man can have is given him by sur- 
 rounding circumstances and associations, and is wholly apart from the 
 education of books. Aristocracies exist by force, democracies by ideas ; 
 and English statesmanship, at its most vigorous times, has never been 
 exclusively, or even mainly, allied with literary scholarship. If the 
 reading of books be the measure of knowledge, then the young men of 
 the higher classes of English society are the most ignorant in the 
 world. If an acquaintance with the theories of philosophers and the 
 speculations of historians be necessary to enable them to render their 
 country sound political service, then that service will never be rendered 
 by them. But if there be such a thing as education without books, 
 and if that is the most valuable education of all, it is as well that 
 matters should remain as they are. The science of life can only be 
 learned from life itself ; and wherever human nature is — in the senate 
 or the street, the court or the club — it is pretty much the same. Our 
 young men nowadays rattle round the world in the course of the 
 grand tour. They study the idiosyncrasies of their countrymen and 
 countrywomen in the drawing-room, on the racecourse, in the park, 
 and the entire process is one of unconscious education. The know- 
 ledge of events and places which is picked up from books is the pos- 
 session of one day and the loss of the next. The knowledge which 
 practical experience gives remains. 
 
 Nor is it only that the character of the English nation and the
 
 SOCIETY AND POLITICS. 341 
 
 genius of our English political system are favourable to the exercise 
 of social influences on politics. Social influences, actively and con- 
 tinuously felt in the region of public life, are implied in our system of 
 party government. If in ordinary times polite society seems to be 
 indifferent to the issues of party politics, ladies who are born states- 
 women, who have a natural turn for forecasting parliamentary com- 
 binations, and who calculate the probable figures of the division list 
 with the eagerness of junior whips, are not quite unknown. For the 
 most part, it is only heroic questions, or questions in which the chief 
 questions concerned are easy to grasp, and appeal directly to the 
 imagination, that have any large interest for society. If a measure 
 were introduced for disestablishing and disendowing the National 
 Church, thousands of feminine swords would, metaphorically speak- 
 ing, flash from their scabbards. Again, such problems as the Eastern 
 Question have a social aspect as well as a profound political signifi- 
 cance. Its broad issues have been fairly intelligible, or have, at least, 
 seemed so, without, the accompaniment of figures and statistics. 
 Moreover they have been fraught with much of that purely personal 
 attraction which politics so often lack. The rivalry between the two 
 most distinguished statesmen of the day has been brought into pro- 
 minent and sensational relief. The progress of the bloody strife 
 between Turk and Russian gave just those opportunities for the 
 display of sympathy which society loves. Concerts or fetes were 
 constantly being held in aid of one or other of the combatants ; and 
 fashionable sisters of mercy not only were able to occupy themselves 
 with a good work, but had the satisfaction of deriving from it a fair 
 measure of social excitement. 
 
 The country house is also an important point of convergence 
 between society and politics. The country house system is as dis- 
 tinctively national as the British Constitution, and the country house 
 season is one which may be said to last all the year round. The 
 English country house is a microcosm of the chief forces that are at 
 work in modern society. If it is a good thing, and one which has 
 tended to the partial obliteration of the hard and fast lines which 
 separate class from class, that our aristocracy should open their parks 
 upon occasion to all who like to make decorous holiday within their 
 limits, a corresponding social good is done when they open their 
 houses, as freely as they do now, to men who represent something 
 more than the principles of idleness and enjoyment. To a large per- 
 centage of visitors the season now spoken of is but a synonym for the 
 shooting season. Even the sportsmen are not deficient in a certain 
 representative character. There are among them men of business as 
 well as of pleasure ; members of all professions ; men who, as a 
 rule, never know what is a day's idleness, as well as others who 
 have never known what is a day's work. Bishops, or some other
 
 842 ENGLAND. 
 
 highly-placed divines, will give an air of eminent respectability to the 
 gathering, and suggestively symbolise the union of Church and State. 
 A traveller who has newly returned to British soil, after years of 
 exploration and wandering, is also a decided acquisition. Professors 
 are found to relax a good deal of their professorial dignity. Highly 
 scientific jurists, as well as natural philosophers, very often blend 
 admirably with the other guests ; and it is interesting to watch how 
 an erudite historian, who has delivered a little lecture of a rather 
 stiff character in the afternoon on the remains of an ancient British 
 camp, becomes pleasantly chatty on commonplace topics at dinner, 
 and shows that he has a keen appreciation of the ludicrous over a 
 cigar in the smoking-room. It may be thought that one regulation 
 character has been omitted from this catalogue. Where, it will be 
 possibly said, is the wit of the company ? The truth is, he is not 
 always to he found. His jests are becoming familiar and wearisome, 
 and though " society " likes to be amused, it has a highly edifying 
 taste for instruction as well. So, instead of the punsters pure and 
 simple, it invites to its houses professors who can be facetious when 
 wanted, or philosophers who can either solve the riddle of the 
 universe or assist in the guessing of a double acrostic. In these 
 blended elements the political fills a prominent place. It was said 
 by Moore, the poet, that there was no receipt for taming a Radical 
 like an invitation to Bowood. There is no doubt that if the secret 
 political history of the past forty years could be written in the frank 
 fashion of the " Greville Memoirs," it would be found that in many 
 instances a judicious course of Whig hospitality during the months of 
 autumn had subdued the wild fervour of the hitherto intractable and 
 irreconcilable democrat. 
 
 While the country house, as an institution, situated in that extensive 
 borderland where politics and society meet, is common to both the 
 great political parties in the State, it has been reserved for the Con- 
 servatives to achieve a unique success with the club system. And here 
 it may be desirable to say a few preliminary words on the general 
 question of clubs. Clubs may generally be described as embodying the 
 principle of co-operation in its application to tavern life. They have 
 been of great service, both political and social : socially they have done 
 an immense deal towards the creation of a sound body of public 
 opinion ; politically, they have consolidated the sense of unity, and 
 have increased that mutual knowledge which is essential for the 
 keeping together of the various members of a party organisation. 
 How far clubs possess the attribute of economy, which is one of the 
 advantages that co-operation usually bestows, may be doubted. At 
 some of the older-established institutions, which have large balances 
 in their bankers' hands, it is indeed possible to procure the necessities 
 and luxuries of life at cost price, and to eat dinners for a third of the
 
 SOCIETY AND POLITICS. 343 
 
 sum which would be paid for them at an ordinary restaurant ; but it 
 is a delusion to suppose that, in the majority of clubs, a man can live 
 as cheaply as he may do if he has his meals in his own apartments, or 
 even at well-selected taverns. There are certainly very few clubs iu 
 London at which it would be possible to have so good and so complete 
 a dinner as may now be purchased at more than one London restau- 
 rant for three shillings and sixpence. What the club man does get, 
 what he could not get elsewhere, and what he may well be content to 
 pay for, is a very considerable degree of luxury and of comfort. For 
 all practical purposes he is the inhabitant of a palace, and so long as 
 he pays his subscription and does not violate the laws of the institu- 
 tion, he need not fear that he will be exiled from it. The social 
 advantages of clubs are apt to be exaggerated even more than the 
 economical ones. Membership of a really first-rate club does un- 
 doubtedly confer upon a man some degree of social distinction. But 
 then, it is rather the hall-mark which stamps the value of the article 
 than the article itself. It is the formal recognition of qualities or 
 advantages which have an existence perfectly independent of the club, 
 and which are indeed the primary cause of membership. But of 
 society, in the sense of fellowship, a club affords little or nothing ; 
 indeed, the genius of modern club life may be almost described as 
 that of isolation. A new comer into the community will probably 
 find that he is not the less completely alone because he happens 
 to be in the presence of some score of his fellow-creatures. 
 
 To belong to a club does not necessarily carry a personal acquaint- 
 ance with any one of the members. In some clubs, where there 
 exists a less rigid system of etiquette, it is not thought irregular for 
 one member to address another of whom he knows nothing if they 
 happen to occupy contiguous chairs in the smoking-room ; in such 
 matters as these, as in many others, every London club of importance 
 has special features of its own. Clubs themselves present almost as 
 many and various characteristics as do the gentlemen frequenting 
 tbem. To some men a club is a mere lounge, at which they 
 spend perhaps two or three hours daily ; perhaps not as much as 
 two or three hours a week. Tbe more superficial specimen of a club 
 lounger enters the morning-room hurriedly, just looks into the 
 candidate's book, and then, after a few words of casual gossip with a 
 slight acquaintance, meets a member with whom he is on more 
 intimate terms, and arranges perhaps some question of business 01 
 of pleasure. Others there are who are regularly to be found at their 
 club on certain days, or at certain hours in every day, during the 
 week ; while to others, again, the club is not merely a second home, 
 but home itself. As are the clubmen so are the clubs. At some there 
 is a general air of easy familiarity, at others there is as much cere- 
 mony as at a State function ; at some members sit down to dinner
 
 844 ENGLAND. 
 
 without compunction in morning dress ; at others this is a sin, which 
 would only be excused if the diner were on the point of setting out on 
 a journey. 
 
 There are clubs which, though affected to one or other of the two 
 great political parties, and subserving a political purpose, do not 
 charge themselves with an evangelising mission, as the purely politi- 
 cal clubs do. The last have political committees, charged with the 
 administration of a fund for political purposes, whose business it 
 is to watch over parliamentary elections, and to see that its mem- 
 bers do not too flagrantly violate, in their political action, the 
 principles of the party to which they belong ; but if these bodies are 
 wise, they will use their power very sparingly. It was not considered 
 a prudent act, on the part of the committee of the Conservative Club 
 in St. James's Street, when it expelled the first Lord Westbury, at the 
 time he was Solicitor- General in Lord Aberdeen's Government ; nor, 
 in the general opinion of politicians who were also men of the world, 
 did the Reform Club exhibit much greater judgment when it exiled, a 
 few years ago, Mr. Eipley, the member for Bradford, on the ground 
 that he had not shown himself a good member of the Liberal party. 
 The Carlton Club has shown more sagacity, and has never recognised 
 the existence of the political committee, which has now at the Junior 
 Carlton Club become a dead letter. Just as the late Lord Derby was 
 a member of Brooks's to the end of his life, so it was only a few years 
 ago that Mr. Gladstone removed his name from the list of the Carlton. 
 When, in 1852, Mr. Gladstone was personally insulted by some Con- 
 servative members of the Carlton, the public opinion of the club was 
 emphatically against the perpetrators of the aggression. Clubs, as 
 a connecting-link between society and statesmanship, are of proved 
 utility, but their utility very largely depends upon the skill and judg- 
 ment with which they are managed ; if the tactics adopted at all savour 
 of inquisition, they are sure to fail. 
 
 As for the true explanation of the different fortunes that have waited 
 on the development of the club principle among Conservatives and 
 Liberals, it must be sought in the fundamental divergences between 
 the composition of the two parties, and the traditions, feelings, and 
 prejudices of their members. The Conservative is by nature a club- 
 bable creature, in the modern acceptation of the word. Liberals and 
 Conservatives each have a cachet of exclusiveness of their own ; but 
 the Conservative exclusiveness differs from the Liberal in this : that 
 it does not militate against — that, in fact, it rather ministers to — 
 freedom in club life. Proof of the fact is to be found in the existence 
 of the Carlton, the club of the Conservative party, in a sense in which 
 the Liberals have no club at all. Unlike the Reform, unlike Brooks's, 
 the Carlton is used equally by the official leaders, the patrician chiefs 
 of the part}', and by the rank and file of their followers. Great peers,
 
 SOCIETY AND POLITICS. 345 
 
 small squires, merchants, and traders meet together on a common 
 ground, and every Conservative has a club acquaintance — and, for the 
 most part, a club acquaintance only — with his accepted chieftains. 
 There is no such comprehensiveness or homogeneity as this about the 
 Liberal clubs. The ordinary members of the party make the Reform 
 their house of call — as do several hundreds of other gentlemen who 
 have no occupation in particular, and whose political views are con- 
 veniently colourless. The leaders of the party go to Brooks's. The 
 Carlton is, in fact, what it pretends to be — a purely politico-social 
 institution, the accepted rendezvous and head-quarters of the accredited 
 representatives of a party. The Reform Club lacks political unity among 
 its members, and the pervading consciousness of a political purpose. 
 On the other hand, the Liberal leaders receive their political followers 
 with hospitality and warmth at their private residences ; and, while 
 of club intercourse there may be less among the Liberals, of private 
 visiting and social hospitality — open house and friendly entertainment 
 — there is probably more. 
 
 Nor is it difficult to see why clubs exactly suit the genius of the 
 Conservative party. Modern Conservatism is successful precisely in 
 proportion as it is an alliance between the aristocratic and democratic 
 elements. The attitude of mind and bearing favourable for the per- 
 petuation of this alliance has long been cultivated among the Con- 
 servatives to a degree that was scarcely possible among the Liberals. 
 The typical Tory has been a large landowner, and if not a master of 
 foxhounds, a tolerably assiduous votary of the hunting-field. Circum- 
 stances have made it his part to ingratiate himself with his inferiors, 
 and unconsciously he has learned to study and exhibit in his own 
 person that air of well-bred condescension, of frank, unsupercilious 
 patronage, which answers so well with Englishmen in the bulk. There 
 could be no better kind of hereditary preparation for the mixed regime 
 of club life than this ; there could be no better opportunity of cheaply, 
 yet effectively, satisfying the social aspirations of political followers 
 than the Conservative club. The manner to which he has been born ; 
 the genial, hearty address, which seems to mean so much and really 
 means so little ; the bluff English courtesy which has been picked up, 
 or inherited from ancestors who picked it up, at the covert-side and 
 in daily conversations with farmers and labourers, serves its turn 
 admirably when it is reproduced, with the necessary modifications, in 
 Pall Mall. 
 
 As a social instrument used for political purposes, the salon can 
 scarcely be now said to fill a very definite place in England. English 
 political society has grown too large for its representatives to be con- 
 tained within the limits of a single drawing-room ; or it may be that 
 the very dimensions which society has attained have inspired English 
 ladies, who might, under other circumstances, have been dictatresses,
 
 346 ENGLAND. 
 
 with a profound impi'ession of the hopelessness of engaging in the 
 attempt to regulate so chaotic an empire. English ladies who are 
 capable of controlling a drawing-room have not ceased to exist, but, 
 with a very few exceptions, their gifts and powers are now exercised 
 in different areas. The best society in England, while possessing a 
 strong political infusion, is not exclusively political ; it is the object 
 of those who govern it to include in it representatives of all that is 
 distinguished in art, science, literature, war, and commerce. Even 
 Prime Ministers no longer confine their guests to those who are poli- 
 ticians merely, and the State dinners given on Her Majesty's birthday 
 and other occasions are graced by the presence of eminent artists, 
 authors, and philosophers. 
 
 It is, therefore, rather because the conditions of English society 
 have changed that the salon, in the sense in which it is usually spoken 
 of, has almost ceased to exist, than because no opportunities or induce- 
 ments are to be found to influence politics through society. When 
 Lady Palmerston died, in 1868, there passed away the great social 
 queen of her era, and she has had no successor. The extraordinary 
 popularity of Lord Palmerston was not a plant of sudden growth. On 
 the contrary, Lord Palmerston was for a long time extremely the 
 reverse of popular. He married, and a change took place. For most 
 of his popularity and much of his influence the husband was indebted 
 to the social tact and the salon of his wife. A little more than a 
 quarter of a century ago, Lord John Russell, on a memorable occasion, 
 dismissed Lord Palmerston from the Foreign Office. The exile was 
 short, but it was short only because, whoever ruled in Downing Street, 
 Lady Palmerston ruled in society. The world not merely sympathised 
 with Lord Palmerston as against Lord John Russell, it applauded 
 him ; and only a few days after the split in the Cabinet occurred, Lady 
 Palmerston gave a party, which may be remembered as historical, and 
 at which was present every person of political, social, or intellectual 
 position. The Times contained a complete list of the guests, under 
 the significant heading, " The Expelled Minister ;" and Mr. Disraeli, 
 who was of the company, declared to Lord Granville that he had 
 made a mistake when, a few nights previously, he had said, " There 
 was a Palmerston." 
 
 Lady Palmerston received not only at night, but in the day. All 
 her invitation-cards were written with her own hand. By consum- 
 mate skill she preserved for her assemblies the cachet of distinction ; 
 and every one who was invited to them regarded the invitation as an 
 honour, although he was not singular in the enjoyment of it. There 
 was no resort in London so interesting to the man of the world or so 
 useful to the politician. It was the one place where the pulse of the 
 world might be infallibly felt, and Ministers went there to ascertain 
 the true currents of popular and polite opinion. The place left vacant
 
 SOCIKTY AND POLITICS. 347 
 
 by the death of Lady Palmerston, more than one great lady has done 
 her best to fill. But their invitations are in the hands of, and are 
 issued, as the names of the invited are written, by secretaries, whips, 
 and clerks. Attendance at these assemblies is as much a business as 
 a pleasure. Almost the same thing may be said of many big poli- 
 tical dinners. The great leaders of the two chief political parties in 
 the State cannot, and will not, study the arts of social entertainment. 
 Dinners and receptions are given, but they are given — as invitations 
 to them are accepted — as matters of necessity and not of choice. 
 Nothing can be easier tban to exaggerate tbe influence exercised upon 
 political life, whether by clubs or salons. It is perfectly true that the 
 club, as already said, has answered better in the hands of Conser- 
 vatism than of Liberalism. But the inference is, not so much that the 
 successful organisation of Conservatism is the result of club life, as 
 that particular reasons conducive to club success exist among the 
 Conservatives and not among the Liberals. The first essential in the 
 development of club life is a supply of moderately young men, toler- 
 ably well provided with pocket money. These are the special posses- 
 sion of Conservatism, while, in addition to these, the Conservatives 
 have an element of social and political stability which the Liberals 
 have not. In the same way, to search for Lord Palmerston's popu- 
 larity and power in Lady Palmerston's drawing-room is to confuse 
 cause and effect. The period was one of political indifference, and 
 Cambridge House was a distinguished rendezvous. It was the former 
 of these circumstances which assisted the latter, not the latter which 
 created the former. So far as any permanent political leverage is con- 
 cerned, the age of salons is as completely gone as the age of chivalry. 
 Individual politicians may be amenable to social pressure, and some 
 stray irreconcilable may be bought off by what he considers social 
 promotion. But a new irreconcilable will at once disclose himself, 
 and the difficulty will only be averted, not removed. At the same 
 time, though the salon is no longer powerful, it may be useful. It 
 may be convenient to politicians of the same way of thinking that they 
 should know where to find each other at stated times, for the purposes 
 of confidential talk. This opportunity the salon may continue to 
 afford them ; but then so, for that matter, will the club. 
 
 Society's chief ailment of to-day is a want of any principle of 
 cohesion. The social area is too vast, the social coteries which it 
 comprises are too numerous, too mixed, and too ambitious, to be con- 
 trolled except by some power external to, and appreciably above, 
 themselves. Society may have always consisted of a congeries of 
 sets. But in the old days these sets either remained tranquilly 
 together, or else met each other in an orderly fashion upon special 
 occasions, like the respective couples in a well-regulated quadrille. 
 This has now ceased to be possible, because no social set is penetrated
 
 348 ENGLAND. 
 
 by the authority of some presiding individual. One social circle 
 comes into emulous contact with another. None owns any dominant 
 system of discipline, and the general result is a wild and disturbed 
 gyration, which is only invested with an appearance of order by the 
 recognition of the controlling power of royalty, as represented by the 
 Prince and Princess of Wales. Society, when their Royal Highnesses 
 are withdrawn from it for any length of time, may be compared to an 
 indiscriminate gathering of clocks and watches without the mean time 
 of Greenwich by which to set themselves. Marlborough House is the 
 universal goal of society — an institution that exercises an ascendancy, 
 and therefore insures a discipline and a method, which, if frequently 
 ignored and forgotten when the system is actively at work, is per- 
 ceived directly, and regretted proportionately, when Marlborough 
 House is closed.
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 CEOWN AND CROWD. 
 
 Disposition of the Multitude to acquiesce in Existing R6gime — Influence of the British 
 Constitution upon National Character — Attitude of Masses towards Monarch and 
 Ministers — Reception given in Public to Sovereign and Leading Statesmen of the 
 Day— Nevertheless New Influences at work among the Masses — The Organisation of 
 Public Opinion in Large Constituencies — The Caucus — Gradual Movements towards 
 Democracy — The Democracy ultimately supreme in our Political System — Effects 
 which this Supremacy must have on Statesmanship and Policy — " Employer and 
 Servant " Theory of Imperial Administration — Its Dangers, and how these Dangers 
 may be met — Checks upon the Democratic Tendency of the Times — General Diffu- 
 sion of the Aristocratic Principle — This illustrated in the Relation of (1) House of 
 Commons, (2) House of Lords, to Masses— The Sovereign — Influence of the Crown 
 on Politics, and Relation of Sovereign to Subject. 
 
 It is a much easier matter to give a general account of the place 
 occupied by the educated classes in regard to our political system than 
 to indicate precisely the relations existing between that system and 
 the multitude. The English masses are not indisposed to accept the 
 political opinion which is manufactured for them. In this, as in other 
 matters, they are, for the most part, creatures of habit, and as long 
 as the shoe does not pinch, they make no demand for political innova- 
 tion. They look, not to theories, but to facts. While work is plenti- 
 ful and wages are good, the British workman has not been accustomed 
 to trouble himself with the principles of statesmanship. In England, 
 unlike France and some other European countries, there is not present 
 to the mind of the ordinary citizen the apprehension of never-ending 
 changes in the political regime under which he lives. If he is the 
 conscious victim of abuses, he will, in the last resort, make a demand 
 for legislative remedies. After the long continuance of neglect on the 
 part of those in power of all which concerns him most, he will avail 
 himself, perhaps, of the machinery of an agitation which his superiors 
 will have done much to place in his hands, and which they will them- 
 selves have suggested. Thus it was that the riots preceding the 
 Reform Act of 1832 had their origin. In the same way the move- 
 ment which was the prelude to the Reform Act of thirty-five years 
 later, and which culminated in the breaking down of the Hyde Park 
 railings, would in all probability never have existed, had it not been 
 for the fact that reform was for many years antecedently the stalking-
 
 350 ENGLAND. 
 
 horse of parties, and that on this occasion its importance was insisted 
 on by every speaker on every Liberal platform. 
 
 What the English multitude require from the State is much what 
 they require from the private employers of their labour — they ask that 
 they shall be fairly treated, that they shall not be the victims of any 
 exceptional inferiority, disadvantage, or disqualification. Periodical 
 revolutions leave their impress upon the individual character of a 
 nation, and in a country in which dynastic and constitutional changes 
 are at any moment liable to occur, a habit of fickleness and sus- 
 picion will be generated in the people. But for the very reason 
 that the English masses themselves are not greatly occupied by or 
 interested in constitutional discussions, their political teachers and 
 rulers ought to be careful that constitutional issues should not be 
 raised. Whenever there is a discussion in Parliament as to whether 
 a particular act or policy is in conformity with constitutional law, so 
 far as any effect is produced upon the multitude at large, it can 
 scarcely be salutary. As far as the practical working of the Constitu- 
 tion goes, it depends, as financial credit depends, upon confidence. 
 So long as the English masses have confidence in the wisdom and 
 moderation of their statesmen, the cry for reorganising the Constitu- 
 tion will never be of much volume. If the study of history could at 
 all influence the feeling of the working classes towards the repre- 
 sentative of English monarchy, the result would probably not be in 
 the direction of loyalty. In the popular histories and in some of the 
 popular periodicals which circulate among the working classes, the 
 views given of monarchy and of other established institutions are 
 eminently unfavourable. Yet when the sovereign appears in public 
 the reception is one of the highest enthusiasm — the very men who a 
 few hours before may have given vent to sentiments positively seditious 
 are borne away on the tide of general feeling, and applaud the pageant 
 to the echo. 
 
 Let us suppose that her Majesty has to-day opened the session of 
 her Imperial Parliament, and that, as is sure to have been the case, 
 very many of her loyal lieges have assisted in some part or other of 
 the ceremony. Have there been any disloyal lieges ? Strolling 
 across the Green Park, after having witnessed the ceremony, one may 
 have encountered a moody-looking, malodorous pair, some of whose 
 criticisms on the monarchical principle are but too audible. One, at 
 ieast, of these scowling but perfectly harmless democrats the spectator 
 may have seen before to-day. His chin is rough and stubbly and of a 
 dirty blue colour, with a beard of some days' growth. He has no 
 linen visible. In his mouth is a short pipe, from which he discharges 
 jerky blasts of intolerable smoke; and as he leans across the iron 
 railings in converse with his companion, he points with the finger of 
 scornful menace in the direction of Buckingham Palace. The spectacle
 
 CROWN AND CROWD. 
 
 351 
 
 of the charity-girls and the Duke of York's boys, who have been 
 marched out to catch a glimpse of their Sovereign, incites him to 
 wrath. The words "mockery" and "despotism," "tyrant" and 
 " oppressor," " prince" and " flunkey," " reason," " humanity," and 
 " republic," drop at intervals from his lips. But where was he to be 
 seen a few hours ago, and what was he doing ? Conspicuous among 
 these demonstratively loyal subjects of Her Majesty, carried away by 
 that irresistible contagion of loyal enthusiasm which a great crowd 
 communicates, was this terrible republican, the democratic firebrand of 
 the discussion forum, the modern disciple of Marat and Tom Paine. 
 This is no exceptional experience. Whenever it is known that either 
 the Queen or, as Her Majesty's representatives, the Prince and 
 Princess of Wales are about to appear in public, a tremor of anticipa- 
 tory enthusiasm asserts its presence in the thoroughfares. Men, 
 women, and children gather in little knots and wait until the royal 
 carriage approaches. Frequently the interval of waiting is long. That 
 they do not mind. Be it summer or winter, at the risk of sunstroke 
 or in the certainty of getting drenched to the skin, the patient and 
 most loyal populace will not disperse until the carriage in which 
 monarchy is seated has driven past, and the national devotion to the 
 monarchical principle has expressed itself in a series of shouts that 
 rend the air. 
 
 Scarcely less impressive in its way is the public reception which, 
 especially on great occasions, is accorded to the English statesmen 
 whose names are household words, whether they are past or present 
 members of the Cabinet. The scene is Palace Yard, and there is a 
 great debate expected. Every minute the enclosure grows fuller and 
 fuller of cabs and carriages, and of masses of enthusiastic and excited 
 spectators as well. They form an avenue in front of the entrance into 
 the great hall, and they greet their favourite statesmen with volleys 
 of applause. The rank and file of the representatives of the people 
 pass without general recognition until some statesman, whose person 
 is as familiar as his career, makes his appearance, and he is greeted 
 with salvoes of acclamation. There is nothing very noticeable about 
 the great man. He is of the middle height ; he stoops a little ; he has 
 a lightish beard and whiskers, which are just tinged with grey ; he 
 wears spectacles, and he walks with rather a quick step, looking 
 neither to the right nor left. As he passes he bows more than once ; 
 and who shall say that the sound of the ringing plaudits does not fall 
 pleasantly on his ears and convey a comfortable hint to his anxious 
 soul ! He is, perhaps, not exactly what would be called a heaven- 
 born statesman. He is not an orator like Canning ; he does not dis- 
 play the skill of a Palmerston in fathoming the secrets of diplomacy. 
 But he has the confidence of his countrymen, who know that he will 
 make no great mistake, and that their main interests are safe in his
 
 352 ENGLAND. 
 
 keeping. Presently there is another arrival. He has just left his 
 carriage, and as he proceeds bravely to run the gauntlet of the crowd 
 the face of a lady looks out from the brougham. His step is light and 
 firm ; his face pale as death, but strong and resolute. He is a man 
 who has never quailed before an angry crowd ; as a politician he has 
 always had his foot in the stirrup, and as a speaker has always carried 
 his lance in rest. But, in truth, he has seldom had occasion to dread 
 the clamouring of an angry mob. He has been the people's hero, 
 and the sounds which have always greeted him have been those that 
 testified an unshakable belief in his genius and his virtues. It is a 
 curious, even a menacing, conflict of noises which awaits him now. 
 There are cheers and there are groans ; there are hisses and there are 
 cheers again. He walks very swiftly ; no muscle quivers ; the only 
 change visible in his countenance is that the pallor of his cheeks 
 grows deadlier and his figure more erect. By what curious fatality 
 is it that this statesman — who has been before the public for half 
 a century, and during most of that time has been among those 
 who share the responsibility for the conduct of the Queen's Govern- 
 ment — is followed by the veteran and victorious chief who has 
 been during nearly the whole of this period his peculiar rival and 
 special foe ? By what strange chance does he, this hero of the 
 fiercest parliamentary fights which, since 1832, the century has seen, 
 on this afternoon, above all others, select as his approach to the 
 illustrious chamber in which he has won himself a place, the great 
 hall before whose portals are ranged the outside critics of parlia- 
 mentary statesmanship ? 
 
 Significant as such scenes as those which have just been described 
 are, and not more general than deep as is the belief in the existing 
 order, new forces have begun unmistakably to assert themselves in 
 the popular mind. On all sides there may now be witnessed what 
 may best be spoken of as the organisation of popular opinion. Tli6 
 spread of education, tho extension of the newspaper press, the multi- 
 plication of lectures, and of a variety of agencies for bringing the 
 working classes together, all tend to make them think more upon the 
 great questions of contemporary politics, and to cast about for new 
 ways of giving effect to the opinions at which they thus arrive. One 
 of the results of this state of things is seen in a tendency to push 
 institutions to an extreme. Successive acts of parliamentary reform, 
 culminating in household suffrage, have imbued the masses with a 
 strong sense of political power. They have come to realise more 
 than they ever did before the truth that parliamentary institu- 
 tions should be representative in something more than name. This 
 movement is one which is really altogether new. It is, perhaps, the 
 first in a series of great changes of which no one now living will wit- 
 ness the last. " It is too soon," wrote Mr. Bagehot, in his introduc-
 
 CROWN AND CROWD. 353 
 
 tion* to the most useful and practical work on the Constitution in the 
 English language, " as yet to attempt to estimate the effect of the 
 Reform Act of 1867. The Reform Act of 1832 did not for many years 
 disclose its full consequences, and a writer in 1836 would have been 
 sure to be mistaken in them. A new Constitution dees not produce 
 its full effect as long as all its subjects were reared under an old 
 Constitution, as long as its statesmen were trained by that old Con- 
 stitution. It is not really tested till it comes to be worked by states- 
 men and among a people neither of whom are guided by a different 
 experience." Mr. Bagehot proceeds to illustrate tbis truth in an 
 interesting and suggestive manner. The change of generation, he 
 remarks, is as powerful as any change in political machinery or insti- 
 tutions. The entire spirit of politics was changed by the death of 
 Lord Palmerston and the disappearance from the stage of his con- 
 temporaries. "All through the period between 1832 and 1865, the 
 pre-'32 statesmen, Lord Derby, Lord Russell, Lord Palmerston, 
 retained great power; Lord Palmerston to the last retained great 
 prohibitive power In consequence, at his death, a new genera- 
 tion all at once started into life ; the pre-'32 all at once died out." In 
 the same strain this acute and luminous writer goes on to remark that 
 until latterly the nominal constituency was not the real constituency ; 
 that the mass of the ten-pound householders did not really form their 
 own opinions, and did not exact from their representatives an obedience 
 to these opinions ; that they were, in fact, guided in their judgment by 
 the better-educated classes ; that they preferred representatives from 
 these classes, and gave their representatives much license. 
 
 In proportion as political opinion in the constituencies becomes 
 organised, the members of Parliament elected by those constituencies 
 will become more and more their direct representatives. It does not, 
 indeed, necessarily follow that when the new system has made its full 
 effects felt, these representatives will be mere delegates. Constituencies 
 will always be attracted in many instances by men of great parts, and 
 will allow such politicians in whom their confidence is reposed much 
 independent liberty of action. Prominent among all the associations 
 for the organising of opinion among the political electorate is what has 
 come to be known as the Caucus. f " The aim of the Caucus," says 
 
 * See Introduction to "The English Constitution." Ed. 1878. 
 
 t The word "Caucus" is defined in Worcester's English Dictionary, published in Bos- 
 ton, Massachusetts, as a meeting of citizens or electors held for the purpose of nomina- 
 ting candidates for public offices, or for making arrangements to secure their election. 
 It is alow word, and supposed to be a corruption — "calkers'," "caulkers'," meeting — a 
 term applied to electioneering meetings held in a part of Boston where all the ship 
 business was carried on. Dr. Charles Mackay suggests, in a letter published in the Pall. 
 Mall Gazette, January 24, 1879, that the true root of the word is to be found in the 
 Celtic "comh" (pronounced "co") — a prefix implying concord or agreement with — 
 and " cuis," signifying cause, affair, concern, business, procedure, &c. From this comes 
 "co-cuis," or "caucus" — a meeting of those who agree with the business in hand, what- 
 ever it may be — a packed meeting, in fact. 
 
 A A
 
 ;>.)± ENGLAND. 
 
 the statesman who, more than any other person, is qualified to expound 
 its true ohject and character, Mr. Chamberlain, "is essentially demo- 
 cratic : it is to provide for the full and efficient system of representa- 
 tion of the will of the majority, and for its definite expression in the 
 government of the people." First let it be briefly explained what the 
 Caucus is. Every parliamentary borough is divided into a certain 
 number of municipal wards. In each of these wards a meeting of all 
 the members of the party is annually convened, with every possible 
 provision to give it publicity and importance. The electors so brought 
 together choose, first, their representatives to the general committee, 
 the " Six Hundred " or " Four Hundred," as it may be called ; second, 
 a smaller number of representatives to the executive committee, con- 
 sisting of perhaps twenty to fifty members ; and lastly, a ward com- 
 mittee, which acts as a canvassing committee at parliamentary elections, 
 and which selects the candidates and controls the policy of the party 
 in the ward at municipal contests. This last committee is as large as 
 possible, and includes all who are willing to serve. It will be seen 
 that the constituency itself elects all the committees, including the 
 executive, which is therefore in direct communication with and respon- 
 sible to the electors. In America the electors choose the primary com- 
 mittees, the primary committees in turn choose the general committee 
 or Caucus, the Caucus chooses an executive, the executive a sub- 
 committee, and the sub-committe a " boss " or chairman, who is thus 
 as far as possible removed from the original electorate. It is hardly 
 necessary to point out the importance of the distinction thus established 
 between the English and American practice. 
 
 America is the home of the Caucus, and those who support the 
 institution do not deny the fact that in America its existence coincides 
 with grave political mischiefs. But they point to the facts already 
 stated as showing that the Caucus in America differs materially from 
 the English organisation, and they deny that, even in its American 
 form, the Caucus is the sole or main cause of the evils complained of. 
 Thus it is urged that if men of inferior capacity or doubtful character 
 find seats in the House of Representatives, the same thing is unfor- 
 tunately true of other representative assemblies, and that if a prize- 
 fighter once represented New York, a member of the same profession 
 not long ago represented a borough in Yorkshire. Again, as Mr. 
 Chamberlain pointed out in an able article on the subject in the 
 Fortnightly Review for November, 1878, the very fact that the greater 
 issues of politics have long ago been settled in America — to say nothing 
 of the absorbing passion for material wealth and well-being — may 
 explain why many men of education refuse their share of public duty. 
 " A nation," he writes, " which has no Land Question, no Church 
 Question, no Education Question, and no Foreign Policy, must pur- 
 chase its advantages at the price of less-sustained and vital interest in
 
 CROWN AND CROWD. 3j5 
 
 its legislative work." Further, it is shown, by way of reply to the 
 criticisms upon the Caucus derived from transatlantic experience, that 
 " America is foremost among the nations of the world in respect to 
 the wide-spread intelligence of its citizens, the rapid development of 
 its resources, the general respect for law and order, and the universal 
 acceptance of the principles of liberty and freedom." If, it is con- 
 tended, all this is compatible with the Caucus, surely the much- 
 execrated machinery cannot be so very bad. 
 
 Two remarks about the Caucus may be made with confidence. It 
 cannot be denied that it is an extension of the principles of party 
 government, and that it tends to make the political power and wish 
 of the individual elector more directly felt. As Mr. Chamberlain has 
 said in the words quoted above, the Caucus is an instrument for 
 expressing and giving effect to the will of the majority. Therefore, it 
 means the subordination of the will of the individual to the will of the 
 many. But that is what our political party system involves already. 
 Again, ours is the age of association, and the Caucus is simply an 
 association of ratepayers, who are parliamentary electors, to secure a 
 parliamentary representative who is fairly in accord with their views. 
 They conceive, and experience seems to confirm the view, that they 
 can secure this with more certainty by collective than by isolated and 
 individual action. Now comes the objection — that the interest of the 
 great bulk of the electors in the Caucus will soon flag, and that the 
 reins will pass into the hands of half a dozen zealous workers, who 
 w r ill make politics an art of which they will be the sole masters. As 
 Mr. Chamberlain and other champions of the system point out, this 
 anticipation depends for its fulfilment on the hypothesis that the 
 interest of the majority will fail in the manner predicted. As a matter 
 of fact, we are told there is no reason to believe the sinister prophecy. 
 In our chapter on Municipal Government, the growth of an intense 
 spirit of citizenship in our great towns has been traced. The men 
 who interest themselves in municipal business are the men who will 
 also interest themselves in politics ; and to suppose that a sudden 
 paralysis is likely to overcome the energies of the inhabitants of these 
 great centres of industry, is to suppose that a process which has now 
 been steadily and swiftly going on for years will be suddenly and 
 decisively arrested. 
 
 Nor is it entirely reasonable to speak of the Caucus as over-riding 
 the public opinion of the constituency in which it exists. The Caucus 
 is public opinion — not its manufactory, but its expression. It is, oi 
 course, conceivable that at particular times and seasons the Caucus 
 may find that it has got out of accord with the public opinion which 
 surrounds it. In this case its decrees and deliberations are an empty 
 farce, and it will be without practical authority until it has again 
 brought itself into harmony with the majority whose organ it is. The 
 
 a a 2
 
 850 ENGLAND. 
 
 Caucus is thus, at least, representative ; occasionally it may be 
 dominated by the superior will and opinion of individuals possessed 
 of exceptional force of character ; but, then, so are parties, and com- 
 munities, and states. And it is certainly the most genuinely repre- 
 sentative variety of political organisation which bas ever been 
 invented. 
 
 The Conservatives have attempted in some borougbs to imitate the 
 organisation of their opponents, but hitberto without much success. 
 The traditions and practice of Conservatism, indeed, are almost 
 antagonistic to a democratic organisation such as that which we have 
 described, and at the same time the need of any such system is less, 
 because habits of discipline and subordination are more common in 
 the Tory than in the Liberal ranks. What the Caucus is to Liberalism, 
 that the action of political clubs, the deference paid to the wish ot 
 local coteries in the selection of parliamentary candidates, are to Con- 
 servatism. Further, it must be remembered that the Conservatives 
 form a party which is always, more or less, organised on certain 
 unmistakable social and constitutional lines. The Church, the aristo- 
 cracy, the great interests of the country, are each of them organising 
 agencies with the Conservatives. It is only natural that a greater 
 tendency to individualism should be developed among the Liberals 
 than among their opponents, and this tendency has resulted in the 
 multiplication of Liberal candidates on the eve of a contested election. 
 Hence, there has been a division of the party in constituencies which 
 frequently, when the existence of a Liberal majority was an undoubted 
 fact, has been instrumental in bringing about a Conservative victory. 
 The Caucus may not be liked, it may even be dreaded. Its associa- 
 tions are as unwelcome as its name. It may be most undesirable that 
 any body, even though composed of the electors themselves, should 
 stand between the member of Parliament and his constituency. But 
 whether un-English or not, the Caucus exists and increases. At the 
 present time the Liberal party in the majority of the urban con- 
 stituencies is organised on the Birmingham model, and the number 
 is constantly growing. It may be safely asserted that whatever 
 other results may follow, the bulk of the electors having once been 
 taken into confidence and consulted in the management of the party 
 and choice of candidates, will never again consent to go back to the 
 old system of management by cliques and coteries. Under the 
 circumstances, the only practical course seems to be to accept it as a 
 perhaps unpalatable but certainly an inevitable condition of a demo- 
 cratic age. 
 
 Let us now trace this democratic principle of our time a little further, 
 and watch its influence on the relations with the highest question of 
 imperial policy. For good or for evil, it seems we must receive the 
 democratic view of our national polic} r , not as that which is now estab-
 
 CROWN AND CROWD. 857 
 
 lished, but as that which will some day or other be established. This 
 conception is very simple, and may be readily stated. According to 
 it, just as the individual is the unit of the town ward, so is the town 
 ward of the town council, and so is tbe town council of the Imperial 
 Parliament. Parliament, ward, council, citizen — these are the chief 
 notes in the democratic scale, the graduated series by the successive 
 stages of which we shall ultimately arrive at the highest sovereign 
 expression of the national will. This fact, the ultimate supremacy of 
 the people — that is, of the majority, the separate parts in the fabric 
 of their supremacy being those which have been already described — 
 is not unrecognised by contemporary statesmen. A very few years 
 ago, a Minister of State, who was then Foreign Secretary, in address- 
 ing a deputation waiting to learn the policy of the Government on 
 foreign affairs of great moment, spoke of himself and his colleagues as 
 u waiting for instructions from their employers " — the people. This 
 expression of Lord Derby's has been much criticised, but whether 
 felicitous or not, it must be said to represent the actual facts of the 
 case with an undoubted degree of truth. The executive has no appeal 
 from the House of Commons, and the House of Commons is chosen 
 by the ratepayers. What will be the power of these when a new 
 generation of electors has arisen, and a generation whose minds are 
 educated, and whose organisation, whether by the Caucus or any 
 other instrumentality, is complete, is the great problem of the future. 
 We live under a constitutional monarchy, which now fears no shocks 
 of revolution ; which is absolutely impotent to pass a law, or to keep 
 in place a minister against whom the masses have unanimously 
 declared ; which is for all practical purposes controlled by the demo- 
 cracy. This view of the English Constitution will not be found in 
 any of our philosophic histories, but it is none the less the true view, 
 and the view which English ministers must henceforward recognise, 
 even though they do not care to proclaim it in words. 
 
 There are several reasons why the condition of things which has 
 now been described may be anticipated with comparatively little 
 apprehension. Logically, the consequence of the master and servant 
 theory, as it has been called, which Lord Derbyenunciated, would be, 
 as an able writer* has put it, the submission of all important ques- 
 tions to the popular vote. "If," he says, "Government is not to 
 direct opinion, but simply to register its decrees, then steps should be 
 taken for enabling public opinion to pronounce its decrees in the hear- 
 ing of all men Upon this theory there should have been some 
 
 means of removing Lord Derby's doubts by the method of plebiscite, 
 and the country should have been asked to vote upon some proposi- 
 tion, raising substantially the issue whether England should defend 
 
 * Mr. H. D. Traill, " The Democracy and Foreign Policy," Nineteenth Century, Nov. 
 
 1878.
 
 358 ENGLAND. 
 
 the integrity and independence of Turkey against invasion by Russia." 
 But the master and servant theory, though fundamentally true, will 
 never involve a precarious appeal of this kind. There are as many checks 
 upon the practice of the theory as upon constitutional monarchy itself. 
 Some of them are to be found in the temper and some in the institu- 
 tions of Englishmen. A nation which has been trained during cen- 
 turies in the school of deference and subordination, and which has 
 become habituated to a belief in the good faith and capacity of its 
 public men, does not in a moment, or indeed at all, throw off its 
 ideas and ways in a sense of elation at its newly realised sovereignty. 
 If it is henceforth to be more self-governed than ever, it has been 
 undergoing for ages the education which of all others would best 
 qualify it for that complete self-government. There is no danger of 
 household suffrage, even when it includes the agricultural labourers, 
 reducing society in England to its primitive atoms ; and though the 
 basis of government may have been broadened, there will not be as a 
 consequence any pervading anarchy in administration. The greater 
 the multitude, the greater the influence of the individual ; and because 
 the English electorate and the English proletariat are convertible 
 terms, the authority of the English statesman will not be gone. It is, 
 indeed, conceivable — for this is the characteristic of all democracies — 
 that the English constituencies may be more liable than hitherto to be 
 carried away by sudden gusts of passion which sweep all before them, 
 and it is precisely these impulses which the statesman will have either 
 to utilise or to control. But because some of the forces with which 
 he has to work are new, the influence of statesmanship will not be less 
 than it has always been in England. More insight, more courage, 
 more candour may be wanted, and when these qualities are forth- 
 coming the authority of the individual statesman and his colleagues 
 will still be paramount. 
 
 The attribute last named, candour, suggests one or two important 
 considerations in the theory and practice of English statesmanship 
 under the new democratic regime. The master and servant theory 
 need not be so interpreted that it requires the perpetual reference of 
 the policy of the minister to the masses for their approval. If it is 
 the fact that the masses are the final arbiters of the position, it must 
 be desirable that ministers should boldly recognise the truth. What, 
 then, is the important question, are the arts by which the confidence 
 und goodwill of the masses are to be won ? As were the ten-pound 
 bouseholders, so are the householders who are only ratepayers. But 
 this, though the preponderating, is only one of several elements in our 
 modern democracy. To the working men must be added that class 
 which socially takes precedence of all others, and which is aristocratic 
 and plutocratic in about equal degrees : the numerous class of pro- 
 fessional men ; the commercial class, which will, of course, include the
 
 CROWN AND CROWD. 059 
 
 employers of labour. Here, then, we have a variety which is itself a 
 guarantee of permanence, and at the same time that there is a distinct 
 interfusion of orders — it being very often difficult to say where one 
 class or interest commences and another ends — there is also a unity of 
 upward-tending aspiration. Each inferior class, in other words, takes 
 more or less of its colour, wishes, views, from the class above it, and 
 thus the English Constitution is indeed that of a democracy, but a 
 democracy with a distinctly aristocratic bias. Hence there is every 
 reason to believe that we have a twofold guarantee of national stability: 
 first, that mutual association of ranks, with a tendency unswervingly 
 felt in one direction ; secondly, the docility and enthusiasm of the 
 working classes themselves, if only they are dealt with in a suitable 
 manner and by rulers whom they instinctively trust. All these con- 
 siderations must be borne in mind if we are either to formulate or 
 accept that master and servant doctrine of imperial administration 
 which has just been spoken of. It is essential not to be misled by 
 false analogies, but to remember that as is the servant — the governing 
 class — so in the long run will be the master — the governed. 
 
 But in proportion as this statement is recognised as true it is neces- 
 sary to insist on the fact that a certain line of treatment must be pur- 
 sued by those in whom the administration of affairs is vested. If our 
 constitution be really democratic, yet not devoid of the leaven of 
 aristocracy to which we have already referred, it is clear that our 
 statesmen must not only mould their policy according to the exigencies 
 of the case, but must attempt its execution in such a way as to con- 
 ciliate the approval and to enlist the support of the multitude, to 
 whom in the last resort the appeal lies. The methods which were 
 perfectly applicable to the conduct of national affairs before the Reform 
 Acts of 1832 and 1867, when government was, as we have seen, a 
 stately game played by the patrician powers of the kingdom, are 
 impossible now. The people have entered into partnership with the 
 aristocracy, and they must be treated as partners. It is quite possible 
 that in specific departments of statesmanship — foreign policy, for 
 instance — the new system may involve great difficulties. Our states- 
 men having to reckon with a force which exists, as it exists in England, 
 in no other country in Europe, may find themselves at an obvious dis- 
 advantage in the hour of international crisis, as compared with the 
 chancellor of the Russian or the German Empire. Rut it argues a 
 very imperfect knowledge of the English character to suppose that if, 
 at anxious moments like these, the supreme direction of affairs is in 
 the hands of men who have the confidence of the masses — men of 
 whom Lord Palmerston has been the most conspicuous example during 
 the past fifty years — the democracy will claim to act upon that master 
 and servant doctrine in which so much of peril has been discerned. 
 There is surely more of permanent— less of mere frothy and evanescent
 
 8G0 ENGLAND. 
 
 — enthusiasm, which the statesman may regard as the most precious 
 of all political capital, in the English people than among any other 
 nation of the world. But it is only placed at the disposal of those 
 who deal openly and fairly with the people, and whom, in return, the 
 people delight to trust. Has this mode of dealing with the masses in 
 these grave matters ever been fairly tried and failed ? The democracy 
 may be as mischievous an impediment in the way of a great foreign 
 policy as it has been taunted with being, if approached in a spirit of 
 selfish timidity, temporising vacillation, or mistimed reticence. Indig- 
 nation meetings are held, demonstrations are organised, agitations are 
 set on foot, the chiefs of the Government complain that they are 
 paralysed by a factious opposition. But may they not be in some 
 degree responsible for this opposition ? Is it not possible that they 
 may in the first instance have been wanting in the resolution — fearful 
 to hazard the compactness of their majority — to tell the people what 
 is the expenditure and what the military measures indispensable, in 
 their opinion, to uphold the dignity and strength of the empire ? Is 
 it unreasonable to suppose that the minister representing to the 
 English people the qualities identified with Palmerston, who should 
 rise in his place in Parliament and say that such-and-such taxation 
 was necessary to ensure a minimum of naval and military efficiency, 
 would find no reluctance to supply him with the funds ? Or that the 
 minister who should insist upon the danger of prematurely disclosing 
 confidential negotiations would not fail to carry his point ? The real 
 peril would seem to come not so much from the fact that the democracy 
 is the ultimate master of the position, as from the chance that this fact 
 may not be sufficiently recognised. 
 
 The very working of the English Constitution is in itself a powerful 
 force for the education and the discipline of the masses. For practical 
 purposes this Constitution must, as Mr. Bagehot has well pointed out, 
 be divided, not into the three estates of the realm, not into judicial, 
 executive, or legislative departments, but into two portions, the digni- 
 fied part, at the head of which is the Queen, and the efficient part, at 
 the head of which is the Prime Minister. The sovereign, says Mr. 
 Bagehot, is the fountain of honour, but the Treasury is the source of 
 business. Inasmuch, however, as the Prime Minister's tenure of office 
 depends on his majority in the House of Commons, it is clear that the 
 representatives of the people, and in the last resort the constituencies 
 who elect them, are supreme in that portion of the Constitution to 
 which has been applied the epithet efficient. The Cabinet is thus a 
 committee for the administration of the empire, whose members have 
 for the time being the confidence of that popular assembly, which itself 
 is the mirror and embodiment of the popular will. Hence there is an 
 interchange of influence between the House of Commons and the mul- 
 titude outside, which is its creator. As the speeches made in the
 
 CROWN AND CROWD. 361 
 
 House reflect national opinion, so do the debates which take place in 
 that House educate the national mind. Conscious of their power to 
 control the action of the Cabinet, and to regenerate the elective legis- 
 lature, the constituencies often read, and sometimes digest, the speeches 
 made at Westminster, and reported for their benefit in the newspapers. 
 There is thus no divorce between the active current of a people's life 
 and the political life of its legislators under a Cabinet system of govern- 
 ment, the Cabinet being dependent on the popular Chamber. Undei 
 the presidential system the conditions are exactly reversed, and "a 
 nation has, except at the electing moment, no influence : it has not 
 the ballot box before it ; its virtue is gone, and it must wait till its 
 instant of despotism again returns. It is not invited to form an 
 opinion like a nation under a Cabinet government ; nor is it instructed 
 like such a nation. There are, doubtless, debates in the legislature, 
 but they are prologues without a play. There is nothing of a catas- 
 trophe about them ; you cannot turn out the Government." * 
 
 While thus in one sense it may be said that as a result of its struc- 
 ture the English Constitution is more democratic, inasmuch as it gives 
 the masses more direct power over the action of the legislature, than 
 that of the American Kepublic, the conditions of this structure also 
 ensure a steady and continuous exercise of influences, which if they 
 are not aristocratic are at least anti-democratic, upon the multitude. 
 At the present time the composition of the House of Commons is more 
 dissimilar, perhaps, than it ever was before from the House of Lords. 
 It is plutocratic rather than aristocratic, but the tendency in England 
 is for plutocracy to assume more and more of an aristocratic com- 
 plexion. Add to this that the House of Lords is being perpetually 
 recruited from men whose presence is the most distinctive feature in the 
 House of Commons — men of lowly origin who have acquired position 
 and money by their exertions and talents, by success in commerce and 
 trade, and enough will have been said to show that however marked 
 the contrast between the two chambers, there will, from the necessities 
 of the case, always be a gradual approximation between them. It is 
 the more necessary to bear this in mind, because, as we have already 
 seen, the political opinion of the working classes is becoming more 
 and more organised, and we may at any moment expect to witness an 
 accentuation of the differences that exist between the personality and 
 the prerogative of the two Houses, or between certain sections of the 
 members of those Houses. We must never forget that the force of 
 repulsion is accompanied by a compensating force of attraction, and 
 that while the working men and artisans are intent upon securing 
 direct representation for their interests at Westminster, these repre- 
 sentatives, when they have been returned to Parliament, will come 
 within the circle of influences more or less the reverse of popular. It 
 * « The English Constitution," p. 21.
 
 3G2 ENGLAND. 
 
 is this fusion of influences and classes, go where we may, in social or 
 political life, in the market-place or the assembly, in the club or at the 
 dinner-table, which is the guarantee of our political stability and our 
 security against revolutionary changes. We have, in a word, what 
 would be the most democratic Constitution in the world, were the 
 democracy itself practically to assert its sovereign power, working in 
 the most aristocratic manner. 
 
 Lastly, we come to the consideration of the relations in which the 
 Crown stands towards the multitude on the one hand, and the execu- 
 tive directly nominated by the multitude on the other. According to 
 the letter of the English Constitution, the Crown and the executive 
 are convertible terms. According to the theory of the Constitution, 
 tbe Sovereign can exercise of his or her own accord a variety of 
 powers, any one of which would precipitate a revolution. When, in 
 1871, purchase in the army was abolished, the Army Bill becoming 
 law immediately after the exercise of an act of prerogative, there was 
 great and general astonishment. " But," says Mr. Bagehot, " this is 
 nothing to what the Queen can do by law without consulting Parlia- 
 ment. Not to mention other things, she could disband tbe army (by 
 law she cannot engage more than a certain number of men, but she is 
 not obliged to engage any men) ; she could dismiss all the officers, 
 from the general commanding-in-chief downwards ; she could dismiss 
 all the sailors too ; she could sell off all our ships of war and all our 
 naval stores ; she could make a peace by the sacrifice of Cornwall, 
 and begin a war for the conquest of Brittany. She could make every 
 citizen in the United Kingdom, male and female, a peer ; she could 
 make every parish in tbe United Kingdom a university ; she could 
 dismiss most of tbe civil servants ; she could pardon all offenders. 
 In a word, the Queen could, by prerogative, upset all the action of 
 civil government within the Government ; could disgrace the nation 
 by a bad war or peace ; and could, by disbanding our forces, whether 
 land or sea, leave us defenceless against foreign nations." 
 
 If we contrast with the theoretical powers of the Sovereign those 
 actually exercised in the relations between the monarch and the 
 monarch's ministers, the facts may be put in a very few worde. It 
 is for the Sovereign to know the policy which ministers may be exe- 
 cuting or deliberating, and to exercise, if she so desires, the right of 
 encouraging, counselling, warning. The choice of its ministers is the 
 privilege of the Crown, but this choice can only be exercised within 
 certain narrow limits. Practically, the constituencies decide who the 
 Premier shall be, and the Premier selects his colleagues in accordance 
 with the political exigencies of the time. But though the Sovereign 
 does not possess, or does not actively exercise, the power of direct 
 political initiative, she has immense political influence, and is charged 
 with grave political duties. Here, again, we have another illustration
 
 CROWN AND CROWD. 3G3 
 
 of the remark that where there is knowledge there will be power. 
 The Sovereign whose mind is a storehouse of political history and 
 precedents necessarily affects, and frequently in a very important 
 degree, the action of successive generations of her advisers. More- 
 over, the Sovereign is the head not only of the Government, but of 
 the society of the realm. The English Court is still the greatest 
 social institution in the country ; the arts of the courtier are up to 
 this day diligently studied and assiduously practised. In a com- 
 munity dominated, as the English community is, by the aristocratic 
 principle, it is inevitable that the Sovereign should always have much 
 power. A constitutional hereditary monarchy may sometimes be 
 compared to the presidency of a republic, but in reality it is endowed 
 with attributes generically distinct. So long as society and politics 
 act and react on each other, the authority of the Sovereign will never 
 become a fiction or a dead letter. 
 
 But independently of the official duties of the Sovereign, and the 
 political power of which, as a consequence of her exalted station, she 
 is the depositary, the Crown is the symbol of a national unity, the 
 force of which is deeply felt by the masses. Monarchy is a strong 
 government in proportion as it is an intelligible government. It is 
 not an abstraction, it is a concrete embodiment of power. When 
 the English multitude gazes upon its Sovereign it is conscious that it 
 beholds an august personification of the principle of its rule. This is 
 not the only way in which the existing Constitution appeals vividly to 
 the imagination. "A family on the throne," writes Mr. Bagehot, 
 " is an interesting idea also. It brings down the fruits of sovereignty 
 
 to the level of petty life To state the matter shortly : 
 
 Royalty is a government in which the attention of the nation is con- 
 centrated on one person doing interesting actions. A republic is a 
 government on which that attention is divided between many who are 
 all doing uninteresting actions. Accordingly, so long as the human 
 heart is strong and the human reason weak, royalty will be strong 
 because it appeals to diffused feelings, and republics weak because 
 they appeal to the understanding." These are the main practical 
 elements in the strength of the English monarchy. It is a great 
 political and a great social force, because it accords with the genius 
 of the English people and the feelings of human nature itself.
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 OFFICIAL ENGLAND. 
 
 The Great Offices of State— Their External Aspect— Their Internal Management- 
 History of an Official Paper— The Colonial Office — The India Office — The Foreign 
 Office— Board of Trade — The Treasury — Privy Council Office — Business done at 
 Privy Council — The Cabinet— Mutual Relations of Cabinet Ministers — Cabinet Pro- 
 cedure — -General View of Life of Minister of State — Nou-official Correspondence 
 received by Members of the Government. 
 
 No more ambitious pile of buildings bas been added to the capital of 
 the empire than that which meets the gaze of the spectator as he 
 ■walks down Whitehall. On the right-hand side, as he goes in tbe 
 direction of the Houses of Parliament, he will see successively the 
 offices of the Treasury and the Privy Council office, an old building 
 with a new and imposing facade, and a grand block of stately struc- 
 tures which comprise under one roof the Home, Colonial, Foreign, 
 and India Offices. By the side of these the official residences of tbe 
 Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer, in Downing Street, 
 present but a mean appearance. Even Downing Street itself — that 
 historic site which has represented the great prize in a long series of 
 political struggles — threatens to disappear, and it is pi-obable that 
 before another fifty years have passed, not one of those houses whicb, 
 less than a century ago, sufficed for the conduct of nearly the entire 
 business of the State, will be left standing. By that time we shall 
 probably have a material addition made to the group of edifices in 
 which tbe -offices above named are domiciled, designed upon a scale 
 not less magnificent, and concentrated, without break or interruption, 
 within one and the same august precinct. 
 
 What, it may be asked, is the nature of the business transacted 
 witbin these buildings, and what its routine ? What are (he stages 
 of administration which may be successively observed in tbe dttlerent 
 departments of the structure ? How is the influence of the outer 
 world made known in the official penetralia ? and how are the decrees 
 fashioned which, emanating from an area of at most a few acres, are 
 transmitted to every quarter of an empire which is a synonym for 
 civilization ? In endeavouring to give an answer to these questions 
 it may be remarked at tbe outset that there is one type of manage- 
 ment to which the administration of the different great offices of State
 
 OFFICIAL ENGLAND. 
 
 3G5 
 
 generally conforms. That it is more closely adhered to in^ some 
 departments than in others necessarily follows from the kind of 
 business transacted in each. In giving priority to the Colonial Office 
 and the conduct of its affairs we are guided by a wish to present the 
 reader with what may be called a pattern of the way in which, in an 
 office divided into several distinct sections, the business of the nation 
 is done. No department is so suitable for an illustration as this, 
 because within it is transacted every sort of official and administrative 
 business. Independently of the specially difficult relations between 
 the mother country and its dependencies, those dependencies have to 
 be advised or directed on all subjects — foreign affairs, international 
 and domestic law, finance, public works — in short, the whole duty of 
 government. 
 
 Let it be supposed, then, that the despatches and official letters, 
 both from England and other parts of the world, are pouring in 
 during the hours of the early morning. It is at the Registry Office 
 that these documents first come within the official horizon. Here 
 there are assistant clerks who mechanically open everything in the 
 letter and despatch-bags which is obviously of a more or less official 
 character. It is not their business to make themselves accurately 
 acquainted with the contents. They are expected to do nothing more 
 than to gain just such a general idea of their purport and character 
 as will enable them to get a title for the official docket of the corre- 
 spondence. To this correspondence is attached, by the Registry 
 Office -clerks, a large paper for the writing of minutes, on which the 
 day of receipt is inscribed. The second stage in the history of our 
 official paper is its transit from the Registry Office to the head of one 
 of the departments into which the entire organisation is divided ; 
 these departments, in the case of the Colonial Office, being, with the 
 single exception of that which deals with general business, arranged 
 on geographical principles. Having, then, been duly entered in the 
 Registry Book, the despatch or letter is forwarded to the principal 
 clerk at the head of the department to which it immediately refers. 
 This official examines it with a view of seeing, in the first instance, 
 whether it is of an urgent character, demanding precedence over 
 other business, and whether it requires for its proper comprehension 
 any reference to previous transactions. In the last case he at once 
 places it in the hands of one of his juniors, with instructions to 
 collect, and, if necessary, to make a precis of, the correspondence 
 containing the history of those transactions ; or if the task is one of 
 particular nicety, or calling for the employment of special knowledge 
 of precedents, the departmental principal may probably take it in hand 
 himself. 
 
 Thus furnished with all supplementary matter necessary for a right 
 understanding of the case, the document advances a step nearer to
 
 300 ENGLAND. 
 
 the ken of the great man who presides over the working of the whole 
 office. It comes, as minuted and prepared in the department, before 
 one of the Assistant Under-Secretaries, each of whom has assigned to 
 him a particular sphere of work, and who, after having carefully 
 perused the papers now submitted, writes his own comments and 
 views in the shape of another minute, and sends the whole budget, 
 which, ever since its introduction to the office, has been gradually- 
 growing in bulk, to the Permanent Under-Secretary of State. It is 
 to be noticed that it is at this stage — namely, when the correspon- 
 dence first comes within the secretarial purview — that the element of 
 official discretion begius. If it is perfectly plain that no decision has 
 to be taken upon the papers, and that the course of action is simple, 
 as, for instance, to refer or transmit them to another department of 
 State, then it may be conjectured that the room of the Assistant 
 Under-Secretary will be the limit of the official progress of the paper. 
 For the most part, however, there is no summary arrest before the 
 Permanent Under-Secretary is reached. It is, indeed, the constitu- 
 tional theory that all communications addressed to a Secretary of 
 State on questions of the public service are laid before the Sovereign 
 — in other words, to adapt the tradition to the ways and language of 
 responsible government, are personally considered by the Secretary 
 of State — and it may be said, with perfect confidence, that whenever 
 any portion of this miscellaneous correspondence is found to involve 
 anything more than mechanical action in accordance with previously 
 decided principles, it does come under the eye of the Secretary of 
 State. When, on the other hand, the point to which the correspon- 
 dence relates is practically settled by well-established precedents, and 
 there can be no doubt as to the decision, the Under-Secretary may 
 fairly assume the duties of a court of ultimate jurisdiction. Possibly 
 we should not be far wrong if we were to say that this occurs almost 
 as frequently as not. 
 
 There is yet one further experience which it will acquire before 
 our typical communication from the other side of the world reaches 
 the audience-chamber of the Queen's direct representative — it has 
 to pass into the hands of the parliamentary Under-Secretary. It 
 should be understood, however, that this is not a necessary incident 
 in the life of such an official document as we are now considering. 
 Supposing that the business is pressing, and that the parliamentary 
 riider-Secretary is otherwise engaged, the paper would pass direct 
 from the Permanent Under-Secretary to the political chief of the 
 department ; and, in fact, in all offices of State these two functionaries 
 are the pivots upon which the whole system of administration turns. 
 In all offices the parliamentary and the Permanent Under-Secretaries 
 have co-ordinate power. Their relation is thus one of mutual supple- 
 ment ; and while it in the business of the parliamentary deputy of the
 
 OFFICIAL ENGLAND. 3G7 
 
 Secretary of State, who is for the most part in the House of Com- 
 mons, to attend to the progress of measures which concern the 
 department in Parliament, it is especially the function of the Per- 
 manent Under-Secretary to supply his chief with the facts and 
 precedents which form the data on which his opinion is based. In 
 other words, the Permanent Under-Secretary of State has to know 
 and the Secretary of State himself has to decide. 
 
 Coming now to the work of the eminent politician or statesman 
 who is the apex of the entire official system of a great department, let 
 us see what are the duties which it rests with him to discharge, and 
 how he discharges them. Supposing he is in London, two or three 
 despatch-boxes closely packed with official documents are delivered at 
 his house as soon as the office has closed for the evening. At almost 
 any hour he may be found closeted in his study with these. Selecting 
 first those papers which are marked as " demanding urgency," and 
 proceeding to the examination of the different sheets of the manuscript 
 " minutes " or observations attached to them, he finds that they are 
 charged with great diversity of opinion. Between these conflicting 
 views he has to decide, and as his decision is, such will be the tenor 
 of the despatch which is ultimately founded on it ; and, indeed, it is 
 probable that at each successive stage something like the rough draft 
 of an answer has been drawn up by the different officials to whom 
 the papers have one after another been submitted. Consequently, the 
 reply finally approved of is often nothing more than a fine specimen of 
 official mosaic. The Secretary of State, it may be assumed, in most 
 cases adopts the form of answer which has been suggested by the 
 Under-Secretary, with certain modifications, as the Under-Secretary, 
 also with modifications, may have adopted that of his immediate sub- 
 ordinate. 
 
 By twelve o'clock the chief of the department, seated probably in 
 his library, has gone through this portion of his work, and he returns 
 all the documents which he has examined to his private secretary at 
 his office. The papers are then sent back through the same suc- 
 cession of hands as that through which they have previously passed, 
 and thus ultimately the reply is drafted. The entire process occupies 
 less time than from this description might be supposed. The different 
 stages here traced may, in ordinary matters, be performed in a couple 
 of days, and very rarely occupy more than a week. "When the Secre- 
 tary of State is in the country there is, of course, a little less 
 promptitude. Bags containing official documents are sent to him 
 daily, the hour of their actual dispatch from the head-quarters at 
 Whitehall being late, as the post there does not close until seven in 
 the evening, when the colonial mails are sent off. 
 
 Much the same routine as that which has been described in the case 
 of the Colonial Office is observed in the department which deals with
 
 3G8 ENGLAND. 
 
 the affairs of our Indian Empire. The correspondence which makes 
 its way hither may be classed under two heads : first, that relating to 
 the Government of India itself ; secondly, the communications which 
 originate in England, and pass either between the India Office and 
 other departments of State, such as the Foreign Office, the Colonial 
 Office, the Board of Trade, and the War Office, or between the India 
 Office and private persons interested in Indian affairs. Again, the 
 Indian correspondence itself is of two kinds : first, ordinary despatches 
 which come, in every case, either from the Government of India, or 
 the Governments of Madras and Bombay, the Lieutenant-Governors 
 not corresponding directly with the Home Government ; secondly, 
 secret despatches which pass directly between the Government of 
 India and the Secretary of State. As at the Colonial Office so at the 
 India Office, there is a central register to which, as a rule, despatches 
 are sent. There are, however, many important exceptions, and docu- 
 ments relating to politics or finance would go, in tbe first instance, 
 not to the Registry, but to that department to which they immediately 
 relate — political, secret, financial, public works, military, as the case 
 may be. They are, of course, opened by the secretaries of the 
 department to which they belong, and these officials put forward the 
 papers whenever they like. After this they pass successively through 
 the hands of the Under-Secretary — permanent or parliamentary, ac- 
 cording to the nature of the communication — the Secretary of State, 
 a committee of the Council especially told off to consider documents 
 of the class to which this one belongs, and, finally, the Council itself 
 in full conclave assembled. But the powers of the Council are deliber- 
 ative, and it may be added obstructive, as well as executive. The 
 power of obstruction is not necessarily mischievous. It is often 
 exercised, and is intended to be exercised, as a check on rash and ill- 
 considered action. 
 
 In the Foreign Office a very different mode of procedure is rendered 
 necessary. A majority of the documents received there are more or 
 less confidential, and, as a consequence, the opening of the despatch- 
 bags is not delegated to subordinate employes, but is performed by 
 some high official. Who this official may be depends on circum- 
 stances — the determining circumstances mainly being the view the 
 Secretary of State takes of the limit of his responsibilities, an arrange- 
 ment arrived at between the Secretary and Under-Secretary, or the 
 personal appetite for work wbich either of them may possess. Thus 
 at one time we are told of a Permanent Under-Secretary of State who 
 takes a pride in remaining at the office daily till eight in the evening, 
 in order that he may depart with the consciousness of having broken 
 the seals of two hundred envelopes. At another time report informs 
 us of a Secretary of State who would allow no letter or communication 
 of any kind to be opened by anyone save himself, and who insisted
 
 OFFICIAL. ENGLAND. 369 
 
 on dictating answers to all the correspondence which poured in. 
 Hence, too, it may be correctly inferred that there is not at the 
 Foreign Office anything like the same system of minuting correspon- 
 dence which exists elsewhere. The entire department is divided into 
 what was formerly called the Establishment, but now rcchristened the 
 Diplomatic Establishment, and departments not on the Establishment. 
 The new name is intended to distinguish the Diplomatic Establish- 
 ment from the Librarian's, the Treaty, and the Chief Clerk's depart- 
 ments. In the Diplomatic Establishment, where a total of forty-one 
 clerks are employed, the Chief Clerk has a department of his own, 
 with twenty clerks under him, who are not themselves on the 
 Diplomatic Establishment, and whose work is chiefly financial. Next 
 — still on the Diplomatic Establishment — there is the Consular 
 Department, presided over by the Superintendent of the Consular 
 and Slave-trade Department, and subdivided into two sections : the 
 second charged with all correspondence and other matters relating to 
 the slave-trade, the first having to do with the Consular Service 
 correspondence. Lastly, there is the Commercial Department. The 
 more purely diplomatic portion of the Foreign Office is subdivided into 
 five departments, distributed geographically, which are under the con- 
 trol of a senior clerk. Naturally the business transacted in all of 
 these is of a strictly confidential character, and includes everything 
 appertaining to the negotiation of treaties. 
 
 We now come to the Treaty Department, which is not on the Diplo- 
 matic Establishment, and is occupied with the formal drafting and 
 engrossing of documents which have already come under the scrutiny 
 of the confidential officers of that august bureau. The Treaty Depart- 
 ment is a Black Letter Department, and those who are employed in 
 it bear much the same relation to the diplomatic staff that the lawyer's 
 clerk who engrosses the deed bears to the lawyer who is the confiden- 
 tial adviser. Even the head of this department, though personal 
 merit and the technical experience which he may have acquired often 
 cause him to be the depositary of a large amount of confidence, is not, 
 in virtue of his office, admitted into the secrets of the Diplomatic 
 Establishment. The relative positions of the two cannot be better 
 illustrated than by saying that, whereas members of the Diplomatic 
 Establishment are, ex officio, admitted members of the St. James's 
 Club, members of the Treaty Department have to submit to the 
 ordinary ballot. Of course, clerks of the Treaty Department of the 
 Foreign Office are trusted not to divulge the import of the papers they 
 are employed to copy and reduce to official order. But their functions 
 are not confidential in the same way as the functions of the clerks in 
 the Diplomatic Establishment. It is only when treaties are ripe for 
 parchments, or when precedents and historical data are required in 
 the preparation of treaties, that the officers of this department are 
 
 B B
 
 370 ENGLAND. 
 
 consulted ; and the mere circumstance that it is the sole department 
 in which hired writers are engaged is sufficient proof that its sphere 
 is generically different from that of the Diplomatic Establishment. 
 
 While the Privy Council Office may be spoken of as the formal 
 head and mother of departments, the foremost place in the official 
 hierarchy may, on some accounts, be claimed by the Treasury. It 
 is the Treasury which has the power of the purse over all other depart- 
 ments, and with which, as a consequence, the ultimate decision rests. 
 The Treasury, moreover, in addition to being the establishment where 
 the annual Budget is made up, has immediately subject to it the two 
 great Revenue Departments — the Customs and the Inland Revenue 
 — as well as the Post Office — only accidentally a source of revenue — 
 while it is practically supreme in point of power. The Privy Council 
 Office is unquestionably sovereign in respect of dignity. It may, in 
 effect, be regarded as a species of commission for the exercise of cer- 
 tain essential prerogatives of the Crown. The work done by the 
 Board of Trade and the Judicial Committee is delegated to them by 
 and from the Privy Council ; while, until quite recently, the business of 
 the Education Department was transacted by a committee of the Privy 
 Council, and even now its head-quarters are under the same roof. The 
 Board of Trade remains nominallv under the direction of a committee 
 of the Privy Council, composed of a President, with certain ex-qfficio 
 members, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chancellor, the 
 First Lord of the Treasury, the Secretaries of State, the Chancellor of 
 the Exchequer, and some others. But, as a matter of fact, the office 
 is entirely departmental, and when the Board of Trade is spoken of, it 
 means for all practical purposes, not the committee of the Privy 
 Council subject to which it performs its duties, but the President, 
 supplemented by his secretaries and official staff. Thus both in fact 
 and in name it is a distinct branch of the Government. 
 
 The duties of the Board of Trade Office are both multifarious and 
 interesting. Railways, the mercantile marine of the country, weights 
 and measures, the collection of all those statistics which concern, not 
 merely the Home Government, but the administration of imperial 
 affairs, belong to the Board of Trade. Much of the departmental 
 work of the office involves a knowledge on the part of those by whom 
 it is done of science and law. Thus it comes frequently within the 
 province of this department to decide on the best form of railway 
 brakes, on the structure of ships and lighthouses, to say nothing of 
 the exceedingly complicated question of signalling at sea. Again, 
 since it is our maritime power which brings us into contact at the 
 largest number of points with the laws of other countries, and since the 
 Board of Trade is practically charged with the supervision of our 
 maritime affairs, it follows that various questions of international law 
 are perpetually presenting themselves for settlement in this depart-
 
 OFFICIAL ENGLAND. 371 
 
 ment. The Board of Trade may be said to take charge of a ship from 
 the cradle to the grave. It keeps a record of all new ships, it can 
 trace their voyages, and has a list of the passengers and crews whom 
 they have upon any occasion carried. Hence the offices of the Board 
 of Trade witness much that is touching, and contain the record of 
 much that is noble. It is here that those who are interested in the 
 lives of sailors go to hear something, if they can, of the fate of ships 
 which are supposed to have been lost at sea. Here, too, is it that the 
 claim is made for having saved life at sea. Nor are the duties of the 
 office in reference to railways less considerable. When a new railway 
 is opened, the Board of Trade sends down an inspector to see that 
 everything is in a proper state for the commencement of traffic. 
 
 The Privy Council Office may be spoken of as that department of 
 State in which the prerogatives of the Crown are brought into imme- 
 diate contact with the persons of its ministers. It is the office which 
 forms a common meeting ground for much of the business of other 
 public departments. It constitutes, in fact, a kind of imperial clear- 
 ing-house. Whatever can be the subject of an Order in Council 
 naturally comes to the Privy Council Office, and is there put into a 
 shape in which it may be conveniently considered by the Sovereign, 
 when the next meeting of the Privy Council is held. Orders in Council 
 relate to such subjects as the ratification of measures passed by the 
 colonial parliaments, royal proclamations, documents concerning the 
 assemblage, prorogation and dissolution of the Imperial Parliament 
 at Westminster. Other Orders in Council are forms which give effect 
 to treaties, extend the terms of patents, grant charters of incorpora- 
 tion to boroughs and to companies, proclaim ports and fairs, decide 
 causes in appeal, create ecclesiastical districts, concede exemptions 
 from the law of mortmain. There is thus an immense amount of 
 clerkly business to be transacted in the Privy Council Office. 
 
 Her Majesty presides at about a dozen meetings of the Privy Council 
 in the course of the year. On the day before the meeting all the 
 papers to be discussed are sent to the Queen, and if she finds anything 
 which she does not exactly understand, she will desire the attendance 
 of the minister to whose department it relates. No Privy Councillor 
 attends the Council unless he has been specially summoned. The 
 business is naturally routine work, and is generally despatched in less 
 than an hour. The presence of three Privy Councillors constitutes a 
 quorum, and the chair is always taken by the Sovereign. Again, the 
 Privy Council is, since every Cabinet minister must first be admitted 
 a Privy Councillor — the theory being that the Cabinet is an inner 
 Council of the Privy Council — a connecting link between Parliament 
 and the Crown. The Cabinet represents the declared will of the con- 
 stituencies, and the chief of the Cabinet, the Prime Minister, is tbo 
 embodiment of the Cabinet in the sight of the Crown. In its relation 
 
 bb2
 
 872 ENGLAND. 
 
 to the Sovereign the Cabinet is an indivisible and absolute unity, nor 
 can a Premier be guilty of an act more   reprehensible in itself and in 
 its tendency than when he informs the Sovereign of the specific causes 
 of difficulty which he may encounter with his colleagues. " The 
 Premier," writes Mr. Gladstone, in " Kin Beyond Sea," " reports to 
 the Sovereign the proceedings of the Cabinet, has many audiences of 
 the august occupant of the throne," but " is bound in these reports 
 aud audiences not to undermine the position of any of his colleagues 
 in the royal favour. If he departs in any degree from strict adherence 
 to these rules, and uses his great opportunities to increase his own 
 influence and pursue aims not shared by his colleagues, then, unless 
 he is prepared to advise them, he not only departs from rule, but 
 commits an act of treachery and baseness. As the Cabinet stands 
 between the Sovereign and the Parliament, and is bound to be loyal to 
 both, so he (the Premier) stands between his colleagues and the Sove- 
 reign, and is bound to be loyal to both." 
 
 The relations between the Secretary of State, as the head of a 
 department, and the Sovereign, as supreme over the State itself, are 
 illustrated by the form with which, until early in the century, this 
 minister commenced his answer to all correspondence brought before 
 him, namely, "I have it in command from the Sovereign to acquaint 
 you," etc. This mode of expression has now been dropped. None 
 the less are the relations maintained between such offices as the India 
 Office, the Colonial Office, the Foreign Office, and the Sovereign of 
 the most direct and intimate character. In the case of each of these 
 departments, not merely is there the frequent, or the occasional, 
 de-patch of official papers to her Majesty, but it is part of the recog- 
 nised duties of the Secretary of State to keep her Majesty duly informed 
 of the general tenor and drift of his administration, and of any im- 
 portant transactions between the office in London and the dependency 
 or state in some other quarter of the world. These memoranda are 
 never written by any member of a department except the minister at 
 its bead. There is a stereotyped style in which they all begin, to 
 Ibis effect — " Lord Leatherhead presents his humble duty to your 
 Majesty." Two obviously proper rules are observed in these momen- 
 tous communications, and in all documents submitted to the Sovereign 
 — one is that they shall contain no erasure, the second, that the paper 
 on which they are written shall not be folded. Considering that the 
 drafts of important despatches are sent to the Sovereign before they 
 leave the office of the Secretary of State, and that, in addition to 
 this, her Majesty receives daily the above-mentioned reports of all 
 matters of great importance pending, it may be readily understood that 
 the time of royalty is tolerably well occupied. 
 
 No authentic account of the manner in which the ministers of the 
 Crown transact their business in Cabinet has ever yet been given to
 
 OFFICIAL ENGLAND. 873 
 
 the world, and the secret has been as religiously and successfully 
 preserved as that of Freemasonry. It may, however, be reasonably 
 conjectured that the mode in which business is conducted is conver- 
 sational and easy ; it is probable that divisions formally taken are 
 exceedingly rare, that, as a rule, ministers speak sitting, and that 
 there is a general understanding between them as to the amount of 
 business which shall be taken on a particular day, and with respect 
 to the limit of time which is not to be exceeded. The actual work 
 of legislation is prefaced by two or three natural preliminary pro- 
 cesses. Supposing that the Cabinet has come to the conclusion that 
 a particular subject is ripe for legislation, the first step taken in the 
 direction of legislation would be for the minister within whose depart- 
 ment it came to draw up the heads of a Bill on the subject. Copies of 
 this memorandum would be sent round to each of the ministers in one 
 of the circulating boxes opened by a key in the possession of each 
 member of the Cabinet, who, having taken a copy of the document 
 from that receptacle, would draw a line through his name, inscribed 
 on a slip of paper projecting from under the lid of the box. The heads 
 of the proposed measure would be discussed at the next meeting of 
 the Cabinet, and the decision arrived at might probably be that a Bill 
 on the subject should be drafted in due form ; the same process would 
 then be gone through again in the matter of the draft measure, and 
 thus, after having been first discussed and then re-discussed, it would 
 ultimately come before Parliament. 
 
 The life of a State official, be he Cabinet minister or Under- 
 Secretary, is one of incessant strain, endless anxiety, continuous 
 toil. Scant leisure, holidays marred by the perpetual interruption of 
 despatches, telegrams, and other documents, are all that the par- 
 liamentary vacation brings. While Parliament is sitting — that is, 
 during nearly six months of the year — he is condemned systematically 
 to burn the candle at both ends. Happy is he if he be fairly asleep 
 by two in the morning ; by noon he will be at his office in Whitehall, 
 Downing Street, or Pall Mall, busy with the reports of his private 
 secretaries, his letters, and much amorphous material which, if the 
 fates be propitious, will some day or other be reduced to order in blue 
 books, or perhaps be embodied in some measuro introduced into Par- 
 liament, and, it may be, specially commended in the speech from the 
 throne. The chances are that our Secretary or Under-Secretary has 
 been already up since eight or nine, after barely five hours of feverish 
 sleep. He has been, in all probability, as a sequel to a hasty and un- 
 substantial breakfast, endeavouring to brace himself for the toils of the 
 day by a canter in Rotten Row. But just as that equestrian promenade 
 begins to grow populous and gay with many riders and loungers, our 
 official, consulting his watch, or admonished by the chimes of Big 
 Ben, turns his horse's head, and makes his way towards Westminster.
 
 874 ENGLAND. 
 
 Let those who sometimes complain of the inaccessibility of the 
 gentlemen responsible for Her Majesty's Government reflect how 
 closely packed are the occupations of the official days, how short the 
 time for the performance of innumerable tasks. There is a deputa- 
 tion to be received which will absorb at least an hour ; there is the 
 daily conference between the Secretary of State and the Under-Secre- 
 tary ; there are business interviews with other members of the Govern- 
 ment. In addition to this, there is the preparation for the night's 
 work in Parliament. Notice has been given of questions, and the 
 materials for reply have to be diligently searched out. A debate is 
 expected, which will draw special attention to the department, and 
 the honourable or right honourable gentleman who represents it must, 
 by dint of much official cramming, furnish himself with all the facts 
 and figures requisite for a complete exposition of the case. A Bill 
 which the Government is bent on "carrying," and which is being 
 opposed at every clause, is making its way through committee, and 
 our statesman, to whom it is chiefly entrusted, must prove himself an 
 encyclopaedia of practical arguments, each one of which is a conclusive 
 refutation of censure and criticism. Four o'clock comes, and the 
 minister has to be in the House. Who shall blame him if he has 
 economised to the utmost the four preceding hours, or who would 
 remove the mysterious inaccessibility with which he endeavours to 
 hedge himself around ? 
 
 Apart from the papers which come before him in the conduct of the 
 regular business of his department, a Minister of State is burdened 
 with an immense variety of general correspondence. There are letters 
 from the chiefs of the Opposition, proposing some plan for the conduct 
 of a debate ; or suggesting some compromise on a particular Bill which 
 may happen to be in committee ; or showing how, if the right honour- 
 able gentleman would but adopt such-and-such a course, he might 
 disarm some of his most formidable criiics, and count at the same 
 time upon satisfying all his more reasonable and moderate partisans. 
 Happily, the strife of the "ins" and the "outs" is conducted with 
 an amenity in England unknown elsewhere, and this portion of the 
 ministerial correspondence conclusively proves the fact. Indeed, our 
 imaginary First Lord, or typical Secretary of State, very often finds 
 that the communications of his professed friends are more trouble- 
 some than those of his professed foes. A follower who is an inveterate 
 crotcheteer is a more awkward customer than a factious antagonist. 
 As the statesman to whom it has pleased Her Majesty to give her 
 'inifidence looks at his letters, there are certain handwritings which 
 he contemplates with profound weariness. He recognises at a glance 
 the envelopes which he knows contain absolutely impracticable hints 
 ami recommendations, utterly groundless protests, and quite impos- 
 sible requests from his most loyal but most importunate supporters.
 
 OFFICIAL ENGLAND. 375 
 
 That little sheaf of letters which he puts on one side is a collection of 
 communications, the several authors of which express a hope that the 
 right honourable gentleman will so arrange that they shall have a 
 day for introducing a Bill much desired by themselves or their con- 
 stituents ; or deferentially point out that if a ministerial measure be 
 marked by the presence or the absence of a certain clause, some 
 great industry will be menaced, or some powerful interest injured ; 
 or assure the minister that it will be extremely desirable if, for the 
 purpose of reassuring the more weak-kneed of his followers, he will 
 take an early opportunity of declaring what points or principles of it 
 are indispensable. What does the minister do ? Some he answers 
 in a few lines at once ; others he puts aside for consideration — all 
 have bis attention. He will consult his department on some ; on 
 some he will communicate with the whip of the party, the patronage 
 secretary of the Treasury, as he is officially called, and will ascertain 
 from that functionary whether the discontent to which such letters 
 point can be said to contain any of the elements of danger. 
 
 Putting aside the mass of correspondence which the minister 
 receives from his brother members of the elective House, we may 
 glance at some of the most salient characteristics of that countless 
 multitude of epistles, written by members of the extra-parliamentary 
 public, which daily discharges itself into Downing Street. Many 
 there are of precisely the same character as might be found on the 
 breakfast-table of any private or non-official senator : applications 
 from friends and constituents for berths in Government offices ; letters 
 particularly drawing attention to the neglect of local welfare by the 
 Imperial Parliament ; appeals to charity, and expostulations, varying 
 in tone from the cringing entreaty to the peremptory demand, on the 
 subject of projected legislation, which will be seriously detrimental to 
 the commerce of particular boroughs, or the traditional rights of 
 counties ; letters applying for additional salaries from officers who 
 are in the employment of the Government, and who are often a greater 
 source of trouble to an Administration than difficult colleagues or 
 importunately burning questions. A Cabinet minister is, of course, 
 assailed with applications from old personal friends, on behalf of their 
 sons, or other members of their families, for whom they wish to secure 
 nominations to offices in the Civil Service. Thei*e are, also, lengthy 
 communications from the accredited agents of the party in the pro- 
 vinces, despatched, in the first instance, to the head whip, and by him 
 laid before his chief. Some of these are troublesome enough. The 
 minister hears that the great tin-tack interest is united as one man 
 against the measure which the Government has introduced for regu- 
 lating afresh that particular industry; or that an agitation, which 
 may become formidable, is being organised for the remission of the 
 present imposts on velveteens and smock-frocks. Others are written
 
 376 ENGLAND. 
 
 with reference to a vacancy, actual or impending, in a parliamentary 
 seat, which has been hitherto occupied by a supporter of the Adminis- 
 tration, or which it is hoped to wrest from tbe Opposition. These 
 are documents which require the closest attention of the ministerial 
 mind. Composed with great skill and local knowledge, they place 
 before the official eye precisely the qualifications which are required 
 in tbe forthcoming candidate. If no person has already paramount 
 and irresistible claims to represent the party, then comes the exercise 
 of the official choice. The local agent waits with anxiety to know 
 what the selection is. The gentleman on whom the lot has fallen 
 may be a perfect stranger to him, or known only by distant rumour. 
 But as soon as the aspirant member for the borough has set foot 
 within the town, and has been closeted with one or two of its leading 
 inhabitants, so soon does that astute agent know whether the poli- 
 tician despatched by the "party" is or is not the right man for the 
 right place. 
 
 Even as the Imperial Parliament sitting at Westminster is, in a 
 manner, a national High Court of Grievances, so is every Cabinet 
 minister stationed at his desk in his office the daily recipient of epistles 
 complaining of wrongs inflicted and injustices sustained, either by an 
 accidental hitch in the machinery of government, or by the operation 
 of some law vicious in principle and mistaken in practice. The 
 number of letters of this kind varies in the different departments of 
 State. Possibly the most ponderous pile of all is that Avhich is 
 deposited within handy reach of the Right Honourable the Secretary 
 of State for War. Are not the Services chartered and inveterate 
 grumblers ? But what shall be said of the countless wails, pitched in 
 every key of discontent, from that of the supplicating and expectant 
 widow to that of the veteran who has grown bald and bronzed in his 
 country's service under a tropical sky, which that other right honour- 
 able gentleman or nobleman, the Secretary of State for our Oriental 
 Empire, is condemned to receive ? Sometimes these documents con- 
 tain threats of an action at law ; sometimes they are piteous protests 
 against the rate of exchange and the depreciation of the rupee ; 
 sometimes they are entreaties from a mother, whose husband has 
 died a hero's death, that a berth of some sort may be found for her 
 son. The outside communications chiefly received by the head of 
 the Colonial Office are of a different character. Colonists being their 
 own masters, and carrying with them wherever they go the repre- 
 sentative institutions of the mother-country, have for the most part 
 no troubles for which they seek redress at the capital of the empire. 
 Yet they are not uncommunicative, and sometimes their communi- 
 cativeness lapses into importunate garrulity. They have much infor- 
 mation to give, and they give it freely without being solicited, on the 
 character and wants of the various parts of the colonial dominions.
 
 OFFICIAL ENGLAND. 877 
 
 Much more often than might be supposed, the correspondents of the 
 Colonial Secretary suggest fresh annexations of territory ; there are 
 even cases in which unemployed gentlemen, their hearts burning for 
 adventure, apply for a charter for a filibustering expedition, the object 
 of which is that the British standard may float over realms now held 
 by the noble savage ; while applications for concessions from com- 
 panies and individuals are of course exceedingly common. 
 
 Let our inquiries once more range into a very august sphere. We 
 are in the sanctum of the First Lord of the Treasury, the Prime 
 Minister for the time being, no matter who he may be. The great 
 man looks, with as much of a smile as his features can wear, over a 
 sheet of post letter-paper, written in a large clear hand, or listens 
 while his secretary tells him something of the contents of an epistle 
 much interlined and underscored. What is the purport of the docu- 
 ment ? Let it be understood that all the eccentric letter-writers of 
 the United Kingdom seem to select Downing Street as the point at 
 which to discharge their missives. That the head of Her Majesty's 
 Government should receive applications from some two or three gen- 
 tlemen a week, who are anxious to edit his speeches, with possibly a 
 brief introductory memoir ; that he should be assailed by mysterious 
 correspondents, who assure him that they have intelligence of the most 
 vital moment to the realm, which they would communicate to him 
 personally, since they fear to entrust it to paper ; that he should be 
 pestered by prayers for small places from obscure partisans and eccle- 
 siastical preferment from hungry divines ; that a considerable portion 
 of the contents of his letter-bag should be the impudent petitions of 
 pure mendicity, is reasonable, for in all these cases the statesman 
 shares the common lot of exceptional eminence. 
 
 Of all Her Majesty's principal ministers of State, none are so much 
 solicited by requests to receive deputations, and by general corres- 
 pondence of an indescribably miscellaneous character, as the Chancellor 
 of the Exchequer and the Secretary for the Home Department. 
 Among those letters are some of the most useful and suggestive 
 received in Downing Street. The departments and legislation of 
 which these two ministers have charge render it desirable and neces- 
 sary that they should have the minutest acquaintance with special 
 demands and local requirements. A comparatively trivial alteration 
 in the incidence of a tax may make all the difference between the im- 
 position and the removal of a burden of discontent. Is it a licensing 
 bill on which the Right Honourable the Secretary of State for the 
 Home Department is engaged '? Of course, the most exhaustive 
 inquiry which official machinery can command into the wants and 
 wishes of the people has been made before the measure was drafted. 
 But the official eye is sure to overlook something. There are certain 
 facts, certain exceptional conditions prevailing in particular districts.
 
 378 ENGLAND. 
 
 which have somenow been ignored. These are formally communi- 
 cated to the department which takes cognisance of them, are duly 
 investigated, and very frequently have the effect of considerably modi- 
 fying the ministerial measure. On the other hand, neither at the 
 Home Office nor at the Treasury are the letters of impracticable 
 crotcheteers and pragmatical hobbyists unknown. If preposterous 
 proposals and impossible plans could have contributed to such a result, 
 an efficient alternative to capital punishment would long ago have 
 been discovered — nay, crime itself would have probably become extinct 
 in the realm. 
 
 That which forms the most romantic portion of the ministerial letter- 
 bag has still to be noticed. Diplomacy, as it is conventionally repre- 
 sented to us, is a darkly mysterious science, and not a few of the 
 letters which find their way to the head-quarters of British diplomacy 
 are of a corresponding character. If the Secretary of State for Foreign 
 Affairs were to believe all that his correspondents tell him, we should 
 have had him living for a quarter of a century past on the brink of a 
 volcano, whose eruption would have long since desolated the kingdom 
 with the burning torrents of revolution let loose by foreign hands. 
 But self-seeking adventurers and applicants for employment are among 
 the most copious contributors to the Foreign Office letter-bag. Not 
 merely at a time of European unrest, but in the midst of profound 
 peace, there are scores and hundreds of ladies, as well as gentlemen, 
 who profess themselves ready and able to reveal the clandestine designs 
 of foreign governments, and to act as secret agents generally, for a 
 modest honorarium. There is a conspiracy brewing in some obscure 
 portion of the world which must, sooner or later, assume disastrous 
 dimensions, and of which only the particular applicant can, by pro- 
 ceeding to the spot, at the public charge, give accurate intelligence ; 
 or it is highly desirable that the Government should send, nul> rosd, 
 the writer on a mission to Bithynia ; or their correspondent, A, B, or 
 C, has had experience and possesses linguistic attainments which 
 would make him invaluable in the employment of the Crown. In the 
 diplomatic service and at the Foreign Office, the close system of nomi- 
 nation is exchanged for one of limited competition. The revolution, 
 now nearly twenty years old, which threw open to free competition 
 nineteen-twentieths of the civil appointments of the Crown, has in a 
 measure served to diminish the public estimation of the prestige or 
 mystery surrounding the official position. But the diplomatic service 
 is still aristocratic, and the Foreign Office is still fashionable ; and, as 
 to the suitors lor places and nominations who approach the Foreign 
 Secretary with every kind of letter, is not their name legion ?
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 
 
 Prevalence of Parliamentary Ambition — Sensibly mitigated by Counter Attraction of 
 Literature, Journalism, &c. — The Value of a Se at in Parliament — The Work which 
 it entails — Inconveniences attending it — General Relations between M.P.'s and 
 Constituents — Small and Large Constituencies — The House of Commons the " Manu- 
 factory of Statute Law" — On the Eve of a Great Debate — Characteristic Scenes in 
 Passages and Lobbies — Scene in the House itself — Presentations of Petitions — How 
 Notices of Motion are given — Balloting for Days — General Description of House — 
 General Aspect of Members — Questions Answered — Business Begins — Preliminary 
 and Personal — The Debate itself — The Orator — The Dinner Hour — Hostilities re- 
 newed — -The Whip — The Division — Prevailing Excitement — The Prose of Legisla- 
 tion — Progress of a Bill from Introduction to Royal Assent — Qualities shown by 
 Honourable Members in Committee — The Speaker: Functions and Position — Some 
 Rules and Practices of the House — Motions — The House of Commons Clerks — Select 
 Committees — House of Commons Oratory — Is it declining ? — Excellences of House 
 of Commons — Tastes of House and Nuances. 
 
 Every Englishman, Mr. John Morley has remarked in his work on 
 " Compromise," is either actually or potentially a parliamentary candi- 
 date, and the political instinct is certainly still vigorous in the British 
 breast. Whether, however, the desire on the part of English 
 citizens to win a seat in the House of Commons is or is not on the 
 decline, whether the House of Commons itself may not be suffering 
 from other competing opportunities of political activity, are questions 
 on which more than one opinion maybe held. Five-and- twenty years 
 ago a political career in England was necessarily a parliamentary 
 career. If a man wished systematically to influence contemporary 
 opinion on public affairs, he at once directed all his efforts to getting 
 into the House of Commons. The pamphlet had already lost its power, 
 political journalism was an imperfectly developed force, and the aspiring 
 statesman, eager to address himself to the world, could only do so 
 through the medium of the morning newspaper which reported his 
 speeches. The position has now been materially modified. There are 
 not only more political journals and more political writers ; the writers 
 in these journals are taken from a class to which they never before 
 belonged. Journalism may not have yet completely lost, to the sense 
 of the more fastidious, all disreputable associations, but the reproach 
 against it is gradually dying out, and the stigma becoming fainter. The 
 journalist has long since left his garret in Grub Street ; he is not neces-
 
 880 ENGLAND. 
 
 sarily educated for his vocation in squalor and poverty ; he is the friend 
 of influential personages, and is very possibly, quite apart from his 
 pen, an influential personage himself. Then, if at the present day the 
 pamphlet is an anachronism, some half-dozen collections of a dozen 
 pamphlets each appear every month. The old quarterlies of party 
 have been succeeded by the new monthly periodicals of culture. The 
 review, instead of being the organ of a section, is a platform for the 
 individual. To contest constituency after constituency is disagreeable 
 and costly work. After many struggles success may not be attain- 
 able ; and even when the House has been secured, political eminence 
 and influence do not always follow. There are the whims and tempers 
 of our six hundred kings to be studied ; there is the risk of the hell 
 of failure to be run. It is much easier, much less costly, much more 
 satisfactory, to serve in the army of paper politicians. 
 
 Some notoriety and a small measure of capacity will secure for the 
 aspirant to literature a place in one of the influential monthly organs 
 of select opinion, in whose pages he may find himself elbowing a 
 former Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer, jostling 
 against a group of lay and clerical disputants, or sitting next to an 
 illustrious doctor of physical science. If the attention paid by some 
 honourable gentlemen, when they address the House of Commons, 
 to the reporters' galleiw can be described as the homage of oratory 
 to literature, the spectacle of well-known statesmen fighting grave 
 political issues in the monthly magazines suggests and symbolises the 
 triumph of the pen over Parliament. It is impossible to doubt that 
 the multiplied opportunities which are placed at the disposal of the 
 thoughtful statesman by editors and publishers, must have the effect 
 of preventing many men who might otherwise be moved to do so from 
 issuing their addresses at the forthcoming general election. The paper 
 politicians, as we have called them, are a growing and a respectable 
 class ; the periodical invented for their wants gives them all the publicity 
 they could desire, or they can at least afford to postpone their entry 
 into the House of Commons till they have educated that assemblage 
 up to their own professorial level. 
 
 But there are other and more generally cogent reasons which will 
 probably tend to reduce the array of possible candidates for the House 
 of Commons. The number of persons who think they have a political 
 mission is strictly limited, and many men who go into, or who are 
 ambitious of going into, the House of Commons, are animated by two 
 motives — desire of social promotion, or of extended persons! power. 
 Now it is beginning to be very questionable whether the degree and 
 kind of social promotion which a seat in Parliament brings with it are 
 sufficient to compensate its possessor for tho expenditure and worry 
 which it entails. No senator and no senator's family were ever ad- 
 vanced to the rank of social sovereignty by the magic influence of the
 
 THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 381 
 
 letters M.P. The social aspirant who goes into the House of Commons 
 very soon finds that the social accessories of St. Stephens are to a great 
 extent an illusion. He may receive more invitations, and when he is 
 being entertained by certain hosts may have the gratification of know- 
 ing that he secures greater attention ; but he seldom succeeds in 
 entirely changing his social level. His social position, in fact, is not 
 so much exalted as emphasised. What holds good of the elective 
 legislator himself is yet more strictly applicable to his family. If 
 his wife and daughters were not in the way before of meeting peers, 
 diplomatists, attaches, young men of birth and fashion and wealth, 
 neither will they be in the way of meeting them now ; if, on the other 
 hand, they were, they will find their previous opportunities multiplied. 
 But the personal importance and the professional or commercial 
 value of a seat in the House of Commons are unquestionable. To 
 these must be added the essentially interesting nature of the occupa- 
 tion. The House of Commons is at orice a mirror and a concentration 
 of the national life. There is no rumour of any sort, social, commercial, 
 diplomatic, or political which does not make its way into the lobby of 
 the House, although it may not indeed reach the ears of all who 
 throng that octagonal chamber. "Before the House," writes Mr. 
 Palgrave,* " passes yearly every national anxiety. Whatever occupies 
 the attention of this great empire makes its appearance there, be the 
 subject trivial or important, be it the state of Rotten Row or the con- 
 duct of a war. A parliamentary discussion also is sure to turn a 
 subject inside out, and to disclose its precise nature. To hear this 
 well done is no sorry amusement ; intellectually it is a great gain. 
 Moreover, the gossip of the house is of first-rate quality. To tell 
 or to hear some new thing it is the best place possible, nor are the 
 new things repeated in Parliament only gossip. Passing events do 
 not merely furnish talk to the Hjuse ; they are a part of the history 
 of our land." Here, then, we have a list of attractions sufficiently 
 numerous to account for the popularity of the House of Commons, 
 and to justify a certain limited- acceptance of Mr. Morley's rather 
 sweeping dictum. Hence it is that there is no lack of candidates to 
 spend upon a parliamentary election an amount of money and trouble 
 which, if placed in a sound commercial enterprise, would give the 
 investor a competence for life. For these reasons are the abnormal 
 hours and the severe labours which constituencies demand tolerated 
 with equanimity for six months of the year. A member of Parliament 
 who is desirous of doing his duty will often commence work a little 
 before noon, only to leave off two or three hours after midnight. At 
 twelve o'clock he will take his place in a committee-room, and sit 
 there with a few interruptions until four. Then he is due at the 
 House, and there he remains until long after the chimes announce 
 * "The House of Commons," by Reginald F. D. Palgrave, p. 48.
 
 382 NGLAND. 
 
 that a new aay has begun. Add to this that before a member of 
 Parliament can have learned the rudiments of his business, he must 
 have mastered the contents of Sir Erskine May's " Parliamentary 
 Practice " — about 800 pages in length and full of figures and facts — 
 that if he wishes not to let the work of the session fall hopelessly into 
 arrear, he must make the acquaintance of a pile of papers and blue 
 books, some notion of the bulk of which may be formed from the 
 fact that they average an annual total of eighty volumes ; that there 
 are also constantly coming before the House great commercial enter- 
 prises, affecting large private and public interests, such as the supply 
 of water to towns and the making of railways ; bear all this in mind, 
 and it will be seen that during the session a member of Parliament 
 who does his duty can have very little time which he may call really 
 his own. 
 
 Besides his purely parliamentary labours, there are those which his 
 private relations with his constituents involve. No mistress was 
 ever more intolerably jealous and exacting of her lover than the 
 ordinary constituency of its representative. The member of Parlia- 
 ment is never certain for six months or six weeks together of the 
 loyal affection of his electors. The last time he was among them they 
 received him with the most cordial and effusive of welcomes. Since 
 then he has had letters from, or interviews in the lobby with some 
 of the more influential of his supporters, from which he gathers that 
 he has contrived to o fiend a sensitive but important section ; he has 
 forgotten that his borough is a place in which urban and county 
 interests meet, and farmers and tradesmen both accuse him of having 
 been indifferent to matters which are of vital importance to them. 
 He has trimmed upon the Burials Bill. It seems very much as if he 
 had ratted upon the County Suffrage ; or he has not taken sufficient 
 notice of the mayor of the town when that local potentate came up to 
 London a few months ago. 
 
 On the other hand, the legislator who has won the confidence and 
 affection of a smaller constituency is not required to pledge himself to 
 the support of any very definite programme or any specific nostrums, 
 as is the representative of an important borough, fully conscious of 
 its own merits and power. So long as he generally attends to the 
 local interests and business of the borough he will be allowed to 
 do pretty much what he likes ; but he must take care that he does 
 not become a mere political abstraction to his electors. He may do 
 what he will with his principles, but though his constituents are 
 devotedly attached to the small borough member, even their fidelity 
 is not proof against all temptation. If he leaves them alone too much 
 he knows that he will have only himself to blame if things go wrong. 
 And it is no laughing matter, in the thick of the session and the 
 season, to be called upon once a fortnight to travel a hundred and
 
 THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 383 
 
 fifty miles to preside at a dinner of townsmen, or to take the chair at 
 the annual feast of a friendly society. 
 
 But it is time that some idea should be given of the manner 
 in which the business of the nation is transacted in the House 
 of Commons. It is too early for the visitor to enter the popular 
 Chamber of the Legislature, seeing that prayers, said daily by the 
 chaplain, are not yet over. They are three in number, one for the 
 Queen, another for the royal family, a third for the Commons, on 
 behalf of whom it is supplicated that their deliberations may be con- 
 ducted " without prejudice, favour, or partial affection." Then comes 
 the collect beginning "Prevent us, Lord, in all our doings," and in 
 less tban ten minutes everything will be ready for work. If there is 
 an important debate imminent, all tbe seats in the body of the House 
 will have been occupied while the short religious service is in progress, 
 for it is only by being present then that a member can take his place 
 and establish a right to occupy it throughout the sitting. Before 
 prayers, he may symbolise his appropriation of a seat by depositing in 
 it his hat and gloves, or perhaps a bundle of papers. But it is only 
 wben prayers are over that he is permitted to place his card in the 
 little brass frame in the back of the bench, and thus finally secure the 
 seat for himself. Tbe chaplain now leaves the House, walking back- 
 wards and bowing all the way. Tbe Speaker takes the chair, and at 
 the extremity of the table opposite him, the mace, which symbolises 
 his presence and authority, is deposited by the Sergeant-at-Arms. 
 
 Meanwhile there is a busy scene to be witnessed, not merely in the 
 House itself, but in those parts of tbe building which lead to it. The 
 appearance of the Westminster lobbies may generally be taken as an 
 accurate indication of the character of the debate impending or in 
 actual progress ; and the merest tyro may infer, from the composition 
 of the crowds who throng the passages, whether it is Bible, or beei 
 or Irish affairs which engage the attention of Her Majesty's " Faith 
 ful Commons " on any given afternoon or evening. If the first, he 
 will see in the great Hall the passages and tbe ante-chambers populous 
 with thronging groups of enthusiastic clergymen. If he made his 
 way into the members' lobby, he would have seen the lay bishops of 
 the House of Commons tbe centre of a demonstrative group of clerics. 
 The scene on the occasion of any Bill which touches the licensing 
 laws is equally typical. Perspiring publicans are seated at intervals 
 along the line of approach to the senatorial sanctum. Some of these 
 are chiefly anxious to gain an order for admittance ; the majority are 
 intent on more serious matters. On another occasion it is neither 
 the public-house question nor the Church question which invites the 
 attention of the elective legislature. We are to have an Irish evening, 
 and the nationality of the imminent discussion is immediately shown 
 in the composition of the knots of persons standing in and about the
 
 384 ENGLAND. 
 
 members' lobby. Every variety of Hibernian accent is audible, from 
 the thin, nipping brogue of Dublin to the rich broad roll of Cork. 
 Some of these sons of the Emerald Isle are the correspondents of 
 Irish newspapers, waiting, it may be, for any intelligence which they 
 can pick up, or perhaps to receive from one of their compatriots wbo 
 is going to enlighten the House that evening with his oratory, a full 
 and correct report of the as yet undelivered speech. Others are 
 possessed by a spirit of feverish anxiety to know whether certain 
 petitions have been presented. 
 
 In the lobby of the House itself may be seen our elective legislators, 
 in little knots of three or four, discussing with each other, or with 
 friends and constituents, the events and the rumours of the hour ; 
 newspaper editors, who have the entree of the place, button-holing 
 some great man with a view of learning State secrets, and very fre- 
 quently some occupant of the reporters' gallery, who is also a corres- 
 pondent of a provincial journal, engaged in much the same process. 
 The doors of the House are constantly swinging backwards and for- 
 wards. Wbite-haired janitors guard the portal on either side ; the 
 air is full of the buzz of conversation, and all is motion and life. The 
 spectacle visible inside the House itself is not one of less animation. 
 Each successive foot of the green leather-covered benches is being 
 occupied by gentlemen who have already left there the emblem of 
 rightful possession, and who stream in one by one, and two by two, 
 while private business is going on. This is tbe name given to all 
 measures promoted by railway companies, gas companies, water com- 
 panies, municipal corporations, or private persons. Everything that 
 passes with reference to these Bills in the House of Commons is, 
 with scarcely an exception, purely formal. The private Bill, after 
 having been read a first and second time, the reading simply con- 
 sisting of a motion that it shall be so read, is referred to a select 
 committee, who pass the measure, send it back to the Commons for 
 the third reading, from whom it goes to the Lords. Not much atten- 
 tion is therefore paid to the earlier proceedings of the parliamentary 
 sitting. In about half an hour the public business, which is the real 
 business of the evening, begins. The House of Commons is a great 
 national court of grievance, and to these grievances its attention is 
 drawn by petitions. On each side of the table hang bags in which 
 the document in question is dropped. As a rule the presentation of 
 a petition resolves itself into the inscription of its subject and its 
 origin on two pieces of paper, which are sent to the reporters' gallery. 
 A member of Parliament, however, has the right to declare, viva voce, 
 who the petitioners are, and what tbeir aim is. Further, he may 
 insist that the whole document shall be read aloud, but not audibly, 
 by one of the clerks at the table. Tbe next stage in the proceedings 
 is the giving of notices of motions. These notices may relate either to
 
 THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 385 
 
 questions, to resolutions, or to bills. As regards the first, notice of 
 question is generally given by the member to the Minister, and this is 
 for the most part done by the interrogant writing his question on a 
 piece of paper, and handing it to the clerk at the table. As there are 
 always many more members anxious to obtain a day for their motions 
 than there are days available, it is necessary to resort to the process 
 of deciding by ballot how these days shall be allotted. On the table 
 of the House there lies a notice paper with a row of printed figures at 
 the side ; on this list members write their names. In a box before the 
 clerk at the table are small bits of paper twisted up, bearing figures 
 which correspond to those on the sheet. When, therefore, notices of 
 motions are called, the clerk draws one of these pieces from the box 
 and reads aloud its number, while the Speaker looking at the list in 
 his hands, calls on the member whose name is written opposite the 
 lucky figure. Hence it is a mere accident whether a private member 
 obtains an opportunity for bringing forward a motion or not. There 
 are only two days, Tuesday and Friday, in the week open for this 
 purpose. Monday and Thursday are Government nights. On 
 Wednesday, which like Tuesday and Friday is open to the private 
 member, but for bills only, not motions, the discussion on any subject 
 closes at a quarter to six o'clock. 
 
 Before the actual business of the evening commences, we may cast 
 a glance round the House. We are now entering, let the reader sup- 
 pose, through the door which opens immediately out of the lobby. 
 Above us is the clock, and on either side, raised a little from the level 
 of the floor, are rows of seats allotted to the secretaries of Ministers 
 and other privileged persons. As the visitor looks straight in front of 
 him — he is now advancing to that invisible line which runs from the 
 capacious chair in which the Sergeant-at-Arms is ensconced to the seat 
 opposite, called the bar, to which all persons, printers, writers, and 
 others guilty of contumacy are summoned for breach of privilege 
 — he will see rows of benches, covered with green leather, rising tier 
 on tier on either side, while immediately opposite is the Speaker's 
 chair, on a small dais. Immediately beneath the Speaker are the 
 three clerks at the table, who wear, by virtue of their office, whether 
 they are or are not barristers, wigs and gowns. The benches on tbe 
 Speaker's right hand are occupied by the Ministers and their sup- 
 porters, those on the left by the Opposition — the members of the late 
 Government being seated on the front Opposition bench, as the 
 members of the present Government are on the front bench facing 
 them. This row of seats is divided by a small interspace to admit of 
 the passage to and fro of members, known as the gangway, and below 
 the gangway sit the independent English members, and below them, 
 as well as mingled with them, the Irish Home Rule members. Once 
 more facing about, so as to be exactly opposite Mr. Speaker, we ele- 
 
 c c
 
 386 ENGLAND. 
 
 vate our eyes and see in the gallery — beneath which enter those mem- 
 bers who wish to attract little notice, and which rises immediately 
 above Mr. Speaker's throne — the representatives of the press, seated 
 in two rows. Those who occupy the front boxes are the actual 
 reporters, busy with their stenographic symbols ; those seated behind 
 them are either reporters waiting their turn, or leader-writers for the 
 different newspapers listening to the debate. If you cast your eye 
 still further up, in the direction of the roof, you will perceive an iron 
 grating in the wall, whence there look out the faces of ladies. This, 
 indeed, is the ladies gallery, better known as " the cage," and although 
 many proposals have been made to do away with the railing which 
 obscures their view, the step has always been resisted on the ground 
 that it would tend to distract the attention of the members from then- 
 parliamentary duties. 
 
 Now let the reader suppose that he has ascended to that gallery in 
 which are congregated the " gentlemen of the press." He is on a level 
 with the two galleries in which members sit and watch the debates. 
 Opposite him, and still on the same level, are a succession of galleries 
 which require explanation. The first of these, that which directly 
 overlooks the area of the House, is devoted to peers and ambassadors 
 and other distinguished personages. Just behind this there are seats 
 which the boys of Westminster School are allowed to occupy, and to 
 which members of Parliament may sometimes introduce upon special 
 occasions the more eminent of their friends. Behind this is the 
 Speaker's gallery — two long rows of seats, closely packed, one may 
 be sure, if a debate of any importance is expected ; and behind this, 
 again, is the strangers' gallery. Behind this there is a small compart- 
 ment, fenced off by an iron railing — another ladies' cage — the 
 Sergeant's gallery ; the gallery of the Speaker's wife, for ladies, being 
 the right-hand compartment of the cage looking towards the Speaker's 
 gallery. 
 
 Already it is possible to form some notion of the personal appearance 
 of the members of whom the House consists. They enter one alter 
 another, in all kinds of costumes, and with every sort of manner. The 
 first thing which it is natural to remark is that the operation of the 
 ballot has caused but little change in the aspect of the House of Com- 
 mons. The parliamentary visitor will see sitting on either side of the 
 Speaker's chair the same array of broad-acred squires and of success- 
 ful merchants as be has observed any time during the Jast twenty 
 years. The squires are not quite so numerous as they were. The 
 barristers are more numerous. There are not, perhaps, quite so many 
 young men as formerly. In the House of Commons elected in 1874 
 there were only a hundred members under forty years of age, of whom 
 one-half were under thirty-five, while only sixteen were under thirty. 
 Of the former of these — those under thirty-live — twenty were sons of
 
 THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 387 
 
 peers, whose election was mainly attributable to family influence. 
 Among the Irish Home Rulers the proportion of young men was 
 unusually large. 
 
 At the general election of 1880 about a hundred and twenty-five 
 members under forty years of age were returned, of whom between 
 seventy and eighty were under thirty-five, and eight- and-twenty were 
 under thirty. Of those under thirty-five years of age nearly twenty 
 were the sons of peers or the heirs-presumptive to peerages, and 
 about a dozen were Home Rulers elected by constituencies in Ireland. 
 Of those under thirty years of age eighteen were the sons of peers, 
 one was the heir-presumptive to a peerage, and one was the son of 
 the Prime Minister. Of the whole number of members under forty 
 only about a fifth were Irish Home Rulers. 
 
 There are, indeed, men in the House of Commons who take to 
 politics as a profession. They are the salt of the assemblage, and 
 they alone will ultimately rise to the highest political distinction. 
 But then these have abundant means of their own, and the fact 
 remains that for the greater number the House of Commons is the 
 glorified haven of men who have been successful in other pursuits. 
 Not merely has the extension of the suffrage increased the polling- 
 booths and the costlier parts of the electoral machinery, but in the 
 lifetime of each Parliament members find themselves involuntarily 
 compelled to spend more money in local charities and other institu- 
 tions in the hope, if possible, of averting a contest. Again, even in 
 the larger constituencies, where most of the expenses are paid by 
 subscribers, there exists a distrust of youth, and the preference is 
 given to the middle-aged gentlemen, especially if they happen to have 
 been in the House of Commons before. The most costly seats of all 
 are probably those for the metropolitan counties, in the case of which 
 the object is to get a candidate who is a personage both in the City 
 and in his suburban neighbourhood, or who is willing to pay for the 
 possession of the continuation of the distinction which a seat for a 
 metropolitan county confers. 
 
 The truth is that we see everywhere in politics what we have seen 
 in society, the general substitution of the plutocratic principle for the 
 aristocratic, although, as has been already pointed out, it is a pluto- 
 cracy round which there have crystallised many of the prejudices and 
 sentiments of aristocracy. Since the repeal of the Corn Laws the 
 peerage has been increased by more than eighty new creations. Yet in 
 the Houses elected in 1874 and 1880 there were not represented more 
 than two-thirds of those peers who were represented in 1846. Here, 
 then, is the evidence of the great change which has been accom- 
 plished. Whereas twenty years after the Reform Bill of 1832 there 
 was scarcely any diminution in the total of peers' heirs in the Lower 
 House, the diminution is now an accomplished fact. The conclusion 
 
 o c 2
 
 388 ENGLAND. 
 
 is, therefore, irresistible that the tendency will be more and more to 
 regard titles without money as politically useless. 
 
 At the general election of 1874 five Irish peers, thirty-four eldest 
 sons of peers, and forty-three younger sons of peers were returned. 
 At the general election of 1880 three Irish peers, thirty-five eldest 
 sons of peers, and forty-eight younger sons of peers were returned. 
 Of these between forty and fifty sat in both Parliaments, and the 
 majority of those who being still alive in 1880 were not re-elected had 
 cither succeeded to peerages or had been created peers themselves 
 since 1874. About a couple of hundred of grandsons, nephews, and 
 cousins, sons-in-law, brothers-in-law, and fathers-in-law, with other 
 and more remote relations and connections of peers, were members of 
 either Parliament at its commencement, a good many of them being 
 baronets, of whom there are some seventy in the present, and were 
 nearly the same number in the late, House of Commons. 
 
 The notices having been despatched, the time for the asking and 
 answering of questions arrives. Most of these, it may be supposed, 
 have neither urgency nor interest, but there are some from which it 
 would seem from the replies given that an idea of the ministerial 
 policy on matters of pressing moment may be formed. When we 
 come to these, the murmur of talk is changed for comparative silence. 
 The only sounds audible in succession are the voice of Mr. Speaker, 
 who summons the questioner; of the questioner himself, of his minis- 
 terial respondent, of the crackling of paper as the gentlemen of the 
 House of Commons turn over the leaves of the orders of the day, and 
 of the deadened monotones of suppressed chatter in the distance. 
 Supposing the answer to be one which clearly shows that her Majesty's 
 Ministers have, or have not, decided to adopt a certain line of action 
 in a matter of supreme national moment, there is sure to be a great 
 demonstration of feeling. Very frequently, however, these interro- 
 gations relate to imaginary grievances and unfounded reports. There 
 are many different ways of answering these — the circumlocutory, the 
 evasive, the enigmatical, the humorous, the contemptuous, the solemn, 
 the jocular, the courteous, the sarcastic. The questions over, the 
 next thing is to pass to the order of the day. Let it be supposed that 
 this order — the day being a Thursday, and consequently appropriated 
 to ministers — is, that the House shall resolve itself into Committee of 
 Supply, to which it is possible that an amendment has been proposed 
 directly or indirectly raising the question of confidence in the Govern- 
 ment. Now it is perfectly possible that before the gentleman who, 
 having a night or two previously moved the adjournment of the House, 
 has the right to open the debate has commenced to speak, another 
 member may rise from his seat with an intimation that he wishes to 
 bring before the Speaker, to whom every member does as a matter of 
 form address himself, a question of order or privilege. This generally
 
 THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 389 
 
 portends that some purely personal episode is imminent. An honour- 
 able gentleman whose sentences are capitally constructed, and whose 
 voice is clear and bitter, protests that he has been gratuitously vilified 
 by a member outside or inside the House, and wishes to draw atten- 
 tion to the fact. After be has done, the incriminated senator explains 
 what he said, why he said it, and what he meant. Then comes a 
 wrangle of tongues, and sundry signs of tumult ; first one member and 
 then another bobs up his head, demanding silence and order. Tempers 
 are becoming heated and patience exhausted. A politician who has 
 an unpleasantly plain way of putting matters suggests that the real 
 problem is whether A did or did not mean to insinuate that B ought 
 to have his place in an unmentionable category of baseness. This 
 brings things to a head : there are explanations, verbal refinements, 
 compromises, and so without anything being really retracted or 
 definitely denied, the matter drops, and, ruffled and agitated by the 
 preliminary skirmish, the House addresses itself to the business of 
 the night. 
 
 Calm and self-possessed amid a storm of cheers, mingled, it may 
 be, with a few derisive sounds, the orator of the evening rises to his 
 feet ; his voice is low, his manner admirably collected. Before com- 
 mencing his speech, he takes care to see that everything he may want 
 in the course of its delivery — books of reference, sundry documents, 
 and a tumbler of water — are within easy distance. All this he does 
 as tranquilly as if he were about to sit down in the solitude of his 
 study for a hard morning's work with his pen. Nothing can be more 
 considerate than his opening language, nothing more reasonable or 
 cogent than his earlier propositions. Presently something of a change 
 comes over the spirit of his utterances. He has heard some side 
 remark, he has been irritated by some ironical cheer, or by some 
 aggressive " No, no." In a moment the speaker is transformed ; the 
 quiet and measured tones are exchanged for a vehement flow of rhe- 
 toric ; protest follows protest, each clothed in language of new vigour 
 and illustration is piled upon illustration. The display, which all 
 admit is magnificent, comes to an end at last, and after the motion 
 has been duly seconded by a political friend, there rises to answer 
 from the ministerial bench a middle-aged gentleman of rather sleepy 
 manner, who, however, gradually works himself into a state of arti- 
 ficial energy. In a statement which makes little pretence to rhetorical 
 merit, and which, from beginning to end, is severely business-like, 
 he endeavours to show that the statesman who opened the debate is 
 wrong in his facts and untrustworthy in his conclusions. The speech 
 of this gentleman, who is a Minister of State, possibly the leader of 
 the House — though, as a rule, it is upon the leader of the House that 
 the duty falls of replying on the whole discussion towards the small 
 hours of the morning — occupies perhaps rather more than an hour.
 
 390 ENGLAND. 
 
 It is now close upon half-past seven, and members commence to leave 
 the House, intent upon dinner. Yet, though the benches are almost 
 deserted, the tide of speech still rolls on. After an interval of 
 about eighty minutes, the House gradually recovers from its con- 
 dition of emptiness and languor. A brisk interchange of fire com- 
 mences along the whole line of the two political armies. The sharp- 
 shooters stand forth, and in more or less animated harangues of twenty 
 minutes endeavour to spread confusion among the ranks of their oppo- 
 nents, and the rest of the evening is occupied with a series of duels, 
 in the conduct of which the chiefs of the two sets of combatants 
 exercise their authority and give counsel. 
 
 All this time there have been busily moving in and out, never sitting 
 down, and never absent from tbe House for many minutes together, 
 four or five gentlemen, whose chief business, it seems, is to come in, 
 look around, consult a piece of paper in their hands, make a memo- 
 randum, wbisper a few words into the ear of some member, and then 
 disappear, only to reappear and again to do precisely the same thing. 
 These are the whips, three of whom are officials, while the other two 
 act for the Opposition. It is the function of the whip to see that the 
 members of his party are on the spot when a division is imminent, 
 and that the debate is conducted according to tbe lines laid down. 
 But he has other work than this to do. He must be imperturbable in 
 his temper, unerring in his tact. If he can win a vote he must accept 
 any number of snubs, and members generally are very fond of snub- 
 bing whips. He must observe everything and appear to observe 
 nothing. He must be omniscient without being inquisitive. He will 
 carry to the Prime Minister a faithful and particular report of all that 
 he sees and hears, and the Prime Minister from that information will 
 judge what he can or cannot achieve, and will regulate his policy 
 accordingly. The Prime Minister may regard a Bill as the embodi- 
 ment of a political principle ; the whip looks at everything not in the 
 light of a principle, but of a question. 
 
 The mere machinery by which a Treasury whip brings his men to 
 the House is simple enough. At six o'clock he knows that an im- 
 portant division will be taken next day. He communicates with the 
 person who acts as a kind of clerk to tbe Patronage Secretary of the 
 Treasury, and who, be the Ministry Whig or Tory, preserves to each 
 in turn on its accession to power a profound silence as to the tactics 
 of its predecessor. This gentleman, on receiving his instructions, 
 repairs to his office in King Street ; the lithograph machines are set. 
 to work, and before the arrival of the post next morning the doubly, 
 or trebly, or quadruply underscored notes are delivered with the 
 parliamentary notices to honourable members. Having issued the 
 whip, the great thing for the whip himself is to see that members do 
 not slip through his fingers. Hence he may have to scour the clubs, 

 
 THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 391 
 
 as well as to guard religiously the portals of the Senate. Further, 
 while the model whip must he vigilant as Cerberus ard as active as 
 an acrobat, he must be careful not to seem the despot he really is. 
 He must be absolutely incorruptible, and that in the midst of transac- 
 tions which have a flavour of jobbery about them. He must exercise 
 the same judgment in deciding who and what are the proper objects 
 of assistance from the private funds of the party — a candidate, it 
 may be, in the costly struggle of a contested election, or possibly 
 a newspaper in the depths of chronic impecuniosity. Nor must the 
 Treasury whip merely pay studious heed to the convenience and even 
 the caprice of the ministerial flock. It is necessary that he should 
 cultivate the good opinion of his opponents, and it is especially neces- 
 sary that he should be in the confidence of the gentleman who, as his 
 personal rival on the Opposition benches, is the candidate for the post 
 which he himself holds. 
 
 But let us suppose that the hostilities are now practically con- 
 cluded, and that the final issue is about to be decided. The Speaker 
 has for the last time put the question. The cry, " Division ! 'vision ! 
 'vision ! " has been rung out by the doorkeepers and police. Tho 
 division bells have been set ringing from one end of the vast building 
 to the other. Scouts have been despatched in swift hansoms to the 
 clubs to collect laggards and deserters, and diners and smokers at the 
 St. Stephen's Club, hard by, have been startled by the sudden sound of 
 the electric alarum. They have mustered at last, and a closely packed 
 phalanx has been collected under the Peers' gallery. The final order 
 is given — ayes to the right and noes to the left. Slowly and quietly 
 do they file out into their respective lobbies. The doorkeepers come 
 in, see that no member is left behind, peer under the benches, and 
 lock the doors. In the course of two or three minutes they begin to 
 defile on their return journey through the re-opened portals. At last, 
 in the space perhaps of a quarter of an hour, the House is completely 
 re-filled. The four tellers, bowing at every step, march up to the 
 Speaker's table, and the result is known. The Government have a 
 majority of nearly two to one. It is an hour past midnight, an hour 
 at which some latitude is to be expected and allowed. The spirit of 
 the schoolboy lives in the breast of many a middle-aged M.P. Leaps 
 are made from the floors to the benches, huzzas are heard. No one 
 knows what representative government is till he has beheld, on an 
 exciting issue, a division in the House of Commons. 
 
 But it is not to be supposed that the House always transacts its 
 business at this point of high pressure, and if we wish to see what are 
 its more normal condition and atmosphere we must visit it upon a 
 less stirring occasion. The House of Commons is the manufactory of 
 statute law, and its first business is to legislate. It will, therefore, be 
 not amiss briefly to glance at the various stages in the progress of a
 
 892 ENGLAND. 
 
 Bill through Parliament, from the moment of its introduction until it 
 receives the royal assent. It has many vicissitudes to encounter and 
 many risks to run. First comes the oral statement of the purport of 
 the measure — technically known as the request for leave to introduce 
 it- — made by its promoter, who afterwards appears at the bar of the 
 House and is summoned by the Speaker. Then follows the first 
 reading ; and though the measure might be opposed at this period, 
 it is seldom, or never, that such opposition is forthcoming. The real 
 contest begins when, probably in about three weeks from this date, 
 the motion is made that the Bill be read a second time. The debate 
 which arises on the second reading of any measure submitted to Par- 
 liament gathers round the principle of the proposed legislation, and 
 if that legislation is not vetoed then, the project, though it may be 
 materially modified in committee, is not likely to be ultimately rejected. 
 Let it, then, be assumed that a Bill has passed the stage of its second 
 reading — and if the measure is of great importance, the debate which 
 will have attended this consummation will have been full of interest 
 and excitement — and that the motion before the House at the present 
 moment is that the assembled members resolve themselves into com- 
 mittee, or, as the Speaker puts it, that " I do now leave this chair." 
 Here the opposition which was possible on, and even before, the first 
 reading of the BUI, and which was very likely actively forthcoming on 
 the second reading, may be renewed. Another long debate may ensue, 
 amendments may be proposed which deny the expediency of any legis- 
 lation at all, or insist that if legislation be forthcoming it shall assume 
 a different shape. The babel of tongues is once more heard and the 
 familiar scene of rhetorical controversy is repeated. At last the motion 
 is carried, and the House of Commons has affirmed by a majority — 
 1 hough, of course, there need not have been any division on the subject 
 :it all — the proposal to go into committee, and to replace the Speaker 
 for the time being by the Chairman of Ways and Means. There is 
 little visible difference except the substitution of the latter for the 
 former officer of the House, between the Commons in committee and 
 in ordinary debate. The step taken is an historical survival of the old 
 days of tho Tudor and the Stuart despotism. " The exclusion of the 
 Jung's emissary and spy — their Speaker — was the sole motive why the 
 Commons elected to convert themselves into a conclave called a com- 
 mittee, that they might meet together as usual, but without his 
 presence." * 
 
 Every clause of the measure now before the House is gone through ; 
 amendments are forthcoming, are accepted by the Government or by 
 the authors of the Bill, or are rejected and divided on, as the case 
 may be. Sometimes it happens that an amendment is passed in com- 
 mittee and is carried which affects a vital point in the measure and 
 
 * "The House of Commons," p. 11.
 
 THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 393 
 
 materially alters its character. In this case the member who is 
 specially charged with the interests of the Bill will perhaps rise and 
 propose to report progress — in other words, that the House shall 
 resume — so that he may have an opportunity of consulting with his 
 colleagues. Nothing can exceed the thoroughness, and occasionally 
 the pertinacity, exhibited in committee of the whole House. Some- 
 times there are set speeches made, which were, perhaps, intended to 
 be delivered on the occasion of the second reading of (he measure, 
 but for which the opportunity could not be found. For the most 
 part, however, the discussion is conversational, members speaking not 
 for effect, but simply with an eye to business. No student of the 
 House of Commons on these occasions can fail to be struck by the 
 ready amount of varied and practical knowledge which its members 
 display. Honourable gentlemen whose voices are seldom or never 
 heard in the course of great debates, rise up again and again — fox- 
 when the House is in committee there is no limit to the number of 
 times which a member may speak — and are found to have a minute 
 acquaintance with and a grasp of the subject which were but little 
 suspected. It may be lightly said of a particular House of Commons 
 that it is the reverse of brilliant. But whether this reproach has or 
 has not any truth, it may be affirmed with confidence that no House 
 of Commons ever sits at Westminster which does not creditably reflect 
 the intelligence of the nation, and the members of which, if they are 
 not heaven-born statesmen, fail to display a singularly creditable apti- 
 tude for, and insight into, public affairs. 
 
 Our imaginary Bill is now so far advanced on the high road towards 
 becoming an Act that it has emerged from committee modified, we 
 may hope improved, but still substantially the same measure as when 
 it was read a second time. The Speaker is once more in his chair, 
 and the motion which he proposes to the House is, that the Bill, as 
 amended in committee, shall be received. Here, again, the opportu- 
 nity of opposition is renewed, nor is this the last chance that the 
 more obstinate opponents of the measure may have of thwarting it. 
 Having gone through the Commons, the Bill will be sent up to the 
 Lords, and the Upper House will have precisely the same power of 
 rejecting or modifying it that the Lower House has enjoyed. But 
 the people's representatives do not surrender their right of veto 
 upon any changes which may have been insisted on in the measure 
 by the hereditary legislators. The Bill once more formally comes 
 before them, and the Commons are invited to pronounce upon the 
 Lords' amendments. Granted that even this further ordeal is over, 
 and that nothing remains save the formal bestowal of the royal assent 
 for the measure to become law, that will be given upon some future 
 day. One afternoon while petitions are being presented in the House 
 of Commons, a rumour suddenly runs round the benches that there is
 
 894 ENGLAND. 
 
 a message from the Lords. In a moment the door of the House is 
 closed, three loud knocks against it are heard, and it is known that 
 Black Rod demands admittance. The doorkeeper, who has previously 
 slammed the portal in the face of this august official, now opens a 
 wicket, like that of a Freemasons' lodge, peers out at Black Rod 
 through it, next unlocks the door, and proclaims in a loud voice to the 
 assembled Commons, "Message from the Lords." Then .the door 
 opens to admit a gentleman with a cocked hat in one hand, and a 
 sceptre in the other, habited in black breeches, who walks with a bow 
 at every step up the House, till he finds himself opposite the Speaker, 
 the Speaker himself rising to receive him and returning the rever- 
 ential salute. He then informs " this Honourable House " that the 
 Lords desire its presence to hear the royal assent given to some Bills. 
 After having delivered his message he retires, walking backwards from 
 tbe Commons' Chamber, bowing all the way, a feat not to be accom- 
 plished without considerable practice, as well as natural aptitude. 
 The next thing is for the Sergeant-at-Arms to lift the mace from the 
 table, and to lead the way to the bar of the Peers' Chamber, followed 
 by the Speaker, who is the representative in his own person of the 
 collective assemblage over which he presides. Now may be witnessed 
 in the body of the Peers' Chamber a curious and interesting sight. 
 On the woolsack is seated the Lord Chancellor, as the chief of the 
 commissioners to whom the Queen has delegated that attribute which 
 makes her supreme over the national legislature. The keeper of Her 
 Majesty's conscience wears a triangular cocked hat on his wig ; the 
 other peers composing the commission wear those cocked hats which 
 are best known as fore-and-aft, and are also clad in their scarlet robes. 
 Presently there advance from the table two clerks, one of whom reads 
 the commission, in which it is declared that the Sovereign entrusts 
 her royal prerogative, upon the present occasion, to these her well- 
 beloved Lords, and as each peer's name is recited, he raises his hat. 
 Then, last of all, the formula is uttered with the traditional pronunci- 
 ation which is not exactly that of Parisian French, " La reyne le 
 veult." If the measure happens to be a money Bill, the phrase used 
 is, " La reyne remercie ses bons sujets, accepte leur benevolence, et 
 ainsi le veult." 
 
 The Speaker cannot leave the chair of the House of Commons 
 until the adjournment is formally moved ; and there is a story told, 
 which is perfectly true, of a distressing, or rather humourous contre- 
 temps, wbich once occurred towards the close of a sitting of the House. 
 It was long past midnight, the House was deserted, except by the 
 Speaker himself. He, however, sat on, and seemed likely to continue 
 to sit on, for no member had formally moved the adjournment; nor 
 could he be released from tbis durance until a senator, recalled from 
 his homeward course, had brought forward the necessary motion in
 
 THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 395 
 
 the appropriate phraseology. Mr. Speaker Denison, writes Mr. Pal- 
 grave on this incident, was, " during those minutes of detention, 
 doing penance for the misdeeds of his predecessors, because Speaker 
 Finch, or Speaker Seymour, obliging their royal master, and disobey- 
 ing the wish of the House, had often abruptly stopped debate by 
 hurriedly ' pattering down ' from their chair, and away out of the 
 chamber ; practices which, centuries ago, compelled the Commons to 
 establish as a rigid rule, that come what may, their adjournment must 
 ever be upon a motion put from the Chair, with every consequent 
 formality." Instead of their being any jealousy of the Speaker now 
 as the representative and custodian of kingly power, there exists an 
 immense respect for his office. In magnifying his authority, the 
 Commons are indeed magnifying their own. Disrespect to him is dis- 
 respect to the House. He is the depositary of the collective dignities, 
 rights, and privileges of members. Hence his ruling is seldom if ever 
 demurred to ; and the member who did not comport himself deferen- 
 tially to the Chair would be held to have sinned against the unwritten 
 law of the House. Advised by counsel, it is necessary that he should 
 be an authority on matters of constitutional law, and that he should 
 be infallible on all matters of parliamentary procedure. In this last 
 task he is much assisted by the Chief Clerk at the table. He has 
 authority over the wording of all motions, and of all questions put or 
 proposed to be put by members to the Government ; and it is his duty 
 to see that no debatable matter, and nothing which can be construed 
 as directly involving an argument or an inference, is imported into 
 them. The powers which the Speaker possesses, and the willingness 
 of the House to support him in their exercise, were strikingly exempli- 
 fied in the session of 1881. What ordinarily occurs when the sitting 
 of the House has come to an end is, that the Speaker, rising from 
 his chair, bows, not, as might have been supposed, to the leader of 
 the House, but to the Secretary of the Treasury, who acts as his 
 adjutant, and who returns the obeisance. Immediately after this is 
 audible the cry, " Who goes home ?" — a relic of those times when 
 members used to make up parties for the homeward journey to pro- 
 tect themselves against the attacks of highwaymen. The police in 
 the lobbies, however, do not echo this shout, but simply announce 
 " House is up." 
 
 Something must be said about a few of the chief rules and practices 
 of the House of Commons. Except when making a personal explana- 
 tion or on a question of privilege, no member can address the House 
 unless there is before it a substantive motion. If, therefore, he wished 
 to direct its attention to a particular matter formerly, if he desired 
 generally to attack the conduct of the Government, and had had no 
 opportunity for doing so in the course of regular debate, he put him- 
 self in order by rising after the questions had been asked, and
 
 396 ENGLAND. 
 
 announcing at the commencement of his remarks that he would con- 
 clude with a motion. This motion was one for the adjournment of 
 the House, and it was theoretically open to members to bring it for- 
 ward whenever they thought fit. But inasmuch as it involved a consider- 
 able loss of time, there was always the strongest feeling against resort- 
 ing to the expedient, save upon the most pressing urgency ; and unless 
 the occasion was extremely grave, or the reputation and popularity of 
 the member moving the adjournment such that they could submit to a 
 very considerable strain, the experiment was made amid a storm of 
 angry and disapproving shouts. Of late years, however, it has been 
 found necessary to adopt stricter and more formal measures for the 
 prevention of obstruction and the restraint of refractory members. 
 Under certain standing orders, passed in a session specially convened 
 for their settlement in the autumn of 1882, no motion for adjournment 
 can now be made until all the questions on the notice paper have been 
 disposed of, or before the orders of the day or notices of motion have 
 been entered on, except by the leave of the House, or unless " a mem- 
 ber rising in his place shall propose to move the adjournment for the 
 purpose of discussing a definite matter of public importance, and not 
 less than forty members shall thereupon rise in their places to support 
 the motion." And if fewer than forty but not fewer than ten members 
 shall so rise, the House " shall on a division upon question put, forth- 
 with determine whether such motion shall be made." Moreover, when 
 a motion is made for the adjournment of the House or of a debate, 
 or that the chairman of the House in Committee do leave the chair or 
 report progress, the discussion thereupon " shall be confined to the 
 matter of such motion, and no member having moved or seconded any 
 such motion shall be entitled to move or second any such motion 
 during the same debate." It is also competent to the Speaker or 
 chairman of the House in Committee, if he is of opinion that any such 
 motion is an abuse of the rules of the House, to put the question at 
 onee and thus immediately to end all controversy concerning it. 
 But the House almost always adjourns if news suddenly reaches it of 
 any very touching or terrible event. It did so when the news of the 
 murder of President Lincoln arrived, and much more recently, when 
 it was announced that one of its members had just expired in the 
 Library. 
 
 The Speaker has, among many other duties, three particular func- 
 tions to discharge. In the first place, he has to see that the debate 
 does not stray hopelessly from its original subject; in the second, 
 that none of the laws of parliamentary courtesy or business are in- 
 fringed ; in the third, it rests with him very much to arrange the plan 
 of a debate. As regards the first, it has been recently illustrated in a 
 case spoken of by Mr. Palgrave, when the subject of the discussion 
 was the silk duty. A member seized on the occasion for the purpose
 
 THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 397 
 
 of delivering an harangue denouncing the love of money and its 
 deteriorating effects on the national character. The Speaker then 
 interposed, and endeavoured to guide the discussion back to its 
 proper channel ; a second diversion took place when another member 
 drew attention to the taxes imposed on corks, and the Speaker 
 interfered again ; a third time, the discussion rambled off from silk to 
 the state of commerce generally, and once more the Speaker mildly 
 protested. As regards the primary duty of the Speaker, he has been 
 comparatively seldom, until the year 1881, called upon to exercise his 
 authority. As regards the third of his attributes, the management of 
 debates, it is one in which impartiality is absolutely essential, and 
 usually it is a matter of arrangement and co-operation with the whips 
 on both sides. The theory, of course, is that a member wishing to 
 speak has only to catch the Speaker's eye, and to receive his nod ; but, 
 as a matter of fact, it is pretty well known and settled beforehand 
 whom the Speaker will contrive to see. The member in question has 
 either intimated directly to the Speaker his wish to take part at a 
 particular stage in a particular debate, and has received his consent, 
 or else, having mentioned the matter to the whip of his party, has 
 secured for himself a place on the list of speakers, which is suggested 
 to the occupant of the chair. Every member, when speaking, is 
 obliged to stand with his head uncovered, unless, indeed, he happens 
 to draw attention to something connected with the division while the 
 division is actually in progress, in which case he speaks sitting and 
 covered. Private members have, as has been already said, the right 
 to bring forward their motions on those nights on which the order is 
 Supply. Now Supply can only be granted in committee ; therefore, 
 the first thing to be done is for the Speaker to put the question, when 
 the words Supply Committee are read by the clerk at the table, " That 
 I now leave the chair." Upon this the member who has precedence 
 with the motion of which he has given notice rises up and bows. The 
 Speaker then puts to the House, as an amendment to the question, 
 " That I now leave the chair," the proposal to insert after the word 
 " that" the motion to be brought forward by the particular member, 
 instead of the words, " I now leave the chair." The Speaker continues 
 in his place, and the motion of the private member is accepted or 
 rejected, as the case may be. Supposing that there are other motions 
 on the paper, and that there is time to discuss them, it is one of 
 the rules of the House that they should not be divided on, the ex- 
 planation being that the House has already decided that the question 
 shall be put, that the Speaker shall leave the chair, that it cannot 
 reconsider the decision, and this being impossible, that there is no way 
 of moving an amendment, wbich is the form technically assumed by 
 every motion on Supply. 
 
 As the Speaker is the great leviathan of the House of Commons,
 
 898 ENGLAND. 
 
 the incarnation and the tutelary governor of its dignities, rights, and 
 privileges, so the Sergeant- at- Arms is the officer who guards his 
 personal majesty — and therefore that of the House — while the clerks, 
 at whom we glanced in our hurried bird's-eye view of the chamber, 
 are his agents and deputies. Though there are only three clerks 
 actually sitting at the table of the House of Commons, the staff of 
 House of Commons clerks includes a great many more. There are 
 indeed no fewer than four distinct offices in the House, each furnished 
 with a clerkly staff numbering some six or seven. Of these the first 
 is the Public Bill Office, which receives and examines public Bills, is 
 responsible for correct printing, and the insertion of all amendments ; 
 the Journal Office sees that the diary of the House is properly drawn 
 up from the votes, and also by keeping an account of these votes acts 
 as a check on the Treasury ; the Committee Office keeps the Minutes, 
 and sends clerks to the Committees. The record of the business of 
 the House of Commons actually despatched is known by the name of 
 Minutes, while the Order Book relates to the impending business ; 
 both are in the hands of the clerks. As regards the private Bill 
 procedure, it is the duty of the Private Bill Office to see that these 
 measures are in proper form, and the Speaker's counsel looks through 
 them to ascertain that there is no informality. In addition to the 
 subjects already mentioned, all questions relating to naturalisation 
 and devolution of estates comes within its jurisdiction. In addition to 
 the Committee on Petitions, there are several other committees which 
 meet periodically during the session. Of these the most popular and 
 the best attended is the Committee on Kitchen and Refreshments, the 
 only one at which members are allowed to smoke, and which meets 
 on Wednesday afternoons, when the House of Commons is sitting, 
 though its proceedings only become of any great interest or import- 
 ance when discussions of an exceptionally stormy character are 
 expected. "With the exception of this committee, these bodies gene- 
 rally assemble on Monday or Thursday, Tuesday or Friday. The 
 nomination of members of Parliament to sit on them practically 
 belongs to the under-whips on the two sides. Altogether there will 
 probably be sitting at the height of the session from fifteen to twenty 
 committees, many of them being, of course, select committees to which 
 Bills are referred, and whose deliberations immensely assist the pro- 
 gress of parliamentary business. Under the standing orders of 1882 
 two grand committees have been appointed during each of the last 
 three sessions, for the consideration of Bills relating to law, the 
 courts of justice, and legal procedure, and to trade, shipping, and 
 manufactures. They consist of not less than sixty or more than 
 eighty members, who are nominated not by the House, but by the 
 Committee of Selection, and who are chosen on account of their sup- 
 posed familiarly with the subjects which are to be referred to them.
 
 THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 399 
 
 The mode of conducting business in the grand committees is partly 
 that of select committees, and partly that of committees of the whole 
 House. It cannot be said that they have altogether fulfilled public 
 expectation as a means either of saving time or of enlisting the 
 services of experts in the work of special legislation. But in both 
 respects it may be conceded that they have accomplished much, 
 although they have not achieved all they at first appeared capable of 
 achieving, and it is at least certain that such measures as the new 
 Bankruptcy Act and the new Patent Act could scarcely have been 
 passed in a single session without their assistance. 
 
 Canning was called by John Wilson (" Christopher North ") " the 
 last of the rhetoricians," and often, since his death, the complaint has 
 been heard that the art of parliamentary eloquence is extinct. It has 
 been said that "there are long speeches, sarcastic speeches, and crack 
 speeches ; but they are not such speeches as fell from the lips ol 
 Burke, Pitt, and Fox, or, more recently still, from Canning and 
 Brougham." The truth of this remark may be frankly admitted; let 
 us endeavour to explain the conditions which may be held to account 
 for the iact. In the first place, it is as unreasonable to expect the 
 oratory of Burke, Pitt and Fox, or of Canning and Brougham, in a 
 Parliament elected under household suffrage, as it would be to expect 
 their policy. The policy of an Administration depends upon the 
 character of the House of Commons for the time being ; so, too, must 
 the standard of parliamentary oratory. " The grand debate, the 
 popular harangue," which we look for and find in the Georgian era of 
 parliamentary eloquence, existed under a condition of things which 
 cannot be recalled at will. Instead of the real opposition between 
 Whig and Tory, at a time when they differed on fundamental principles, 
 and were perpetually challenging each other on momentous issues that 
 struck at the root of government, we seem to have little more now 
 than the antagonism between the ins and the outs. From the Exclusion 
 Bill to 1714, Whigs and Tories were separated by the disputed suc- 
 cession of a Popish sovereign. Later on, in the days of Lord Melbourne 
 even, there was the controversy between the country gentlemen and 
 the commercial class — the former complaining that the corruption 
 exercised by the latter upon the Government was fatal to the best 
 interests of the realm. From the days of George III. to William IV. 
 Whigs and Tories were mutually distinguished by different views of 
 the royal prerogative. Moreover, the time was eminently calculated 
 to inspire patriots and politicians with great thoughts, and with noble 
 language in which to express them. The existence of England as 
 a nation was menaced, and even domestic policy was debated from an 
 imperial standpoint. The situation was full of dignity and danger. 
 Men rose to it unconsciously, and the entire atmosphere was en- 
 nobling. When the thirty tyrants at Athens wished to check the flood
 
 400 ENGLAND. 
 
 of Attic eloquence, they reversed the bemu on the Pnyx, so that 
 the speaker should no longer catch his inspiration from the prospect 
 of the sea, the scene of the greatest Athenian triumphs. The simple 
 historic circumstance remains for all ages the symbol of the influence 
 which national spirit must exercise over national eloquence. Year 
 after year the tendency asserts itself more and more with the con- 
 stituencies to send to Parliament as their representatives men who 
 are rather specialists than statesmen. The favoured candidate is he 
 who has made a particular study of some particular branch of political 
 or social knowledge ; who is master of the whole question of local 
 taxation ; who is versed in all the mysteries of poor-law administra- 
 tion ; who is conversant with Bank Currency and Consolidated 
 Funds ; with drains and sewers ; with School Boards and the new 
 Educational Code. And this is inevitable. The British elector, in 
 showing himself more or less a believer in the philosophy of Mr. 
 Gradgrind, is true to the practical spirit of his very practical age. 
 There is little or no scope for the exercise of imagination or the 
 display of taste in the arena of political discussion. What the 
 House of Commons has for the most part to consider, are not so 
 much broad questions of policy, or great problems which lie at the 
 root of society and government, as technical points of political 
 economy, and dry and minute details of commercial and industrial 
 arrangement. The machine of government has grown terribly com- 
 plex ; its movement is necessarily less rapid. It would be unreason- 
 able to expect from those who regulate it the rush and vigour of the 
 age of Pitt and Fox. 
 
 Again, the House of Commons is necessarily, in a sense, the 
 educational mirror of the nation, and its speakers naturally reflect 
 the dominant intellectual influences of their day. The present age 
 is one of educational transition. The literary and, above all, the 
 classical lines of the past are being deserted. The expulsion of the 
 Muses from the national curriculum is rapidly becoming an accom- 
 plished fact, and the goddess Scientia is being enthroned in their 
 place. The chief cause of the richness and elegance of the general 
 standard of debate which formerly existed in the Commons was the 
 education which its members received. The groundwork of that 
 education was literary ; the intellectual influences, to which they 
 were from the first subjected, were classical. Eloquence and oratory 
 are essentially Greek and Roman arts, and our first statesmen have 
 without exception learned them from the Greek and Roman models. 
 The entire atmosphere of the House was suffused, as it were, with a 
 classical aroma. The ablest metaphors, the happiest repartees were 
 drawn from the classical storehouse. 
 
 But if we have seen the last of the school of literary and classical 
 speakers, there is no reason whatever to anticipate a decline in the
 
 THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 401 
 
 debating power of the popular chamber of* the legislature. There 
 may be less of art or artifice, but there is no diminution of vigour, 
 nor is there any slackness of appreciation on the part of the people's 
 representatives of really good speaking. The House of Commons 
 is always profoundly impressed by anything which strikes it as 
 unlaboured and natural. Hence the great success of Mr. Bright's 
 speeches in Parliament as elsewhere ; they are instinct with genuine 
 pathos, a pathos which is dependent not merely on the wonderful 
 simplicity of the language itself, but on the tone and manner of the 
 speaker. On the other hand, there is nothing which the House of 
 Commons objects to more than the assumption of infallibility on the 
 part of any of its members. The House is in this, as in many other 
 things, a reflection of the most strongly pronounced traits in our 
 national character. The feelings which dominate the public school, 
 the regiment, the college, the profession, and any other society of 
 Englishmen of whatever age, are also those which are represented in 
 the House of Commons. Simplicuy, directness, business-like despatch 
 — all these are qualities eminently valuable in the eyes of members of 
 Parliament. There is no reproach greater than that of exaggerated 
 self-sufficiency to be brought against one of the representatives of the 
 people. Just as the House dislikes above everything the man who 
 shows that he is free from every kind of doubt or scruple upon every 
 subject, so also does it show the sentiment of its dislike in an unmis- 
 takable manner. The stubborn member who will not yield to its 
 collective will when indubitably expressed, the member who speaks 
 with the affectation of dogmatic certainty on all subjects, the member 
 who is under the influence of strong animosities, the member who 
 has a bad temper, or who is without the gift of concealing it, 
 usually fails in parliamentary life. It must always be recollected 
 that English politics are free from that acerbity which infuses the 
 venom of bitterness into the political life of France, and that political 
 differences do not operate as any bar to personal good will. 
 
 D D
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 THE HOUSE OF LOKDS. 
 
 Reasons for treating the House of Lords after the House of Commons — Reasons why the 
 Proceedings of the Peers have latterly increased in Interest and Importance — Class 
 of Questions in which the House of Lords from its Composition is specially compe- 
 tent to instruct the Public — General Relations between the Two Houses — Legisla- 
 tive Activity of the Lords — Difficulties of Young Peers — The House of Lords in 
 Action — Inside the House — Points of Difference from Commons — The Whips — 
 Questions — Progress of Debate — General Conduct of Business — Questions of Pos- 
 sible Reforms — Future of Parliament. 
 
 If considerations of dignity and of fidelity to the letter of the Con- 
 stitution had influenced us, we should not have given priority of treat- 
 ment to the House of Commons over the House of Lords. But our 
 purpose is to show the British Constitution actually at work, not to 
 analyse its component parts in a state of quiescence. The practical 
 business of Parliament is to maintain the government and to legislate. 
 Neither can be done apart from the House of Commons ; and if that 
 House has made up its mind as to the way in which either the one or the 
 other task is to be accomplished, it may be predicted with certainty 
 that the House of Lords will eventually shape its course accordingly. 
 But to say this is not to imply that in its own particular sphere the 
 House of Lords is subordinated to the House of Commons. As a matter 
 of fact, during the last ten years an unusually large number of national 
 measures have originated in the chamber of our hereditary legislators ; 
 it has been the scene of many debates of great moment and of rare 
 excellence ; it has witnessed the rise and development of one or two 
 parliamentary reputations on a more striking scale than the House 
 of Commons has known. The statesmanship, the oratory, the wisdom, 
 and the debating power of the Peers will compare favourably with the 
 best standard of the Commons. It was Sir Robert Peel's opinion 
 that the statesman primarily responsible for the conduct of her 
 Majesty's Government could not possibly discharge all the duties of 
 his position in the House of Commons ; and in an address which he 
 delivered at Aylesbury just before he was raised to the peerage, Lord 
 iWaconsneld may be said to have endorsed and emphasised this judg- 
 ment of his ancient foe. Further, there is tho noticeable fact that half 
 of the Select Committee known as the Cabinet, which initiates the
 
 THE HOUSE OF LOEDS. 403 
 
 legislation of the country, and on whose conduct the fate of the 
 Government and parties depends, have seats in the House of Lords. 
 
 Again, the character of the debates in which the House of Lords 
 has been principally engaged has been favourable to the display of 
 those peculiar qualities which secure a strong influence for the Peers 
 over public opinion. Knowledge is power ; and where knowledge is, 
 authority is sure to drift. To address the House of Lords on certain 
 questions is to address a jury of experts. Not only is there repre- 
 sented in that House all the matured wisdom and ripe experience of 
 the Commons, added to all that is most characteristic of the traditions, 
 pride, and prejudice of the peerage : but among those who take their 
 place in the ranks of our hereditary legislators are men who have con- 
 trolled important dependencies of the Empire, and who have acquired 
 an insight, by long residence in foreign capitals, into the diplomatic 
 secrets of European Cabinets, and into the hidden tendencies of the 
 popular will — former and future ambassadors, the governors of great 
 colonies, generals who have held the highest military commands, 
 viceroys who have administered our Indian possessions, in comparison 
 with which the British Isles are but as a speck in the ocean; these. 
 to say nothing of men who have been steeped in the atmosphere ot 
 statesmanship and office from their infancy, are prominent in the 
 House of Lords in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Hence, 
 seeing that in the past few years foreign policy has been a conspi- 
 cuous theme in parliamentary debate, the proceedings of that assembly 
 have acquired a new interest and importance. Granting that the 
 average of rhetorical skill in both Houses is pretty nearly equal, the 
 average of superior merit is higher in the Lords than in the Commons. 
 Further, the speeches made in the former have not only been often 
 better than those made in tbe latter, they have often been better 
 reported ; first, because, as a rule, they are shorter ; secondly, because 
 they are, as a rule, delivered much earlier. Only on three occasions 
 previous to the conflict which has been witnessed this year, has 
 there been since the Eeform Bill of 1832 any appearance or danger 
 of a collision between the two Houses of Parliament. The first 
 of these was in 1860. On May 21st, the House of Lords had 
 thrown out the Bill for the remission of the paper duty by a majority 
 of 89. The Opposition was successfully led by the venerable Lord 
 Lyndhurst, who, on his eighty-first birthday, spoke with all the elo- 
 quence and acumen which had made him famous half a century before. 
 The question was whether the Peers had a right to reject a money Bill. 
 It was admitted that they had no right so to amend a money Bill as tc 
 change the amount or incidents of taxation in any degree. On the other 
 hand, it was shown by Lord Lyndhurst that the right now claimed 
 by the Peers of rejection had been exercised before, and was logically 
 implied in the discussion by the House of Lords of such measures. 
 
 dd2
 
 40 i ENGLAND. 
 
 These arguments were not replies to the contention that it was inexpe- 
 dient to assert the right, and as is generally the case when a consi- 
 deration of technical legality arises, the controversy was ultimately 
 decided, not by the division in the House of Lords, but on the broad 
 grounds of constitutional policy and prudence. The matter was first 
 relegated to a committee, and then settled by Lord Palmerston's 
 resolutions of July 5th, 1860. It is only necessary to mention by 
 name the second and third instances in which differences between 
 the Houses of Lords and Commons have menaced a parliamentary 
 deadlock. Of these one occurred when the Bill for the disestablish- 
 ment of the Irish Church was going through Parliament in 1868, 
 and the Peers ultimately giving way. The other took place three 
 years later, when their lordships rejected the Bill for the abolition 
 of purchase in tbe army. Since then, until the present year, there has 
 been no really serious hitch in the amicable relations of the two Houses. 
 It is to be observed also that the recent debates in the House of Lords 
 have not only been in many cases of a high order of excellence, but 
 that they have introduced to public attention a larger proportion of 
 capable candidates for political eminence comparatively, if not abso- 
 lutely, than has been seen in the House of Commons of late years. 
 This is the more remarkable, seeing that the number of those who 
 habitually take part in parliamentary debate is much smaller in the 
 House of Lords than in the House of Commons. In the latter the 
 total may perhaps, roughly speaking, be fifty, in the former it is pro- 
 bably not more than fifteen. Further, difficult as it may be for a 
 young and untried man to get the ear of the House of Commons, tbat 
 difficulty is very much greater in the House of Lords. The young 
 peer rises full of suppressed fire and enthusiasm, to meet with as 
 chilling a reception as a well-bred audience can give. He is ignored ; 
 he is silenced by a general undertone of conversation ; or he finds 
 that he is defeated by the peculiar acoustic qualities of the chamber 
 in which he essays to speak. It is a different thing if he belongs to a 
 family traditionally famous in parliamentary annals. If he is a Duke 
 of Richmond, a Marquis of Salisbury, an Earl of Derby, Carnarvon, 
 or Clarendon, or the representative of any other great political house, 
 he will be sure of attention. But at all times the sphere gf active 
 statesmanship in the House of Lords has conformed to the conditions 
 of a close borough, and unknown aspirants to parliamentary fame 
 have not been encouraged, and have proclaimed their ambition only 
 to insure collapse. To a great extent this is due to the fact that the 
 House of Lords is always more or less under the domination of one 
 or two peers of exceptional eminence and force of character, although 
 nothing like the dictatorship which, in times past, Lord Thurlow, 
 Lord Eldon, the Duke of Wellington, and Lord Lyndhurst exercised 
 can now bo found. There is undoubtedly a growing tendency among
 
 THE HOUSE OF LORDS. 405 
 
 their lordships to give the rising talent of their House a chance, and 
 this tendency has already had the happiest results. 
 
 For the purpose of acquiring a general view of the House of Lords, 
 its chief members, and the manner in which business is conducted 
 therein, let the reader accompany us thither in imagination on any 
 afternoon during the session. It is essential that the weather should 
 be fine, for the Chamber of Peers is dependent upon the beams of 
 the sun for its picturesqueness of effect. It is five o'clock, and in 
 another place — the House of Commons — work has been going on for 
 three-quarters of an hour. Most of the gentlemen strolling through 
 St. James's Park in the direction of Palace Yard, or dismounting 
 from carriage and horse there or at the entrance to St. Stephen's 
 from the side of Poets' Corner, are peers, and from their number it 
 may be inferred that an interesting or an important debate is expected. 
 The House is beginning gradually to fill as the visitor takes his seat, 
 not behind the bar, nor in front of the House — positions the best for 
 the purpose of hearing, but the worst for purposes of vision — but in 
 the front row of the strangers' gallery. The afternoon sun pours in 
 through the painted windows, illuminating the gilding of the decora- 
 tions and bathing in lustre the blue carpet with its prince's feathers 
 of gold, and the crimson morocco of the benches. If there is 
 something barbaric in the hues and patterns, there is some effect of 
 historic dignity in the statues of the famous founders of noble houses 
 which adorn the niches in the wall, and under which are inscribed 
 names immortal in our national history. On each side of the chamber, 
 save the side allotted to reporters, is the Peeresses' gallery — that struc- 
 ture against which Lord Kedesdale so emphatically protested, on the 
 ground that it would make the House of Lords like a casino. If gay 
 dresses can produce this result there is certainly some danger of Lord 
 liedesdale's apprehension being fulfilled. Given only fine weather 
 and an attractive debate, and the Peeresses' gallery will be a parterre 
 of elaborate and multi-coloured toilettes, rivalling in their resplendent 
 variety the innumerable tints which the decorative taste of Barry has 
 impressed upon the architecture of the fabric. 
 
 It is not only in these respects — sumptuous ornamentation, and the 
 presence of ladies full in the sight of assembled legislators — that the 
 interior of the House of Lords presents such a contrast to the House 
 of Commons. There is an air of agreeable abandon in the mien and 
 deportment of their lordships. The countenances of the members of 
 the House of Commons have for the most part a look of anxiety or 
 preoccupation. They enter their chamber like men oppressed with 
 the consciousness of responsibility, burdened by a despotism of immu- 
 table laws and rigid etiquette. There is nothing of the sort in the 
 House of Lords — no painful evidence of the thraldom of ceremonial 
 rules or customs, or of the ruthless sacrifice of pleasure to duty. The
 
 406 ENGLAND. 
 
 « 
 
 whole atmosphere is redolent of well-bred nonchalance and aristocratic 
 lepose. For instance, there is in theory a Speaker of the House of 
 Lords, called, though he always is, the Chancellor, just as there is 
 a Speaker of the House of Commons. But the functions of the two 
 are separated by a gulf which is conclusive as to the difference of 
 their relative positions, and also as to the spirit in which the business 
 of the two Houses is conducted. The Speaker of the House of 
 Commons is something more than primus inter pares. For the time 
 being he is regarded as of a nature different from and superior to 
 the members by whom he is surrounded. Though there is nothing 
 which the House of Commons likes better than a personal encounter, 
 or a vituperative duel between any two members, there is nothing 
 approaching to disrespect to the " first commoner of England " — 
 the custodian and embodiment of its privileges — that it will tolerate. 
 The Speaker is, in fact, the Commissioner-in-Chief of the privi- 
 leges and prerogatives of the House of Commons — whom the House 
 has agreed to make the depositary of its ceremonial interests. To the 
 Lord Chancellor no such trust has been delivered : the Peers are 
 a self-governed body, the preservers of their own " order," and 
 the protectors of their own privileges. Though the keeper of the 
 Queen's conscience may sit enthroned in majesty on the woolsack, 
 he is not fenced round by a divinity sufficient to deter noble lords 
 from lounging indolently at half-length upon its well-padded sides. 
 Save for the dignity of his garb, the Lord Chancellor might be 
 nothing more than the usher of the court ; unlike the Speaker, his 
 lordship does not decide who shall have priority. When more than 
 one peer rises, their lordships keep order for themselves ; the 
 Lord Chancellor has not even a casting-vote when the numbers in 
 a division are equal, and his only strictly presidential duty is to put 
 the question, and read the titles of measures. On the other hand, he 
 is the direct representative of royalty on all occasions when the 
 sovereign communicates with Parliament, and he is the represen- 
 tative official mouthpiece of the Peers when they hold intercourse 
 with public bodies or individuals outside. It is rare to find more 
 Ihan ? third of the seats in the House of Lords occupied, and hence 
 there is no need for members, as in the House of Commons, to come 
 down a couple of hours before the business of the day begins, and 
 bespeak a place for themselves by affixing a card. 
 
 All is calm ; there is no hurry, no rude competition, no uncere- 
 monious jostling. It is five minutes past five, and the Lord 
 Chancellor has taken his seat on the woolsack. The proceedings of 
 their lordships begin with what, to the spectator from the gallery, is 
 merely dumb show. The Lord Chancellor rises, repeats a cabalistic 
 formula, which is in effect the titles of the measures that are not 
 opposed — private Bills, and so forth — and after having murmured, in
 
 THE HOUSE OF LORDS 407 
 
 tones audible to few but bimself, some twenty times, tbat tbe " con- 
 tents have it," sits down, and waits for his colleagues on the ministe- 
 rial bench, or his noble opponents on the Opposition bench, to com- 
 mence. Independently of the condition of the galleries, and the space 
 before the throne and in front of the bar, and behind the iron 
 benches at the opposite end of the House, there are other signs 
 which will acquaint the visitor whether a keen debate or important 
 division is expected. If it is he will notice that the parliamentary 
 clerk, who stands a little in front and to the right of the entrance on 
 the left side of the throne, is particularly busy in writing down 
 on a tablet which he carries in his hands the name of every peer 
 whom he can see. He will also notice that a gentleman of plea- 
 sant appearance and polished address is particularly active in saluting 
 noble lords as they come into the chamber, or after they have 
 taken their seat. Presently the same gentleman hurriedly commits a 
 number of names to paper, under the heading C. and N. C, but not 
 before he has first conferred, for the purpose of verifying his cata- 
 logue, with the above-named parliamentary clerk, who stands a little 
 aloof, smoothing with his hand, at intervals, his flowing beard. At 
 last his task is over. He completes his calculation with a smile of 
 satisfaction, and walks leisurely up to the Government leader in the 
 House of Lords to whisper a few words in his ear. The Government 
 leader is for the time the President of the Council, and his friend and 
 colleague is the most popular and assiduous ministerial " whip " ever 
 known in their lordships' House. Meanwhile ministers are answering 
 the comparatively few questions to which in the House of Lords 
 they are called upon to respond. The curious point in the collective 
 life of the House of Lords at the present moment is that no one seems 
 to care what his neighbour is doing or saying. The Lord Chancellor 
 is writing a note on his knee. The Primate is talking to an arch- 
 deacon whom he has introduced into the House on the left of the 
 Episcopal Bench. The Lord President of the Council is strolling 
 into the lobby. The leader of the Opposition is chatting to a noble 
 duke who sits immediately behind him. But after a while the pre- 
 liminaries come to an end, and then, if there is to be a real debate, 
 and not merely a discursive conversation, the debate begins. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that the debate itself will be wanting 
 either in interest or excitement. The speeches, whatever the subject 
 may be, which are most successful and which elicit the greatest 
 manifestations of applause, are to all intents and purposes House of 
 Commons speeches. Yet the interest attaching to the discussion is of a 
 kind entirely different from that attaching to debates in the Lower 
 Chamber. There is no widely diffused sense of the collective wisdom 
 of the assemblage ; the object is not to know what the House will 
 say, but what particular mberems of the House will say. The attrac-
 
 408 ENGLAND. 
 
 tion is found rather in the individuals than in the institution, whereas 
 just the reverse of this holds true in the case of the House of Commons. 
 It may, indeed, almost be said that the fame of a few illustrious peers 
 eclipses the prestige of the assembly in which they sit ; and though 
 the House of Lords owes much of its power and influence to the fact 
 that its members have their seats there by right of birth, it is not, and 
 it never has been, a house where the most influential members are 
 the greatest noblemen. Here there is at work, as elsewhere in our 
 constitution, that subtly democratising tendency which is yet such a 
 guarantee of the stability of our aristocratic system. The vote and 
 speech of the biggest duke do not, because of the accident of the ducal 
 dignity, carry more weight than that of the viscount or the baron. 
 It is true that, as has been already said, there is in the House of 
 Lords a sort of imperium in imperio, and that the rank and file of the 
 members do not as a rule actively take part in the proceedings. But 
 ■when once the critic comes to the charmed circle he will find that 
 its most important members are those of the highest political aptitude. 
 All this time the reader has been kept waiting on the threshold of 
 the actual discussion. Under the strangers' gallery, immediately 
 opposite the semicircular space where the throne is, and which is 
 reserved for Privy Councillors and the sons of peers, is an oblong 
 enclosure, also railed off, which is known as the bar. Hither presses 
 a mixed throng of members of the House of Commons and visitors 
 from outside, for an important discussion is expected, and it may 
 even be that their lordships will stoop to personalities. The debate 
 begins with dignity, and save for the voice of the speaker, with silence. 
 There are few cries of " hear, hear," there are fewer cheers. Who- 
 ever the orator may be, his audience succeed in presenting an appear- 
 ance of comparative indifference. One noble lord transacts as much 
 as he can of his private and official correspondence, leaning forward to 
 the table ever and anon to dip his pen in the ink ; another beats time 
 to an imaginary melody with his fingers on his knees ; a third lapses 
 into seeming somnolence ; a fourth, and be, perhaps, the most keenly 
 interested of all, folds bis arms and sits unmoved and immovable, to 
 all outward seeming, as granite. This state of things lasts for some 
 little time, until, indeed, either the present or some subsequent 
 speaker touches upon a theme which at once lets loose the bitter 
 waters of party or personal strife. Some imputation has been made, 
 and an explanation is demanded ; it is given, it is not satisfactory, 
 ami thus the wrangle continues. But these effervescences are of very 
 exceptional occurrence, and, indeed, it is rare when any debate 
 takes place which is not concluded before the dinner-hour. More 
 than one proposal has been made that the House of Lords should 
 meet earlier and rise later, and there are signs of a growing appetite 
 for work at the present time among the Peers. Momentous questions
 
 THE HOUSE OF LORDS. 409 
 
 of foreign policy will perhaps never be the subject of general debate, 
 but it is pointed out that there are a host of matters connected with 
 army reform, local government, railway business, and a variety of 
 matters connected with domestic administration, on which many 
 noblemen who are now systematically silent might make themselves 
 periodically heard, and might, by speaking on them, acquire a valuable 
 parliamentary training. As matters are, it is part of the duty of lords- 
 in-waiting to do regular work in a Government office during the tenure 
 of their posts, and consequently these officials are no longer the mere 
 ornaments of a Court they once were. Why, it has been asked, 
 should not the number of these appointments, with their correspond- 
 ing obligations, be increased, and if that step prove impracticable, why 
 should not some sort of occupation be found ? It must, however, be 
 remembered that their lordships accomplish a great deal more work 
 than meets the public eye. The House of Lords, too, has, like the 
 House of Commons, its own elaborate system of private Bill legis- 
 lation, and attendance at select committees is quite as much the duty 
 of the hereditary as of the elective legislator. AVhenever any of 
 the proposals which have been made above are suggested, the answer 
 is that great difficulty is already experienced in ensuring an adequate 
 attendance of members on these select committees. The powers which 
 may be exercised by the Chairman of Committees in the House of 
 Lords are so large and even absolute that no comparison in this 
 respect between the two assemblies is possible. The present holder 
 of the office in the Peers — Lord Redesdale — may be almost described 
 as a sort of constitution in himself. There is a more specific difference 
 between the procedure of the select committees of the House of Com- 
 mons and select committees of the House of Lords, in that whereas 
 in the former case the public are, as a rule, admitted, in the latter 
 they are, with few exceptions, excluded. 
 
 Between the rules and the routine of the two Chambers of the 
 legislature there is a general resemblance, although the quorum of the 
 Upper House is not forty, but three. At the table of the House are 
 seated the three clerks, as in the case of the House of Commons, 
 who take down minutes of the proceedings and receive all notices of 
 motion. Much greater laxity prevails as to the rules regulating the 
 asking of questions in the Lords than in the Commons. Questions 
 are very often asked by members of the Opposition of the Govern- 
 ment, or by one peer of another, with a notice that would be deemed 
 inadequate in the Commons, or, possibly, without any notice at all. 
 Nor, although it is prohibited to mention any peer by name in the 
 course of a debate, has that rule been as rigidly adhered to in the 
 Lords during the last few years as in the Commons. Here, as in the 
 Commons, all proposals submitted to the House resolve themselves 
 into questions asked of the Speaker, which have to be answered in
 
 410 ENGLAND. 
 
 the negative or affirmative. But in the House of Lords the " ayes " 
 are spoken of as the "contents," and the "noes" as the "non- 
 contents." The manner of takiug a division resembles, since effect 
 was given to certain changes made on the motion of the late Lord 
 Stanhope, that adopted in the Commons. The lobbies on the right 
 and left of the House, after having been cleared of strangers, are 
 guarded with locked doors ; two tellers are appointed for each party, 
 the contents going into the right lobby and the non-contents into the 
 left, and as they return into the House the votes are counted and are 
 announced to the Lord Chancellor or to the Speaker of the House, 
 who is, of course, the Chairman of Committees, if the division has 
 taken place in committee. 
 
 In this general review of the House of Lords, as it at present 
 exists, two or three facts prominently stand forth. In the first place, 
 Avhile the House of Lords is an assembly representative of great 
 interests, high intellectual excellence, success, and prosperity, and all 
 the qualities which command success and prosperity, it retains its 
 aristocratic prestige unimpaired. Secondly, valuable as its discussions 
 always are on critical and complicated themes of imperial policy, 
 mature and finished as is the quality of its statesmanship, there is a 
 definite promise of more legislative activity and influence among its 
 rising members. Hence, in a democratic age, it is gaining rather than 
 losing power; and although the traditions and habits of dependence 
 on the aristocracy have disappeared, it is felt that an aristocratic 
 hereditary legislature, which does its work well, stands on unassail- 
 able ground. The very fact that the functions of the House of Lords 
 are critical rather than constructive, while it gives their lordships less 
 opportunity of national display, increases their capacities for national 
 usefulness. It is also to the House of Lords, rather than to the 
 House of Commons, that we must look to preserve the standard of 
 English statesmanship and English parliamentary speaking. Incom- 
 petent speakers there doubtless are among the peers, but they perhaps 
 break silence less often than in the House of Commons. As for the 
 best of the regular speakers, their utterances are seldom without two 
 merits — lucidity and compression. If only as a corrective to the 
 diffuseness and obscurity which are the bane of the House of Com- 
 mons rhetoricians, the speeches in the House of Lords would be of 
 extreme value. 
 
 A few words remain to be said on the relation in which the House 
 of Lords stands to the two great parties in the State. Whereas there 
 are few respects in which the staunch Liberal would advocate reform 
 in our second Chamber, the Conservative would not deny that their 
 lordships' House might submit to several modifications with advan- 
 tage. Thus there are many Conservatives in favour of the creation of 
 life-peers ; but, with two exceptions, it is exceedingly doubtful how
 
 THE HOUSE OF LORDS. 411 
 
 far the representative Liberal would be in favour of any reform at all 
 in their lordships' body. These exceptions are the disqualification of 
 bishops to sit in the House, and the introduction of the Minority Vote 
 into the election of Scotch and Irish representative peers ; the former 
 would be hailed by Liberalism as a step towards, and as involving the 
 principle of, the disestablishment of the English Church ; the second, 
 as a guarantee that the representative peers of Ireland and Scotland 
 would be, in some cases, Liberals. For the rest, the Liberal politician 
 would oppose reform of the House of Lords for the same reasons that 
 the Conservative would advocate it ; such a measure, the former would 
 contend, must strengthen and not weaken the influence of a second 
 Chamber, whereas a certain phase of Liberalism is pretty generally 
 opposed to the existence of any second Chamber at all. The House 
 of Lords, argues the Liberal, is quite strong enough as matters are, 
 and exercises a sufficiently sinister force upon the course of legislation. 
 
 That the influence of the House of Lords upon the deliberations 
 and the conduct of Parliament is, in the last quarter of the nineteenth 
 century, a very real thing, there can be no doubt. But it is not exer- 
 cised in the old way, nor is it exercised in the only way which some 
 persons may imagine to be possible. Such collisions between the two 
 Houses as those which took place over the Reform Bill in 1832, or 
 in the matter of the repeal of the paper duty, are happily not of 
 frequent occurrence. So far as the course of legislation is con- 
 cerned, when once it has commenced, the authority of the Lords 
 is in the majority of instances rather seen, as has been said, in 
 the revision of the edicts of the Commons than in the thwarting of 
 them. But there is a great deal of authority wielded by them which 
 does not come before the public at all. They prevent certain measures 
 from being introduced quite as much as they control them when 
 they have been introduced. Whatever may be the case with the 
 country, the Conservative party are always sure to have an over- 
 whelming majority among the peers. Hence, it is always constitu- 
 tionally possible for the Upper House to reject any measure passed by 
 the Lower House which may offend the prejudices of Conservatism. 
 A Liberal Cabinet, we may suppose, meditates the introduction of a 
 Bill which is considered fatally to affect some great Conservative 
 interest ; their lordships get wind of the proposal, and politely, but 
 firmly, hint that it will not do. What is, or, at least, what may be 
 the consequence ? The measure is either shelved or else so watered 
 down that its drastic powers altogether disappear. 
 
 Further, it must always be remembered that the solid and sub- 
 stantial interests of a majority of the Whig aristocracy are, in their 
 essence, identical with those of the Tory peers. The peerage exists 
 upon a basis of landed property. Nothing which does not strike 
 at these exclusive territorial privileges can seriously impair the posi-
 
 41U ENGLAND. 
 
 tion of the Conservative peer ; nothing which does so strike at them 
 can be acceptable to the Whigs. Again, there are certain constitu- 
 tional rights, the collective possession of the House of Lords, in the 
 preservation of which Whigs and Tories are equally interested. A 
 few years ago, when it was proposed to rob their lordships of their 
 judicial powers, a great Tory nobleman, who was in the habit of hold- 
 ing weekly a lodge at his private house — the gentlemen attending 
 which made it their special business to watch current or expected 
 legislation in the interests of Conservatism — rallied round him at the 
 critical moment the support not only of the peers of his own party, 
 but of many who on ordinary occasions were opposed to him. So 
 strong was this combination of noblemen, taking their stand upon the 
 common ground of the privileges of nobility, that the Lord Chan- 
 cellor of the day was compelled to surrender those clauses of the 
 measure to which they objected. 
 
 The Lords and Commons may still look at matters from a different 
 point of view, but only under exceptional circumstances do they 
 parade their quarrels as was formerly their custom. Their disputes 
 have generally speaking ceased to take place in public, and all 
 that the public knows of the dispute is the result born of diplomatic 
 negotiation and compromise. Now, compromise beyond a certain 
 point is the one thing of which the thoroughgoing Liberal disap- 
 proves, and hence his natural dislike to a House of Lords, or to any 
 second Chamber at all. In the natural antagonism, sometimes sup- 
 pressed, at others openly asserted, between the principles of Liberalism 
 and the House of Lords, may be seen the reason why all Liberal 
 administrations are likely to be less long-lived than Conservative 
 administrations. Between a Conservative Government and a House 
 of Lords there is an open and durable alliance ; between a Liberal 
 Government and a House of Lords there is constantly present the 
 probability of feud. Sooner or later the elements of strife assert 
 themselves, the water begins to be troubled, and the foundering of 
 the ship is imminent. 
 
 So far as the political and constitutional future of England is con- 
 cerned, there are two prophecies which may be made without incurring 
 the charge of rashness proverbially attendant on prediction. It can 
 scarcely be doubted that when household suffrage is given to county 
 voters the entire aspect of party politics will be materially altered. 
 For the first time in the parliamentary history of England it is possible 
 that even in the representation of counties — those strongholds of 
 Toryism — the Liberals will command an absolute majority. This majo- 
 rity would enable Liberal statesmanship to proceed in a more daring 
 spirit, and to attempt to realise bolder and more sweeping conceptions 
 than it has yet ventured to do. What actual use would be made of 
 this opportunity, what practical result the possibility would yield,
 
 THE HOUSE OF LORDS. 413 
 
 must be matter of opinion. There are those who hold that the latent 
 revolutionary instincts of the English people would display themselves 
 without disguise, and that we should at once enter upon a new order 
 of subversive legislative enterprise. On the other hand, there will be 
 tbose who, giving their due weight to the facts and illustrations which 
 have been produced elsewhere in this work, and recollecting that the 
 political life of Englishmen is not distinct from their social life ; that 
 the influences which leaven the masses are not democratic but aristo- 
 cratic, or as aristocratic as the plutocratic agencies at work will allow ; 
 that there is no impassable gulf fixed between one class and another, 
 and that admiration for rank almost seems innate in the English 
 breast — there are those who, bearing these circumstances in mind, 
 will hold that household suffrage in counties will bring us no nearer 
 to revolution than did the first Reform Act, which, it was ominously 
 predicted at the time by alarmist prophets, would be quickly followed 
 by a reign of terror. 
 
 These are questions which the reader must decide for himself. One 
 other point there is on which a definite opinion may be expressed. It 
 is conceivable that in years to come events may occur tending in the 
 direction of a grave strife, between the privileged classes and the 
 multitude, on property in land. But imagine the most disastrous 
 contingency that can possibly be realised, a strife that should prac- 
 tically culminate in civil war. How would this affect the tenure of 
 the Crown ? The Crown would certainly have nothing to gain by 
 flinging its influence into the scale of the aristocracy, and it would 
 certainly have much to lose if the aristocracy were beaten. Probably 
 there is no practical politician living who holds that any political con- 
 juncture at home is likely to present itself which can seriously menace 
 the existence of the monarchy. If a Nero or a Caligula were to come 
 to the throne, possibly there would be more than danger — there might 
 be certainty of overthrow. But these are not the monsters which 
 the atmosphere of royalty in the nineteenth century develops. Follies 
 and extravagances we indeed may have, and it is perhaps more rea- 
 sonable to anticipate the theatrical wantonness of a Louis of Bavaria 
 than the portentous eccentricities of the most debased of the Cassars, 
 or even the attempted personal government of the third of the Hano- 
 verian kings. It is not possible to conceive of the English monarchy 
 as perishing, except amid a universal cataclysm.* A colossal Euro- 
 pean war, followed by grinding taxation, the total loss of our carrying 
 trade at the hands of privateers scouring the high seas, the depriva- 
 tion of industry and a livelihood to thousands of our population which 
 
 * A distinguished statesman writes to me as follows on the opinion expressed in the 
 text: — " This is, I admit, a fair and reasonable view; but I can easily conceive another 
 alternative, and one quite as probable. The ordinary progress of modern democracy 
 might silently and gradually absorb the monarchy into a presidency without cataclysm 
 or even struggle."
 
 414 ENGLAND. 
 
 this loss would imply, the blocking up of the channels of emigration, 
 attended perhaps by the secession or the conquest of some of our 
 most important colonies, a population overgrown, starving and despe- 
 rate, pent up within the narrow limits of the United Kingdom — this 
 is a combination of calamities which might indeed provoke a move- 
 ment fatal to the monarchy. But before that went everything else 
 would have gone. The Crown would not perish singly, and on the 
 day that it ceased to exist as an institution the structure of English 
 society would be in danger of falling to pieces. It is only upon the 
 fulfilment of some such hypothesis as this, and not as a consequence 
 of any national fit of political discontent, however deep or long, that 
 the destruction of the monarchy can present itself as a contingency 
 that need be reckoned with.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 THE LAW COURTS. 
 
 The Policeman— Police Courts— Committal— Quarter Sessions— Grand Jury— Trial of 
 Indictment— Court of Crown Cases — High Court— Writ— Sheriff's Court— Plead- 
 ings — Law and Equity — Judges' Chambers — Interrogatories — Trial of Action — 
 Divisional Court— Court of Appeal— Supreme Court — House of Lords— County 
 Courts — Judgment Summonses — Appeal from County Courts — Courts Spiritual — 
 The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. 
 
 To a vast number of law-abiding and law-protected Englisb men and 
 Englisb women the only visible embodiment of the law under which 
 tbey live is the police constable. He is the outermost wheel in the 
 great and complicated mechanism which is charged with the duty of 
 maintaining the broad outline of social relations. Fortunately, he is 
 in himself a very simple legal unit, being little more than one of the 
 people put into a blue uniform, his figure improved by drill, and his 
 intelligence sharpened by experience in applying on emergencies a 
 few plain rules. In England he is not, as in other countries, much 
 under the control of the central Government, being appointed and 
 regulated by county justices, or the local authority of a borough. 
 He is, in fact the servant of the people and of the law. Stationed in a 
 country village, he is looked up to as an oracle ; and in the crowded 
 courts and alleys of a town, where, from want of elbow-room, much 
 friction of the social machine occurs, he is often the needful arbitrator 
 and peacemaker. In this character he may be considered a legal 
 tribunal of the very first instance. 
 
 Apart from the visible presence of the police constable, the law is 
 hardly realised until it is broken. Like the air, it is always above and 
 around us, but is not fully valued until withdrawn. Cantabit vacuus 
 coram latrone viator ; but everybody who carries aboitt him what is 
 worth stealing is constantly in need of the protection of the law. 
 Viator may pass half a lifetime without knowing anything of the actual 
 working of his omnipresent protector, yet one day he may be looking 
 into a shop-window and feel a tug at his watch. The instinct of self- 
 protection makes him seize the man standing near, who, he believes, 
 has it. Then he remembers the police constable, and at once the law 
 becomes to him a real existence. A policeman arrives, and the first 
 thing he does after hearing what has happened is to ask, " Do you
 
 416 ENGLAND. 
 
 give him in charge ? " Viator thinks he cannot be mistaken ; there 
 was only one other person before the shop-window besides himself 
 and the man in question, and that person has disappeared. On the 
 other hand, the captive is loud in his protestations. He is an honest 
 man, one Latro, a French-polisher, who lives in Furcifer Street. He 
 is as innocent as the babe unborn. Let them search him, and if he 
 has the gentleman's watch, he will say no more. This flood of 
 eloquence rather puzzles Viator, but it seems to have little effect on 
 the constable, and Latro is given in charge. The law has now been 
 fairly set in motion, and we shall see what happens next. 
 
 The constable and Latro start together to the police-station, and 
 Viator is desired to follow. Here they find an inspector of police, 
 who enters the charge in the station records. Latro is searched and 
 no watch is found on him, but meanwbile a constable has gone round 
 to Furcifer Street, and no Latro is known at the address, nor any 
 French-polisher. Prosecutor, constable, and prisoner thereupon pro- 
 ceed to the police-court, and we now first find ourselves in a court of 
 law. The magistrate is seated, without official dress, at a desk placed 
 in front of a small library of law books. He is one of the class called 
 stipendiary magistrates, who in places where the magisterial work is 
 arduous are commonly substituted for the Petty Sessions. In dis- 
 tricts where the business is lighter the Petty Sessions consist of two 
 or more country gentlemen, or it may be aldermen, who, without 
 salary, exercise the same jurisdiction as the stipendiary. Opposite to 
 the magistrate, and at the end of a table at which there are seats for 
 the lawyers, is the dock, enclosed with an iron rail ; and at the 
 other end of the table, under the magistrate, sits the clerk of the 
 court, whose duty it is to take notes of the evidence. The magistrate 
 is just finishing his list of " night charges," and the latest claimants 
 for justice must wait their turn. Cases of drunkenness are visited 
 with a fine of some shillings, or in the alternative a few days' im- 
 prisonment. Then there are cases of assault. A husband has 
 been beating his wife, and the wife, having given him into custody, 
 now begs earnestly for his release. In another case the assault is 
 very grievous, and the husband has drawn so often on the wife's 
 forbearance that the fund is exhausted. The magistrate orders a 
 separation, under a statute passed in the year 1878, so that the wife 
 is acquitted of her matrimonial misadventure, although to allow her 
 to marry again is beyond magisterial power. After these charges 
 there is a prisoner who has been caught in the act of attempted 
 robbery during the day. His offence, being the first, is sufficiently 
 punished by four months' imprisonment. It was but an hour ago 
 that the law was broken, and its vindication has been speedy. At 
 length Latro is put into the dock, and is for the first time a little 
 abashed by the scrutinising glance of the gaoler in court. Viator is
 
 THE LAW COURTS. 417 
 
 sworn as a witness, and details his mishap. The policeman is sworn 
 also, and the address given by the prisoner is proved to be false. 
 But the evidence, although suspicious, is not sufficient, as Viator did 
 not see his watch taken, and no watch has been found. Then the 
 magistrate asks, "Is anything known of the man ?" and the gaoler 
 replies that he thinks he is known; whereupon a remand is ordered, 
 and Latro is locked up. 
 
 Interested in what are to him novel proceedings, Viator remains a 
 short time in court. He hears an affiliation order made for the pay- 
 ment of five shillings a week by the father of the child ; and a sum- 
 mons against a licensed victualler for Sunday trading dismissed, on the 
 ground that the person served was a bona-fide traveller and therefore 
 legitimately thirsty. There are besides cross-summonses with most 
 conflicting evidence for assaults, and a case of burglary depending 
 entirely on circumstantial evidence, adjourned from a previous sitting. 
 Finally Viator goes away, leaving the magistrate painfully unravelling 
 a charge of commercial fraud. 
 
 A day or two later Viator is required to attend again at the station 
 to see whether he can identify the man who decamped when bis 
 watch was stolen, as the police think they have found him. He is taken 
 into the room where there are seven or eight men, and among them 
 he recognises the runaway. A description of the watch had been 
 inserted in the Police Gazette, and information had been obtained 
 that the watch was offered in pawn by a woman who turned out to 
 be the wife of the man now identified. The watch was found in his 
 house, and both he and the man already in custody have been pre- 
 viously convicted of stealing. The evidence is now complete, and 
 when all concerned go before the magistrate, both prisoners are 
 committed to take their trial before a jury, as the magistrate has no 
 power to dispose summarily of such repeated offenders. The offence 
 was not committed within the district of the Central Criminal Court, 
 so that the prisoners must be tried either at the Assizes when the 
 judge comes round on circuit, or at the Quarter Sessions, which have 
 power to try most criminal cases except burglary and murder. The 
 sessions take place first, and accordingly the prisoners are committed 
 for trial at that court. 
 
 On the Bench of the Quarter Sessions we find a county magnate 
 by way of chairman, with another magistrate on each side of him. 
 Neither of the three is a lawyer or has had any legal training, but they 
 administer justice gratuitously, with the assistance of the Clerk of the 
 Peace, who is a salaried lawyer, occupying no mean position in the 
 county. The Quarter Sessions sat yesterday in a numerous body to 
 administer the business of the county in respect of bridges, police, and 
 the like, and to-day they meet for judicial purposes. The first thing 
 is to charge the Grand Jury. They are gentlemen of the county and 
 
 E E
 
 418 ENGLAND. 
 
 respectable yeomen, although of a lower social rank than at the 
 Assizes, where the Grand Jury is reinforced by men of the class who 
 now sit on the Bench. It must consist of not less than twelve nor 
 more than twenty-three jurors ; but an uneven number are always 
 sworn. The Grand Jurors stand in a gallery at one side of the court, 
 and the Chairman proceeds to charge them by referring shortly to 
 the cases in the calendar of criminals, and telling them that if they 
 think there is sufficient evidence to make it proper for the case to be 
 tried, they ought to find a true bill. The Grand Jury then retire to 
 their room, for their sittings are held in private, and they are bound 
 not to disclose their deliberations. In due course Viator and the 
 other witnesses in his case are summoned into the Grand Jury room, 
 and tell their story shortly to the Grand Jury, who after a time 
 reappear in their gallery, the foreman carrying several pieces of parch- 
 ment in his hand. These are handed down to the Clerk of the Peace. 
 The Clerk of the Peace looks at the back of each document to see 
 what the Grand Jurors have there certified under the hand of their 
 foreman. " Gentlemen of the Grand Jury, you find a true bill 
 against Latro and another for larceny from the person." The fore- 
 man bows, and thus the "bill," which had been prepared in legal 
 form for the Grand Jury's authorisation, becomes the " indictment," 
 or formal charge upon which the prisoners will be tried. It is some 
 time before Viator's case comes on, and he wanders into the second 
 court. This court is a duplicate of the other ; but, as it has no 
 Grand Jury to charge, it takes in hand some of the civil and appel- 
 late cases which come before the Quarter Sessions. Permission is 
 given to one applicant to keep a lunatic asylum, to another to open 
 a slaughter-house, to a third to divert a road passing over his pro- 
 perty. Then a licensing appeal is heard. Mr. Boniface, through his 
 counsel, complains that the magistrates who sat to grant licences have 
 improperly declined to renew his. His house has been in existence 
 for twenty years, and there have been no complaints. On the other 
 hand, a rival to Boniface, who has taken up the case against him, 
 emphatically declares that no more licences are required in his neigh- 
 bourhood, and that Boniface has opened a tap at the side of his 
 house in a fashionable thoroughfare, which is an annoyance to 
 promenaders. The matter ends by Boniface promising to close the 
 tap, and obtaining his licence. Next there is an appeal from a sum- 
 mary decision of the stipendiary whose acquaintance we have already 
 made, convicting the appellant of an assault ; witnesses are called, 
 and the case is tried all over again. The Quarter Sessions confirm or 
 quash the conviction, as justice in their opinion requires. 
 
 But Viator is called away, as his case is about to begin. The Clerk 
 of the Peace then takes the plea of Latro, which is, as a matter of 
 course, " Not Guilty." A similar ceremony is gone through with the
 
 THE LAW COURTS. 419 
 
 other prisoner. They have in legal phrase " pnt themselves on the 
 country," and their country is rapidly represented, subject perhaps to 
 the winnowing process of challenging the jurors, by twelve men in 
 the jury-box, mostly farmers and tradesmen, who are sworn truly to 
 try the issue between the Queen and the prisoners at the bar. The 
 counsel for the prosecution first briefly details the facts of the case. 
 He is a young barrister, for it is at Quarter Sessions that young 
 barristers are trained to the work of their profession. He then calls 
 the witnesses and elicits the facts from them by questions. The 
 prisoners have no counsel to defend them, but Latro cross-examines 
 the witnesses with some ingenuity. His companion in durance is 
 stolidly silent all through. The prisoners call no witnesses, but Latro 
 makes a voluble appeal to the jury, disclaiming any knowledge of the 
 other man, and protesting that they cannot convict him simply 
 because he happened to be standing by when the gentleman lost his 
 watch. What surprises Viator is that all through the trial not a 
 single reference is made to the previous conviction of both prisoners, 
 facts in his opinion most significant. But the law is of opinion that 
 facts like these, if known to the jury, would prejudice the fair trial 
 of the existing charge, and it is not until the jury have found a ver- 
 dict of " Guilty " that the prisoners are asked whether they have not 
 been previously convicted of stealing a pair of boots. They both 
 plead guilty to this fact, although Latro, amid laughter, says he did 
 not take the boots all the same, and are sentenced to penal servitude 
 — which has been defined by a Chief Justice as a condition of slavery 
 — for seven years. 
 
 Most criminal trials end with the verdict and sentence, and in the 
 case of a simple crime no difficult point of law is likely to arise to 
 require consideration in a higher court. Still, even in an ordinary 
 case of stealing there may be a question of law, such as whether a 
 statement by the accused tending to show his guilt was admissible in 
 evidence ; for the English law has a constitutional horror of proving 
 guilt from the mouth of the prisoner, and always rejects an approach 
 to a confession if there is any appearance of its having been extorted 
 either by fear of punishment or hope of escape. If the judge at the 
 trial thinks there is a point of law in a criminal case, he states the 
 facts in writing for the opinion of the Court for the Consideration of 
 Crown Cases Reserved, where it is argued and determined. This 
 court is as numerous in its composition as its name is long, being 
 composed of all the three-and-twenty judges of the High Court of 
 Justice. Ordinarily five judges only sit, but in the celebrated case 
 of the Franconia, the German vessel which ran down an English 
 ship within three miles of our shore, fourteen judges sat to decide 
 whether the captain, who was a German, was criminally responsible 
 in the English courts. Six judges thought he was, and seven thought 
 
 e k 2
 
 420 ENGLAND. 
 
 he was not, while the fourteenth died between the argument and the 
 judgment, thus perhaps saving the court from being equally divided. 
 Quantity rather than quality is not a satisfactory basis for a Court of 
 Appeal, and the time may come when criminal appeals will be taken, 
 like other appeals, to the House of Lords. To have but one Court 
 of Appeal favours the expedition which is essential to the due punish- 
 ment of crime ; and when appeals are few, to take them to the highest 
 source of law is not likely much to prejudice persons in the position 
 of Viator. 
 
 If Viator only makes acquaintance with the law through the casual 
 loss of his watch, law is to Doniinus more or less a matter of business. 
 Dominus has money invested in house property, and he must be a 
 lucky man indeed if he does not every now and again find the law's 
 assistance necessary to the management of his investments. Possessor 
 is the tenant of one of his houses, with a lease for fourteen years, 
 subject to a rent payable quarterly and the obligation to repair. The 
 rent is in arrear for a whole year, the premises are grievously out 
 of repair, and altogether Possessor is an unsatisfactory tenant. 
 Dominus wishes to get rid of him, and consults his solicitor. The lease, 
 as usual, contains a provision that if the rent is in arrear, and the 
 premises out of repair, the remainder of the term is to be forfeited and 
 the landlord may re-enter on his property. An action of ejectment is 
 therefore advised to carry out this desirable purpose. Accordingly a 
 writ is issued, say, in the Queen's Bench Division of the High Court 
 of Justice, claiming, according to the endorsement on the back, pos- 
 session of the house, the rent due, and damages for failure to repair. 
 It is just possible that Possessor may not care to defend his lease, and 
 although the writ is served upon him, does not intimate his intention 
 of disputing the claim by entering an appearance at the offices of the 
 court. In this case Dominus may sign judgment upon the lapse of a 
 specified time, and his damages for dilapidations will be assessed by 
 a jury in the Sheriffs Court, where assessments of damages upon 
 non-appearance to the writ usually take place. But Possessor is a 
 much more accommodating tenant than is usual with his class if he 
 takes this course. In all probability he will appear, and Dominus must 
 prepare himself for a regular legal campaign. 
 
 He has first of all to extend his line in the form of a " Claim." 
 This is the beginning of the so-called " pleadings," which are not 
 pleadings in the popular sense at all, but a series of written attacks on 
 the enemy made by each side alternately, for the purpose of recon- 
 noitring one another's position, before actually engaging in open court. 
 Formerly pleading was a mystery known to few but " special 
 pleaders." These practitioners still exist ; but the class is rapidly 
 becoming absorbed into the ordinary ranks of lawyers, and the busi- 
 ness of a special pleader is sadly curtailed by reason of the inroads
 
 THE LAW COURTS. 421 
 
 made of late years by common sense upon legal cobwebs, especially 
 by the Common Law Procedure Act of 1852, and the Judicature Act 
 of 1873. Dominus will find the "claim " in his case, although pre- 
 pared by counsel learned in the law, to be moderately intelligible 
 to lay capacity. It propounds the facts that he is owner of the 
 property ; that he granted the lease to Possessor, the defendant ; 
 that the lease contained covenants to pay rent and repair, and a 
 clause of forfeiture upon breach of those covenants ; that the cove- 
 nants have been broken, and that accordingly Dominus wants his pro- 
 perty back, together with his rent, and damages for not repairing. 
 Possessor's turn now comes, and he retorts with his " Defence," in 
 wbich he states that he pays into court the rent in arrear, together 
 with interest, and denies that the premises are out of repair. All 
 that Dominus can do in answer is to take his rent out of court, and in 
 his " Reply," which is the next step in the pleadings, to " take issue " 
 on the question of the repairs, which is the orthodox way of reite- 
 rating his view of the facts, and avowing his readiness to establish it 
 by proof in court. 
 
 In order to understand the meaning of Possessor's manoeuvre, 
 something in the difference of the English system of jurisprudence 
 between law and equity must be known. Law, as distinguished from 
 equity, always keeps a man strictly to his bond. Whatever he under- 
 takes to do, unless it is either illegal or physically impossible, he must 
 do, or must suffer the consequences prescribed in his contract. Equity 
 is less logical, and if the consequences are cruel, or altogether dispro- 
 portionate to the offence, it releases the person under the obligation 
 from the consequences of breaking it. For instance, according to the 
 lease granted by Dominus, if the rent were in arrear for a fixed time 
 the term granted was, according to the principles of law, at once for- 
 feited, although the rent were tendered the day after the expiration of 
 the time fixed. Accordingly, however, to a rule established in equity, 
 if the tenant, on an attempt being made to evict him, paid the rent, 
 together with interest and the costs incurred by the landlord, he might 
 retain the lease. Tbis is why Possessor paid the rent into court. As, 
 however, he resisted giving up the property, he was bound to dispute 
 tbat it was out of repair, because equity has declined to interfere with 
 the strict principle of law in the case where a forfeiture occurs through 
 not repairing. This inconsistency shows that equity, although origi- 
 nally founded on the attribute from which it takes its name, is as rigid 
 in its rules as law itself. Previously to the reform lately carried by 
 Lord Selborne and Lord Cairns, instead of pleading equity as a defence, 
 it was necessary to go to the Court of Chancery to have one's opponent 
 ordered not to press his rights in the other courts, which were courts 
 of law only. There were, in fact, two jurisprudential establishments, 
 each with no connection with its rival over the way. and in their early
 
 422 ENGLA.ND. 
 
 days of rivalry cordially hating one another. The reform referred to, 
 which rather late in the day adopted an established principle of busi- 
 ness in legal administration, makes it possible to obtain all the law 
 and equity requisite for one's case at the same store. It thus came 
 about that Dominus and Possessor were at issue on the question of 
 repairs. 
 
 Meanwhile, there has been some little skirmishing at " Judges' 
 Chambers," where a judge sits to bring to book either side who, in 
 the reconnoitring preliminary to trial, may have offended against the 
 laws of war. If the pleading be worded vaguely or evasively, the 
 offender is made to repent and amend. " Interrogatories " are 
 another form of attack which have often to be regulated at Judges' 
 Chambers. These are the only instruments of torture now known to 
 the law by means of which a litigant may ask his antagonist on 
 paper any questions material to the action, and have them answered 
 in the same way. Possessor has asked Dominus some very trouble- 
 some questions, tending to show that Dominus condoned the forfeiture 
 of the lease, Dominus appeals to the judge at chambers to say 
 whether he is to submit to the impertinence. He has to submit, but 
 tinds when he swears his answer, as drawn up by his lawyers, that 
 he has not after all given his adversary much information. 
 
 All the preliminaries having been settled, Dominus now gives his 
 adversary notice that he is ready to try the case before a special jury 
 of Middlesex — that is to say, a jury composed of merchants, bankers, 
 and professional men, as distinguished from the rank and file of jurors. 
 After the delay inseparable from law, Dominus sees the case of 
 " Dominus v. Possessor " in the law notices of his morning's news- 
 paper, and posts down to the Court. There was no reason for any great 
 hurry, as there are several cases in front. The judge is sitting in the 
 plain black robes always worn when a judge sits alone to try civil cases. 
 There is a great display of bleached horsehair on the Bar benches. 
 Those gentlemen in silk gowns in the front row are Queen's counsel. 
 The gentlemen in stuff gowns on the back benches are junior counsel, 
 not honoured with the complimentary retainer of the Crown. The 
 difference between the two is substantial. Queen's counsel earn 
 bigher fees, but are not able to do routine work, such as devising 
 those pleadings and answers to interrogatories before mentioned. 
 Nominally the higher rank is conferred through the grace and favour 
 of the Crown ; but, in fact, any barrister of reputation, if there is 
 room for a new Queen's counsel on his circuit, may "take silk " by 
 .isking the Chancellor. Many find the humbler " stuff" more remu- 
 nerative. In the " well," a seat a step below that of the Queen's 
 counsel, sit the solicitors, ready to give their counsel a reminder when 
 needed. But the Associate, the official sitting under the judge, has 
 sworn the jury, and a case has begun. It is an action brought by a
 
 THE LAW COURTS. 423 
 
 man who fell down a cellar in a public-house, and claims compen- 
 sation. The next case is an action on a bill of exchange, in which 
 the defendant contends that he was induced to give the bill by fraud. 
 Then follows an action in which the plaintiff, a maiden lady, complains 
 of a livery stable as a nuisance. The horses, she says, make a great 
 noise, and keep her awake, and she asks for an injunction to the 
 defendant to conduct his business with more consideration for her 
 nerves. Then we have an action for the non-delivery of a cargo of 
 wheat, and an action for breach of promise of marriage, in which the 
 young lady creates the usual amount of interest, and the man has 
 written the usual quantity of nonsense. Then comes an action for 
 libel, which the jury seem to think is a case of the pot against the 
 kettle, as they return as damages the farthing which has so often 
 been given in the same circumstances, but from which so few take 
 warning not to tempt their fate. 
 
 At last, and perhaps after a day or two of waiting, the case which 
 interests us is called, and the jury are sworn. Each side is repre- 
 sented by a Queen's counsel and a junior. The junior counsel for the 
 plaintiff begins by "opening the pleadings" — that is, informing the 
 jury in a dozen words or so what are the names of the litigants, what 
 the action is about, and what questions appear to be in dispute between 
 them. His " leader " then rises and addresses the court and jury at 
 length, telling the whole story of the difficulties of Dominus with his 
 tenant, and asks the jury to end them by turning the tenant out. 
 Dominus himself is then sworn, and is examined by his junior counsel. 
 He is cross-examined by the defendant's Queen's counsel, and thirdly, 
 a few questions are put to him by his own leading counsel, with a 
 view to re-establish his evidence if at all damaged by the cross- 
 examination. The same process is gone through in the case of the 
 surveyor and the builder, who are next called. While these witnesses 
 are examined, the judge inquires whether the jury are to be asked to 
 assess the amount, if any, which Possessor ought to have spent on 
 repairs. The counsel for Dominus thereupon suggests that the 
 amount should be referred to an official referee, if the jury find that 
 some repairs ought to have been done. The defendant's counsel 
 agrees, and Dominus is content, because if he can turn Possessor out 
 to make room for a better tenant, he does not care much for the 
 repairs. The surveyor goes on to detail how the ceiling of the back 
 parlour had fallen in, the boiler and water-pipes were out of order, 
 the floor of the pantry was damaged, and so on. The defendant's 
 senior counsel then takes up the parable, and declares that Dominus 
 with his rent in his pocket, and his house in a tolerably good state of 
 repair, is as well off as he deserves, without wanting to turn Possessor 
 out into the street. As to the house, Dominus knew its state all 
 along, and has taken rent from Possessor since it fell into its present
 
 424 ENGLAND. 
 
 state, and therefore he cannot now claim the forfeiture of the lease 
 on the allegation that it is out of repair. Witnesses are called to 
 support this view of the matter, and Dorninus, to his surprise, finds 
 his own witnesses ahout the want of repairs flatly contradicted. The 
 counsel for his opponent then " sums up " his evidence, and his own 
 counsel replies on the whole case. The judge then proceeds to charge 
 the jury, and tells them that they must first consider whether the 
 house was substantially in want of repair, and if they, after weighing 
 the evidence, think that it was, then, whether the plaintiff did receive 
 rent knowing what the real state of the house was, and so waived or 
 condoned the forfeiture. The jury, after retiring to consult, find as 
 their verdict that the house was out of repair, and that, though the 
 plaintiff knew of its state and took his rent, the tenement had again 
 fallen into disrepair since. Both sides upon this claim the verdict, and 
 the judge says that he cannot give his decision now, but must reserve 
 the matter for further consideration. 
 
 Dominus now finds himself embarked in a considerable litigation. 
 The judge after a week or two hears an argument on the question of 
 law, and decides against Dominus. Thereupon he resorts to the 
 Court of Appeal, but meanwhile Possessor, not to be outdone, applies 
 to a Divisional Court for a new trial on the ground that the verdict 
 was against the weight of the evidence with regard to the need of 
 repairs, and that the judge did not rightly direct the jury in point of 
 law. The law does not consider juries infallible, and sometimes sets 
 their verdicts aside, if the judge who tried the case thinks that they 
 were misled. In the Divisional Court Dominus finds two judges, one 
 of whom happens to be the judge who tried his case. As it is a saint's 
 day, they wear scarlet robes, and not the black ones ordinarily worn 
 by them in winter, or the violet ones which they wear in summer. 
 Possessor has obtained an order to show cause why there should not 
 be a new trial, and Dominus's counsel have to show cause. Pos- 
 sessor's counsel are then heard in support of his contention, and the 
 judges decide that there must be no new trial. The verdict therefore 
 stands, and success for Dominus depends on his persuading the Court 
 of Appeal that its effect is to entitle him to judgment. 
 
 The Court of Appeal is composed of three Lords Justices. The 
 other three, making up the six permanent judges of the Court, are 
 sitting in another chamber, hearing appeals which have more equity 
 than law in them. The three judges in either chamber are sometimes 
 supplemented by the Lord Chancellor himself, who ordinarily sits in 
 the House of Lords ; or by the Master of the Rolls, who is commonly 
 to be found sitting by himself, hearing equity cases ; or by the Chief 
 Justice of England, who usually presides in a Divisional Court or 
 lakes jury cases. These supplementary judges of the Court of Appeal 
 belong both to that court and the High Court, which together ara
 
 THE LAW COURTS. 425 
 
 called the Supreme Court of Judicature. The Lords Justices wear 
 their judicial wigs, but nothing more showy in the way of judicial 
 costume than the black silk gown which is the least of the ceremonial 
 costumes of the judges. Dominus wonders why an Appeal Court 
 should be arrayed in less glory than the court below. But the fact 
 is, the Court of Appeal took its origin from a court of consultation 
 rather than of jurisdiction, and the black gown is the fatigue dress of 
 judges. The mysteries of judicial millinery are indeed great, and can 
 hardly be fathomed by anyone but the oldest "body clerk" among 
 the attendants of the judges. On the first day of Michaelmas sittings 
 the Lords Justices, when they march up the hall of the Palace of 
 Justice, wear a black robe liberally sprinkled with gold lace ; but 
 when they go on circuit and try prisoners they become " red judges," 
 so familiar to the eyes of the criminal classes. On solemn occasions, 
 as in the Palace of Justice procession or in charging a Grand Jury, 
 the judges always wear the full-bottomed wig — a head-dress which 
 looks from behind like a straw beehive and in front gives them 
 the appearance of Egyptian sphinxes — instead of the short uncurled 
 wig now worn by the Lords Justices. For Court or personal mourn- 
 iug, both judges and Queen's counsel wear their bands with a 
 stripe or fold down the middle, and lawn cuffs or "weepers" on 
 their sleeves. Both the counsel of Dominus are heard in support of 
 the appeal and Possessor's counsel are heard on the other side. A 
 great deal is said about continuous breach and waiver, and other 
 things which Dominus imperfectly understands, but the upshot is 
 that the court reverses the decision of the judge, and enters judg- 
 ment for Dominus. 
 
 But Possessor will not give up his judgment easily, and he appeals 
 to the House of Lords, the court of last resort for Great Britain and 
 Ireland. Here English cases find themselves in company with Irish 
 appeals, which are similar in kind and decided according to the same 
 legal principles, and Scotch appeals coming from an altogether distinct 
 jurisprudence, with law terms strange and uncouth to the English 
 lawyer, in whose eyes the law of Scotland is the law of a foreign 
 country. The argument takes place in the gilded chamber where the 
 Lords sit for legislation. The Queen's counsel are in their full- 
 bottomed wigs ; the Lord Chancellor is on the woolsack in his wig 
 ^nd robes ; but the other members present, although lawyers, wear no 
 official costume. They sit not as judges, nor as lawyers, but as peers ; 
 ind it is only by a custom barely a hundred years old that lay peers do 
 .not take part in the decision of the legal questions submitted to their 
 House. Of late years, under an Act of Parliament passed in 1876, 
 peerages for life have been instituted for the purpose of conferring 
 them on lawyers ; and these life peers, together with the ex-Chan- 
 cellors and other lawyers who may have been ennobled, are the
 
 42G ENGLAND. 
 
 effective force of the House as a law court. Dominus observes that 
 the atmosphere of the highest Court of Appeal in the country is 
 serener than that of the courts below. The arguments proceed 
 smoothly and with little interruption, and afterwards the Lords 
 deliver their opinions one by one, in the form of arguments for the 
 consideration of the House and not judgments. The opinion of 
 the Lords is the same as that of the Court of Appeal, and Dominus is 
 triumphant. All this time, however, Possessor has stuck to the 
 house like a limpet, and the lease has become appreciably less since 
 the writ was issued. Moreover, Dominus has incurred some heavy 
 costs, which it does not seem clear that Possessor, although con- 
 demned in costs, will entirely defray ; and his triumph is dashed with 
 the reflection that going to law, however pleasing the excitement, is 
 an expensive luxury. 
 
 The rooted horror of law, induced by fear of a lawyer's bill, 
 accounts for much of the Englishman's want of acquaintance with 
 legal procedure. He will generally pay any moderate claim made 
 upon him, so long as it does not amount to extortion. If his wife 
 hires a housemaid who turns out badly, the master gets rid of the 
 servant, but pays the month's wages in lieu of notice, although if the 
 servant is in the wrong she is not entitled to them. Sometimes, how- 
 ever, a principle is, or is supposed to be, involved, in which case the 
 Englishman will do his duty in his family concerns, as he is ex- 
 pected to do it elsewhere. The cook, let us say, gives herself airs ; 
 one morning she takes it into her head not to come to family prayers, 
 and when her mistress remonstrates with her, declares it to be her 
 fixed intention not to attend prayers. She gives no reason for her 
 resolve ; perhaps she thinks the prayers too long, or too short, or 
 devoid of earnestness, or too unctuous ; perhaps she has a philo- 
 sophical regard for the maxim that "labour is prayer," and pre- 
 fers to make sure that the breakfast coffee is in good order. At any 
 rate, she declines to come, and Paterfamilias resolves that if so she 
 shall go altogether. Family prayers to his mind are not only a 
 religious exercise, but a morning parade of the servants, which a 
 reasonable regard for discipline requires. If the servants do not 
 all attend, he may have one of them in his house for years without 
 even knowing the fact. He thinks they ought to attend, down to the 
 scullerymaid. Accordingly he dismisses the cook, and this time 
 declines to give her the customary month's wages. A cook with 
 such independent notions has, of course, friends and advisers out- 
 side, and a solicitor of the class ordinarily practising in County Courts 
 is without difficulty found to take the matter up. Paterfamilias 
 receives a polite letter from this solicitor asking on behalf of his client, 
 Ancilla, the cook, that the month's wages may be paid, together with 
 law charges, or that the writer may be referred to the solicitor of
 
 THE LAW COURTS. 427 
 
 Paterfamilias, who may accept service of a summons in the County 
 Court. It is an odd example of the Englishman's almost supersti- 
 tious respect for the law, that he will often not only give way on 
 receipt of a lawyer's letter of this kind, but will also pay the law- 
 yer's charges, which the lawyer has not the shadow of right to 
 enforce, though he always asks for them. Paterfamilias, however, 
 on the question of principle is of sterner stuff ; he does not care 
 to consult the family solicitor, who, he knows, never goes near a 
 County Court, and he is a little curious to see how the matter will go 
 if left to itself. He accordingly writes and asks that the summons 
 may be sent to him, and in due course it arrives. This is how the 
 action of " Ancilla against Paterfamilias " comes into existence. 
 
 Paterfamilias finds that he does not require to be much of a 
 lawyer to carry his case through. In the County Court there is 
 not, as in the High Court, any of the preliminary skirmishing of 
 pleadings. He finds that the summons kindly tells him in very 
 plain language what he is to do. If the defendant wishes to set up as 
 a defence that she is a married woman, or infancy, or that the statute 
 of limitation has run out, the summons says that notice must be 
 given to the plaintiff. But Paterfamilias only wishes to set up 
 that the cook would not come to prayers, so he leaves things 
 alone, and awaits the day in the next month named for the hearing 
 of the case. 
 
 Arrived at the court-house, he finds the officials ready enough to 
 give him information. Under their guidance he first attends the 
 Registrar's room, where he hears "Ancilla against Paterfamilias" 
 called out among some hundred others, and is asked whether the 
 claim is disputed. He says that it is, and is told that the case will be 
 heard before the judge. As soon as the judge arrives, he plunges at 
 once into the judgment summonses, which are a most important part 
 of the jurisdiction of County Courts. Until recently the very 
 principle of morality that a man ought to pay his debts was enforced 
 by putting the defaulter into prison. If a man has money, he will 
 generally spend it rather than go to prison ; and if his friends have 
 money, they will, until tired of so doing, come to his help rather 
 than that he should be incarcerated. The power of imprisonment 
 was thus a valuable ally of the creditor, and if the debtor had no 
 money and no friends, the creditor had at least the satisfaction of 
 having his debtor locked up. It was, however, thought that ven- 
 geance did not belong to the creditor, and that it was not right to put 
 indirect pressure on the debtor's friends. Accordingly, in 1869, 
 imprisonment for debt was abolished, unless it was proved that the 
 debtor had means but would not pay. As the County Courts are 
 the machinery for collecting a great number of debts which cannot 
 be disputed, the judges are constantly called upon to say whether a
 
 428 ENGLAND. 
 
 man has or has not the means of paying. Paterfamilias observes that 
 many of the debtors whose cases are brought before the judge seem 
 to be living very comfortably ; but they always explain that they are 
 living with their mother-in-law, or that a kind uncle supplies their 
 necessities. Imprisonment, therefore, is seldom ordered, and on 
 the whole Paterfamilias thinks that the burden of proof has been 
 thrown on the wrong shoulders — that the debtor ought to prove that 
 he has no means, and not the creditor that he has means. What 
 generally happens in a County Court is that the judge breaks the 
 blow of his judgment by allowing the defaulter to satisfy the claim 
 in easy instalments. 
 
 The ordinary run of County Court cases follows. There are two 
 little boxes, one on the judge's right and the other on his left, which 
 are occupied respectively by the plaintiff and tbe defendant. They 
 stand here after the manner of lighting-cocks held in check, and a 
 torrent of vituperation is often exchanged across the table, especially 
 when the litigants are women. A laundress sues for the amount of 
 a washing-bill, and the defendant resists the claim on the ground that 
 her collars and cuffs have been lost, and her husband's shirt-fronts 
 spoiled by bad ironing. A Jew money-lender sues a clerk in a bank 
 on a bill for £20, which includes interest at 60 per cent. The defen- 
 dant declares that the Jew knew he was only surety for a fellow-clerk, 
 and yet he allowed the other clerk to leave the country without suing 
 him. A baker claims for bread supplied, and the customer affirms 
 that his wife paid the baker's man. An old lady demands compensa- 
 tion for tumbling into a coal-hole left open in the street. The house- 
 holder says it was not his fault, but the coal-merchant's, whose men 
 left the coal-plate open. In most of these cases the judge manages 
 to make up his mind quickly, being guided by the appearance and 
 manner of the witnesses, as the evidence of the two sides is commonly 
 in direct opposition. Sometimes a jury of five men, substituted in 
 the County Court for the traditional twelve, is called to the judge's 
 assistance, especially if the case, being too trifling for a superior 
 court, has been sent down for trial to tbe lower ; but Paterfamilias 
 observes that jury trial hardly flourishes in the alien soil of the 
 County Court. The judge is so accustomed to try the facts himself, 
 tbat he tries them when it is not his but the jury's duty to do so. 
 This is the sort of dialogue that Paterfamilias hears at the end of a 
 jury-case. Judge: "Gentlemen of the jury, the evidence clearly 
 points to a verdict for the Railway Company." Foreman: "The jury 
 iind for the plaintiff with £20 damages." Advocate: "I move, sir, for 
 a new trial." Judge : " New trial granted." 
 
 The case of " Ancilla against Paterfamilias," when called on, does 
 not take long to try. The cook's solicitor details the facts with as 
 much of flourish as he can introduce. Paterfamilias admits them all,
 
 THE LAW COCKTS. 429 
 
 and explains that the refusal of the cook to attend prayers was the 
 ground of her dismissal. It would be hazardous to say what the 
 decision of the County Court judge on so weighty a question of 
 domestic government would or ought to be. Perhaps the judge is 
 epigrammatic, and says that Ancilla was hired " to cook and not to 
 pray," or perhaps he takes a broader view. If the judge is against 
 Paterfamilias he may appeal, if he can make out that a question of 
 law is involved. If there is an appeal, the case then gets into the 
 hands of Paterfamilias' solicitor, and is heard before one of the Divi- 
 sional Courts, which have already been described. 
 
 Whatever the condition of knowledge among the Queen's subjects 
 of the working of the law temporal, it could hardly be expected that 
 they should know much of the procedure of the spiritual courts. When 
 lawyers meet clergymen, we may expect something of subtlety and 
 obscurity. Still, the necessities of an era in the history of the Church 
 of England have brought out many instruments of ecclesiastical pro- 
 cedure from their dusty receptacles, and precedents from dark corners 
 of the law blink their eyes in the light of day. If it depended on 
 individual persons to put ecclesiastical law in force, the dust and 
 darkness would undoubtedly remain little disturbed. But the Church 
 at that time was divided into High Church and Low Church camps, 
 the one ranging itself under the Church Union, and the other under 
 the Church Association, both being well-organised bodies, with funds 
 and energy enough to carry through a suit. The accused in an eccle- 
 siastical process might generally be assumed to have behind him the 
 former, and the accuser the latter of these organisations. 
 
 The main outlines of ecclesiastical procedure are now to be found 
 in the Public Worship Regulation Act, passed in 1874, with a view to 
 simplify the difficulties of the law, which were considered to favour 
 unduly those who, at the time, were described as introducing " the 
 mass in masquerade " into the Church. Simplicius, let us assume, is 
 an inhabitant of a parish of which Laticlavius has been appointed 
 parson. Laticlavius belongs to the section of the High Church party 
 generally called Ritualists. His church has more the appearance of a 
 Roman Catholic than of an English church. He has a crucifix on 
 the screen, and lighted candles on the altar, and the odour of incense 
 pervades the building. He affects coloured stoles, wears vestments 
 during the celebration of the Holy Communion, and turns his back 
 on the people in breaking the bread and taking the cup. He mixes 
 water with the wine and uses wafer bread. These things grate on 
 the feelings of Simplicius and many other parishioners, who consider 
 them to be inconsistent with the simplicity of worship which they 
 prefer and to which they have hitherto been used, and suggestive of 
 doctrines not recognised by the Church of England. Laticlavius is 
 appealed to, but he is unable with any loyalty to his principles to
 
 430 ENGLAND. 
 
 change his practice. Nothing remains but an appeal to the law, and 
 the first step is to represent the grievance of the parishioners to the 
 bishop of the diocese. 
 
 The representation is made in the name of Simplicius and two other 
 parishioners, and is a formal document setting out the heads of com- 
 plaint. Upon reading this representation it is open to the bishop to 
 determine that further proceedings shall not be taken, but he must 
 give the grounds of his decision in writing to be solemnly filed in the 
 diocesan registry. In the case in question he thinks that there is 
 good ground for complaint, and he sends the representation to the 
 accused clergyman, and proposes to him and also to the complainants 
 a friendly arbitration. Neither party is prepared to agree to this 
 course, and the matter is thereupon transmitted to the ecclesiastical 
 judge, whose office was in the Public Worship Regulation Act consti- 
 tuted or rather re-constituted by Parliament. Laticlavius has time 
 given him to answer the charges made against him in writing, and on 
 the appointed day the judge hears the witnesses produced on either 
 side, and the arguments of their counsel. He is of opinion that Lati- 
 clavius has infringed the law, and issues a monition to him to abstain 
 for the future from the practices which he pronounces illegal. If 
 Laticlavius should not submit to this decision, an order will be made 
 upon him forbidding him to perform service in the church or to exer- 
 cise the cure of souls for a term of not more than three months. This 
 is by way of punishment for contumacy, and if before the end of the 
 term Laticlavius should not submit in writing, the prohibition is con- 
 tinued indefinitely, and he will eventually lose his benefice. 
 
 But an appeal lies from the decision of the judge to the Judicial 
 Committee of the Privy Council, and Laticlavius takes advantage of 
 this respite. Ecclesiastical appeals are part of the miscellaneous 
 jurisdiction of this anomalous court of law. Simplicius will find it 
 sitting, not at the Palace of Justice, but in a pleasant and luxu- 
 rious room, not easily discovered, in the office of the Privy Council, 
 just round the corner of Downing Street. There is a desk for the 
 counsel who is arguing, some seats round a table for others who have 
 business here, and very scanty accommodation for the outside public. 
 The rest of the room, and by far its greater portion, is railed off for 
 the judicial Privy Councillors, who sit scattered about it in comfort- 
 able chairs. The place has not the appearance of a court of law, and 
 its ways are not the ways of the ordinary law courts. There is an 
 air of officialism rather than of publicity about it. It is not, as is 
 usual with law courts, open half an hour before the sitting begins, 
 and the Privy Councillors do not enter the court like judges. But 
 so soon as the Privy Councillors are seated, the doors are opened, and 
 the lawyers and the public are admitted. When a case has been 
 argued, the profane vulgar are turued cut, to be recalled while one 

 
 THE LAW COURTS. 431 
 
 of the Privy Councillors delivers their decision, which is not a judg- 
 ment, but in the form of advice to the Queen. The members of the 
 committee, from time to time, include the Lord Chancellor, the ex- 
 Chancellors, the Chief Justice of England, the Master of the Rolls, 
 the Lords Justices, and other judges who may have been made Privy 
 Councillors, and certain permanent judges raised from the Bench, 
 either of England or India ; but they do not, as in their own courts, 
 deliver each his own judgment; the judgment of the majority is 
 delivered for all, an expression of dissent not being allowed. 
 
 Simplicius has the curiosity to attend the committee before his 
 case is heard. Appeals from the courts of the Queen's dominions 
 abroad are the staple of the business, varied by an occasional halt 
 judicial, half administrative case — such as an application for the exten- 
 sion of a patent beyond the usual term by an inventor who has not 
 reaped so much advantage from it as he thinks he should have done. 
 Near home, cases come from the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. 
 From India, rajahs and zemindars, and Parsee merchants carry then- 
 disputes here, and find themselves litigants side by side with West 
 Indian planters. The French civil code of Canada has to be inter- 
 preted, and a meaning given to the Rornan-Dutch law of Ceylon and the 
 Cape. Australia sends a supply of knotty commercial difficulties, and 
 even the West Coast of Africa is not without a share in the argu- 
 ments. Every quarter of the globe exports litigation to the Judicial 
 Committee of the Privy Council. 
 
 A day is specially appointed to hear the appeal of Laticlavius, 
 because there must be ecclesiastical assessors. An archbishop and 
 four bishops support the lay Privy Councillors. On the question of 
 the vestments the difference between the Ritualists and their oppo- 
 nents seems to lie in a narrow compass. By the Act of Uniformity, 
 passed in the first year of Queen Elizabeth, it is directed that " the 
 ornaments of the Church, and the ministers thereof, shall be retained 
 and be in use as were in this Church of England, by authority of 
 Parliament, in the second year of King Edward VI., until other order 
 shall be therein taken by the authority of the Queen's Majesty, with 
 the advice of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, or of the metropolitan 
 of this realm." Both sides admit that in the second year of King 
 Edward VI. vestments were in use by authority of Parliament, but 
 certain "advertisements," or admonitions, were issued by the Queen 
 in 1556 with the advice required by the Act of Uniformity, which 
 provide that " every minister saying public prayers, or ministering 
 the sacraments or other rites of the Church, shall wear a comely sur- 
 plice with sleeves." The Ritualists say that this direction is not an 
 "other order" contemplated by the Act of Uniformity, because it 
 forbids nothing, and only enjoins at least a " comely surplice with 
 sleeves," to which they are entitled to add cope, alb, and chasuble.
 
 432 ENGLAND. 
 
 The Judicial Committee, however, had previously disagreed with this 
 view ; they in this case maintain their previous decisions, so that the 
 monition to Laticlavius is affirmed. 
 
 The law and the law courts, as may be partly gathered from the 
 foregoing illustrations of legal administration, are constantly, like 
 other institutions of the country, in a state of transition. The 
 Judicature Acts concentrated into one Supreme Court the whole judi- 
 cial staff, which up to that time had been scattered among distinct 
 courts of equal rank, and it effected a fusion of the divergent prin- 
 ciples which those courts acknowledged, but time was required to reap 
 the full fruits of the reform. The relation between the Supreme Court 
 and the County Courts is among the legal subjects which from time 
 to time occupy the attention of the Legislature ; the question being, 
 whether the true policy is to strengthen the County Courts or to put 
 a stop to the transfer of business to these lower tribunals, which has 
 been on the increase year by year. Other subjects are canvassed from 
 time to time. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, in its 
 colonial as well as in its ecclesiastical jurisdiction, has been, in regard 
 to the mode of choosing the judges who are summoned to its delibera- 
 tions and the conduct of its business, subjected to criticisms which are 
 well enough deserved to portend a modification of some of its anoma- 
 lies. It is thus evident that the law of England and the law courts 
 are not behind the times, but adapt themselves with as much readi- 
 ness as the necessarily conservative character of law and lawyers 
 allows, to the requirements of the day. A capacity for change is, 
 perhaps, the strongest evidence of vitality.
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 THE SERVICES. 
 
 Position of the British Navy compared with that of others — Present Importance of 
 Superior Organisation and Instructed Personnel — Training of Boys and Seamen 
 gunners — Royal Marines — Naval Artificers — Education of Officers — Young Officers 
 of the Present Day — Higher Ranks and different Branches of the Service — Inner 
 Life of a Man-of-War — Central Administration — Peculiar Independence of the 
 Admiralty — The Army : Difficulty of organically changing it — Efforts at Reform — 
 Why the General Outlines of the Army must always remain the same — Chief 
 Changes described within these Outlines — The Abolition of Purchase and Change 
 in the Prospects of Officers — Their Professional Improvements in Recent Years — 
 Short Service— The Formation of the Soldier — Progress of the Recruit — Drill, Dis- 
 cipline, Crimes, Penalties, and Rewards — Insufficiency of Regular Army — Supple- 
 mented by Militia and Volunteers— Militia and Volunteers described. 
 
 The relations in which England, as the mistress of a powerful navy, 
 stands to the other maritime Powers of the world are marked by 
 certain peculiarities. Owing to the insular position of the United 
 Kingdom, a fleet is naturally regarded as our first and most important 
 line of defence. In Continental states, on the other hand, an army 
 affords the best security against the aggression of hostile neighbours. 
 A threat of war turns the thoughts of Englishmen to the condition of 
 the navy, which an enemy must overcome before he can throw an 
 expedition upon our shores. On the Continent it at once directs 
 attention to the efficiency of the land forces to prevent or punish a 
 violation of the territory. Most Continental nations will have a neutral 
 state upon some division of their frontier, through which, in the pre- 
 sent highly advanced condition of land communications, trade, though 
 somewhat turned aside from its habitual channels, may still pass 
 unmolested. The external trade of an island must, in the nature of 
 things, be carried on by sea, and only a naval force can guarantee it 
 against blockade. Where, as in our own case, the insular people are 
 their own carriers, the necessity in war of protecting private property 
 at sea at once increases the functions of the navy. If we add 
 to this the consideration of the vast extent of our transmarine 
 dominions, protected chiefly, if not solely, by the maritime power of 
 the mother country, and the important fact that year by year we are 
 becoming more dependent upon foreign imports for our food, it will 
 be easy to perceive how much more extensive are the duties of our 
 navy than those of the fleets of the other great European Powers. 
 
 F F
 
 434 ENGLAND. 
 
 Yet foreign nations have developed the strength of their navies during 
 recent years, to a degree altogether out of proportion to the progress 
 which has been made with our own. Thus England can show a dis- 
 placement of only about 12,000 tons more than France, who, next to 
 ourselves, is the strongest naval power in the world. Whilst, how- 
 ever, at this moment there can be no doubt as to the inefficiency of 
 our navy — consequent in a great measure on the scattered nature 
 of the empire which it is called upon to defend — it is equally 
 certain that not only the public, but the Admiralty, recognize 
 the desirability of building more armour-plated ships, as well as 
 swift cruisers, especially designed for the protection of our com- 
 merce. 
 
 Progress in the arts and sciences, and the cosmopolitan character 
 of modern commerce, have practically insured to all maritime states 
 an equality in excellence of materiel. If the natural resources of a 
 country do not suffice for, or the skill of its artificers prove unequal 
 to, the production of the ships and equipment now requisite for an 
 efficient fleet, recourse may be had to foreign factories and building- 
 yards. If only the money can be provided, and as a rule it seems it 
 can, any country with a coast may have at least the inanimate com- 
 ponents of a navy. The chief superiority of our own country, there- 
 fore, lies in the nautical aptitude of the people ; and, as might be 
 expected, to develop this advantage to the fullest extent possible, by 
 the careful organisation and systematic training of the personnel, is an 
 essential element in the naval policy of the present day. 
 
 Maritime tastes prevail among all classes. To go to sea is, at one 
 time or other, the desire of nearly every English boy. By a politic 
 arrangement the State takes advantage of this wide-spread feeling. 
 Recruits present themselves in greater numbers than are required ; 
 ships can be easily manned ; habits of discipline and a knowledge of 
 the duties which have to be performed are early instilled into the 
 mind of the young sailor ; and hundreds of lads are provided with 
 the means of gaining an honourable livelihood. The advantages 
 which a naval career offers to a boy are sufficiently great to attract to 
 the service the sons of many parents considerably above the lowest 
 class. The limits of age on entering the service — from fifteen to 
 sixteen and a half — and the educational and physical tests, are suf- 
 ficient indication that the boys, for the most part, must have been at 
 decent schools and have been reared in comfort. The prohibition of 
 the enrolment of youths from reformatories and industrial schools 
 guard them in a great measure from association with crime and 
 depravity, although in some instances this prohibition is in practice 
 evaded. To their enrolment and their engagement to remain in the 
 service for ten years after their eighteenth birthday the consent of 
 their parents is necessary ; while provision is made for a subsequent
 
 THE SERVICES. 435 
 
 change in the family fortunes by permitting the purchase of a dis- 
 charge on not very onerous terms. 
 
 The first step in the boy's career is embarkation on board a 
 stationary training-ship at Portsmouth, or some other southern port. 
 His uniform — supplied at his own cost, but provided for to some 
 extent out of a money grant subsequently awarded for the purpose — 
 is ready for him in a few days, and he soon appears a small, but 
 veritable, " blue-jacket." The course of instruction which he has to 
 undergo is elaborate and exact. He begins by learning how to pay 
 respect to his superiors, how to lash up his hammock, and how to 
 fold up and put away his clothes in the sailor's only wardrobe — his 
 bag. His day commences with washing the decks, and his hours of 
 instruction with public prayers conducted by the chaplain. He is 
 taught to wash his clothes, and to keep himself clean in person and 
 neat in outward appearance. Half his time is devoted to regular 
 school work — unless he be qualified for the " upper school," when 
 the schoolmasters see less of him — and half to instruction in a sailor's 
 duties. Rowing, reefing, furling, rigging, steering, sail-making, are 
 taught him as soon as he has mastered the technical terms of the new 
 language which he will have to speak. Drill with guns, with rifles, 
 and with cutlasses goes on in the intervals between other lessons, and 
 in summer every boy is taught to swim. 
 
 The whole course lasts a year, and at the end of it he becomes a 
 " first-class boy," and is sent for a short cruise in the Channel in a 
 training-brig, where he makes his earliest acquaintance with blue 
 water. The schoolmaster and the instructor follow him here ; but 
 his time is chiefly and properly taken up in the practical work of his 
 calling. At eighteen he ceases to be a boy, and is officially raised to 
 the rank of a man by being " rated " ordinary seaman. His pay 
 hitherto has been but sixpence or sevenpence a day, which has gone 
 principally to supply clothing, and a small allowance of weekly pocket- 
 money. The excellence of the diet in the training-ship frees him from 
 the necessity of spending anything on food. As a man he receives 
 higher pay, is allowed a ration of grog if he chooses, and may use 
 tobacco at his pleasure. Every man in the navy is practically drilled 
 and instructed until his last day afloat. But compulsory training in 
 the technical sense diminishes considerably with manhood, and ends 
 altogether with the final graduation as able seaman, or A.B. 
 
 The importance of excellence in the practice of naval gunnery in 
 modern war-fleets is universally recognised, and has led to the 
 introduction of gunnery-ships, on board of which the men who are to 
 become seamen-gunners are carefully instructed. Those who join 
 them do so voluntarily, attracted by an addition to their wages in 
 accordance with the class of certificate gained, and other inducements, 
 such as diminution in the period of service entitling them to a pension. 
 
 F F 2
 
 4 36 ENGLAND. 
 
 The course lasts several months, and includes drill with great guns, 
 with cutlasses, in musketry firing, in the management of torpedoes, 
 and in the evolutions of infantry and field-artillery. As a fact, all the 
 seamen of the fleet are trained in these things, but the instruction is 
 more thorough and extended in the case of seamen-gunners. A 
 trained sailor may be reefing or furling sails on Monday, acting as a 
 rifleman on Tuesday, manoeuvring a field-gun on Wednesday, prac- 
 tising the " cuts and guards " on Thursday, and be working an 
 eighteen-ton gun on Friday. A gunner must not only be conversant 
 with the practical work of the various branches of naval gunnery, but 
 must be competent to teach others as well. The most promising men 
 are put through a more advanced course of instruction and become 
 teachers themselves, with the official designation of Instructors. The 
 A.B. — whether trained in a gunnery ship or not — can be advanced to 
 higher grades as a petty officer. He may become coxswain of a boat, 
 captain of a top, or boatswain's or gunner's mate, and thus obtain 
 command over others, increased pay, and the right to wear a badge 
 or symbol of rank upon his sleeve ; or he may reach the highest 
 position open to a 'fore-mast hand — the grade of boatswain or 
 gunner. 
 
 The seamen proper form but a portion of the crew of a ship. 
 There are many other classes " before the mast." Every vessel 
 carries a considerable detachment of Royal Marines, made up of both 
 artillerymen and infantry, the former being selected from the latter, 
 and subjected to a special training. These men are enlisted on terms 
 somewhat different from those which obtain in the army of the line. 
 They enlist for long service, while the men of the army have superior 
 advantages in the way of pay, pension, and promotion from the ranks. 
 Though the requirements in height and chest measurement for the 
 marines exceed those for army recruits, there is never any difficulty 
 in obtaining men ; in fact, it has been necessary upon several occa- 
 sions to raise the standard in order to keep the force within the 
 established strength. The marines are distributed in divisions at the 
 principal naval ports. They supply the guards and sentries on board 
 ship, and some few of them are permitted to act as servants to the 
 officers. Together with the blue-jackets they man the guns, and in 
 all duties — which do not require their presence aloft or at the oars 
 — they share equally with the sailors. Their training, which, as 
 they enter the service as grown men, is shorter than that of their 
 shipmates, is conducted at their own head-quarters, and is so perfect 
 and carefully supervised that, in spite of long absences from a parade- 
 ground, their qualities as soldiers are second to those of none in the 
 world. Their discipline is admirable, and their fidelity so well 
 established as to have almost passed into a proverb. The position 
 of the corps is not so good as its deserts ; for, owing to long service
 
 THE SERVICES. 437 
 
 enlistment and the requirements of the authorities, they form a corps 
 d 'elite. Of late years, however, the sailor has been more and more 
 trained and drilled as if it were intended that he should be able to 
 perform the duties of a soldier. His military education naturally 
 takes up a good deal of his time ; and it is a common cause of com- 
 plaint among officers of the marines, that their men are removed from 
 their legitimate duties to perform others and subordinate ones rightly 
 the work of seamen. Besides these, there are stokers for the work 
 of the engine-room and stokehole, and endless varieties of artificers. 
 Nor is a crew complete which has not on its lists carpenters, caulkers, 
 shipwrights, blacksmiths, armourers, and painters, each with their 
 separate grades ; while in large ships are also to be found butchers, 
 tinsmiths, coopers, and lamp-trimmers. Vessels of all classes carry 
 stewards, cooks, sick-berth attendants, and servants. 
 
 The officers who have to command these men begin their career at 
 an earlier aije than the " 'foremast hands." To become a naval cadet 
 a boy must be more than twelve and less than thirteen years and a 
 half old. Those who have succeeded in obtaining a nomination to 
 compete for a cadetsbip have to pass an examination in school sub- 
 jects, held twice a year, before they can be appointed to the officers' 
 school-ship, the Britannia. It is also necessary to pass an examina- 
 tion in physical qualifications before a board of medical men. The 
 duration of the schooling in the Britannia is two years, the cadet 
 being instructed chiefly in the theoretical subjects with which he must 
 become conversant before he can gain a correct knowledge of the duties 
 of his profession. The education is to a great extent mathematical, 
 and is almost purely scholastic, in order that the withdrawal of boys 
 at so tender an age from the usual studies of persons of their class in 
 life may be in some measure made up to them. At its conclusion 
 they are sent to the larger of the regular sea-going ships of the fleet, 
 and this is the real beginning of the young officer's naval life. His 
 schooling, however, still continues ; the naval instructor — an officer 
 appointed specially for the purpose — claims him for a great part of the 
 day, the desk being really the true scene of the modern midshipman's 
 labours. Examinations are frequent, and future advancement in the 
 service depends on success in them. It will therefore be readily 
 understood that the " middies " of our time differ greatly from the 
 " reefers " of the time of Marryat. They are schoolboys now rather 
 than officers, purely academic tests being powerful to fix their posi- 
 tion in the least academic of services. They still command boats and 
 have charge of tops ; but the former are too often steam launches, 
 and in ironclads the latter are seldom practically used either to set or 
 take in sail. 
 
 After some four years spent at sea, the passing of a series of exami- 
 nations entitles the midshipman to his first commission as a sub-
 
 4 38 ENGLAND. 
 
 lieutenant, and marks the end of the obligatory status piqrillaris. 
 He may, when promoted to the next rank — that of lieutenant — volun- 
 tarily undergo a course of study in naval gunnery, or in torpedo 
 science ; or he can, in any rank bearing a commission (up to that of 
 captain), study at the college at Greenwich. But the end of his mid- 
 shipman's term and its several "final" examinations terminate his 
 schoolboy-days. Promotion to a lieutenancy goes practically by 
 seniority, and should be attained about the twenty-fourth year ; to 
 commander, and afterwards to captain, it is by selection ; to the 
 various grades of flag-officers strictly by seniority. A man may be a 
 commander by five-and-thirty or sooner, and a captain four or five 
 years later. Large ships carry an officer of each of these ranks, while 
 small vessels with less than about one hundred and fifty men are 
 frequently in sole charge of a commander. Besides the great body of 
 naval officers, there are in the service many branches, e.g., the chap- 
 lains, the increasingly important engineers, the medical officers, the 
 paymasters, and so on. At least one representative of every class is 
 to be found aboard most men-of-war. Indeed, H.M.'s ships resemble 
 little worlds in the completeness and variety of the callings represented 
 by their crews. 
 
 It is when the officers and men, of whom so much has now been 
 said, are brought together afloat, that the inner life on board ship may 
 be seen, in the customs and manners which prevail throughout the 
 navy. The early and thorough cleansing of every part of the ship, 
 which begins the day ; the polishing and beautifying all within and 
 without which follows ; the forenoons and afternoons given up to drill 
 and instruction ; th« busy work of the carpenters, blacksmiths, sail- 
 makers, and other artificers ; the whirr of the lathe of the engineers 
 — all these are reproduced throughout hundreds of ships in all parts of 
 the world. At one time a row of men are standing ready for inspection 
 before having leave or "liberty " to go on shore. At another, a less 
 eager rank is drawn up before the commander or senior lieutenant 
 (the second in command, by whom the internal economy is super- 
 vised), awaiting trial for small offences. Red-coated sentries pace to 
 and fro ; the captain quits or returns to the ship amid a shrill flourish 
 of whistles ; the doctors inspect their patients in the hospital or 
 " sick-bay." The working hours may be said to end after the early 
 supper of the men at half-past four is finished, when the long- wished - 
 for pipe may be smoked. As the bells strike the hour the watch is 
 called. The pipe of the boatswain's mate conveys orders given by the 
 ever-present lieutenant of the watch. The whole busy scene of ship 
 life is intended as a preparation for war ; and the steady and con- 
 tinuous instruction given has provided the fleet of the country with a 
 class of " trained cutlasses " to which even the " educated bayonets " 
 of Prussia are not superior.
 
 THE SERVICES. 439 
 
 The central government of the naval service resides at the Admiralty, 
 and is carried on by a Board called the Board of Admiralty, the mem- 
 bers being styled " Lords Commissioners for Executing the Office of 
 Lord High Admiral." There are five members of the Board: the 
 First Lord, who is a member of the Cabinet, and four assistant Com- 
 missioners. To the First Lord is entrusted the general supervision, 
 the control, in great measure, of the naval policy of the country, and 
 the appointment of officers to high commands. His power over his 
 colleagues is practically supreme, but in the division of labour among 
 them these important matters as a rule fall to him. Next come three 
 naval lords — known as the Senior Naval Lord, Third Lord, and 
 Junior Naval Lord, of whom the first superintends the discipline of 
 the fleet, the next attends to construction and the dockyards, and the 
 last to victualling and transport. The fifth member of the Board is 
 the Civil Lord, who attends to finance. Secretaires take other duties, 
 and the Controller — the greatest officer of the navy who has not a seat 
 at the Board — has care of the materiel and armament. 
 
 In the discharge of his important duties he has to approve of 
 designs of ships, armoured and unarmoured — from the turret-ship 
 carrying guns weighing eighty tons and armour twenty-four inches 
 thick, to the gunboat not much bigger than a Cowes yacht. With his 
 department rests the decision as to the weapons to be carried ; the 
 size and position of the guns, and of the new and important weapon — 
 the torpedo. His relations with the dockyards — the vast establishments 
 in which ships are built or repaired — are naturally intimate. The 
 dockyards represent, to some extent, outlying branches of his great 
 department, and have their offshoots at many places, thousands of 
 miles off, in our colonial dependencies. In the same way the victual- 
 ling-yards, or establishments for supplying the fleet with food and 
 other necessaries, are distributed about the world. The Admiralty, as 
 head of the navy, enjoys a curious constitutional independence ; it 
 can appoint officers independently of the Sovereign's sign-manual ; 
 its Mutiny Act — the Naval Discipline Act — does not require renewal. 
 Another peculiarity is the method of voting the estimates. In the 
 army the number of men and the charges for pay and maintenance are 
 made the subject of votes. In the navy the wages only for so many 
 men and boys are voted. In fact, though many of its privileges have 
 been abolished or exchanged, the Admiralty still occupies a unique 
 position among the great departments of the State.* 
 
 The British army of to-day may be compared to an old-fashioned 
 house in one of the principal London streets, which has been re- 
 
 * The numbers provided for in the naval estimates for the current financial year are 
 as follows : For the fleet — seamen, 30,633 ; boys, 4,950 ; marines afloat, 6,200 ; marines 
 ashore, 6,200. For the coastguard — afloat (included with fleet) ; on shore, officers and 
 men, 4,000. Indian service, 958. Total, 52,941. Ships and vessels of all sorts, 
 efficient, 236.
 
 ■110 ENGLAND. 
 
 fronted and re-decorated to meet the imperious needs of modern pro- 
 gress. Till the portals have been passed no one would recognise the 
 dwelling. Outside, the architect, lavish with plate-glass, with stone 
 mullions and crimson bricks, has worked wonders ; but he has not 
 been equally successful within. All his efforts to recast the interior of 
 the dwelling and lay it out afresh have been at best half failures. He 
 has thrown down partitions, altered levels, added here and rebuilt 
 there ; but his difficulties were too great to be completely surmounted, 
 and everywhere the old character of the place crops up irrepressibly. 
 Great structural changes have been impracticable ; conflicting interests 
 and vested rights, questions of free access, party-walls and light im- 
 peded, have tied his hands. He has been forbidden to increase the 
 limits of the edifice, which must still be contained within its old four 
 walls. Consequently, there are still low ceilings, narrow corridors 
 leading to culs-de-sac, curious corners where the daylight cannot pene- 
 trate, and where the dust will still gather in spite of new brooms. 
 Nothing better, indeed, could be done ; at least until the advent of a 
 general conflagration, an earthquake, or some abnormal cataclysm 
 which, spreading ruin and desolation around, shall leave the site 
 unencumbered for the erection of another mansion, new, from base- 
 ment to roof-tree, and constructed from first to last on entirely different 
 lines. 
 
 It is precisely the same with our army. The necessity for its 
 thorough re-constitution and reform has long been admitted on every 
 side, and statesmen, soldiers, officials, experts of every kind have had 
 a hand in the job. The War Office has proved a sure avenue to the 
 peerage for cabinet ministers, who, recognising the importance of the 
 work, have strenuously put their shoulder to the wheel. A host of 
 specialists, some merely outsiders, others in high place at the War 
 Office and on the staff, have assisted in the work of revision, recom- 
 mendation, and substitution ; yet, in spite of the efforts of all, it is 
 only upon the surface, only in its external aspect, not in its internal 
 framework and principal lines, that the army has been changed. 
 
 There are, in fact, certain seemingly inalienable peculiarities which 
 continually run counter to drastic reform. Complications crop up at 
 every turn ; grave constitutional and political questions are intimately 
 connected with the whole subject. The responsibilities of the most 
 extensive and most varied empire which the world ever knew intensify 
 a thousandfold the difficulties of army administration and organisation. 
 The usual formula, that liberty is in danger, is echoed on every side 
 at the first hint of the possible necessity for universal service. While 
 parliamentary government remains what it is, the exigencies of "party" 
 1 1 rife will always override the manifest advantages of military efficiency 
 and thorough readiness for war. The same principle of government 
 carries with it the inevitable consequence that the supreme hoad of
 
 THE SERVICES. 441 
 
 the army must be a civilian. Even if there were not an invincible 
 national repugnance to the mere name of " conscription," the multi- 
 farious character of the duties which our soldiers are called upon to 
 perform, often in deadly climates, exiled and at a distance from home, 
 would render compulsory service practically impossible with us. We 
 alone among great European Powers must continue, therefore, to 
 recruit our army by voluntary enlistment, accepting the pecuniary 
 burden which it entails ; a tax, however, which ends with the money 
 spent, and does not, as in Germany and elsewhere, seriously sap the 
 national prosperity and progress. Again, it is this unalterable rule ot 
 voluntary service which fixes the quality and status of the men who 
 form the rank and file. These cannot, as in countries where all 
 classes alike supply their quota, be drawn from more than one source 
 of supply. This source, with us, must be the market for unskilled 
 labour, in which alone Government competes against other employers 
 for the thews and muscles it requires. Finally, the peculiar fascina- 
 tions which the profession of arms seems to possess for the sons of the 
 aristocracy and of well-to-do people of the upper and middle classes 
 provide an inexhaustible contingent of candidates for commissions. 
 There is an increase rather than a diminution in the supply, and this 
 in spite of changes which might have been thought to reduce appre- 
 ciably the attractions of the military career. Notwithstanding the 
 abolition of purchase, the difficulties thrown in the way of exchanges 
 from regiment to regiment to suit individual convenience, and the 
 prospect of stagnation in promotion which can be relieved only at 
 the cost of much hardship, the officers, as a body, are and will con- 
 tinue to be of the class of gentlemen bred and born. 
 
 But although the general outlines and principal conditions of mili- 
 tary service remain much what they were a hundred years ago, it 
 cannot be denied that there have been recently great changes and 
 improvements in matters of detail. Of these the most remarkable are 
 (1) the consolidation of the governing bodies, which has been effected 
 through the removal of the Horse Guards' staff from Whitehall to the 
 War Office ; (2) the abolition of purchase among officers and the con- 
 current, but not necessarily, consequent increase of professional know- 
 ledge and acquirements among them ; (3) the adoption of the principle 
 of short enlistment for the rank and file ; and (4) a general revision 
 of the training, constitution, equipment, and weapons of the three 
 arms. 
 
 Before the Crimean campaign there was practically no single great 
 office charged with the administration of the army as a whole. A num- 
 ber of small independent jurisdictions controlled the several branches, 
 working in harmony or not, according to the chances of the case, but 
 imperfectly conscious of their true functions and the importance of 
 maintaining the army itself in a high state of efficiency. The results
 
 442 ENGLAND. 
 
 of this want of a unified system were plainly apparent in the terrihle 
 confusion which promptly supervened during our war with Russia, 
 and one of the first efforts towards reform was in administration. 
 The creation of a new Secretary of State especially appointed "for 
 war " was followed by numerous alterations in names, officers, and 
 business performed, yet all having the same purpose of concentrating 
 authority under a single head. The edifice was not crowned until 
 the commander-in-chief was forcibly moved from Whitehall. The 
 Duke of Cambridge had always cheerfully recognised the power and 
 superiority of the Secretary of State as the official really responsible 
 to the Queen and Parliament. But this subordination continued to 
 be in a measure misunderstood so long as the two remained under 
 different roofs and, at least in appearance, independent of each other. 
 Now the fusion is actual and complete. The Secretary of State for 
 War stands next to the Sovereign, and holds by delegation the 
 supreme authority and command. Upon his staff are three principal 
 officers. Two of these are parliamentary officials having seats in 
 Parliament, and are charged, severally, with the departments of 
 supply of stores, and finance ; the third is the Field-Marshal Com- 
 manding-in-Chief, who discharges purely military functions. The 
 measures by which this consolidation was brought about did not at 
 first find favour with all concerned. But the necessity was indis- 
 putable, and now that some years have passed, the system has been 
 accepted and acquiesced in with the best grace in the world. The 
 fact is, the introduction into the War Office of a large leaven of the 
 military element has tended to increase the dignity and influence of 
 the Commander-in-Chief. Clerkdom has in a measure succumbed : 
 the soldiers, although nominally more subordinated, are really more 
 powerful now when they are on the spot, and their voices can be 
 quickly heard, than when they transacted their business from a dis- 
 tance by communications on paper, or by visits which were formal 
 and rare. 
 
 The precise ends which the Government of the day had in view 
 when it proposed to abolish the long-established practice of buying 
 and selling commissions in the army will never perhaps be accurately 
 known. The occasion was one of general excitement, and nothing less 
 than some large scheme of military reorganisation and reform, or the 
 semblance of it, would have satisfied the public mind. Purchase 
 being theoretically quite indefensible, nothing was easier than to 
 charge it with the flaws and failures of the whole system. It was 
 said to impede and interfere with any arrangements for increasing the 
 symmetry and efficiency of the service ; the vested rights of the 
 officers stood continually in the way. If a man had purchased his 
 promotion, it was almost impossible to remove him, however incom- 
 petent, from regimental command. Merit was repeatedly over-
 
 THE SERVICES. 443 
 
 looked ; promotion following not fitness, but the length of a man's 
 purse. These and other reasons sufficiently justified the attack made 
 upon an institution which, though it might be time-honoured, had on 
 the face of it little to recommend it. But they did not easily over- 
 bear the opposition which the proposal encountered. There were 
 many practical men who, while they admitted the disadvantages of 
 purchase, upheld it on the ground of its economy and convenience. 
 It was a system by which a large body of servants of the Crown 
 provided their own pensions without costing the public exchequer a 
 penny. It secured a reasonably rapid flow of promotion ; and if, 
 in theory, it bore hardly upon some deserving officers who had not 
 the means to purchase, matters righted themselves in the long run, 
 and, as a matter of fact, they often benefited more largely by the 
 system than their comrades who paid. For the non-purchase officer 
 who constantly gained promotion by seniority and other means, 
 became entitled to precisely the same sums on retirement as the 
 purchase officer ; while the constant movement of men coming and 
 going pushed him steadily to the top of the tree. 
 
 Nevertheless, although the contest was fierce and protracted, 
 purchase was definitively swept away in 1871. In the years that 
 have since elapsed there have been many opportunities of testing the 
 wisdom of the change, although it would be premature to pronounce 
 finally even as yet upon its failure or success. Certain consequences, 
 however, which are directly traceable to it, have become plainly 
 apparent. Chief among these is the unsatisfactory conclusion that 
 the eight millions voted to " buy back our army " represented only a 
 fraction of the total outlay involved ; promotion almost immediately 
 stagnated, and threa.teued soon to cease altogether unless some 
 artificial means were devised to quicken it and keep it alive. This 
 entailed an elaborate scheme of retirements with bonuses and pensions, 
 which falls heavily on the public purse ; while the provisions of the 
 warrant prove in many cases a distinct hardship to officers them- 
 selves. The basis of existing arrangements is that all who, at a 
 certain age, have not ascended above a certain grade shall be com- 
 pelled to retire. In other words, a captain who is still a captain at 
 forty, a major still a major at forty-seven, and so on through the 
 various grades, must, although their retardation will probably have 
 been their misfortune and not their fault, take tbeir pensions and 
 retire permanently from active employment. This rule may have 
 been a logical necessity. It cannot be doubted that strong reasons 
 existed why this stagnation should be relieved by application of the 
 scheme to other than the very highest ranks. But the immediate 
 results of the plan have caused great hardship to a number of 
 officers, while the State was heavily taxed to provide pensions for 
 men still full of health and eager to work. The evils of this
 
 444 ENGLAND. 
 
 method of enforced retirements soon became plainly marked, and 
 it has been considerably modified. Of late years strenuous efforts 
 have been made to reduce compulsory retirement to a minimum. 
 Promotion and the common upward movement have been stimulated 
 by reducing the number of generals serving upon the active list. 
 At the same time the regimental majors have been increased from 
 two to four, so that there is and will be less stagnation in the lower 
 grades. 
 
 How far the abolition of purchase can be credited with the dis- 
 tinct improvement in the professional efficiency of the body of officers 
 is another point which cannot be exactly determined. No doubt, the 
 knowledge that promotion can no longer be purchased, but may be 
 secured by merit, has proved an incentive to exertion ; although even 
 now, it is no more certain that mere merit will insure advancement 
 than that incompetence will be a disqualification for high commands. 
 But other causes have also been at work. The present generation 
 has seen a more widespread development of military science than any 
 that has preceded it ; and the same influences which brought about 
 German triumphs and French disasters have been felt in England. 
 The paramount necessity for progressive improvement has been 
 impressed with irresistible force on an important section of our 
 officers ; and these have in their turn, authoritatively, or by the 
 more effective suasion of precept and example, helped to introduce a 
 new tone throughout the service and establish a new order of things. 
 Under the present regime, military subjects are no longer tabooed, as 
 they once were, among military men. Military literature finds a wide 
 circle of military readers. Military games are played by the dandi- 
 fied guardsman or the once professionally illiterate dragoon. Schools, 
 classes, lectures in London and the principal garrisons and camps, 
 provide all ranks with abundant opportunities for self-improvement, 
 of which numbers gladly avail themselves to the full. This marked 
 and very general change in the ambitions and aptitudes of the officers 
 is one of the most hopeful signs for the future of our military insti- 
 tutions. Although yielding to none in the world in gallantry and devo- 
 tion in the hour of danger, it might once have been urged against 
 them that their scientific acquirements were extremely limited ; that, 
 beyond the perfunctory discharge of routine duties, as quickly for- 
 gotten as the uniform coat was exchanged for mufti, they had no 
 claim to be called soldiers in the modern sense of the term. But 
 officers, as a body, are now rapidly escaping from any such reproach. 
 From the moment the young cadet, released from Sandhurst, matri- 
 culates, so to speak at the ahiut muter of his corps, he is subjected to 
 a system of progressive training which cannot fail to perfect him in 
 the work he; has or will have to do. He is still encouraged, as of old, 
 to play games and patronise sport ; to shoot, hunt, fish, and show
 
 THE SERVICES. 443 
 
 his prowess in those manly exercises which have in times past given 
 English officers a peculiar advantage when sent into the field. He is 
 still constantly reminded by the tone and spirit of those among whom 
 he lives, and who soon become his life-long friends, that unfailing 
 courtesy, a chivalrous bearing and pleasant address, frank manliness, 
 and straightforward and honourable dealings with all the world, are 
 the traits of " the officer and the gentleman." This composite ex-, 
 pression appears to be in no immediate danger of alteration. It was 
 thought at the time that the action of recent reforms would tend to 
 lower appreciably the social status of English officers as a whole. 
 But although the expression " Mr. Cardwell's young men" was for a 
 short period often employed as a term of contempt, it never had real 
 meaning or foundation. Now, from causes already indicated, the 
 tendency is more than ever to fill our regiments with officers drawn 
 exclusively from the wealthier classes. Armies will still be led, as of 
 old, by the gentlemen of England. But they will be gentlemen who 
 can rely on their professional knowledge, as well as on their personal 
 qualities, to win the esteem and respect of their men. 
 
 Not less drastic than the measures adopted with regard to the 
 officers were those which were taken about the same time for revising 
 the conditions of service for the rank and file. The Enlistment Act 
 of 1871 was a well-digested scheme for the consolidation of the 
 whole of our military forces. The adoption of the principle of enlist- 
 ment for short periods of service with the colours, followed by a 
 longer time in a reserve presumably within easy reach, is only of 
 recent date, but it has already modified considerably the aspect and 
 intrinsic value of the army as a whole. Before 1870 there had been 
 repeated changes in the terms and conditions of service. Men had 
 been enlisted for life, for twenty-one, for twelve, and last of all for 
 ten years. But none of these systems had aimed at doing more than 
 fill the ranks. The recruit who joined under them served always at 
 headquarters ; it was not incumbent upon him, it was not even open 
 to him, to pass into a reserve, except under conditions which were not 
 sufficiently attractive to induce him thus to become bound for a further 
 period. The Army Enlistment Act of 1871, which is now in force, 
 was a new and logical attempt to alter this. Under its provisions the 
 recruit could enlist for either long or short service. If he chose the 
 former, the soldier engaged to serve twelve years with the colours, 
 and had the option of re-engaging for another term of nine years at 
 the end of the first period. For short service, he engaged to serve 
 six years with the colours and six in the reserve. But at any time 
 after three years he could be dismissed to the reserve with a retaining 
 fee in the shape of a modicum of daily pay, to act as a lien upon him 
 to return and complete the full term, should his services in any emer- 
 gency be required. At present, however, practically all enlistments
 
 446 ENGLAND. 
 
 are for short service, which is fixed at seven years with the colours 
 and five years in the reserve. If the soldier is abroad when his term 
 with the colours expires, another twelvemonth is added to it and 
 deducted from his term in the reserve ; that is, he serves eight years 
 with the first and four years in the second. But only men in the 
 Household Cavalry, the Band of the Royal Military College, and the 
 Corps of Ordnance Artificers are now permitted to engage for long 
 service or twelve years with the colours. No doubt the intentions of 
 the authors of this change were excellent, and it is but fair to 
 admit that so far as the formation of reserves, which could be 
 promptly utilised and in considerable numbers, is concerned, their 
 endeavours have been attended by a certain degree of success. The 
 ease and rapidity with which, in spite of friction and small flaws in 
 administrative machinery, these reserves were mobilised when war 
 with Russia was imminent five years ago, sufficiently established the 
 wisdom of the system in this particular respect. But there are, on 
 the other hand, uncomfortable misgivings that the principle of short 
 service has tended greatly to alter the physical character of the army 
 as a whole and in a measure to reduce its soldierly efficiency. The 
 reserves, it is to be feared, are kept up at the expense of the service 
 battalions, which have become merely feed-pipes, so to speak, con- 
 veying a constant stream towards them. The service army is always 
 in a fluid condition ; it never crystallises and consolidates itself. The 
 bronzed and bearded veterans, the old soldiers, full of the cunning of 
 experience, the self-reliant full-grown men who won for Great Britain 
 its records of imperishable fame, are absolutely wanting in our regi- 
 ments of to-day. That the lads and striplings who have replaced 
 them are animated by the same spirit is likely enough, but they can- 
 not be equal to them in strength and physique, nor are they to be 
 blamed if they exhibit unsteadiness or want of stamina when sorely 
 tried. Six years ago, when our operations in Zululand caused a 
 sudden demand to be made on our home establishment, it was dis- 
 covered that no fewer than thirty-one of our line battalions had each 
 on an average only a hundred and twenty-eight men who had com- 
 pleted two years' service. Of such men there were just forty-eight in 
 one battalion and eighty-one in another. Our later experience in 
 Afghanistan and the Transvaal afforded additional if not stronger evi- 
 dence that some modification of the principle of short service was 
 required in order to secure for every corps at least a leaven of older 
 and more thoroughly trained men. It may be questioned, indeed, if 
 the short service system — especially now that an extra year with the 
 colours is exacted — is alone and in itself responsible for the general 
 immaturity of our troops. Although the age at which recruits can be 
 enlisted has been nominally raised from eighteen to nineteen, it is 
 matter of common observation that many of them are considerably
 
 THE SERVICES. 447 
 
 younger. When the limit of age was eighteen it is notorious that 
 numbers of youths of seventeen, and even sixteen, were accepted, and 
 judging from the past it is pretty safe to conjecture that a year, or 
 even two years, of deficiency is not at present regarded very 
 frequently as an insurmountable obstacle to enlistment. Hence, since 
 the period of greatest endurance is between twenty-three and thirty, 
 it happens that owing to several concurrent causes, a large contin- 
 gent of our soldiers scarcely enter on it while they are with the 
 colours. It is true that the campaigns of last year and the year 
 before in Egypt bore witness to an encouraging improvement in both 
 the physical and moral qualities of our troops, and seemed to testify 
 to a considerable advance in age and increase in discipline. But the 
 men engaged in the Egyptian expeditions were more or less picked 
 men, and besides had had the opportunity of reaping some of the 
 advantages which the general although slight extension of army service, 
 and the inducement, in the shape of a pension after twenty-one years 
 with the colours, offered to efficient non-commissioned officers to re- 
 enlist, were intended and calculated to insure. Beneficial, however, as 
 the effects of these reforms, of which the credit is due to Mr. Childers, 
 are, and are likely to be, it would be better still if some expedient 
 could be introduced by which a certain proportion, say ten per cent., 
 of the rank and file could be composed of old soldiers. 
 
 But if too many of our brave defenders are nowadays merely 
 warriors in embryo, no pains are spared to carry their training as far 
 as it can go, to improve their equipment, and generally to secure their 
 comfort and well-being. The life of the recruit, from the moment be 
 enlists until he is dismissed drill, fully proves this. Whether picked 
 up by the recruiting sergeant in metropolitan purlieus, whether drawn 
 from agricultural district or busy manufacturing town, or whether 
 coming into barracks of his own free will, seeking employment after a 
 run of bad luck in other callings, the recruit is carefully protected and 
 looked after from the first. He must be sworn in and attested before 
 a magistrate after a certain lapse of hours, to prove that he has not 
 been inveigled into enlistment unawares. To secure his independence 
 still further, he joins his depot or the head-quarters of the corps by 
 himself, and not, as in times past, under an escort. Arrived at the bar- 
 racks, he undergoes a second medical examination, is bathed, clothed 
 in fatigue dress, and handed over to his " company " sergeant to be 
 lodged in a barrack-room, made one of a " mess," and within the day 
 is included in a squad of others like himself about to be initiated into 
 the mysteries of his profession. From the goose-step, the infantry 
 recruit passes through the "extension motions" to club-drill, and so 
 on, through slow marching, marching in quick and double time, to the 
 use of his weapons, and then to more intricate movements in company 
 and battalion drill, followed last of all by careful instruction in " loose
 
 448 ENGLAND. 
 
 order " fighting, or independent skirmishing. The process is naturally 
 more intricate and lengthened with the cavalry recruit, the artillery- 
 man, and the engineer. The riding-school is the chief thing with the 
 first named, and a source of no little discomfort to the yokel or city 
 vaurien, who has never before been in a saddle. Cavalry exercises, 
 again, are difficult to master, because the pupil must learn to handle 
 not a rifle only, but a sword, carbine, pistol, and lance. The gunner's 
 training is practically never completed ; the horse-artilleryman must 
 learn to ride as well as to work his guns, and the garrison gunner has an 
 endless course of instruction in manipulating the multitudinous appli- 
 ances and machinery of modern ordnance. The sapper or engineer 
 begins with the knowledge of some handicraft or trade, which is an 
 indispensable qualification for enlistment into that arm ; but he also 
 has an interminable course of instruction in the various processes 
 which the modern scientific soldier has at command. 
 
 But the education of the young soldier is not entirely technical and 
 mechanical. While thus undergoing that perpetual repetition of 
 exercises which gradually makes their performance almost automatic, 
 he is insensibly subjected to the influences of discipline, and almost 
 impalpably assimilates those notions of perfect obedience to orders 
 and implicit subordination of will which, when thoroughly under- 
 stood, makes an army, as Locke has it, " a collection of armed men 
 obliged to obey one man." According as he submits to the iron rule 
 with a good will, grudgingly, or not at all, must his value as a soldier 
 be measured. If he kicks against the pricks, and chafes at the petty 
 despotism of a stripling sergeant or callow corporal, who but the day 
 before was a recruit like himself, he may enter upon a career of mis- 
 conduct which, commencing in trifling laches — such as short absences 
 without leave, occasional resistance to authority — may culminate one 
 day in defiant conduct and desertion of the colours. For each and all 
 of the first named he will incur penalties — such as loss of pay and 
 liberty, dull repetitions of drill, with possibly a short confinement to 
 cells. If his insubordination goes to the length of actual violence, he 
 will be tried by court-martial, and may find himself in prison for a 
 long term, as he will assuredly do should his desertion end, as it very 
 often but, unhappily, not always does, in detection and recapture. 
 On the other hand, the well-conducted soldier, save and except for a 
 more or less constant ennui born of the narrow and objectless life he 
 leads, may pass his days in comparative comfort and freedom from 
 care. He is relieved of all responsibilities of maintenance, is fed, 
 lodged, clothed, with the most punctilious attention to his wants and 
 requirements. Officers inspect his food and his barrack-rooms; doctors 
 prescribe for him if his finger aches ; he has " his rights," as he calls 
 them, and may complain, whenever he feels aggrieved, to the highest 
 authority. The sum of 2d. a day is placed to his credit under the
 
 THE SERVICES 449 
 
 name of deferred pay, so that when he obtains his discharge he may 
 not be without funds with which to start in his old trade, or on which 
 he can subsist until he discovers some opening in civil life. But for 
 occasional exile and the rather remote possibility of being called upon 
 to risk his life for his country, the private soldier, in the society of 
 congenial companions, and with just enough exercise to keep him in 
 health, is perhaps more of a gentleman at large than any other mem- 
 ber of the working community. 
 
 Were it not for their rawness and crudity, no grave fault could be 
 found with the rank and file of by far the larger portion of our regular 
 army. Our infantry soldiers are armed with an admirable breech- 
 loader, which they are taught to handle with skill and effect. The 
 cavalry are well mounted and fairly equipped, although there is still 
 room for improvement in weapons and gear, in organisation and 
 tactics, whether for man or horse. As for the artillery and engineers, 
 they may compare with advantage with any in Europe. The intelli- 
 gence of our officers and their good qualities have been already 
 adverted to ; while the action of those in authority and in the superior 
 grades, in raising the level of excellence, is an exceedingly hopeful 
 sign for times to come. Yet one serious defect remains, and is likely 
 to remain unremedied until some almost irreparable disaster overtakes 
 us. This is the insufficiency of our regular forces, all told, for the 
 services they may be called upon to perform. What with the demands 
 made by India, the Crown colonies, and occasional little wars in 
 remote regions, our regular army is always broken up into fractions 
 and distributed over the face of the earth. The balance available for 
 service within the United Kingdom, as garrison and safeguard against 
 foreign attack, is altogether inadequate in view of the mammoth armies 
 which our neighbours control. Great doubts exist, moreover, as to 
 the wisdom of the present system of organisation. Some twelve years 
 ago the War Minister sought to consolidate our military forces by 
 ordaining the more intimate amalgamation of regulars with auxiliaries. 
 To accomplish this the principle of "localising" regiments was 
 adopted. All regular regiments have long borne certain county or 
 local designations, and the notion was to connect each more closely 
 with the particular shire or place of which it bore the name. It was 
 hoped that this would stimulate recruiting for each corps in its own 
 district, and that, moreover, the militia and volunteers of the district 
 would become more closely identified with the fighting line. But the 
 depot of the regiment only was so " localized," and the head-quar- 
 ters, with its band and colours, and all the pomp and circumstance 
 which gave it prestige, was never seen. The attempt to stir up pro- 
 vincial enthusiasm has more or less failed, and it is becoming nearly 
 certain that localisation itself is an anachronism. People have long 
 since ceased to be moved by local sentiment or bound by strong local 
 
 G G
 
 450 ENGLAND. 
 
 ties. Recruits as a matter of fact are nowadays obtained mainly at 
 the great centres of life and activity, and not from the outlying dis- 
 tricts. Nevertheless the military authorities are loth to admit this. 
 They attribute the failure of localising regiments to the fact that the 
 system has not been carried sufficiently far. Now every line regiment 
 has lost its individual identity, and is incorporated with another and 
 with two militia battalions into a newfangled body with" an especially 
 local or " territorial " name. The change was by no means popular, 
 and many officers of rank and great experience protested against it in 
 the strongest terms as tending to destroy that peculiar regimental feel- 
 ing, so valuable and so keenly felt in our service, called esprit de corps. 
 But a small band of ardent reformers, having the courage of their 
 convictions, have given the fullest effect to their theories. What the 
 consequences will ultimately be it is at present too early to foresee. 
 
 "When discussing the inadequacy of our land forces it is usual to 
 lay great stress upon our navy as our first and most effective line 
 of defence. But that this powerful arm is not all sufficient for our 
 safety, is proved by our consistent efforts to organise citizen forces to 
 supplement our home army should occasion arise. Of these, the first, 
 the militia, is an institution practically coeval with the nation, which 
 bases its right to exist upon the claim the State has upon every citizen 
 to serve in defence of his hearth and home ; the second — the volun- 
 teers — is an admirable exponent of the spirit and martial enterprise of 
 the nation at large. 
 
 The loyalty of the militia to the State rather than to the individual 
 has always been marked, so much so that at one period of our history 
 it was relied upon as the most effectual safeguard of the liberties of 
 the people against the menace of a standing army. It was recruited 
 by ballot, and although this method has now fallen into abeyance, the 
 statutory power to enforce it still remains. It is, perhaps, needless to 
 remark that any attempt to carry it into effect would, in the present 
 state of public opinion, lead to determined resistance. Nevertheless, 
 the ballot remains as a last resource in a time of national emergency. 
 Time was when the militia as an element of military strength was 
 somewhat under-estimated. For numbers of years it was never called 
 out, and its existence was almost forgotten. Then after it had done 
 good service, as during the Crimean war and Indian Mutiny, it was 
 long subordinated to the volunteers. It has, however, regained its 
 proper place in public esteem, and is now closely interwoven with the 
 whole scheme of military organisation for purposes of recruiting ; 
 militia regiments being affiliated to certain line regiments, to which 
 they act as supports and reserves. More careful supervision and a 
 change in the system of officering, with longer trainings and more 
 frequent practice in association with other troops, have in recent 
 years considerably developed the efficiency of the whole force. As
 
 THE SEKVICES. 451 
 
 for the volunteers, their wonderful vitality, in spite of snubs and 
 sneers, accompanied not unfrequently by contemptuous distrustful- 
 ness as to their real value in time of need, still maintains their prestige. 
 The volunteer movement was the natural outcome of the wave of 
 military enthusiasm which swept over the land a quarter of a century 
 ago. Many causes had been working upon the national spirit. 
 The Crimean war and the Indian Mutiny had developed rather than 
 diminished our offensive strength, but it was at the cost of our defensive 
 resources. The militia had been called upon, and had responded 
 well ; but even of militia we had too few. It was at this juncture 
 that the apparently aggressive policy of Napoleon III. led people to 
 think once more of the proximity of France to our own shores, and 
 gave rise to rumours, vague enough, but widely circulated and believed, 
 that an invasion of England was not an impossible contingency. 
 There is no doubt that tbe volunteers were very much in earnest ; 
 and as might have been predicted of the stubborn national character, 
 the only effect of the ridicule and satire expended upon them was to 
 intensify their perseverance and confirm their resolution. They are 
 now excellent soldiers, in some points superior to regulars or militia ; 
 for one thing they are generally expert marksmen, and they exhibit a 
 high degree of intelligence, being for the most part recruited from the 
 educated classes. The defective arrangements for their equipment 
 upon a war footing, and for practice in military exercises, are the 
 great faults of the system. In the present state of our general 
 military organisation, however, it is not quite clear whether, in case 
 of invasion, the volunteers would be much worse off than the regular 
 troops as far as mobilisation is concerned. In any case, it is a great 
 point gained to have the men ; and although, with regard to the status 
 of the volunteer force anomalies at present exist which would not be 
 tolerated in Continental armies, it forms an element in our defensive, 
 and presumptively of our offensive, strength which no foreign critic 
 attempts to ignore. 
 
 The Head-quarter Staff at the War Office superintends the whole 
 business of the army. Tbe General Staff is composed of men who 
 have in most cases received a special training at the Staff College ; 
 but there are several exceptions to the rule, since good service in the 
 field and recognised ability frequently open the door of promotion to 
 it. In our military system, however, the organisation of the staff is 
 somewhat complicated, and the staff officers are often employed in 
 duties of mere routine, which in Continental armies would not be 
 regarded as falling within their proper province. Attached to the 
 General Staff there are at present 250 officers, 26 warrant officers, and 
 141 non-commissioned officers. According to the Army Estimates for 
 the current financial year the regular army, exclusive of India, was 
 to consist of 7,243 officers, 1,040 warrant officers, 14,952 non-com- 
 
 G g2
 
 452 ENGLAND. 
 
 missioned officers, 3,656 drummers, trumpeters, and buglers, and 
 113,423 rank and file — in all 140,314. Of these, in round numbers, 
 12,400 are cavalry, 2,500 horse artillery, 19,000 field or garrison 
 artillery, 5,200 engineers, 80,200 infantry, 2,500 colonial corps, and 
 5,250 departmental corps, to which must be added the general staff, 
 the militia staff, the staff of the various military institutions, the Army 
 Hospital Corps, the Army Service Corps, and the rest, making the total 
 as we have already stated it. The British army in India numbers 
 61,591 men of all ranks ; 2,487 officers, 129 warrant officers, 3,304 
 non-commissioned officers, 1,613 drummers, trumpeters, and buglers, 
 and 54,658 rank and file. It comprises, in round numbers, 4,300 
 cavalry, 1,600 horse artillery, 6,500 field artillery and 3,000 garrison 
 artillery, 400 engineers, and 45,600 infantry. The four classes of 
 auxiliary troops include the Militia, 141,982 ; the Yeomanry, 14,404 ; 
 the Volunteers, 249,412 ; and the Army Reserve — first class, 89,500, 
 and second class, 7,750 ; — or 453,048 of all ranks and arms. The 
 number at which the Army Reserve was ultimately to stand under the 
 Army Regulation Act of 1870 was 60,000, and it has taken between 
 fourteen or fifteen years to bring it up to 47,250, or nearly a quarter 
 under its normal strength. We have thus in all parts of the world a 
 nominal military force of 644,753, of which the numbers actually 
 returned on paper at the beginning of the year were 555,548. 
 
 On the armament of the several branches of the service a few words 
 may be said in conclusion. The infantry are armed with breech -loading 
 rifles and bayonets. The range of the rifle for practical purposes was 
 estimated at 900 yards, but experience has shown that long-range fire 
 — that is, at much greater distances — will probably be utilised in future 
 wars. Cavalry soldiers are armed with sword and breech-loading car 
 bine, lancers with the lance. The naked weapon, or mine blanche, is 
 the weapon of the mounted cavalry soldier. Dismounted, he can use 
 his carbine with effect. The arm of the artillery is the gun : light field 
 batteries and horse artillery batteries with muzzle-loading rifled field 
 guns, 9-pounders ; heavy field batteries with 16-pounder guns ; moun- 
 tain batteries with steel 7-pounder guns ; batteries of position with 
 40-pounder guns. A proportion of the men are provided with car- 
 bines and swords for individual defence or for outpost and garrison 
 purposes.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 RELIGIOUS ENGLAND. 
 
 Various Religious Sects in England — General Spirit of Toleration — Two opposite 
 Tendencies in most Creeds: (1) Towards Excessive Organisation, (2) Reaction 
 from Dogmatic Spirit — General Survey of Activity of Church of England — Anglican 
 Theology : its Chief Aspects — Contemporary Aspects contrasted with those of a 
 Former Period — Importance of the Question, whether Theology is Progressive — On 
 the Answer given to this Inquiry, Sectarian Differences depend — Some Tendencies 
 of Broad Church Theology — Dr. Ince — Dean Stanley— Mr. Jowett — Mr. Matthew 
 Arnold — Present Province of Theological Controversy — The High Church and 
 Ritualistic Party : their Differences and Resemblances — The Ecclesiastical Party — 
 Organisation of Church of England — Rectors; Vicars; Perpetual Curates — Great 
 and Small Tithes— The Diocesan System: Bishops; Archdeacons; Deans; Rural 
 Deans — Organisation of Protestant Nonconformists : Independents ; Wesleyans — 
 Organisation of the Roman Catholic Church in England — Religious and Social 
 Organisation of the Jews — Common Meeting Ground of all Sects — Future of Reli- 
 gion in England. 
 
 If variety of religious sects were any test of the earnestness of a 
 nation's religious life, nineteenth-century England might be esteemed 
 in an enviable condition. The total number of separate denominations 
 having one or more certified places of worship exceeds one hundred 
 and thirty. These, of course, represent not merely divisions of the 
 same parent faith, and subdivisions, but subdivisions minutely sub- 
 divided. In many cases, apparently, the distinction is not so much 
 theological as social or political. Thus Christian Teetotallers are regis- 
 tered independently of the "Temperance Church," while the "Church 
 of Progress" and the " Church of the People" are the titles of two 
 other mutually separate communions. Scarcely less suggestive than 
 this diversity of nomenclature is the multitude of announcements 
 which are made in the London papers published on Saturday, under 
 the beading " London Preachers for To-morrow." The Establishment 
 itself comprehends a list representing many types of Christianity, 
 churchmen, and preachers. If we look at the intimations which 
 follow the words " Nonconformist Churches," there is no species of 
 Latitudinarianism or Free Thought, of which the prophets are not 
 announced to appear in pulpit or on platform. In these cases, not 
 merely is the name of the particular communion given, but of the 
 precise subject on which the speaker may be expected to hold forth. 
 A very cursory glance at the long catalogue will give some notion of
 
 4-54 ENGLAND. 
 
 the extent to which the practical assertion of the principle of indi- 
 vidualism in religious matters has been carried. Some of these topics 
 are colourless ethical abstractions. Others testify to different degrees 
 of fanaticism, or fantasy, or anti-Christian and anti-religious malig- 
 nity. Side by side with the announcement that one evangelist of 
 Nonconformity will treat of the " Life and Times of the Prophet 
 Jeremiah," we are told that an ingenious and speculative schismatic 
 will favour his hearers with the result of his researches in the matter 
 of "Lilith, Adam's first wife," or that another gentleman will lecture 
 on "The Theatre and the People," or that a distinguished astronomer 
 will discourse to an audience on " Meteorites and Shooting Stars," 
 or that there will be a prelection in some secular conventicle at the 
 East End of London apropos of the inquiry " Ought England to be 
 a Republic ? " or that a feminine preacher of the school which rejects 
 all that there is in revelation and much that there is in morality, will 
 candidly investigate "whether virtue is compatible with Christianity." 
 These announcements, which in each case have been taken literally 
 from the newspapers of the day, the name of the preacher and of 
 the chapel alone having been suppressed, will be regarded according 
 to the temper of the critic, either as evidence of the multiplicity of 
 error, or of the praiseworthy activity of the modern intellect in 
 declining to take anything for granted, and in refusing to be deterred 
 from the duty of original investigation of the loftiest subjects which 
 can engage the human mind. The age has been variously spoken of 
 as one of religious indifferentism and religious zeal, of generally 
 extended belief and of wide-spread scepticism. It presents, no doubt, 
 some of each of these more or less conflicting characteristics. Perhaps 
 its two most real and distinctive features in all that appertains to 
 affairs of spiritual faith are its activity and its toleration. Here, as 
 everywhere in this last quarter of the nineteenth century, are percep- 
 tible the different influences of the spirit of transition and of organi- 
 sation. At the very moment when men are quick to take sides, keen 
 to ide itify themselves with some phase or other of the religious or 
 irreligious development of the time, they are disposed to admit that 
 theological truth may reside in an entirely different direction, that 
 truth itself is not to be found in its integrity anywhere, and that 
 scattered elements of truth may be discovered in every quarter. It 
 is not, perhaps, an age in which men would go to the stake with an 
 unshaken conviction that they were sacrificing life for an infallible 
 faith. It is rather an age in which men write pamphlets and essays, 
 promulgate manifestos, and, if necessary, incur lawsuits, with the 
 loud-voiced and oft-repeated asseveration that they and those who 
 hold with them are, and only can be, in the right. It is an age in 
 which obstinacy is likely to be mistaken for conviction, and in which 
 the passion for controversy may sometimes appear a heart-deep
 
 RELIGIOUS ENGLAND. 455 
 
 devotion to fundamental principles ; an age in which enthusiasm does 
 not necessarily mean intensity, and in which fervour is often in an 
 inverse proportion to noise ; an age in which all religions are highly 
 organised, but not on that account generally and profoundly believed 
 in ; an age of observance more than assurance, of worship in a greater 
 degree than faith. 
 
 A short examination of the existing condition of the (^urch_of 
 England will suffice to explain and justify the views which have just 
 been advanced. The Establishment, it may perhaps be objected, of 
 the religion of a half7 poss"ibTyl)l~a bare majori ty, of the people of 
 England, "is ho Ib^er^o^extensTve with" the Kingdom, and is itself 
 split up into sects many of them differing more widely from each 
 other than they differ respectively from many Roman Catholics and 
 Protestant Nonconformists outside its pale. Still, the Establishment 
 is entitled to be regarded as fairly representative of the nation, while 
 above and beyond this is the fact, that the Establishm ent is jajQhurch, 
 and, as such, subject to much the same influences, distracted by 
 nearly the same internal differences and controversies, as other 
 Churches. Thus the various parties that may be seen in the Anglican 
 communion have their reflections and analogues in the parties which 
 divide Boman Catholicism or Protestant Nonconformity — the differ- 
 ence in the case of Roman Catholicism being that the supreme 
 perfection of its discipline dwarfs or suppresses much that might 
 otherwise be fully developed in openly asserted schism. If the 
 Church of England is tolerant and comprehensive, it is because com- 
 prehensiveness and tolerance are the notes of the times, and as is the 
 tendency of the day such is certain to be the spirit of the adminis- 
 tration of any particular Church. But concurrently with the general 
 attitude of forbearance may be noticed that excessive addiction to 
 organisation, of which mention has already been made. Let us place 
 the two in juxtaposition, directing our attention first to the second. 
 
 How elaborate is the machinery for guaranteeing the due obser- 
 vance of the Anglican ritual may be judged from the following 
 statistics. Out of, in round numbers, 850 churches within the 
 metropolitan area there is a weekly celebration of the Holy Com- 
 munion in 390, nearly one-half ; daily Holy Communion in 40, one 
 church in every 20; early Holy Communion in 450, more than one- 
 half; choral celebration in 120, nearly one-seventh; evening Holy 
 Communion in 240, more than one-fourth. There is service on saints' 
 days in 415 churches, nearly one-half ; daily service in 240, more 
 than one-fourth ; while in 138 cases, nearly one-sixth, there is no 
 week-day service. The service is fully choral in 260 churches, nearly 
 one-third, and partly choral in 240, or two-sevenths, thus giving 500 
 churches out of 850 where the Psalms are chanted. There is a 
 surpliced choir in 350, more than two-fifths ; the choir is paid or
 
 456 ENGLAND. 
 
 partly paid in 220, more than one-fourth, and voluntary in 380, more 
 than two-fifths, £rregorian tones are used wholly or partly in 115, 
 nearly one-seventh. The seats are free and open in 250, more than 
 one-fourth ; and there is a weekly offertory in 450, more than one- 
 half. The surplice is worn in preaching in 460, more than one-half. 
 The eucharistic vestments are adopted in 35, or one church in every 
 24 ; incense is used in 14, and altar-lights are used in 58, one-ninth ; 
 while in 41 other churches there are candles on the altar, but they 
 are not lighted. The eastward position is adopted by the celebrant at 
 the Holy Communion in 180 churches, nearly one-fifth ; 120, nearly 
 one-seventh, are open daily for private prayer ; floral decorations are 
 introduced at 240, more than one-fourth ; the feast of dedication is 
 observed at 150, nearly one-sixth ; the shortened form of daily service 
 sanctioned by the Act of Uniformity Amendment Act is used at 88, 
 nearly one4enth ; the Sunday services are separated at 49 ; the old 
 lectionary is still used exclusively at 12 churches, and the old and 
 new optionally at six.* 
 
 If to the above statement we add the total expenditure of energy, 
 piety, and good works which the parochial system of the Cburch of 
 England involves, if we further remember that larger benefactions 
 are being perpetually made by private persons to the Establishment — 
 that the wealth of the manufacturers of the north of the kingdom is 
 often devoted to the building and the endowment of new churches in 
 districts that are supposed to need them, it will be apparent that the 
 zeal which Anglicanism can boast is at its disposal, is very remarkable, 
 both as regards its kind and degree. It is significant, and it is only 
 just, to place by the side of such facts as these some to which atten- 
 tion is less frequently or less publicly directed. The signs of external 
 activity which the Church of England displays may be all that are 
 admirable ; what is to be said of the evidences of her internal spiritual 
 life ? A distinguished living theologian, the Regius Professor of 
 Divinity at Oxford, has drawn attention, in an introductory lecture, 
 to the vicissitudes which English theology has experienced. From 
 the Reformation to the middle of the seventeenth century, Dr. Ince 
 remarks, his own university was given up to the disputes between the 
 Roman Catholics and the Protestants, or between the Calvinists and 
 the Arminians. From 1650 to 1750, theology was merged in politics, 
 and the great texts of the pulpit were those which bore on the divine 
 right of kings, and the duty of non-resistance. Then came the 
 struggle about the evidences of Christianity, which was followed by 
 the Tractarian movement. What are the issues now substituted for 
 those which that movement raised ? Whereas formerly, the questions 
 discussed in the divinity schools at Oxford were five : " predestina- 
 
 * See Mackeson's " Guide to the Churches of London and its Suburbs," and in this 
 matter London may be regarded as fairly representative of the rest of England.
 
 RELIGIOUS ENGLAND. 457 
 
 tion, universal redemption, reprobation, irresistible grace, final per- 
 severance," the vexed points now are — incenses, lights, vestments, 
 eastward position, wafer bread, mixed chalice. 
 
 These, indeed, are not the only subjects which engage the attention 
 of contemporary theologians. The discussion between the most 
 eminent of our theological controversialists is not so much on the 
 doctrines of the English Church as on the nature of the scriptural 
 record. Tbis, it may be urged, involves issues still more momentous 
 than those which underlay the inquiries of an earlier period into the 
 nature of predestination, and the other points enumerated above. 
 For these doctrines can only be verified in the last degree by the 
 testimony of tbe Bible, to which some would add the concurrent 
 testimony of ecclesiastical tradition. The question which such theo- 
 logians as Bishop Lightfoot, Professor Westcott, and Mr. Sanday are 
 endeavouring to decide is, of what do the really inspired writings 
 consist, and to what, exactly, does inspiration itself amount ? Of 
 course, there are other problems in addition to those mentioned — the 
 eternity of punishment, and the final restoration of all things. Bat 
 the tendency is for the more scientific, who in this case are the more 
 practical of theologians, to lay stress upon such subjects, as admitting 
 possibly of no scientific demonstration, and to weigh all the evidence 
 for and against the alleged antiquity of certain writings, and the 
 degree of authority which they may be regarded as carrying with 
 them. This is the positive and historic method, and in some ways it 
 indicates an immense advance within the pale of the Anglican Church 
 since Dr. Hampden was almost excommunicated for remarking on the 
 obsoleteness of the phraseology of the Athanasian Creed, or the 
 authors of " Essays and Reviews" were condemned by Convocation 
 for the production of a blasphemous and heretical book. 
 
 What has just been said will enable us to form a clearer conception 
 of tbe exact position of the Broad Church party at the present day. 
 It is scarcely too much to say that there is a single question the 
 answer given to which would serve definitely to fix a man's place in 
 relation to the several sects of Anglican Christianity. This question 
 is : Can theology be called a progressive science ? According to all the 
 great leaders of the Broad Church party, it can. On this point, hear 
 the late Dean Stanley. "What," he says, "has become of the belief once 
 absolutely universal in Christendom, that unless by some altogether 
 exceptional intervention, no human being could be saved who had not 
 passed through the waters of baptism ; that even innocent children, if 
 not immersed in the font, were doomed to endless perdition ? Or 
 where are the interminable questions respecting the doctrine of predes- 
 tination or the mode of justification which occupied the middle of the 
 sixteenth century in Protestant churches ? Into what limbo has passed 
 the terrible conflict between the Burghers and the Anti-Burghers
 
 458 ENGLAND. 
 
 amongst the now United Presbyterians ? What do we now hear of 
 the doctrine of the Double Procession, or of the light on Mount 
 Tabor which, in the ninth century and in the fifteenth, filled the mind 
 of Eastern Christendom ? These questions for the time occupied in 
 these several Churches the whole horizon of theological thought. They 
 are dead and buried ; and for us standing on their graves, it is idle to 
 say that theology has not changed. It has changed. Religion has 
 survived those changes ; and this is the historical pledge that it may, 
 that it will, survive a thousand more." * Of course, in one sense, this 
 indicates a real progress, but progress whence and whither ? Scarcely 
 from a less belief in the letter of revealed religion to a greater. The 
 dispute now, in fact, is not as it was once about the interpretation of 
 the dogmatic tenets of religion, but about the nature of religion itself. 
 Those who hold by the doctrine of the verbal inspiration of Scripture, 
 and the unbroken tradition of the Church, cannot mean the same thing 
 when they speak of religion, theology, or Christianity, as those who con- 
 sider that religion is progressive in the sense already explained, and who 
 admit, as Dr. Ince and others do, that many notions concerning the books 
 of the Bible once deemed orthodox are erroneous. When men do not 
 use the same words in the same sense, it is out of the question that any 
 agreement shall ever be arrived at between them. Thus when Dean 
 Stanley substituted for the phrase " the reconciliation of theology and 
 science," " the recognition that so far as they meet, theology and 
 science are one and indivisible," he scarcely signified by theology all 
 that those who are persuaded that the text of the Bible, as we have 
 it, is the precisely written word of Omnipotence signify ; or by science, 
 all that to Professor Huxley that word implies. Such expressions as 
 " whatever enlarges our ideas of nature enlarges our ideas of God ;" 
 " whatever is bad theology is bad science ;" " whatever is good science 
 is good theology," are open to the same criticism. When, therefore, 
 an analogy is drawn between the progressiveness of astronomy and 
 theology it must be accepted with some reserve. The historical method, 
 of which literary criticism is an integral part, has cbanged — euphemis- 
 tically speaking — has enlarged our conception of certain central theo- 
 logical facts, has disposed, as Dean Stanley reminded us, of " untenable 
 interpretations;" " wrong translations ; " "mistaken punctuation." 
 But wbat is the relation in which these instruments of progress stand to 
 the miracles, and other great facts, belief in which is an essential part of 
 Christianity, as Christianity has in time past been understood ? Is it 
 not much the same thing to say that there has been an advance in 
 theology, as it would be to say that there has been an advance in 
 ustronomy, if a convenient compromise had been found possible between 
 those who accepted and those who rejected the idea of the law of 
 gravitation, or of the sphericity of the earth ? 
 
 * "Sermons and Addresses," by the Dean of Westminster.
 
 RELIGIOUS ENGLAND. 459 
 
 Dean Stanley was far from being an extreme exponent of this 
 tendency. The religion of latitudinarianism is not a religion in the 
 same sense as the religion of the High Church or of the Evangelical 
 party. The truth is, that the doctors of the Broad Church school use 
 the current terms of theology in an esoteric sense peculiar to themselves. 
 Thus in one of his sermons Professor Jowett, the Master of Balliol, 
 spoke of the divinity of Christ's life, but he did not mean that Christ 
 was divine.* He spoke of the overshadowiug providence of God, but 
 he did not mean a personal God. He spoke of a Christian Trinity, but 
 he defined its thi'ee elements to be a pantheistic conception of 
 Godhead, all that is Godlike in human life and character, and all well- 
 attested facts of science and history. This is scarcely the Trinity of 
 the divinity schools. Or take the case of the most accomplished 
 literary critic and almost the greatest poet of the day — Mr. Matthew 
 Arnold. Mr. Arnold is, according to his own view, not only a poet 
 and critic, but a theologian. He has written in defence of the Church 
 of England, as a centre of religious sweetness, light, and culture, 
 against the attacks of political Nonconformists. He holds that the 
 Church is " a national society for the diffusion of goodness," and, 
 holding this view, he claims to be a very good Churchman. The 
 instruments to be employed by the Church in the attainment of the 
 end of its existence are Christianity and the Bible. But in what sense 
 can Mr. Arnold be said to accept either, when he interprets funda- 
 mental doctrines of Christianity in the following words : " Eternal 
 life ? Yes, the life in the higher and undying self of man. Judgment ? 
 Yes, the trying, in conscience, of the claims and instigations of the 
 two lives, and the decision between them. Resurrection ? Yes, the 
 rising from bondage and transcience with the lower life to victory and 
 permanence with the higher. The kingdom of God ? Yes, the reign 
 amongst mankind of the higher life. The Christ the Son of God ? 
 Yes, the bringer-in and founder of this reign of the higher life, this 
 true kingdom of God." 
 
 Of course these views, or anything approaching to these views, 
 would be conscientiously repudiated by many distinguished members 
 of the Broad Church party. Nevertheless, it may be questioned 
 whether this is not the tendency of all Broad Church theology, and 
 whether the boldly-avowed opinions of Mr. Matthew Arnold do not 
 represent the ultimate analysis of some of the cardinal ideas of eccle- 
 siastical latitudinarianism. As it is the historical method which is chiefly 
 characteristic of the Broad Church party, so, too, there is an historical 
 aspect to the party which is at the opposite pole of contemporary eccle- 
 siasticism — the Ritualists. The grounds on which the lengths resorted 
 to by Ritualists in matters of posture, millinery, music, and decoration 
 are defended is, that such extremes are historically justifiable, that they 
 * Preached at St. Mary's, Oxford, February 16, 1879.
 
 400 ENGLAND. 
 
 are what the rubric of the Anglican Church enjoins, or that they are 
 what the spiritual rulers of that Church have an historical claim to 
 command. Eminently historical too were, in a sense, the influences 
 which presided over the. birth of the party that for practical purposes 
 has become merged in the Ritualists. There came up to Oxford, 
 between the years 1820 and 1840, a number of undergraduates, most 
 of whom had been educated under evangelical influences, including 
 John Henry Newman, Pusey, Keble, Grcsley, Manning, Faber, Froude, 
 Palmer, Perceval, Churton. The avowed object of these men was to 
 withstand all changes, and .to maintain pure doctrine and primitive 
 practice. The profession of these views was followed by the study of 
 history. The records of the third century were investigated, the ritual 
 and creed of Rome examined. A sentiment of hostility to the Refor- 
 mation developed itself. Opinions not held in the third century began 
 tc be entertained. Purgatory, prayers for the dead, the confessional, 
 the saints, baptismal regeneration, were regarded with reverence. 
 
 The direct ecclesiastical descendants of these men, in that state ot 
 their belief before these views were carried to their logical results, 
 there still are among us, but the undoubted tendency is to sink the 
 High Church party in the Ritualists. There can be no greater con- 
 trast than that between the religious ceremonial of the first founders 
 of the school and the cultus of contemporary Ritualism. The old 
 type of High Church divine, a scholastic gentleman, well read in 
 the Fathers, and well informed generally on subjects of architecture 
 and archaeology, betraying a quiet weakness for anthems and painted 
 glass, a cultivated and agreeable companion, is seldom met with now. 
 The later specimen is a more or less boisterous young divine, much 
 given to the inarticulate mumbling of many services. He is, perhaps, 
 less particular about the cleanliness of his surplice than his prede- 
 cessor, but is very precise as to the fit of his coloured and embroidered 
 stole. He is fond of speaking in his sermons about the Church, and 
 her kindness to her ungrateful children. This phraseology is often 
 confusing to the lower classes, and a ballad has been written, which 
 has obtained much popularity, embodying the complaint of an old- 
 fashioned villager at the new style. He used, he says, to understand 
 when he heard of " Christ, our Lord," of " His work" and " His 
 love;" now, he addresses his clergyman, "you only talk of she." 
 The same person is represented as saying, that no doubt the painted 
 glass windows may be very fine, but then he regrets the days when 
 he could look through the panes upon the blue sky and the climbing 
 roses. The Ritualist curate of the newly -fledged Ritualist rector 
 betrays certain' resemblances to those religious sects whom of all 
 others they detest — the Protestant Dissenters — in their occasional 
 disregard for scholarship and culture, and in their invectives against 
 State tyranny.
 
 KfcXIGIOUS ENGLAND. 4G1 
 
 The Ritualistic divine of this order, who has been known before 
 now to engage the services of a sacristan, to drill his choir in the 
 movements of the Sarum Mass, must be carefully distinguished from 
 the Anglican parish priest, devoted to the spiritual and temporal 
 welfare of his flock, who is to be found constantly at the village school, 
 by the bedside of the sick and dying, in the cottages of the poor and 
 the hovels of the afflicted. Nor while the ringing voice of Canon 
 Liddon thrills through the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral, and while 
 that Cathedral, in its Dean, Dr. Church, possesses the scholarlike 
 biographer of Archbishop Anselm, can it be said that the founders of 
 the High Church party are without true and worthy representatives. 
 Essentially anti-popular as the pretensions of Ritualism — or to speak 
 of it by the name which is most convenient in this context, Anglican 
 Sacerdotalism — are, there can be no doubt that it attracts an increas- 
 ing number of adherents. It is immaterial to the multitude of those 
 who flock to witness the ornate ceremonial of Ritualism that the 
 theory of these services is that they are performed by the priest for 
 the people, and that the priesthood thus performing them is a body 
 divinely appointed, a caste by itself gifted with the power of the remis- 
 sion of sins. The exaltation of priestly authority to this point may be 
 in its idea distasteful to the English people, but it is not with the idea 
 that they are concerned. They are only conscious of the odours of 
 incense, of the brilliance of many-coloured vestures, of melodious 
 notes, of all the influences which can lull or excite the senses. It is 
 a decorative age, and Ritualism is above all things ornamental. It 
 is an emotional age, and Ritualism appeals pre-eminently to the 
 emotions. Ritualism had supplied the want long felt of the aesthetic 
 element in religion, and Ritualism had its beginnings in earnest and 
 pious efforts to secure for the solemnisation of the services of the 
 Church more of dignity and propriety, better fabrics, and better music. 
 
 While it is certain that the services of Ritualism attract many of 
 both sexes who would otherwise have found their place in the Evan- 
 gelical fold, and that every Ritualistic Church has among its congre- 
 gation many of that class which would five-and-twenty years ago have 
 crowded to Young Men's Christian Associations, the Evangelical party 
 cannot be said to have ceased to exist. It possesses, on the contrary, 
 all the conditions of vitality — deep religious fervour, an influential 
 religious organisation, a great deal of valuable ecclesiastical patronage 
 exercised through the Simeon Trustees, leaders of recognised ability. 
 ¥et of late years the Low Churchmen have lost much of their unction 
 and much of their exclusiveness. Their influence remains, but it is 
 often exercised quite as much outside as within the limits of their own 
 sectarian pale. The great work with which the names of the Evan- 
 gelical leaders will always be identified was the revival of personal 
 religion ; the task which the High Church party helped to accomplish
 
 102 ENGLAND. 
 
 was the introduction of new principles of order and reverence into the 
 services of the Church. There are many points on which clergymen, 
 calling and considering themselves Evangelical, are absolutely at one 
 with clergymen of the Broad Church school — such, for instance, as the 
 right of the laity to a voice in the selection of services, and even the 
 regulation and interpretation of dogmas ; the necessity of preserving 
 within certain limits the historical method ; and other cognate matters. 
 On the other hand, it is natural that there should be many Evangelical 
 clergymen who, especially as they rise in their profession, are disposed 
 to magnify their apostleship. Hence, in Evangelicalism at the present 
 day there is a tendency, first, on the part of some, to gravitate towards 
 Broad Churchism ; secondly, on the part of others, to gravitate to what 
 survives of the old constitutional High Church party. 
 
 First among the parochial clergy rank rectors, who alone are strictly 
 entitled to the designation of parson, " the most legal, the most bene- 
 ficial, and most honourable title," according to Blackstone, " that a 
 parish priest can enjoy, because such an one as he only is said vicem 
 sen personam ecclesice gerere." The chief distinction between a rector 
 and vicar is that the former receives all the tithes, great and small, 
 but the latter usually the small tithes only. It was in the thirteenth 
 century that vicars came into existence, in consequence of the appro- 
 priation of tithes to spiritual corporations, whence at the period of the 
 Reformation they passed, under grants by the Crown, into lay hands. 
 To the great tithes there attaches the obligation of keeping the chancel 
 in repair. Originally the small tithes were all the tithes, except those 
 of corn, and sometimes of hay. Prior to 1835, no farmer could remove 
 his corn from a field until it had remained there for three days, in 
 order to give time for the rector's agents to take a tenth stalk, unless 
 some special agreement between parishioner and rector had been 
 entered into ; and, of course, in many cases these agreements were 
 made. Naturally under this system there were many inconveniences, 
 and many disputes which urgently called for correction. In 1835 
 Lord John Bussed passed an Act commuting the average value of the 
 titbes received during the previous seven years into a corresponding 
 annual payment, subject to variations according to the average prices 
 of corn. The freehold of the church, churchyard, and glebe vests in 
 the parson during his life. 
 
 Perpetual curates were one of the products of the Restoration, 
 when tbe Sovereign sent a circular to the bishops and chapters of the 
 different dioceses, pointing out the inadequacy of the provision for the 
 cure of souls. This deficiency was supplied by the institution of per- 
 petual curates, whose stipends were derived from an annual payment 
 charged on the rectorial estates, in the fee simple of which the per- 
 petual curate had, of course, no interest. In the last fifteen years the 
 very name has well-nigh disappeared, and those who were perpetual
 
 RELIGIOUS ENGLAND. 4G3 
 
 curates are by Act of Parliament constituted vicars. It is, however, 
 to the poverty of this order that the Church of England is indebted 
 for the institution of one of its funds — that known as Queen Anne's 
 Bounty. At the beginning of the eighteenth century the stipends of 
 the perpetual curates were so miserably low as to be a scandal to the 
 Establishment. Queen Anne, consequently, was induced to suggest to 
 Parliament the appropriation of certain sums, which would under ordi- 
 nary circumstances have gone to the Crown, to the augmentation of 
 the perpetual curates' stipend. This process has continued uninter- 
 ruptedly to the present time, and the Governors of Queen Anne's 
 Bounty are frequently lending sums of money, to be returned by 
 instalments, to assist clergymen to build and improve parsonage 
 houses. About the same time that the Act was passed for the commu- 
 tation of tithes, the Ecclesiastical Commission was appointed, which, 
 among other things, has been the means of very generally increasing 
 the incomes of Church livings, in cases where they fell below that 
 sum, to £300 a year. 
 
 The archdeacons of a diocese are appointed by the bishop, and 
 exercise within their archdeaconries a jurisdiction immediately sub- 
 ordinate to him. They wear shovel hats, similar to those worn by 
 the episcopate, but without strings. Etiquette prescribes that the 
 archidiaconal frock-coat should not be so short as a prelate's, and that 
 the apron should only be worn in the evening and on state occasions. 
 Like the bishop, the archdeacon has powers distinctly specified by 
 law. Chief among these are the prerogative, in virtue of which he 
 can by summoning the clergy create a court. On the occasion of his 
 periodical visitation, the archdeacon is attended by a legal official, who 
 stands to him in the same relation that the chancellor does to the 
 bishop. The archdeacon— and if the diocese is large there will be 
 more than one incumbent of the office — is above all things the business 
 man of the diocese. As the bishop deals primarily and directly with 
 the clergy, so is the archdeacon specially brought into contact with 
 the churchwardens. The charge which he delivers to the clergy is 
 quite as much intended for the custodians of the fabric of the church 
 in every parish as for its spiritual officer, the rector, vicar, or curate. 
 Generally, the archdeacon avoids touching in these charges, in any 
 very pronounced manner, on questions of doctrine and dogma. The 
 organisation of a parish and the conduct of services are both subjects 
 specially appropriate to the archidiaconal addresses. 
 
 When the archdeacon is inspecting the external and the internal 
 condition of the ecclesiastical building, he has as his companions the 
 two churchwardens, of whom one is the representative of the congre- 
 gation, as the other is of the clergyman. To these he points out 
 any defects or imperfections in the edifice, suggests a remedy, and is 
 empowered to give a written order requiring that this suggestion shall
 
 464 ENGLAND. 
 
 be carried into effect. If this mandate is neglected, he can report the 
 matter to the bishop, but he has himself no power to compel the action 
 which he recommends. The service to the church which a discreetly 
 vigilant and energetic churchwarden may render is great. The race 
 of sleepy and obstinate clergymen and churchwardens is not extinct, 
 and the archdeacon, having aright to inspect the church at all periods, 
 may, by courteously but firmly impressing upon the minds of those 
 responsible for its material order the necessity of improvement and 
 care, prevent many abuses and scandals. Moreover, both on the 
 occasions of his regular visitations, and at other times in a less formal 
 manner, the archdeacon discharges distinctly educational duties ; he 
 makes it his business to explain to all with whom he is brought into 
 contact what are the ecclesiastical requirements of the law, and how 
 these are modified by successive acts of the legislature. 
 
 Nor do the functions of the archdeacon end here. Not only is he, 
 as he is often called, " the eye of the bishop," superintending as the 
 episcopal representative indeed, but, at the same time, as an indepen- 
 dent authority, whose reports will not necessarily come before the 
 bishop, the state of the ecclesiastical edifices, and reporting to the 
 bishop on the fitness of churches for consecration, but he represents 
 the preliminary tribunal which candidates for orders must pass. His 
 sanction also is • necessary to give legal validity to the nomination of 
 those churchwardens with whom, as we have seen, he is mainly 
 brought into contact. At the same time, though theoretically it is 
 for the archdeacon to decide on the eligibility of any intending clergy- 
 man for the Anglican priesthood, this duty is, as a matter of fact, 
 invariably delegated to the bishop's examining chaplain. As regards 
 the churchwardens, the archdeacon formally admits them to their 
 offices, and they are regularly sworn in before him. 
 
 The cathedral is the central or mother church of the diocese, and 
 is administered by a dean and chapter of canons residentiary, whose 
 number is usually four. The dean, who enjoys the title of " very 
 reverend," and ranks next to the bishop, is appointed by the Crown, 
 except indeed in the dioceses of Wales, where the appointment rests 
 with the bishop. The canons, whose stalls are conferred upon them 
 in theory — and in the present day it must be owned the theory is 
 usually carried out— in recognition of distinguished services or acquire- 
 ments, commonly take it in turn to reside, the ordinary period of resi- 
 dence being three months. They are appointed in some cases by the 
 Crown, in others by the bishop, and their incomes, with one or two 
 exceptions, vary from £500 to £1,000 a year. The stipend of a dean 
 is seldom less than £1,000 or more than £2,000 a year. While the 
 bishop has direct control over the clergy of his diocese, he has no 
 authority over the dean and chapter of his cathedral, except as visitor 
 under their statutes. There is indeed a special throne always reserved
 
 RELIGIOUS ENGLAND. 4G6 
 
 for the bishop in the cathedral, and to this he, of course, has access ; 
 but he cannot occupy the pulpit except by invitation from the dean 
 and chapter. Generally, the relations existing between the bishop 
 and the dean, to compare them to secular officers, are not unlike those 
 of the admiral and the captain in the navy ; just as the captain is 
 absolutely supreme in his own ship, and the admiral is only entrusted 
 with general responsibility for the movements of the squadron, so the 
 bishop is without the power of dictating to the dean in the manage- 
 ment of his cathedral. 
 
 The rural dean has not, as the name might be thought to imply, 
 anything in common with the dean of a cathedral. His office and his 
 rights are of courtesy, rather than of law, and he is invested with 
 neither more nor less power than the bishop may choose to give him. 
 He convenes meetings of his clerical brethren for any diocesan work, 
 but his summons carries no kind of compulsion with it. The rural 
 dean will also, perhaps, occasionally report, though not according to 
 any official form, to his bishop, generally through the archdeacon. 
 "While deans and archdeacons are, like the occupants of the episcopal 
 bench, ex officio members of Convocation, rural deans have no such 
 distinction. Their jurisdiction is purely local, each archdeaconry 
 being divided into a certain number of rural deaneries, while of rural 
 deaneries themselves there are altogether in England and Wales about 
 six hundred. 
 
 Nominally, Convocation has a wide jurisdiction, but it is one 
 rather of sentiment than effect. The Convocation of Canterbury is an 
 ideal ecclesiastical parliament. The Upper House consists of the 
 archbishops and bishops ; the Lower House of deans, archdeacons, 
 and the proctors of the clergy. But its power is a mere shadow. 
 Nothing can be transacted without the sanction of the Crown. It 
 may project measures, but these, to have effect, must pass through 
 Parliament, and in so doing necessarily lose their ecclesiastical cha- 
 racter. The reform of Convocation is a "burning" question of the 
 day with the clergy of all shades of opinion. It is a question that 
 involves some important considerations as to the future relations 
 between Church and State. 
 
 For a brief account of the procedure in matters of ecclesiastical 
 litigation, the reader may be referred to the chapter on the English 
 Law Courts. It remains to say a few words on the subject of the 
 appointment of the different dignitaries of the English Church to their 
 ecclesiastical offices, and on the vexed question of patronage. An 
 archbishop or bishop is nominally elected in most cases by the dean 
 and chapter of the diocese in virtue of a license from the Crown, 
 always accompanied by a royal letter missive, which contains the 
 name of the person whom the Sovereign desires to be elected, and to 
 which obedience is due under the penalties of a praemunire. 
 
 H H
 
 4G6 ENGLAND. 
 
 As regards patronage : the right of appointing the rector or vicar 
 of a parish rests with the owner of the advowson, who is termed the 
 patron of the living. The clerk in holy orders who is presented by 
 the patron to a benefice has to obtain from the bishop of the diocese 
 u formal institution, which tbe bishop is bound to grant, unless the 
 nominee labours under any legal disqualification for the pastoral 
 office. Advowsons are recognised by the law as property, and may be 
 bought and sold like any other property. The next presentations to 
 livings may also be purchased, provided the benefice be not vacant at 
 the time, and that no condition as to resignation be a condition of the 
 contract. 
 
 The two most numerous, influential, and generally important of 
 Nonconformist denominations at the present day in England are un- 
 doubtedly the Independents and the Wesleyans, or, as they are fre- 
 quently called, the Congregationalists and the Methodists. The Inde- 
 pendents have many points in common, both as regards their religious 
 creed and organisation, with a third very considerable sect, scarcely, 
 indeed, inferior to either — the Baptists. The Presbyterians, an 
 exceedingly powerful body in England as well as in Scotland, on the 
 other hand, have more points in common with the followers of 
 Wesley. There still exists at the present day an historical institution 
 of Nonconformity known as the Three Denominations. These form 
 a board whose origin is of some antiquity. The Independents, 
 Baptists, and Presbyterians sympathised in the revolution which 
 placed William III. on the throne of England, and took an active 
 part in that movement which led to the succession of the House of 
 Hanover. In recognition of their services in connection with these 
 two events, they were accorded the privileges common to bodies incor- 
 porated by Royal Charter, and were permitted access to the Sovereign 
 upon the same conditions and occasions as other corporate institutions. 
 Till within the last quarter of a century, there were no sectarian 
 jealousies between the three, and the members of each were content 
 to meet and act together. Then came a change in the Presbyterian 
 community, most of them embracing the principles of Socinianism. 
 The consequence was that the Independents and the Baptists objected 
 officially to appear in company with Unitarians. Afterwards the 
 Unitarians enlisted the services of Lord John Russell on their behalf, 
 ; i nd received through him a renewal of the privilege they had before 
 enjoyed as members of the Three Denominations in the matter of 
 approaching the Sovereign. 
 
 The Independents are particularly strong in the great towns of 
 England, and are as a body characterised perhaps by the display 
 of more political activity than is usually the case with the Wesleyans 
 or Baptists. Thus it is probable that the Disestablishment agitation 
 has been promoted mainly among the Independent body — a proceed-
 
 RELIGIOUS ENGLAND. 4G7 
 
 ing with which many prominent Dissenting clergymen decline to 
 identify themselves. Mr. Dale, of Birmingham, and Mr. Rogers, of 
 Clapham, may be regarded as among the chiefs of the an ti- State 
 Church movement. These gentlemen undoubtedly have great influ- 
 ence over the younger ministers and members of their denomination, 
 and a new impetus is given by them to the programme of the Libera- 
 tion Society. There are, of course, perhaps possibly in increasing 
 number, strong supporters of Disestablishment both among the Wes- 
 leyans and the Baptists. But neither body is associated with political 
 purposes of this kind to the same degree as the Independents. This 
 is not the only characteristic which distinguishes the Independents. 
 The fundamental principle of their religious creed — a principle which 
 has given the name to the denomination — is that each congregation 
 is complete in itself, is an entity to be controlled entirely by its 
 own members, and is not to look for any discipline or govern- 
 ment from outside. In this respect the Independents and Baptists 
 resemble each other. There is thus far less of organisation possible 
 among them than among the Wesleyans, the centre of whose system 
 — whence come the orders that regulate all the parts — is the annually 
 held Conference. The differences of the two bodies will, perhaps, 
 best be understood if we give a brief account of the successive stages 
 through which a candidate for the ministry in each sect severally 
 has to pass. 
 
 A young man, we will suppose, born in the Independent body, or 
 entering it in early life, feels that he is specially adapted for the 
 ministry ; what, in the natural course of things, are the steps that 
 he would take completely to qualify himself for the office ? He would 
 probably, in the first instance, place himself in communication with 
 the secretary of one of the colleges at which Independent ministers 
 are educated. But he would not be received at this institution before 
 he had satisfactorily answered questions put to him by its authorities, 
 and had been personally examined by the members of the college 
 council. Having satisfactorily submitted to this ordeal, he would be 
 received on probation for a term of three months, after which he 
 would be admitted as a regular student of a curriculum that would 
 extend over four or five years. Of these the two first would, in 
 some cases, be devoted to supplementing the defects of a somewhat 
 imperfect education, and would be chiefly occupied with general studies, 
 such as classics or mathematics. His earliest purely ministerial train- 
 ing would consist of a course of sermon-writing, the discourses thus 
 composed being read before a class, and criticised by a teacher of 
 homiletics. The last three years would be given to the study of 
 theological dogmas, and of the state of religious opinion generally, 
 both in past and present times. Then his ministerial career would 
 actively begin. Having gone through his college course, and satis- 
 
 H H 2
 
 463 ENGLAND. 
 
 lied bis instructors, he would be considered eligible to accept as a 
 probationer any opportunity of clerical ministrations which might 
 present itself. Should the congregation like him, he will receive an 
 offer of a permanent engagement. He is, in fact, chosen to the pulpit 
 by a plebiscite taken among his flock. No more purely democratic 
 system of ecclesiastical polity can be imagined. Now that he has 
 secured the favour of a congregation, there will follow his formal 
 ordination, a ceremony which may be profoundly impressive or 
 entirely the reverse, according to the power and eloquence of the 
 ministers engaged in its celebration. The flock of the future pastor is 
 assembled together, and one minister, specially chosen for the 
 occasion, gives a statement of the general ecclesiastical principles of 
 the body. Then the candidate for orders is expected, in reply to 
 certain questions, to give a full and clear account, first, of the reasons 
 which make him wish to enter the ministry ; secondly, of his pre- 
 ference for the Independent form of Protestant Nonconformity. The 
 actual rite of ordination is of extreme simplicity. One of the 
 officiating ministers offers a prayer, during which he and his colleagues 
 place their hands on the head of the candidate. This process is 
 technically known as the laying on of hands by the presbytery, and 
 is maintained by some clergymen of the Church of England, notably 
 by the late Dean Stanley, to be the true mode of performing the 
 function. In some cases this part of the ceremony is waived. A 
 charge delivered to the new minister follows, in which his duties are 
 pointed out, and the solemn responsibility under which he lies for 
 their proper discharge is impressed upon him. In a second address 
 the members of his flock are reminded that they have duties, neither 
 less definite nor sacred. Very much the same ceremony is gone 
 through in the case of Baptist and Presbyterian ministers, and if the 
 officiating ministers on the occasion are men of considerable gifts, the 
 effect produced is extremely striking. 
 
 Once the minister has been ordained and appointed to his congre- 
 gation, it is solely and exclusively with his congregation that he is 
 concerned. Where harmony exists between a minister and his Church 
 the moral influence he has over them is very great. He will rise or 
 fall, succeed or fail, in proportion as he does or does not happen to 
 satisfy his people. It is thus apparent that the whole success of the 
 Independent system is contingent on a good understanding between 
 pastor and flock, and it works well or ill, according as the two parties 
 to the contract display both temper and judgment. It does not, 
 however, follow that an Independent congregation will always be able 
 to dismiss its pastor at will. In the case of some chapels there are 
 trust-deeds which specifically secure this power of dismissal to the 
 congregation, in others there may be legal difficulties in the way of 
 ejection. The tendency of things in the Independent body seems to be
 
 RELIGIOUS ENGLAND. 4G0 
 
 in the direction of more concentrated action, There are several 
 eminent Independents who advocate closer bonds of connection 
 between the churches of the denomination ; and though this claim is 
 steadily resisted by many staunch members of the society, who believe 
 that without the absolute autonomy of each congregation the Inde- 
 pendent system would come to nothing, there is a gradually increasing 
 number of those who hold that more general organisation is wanted, 
 and who advocate particularly a general sustentation fund to be 
 controlled by a presiding representative body. As it is, the Inde- 
 pendents have many county associations, from which the Congre- 
 gational Union, which is the combined society of these associations, 
 is chosen. This Union holds two great meetings every year, one in 
 London, the other in some provincial city of importance. Under the 
 existing regime the Congregational Union is a purely consultative and 
 deliberative body. It carries with it no legislative power, and it is, 
 therefore, quite as impotent to change the practice of Congregational- 
 ism, except by purely moral influences, as Convocation is to revo- 
 lutionise the laws of the Church. There is some disposition, however, 
 to bestow more power upon the Congregational Union, and its exer- 
 cise may come as the results of its agency in connection with the 
 management of the new sustentation fund. 
 
 Nor is it to be supposed that the Independents, or, for the matter 
 of that, the members of any Nonconformist sect, are entirely un- 
 distracted by internal differences and controversies, though they differ 
 from those which agitate the Church of England. Thus, it is a moot 
 point what is the exact position of deacons in an Independent congre- 
 gation. As matters are, generally, they have no strictly spiritual 
 duties to perform ; their great business is to attend to the pecuniary 
 affairs of a congregation and to the care of the poor. There are, too, 
 slight differences in the forms of worship, and in the mode of admitting 
 communicants. The circumstance that there is in the nature of things 
 a stronger tie between the Independent pastor and his flock than 
 between the English clergyman and his congregation may perhaps 
 tend to minimise such controversies ; probably, for instance, there 
 would never be witnessed the spectacle of an Independent minister 
 who deliberately opposed himself to the ascertained wishes and con- 
 victions of his congregation. At the same time there are divergences 
 of view as to the limit within which the decorative element is permis- 
 sible. But these divergences do not involve the same differences 
 of fundamental principle as differences of ritual do in the Church 
 of England, because all Independents repudiate the idea of sacer- 
 dotalism. 
 
 When we come to the Wesleyans we have to deal with a Noncon- 
 formist body which differs in many important ways from the Indepen- 
 dents. The great point in the system is a central organisation
 
 ■i 70 ENGLAND. 
 
 invested with a power, not indeed absolutely supreme, but final on 
 appeal ; in otber words, supreme just as a board of trustees is supreme 
 for the specific provisions of their trust. The name given to this 
 central body is the Conference, whose powers are exercised in (1) 
 jurisdiction over its own members, (2) appointment of ministers, (3) 
 occupancy of cbapels by ministers in connection with them, and (4) 
 the preservation of sound doctrine. Here it is not merely the tradition 
 of Wesley which discovers itself, but the letter of Wesley's injunctions 
 which is followed. That gifted man who, to his spiritual eminence, 
 added a decided assumption of autocratic power, confided plenary 
 authority over the sect which he had founded, in the duties just 
 named, to one hundred ministers. These one hundred form the Con- 
 ference in law, but the whole body of ministers, or as many of them as 
 are gathered in the annual session, are the Conference in fact — the legal 
 Conference never annulling their acts, and only confirming them to 
 render them legal. Thus far of purely ecclesiastical matters. In matters 
 economical, financial, and generally administrative, a representative 
 number of ministers and an equal number of laymen constitute the 
 Conference. Hence, the five score are a sort of Upper House for the 
 ratification of decisions arrived at in common sessions with a large 
 ] i umber of their brethren. It is an error to suppose, as is sometimes 
 stated, that the Conference initiates policy. It rarely initiates anything. 
 Under the general laws by which the whole Conference is governed, 
 there is, first, the circuit, or separate pastorate, in which the chief court 
 is the quarterly meeting, composed of the pastors and a large number, 
 from twenty to sixty, according to the size and influence of the circuit, 
 of lay members. This court manages all circuit funds, pays the minister's 
 stipend, and provides generally for the carrying on of efficient and 
 orderly service within the circuit bounds. Secondly, there is the dis- 
 trict meeting, or synod, which is composed of the ministers within a 
 given geographical area, for purposes connected with ecclesiastical and 
 pastoral administration, and of two lay representatives from each circuit, 
 when financial and economical questions are under consideration. 
 Lastly, there is the Conference, whose constitution has been already 
 described. The Conference — as a Conference — has neither funds, nor 
 the control of funds. All the pew-rents are under the direction of the 
 trustees of the various chapels, and are by them appropriated — some- 
 times by grant to the circuit funds, from which the ministers receive 
 their stipends, though not always, and occasionally in other ways. In 
 reference to connexional funds — that is, funds raised for foreign mis- 
 sions, home missions, schools, and the rest — these are disbursed 
 under the direction of managing committees. Ministers composing 
 the Conference are elected by the entire body of ministers, who, 
 in the first instance, make their power felt in the district, and 
 after the district in the synod, which comprehends a group of dis-
 
 RELIGIOUS ENGLAND. 471 
 
 tricts. But no final action in any grave measure, whatever the 
 congregation it affects, can be taken without the approval of the 
 Conference. 
 
 The second great feature in the organisation of Wesleyanism is the 
 itinerant system, in virtue of which no minister is permitted to stay 
 more than three years in the same neighbourhood. There are both 
 manifest advantages and disadvantages bound up with this system. 
 While the limitations imposed by the laws of the society on the possible 
 tenure by the minister of a district certainly prevent any congrega- 
 tion from what has been called " immersion in the stagnant pool of 
 a single mind," there is the obvious disadvantage that the minister 
 does not form many pastoral attachments. Though the fact that every 
 congregation is encouraged to issue invitations to ministers is a 
 guarantee of the interest which congregations are likely to take in 
 their purely spiritual affairs, the relation thus developed between teacher 
 and taught necessarily lacks certain elements of intimacy, of which 
 absence is recognised by some Wesleyans themselves as t*n inherent 
 defect in the system. 
 
 The unit of government among the Wesleyans is the circuit, as 
 represented on the occasion of its quarterly meetings, every circuit 
 consisting of a certain number of congregations grouped together, both 
 on geographical considerations and also according to number. No 
 candidate can even so far take active steps to enter the Wesleyan 
 ministry as to go to one of the colleges of the body without having 
 been duly recommended by the quarterly meeting of that circuit within 
 which his own congregation comes. At this meeting not only are the 
 local ministers convened, but representatives of the laity, as well as lay 
 helpers and class-leaders, who are ex officio members of the periodically 
 held assembly. Again, before a young man can arrive at the stage 
 of candidature, he must have had some practice as a local preacher, 
 and the common voice of his neighbourhood must have decided that 
 he possesses certain indisputable rhetorical gifts. Here we may see, 
 what we have already seen in the case of the Independents, the recog- 
 nition of the principle tbat the qualifications of a minister must either 
 be decided directly by his flock, or indirectly by their immediate 
 representatives ; we may also notice that this arrangement does fur- 
 nish, what the Church of England does not, some guarantee that the 
 future minister has, in a measure at least, the gift of speech. 
 
 The candidate for the Wesleyan ministry has no sooner satisfied the 
 requirements of the quarterly meeting of the circuit than he comes 
 before a judicial tribunal composed of the representatives of the aggre- 
 gate of several circuits, in other words, the district meeting. Before 
 these judges he has again to preach and to answer a variety of ques- 
 tions. If he satisfies the conditions of this test he is sent before a 
 Conference, whether that body may happen to be holding its sitting in
 
 472 ENGLAND. 
 
 London or in a provincial town. Should the verdict of the Conference 
 be favourable, the candidate will proceed in due course to the college of 
 the community at Didsbury, or Headingley, or Richmond. At one of 
 these institutions, at which his first three months are probationary, he 
 will probably spend three years, and he will leave it only after he has 
 been pronounced, as the result of a searching examination, to be a fit 
 and proper person for the ministry. Nor is the probationary period 
 of his career yet at an end. Every man remains in the ministry for 
 four years on trial, the third year of college residence which has been 
 already completed counting as one year, while the ordination cere- 
 mony, which is practically the same as in the case of the Independents, 
 performed before that period is not considered complete. It is not to 
 be supposed that either among the Independents or the Wesleyans 
 this somewhat elaborate process is always exactly followed. There 
 is nothing to prevent any member of an Independent community who 
 can get a congregation to listen to him or her, to stand as a minister ; 
 while among the Wesleyans the deficiency of college accommodation 
 frequently compels the Conference to accept as qualified candidates 
 for orders those who have not gone through the whole of the pre- 
 scribed routine. It thus follows that the future ministers of both 
 orders have scarcely ever lived purely student lives. They have 
 almost always learnt the mysteries of some handicraft, and are, in the 
 majority of instances, capable of supporting themselves independently 
 of their spiritual profession. Among a few Wesleyan societies there 
 exists a fund for common purposes ; all the pew-rents and voluntary 
 subscriptions within the limits of any circuit are paid into the hands 
 of a steward, who accounts to the trustees for their disbursement. In 
 addition to this, there is a district fund which contributes to the sup- 
 port of circuits in neighbourhoods which are not able to support 
 ministers of their own. 
 
 The missionary organisation of the Church of Rome, which is the 
 only organisation of that Church existing in the British Empire, is to 
 be carefully distinguished from that known in countries where the 
 whole of the decrees of the Council of Trent are in force. This — the 
 missionary system — is dependent directly on the sacred congregation 
 of the Propaganda, presided over by a Cardinal Prefect, to which all 
 matters in pctrtibus infidelium are in the last instance referred, and 
 which may be described as a board of control, with jurisdiction over 
 the missionary domains of the Catholic Church. 
 
 Previous to 185^ .the Papal authority was exercised through vicars 
 ;ipostolic. That yeai witnessed the establishment of a regular hierarchy 
 in England, and hence tbe ill-starred Ecclesiastical Titles' Act. At 
 tbe present moment England is divided into thirteen dioceses, one of 
 which- — that of Westminster — is the arch diocese, while the others are 
 suffragan dioceses. Every bishop has his own chapter of canons, who
 
 RELIGIOUS ENGLAND. 473 
 
 are his privy councillors, and possesses the right to convoke his own 
 synod. This canonical body is presided over in England by a pro- 
 vost, and its two chief members are the Canon Theologic and the 
 Canon Penitentiary. These canons constitute a quasi -corporate body, 
 electing a certain proportion of their own members, while some are 
 the nominees of the bishop, and others of the Pope, according to the 
 month in which, by the death of a canon, a vacancy occurs. They 
 are also liable to be consulted by the bishop, who, though in some 
 cases bound to seek, does not necessarily follow tbeir advice. More- 
 over, when a vacancy in a bishopric occurs, the canons name three 
 persons as suitable candidates, the final selection being usually made 
 at Rome. If any of the inferior clergy appeal against the order of 
 their bishop, it is to Rome that that appeal goes. Monsignori are 
 persons belonging to the Papal Court, the more important class of 
 them being the Pope's domestic prelates. 
 
 Over and above this regular organisation of the Roman Catholic 
 Church in non-Catholic countries, there are the religious orders, such 
 as Dominicans, Franciscans, Benedictines, Carmelites, Cistercians, and 
 Jesuits. Each of these is in the possession of special and accumulated 
 privileges. Directly subjected to generals or other heads at Rome, 
 they are all of them to a great extent free from the internal ecclesias- 
 tical government of the countries in which they may be placed. Each 
 of these orders has a provincial and local superior, who is invested 
 with ample powers. The Oratorians are not so much an ecclesiastical 
 order as a congregation of secular priests — every priest, it will be 
 understood, being a secular one, if he does not belong to some order 
 — who have organised themselves into a religious community. 
 
 As regards the numbers and the influence of the Roman Catholic 
 Church in England, it will be found that so far as the former is con- 
 cerned, its figures have remained almost the same for many years. 
 Numerically, Roman Catholics have not increased in proportion to the 
 population, to which they stand now in the relation of one-tenth. But 
 while the Church of Rome in England has only managed just to hold 
 its own, it has not retrograded in power. Probably it has as little i 
 now of influence as ever over the English middle classes, but it has 
 been recruited in a marked degree from the higher classes of the 
 community ; at the same time, too, its organisation has improved. It_ 
 has more schools and better schools, but in the direction of education 
 much has yet to be done, and the staunchest Roman Catholics will 
 be the first to admit that, always excepting the primary schools, the 
 machinery of Roman Catholic education is at the present moment 
 sadly deficient. The attempted establishment and collapse of a 
 " Catholic University" College in Kensington furnished a test of the 
 reality of the demand for a higher education among tbe Catholic 
 youth of England. As the future of the secondary and higher educa-
 
 474 ENGLAND. 
 
 tion of Roman Catholics in England is full of great possibilities, so its 
 present is felt to be far from satisfactory. 
 
 The Jews are a body of far too much importance in England, as 
 elsewhere, to render it possible to dispense with some notice of their 
 religious organisation in this chapter. The Hebrew race, which in 
 the Russian Empire and in Poland numbers five millions, in the 
 Austrian Empire from a hundred and twenty to a hundred and eighty 
 thousand, in New York alone more than a hundred thousand, has in 
 the British Empire from eighty to ninety thousand, of whom upwards 
 of sixty-five thousand are within the metropolitan radius of London. 
 On the influence that this extraordinary people exercises, in England 
 as elsewhere, and of which its numerical strength is only a faint indi- 
 cation, it is not necessary to dwell. The questions here to consider 
 are the religious organisation of the Jews in the United Kingdom, 
 and closely allied with this, as is natural under a theocratic system, 
 their social condition and general characteristics. 
 
 The same line of cleavage that traverses most other religious 
 societies at the present clay is discernible among the members of the 
 Jewish persuasion. On the one hand, there are the representatives 
 of orthodoxy, who profoundly venerate dogmatic tradition and pre- 
 scription, and who solemnly observe with exact fidelity the eccle- 
 siastical ritual. On the other hand, there is the party whose members 
 claim a wide latitude in the interpretation of the Mosaic law, and who 
 hold that many usages, enjoined by the rabbinical doctors of their 
 Church, have been rendered obsolete by the altered conditions of the 
 times. This feud between authority and private judgment has 
 divided the Jews in England into two different groups of congrega- 
 tions. The rabbinical writings, with the doctrinal overgrowth that 
 has been accumulated upon them, — a consequence of the labours of 
 successive generations of expositors, — are to the Hebrew Church what 
 the Fathers are to the Christian. The laws of Moses have been 
 elaborated in this manner into a complex system of ceremonial and 
 faith, too exacting in its demands for many who are profoundly con- 
 vinced of the truth of the central articles of Judaism. In this way 
 the Commentary, or to speak of it by its Hebrew name, the " Gemara," 
 has outgrown the text or " Mishna," which two, taken together, con- 
 stitute the " Talmud." The library of rabbinical interpretation has 
 acquired in some quarters a sanctity equal or superior to the Five 
 Books of Moses, and the point at issue between the two sects at 
 present is, what measure of deference is due to the rabbinical writings. 
 These internal dissensions in England date from the year 1841, down 
 to which time the English synagogue was an exact copy of that of the 
 Middle Ages. Attempts, indeed, had periodically been made to 
 modify the ritual in a manner suitable to the requirements of the 
 age ; but these efforts failed, and it was only when a Reformed
 
 RELIGIOUS ENGLAND. 475 
 
 English Synagogue was opened in Burton Street that anything was 
 actually done. This movement resulted in an open schism, which 
 was not unattended by bitterness ; the decree of excommunication 
 was passed upon the new congregation and its minister. Still the 
 heretical leaven spi'ead, and the smaller synagogue was soon ex- 
 changed for a larger one. " Though we are," writes Professor Marks, 
 who was at the head of the movement, " still divided on questions 
 purely and wholly ritual, we are nevertheless drawn closely together 
 by a common belief and by mutual sympathies ; and for all communal 
 purposes we act as one inseparable brotherhood." It was anticipated 
 in some quarters that the ultimate result of this split in the Jewish 
 community would be the secession of the reformers to the Christian 
 Church. Nothing of the sort has followed, and Judaism has generally 
 revived since the congregation of British Jews was organised. The 
 subdivision of the services, which were, and among the ultra-rab- 
 binical Jews still are, intolerably long, attracts a larger number of 
 worshippers, and the women's galleries, rarely attended in former 
 days, except at high festivals, are now well filled on every Sabbath. 
 
 Though the ritual practice of the Jews has differed at successive 
 eras, their religious belief is identical in all essential respects with 
 that which has always prevailed. The Jews, in England as else- 
 where, assign the first place in the scale of Biblical sanctity to the 
 Books of Moses, the second to the Prophetical Writings, the last to 
 the other scriptural works — the Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Daniel, and 
 historical records — all of which are generally described as " Hagio- 
 graphy." These last are not held to be inspired in the same sense as 
 the laws of Moses and the messages and predictions of the prophets, 
 which, according to orthodox Judaism, are full of the spirit of verbal 
 inspiration. Mendelssohn remarked that in the whole Mosaic law 
 there was not a single precept saying " Thou shalt believe this or 
 that," or " Thou shalt not believe it," and gave it as his opinion that 
 Judaism was a system without an idea of articles or oaths of religion . 
 Generally the Jews in England, at the present day, are distinguished 
 by the spirit of toleration which the remark of Mendelssohn would 
 lead us to expect. As they agree mutually to differ among them- 
 selves, without any reciprocal invocation of the penalties of Divine 
 vengeance, so they hold that salvation belongs to all those outside 
 their own pale who keep the moral law of Moses ; in other words, 
 who conform to those ethical rules which are recognised as binding by 
 the whole human race. On themselves they consider it incumbent to 
 observe as much of the ceremonial part of the code of the Pentateuch 
 as is practicable out of Palestine. There is, moreover, a strong feeling 
 among them that their marriages should be confined to members of 
 their own race and creed, but the national and the religious sentiments 
 have each of them an independent existence of their own, and they
 
 476 ENGLAND. 
 
 admit that every human being, of every race or creed, who is morally 
 just, stands in the same relation as themselves, here and hereafter, to 
 the Universal Father. Even at the time when the storm of persecu- 
 tion raged most fiercely against them the doctrine was taught that 
 the pious of all nations would enjoy everlasting felicity in the world 
 to come. 
 
 It would be scarcely rash to say that a considerable number of 
 English Jews are merely theists, who, over and above the faith of 
 Theism, believe that the accident of their race places them under an 
 obligation to observe certain rites. They do not hold that these rites 
 are compulsory upon those who are not descendants of Abraham, and 
 for this reason among others, the most fervent of Jewish religionists 
 are not proselytisers. Cases in which applications are made to join 
 the Jewish Church are more frequent than might be thought, though 
 probably in few of these can the motive be attributed to disinterested 
 religious conviction. The Rabbi who is importuned to receive Christian 
 converts to the Synagogue protests in the first instance against the 
 step, and says, in so many words, " If you believe in and worship the 
 one and only God, refrain in thought and in deed from idolatry, and 
 keep the moral law, which consists in loving your fellow-creature as 
 yourself, we are taught to believe that you, as a Gentile, will be 
 regarded as one with the most pious Israelite by Him that readeth all 
 hearts.' 1 If after this the applicant persists in the request, and solemnly 
 declares that he is not prompted by any carnal desire or prospect of 
 worldly gain, but is the result of mature and sincere conviction, the 
 Rabbi appoints a term for the religious instruction of the neophyte, and 
 at its expiration reluctantly receives him into the Jewish community. 
 
 It may safely be said that the doctrine of the restoration — the 
 ingathering, that is, of the Jews of all nations to Palestine — has no 
 practical reality to the Jews themselves. A spiritual influence over tbe 
 thoughts of the pious Hebrew it may, perhaps, exercise ; but even in 
 this case it suggests rather the last act in a grand and mysterious 
 drama, an act which will be witnessed only when the present universe 
 is on the eve of dissolution. So far as his actual social and political 
 relations are concerned, the restoration is to the Jew very much what 
 the millennium is to the Christian. Both beliefs, it is to be noticed, 
 had their origin in similar circumstances of persecution and oppres- 
 sion. As the majority of Christians suffered the cherished doctrine 
 of the millennium to recede into the background when they found 
 themselves in security and power, so most modern Jews, as they rose 
 in the scale of prosperity and citizenship, withdrew their eyes from 
 the belief once firmly held, that their entire race would meet together 
 again on the soil of Palestine. As the Jews are thus practically 
 absorbed in the general mass of the English population, or of the 
 population of any other country where they may chance to be, so
 
 RELIGIOUS ENGLAND. 477 
 
 the tribal differences among the Jews themselves have disappeared. 
 Indeed, the only tribe practically known among the English Jews is 
 that of Judah, which, however, includes some members of the tribes 
 of Benjamin and Levi. Wherever the name Cohen is found, one may 
 be certain that one has lighted upon a descendant of Aaron. 
 
 The distinctly religious organisation of the Jews for the purposes 
 of public worship may be said to proceed upon much the same lines 
 as that of the Independents. In some cases, indeed, the congregations 
 group themselves into a confederation, and recognise, as extending 
 over the whole number, the authority of the Rabbi. Although the 
 Rabbi,., has no power of enforcing his authority, the congregations 
 placing themselves under his guidance leave to him and his eccle- 
 siastical coadjutors all matters relating to ritual. This, at least, is 
 the rule. But there are occasions when the wardens and the council 
 of a synagogue undertake to introduce changes of a minor character 
 without consulting the Rabbi, and without holding themselves obliged 
 to do so. What portions of the service are to be read, and what 
 chanted, are left to the discretion of the minister in consultation with 
 the wardens. The West London Synagogue of British Jews is the 
 only metropolitan synagogue where there is an organ. In others 
 choirs are formed, but they are not accompanied by instrumental 
 music. 
 
 A specially ordained priesthood is what Judaism can hardly be said 
 to have. " Whatever may be urged to the contrary," says Professor 
 Marks, after having cited a number of historical passages bearing upon 
 the point by those who promote ecclesiasticism, "and to raise above 
 its proper level the seat of priestly authority, the historical fact remains, 
 that from the middle of the eleventh century all power of authorising 
 teachers in Israel, by superincumbence of hands, became extinct, and 
 since that time the only recognised authority for electing and insti- 
 tuting ministers has resided in the congregations themselves." There 
 is, however, a special course of education prescribed for the ministers 
 of the Jewish religion, though it is very far from being uniformly fol- 
 lowed. In the West London Synagogue of British Jews, over which 
 Professor Marks presides, a special fund has been established for 
 training candidates for the ministry, after they have taken their 
 Bachelor of Arts degree — as it is considered exceedingly desirable 
 they should do, at the University of London — at the theological semi- 
 nary at Breslau. But, for the most part, the Jewish clergy come from 
 the Jewish College, which has contributed many distinguished graduates 
 to the University of London. Education has advanced with rapid strides 
 among the Jewish community in the last few years, and it may be said 
 with some confidence that there is no child of either sex among English 
 Jews, of the age of nine or ten, who cannot both read and write. The 
 Jews' Free School in Spitalfields provides for the instruction of moi»
 
 478 ENGLAND. 
 
 than two thousand pupils, half, at least, of whom are of foreign parentage, 
 and there are many other institutions both in London and elsewhere of 
 almost equal excellence. Nor are the provisions that exist for the 
 bodily welfare of the poorer members of the community less effective. 
 There are few instances in which the relief of Jew paupers is left 
 to the ratepayers, and there is among the Jews a Board of Guardians, 
 chosen exclusively from the members of their own body, who attend 
 to all cases of distress and administer the funds which are generously 
 contributed. Want and mendicity still exist, but the latter is almost 
 entirely confined to the foreign Jews, who find their most profitable 
 asylum in England. A great deal of the Jewish pauperism in this 
 country comes from Russia, and is the result of a system under 
 which conscription is universal, and no one not professing the creed 
 of Christianity can rise above the ranks. The society which exists in 
 England for the conversion of Jews to Christianity acts, in not a few 
 cases, as an inducement to professional pauperism ; nor is there any 
 more common threat with which a Jew beggar supplements his prayer 
 for alms when made to one of the wealthy members of his com- 
 munity, than that, if relief is denied, he will go over to the Conversion 
 Society. Many of the abuses consequent upon the lavishness of 
 Jewish charity have been effectually prevented by the establishment 
 of the Jewish Board of Guardians. 
 
 It has been already said, and it may be cited as a proof of the 
 religious activity and earnestness of the age, that the spirit of organi- 
 sation is visible within the pale of every creed. On all sides there is 
 hurrying to and fro, much parade of the machinery of faith, much 
 insistence upon its routine business and its spectacular effects. But 
 the question arises, How far can all this rightly be interpreted as a 
 healthy sign ? May not the very littleness of the controversies 
 among the members of the Anglican communion, noticed at the 
 beginning of this chapter, imply a diminution of the vital spirit '? 
 The superficial energy is there, but where, it may be asked, are the 
 deep belief and the inspiring convictions which animated the older 
 controversialists ? It is unfortunately not to be doubted that exces- 
 sive organisation is an omen of decay as well as a sign of growth. 
 The excessive organisation of Imperial Home coincided with the 
 lamentable atrophy of the old Roman spirit. Again, it may be 
 doubted how far the point to which toleration has been carried is at 
 all a proof of that spread of conviction which is likely to result in 
 the diffusion of the distinctively religious sentiment. Toleration may 
 be quite as much a result of the consciousness of their position 
 forced in upon the members of any communion or sect by the external 
 forces of literature and science, and by the attitude of the State, as a 
 frame of mind generated by a belief so profound in the truth of their 
 own doctrines that they can regard with complacent indifference the
 
 RELIGIOUS ENGLAND. 470 
 
 religious movements of others. It is not easy to see how toleration 
 can be sincere in any Church party, or how any one can be tolerant 
 throughout, who is possessed by a sense of the paramount importance of 
 particular dogmatic tenets. What are to be the future relations of 
 the different sects in England, Protestant or Catholic, and what the 
 future of religion itself, is a tempting, but a perilous, theme of specu- 
 lation. At present we can only see tendencies, and those tendencies 
 are not in the direction of dogmatic unity. On all sides there is a 
 disposition for the teachers and preachers of different Churches to 
 combine together for the purpose of advancing the social and moral 
 good of the community at large ; to recognise that element of regard 
 for the progress and amelioration of humanity which belongs to all 
 creeds alike, and which may, perhaps, be spoken of as the human 
 aspect of religion. Thus we find clergymen of the Church of England, 
 of the Church of Rome, of the various Dissenting bodies, taking their 
 place on public platforms by the side not only of devout or philan- 
 thropic peers, but also of well-meaning men of the world, who make 
 no special profession of any spiritual faith, with the common object 
 of stamping out the national curse of intemperance. The London 
 City Mission and Hospital Sunday are further instances of the 
 unanimity which is possible among the champions of rival creeds 
 when the object aimed at is the alleviation of human misery, want, 
 and suffering. The institution of School Boards has supplied another 
 and similar opportunity of obliterating denominational distinctions, 
 while the movement now taking place throughout the country, for 
 the diffusion of art education, also teaches the religious instructors 
 of the masses, irrespective of their faith or sect, to act together with 
 men and women who are, perhaps, attached to no sect at all. 
 
 The Positivist, who holds that the only creed possible for humanity 
 is that in which humanity is the first article, may perhaps deduce 
 from these facts signs of the ultimate triumph of his faith. And it 
 may be urged that there is a sense in which Positivism, as a religious 
 gospel, may not be without its charm to a busy and pre-occupie I 
 generation ; it is conceivable that there are minds to whom it may be 
 an attraction to be told that the sole motive of worthy actions is 
 their inherent worthiness, and that the results of such actions will 
 make themselves felt and will be their own reward, transmitted 
 through endless ages of posterity. Miss Martineau has told us, in 
 her autobiography, that she never felt more completely happy than 
 when she had renounced all belief in a future life and the last traces 
 of a lingering attachment to any theological dogmas. To do good 
 and to cultivate morality because it is a law of enlightened self- 
 interest, and because it will be of advantage to others now and here- 
 after, is a faith whose large definiteness of outline may have a strong 
 attraction to a certain order of minds. Here there is, at least, nont>
 
 480 ENGLAND. 
 
 of the doubt and perplexity which overshadow a religion whose sanc- 
 tions are found in an appeal to the immortality of the soul, and the 
 distribution of rewards and punishments in another world. What 
 has yet to be proved is whether a belief circumscribed by these 
 narrow limits, and divested of all supernatural elements, can have 
 any practical authority with the great majority of mankind. If his- 
 tory has any lesson for us, it would surely seem that religion, having 
 survived the calumnies and misrepresentations of sacerdotal bigotry, 
 will survive also the new scientific attacks. The great question to be 
 iisked and answered is this : Can you bring up children so as to make 
 them truthful, moral, law-abiding, good subjects of a State, and good 
 members of a family, without teaching them that there is a God who 
 judges mankind ? Here one is irresistibly reminded of the remark of 
 the great French Revolutionist, that " if there were no God, it would 
 be necessary to create one." Of course, the answer made to these 
 observations, and which is made with such eloquence and earnestness 
 by Mr. John Morley and others, is that the experiment has not yet 
 been fairly tried. That is undoubtedly true. But the question which 
 ihese gentlemen have never yet fairly met is, whether in the history 
 of humanity there is anything to justify the belief that a religion of 
 humanity, which ignores all supernatural sanctions, is practicable for 
 the bulk of human beings, is a categorical imperative without the 
 association of extra mundane hopes and fears, likely to accomplish 
 for mankind what even the Positivists say is necessary. Is it merely 
 a fanciful superstition to detect the true account of the growth of 
 human society in these stanzas ? — 
 
 " And quickened by the Almighty's breath, 
 And chastened by His rod, 
 And taught by angel-visitings, 
 At length he sought his God ; 
 
 ' And learned to call upon His name, 
 And in His faith create 
 A household and a fatherland, 
 A citv and a state."
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 MODERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 
 
 The Psychological School the Main School of Philosophy in England — Its Relations 
 to the Scotch Common Sense School, to French Eclecticism, and to the System 
 of M. Comte and Positivism — Positivism in England — The Course of Development 
 in the English School — John Stuart Mill, the Logician — Utilitarianism — The 
 Modern Scientific Ethics— Herbert Spencer — The Doctrine of Evolution — Alex- 
 ander Bain, the Psychologist — George Henry Lewes, the Physiologist — Antagonism 
 of Metaphysics and Theology — The Influence of Science and the Popular Con- 
 sciousness — Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall — The Influence of German Thought — The 
 Kantiuns and the Hegelians — Reason and Faith, their Possible Reconciliation. 
 
 "The sceptre of Psychology has decidedly returned to England." 
 Such are the words in which Mr. John Stuart Mill summed up the 
 course of recent speculation in this country. Some critics might be 
 disposed to detect some arrogance on the part of the English philo- 
 sopher towards the psychological studies of Germany, of Kant in 
 the last century, of Herbart, Wundt, Fechner, and Lotze in more recent 
 times. But the sentence quoted above brings into prominence the 
 main fact, which is incontestable : that the best spirit of English thought 
 in this century has, under the leadership of names like Herbert 
 Spencer, Bain, Lewes, and Mill himself, centred round the problems 
 of mental philosophy. Some activity has indeed been displayed in the 
 deeper and more far-reaching inquiries, which go by the name of meta- 
 physics. But this has been seen chiefly in the difficult, if not impos- 
 sible, attempt to transplant German thought to English soil ; and the 
 number of the professed students of metaphysics may be counted on 
 the fingers of the hand in comparison with the large and devoted band 
 of those who rely on experience. If there is one more decisive note 
 than another of modern English philosophy, it is a resolute adherence 
 to the teaching of experience in mind, matter, and morals, 
 
 Such a tendency could not root itself in England without contesting 
 the ground against alien influences : at the beginning of the century 
 there were at least two dominant modes of thought against which it 
 had to struggle. If we put aside for the moment the influence of 
 German speculation — to which we will return later — we shall find two 
 tendencies, one emanating from Scotland, and one due to a form of 
 Continental thought, against both of which, in different ways, it had to 
 make good its ground. That which is known as the Scotch school, 
 
 i i
 
 482 ENGLAND. 
 
 under the names of Reid, Dugald Stewart, and Brown, was a philo- 
 sophy which its adherents called that of Common Sense. The term has 
 either no significance in philosophy, or else it is superfluous. If Com- 
 mon Sense means a tact or instinct, as opposed to experience, it obvi- 
 ously can have no right to exist in a system of thought at all. If it 
 means a rationalised experience, it is only a tautological expression for 
 philosophy itself. As a matter of fact, the school in question arose as 
 a well-meant but merely popular reaction against the sceptical tenden- 
 cies of Hume. If philosophy meant such a complete suicide of thought 
 as Hume's conclusions seemed to warrant, the best way appeared to be 
 to abjure philosophical analysis and fall back on broad, uncritical, 
 popular modes of deciding problems. If our knowledge of the world 
 outside, and the soul inside us, was nothing else than a plausible 
 delusion, as was asserted by Hume, then, inasmuch as ordinary prac- 
 tical men of the world found that they could depend on the world and 
 themselves with tolerable certainty as real existences, it seemed that 
 the fault must lie with the philosopher and not with the objects of his 
 study, and that the best course must be to brush away the cobwebs 
 by a vigorous appeal to common sense. Thus, too, a hand might be 
 stretched to the outraged religious world, scandalised by the noto- 
 rious scepticism of Hume, and the Scotch successors of a Scotch 
 philosopher might take vengeance on their ingenious but mistaken 
 parent.   
 
 This was the historical genesis of Reid and Stewart, and so far as 
 Common Sense meant methodical experience, it suited the sober prac- 
 tical temper of Englishmen too well not to leave deep traces in modern 
 English thought. But a philosophy of Common Sense might include 
 other elements. It was almost sure to be declamatory and rhetorical ; 
 and sooner or later it might ally itself with that system of spiritual- 
 istic philosophy which merges logic into dreams. How little the 
 English psychological school admired the first characteristic may be 
 seen in the truculent fashion in which James Mill, in his " Fragment 
 on Mackintosh," handled that unfortunate rhetorician. How little the 
 second characteristic could be admitted is best seen in the relations 
 of the English school to the French spiritualists. The doctrines of 
 "Common Sense " were soon after their first promulgation introduced 
 into France. Royer-Collard, a disciple of Reid, and his followers, 
 Maine de Biran and Victor Cousin, inaugurated a philosophy, which 
 mixed up (in such proportions as the antagonistic elements admitted) 
 Scotch Common Sense, Cartesian self-analysis, and a vague and 
 nebulous spiritualism which was essentially their own. Scraps of 
 thought were introduced from all quarters so long as these would help 
 them in their crusade against their two enemies, Diderot and the En- 
 cyclopaedists, and Robespierre and Revolution. The result was a 
 marvellous eclecticism, genial, rhetorical, religious, but by no means
 
 MODERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 483 
 
 philosophic ; a system which is seen in its best characteristics in the 
 amiable and accomplished M. Jouffroy, some of whose writings have 
 become domesticated in England. But they could not win any sym- 
 pathy from the English school. The character of the judgment passed 
 on them may be gathered from the remarks of George Henry Lewes 
 in his characteristically English " History of Philosophy." 
 
 We noticed another influence which the rising school of English 
 psychologists had in a measure to discard. By their very name they 
 held on to psychology as their sheet-anchor. But psychology itself 
 was threatened from a new quarter by a French thinker, diametrically 
 opposed to Victor Cousin and his fellows — Auguste Comte. Comte is 
 the author of that system of strictly practical philosophy and vaguely 
 theoretical religion which is termed Positivism, and Positivism, at all 
 events in the mouth of its earliest expounder, abjures psychology. 
 Psychology, says Comte, is an impossible science, because it attempts 
 to study the faculties by the light of those faculties themselves. " In 
 order to observe you must effect a pause ; if you effect the pause there 
 is nothing left to observe." In other words, mind cannot study itself, 
 because that study is only possible by mind's activity, and the activity 
 neutralises the results of the study. The intellect cannot observe the 
 workings of intellect, because here observed and observer are the same. 
 Nor, again, can even the intellect observe the passions, because passion 
 disturbs the observing faculties. And so, instead of psychology, Comte 
 introduces what he calls "Physiological Phrenology;" that is, the 
 objective study of mind — the scientific analysis of cerebrum, cerebellum, 
 and nerve-centres, and the white and grey matter of the brain and 
 spinal column. 
 
 That this Positivist attack on psychology had a deep influence on 
 English thought is clear to all students of Bain, Lewes, Carpenter, 
 and Maudsley ; but at the outset it is equally clear that some deter- 
 mined stand had to be made by those who were professedly advo- 
 cates of psychological analysis. John Stuart Mill severely criticises 
 this phase of Positivism in his work on " Auguste Comte and Posi- 
 tivism," as well as in his " System of Logic." Herbert Spencer issued 
 a pamphlet, entitled " Reasons for Dissenting from the Philosophy of 
 M. Comte," in which he asserts that the analysis of our ideas is an 
 integral portion of philosophy. The general line which such criticisms 
 of Comte took is, of course, the obvious fact that even granting that 
 we do not know much of " states of consciousness," we know incom- 
 parably more of them than we do of their physical counterparts, and 
 that in the last resort we know no fact at all, except in relation to our 
 own states of consciousness. 
 
 But Positivism includes many more essentialfeatur es than this 
 attack on psychology, which has in fact been greatly modified and 
 almost expunged by the later disciples of Comte. Positivism is at 
 
 n2
 
 4 SI . ENGLAND. 
 
 once a system of thought and a system of life. As a system of 
 thought, it proceeds on the fundamental principle that all researches 
 beyond phenomena should D8 suppressed. First causes and final 
 causes must be ignored ; with the beginning and end of things we 
 have nothing to do, our only concern being with what lies between 
 these two extremes. Thus all forms of theology, all forms of meta- 
 physics, are finally banished. As a system of life, it includes a 
 religious cult — the worship of humanity — and a more or less definite 
 system of Socialism. In France M. Littre is the great modern 
 expounder of Positivism ; in England, also, we have had a small but 
 devoted band of religious Positivists, of which Dr. Congreve, Dr. 
 Brydges, and Mr. Frederic Harrison are distinguished members. 
 The religious Positivists name their children after mediajval saints, by 
 way of keeping up the catholic feeling of Humanity. They have their 
 own names for the months of the year, and they have their special 
 services in a Positivist chapel in London, in which many curious 
 sightseers serve to swell the ranks of the worshippers of Humanity. 
 
 The best and the most permanent element of Positivism was the 
 enunciation of a great historic law of progress and evolution of 
 thought, which in Comte's technical phraseology was called " La loi 
 des trois etats," but in its general tendency has become merged in the 
 modern scientific doctrine of development. It is this which has 
 consciously or unconsciously, influenced many English philosophers 
 who disavow all leanings to Positivism. It is this, possibly, which, 
 combined with the attack on metaphysics, has made Mr. Lewes so 
 strong an advocate of the Positive system. "I adhered," he says, 
 " to the Positive philosophy in 1845, and I adhere to it still (in 
 1870)." And he would fain have us all read the " Philosophie 
 Positive." " Study the ' Philosophie Positive ' for yourself" (he thus 
 apostrophises his reader) ; " study it patiently, give it the time and 
 thought you would not grudge to a new science or a new language, 
 and then, whether you accept or reject the system, you will find 
 yonr mental horizon irrevocably enlarged." "But six stout volumes!" 
 exclaims the hesitating aspirant. " Well, yes, six volumes requiring 
 to be meditated as well as read. I admit that they ' give pause ' in 
 this busy, bustling life of ours ; but if you reflect how willingly six 
 separate volumes of philosophy would be read in the course of the 
 year, the undertaking seems less formidable." " No one,'' he con- 
 cludes, " who considers the immense importance of a doctrine which 
 will give unity to his life would hesitate to pay a higher price than that 
 of a year's study." Meanwhile, to a less aspiring and more hesitating 
 student, it may be mentioned that in Miss Martineau's excellent 
 " Abridgment of Comte " he can make himself acquainted, by the peru- 
 sal of two small volumes, with at all events the more salient doctrines 
 of Positivism. The importance of the sociological analysis of that
 
 MODEKN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 485 
 
 philosophy may be gathered from the fact, that in it will be found the 
 key to Mill's Sociology as sketched in the sixth book of his " Logic," 
 as well as the source and fountain-head of much recent sociological 
 speculation. But in mentioning Mr. Lewes, we are somewhat 
 anticipating the course of development in the prominent English 
 school. His place comes, chronologically, with Mr. Darwin, Mr. 
 Alexander Bain, and others ; and to the rise and development of that 
 system of psychological analysis we must now proceed. 
 
 How far not only moral and constitutional peculiarities, but modes 
 and forms of thought, can be transmitted from father to son, is one of 
 the much debated questions of heredity. But that the two Mills — 
 father and son — exhibit a striking instance of the extent of such 
 hereditary transmission is indisputable. The mind of John Stuart 
 was run in the mould of James Mill, and the creations of that mind 
 were but more or less varied repetitions of the thoughts of the bold 
 and original historian of British India. The proofs are to be found 
 not only in the general position of philosophic radicalism which is 
 common to both, but in the edition which the son published of his 
 father's " Analysis of the Human Mind," and in the explicit ad- 
 missions which are contained in that book — of such peculiar sadness 
 to many minds — the " Autobiography " of the younger Mill. This 
 book has thrown much light on the character of his philosophy. It 
 has explained how it was that his psychology was so entirely derived 
 from that of James Mill, and was the result of so little independent 
 thought on his own part ; it has explained why Mill never soems to 
 have systematically studied Continental philosophy, especially German 
 speculation ; it gives the reason for his being so wholly occupied with 
 the middle levels of thought, to the exclusion of all inquiries as to 
 ultimate ideas, and the beginning and end of things. For we now 
 know that his education left hardly any room for his character and 
 disposition to display any preferences, and that he was trained strictly 
 on the lines of Benthamism in morals, and a modernised version of 
 Hobbes in mental philosophy. A stern, rigid, autocratic father like 
 the elder Mill, with clearly defined views, rendered all the more 
 positive and dogmatic by opposition and unpopularity, was not likely 
 to allow his son's intellect to expand in any other directions than 
 such as accorded with his own predilections. 
 
 There is little which may be called strictly original in Mill's philo- 
 sophical scheme, except, possibly, in some of his logical speculations. 
 To him must be attributed a theory of reasoning, which, if not wholly 
 new, yet exhibits with clearness and precision the function of the 
 major premiss in a syllogism, and affirms that our course of reason- 
 ing is not, as is usually supposed, from the general law to the par- 
 ticular case, but, without exception, from a particular case to adjacent 
 particular cases — the major premiss being but a memorandum, a
 
 48G ENGLAND. 
 
 compendious statement of the result of our experience hitherto. If to 
 this we add that he is the author of certain experimental methods or 
 canons of induction (which have been severely criticised, among others, 
 by Dr. Whewell) — that he advocates the existence of " bleal Kinds "' 
 in nature apart from classifications due to our own convenience — that 
 he has illustrated with great amplitude the plurality of causes and 
 intermixture of effects which are found in nature's working, we shall 
 have exhausted his chief contributions to logical science. The most 
 interesting part of his "Logic" is the sixth book in the second volume, 
 in which, starting from psychology, and what he terms " Ethology" 
 (i.e., the conditions which regulate the varieties of human character), 
 he proceeds to trace the future science of Sociology. It is in this 
 department of his work that he approximates most nearly to Comte 
 and Positivism, just as it was especially his sociological speculation 
 which formed the most valuable and lasting heritage of Comte to his 
 successors. 
 
 In the fundamental doctrines of his philosophy, as exhibited, for 
 instance, in his bitter attack on Sir William Hamilton, Mill appears as 
 a modern version of Hume. He is like the elder philosopher in his 
 empirical and sensationalist stand-point, believing that the whole body 
 of human knowledge may be traced back to sensations, to immediate 
 contact with the world outside us, entirely excluding a priori mental 
 action. He is like him, again, in his attack on so-called necessary 
 and universal truth, resolving, for instance, all mathematical axioms 
 into the mere result of a number of experiences of points, straight 
 lines, and angles. Above all he is like him in his analysis of external 
 matter, which he maintains is nothing more than the " permanent 
 possibility of sensation," and, with some limitations, extends the 
 same analysis also to the case of mind. But in his more purely psy- 
 chological aspect, Mill's merit lies in the stress which he has laid on 
 the great principle enunciated by Hartley of" the association of ideas." 
 Resemblance and contiguity in our ideas cause them to be so indis- 
 solubly fused together, that we find it impossible to call up one 
 without thereby summoning the others in its train. It is thus that 
 we associate together, for instance, our notion of " straight lines," 
 and " impossibility to include a space," and end by imagining — so 
 indissoluble is the connection thus formed — that we have this union 
 of the two ideas as an intuitive perception of our minds, independent 
 of all experience. It is thus, too, that association of antecedent and 
 consequent in the natural world leads to the idea that there is in what 
 we term " the cause " some productive force, some creative energy, 
 V.i which the effect is due ; and again, in less theoretic spheres, it is 
 thus that the notions ot money and happiness are so blended together, 
 that the miser will make the amassing of money his end, finding 
 happiness in such an inversion of ends and means. In fact, " the
 
 MODERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 487 
 
 association of ideas " is a sort of" mental chyniistry," as Mill calls it, 
 which explains many of the most deeply-rooted convictions of our 
 nature ; and in psychological science, we are told, it plays much the 
 same part as the law of gravitation does in physics. 
 
 More important, however, in its influence on contemporary and 
 popular thought than his more purely philosophic speculations, was 
 that doctrine of utilitarianism in morals, of which, under the influence 
 of his father and Bentham, Mill was so energetic an advocate. Indeed, 
 the belief that the good is only the generally useful is, in one 
 shape or another, common to the whole of the so-called English psy- 
 chological school, to Herbert Spencer and to Bain just as much as to 
 Mill himself. More recently Mr. Henry Sidgwick has published his 
 work on " The Methods of Ethics," in which he appears as the defender 
 of the utilitarian theory ; and it may be said that, for the greater 
 part of the thinking world, as well as for a large section of the 
 unthinking, utilitarianism forms the popular philosophy of the day. 
 It has been found to accord marvellously well with the practical temper 
 of the English mind, and receives more than an incidental illustration 
 in the favourite English study of political economy. 
 
 There are many points of view from which utilitarianism appears to 
 give a satisfactory explanation of the phenomena with which it is con- 
 cerned. When we approach human action from the political side, the 
 utilitarian view is perhaps the only practicable one. The happiness of 
 the people is tbe only possible aim for the political philosopher ; indeed, 
 it has been often urged, sometimes as praise, sometimes as blame, 
 that the principle of " the greatest happiness of the greatest number " 
 has more a political than a moral character. Helvetius says, " La 
 science de la morale n'est autre chose que la science de la legislation." 
 And for this, there is this sufficient reason, that utilitarianism studies 
 only the consequences of action (i.e., action viewed from the outside, 
 as it affects other people), which is a truly political and social view. 
 The question, however, remains, whether if personal ethics is to mean 
 anything, it should not mean " action viewed from within," in connec- 
 tion, that is, with the principle and motive which animates it. Or 
 again, in cases of casuistry, or instances where apparent duties clash, 
 it may be asked what better test can be found than experience of the 
 consequences of actions ? When a patriot has to decide between his 
 duty to the Government under which he lives and his duty to his own 
 views and aspirations for his country, is not " utility," or the greatest 
 happiness of the greatest number, the best solvent of his doubts ? On 
 the other hand, though an appeal to utility can best settle collisions of 
 duties, it is clear enough that there are virtues, the sacred and autho- 
 ritative character of which is taken away by the explanation afforded 
 by utilitarianism. Justice is very clumsily explained (notwithstanding 
 Mill's discussion in his " Utilitarianism ") ; Chastity, Veracity, Honesty,
 
 488 ENGLAND. 
 
 are more powerful before the analysis into utility is applied to them 
 than after it. A man will not consent to be killed rather than tell 
 a lie because, on the whole, the practice of telling truth is useful to 
 humanity ; nor yet will a Light Brigade charge Russian guns because 
 military discipline is good for the world. 
 
 The fact is that, despite the widespread acceptance of utilitarianism 
 among English thinkers of the present day, it runs counter to that 
 popular consciousness to which it is sometimes given to break through 
 the cobwebs of metaphysical .ingenuity. Nothing is more clear to 
 unsophisticated minds than the distinction between what is expedient 
 and what is right, however often they may happen to coincide. We 
 do not venerate the man who, when called to some act of heroism, 
 calculates whether on the whole his act will be useful to himself and 
 to the world or not. It is more natural to call self-sacrifice noble 
 than to call it useful ; and no martyr — not even a scientific martyr — 
 would ever go to the stake if he stopped to reckon up the benefits to 
 society as against the personal pain of a death by burning. 
 
 Utilitarianism, however, as it appears in Mill, has been to some 
 extent modified and transformed by the so-called Rational Utili- 
 tarianism of Mr. Herbert Spencer. This newer and more scientific 
 scheme has for its object to determine from the laws of life and the 
 conditions of existence how and why certain modes of conduct are 
 detrimental and certain other modes beneficial. These good and bad 
 results cannot be accidental, but must be necessary consequences of 
 the constitution of things. Morality, then, must be deduced from the 
 laws of life and nature. Defined in the "Data of Ethics" as the 
 science of conduct, morality is shown to involve physical, biological, 
 psychological, and sociological data. From a physical standpoint, 
 conduct advances towards rectitude when it becomes more coherent 
 and more definite — when, that is to say, a man regulates his acts 
 more in accordance with definite ends, and has many interests and 
 occupations. From a biological standpoint, conduct improves when 
 a man learns to develop all his functions, guided by pleasure, which 
 is throughout the concomitant of normal function ; while pain, on the 
 contrary, is the concomitant of deranged function. From a psycho- 
 logical point of view, the advance of morality is indicated by a pre- 
 ference for the satisfactions of the future, as compared with the enjoy- 
 ments of the present, and by the acknowledgment of the superior 
 obligation of internal sanctions of conscience in contrast with external 
 sanctions, such as legal punishment and theological systems of rewards 
 and penalties. Lastly, the sociological aspect of ethics proves that 
 progress means the substitution of peaceful co-operation for the violent 
 constraints and animosities of war. As compared with the utili- 
 tarianism of Mill, the moral scheme of Spencer appears more scientific, 
 more thoroughly systematic, and less inadequate to the problems
 
 MODERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 489 
 
 involved. But the familiar truths of ethics become unfamiliar when 
 dressed in the garb of scientific nomenclature, and perhaps the most 
 startling doctrine of the " Data of Ethics " is the new view inculcated 
 of Duty. " The sense of duty," says Mr. Spencer, " is transitory, 
 and will diminish as fast as moralisation increases." In other words, 
 duty is not obedience to an internal law, but an arbitrary and pro- 
 visional thing, which changes its stern complexion, as conduct, be- 
 coming more scientific, becomes also more pleasurable. The applica- 
 tion of scientific canons to ethics naturally makes morality more 
 dependent on physical laws, and tends to convert conscience into a 
 function of organisation. 
 
 The characteristic of Bain and Lewes as psychologists is (as we 
 shall see) to treat thought as a function of matter, and from this it is 
 but a step to the position that all moral feeling and sentiment may be 
 equally explained by physical considerations. The step has been 
 boldly taken by some physiologists and medical theorists, among 
 others by Dr. Maudsley. In a lecture on Conscience published in his 
 work, " Body and Mind," Dr. Maudsley says, " There is the strongest 
 desire evinced, and the most strenuous efforts are made in many quar- 
 ters, to exempt from physical researches the highest functions of mind, 
 and particularly the so-called moral sense and the will. The moral 
 sense is, indeed, the stronghold of those who have made strategical 
 movements of retreat from other defensive positions which they have 
 taken up. Are we then, as physiologists, to allow an exemption from 
 physical research to any function of mind, however exalted ? or shall 
 we maintain through good and through evil report that all its func- 
 tions, from the lowest to the highest, are equally functions of organisa- 
 tion ? A vital question for us as medical psychologists, which we 
 must sooner or later face boldly and answer distinctly." To which 
 we may add, that it is also a vital question for moral philosophers 
 which they must face boldly and answer distinctly, if there is to be 
 any longer an independent science of ethics. 
 
 Dr. Maudsley proceeds to ask if there is " the same essential con- 
 nection between moral sense and brain which there is between thought 
 and brain, or between any of our special senses and its special 
 ganglionic centre in the brain ? To which he returns an emphatic 
 affirmative, with the assertion that they do not admit of any other 
 scientific interpretation. " One thing is certain, that moral philosophy 
 cannot penetrate the hidden springs of feeling and impulse ; they lie 
 deeper than it can reach, for they lie in the physical constitution 
 of the individual, and, going still farther back, perhaps in his organic 
 antecedents. Because the fathers have eaten sour grapes, therefore 
 it often is that the children's teeth are set on edge. Assuredly of 
 some criminals, as of some insane persons, it may be truly said that 
 they are born, not made ; they go criminal, as the insane go mad,
 
 490 ENGLAND. 
 
 because they cannot help it ; a stronger power than they can counter- 
 act has given the bias of then - being." A striking illustration is 
 adduced to bring this home to the reader. " While the Reign of 
 Terror was going on during the first French Revolution, an innkeeper 
 profited by the critical situation in which many nobles of his commune 
 found themselves to decoy them into his house, where he was believed 
 to have robbed and murdered them. His daughter, having quarrelled 
 with him, denounced him to the authorities, who put him on his trial, 
 but he escaped conviction from lack of proof. She committed suicide 
 subsequently. One of her brothers had nearly murdered her on one 
 occasion with a knife, and another brother hanged himself. Her sister 
 was epileptic, imbecile, and paroxysmally violent. Her daughter, in 
 whom the degenerate line approached extinction, became completely 
 deranged, and was sent to an asylum. Here, then, is the sort of 
 pedigree which we really want if we are to judge of the worth of a 
 family— the hereditary line of its vices, virtues, and diseases. 
 
 First Ge>. (ration. Acute in'elligence, with \ Absence or destruction of 
 murder and robbery. J moral sense. 
 
 Second Generation. Suicide. Homicidal violence Epilepsy, imbecility, 
 
 I and suicide. and mania. 
 
 Third Generation. Mania." 
 
 Such is the latest result of the application of the great modern doctrine 
 of " Evolution " to the phenomena of moral life. 
 
 The first systematic adoption of evolution, as the keystone of philo- 
 sophy, was made by Herbert Spencer. Of the three contemporaries, 
 Herbert Spencer, Alexander Bain, and George Henry Lewes, who 
 have propagated so widely the scientific and philosophic impulse com- 
 municated by Mill, it is undoubtedly the first who completely merits 
 the name of a systematic thinker. In March, 1860, a catholic scheme 
 was propounded, almost Titanic in its proportions, of works to be 
 issued in periodical parts by Herbert Spencer. The series was to begin 
 with " First Principles," with its two divisions of " the Unknowable " 
 and " the Knowable," to proceed to " The Principles of Biology" in 
 two volumes, " The Principles of Psychology " also in two volumes, 
 " The Principles of Sociology " in three volumes, and to end with the 
 two volumes of " The Principles of Morality ; " and of this enormous 
 programme the greater portion is completed. Little wonder is it that 
 Mill and Lewes should be equally emphatic in their admiration. In 
 comparing him with Comte, Mill says, " Mr. Spencer is one of the 
 small number of persons who, by the solidity and encyclopedical 
 character of their knowledge and their power of co-ordination and con- 
 catenation, may claim to be the peers of M. Comte, and entitled to a 
 vote in the estimation of him." " It is questionable," says the author
 
 MODEKN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 491 
 
 of the '* History of Philosophy," whether any thinker of finer calibre 
 has appeared in our country, although the future alone can determine 
 the position he is to assume in history. . . . He alone of British 
 thinkers has organised a system of philosophy." The reason is that 
 Herbert Spencer's philosophy is dominated by one vast conception, 
 which serves as a focus in which are gathered and concentrated all the 
 rays of thought in its different departments. It is saturated with one 
 thought of pre eminent importance — the great conception of " Evolu- 
 tion." As Professor Huxley has said, " The only complete and metho- 
 dical exposition known to me of the theory of evolution is to be found 
 in Herbert Spencer's ' System of Philosophy,' a work that should be 
 carefully studied by those who desire to become acquainted with the 
 tendencies of scientific thought." 
 
 What is this law of evolution ? We must first attempt to get some 
 scientific expression or definition of it before proceeding to observe 
 its exemplifications in the different spheres of being and thought. 
 It has one fundamental principle from which everything is deduced — 
 the persistence of force or energy. Just for the reason that energy 
 is always active in nature, that force never fails or dies, do things in 
 nature change, adopt new forms, new developments, new transforma- 
 tions. If the law is to be expressed in a formula, it will run thus : 
 " Progress consists in the passage from a homogeneous to a hetero- 
 geneous structure." The law of all progress is one and the same, 
 the evolution of the simple into the complex by succer ve differentia- 
 tions. If we ask why progress should run always in this direction, 
 from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous, the reason is twofold. 
 In the first place, if a body is in a homogeneous condition it is 
 unstable; " homogeneity is a condition of unstable equilibrium; " or, 
 in more simple language, a state of uniformity is one which cannot 
 be maintained. A familiar illustration is furnished by the scales : " If 
 they be accurately made and not clogged by dirt or rust, it is 
 impossible to keep a pair of scales perfectly balanced ; eventually one 
 scale will descend and the other ascend, they will assume a hetero- 
 geneous relation." Or again : " Take a piece of red-hot matter, 
 and however evenly heated it may at first be, it will quickly cease 
 to be so ; the exterior cooling faster than the interior, will become 
 different in temperature from it, and the lapse into heterogeneity of 
 temperature, so obvious in this extreme case, takes place more or less 
 in all cases." * The second reason for this direction of progress is 
 that every active force produces more than one change, every cause 
 produces more than one effect. The multiplicity of effects resulting 
 from a single cause naturally converts homogeneity into heterogeneity. 
 
 * Herbert Spencer, " First Principles," p. 402. The interested reader should study 
 the whole of the chaps, xii. — xviii. of Part II., exhibited in a more popular form in 
 " Essays," London, 1861.
 
 492 ENGLAND. 
 
 If a body is shattered by violent collision, "besides the change of 
 the homogeneous mass into a heterogeneous group of scattered 
 fragments, there is a change of the homogeneous momentum into 
 a group of momenta, heterogeneous in both amounts and directions." 
 " Of the sun's rays, issuing from him on every side, some few strike 
 the moon ; these being reflected at all angles from the moon's surface, 
 some few of them strike the earth. By a like process the few which 
 reach the earth are again diffused through surrounding space ; and on 
 each occasion, such portions of the rays as are absorbed instead of 
 reflected, undergo refractions that equally destroy their parallelism." 
 For these two reasons — that homogeneity is a condition of unstable 
 equilibrium, and that every active force produces several changes — 
 the law of evolution may be defined as a process during which " an 
 indefinite incoherent homogeneity is transformed into a definite cohe- 
 rent heterogeneity." 
 
 Herbert Spencer exemplifies this law with a wonderful wealth of 
 illustration in all kinds of different spheres — in the sphere of the world's 
 growth, the growth of individual organisms, the growth of the social 
 organism, and the genesis of science ; of these we may select the first 
 and the third as adequate examples of his method. 
 
 In the beginning geologists tell us that our globe was a mass of 
 matter in a state of fusion, and was therefore of homogeneous structure 
 and of tolerably homogeneous temperature. Then came the successive 
 changes into heterogeneity ; into mountains, continents, seas, igneous 
 rocks, sedimentary strata, metallic veins. Or, again, look at the case 
 of organisms on the face of the globe. Fishes are the most homo- 
 geneous in their structure, and are one of the earliest productions on 
 the globe ; reptiles come later and are more heterogeneous ; mammals 
 and birds, which are produced later still, are still more heterogeneous ; 
 man is the most heterogeneous of all. Even if we limit ourselves to 
 the case of man, the law holds good. The multiplication of races, 
 and the splitting up of races among themselves, have made the species 
 much more heterogeneous. " The Papuan has very small legs, 
 resembling in this the quadrumanous kind, while in the case of the 
 European, whose legs are longer and more massive, there is more 
 heterogeneity between the upper and lower limbs." Another example 
 of this progress in heterogeneity is furnished by the subdivisions even 
 of the Saxon race, which has within a few generations developed into 
 the Anglo-American variety and the Anglo-Australian variety. Per- 
 haps, however, a still clearer example of the operation of the law can 
 be found in the development of the social organism. The society of 
 savages is an aggregate of individuals, who all hunt, fish, go to war, 
 and work, or, in other words, it is homogeneous ; every individual 
 having the same functions. Then comes a differentiation between 
 the governing and the governed; while in the governing power are
 
 MODERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 493 
 
 still united religious and executive functions. Other differentiations 
 lead to our present condition of heterogeneity, Church gradually 
 dividing itself from State, and the actual political organisation con- 
 sisting of numerous subdivisions in justice and finance, in executive 
 and deliberative powers. 
 
 In Herbert Spencer's " Principles of Psychology " the same law- 
 is applied to our mental states, and we are proved to have become in 
 mind what we are by successive developments from early organic 
 states. A striking result of the introduction of this conception of 
 evolution into psychology is shown in Herbert Spencer's attitude 
 towards the so-called "Forms" of mind. There are certain forms, 
 of which " Time " and " Space " are most frequently quoted, which 
 have been the sources of much mental confusion to philosophers, for 
 they seem to be so entirely innate, conceptions of such immediate 
 validity, as to preclude all possibility of resolution ; and hence by 
 Kant they have been boldly termed " Forms of Sense," or, in other 
 words, a priori conditions of sensation and perception. On the other 
 hand, they can be resolved, and are resolved by philosophers like 
 Hume and Mill, into ideas " put together out of successive single 
 sensations." Now this old difficulty as to whether "Time" and 
 " Space " are a priori or a posteriori, is solved, according to Herbert 
 Spencer, by the hypothesis that they are in reality a priori to the 
 individual, but a posteriori to the race ; in other words, men begin 
 now in their perceptions with ideas of space and time ready formed ; 
 but these have in reality been bequeathed to them — bequeathed by a 
 long course of experiences in their ancestors. And so Herbert 
 Spencer claims to have reconciled Locke and Kant: "in psychology, 
 the arrested growth recommences now that the disciples of Kant and 
 those of Locke have both their views recognised in the theory that 
 organised experiences produce forms of thought." 
 
 Nothing, in fact, is sacred from the penetrative analysis of Mr. 
 Spencer ; no thought, no feeling, no sentiment, not even that senti- 
 ment which, under the name of Love, has formed the staple com- 
 modity of poets and novelists. This is how " victorious analysis '' 
 disposes of love : " The passion which unites the sexes is habitually 
 spoken of as though it were a simple feeling ; whereas it is the most 
 compound, and therefore the most powerful of all the feelings. Added 
 to the purely physical elements of it, are first to be noticed those 
 highly complex impressions produced by personal beauty ; around 
 which are aggregated a variety of pleasurable ideas, not in themselves 
 amatory, but which have an organised relation to the amatory feeling. 
 With this there is united the complex sentiment which we term 
 affection — a sentiment which, as it can exist between those of the 
 same sex, must be regarded as an independent sentiment, but one 
 which is here greatly exalted. Then there is the sentiment of
 
 494 ENGLAND. 
 
 admiration, respect, or reverence ; in itself one of considerable power, 
 and which in this relation becomes in a high degree active. There 
 comes next the feeling called love of approbation. To be preferred 
 above all the world, and that by one admired beyond all others, is to 
 have the love of approbation gratified in a degree passing every 
 previous experience ; especially as there is added that indirect 
 gratification of it, which results from the preference being witnessed 
 by unconcerned persons. Further, the allied emotion of self-esteem 
 comes into play. To have succeeded in gaining such attachment 
 from, and sway over, another, is a proof of power which cannot fail 
 agreeably to excite the amour propre. Yet again the proprietary 
 feeling has its share in the general activity ; there is the pleasure of 
 possession — the two belong to each other. Once more, the relation 
 allows of an extended liberty of action. Finally, there is the 
 exaltation of the sympathies. Thus, around the physical feeling 
 forming the nucleus of the whole are gathered the feelings produced 
 by personal beauty, that constituting simple attachment, those of 
 reverence, of love of approbation, of self-esteem, of property, of love 
 of freedom, of sympathy. These, all greatly exalted, and severally 
 tending to reflect their excitements on one another, unite to form the 
 mental state we call 'love,' and as each of them is itself comprehen- 
 sive of multitudinous states of consciousness, we may say that this 
 passion fuses into one immense aggregate most of the elementary 
 excitations of which we are capable, and that hence results its 
 irresistible power." 
 
 And now what has Mr. Spencer to say of those deeper problems 
 which lie at the root of philosophy and science, of the relations of 
 all the forces and powers of nature to the First Cause — of the relations 
 of science and religion ? One of the most interesting portions of 
 " First Principles " treats expressly of these problems. Mr. Spencer 
 asserts that he has found a reconciliation between religion and science. 
 The reconciliation is, possibly, not one which either of the two con- 
 tending parties would accept ; and more strangely still, it is a solution 
 framed on the lines of Sir William Hamilton and Dr. Mansel — the one 
 a Scotch metaphysician, the other a " Bampton lecturer" on divinity. 
 Both religion and science must allow, according to Spencer, that 
 ultimately they rest on "the Unknowable." The theologians cannot 
 define their God, cannot possibly explain how the Infinite and the 
 Absolute can yet bo a Person ; the scientific men cannot define the 
 ultimate grounds on which rest their "Forces," and "Energies," and 
 " Laws." In every direction, if we pursue the inquiry long enough, 
 we come to an inner secret, to a substratum of " the Unknowable." 
 " By continually seeking to know, and being continually thrown 
 back with a deepened conviction of the impossibility of knowin,g we 
 may keep alive the consciousness that it is alike our highest wisdom
 
 MODERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 405 
 
 and our highest duty to regard that through which all things exist as 
 the unknowable." 
 
 As " Amurath an Amurath succeeds," so follow psychologists and 
 physiologists in the steps of Mr. Spencer. Among these, two have 
 raised themselves into the front rank — Alexander Bain and George 
 Henry Lewes ; but their merits are of a very different order. By far 
 tbe acuter mind of the two, both in speculative insight and the special 
 talents of the psychologist, was possessed by Mr. Lewes. Without 
 him it would be true to say that a marked step of progress would be 
 wanting in philosophy. But such praise could hardly be accorded to 
 Mr. Bain. His strength lies rather in expression, in illustration of 
 details, in general breadth of descriptive power, than in those gifts of 
 vivid insight, or ample generalisation, or pregnant suggestion, which 
 form the character of an original philosopher. Perhaps such a man 
 is needed after a great systematic synthetic thinker like Mr. Spencer, 
 to pick up, as it were, the fragments that remain, to bring out points 
 in clearer light which might otherwise be neglected, to serve up the 
 intellectual banquet anew in fresh forms for the jaded appetite. 
 Necessary, however, though such a man may be in a series or suc- 
 cession of philosophic thinkers, yet from a popular point of view — 
 from the view of large or wide-spread influence on the body of the 
 cultured world — we shall hardly be wrong in passing over without 
 much comment the name of Mr. Bain in such a general review of 
 thought as we propose to ourselves. One reason, among many 
 others, which might be adduced of the comparative unimportance 
 of this philosopher is to be found in the fact that there is in his work, 
 as his French critic, M. Ribot, observes, " a too frequent absence of 
 the idea of progress, and a consequent neglect of the dynamic study 
 of phenomena." 
 
 The best that can be said for him will be found in the estimate of 
 Mr. Mill, in an essay published in the "Dissertations and Discussions." 
 " He has worthily inscribed his name beside those of the successive 
 builders of an edifice, to which Hartley, Brown, and James Mill have 
 contributed their share of toil." But in that temple of fame we pre- 
 sume that niches are found not only for the master-builders, the great 
 spiritual architects, but also for those who have humbler tasks, the 
 careful and conscientious workmen in other people's designs. By far 
 a truer estimate, probably, is that given by Mr. Spencer in one of his 
 " Essays." " The work of Mr. Alexander Bain," he says, " is not in 
 itself a system of mental philosophy, properly so called, but a classified 
 collection of materials for that system, presented with that method 
 and insight which scientific discipline generates, and accompanied with 
 occasional passages of an analytical character. Were we to say that 1he 
 researches of the naturalist, who collects, and dissects and describes 
 species, bear the same relation to the researches of the comparative
 
 49G ENGLAND. 
 
 anatomist tracing out the laws of organisation, "which Mr. Bain's 
 labours bear to the labours of the abstract psychologist, we should 
 be going somewhat too far, for Mr. Bain's work is not wholly 
 descriptive. Still, however, such an analogy conveys the best general 
 conception of what he has done, and serves most clearly to indicate 
 its needfulness." 
 
 The chief points of interest in Mr. Bain's philosophy may be briefly 
 summarised. In the first place, we notice the same stress on the 
 physiological antecedents of psychology, which is to be found in Mr. 
 Spencer. In the first of his two larger books, " The Senses and the 
 Intellect," Mr. Bain begins with a description of the brain, the cerebral 
 nerves, the cerebellum, and the spinal cord. The nervous system is 
 for him the " fons et origo " of psychological study, for the nervous 
 system is the very condition of psychological life. In a word, the 
 life of the mind is but a special variety, a peculiar manifestation, of 
 general physical life. In the second place, we have in the same 
 work an elaborate study of the association of ideas, illustrated with 
 that fulness of descriptive power which is the best and the chief cha- 
 racteristic of Mr. Bain. Lastly, in the companion work, entitled 
 " The Emotions and the Will," we have an exhaustive enumeration 
 (yet hardly a classification) of the feelings and emotions, studied in 
 their double aspect, as parts at once of psychology and physiology. 
 Somewhat curiously, English philosophers have, as a rule, been 
 deficient in any study of the emotions. They have not in this respect 
 assimilated one of the truest elements of Comte's programme (which 
 distinctly included "the affective phenomena"), and the result has 
 been a certain unreality and lack of practical influence in their 
 mental theories. Yet, though Mr. Bain does his best in this instance 
 to fill the breach, his descriptive power too often runs away with 
 him ; according to the judgment of Mr. Spencer, in Mr. Bain's work 
 description fills too large a share, and analysis too small a one. It is 
 only a strict analysis which can precede a real classification. 
 
 Very striking and suggestive are the contributions made by Mr. 
 Lewes to the history of modern thought. Metaphysics Mr. Lewes 
 would have none of, and his attack on them in his later works was only 
 an echo of the attack made in the Prolegomena to the earliest edition 
 of his " History of Philosophy." If we wish to see Mr. Lewes at his 
 best we should peruse that characteristic Introduction. There will be 
 found the salient features of his style — its liveliness, its freedom from 
 all pedantry, its critical acumen, its popular sallies, its excessive dog- 
 matism. The metaphysician and the man of science are like two 
 travellers who come into a country where for the first time they see a 
 clock. One finds in the new phenomenon an exhibition of a vital prin- 
 ciple : "the ticking resembles the regular sounds of breathing; the 
 beating of the pendulum is like the beating of the heart ; the slow
 
 MODERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 497 
 
 movements of the hands, are they not movements of feelers in search 
 of food ? The striking of the hours, are they not cries of pain or 
 expressions of anger ? " The other traveller is aware of the necessity 
 of verifying hypotheses, and proceeds according to a different method. 
 He takes away the face of the clock, but finds nothing changed ; but 
 no sooner has he stopped the pendulum than he finds that everything 
 has stopped with it. From these and other experiments he discovers 
 truly that the clock is a mechanism. Such, thinks Mr. Lewes, is the 
 difference between the two classes of minds, one of which is doomed 
 to sterility, the other ordained to an ever-increasing triumph. Or 
 again, " the metaphysician is a merchant, who speculates boldly, but 
 without that convertible capital which can enable him to meet his 
 engagements. The man of science is also a venturesome merchant, 
 but one fully alive to the necessity of solid capital, which can, on 
 emergency, be produced to meet his bills ; he knows the risks he runs 
 whenever that amount of capital is exceeded ; he knows that bank- 
 ruptcy awaits him if capital be not forthcoming." A third illustration 
 is drawn from the phenomena of spirit-rapping. With such variety of 
 agreeable matter does the brilliant historian of philosophy beguile the 
 ennui of the student, and attempt to disguise the difficulties which 
 surround that unique phenomenon, " Consciousness." 
 
 There is, perhaps, only one thing which moves Mr. Lewes's scorn 
 as much as metaphysics, and that is dogmatic theology. " The expan- 
 sion of knowledge is loosening the very earth clutched by the roots of 
 creeds and churches," he says with almost cruel energy. The history 
 of philosophy is for him the narrative of the emancipation of philosophy 
 from theology. In time, he hopes, we shall be in possession of " a 
 method which will make religion also the expression of experience, 
 and thus dissipate the clouds of mystery and incredibility which have 
 so long concealed the clear heavens." Whether the Positivist " Eeli- 
 gion of Humanity " be " the expression of experience " is best known to 
 the hierophants initiated in its mystic rites ; but that this is not what 
 religion means to the ordinary consciousness is obvious. Possibly, 
 here we have one result of that definition of philosophy which makes 
 it equivalent to analytic science. In his special lines, Mr. Lewes's 
 criticism is always pertinent, his judgment clear, and his conclusion 
 expressed with unmistakable emphasis. As an historian of philosophy 
 he has his favourites, and he lets his readers know clearly who they 
 are. Any genuine analytical power, however imperfect in exercise, 
 he always admires ; which explains, perhaps, why he is so singularly 
 indulgent to Bishop Berkeley, and why he is filled with such true 
 respect for the critical work of Kant. But meaningless dialectic he 
 abhors and despises : and next to his scathing criticism of the French 
 eclectics, we may put his merciless and (if the truth may be said) 
 somewhat inadequate treatment of Hegel. As a psychologist, he has 
 
 K K
 
 498 ENGLAND. 
 
 developed, in independent lines, the system of Mr. Spencer, and has 
 completely severed himself from all affinity with the simple sensa- 
 tionalism of Condillac. 
 
 In company with Mr. Lewes, but not, perhaps, equally deserving of 
 the name of philosophers, come a host of writers, mainly scientific, 
 among whom we may specify the names of Darwin, Carpenter, 
 Maudsley, Morell, Sully, Leslie Stephen, and as pure savants, Tyndall 
 and Huxley. Of these, probably, Darwin has had most influence in 
 fashioning, or at least instigating, popular modes of thought and 
 expression. " The Origin of Species," " The Descent of Man," " The 
 Expression of the Emotions," have probably been more widely read 
 than usually falls to the lot of scientific books. For so long as savants 
 labour in the special departments of science, public opinion is exces- 
 sively tolerant, for the simple reason that its incuriousness is only 
 equalled by its ignorance ; but as soon as the field of minute inquiry 
 is left behind, and some wide generalisation is attempted, some startling 
 law exhibited, which touches the general thoughts and feelings of the 
 common mass, then at once public opinion gets aroused and angry, 
 and ignorance degenerates into something very akin to blind bigotry. 
 This is a mere matter of history, and does not affect either way the 
 truth or the untruth of the opinions that have aroused the storm. As 
 long as Darwin studied the phenomena of the world of pigeons, or 
 threw new light on the question of instinct, he was left alone in his 
 study to pursue his scientific experiments ; but when, as the result of 
 these experiments, there came forth the great law of the evolution ot 
 the human race from inferior organisations by means of the " Struggle 
 for Existence" and the " Survival of the Fittest," mankind, perhaps 
 naturally, resented a theory which established their kinship with a 
 lower creation. The same was the case in a less degree with Pro- 
 fessor Tyndall. He might pursue his science and his pleasure in the 
 Alps as long as he liked, but when he propounded a theory about the 
 origin of things in a Belfast address, the popular consciousness felt 
 itself injured in its belief in the Book of Genesis. For there are two 
 subjects with which ordinary human nature will not permit any liberties 
 to be taken — its origin and its decease ; it pursues with relentless 
 hatred materialists and Positivists, professors of evolution, and deniers 
 of the soul's immortality; and in recent days Professor Hackel, of 
 Jena, has stirred up this opposition anew. In the wild but virtuous 
 indignation of " the organs of public opinion," some ignorance may 
 possibly be detected of what " a scientific hypothesis " really means; 
 some convenient forgetfulness that the methods of inquiry which make 
 them so angry are precisely those which have taught us the facts of 
 astronomy, and won for us the material comforts of our civilisation. 
 But tbe historian cannot overlook the fact that these struggles to and 
 fro, these heart-burnings, these contentions between the Church and
 
 MODERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 499 
 
 the laboratory, religion and science, are but so many indications of 
 the profound unrest of modern thought, varying and antagonistic 
 elements, which prove, as clearly as they can, the transitional character 
 of our age. The lines of the reconstruction can hardly yet be guessed 
 — whether the issue is to be an armed neutrality between religion and 
 science, and a clear division of territory between them, or the triumph 
 of science and experience, or, as some think not improbable, the rena- 
 scence of religion in the form of a philosophy. Whichever it be, one 
 tbing is clear, that these scientific conceptions of evolution, of develop- 
 ment, of analysis, of biology, have gained and are gaining an increasing 
 hold on the modern world. We find them in our newspapers, in our 
 magazines, in our poetry, in our novels ; analysis, triumphant and 
 victorious, is seen on every page of Browning's verse, in every para- 
 graph of George Eliot's novels. A hero is not drawn in some flash of 
 constructive genius, as he would be in a great creative age, like that 
 of Shakespeare, but built up, piece by piece, by single traits and 
 characteristics, amid a mass of reflections, after the manner of a criti- 
 cal, analytic, transitional age like that which is the parent of Daniel 
 Derondas. The very word " evolution " has lost its scientific meaning, 
 and we now talk of the evolution of a plot in a three-volume novel. 
 ' Whether the future be with the Darwins or Huxlej^s we know not, but 
 it is abundantly clear that the present is on their side. To deplore 
 the fact is as useless as to ignore it ; it is to condemn ourselves to 
 hopeless sterility. " Toute cause qui hait son temps se suicide." It 
 is more interesting and more profitable to attempt to see how the 
 future, with its wondrous power of reconciling contraries, will assimi- 
 late scientific conclusions with that vast body of pre-existent popular 
 thought, which science may be said as yet to have scarcely leavened. 
 One element in such a reconciliation must undoubtedly be furnished 
 by the influence on England of German thought. This influence we 
 have reserved to the last, because its reality and permanence have 
 often been unjustly questioned, and because no candid historian can 
 help allowing the fact that it is in itself alien to the English temper 
 and English modes of speculation. Somewhat fitful, in fact, and 
 sj^asmodic has been the German invasion of ideas with us. English 
 reliance on science and experience has, of course, continuously allied 
 itself with the empirical philosophers of Germany. But the deeper 
 thoughts and the metaphysical systems of the one country have had 
 to wait upon the appearances of somewhat rare spirits in the other, 
 before they could become known and, for the time at least, naturalised. 
 One such rare spirit was found in Samuel Taylor Coleridge, born in 
 1772. In 1798 he went for some time to Germany to study the 
 philosophy of Kant. In 1817 and 1825 he poured forth upon the 
 English public his earnest protests against the philosophy which was 
 popular among them, in his " Biofjraphia Litcraria " and his " Aids 
 
 K k Li
 
 500 ENGLAND 
 
 to Reflection." In one aspect, possibly, he might be called reac- 
 tionary, for he was full of the times of Elizabeth and James, and the 
 greatest period of English literature. But in another aspect he was 
 the prophet, seeing from a mountain the land which the common herd 
 had not tbe wit to see, ever warning men against the philosophical 
 writers of his time, ever striving to awaken some feeling for, and 
 belief in, the systems of Jacobi, and Schelling, and Fichte, always 
 insisting on a distinction which was strange to the English intelligence 
 — that between reason and understanding — for reason to Coleridge 
 was the organ of the higher truths, understanding a faculty on a lower 
 scale, a faculty of comprebension, but not, like the other, a faculty of 
 creative thought. The impulse was widely extended by a literary 
 feeling. The literature of Germany — Goethe, and Lessing, and Schiller 
 — was popularised for the first time in England by the labours of 
 Edward Bulwer Lytton, Thomas de Quincey, and, above all, Thomas 
 Carlyle. The last is a unique figure in the literary world, passionate, 
 masterful, bizarre, penetrated through and through with German 
 thought, an idealist, a poet of the highest type, a great creative genius, 
 a " laudator temporis acti," a modern Heracleitus, o-kotcii/o?, cui'iktt/s, 
 oxAoXdiSopos. To bim and to Coleridge more than to any other writers, 
 we owe whatever German elements are to be found in our ordinary 
 tboughts. But already his influence is waning, and he is no longer to 
 the younger generation of the present day what he was to the con- 
 temporaries of De Quincey. 
 
 In later times, as literature has. become more cosmopolitan, the phi- 
 losophic influence of Germany has been communicated through more 
 iiumerous channels. Nothing has been more remarkable in Germany 
 itself than the resurrection of Kant. There is now a so-called neo- 
 Kantian school, with the motto of Otto Liebmann, " Es muss auf Kant 
 zuriickgegangen werden," and with tbe avowed object of making head 
 against contemporary materialism. Although it has no actual repre- 
 sentatives in England, there has been much intellectual activity exer- 
 cised on the Kantian " Critiques " by Englishmen who have either 
 viewed Kant tbrough Hegelian spectacles, or found that they must 
 reckon with Kant in the formation of tbeir own systems. The Kantian 
 literature in Eng'ish is becoming very large ; it is only necessary to 
 instance Dr. T. Hutchinson Stirling's " Treatise on Kant," Professor 
 Caird's " Pbilosopby of Kant," Professor Max Muller'a English trans- 
 lation of Kant's " Critique of Pure Reason," Professor Watson's 
 " Kant and his English Critics," and tbe works of Professor Mahaffy 
 and Professor Adauison on the philosopher of Konigsberg. In Oxford, 
 which lias never been quite weaned from its metaphysical tendencies, 
 several philosophical works have been composed bearing more or less 
 the Teutonic stamp. Chief among these may be noticed the late Pro- 
 lesoe-r Green's " Introduction to the Works of Hume," and his " Pro^
 
 MODERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 501 
 
 Iegomena to Ethics," Professor Wallace's " Logic of Hegel," and Mr. 
 Bradley's " Ethical Studies ' : and " Principles of Logic." Translators 
 also have been busy. One of the most recent publications of the 
 Clarendon Press is a translation of Lotze's " Metaphysic " and 
 " Logic," executed by various hands. The German pessimists have 
 not been forgotten, Messrs. Haldane and Kemp having produced a 
 most serviceable edition of Schopenhauer's " Welt als Wille und Vors- 
 tellung," and Mr. Coupland having done his best to introduce Von 
 Hartmann's " Philosophy of the Unconscious " to the English public. 
 The influence of pessimism in England is curious, but probably 
 evanescent ; for pessimism, though the privilege of youth in most 
 countries, and though rampant enough in Byron and Byronic young 
 men, appears in reality to be utterly alien to the strenuous and happy 
 activity of the English spirit. 
 
 What the exact importance may be of the German methods of phi- 
 losophy in our insular thought, it is as yet probably too soon to 
 estimate. The prima facie objection that it is distasteful to our 
 national instincts may be held to be of some weight ; but it must be 
 remembered that the highest English thought has often been touched 
 by foreign influences, whether it be the Hebraic " passion for righteous- 
 ness " which animates English religion, or the keen air of foreign travel 
 which blows through every page of Elizabethan literature. The chief 
 interest, however, to any dispassionate observer of English contempo- 
 rary thought, who is wearied with the struggle of priest and savant, is 
 to gauge the value of a new intellectual "departure" in its bearings 
 on the debatable country between Faith and Reason. By some men 
 the German metaphysic, in its apotheosis of Reason, may be hailed as 
 providing the only substitute which a cultured and enlightened age 
 can accept for the superannuated phases of " Faith ; " while others, 
 who refuse to recognise in such new garb the long-loved features of 
 the religion which has been consecrated to them in lisping utterances 
 learnt at a mother's knee, may hold at arms' length the doubtful ad- 
 vantages of novel, though generous allies. But doubt of this kind as 
 to the exact value of a new form of philosophy can only be solved by 
 time ; and to time we must look to decide whether the leaves of the 
 tree which are for the healing of the nations, and which have been 
 gathered in the garden of Gethsemane, can be ever found in the garden 
 of the Academe.
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 MODERN CULTURE AND LITERATURE. 
 
 General Definition and View of Modern Culture — Ascendancy of the Romantic 
 Spirit — First Element in Culture: the Artistic — Art an Equalising as well as 
 Humanising Agency — Advance of Domestic Decorative Art since 1851 — Influence 
 of Mr. Ruskin : of Art Exhibitions — Improved Taste visible in Furniture and Em- 
 broider}' — In Feminine Dress— In Home Decorations— General Characteristics of 
 Modern English Fainting — How far does Modern Art reflect the Spirit of the Age? 
 — Explanation of the Popularity of Pre-Raphaelite Pictures, and Specimens of these 
 — Whistler, Moore, Burne Jones — The Giorgionesque — Influence of Turner — 
 Stimulus given to Artistic Impulse by other Art Critics than Ruskin : Hammerton. 
 Colvin, Carr, Wedmore, Augustus Hare — Development of Art in Great Towns — 
 Music an Element in Modern Culture — Are we a Musical Nation? — Music as reflect- 
 ing the Spirit of the Age — Second Element in Modern Culture : the Scientific — 
 Progress and Organisation of Science in England — Popular and Famous Teachers 
 of Science — Huxley, Tyndall, Lister, Sir Wyville Thompson — Charm of Science to 
 Imagination — Influence of Science (1) upon Literature, (2) upon Religion — Relation 
 of Science and Religion — Pessimism — The Pope of the Future — Other Elements in 
 Modern Culture : Religion, Travel, Literature — General Tendencies of the Litera- 
 ture of the Time — Reaction against purely Literary Spirit — Mr. Matthew Arnold. 
 Mr. Pater, Mr. J. A. Symonds, Prof. Shairp, Mr. Leslie Stephen — Poetry — Modern 
 Poetical Schools — Lord Tennyson, Mr. Browning, Mr. Swinburne, Mr. Morris, Mr. 
 Alfred Austin — Novels— Novel-reading Classes — Novelists: Mr. A. Trollope, Mr. 
 diaries Reade, Mr. E. Yates, Mr. Wilkie Collins, Mrs. Oliphant, Mrs. Linton, &c, 
 <fcc. — Influence of George Eliot — Miss Broughton, Miss Braddon, Mr. L. Oliphant, 
 &c. — Other Departments of Prose Literature— The New School of Historians — Mr. 
 Freeman, Mr. Green, Mr. Fronde— French Influences in Contemporary Literature 
 — Mr. Frederic Harrison and Mr. John Morley — Serial Literature. 
 
 • 
 I. 
 
 We have in this chapter to consider one of the most representative 
 and complex products of nineteenth-century England. When we 
 ' speak of culture, we mean the fusion of the higher influences of the 
 { age — artistic, scientific, religious, and literary. Glimpses of some 
 aspects of this many-sided development may be caught in the streets 
 of London and in other of our great cities, in drawing-rooms, in 
 picture galleries, in the periodicals of the day, wherever men and 
 women meet together for the purpose of social conversation and plea- 
 sure. We recognise the indication of its presence in many ways and 
 by many outward notes. Sometimes these are to be discovered in old 
 china, in quaint furniture, in antique velvet hangings, in curiously- 
 >h;iped cabinets ; sometimes in a rather mystical, and, to uninstructed
 
 MODERN CULTURE AND LITERATURE. 50B 
 
 hearers, unintelligible dialect; sometimes in a literary style remark- 
 able for softness rather than vigour. 
 
 As it has been said that everyone is a born follower either of | 
 Aristotle or Plato, so every age may be described as being mainly 
 classical or romantic in its tendencies. Romanticism is certainly in 
 the ascendant during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, both 
 in poetry and in household paraphernalia. It is the age of mansions 
 built, as to their exterior, in the style of Queen Anne, although nothing 
 more alien to the spirit of the literature of that age than their interior 
 could well be found. The genius of the romantic eminently suits a 
 time when the beauty of colour is worshipped as superior to the 
 beauty of form. It is this preference which is the distinguishing cha- 
 racteristic of the romantic school, whether in art or literature. What 
 the particular poets of the period — Mr. Swinburne, Mr. Morris, Mr. 
 Rossetti — are in literature, Mr. Burne Jones, Mr. Whistler, and Mr: 
 Albert Moore are in art. Theirs are the poems, and theirs the pictures,, 
 in which it is natural that a modern cultured public should delight. ] 
 There is a sex in taste even as there is in flowers ; and the sex which 
 for the most part prevails just now, not more in art than in litera- 
 ture and religion, is feminine. As are the rooms we live in, so are the 
 libraries which they contain. What Mr. Swinburne is among poets, 
 Mr. Black, Mr. Blackmore, Miss Thackeray (Mrs. Ritchie) are among 
 novelists — skilled, each of them, in the grouping of rich and varied 
 tints, sometimes dazzling, often lulling the senses and causing them 
 to sink into a slumber exquisitely sweet, but troubling themselves 
 comparatively little, if at all, to attain to severity of outline or classical 
 symmetry of proportions. 
 
 Art in the present decade is not only a great humanising, but a 
 great equalising, power. The interchange of aasthetic sympathies, the 
 compelling power of the brush and the studio — were we speaking now 
 of matters theatrical, it might be added, of the stage — have become 
 the instruments of a new kind of class fusion. The professional house- 
 decorator is no longer a mere tradesman or tradesman's employe. 
 He is an artist, and he is entitled to receive the treatment of a gentle- 
 man. But on a larger scale than this, and in matters more important, 
 art is a great leveller. It has done much, is doing much now, to give 
 to the daily life of middle-class England a grace and finish, the absence 
 of which was long and bitterly deplored by Aesthetic reformers. It is 
 unlocking the door to a multitude of educating perceptions which had 
 been systematically closed. It is imbuing with a sense of refinement 
 — aristocratic in the best meaning of the word — the middle-class 
 households of the land. Contrast the domestic interiors drawn in 
 Punch by John Leech, about and before the time of the Hyde Park 
 Exhibition of 1851, with those sketched by Mr. Du Mauricr. and then 
 judge of the interval which has been traversed. Fireplaces orna-
 
 504 ENGLAND. 
 
 merited with Dutch tiles, carved oak chimneypieces, costly wall- 
 papers, dadoes, and all the other most perfect appliances and apparatus 
 in which the artistic soul delights may not be within the reach of 
 everyone. But little objects conceived in the true artistic spirit, and 
 eloquent of the distinguishing tone of modern culture, which give a 
 pretty air of finish of the right kind even to an apartment crowded 
 by sins against the true aesthetic canons, may be bought wonderfully 
 cheap. It is something, surely, that the Philistine British public, 
 against which Mr. Matthew Arnold has inveighed so often and so 
 bitterly, has learned the use of the tints of pale olive, faint blue, 
 dull yellow in its wall-papers, and sees, in the rich effect when a 
 glass with scarlet chrysanthemums is placed against that background, 
 what its true meaning is. How full of rest those dreamy curves and 
 subdued tints are is best known to invalids, condemned formerly to 
 gaze on a bed of sickness on brilliant green wreaths or combinations 
 of roses tied in impossible knots, and depicted in impossible hues. 
 
 The names of two persons and of two institutions are prominently 
 connected with this awakening on the part of the English public at 
 large to the new artistic life — the late Prince Consort and Mr. Buskin 
 on the one hand : the Exhibition of 1851 and South Kensington on 
 the other. Few men in the history of a nation have ever le»t so 
 powerful an influence to its scientific, artistic — some will add political 
 — development as the husband of Queen Victoria. His taste and 
 example gave an immense stimulus to the popularity of music. His 
 encouragement was a signal . advantage to British painting and 
 sculpture and science. The world's fair in Hyde Park, when the 
 present century bad arrived at middle age, was not only the first of a 
 series of international exhibitions, but did for art with the English 
 public what Socrates did for philosophy when he brought it down from 
 the gods to men— it taught the English people that the goddess might 
 be domiciled in a middle-class English home as well as in a Venetian 
 palace. Had it not been for Prince Albert, this event, which marks an 
 era in the history of the humanities in this country, might never have 
 occurred. The work which the Exhibition began. South Kensington 
 has continued. To say that South Kensington migbt have held up a 
 higber standard and a better model of artistic imitation to the English 
 public than it has, is not to destroy its claim to grateful recognition. 
 Its influence has been in the direction of sweetness and light. It has 
 inspired the mothers and daughters of England with ideas which, if 
 they have about them nothing that is heroic, have about them also 
 nothing that is not refining. It is the School of Art Needlework at 
 South Kensington which, aided by that loving study of nature for 
 which the present generation is indebted to Mr. Buskin, has given 
 us, instead of the tasteless antimacassars of old, chaircovers em- 
 broidered with such wreaths of jessamine, honeysuckle, or Virginia
 
 MODERN CULTURE AND LITERATURE. 505 
 
 creeper as we may see trailed along a garden wall or bower. Screens 
 and chairs embroidered with delicate white acacia or laburnum, with 
 pink and white hawthorn and myrtle ; or else tapestried with larger 
 designs of birds, and even with effects of trees and water ; curtains 
 covered with pomegranate or orange, fruits and flowers ; doyleys 
 worked with field-flowers : all these unquestionably indicate a great 
 advance on the style in which our drawing-rooms were ornamented at 
 the time of the Exhibition of 1851. In other words, we have, 
 thanks to Mr, Ruskin, learned to replace the conventional by the 
 results of that reverent study of nature which the author of " Modern 
 Painters " has done more than any man living to promote. He it is 
 who has taught those whose lot is cast in these latter days, not only 
 to love nature, but to discover a world of subtle and infinite beauty 
 in her simplest, lowliest aspects : in the very mosses which grow at 
 our feet, and which, as he exquisitely reminds us, cover with their 
 soft tapestry the last couch of earthly rest. " When all other 
 service," he writes in " Modern Painters," " is vain from plant and 
 tree, the soft mosses and grey lichens take up their watch by the head- 
 stone. The woods, the blossoms, the gift-bearing grasses, have done 
 their part for a time, but these do service for ever. Trees for the 
 builder's yard, flowers for the bride's chamber, corn for the granary, 
 moss for the grave." 
 
 Those who have heard Mr. Ruskin in his Oxford lectures dwell with 
 delight on the exquisite beauty of the strawberry plant, leaf, flower, 
 fruit, and stem, can never see it without remembering the glowing 
 words that taught them how much perfection of outline and colouring 
 they had so often suffered to pass under their eyes unheeded. So, 
 tco, has he. pointed out to us the mystic beauty of the olive-tree, 
 with its dim foliage, delicate blossoms, and dark fruits — which even 
 the great southern masters of painting overlooked, possibty because 
 it was so near them — and of countless other things in earth and air 
 and water. 
 
 The faculty of seeing more than meets the careless eye, and the 
 cultivation of the faculty, have had other valuable effects than those 
 which are purely artistic. By degrees our middle class is becoming 
 gradually disabused of the vulgar notion that a large outlay is required 
 for the tasteful arrangement of our rooms. The fact is recognised' 
 that the true artist can work, and work well, with the very simplest 
 materials. And these influences are already becoming visible in the 
 dress of women. What is chiefly conspicuous in modern feminine 
 fashions is the latitude of personal choice, the opportunity of indi- 
 vidualism in costume which they allow, and above all things, the 
 revolt against the Parisian dressmaker. There is certainly much less 
 of rigid conformity to a single type than during the reign of crinoline, 
 or during the interval which immediately followed, when ladies emulated
 
 f)OG ENGLAND. 
 
 in the limpness of their robes the appearance of one who might have 
 just been immersed in a duck-pond. Nor does this hold true of dress 
 only. Half a decade or a decade ago the feminine hair was dressed 
 after one uniform pattern, quite irrespective of the contour and require- 
 ments of head and face. Of course a prevailing mode there still is — 
 or, more correctly, there are two or three prevailing modes. But 
 within certain and tolerably elastic limits a very considerable latitude 
 of choice is allowed. In other words, ladies are rightly claiming and 
 discreetly exercising more of an intelligent and personal initiative than 
 they have ever before done. The fact is gradually being recognised 
 that dregs really stands in the same relation to the physical form that 
 language does to thought, and that as for each variety of the latter 
 there is the expression which is most appropriate, so in the case of 
 the former there must be a reasonable artistic relation between the 
 garment worn and the person wearing it. Thus it is that art has 
 descended from the cold heights on which she once dwelt apart, and 
 has thrown the grace of her presence over the familiar objects of 
 everyday life. It is a further eminently satisfactory quality in the 
 feminine costume of to-day that improvements in taste and economy 
 in a great measure go together. Comparatively few ladies can afford 
 such a dress as was exhibited at the School of Art in 1876, and after- 
 wards sent to the Philadelphia Exhibition. But many, happily, can 
 now work, and even design, borders of fruit and flowers, which give 
 grace and character to the simplest costume, or paint sprigs of blossoms 
 or clusters of flowers on the surface of silk and muslin skirts. 
 
 Even the domestic recreations of English homes in the present day 
 illustrate the beneficent and humanising power of the artistic spirit. 
 Painting on china is a graceful art, which is now not a little practised, 
 and has received special encouragement from the Imperial Princess of 
 Germany. Blue and white chimney-tiles, dainty Watteau groups on 
 china plates or terra-cotta, may be executed by everyone who has 
 artistic taste and leisure to cultivate it. It is a common and a welcome 
 sight to see the young ladies of an English family employed in deco- 
 rating the earthenware cups and jugs manufactured and used by the 
 peasants at Dinan — which may be bought for a few sous, and take oil 
 paint perfectly — with a little design of poppies or daisies that converts 
 the jar or cup at once into a work of art. Here one may surely trace, 
 in a manner however imperfect, a humble realisation of the fancy 
 illustrated by Mr. Longfellow in "Keramos" — the graceful volume ot 
 verse in which he sings so well the art that was a passion with Bernard 
 Palissy, the Huguenot potter. 
 
 When we approach modern English art, as embodied in the creations 
 of the contemporary painter, we are in the presence of a difficult and 
 delicate subject, which cannot here be dwelt upon with any pretence 
 to completeness. It is charged against the latter-day school of English
 
 MODERN CULTURE AND LITERATURE. 507 
 
 painters that their skill and imagination are divorced from the stirring 
 events of the time ; that the atmosphere, social, political, scientific, 
 abounds in ideas which might well stimulate them to heroic efforts ; 
 that they lack the courage to grasp or the fancy to illustrate these ; 
 that if they exercise their fancy upon circumstances of English life, 
 they portray nothing nohler than a scene in a parlour or on a lawn, 
 on the downs at Epsom, or at the railway station of Charing Cross ; 
 that the only type of the knight of chivalry which they can see in 
 contemporary society is the well-dressed young guardsman ; and that 
 their loftiest visions of womanly nobility and beauty are to be dis- 
 covered in the persons of a bevy of pretty young ladies standing 
 before a picture or engaged in a game of lawn tennis. In a word, our 
 painters, when they do not devote themselves to the region of history, 
 allegory, and legend, have, according to this view, lost the secret of the 
 " grand style." Hence, it is alleged, the real traditions and the true 
 and best idiosyncrasies of English art are not to be found in the 
 painters of the period. They do not reflect English character as 
 Hogarth, Wilkie, Turner, and Gainsborough did. English character 
 is full of enterprise and daring, is consumed by a restless thirst for 
 action, is always eager for veritably imperial undertakings. Where, it 
 is asked despairingly, can we look for any evidence of this in con- 
 temporary English art ? And yet we are reminded, in the words of 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds, "the ideal perfection and beauty are not to be 
 sought in the heavens, but upon the earth. They are about us and 
 upon every side of us." The whole of this question was ably dis- 
 cussed, though exclusively from one standpoint, by a writer in the 
 Quarterly Review for February, 1879. " To represent action," says 
 the writer, " in some form or another, is the aim of every great painter. 
 In landscape, for example : how full of action is the painting of Turner, 
 who may be truly said to have invented the great style in this branch 
 of the art. The different lights and the far distances of his pictures 
 blend in extraordinary sympathy with the human associations of the 
 scene. His ' Rise ' and ' Decline of Carthage,' and his ' Fighting 
 Temeraire,' though the representation of human life in these is entirely 
 subordinate, have all the feeling of a great tragic poet. They seize 
 the unseen worth or character of the subject." Now it is just this 
 "action" which, the complaint runs, is conspicuously absent from 
 the most noticeable of modern pictures. Thus Mr. Brett's " Cornish 
 Lions" is a beautiful presentation of a dazzling blue sea, illuminated 
 by a sunshine so brilliant as to make each cranny and indentation 
 in the cliff visible. But the general effect of the picture appears 
 to this critic " to be that of suspended life." The same test is 
 applied to Mr. Herkomer, whose picture of the " Evening in the 
 Workhouse," with its predominant tone of sombre, hopeless peace, 
 is contrasted with Wilkie's " Blind Fiddler " and " Blind Man's
 
 508 ENGLAND. 
 
 I'uff ; " to Mr. Long, who, it is admitted, has a keen dramatic 
 sense, but who, in bis Egyptian picture, "The Making of the Gods," 
 persists in employing it in realising the idea of an obsolete super- 
 stition ; to Mr. Marks, who, it is deplored, gives up to dumb 
 animals that faculty of active and energising creation which was 
 surely " meant for mankind." To sum up : the three chief faults 
 of our modern pictorial art, in the opinion of a writer whose compe- 
 tence and representative position entitle his views to consideration, 
 are these — first, the want of life-like vigour and action ; secondly, the 
 alienation of artistic fancy from the stirring events of the time ; and 
 thirdly, if contemporary history is resorted to, the selection of un- 
 worthy and commonplace scenes and incidents. There is, of course, 
 a protest against the feeble realism in the modes of thought prevalent 
 among a certain section of society, and these modes of thought are bodied 
 forth on some of the canvases of the period. Thus, the critic writes : — 
 
 " Those who last summer visited the Grosvenor Gallery found themselves in a region 
 from which the vulgar and the familiar were fastidiously banished. If they had been 
 offended in the Academy with the somewhat lavish imitation of particulars, they might 
 here solace themselves with pure abstraction ; if, in Burlington House, they had breathed 
 with some difficulty the conventional atmosphere of modern society, here at least they 
 might retire into the middle ages; they might listen to the pastoral pipe of the Renais- 
 sance, roam among rocks and mountains that appeared to have strayed out of the 
 pictures of Benozzo Gozzoli, or ransack their memories before the faces of krjights and 
 angels whose acquaintance they fancied they had made long ago on some canvas of 
 Giorgione or Sandro Botticelli. Surely here, if anywhere, was to be found that artistic 
 generalisation, that imaginative energy, which Sir Joshua Reynolds declared to be the 
 characteristic of the 'great style.' Alas, no! The representative painters of the 
 Grosvenor Gallery had even less conception of action than the painters of the Academy: 
 for if the latter restricted themselves to imitation, at least they imitated actual life, but 
 the former merely imitated certain peculiarities in the style of the old masters. Mr. 
 Burne Jones is the chief master of this school. His picture, entitled ' Laus Veneris,' 
 represented a number of ladies sitting in the foreground, gorgeously attired, and in the 
 background some knights in white armour looking in at a window as they rode by. The 
 women in the chief group were doing nothing. They had even stopped singing the 
 praises of Venus, which, it appears, was their sole resource for passing the time. They 
 bad all one type of face, one morbid kind of complexion, one monotonous expression, 
 which culminated in the figure of the Queen, who, with her seat thrust back from the 
 rest, her crown on her knees, and her feet far extended in front of her, seemed to have 
 resigned herself to the dominion of ennui. A similar somnolent languor pervaded Mr. 
 Jones's ' Chant d'Amour;' indeed, so potent was its influence, that a Cupid, who had 
 been apparently borrowed from Botticelli for the purpose of blowing the bellows of an 
 organ — which for some reason the female musician has chosen to play on the top of a 
 wall — had actually fallen asleep at his work. In like manner the abstractions of 'Day 
 and Night' and the 'Four Seasons' indicated not the action of light and darkness, nor 
 the variety of generation and production, but the perpetual presence in the painter's 
 mind of thoughts on revolution and decay." 
 
 What is there to be said on the other side of the question, not 
 so much as regards the technical merit of modern paintings — which 
 is not now the quality in dispute — as on the subject of the relation 
 existing between the time and the works of pictorial art which it pro- 
 duces ? Before we pass to this question, we may notice that while there
 
 MODERN CULTURE AND LITERATURE. 509 
 
 is much that may yearly disappoint and anger the lover of art on the 
 walls of Burlington House — much which, when one compares the 
 crudity of colouring and the hastiness of outline with the mellow 
 glow on the canvas of French or Belgian artists, might tempt Con- 
 tinental masters to reverse the saying of Correggio when he first saw 
 Kaphael's masterpiece : "And I too am a painter!" — there is still 
 one charming branch of art in which the supremacy remains to Eng- 
 land. English water-colours are, and are likely to be, unrivalled. 
 David Cox's " Hayfields ; " Midler's "Eastern or English Scenes ; " 
 De Wint's " Church by the Banks of a Winding River," at South Ken- 
 sington ; George Mason's pictures of " Girls dancing by the Sea," 
 " The Harvest Moon," " The Evening Hymn," exhibited a few years 
 ago at the Burlington Fine Arts Club ; Pin well's " Mother of Thomas 
 k Becket reaching London," a work of dream-like beauty ; Frederick 
 Walker's exquisite collection of drawings and sketches — the memorial 
 of genius too early lost to us — among which " The Right of Way " 
 and " The Fisher Boy," are perhaps the most perfect : these constitute 
 sufficiently conclusive proofs of tbe superiority of English painters in 
 water-colours. 
 
 Nor is it fair, or even intelligent, to speak in the language of 
 unqualified depreciation of the Grosvenor Gallery and the school of 
 art which it represents. The extravagances of that school may seem 
 sufficiently glaring. Yet if there is much in it which is crude and 
 fantastic, there is much, too, which is fruitful in promise and rich in 
 ideas. And many of these ideas are an integral portion of the true 
 inspiration of the time in, and the scenes amid, which we live. Take 
 the case of the wan figure of Autumn in the tableaux of the seasons, 
 each of them entirely different from the received types, with the 
 legend written below : —   
 
 o 
 
 " Laden Autumn, here I stand, 
 Worn of heart and weak of hand ! 
 Kest alone seems good to me — 
 Speak the word and set me free." 
 
 It was a sad, perhaps a morbid, view of Autumn this, but it was 
 one not easily forgotten. Another representative specimen of this 
 scbool of art may be witnessed in the " Capture of Proserpine," where 
 the " coal-black steeds" bear the chariot upwards into the flowery 
 meadow thick with narcissus, while across the pitch-black cavern 
 whence they issue is trailed a flower of deep orange or flame colour. 
 This contrast, the effect of which is in itself highly remarkable, is 
 eminently characteristic of the school, and may be seen also in the 
 memorial window erected to Frederick Vyner at Oxford. The designers 
 of this are Mr. Morris and Mr. Burne Jones, and almost all the colour 
 is concentrated in the aureole of flame about the white-robed figure. 
 Again, whatever affectation there may be in the phraseology applied
 
 510 ENGLAND. 
 
 by Mr. Whistler to his pictures — "Nocturnes," " Symphonies," 
 " Caprices " — it cannot be denied that they have a copious measure of 
 suggestive poetry. The shower of sparks from a burning house 
 thrown on the dark sky of night, the dim gleam of lamps, like gold 
 and red stars through mist, idealising the effect of a London river- 
 fog — surely this is poetry, such poetry as any of us can see any day, 
 if we look for it. 
 
 While it is his obscurer effects which make Turner, who is too great 
 to be the exclusive possession of any school, a special favourite with 
 that of high art, Sandro Botticelli among mediaeval painters, with his 
 quaint serious angels and Madonnas, his filmy draperies and flowery 
 backgrounds, is one of those who find most favour with the artists in 
 colours whose corresponding artists in words are William Morris and 
 Philip Bourke Marston. Nor is it only to Sandro Botticelli that we 
 must go if we would find the original sources of these inspirations. 
 Andrea Mantegna, more grand and processional in his outlines and 
 groupings, is yet sufficiently pre-Raphaelite to please the school ; 
 Giorgione, also, in spite of his later birth — the young Venetian whose 
 pictures are lighted from within, as it were, by a golden glow — has fed 
 the fancy of the neo-sesthetic sect. The influence of the " Giorgion- 
 esque " may be traced, to give an illustration, in Mr. Albert Moore's 
 " Sapphires " — a woman's figure robed in loose draperies, her head 
 crowned with a luminous turban. The splendid glow of blue and 
 orange in her robes and jewels is gem-like, transparent, and radiant 
 with splendour. It is easier for the uninitiated spectator to appreciate 
 the beauty of pictures such as these than that of the presentations of 
 the pallid red-haired figures, worn and wasted, the lank forms and 
 clinging draperies, which are much affected by this school. Perhaps 
 a picture of Tissot — "Autumn" — exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery 
 in 1878, may help the critic in some degree towards an understanding 
 of the charm which may be found in these unlovely forms and ghastly 
 visages. The charm of this work does not lie entirely in Tissot's 
 masterly foreshortenings and perspectives. There is something more 
 that appeals especially to the present generation. The pale, wistful 
 young face, turned sadly back to us for a moment, while the figui'e, in 
 heavy mourning robes, retreats swiftly along under the chestnut-tree, 
 and the autumn wind sweeps down its large, yellow, fan-like leaves 
 and scatters them thickly along her path, brings a message full of 
 meaning to the heart of many a spectator in these days of sadness, 
 weariness, unsatisfied yearning — a spirit which is expressed in that 
 eager outlook into futurity called by the Germans " Sehnsucht." 
 Again, while this kind of art, though certainly not representing Eng- 
 lish character, may be said to reflect a certain morbid and evanescent 
 phase of English thought, it may also be regarded in another light — 
 a a reaction from the realism which pervades so much of the art that
 
 MODERN CULTURE AND LITERATURE. 511 
 
 is purely popular. From these pictures, which merely give us the 
 outside aspect of things, it may conceivably be a relief to some persons 
 to turn to those in which the curious imagination may read any mean- 
 ing that it chooses. To Turner, it has been said, nothing was common 
 and unclean ; and a Mason can invest with grace and beauty such a 
 subject as " The Clothes Line." These are cases of an exceptional 
 power ; and it is perhaps because so many of our cleverest painters 
 fail to develop the landscape and the objects which they depict with 
 the hues of their imagination, that there is a certain public which can 
 enjoy the fantasies of pre-Raphaelitism. 
 
 There are other features yet to be noticed in the artistic aspect of 
 modern popular culture. Mr. Ruskin has been the leader of the school 
 of aesthetic prophets ; his influence has germinated to such an extent 
 that a considerable proportion of the literature of the day is purely 
 artistic. First, there are the many periodicals devoted to art — such as 
 " I/Art," " The Portfolio," " The Art Journal," and " The Maga- 
 zine of Art " — with their careful and conscientious, if somewhat artifi- 
 cially subtle, criticisms, and their beautifully executed engravings ; 
 then there are the various periodicals which aim at bringing home the 
 rudiments of true art to English middle-class households, chief 
 among which — if we except " The Century " and " Harper's Monthly," 
 both of which are American — is " The Illustrated English Maga- 
 zine ;" lastly, there is the crowd of writers upon art subjects who 
 have efficiently continued the work which Mr. Ruskin began. Mr. 
 P. G. Hamerton is at once an accomplished man of letters and an 
 authority upon all subjects connected with the studio. The beauty of 
 his style causes his works to be eminently pleasant and popular read- 
 ing ; while the thorough knowledge of his subject with which he writes, 
 insensibly develops in the reader an artistic feeling and insight. Dis- 
 tinguished in this school of etching, of which Mr. Hamerton must be 
 regarded as the chief, are Mr. Pater, who may almost claim to be the 
 parent of the idea of the " Giorgionesque " in modern literature and 
 art, Mr. Symonds, Professor Colvin, Mr. Comyns Carr, and Mr. Wed- 
 more. Their books would be in demand independently of their subject, 
 and they play the part of genuine teachers to the ordinary circulat- 
 ing library public, because there is nothing pedagogic, and much of 
 natural and poetic beauty, in their manner. It is also to be noticed 
 that the most popular literature of travel is that which is specially 
 adapted to the taste of the artistic traveller. Such manuals as those 
 written by Mr. Augustus Hare not only contain a great deal of well- 
 digested miscellaneous information, and abound in extracts from 
 volumes like Nathaniel Hawthorne's " Transformation " and Mr. 
 Story's " Roba di Roma," but display consummate insight into the 
 foibles, vanities, and humours of the age for which they are written. 
 They are precisely level with the standard of modern popular culture,.
 
 512 ENGLAND. 
 
 are written mainly from the art point of view, and are really guide- 
 books to artistic culture. 
 
 "While a taste for and sympathy with art, which, if it sometimes 
 assumes a capricious and factitious shape, uniformly exercises a 
 humanising influence, have been spreading throughout the commu- 
 nity, the State has recognised the duty of encouragement and support. 
 The last half century has witnessed the foundation of a National 
 Gallery, the embellishment of the Houses of Parliament with an inter- 
 esting series of historical frescoes, the formation at South Kensington 
 of valuable collections, not only of modern pictures, but of objects of 
 decorative and of industrial art, and of a department of State charged 
 with the duty of superintending the teaching of art throughout the 
 whole country by means of Schools of Design. * Nor has provincial 
 England fallen short of the active enthusiasm which, in the capital, 
 has been displayed by the State. Government grants for art purposes 
 are made to Edinburgh and Dublin ; but the large manufacturing 
 towns receive nothing from the State, and yet private effort in them 
 does a great deal. It would certainly seem desirable that some of 
 the artistic treasures of the British Museum should be occasionally 
 lent to provincial galleries. Meanwhile, in Birmingham, Sheffield, 
 Manchester, Newcastle, and elsewhere, the penny rate levied for free 
 libraries, museums, and art galleries, liberally supplemented as this has 
 been by private donations, has accomplished much, and has provided 
 an elaborate and most effective machinery for educating the popu- 
 lar eye and taste. As yet, this artistic teaching has not mate- 
 rially improved the architectural aspect of our great commercial 
 and industrial centres. Yet even here it is evident that we have 
 taken a new and nobler point of departure. There are structures 
 in Liverpool which invest it with an imperial aspect, worthy of the 
 great place it occupies in our national system ; again, Manchester, 
 notwithstanding its unlovely streets, can boast warehouses of truly 
 palatial appearance, and is adorned by a pile of buildings, erected 
 lor municipal purposes by the Corporation, at once a superb spe- 
 cimen of the genuinely English Gothic and a noble example to the 
 rest of the United Kingdom. The study of architecture itself, and 
 above all, the architecture of the Gothic school, has exercised an im- 
 portant influence on modern culture; signs have been witnessed of 
 the revival of reality in opposition to sham, and it is a distinct gain 
 that oak and granite should be superseding spurious stone and stucco. 
 
 Among the individual influence to which the cultivation of artistic 
 tastes may be ascribed, notice has been taken already of that of the 
 Prince Consort. While he did much to stimulate art, as well as 
 science, it is probably in the domain of music that his example has 
 
 * In L s 7* there werp considerably more than half a million persons receiving instruc- 
 tion in these establishments.
 
 MODERN CULTURE AND LITERATURE. 513 
 
 been most powerfully felt and directly followed. Art, music, and the 
 drama, represent each of them forces equally active among the English 
 middle and upper classes. The reproach that the English are a race 
 which has no music in its soul has only to be applied to our existing 
 social state to be falsified by peals of harmony in every direction. 
 Music, we are told from pulpits and platforms, in essays and in ser- 
 mons, has had an influence not less refining than that of art upon the 
 popular taste ; and the head master of Uppingham School, one of the 
 most successful schoolmasters of the day, considers music essential to 
 the education of youth. We have a Royal Academy, a Royal College, 
 and a National Training School for Music, the former of which receives 
 an annual grant of £500 from Parliament. Music is also being taught 
 in the elementary schools of the United Kingdom ; and experience has 
 shown that part-singing very often brings much innocent pleasure to 
 the poorer classes, who are, probably, worse off than any people in 
 the world for harmless amusements. 
 
 If it cannot be said that in England modern musical taste has 
 resulted in the production of any composers of the first order, it has 
 certainly given us a number of sympathetic and intelligent audiences. 
 Go to any great concert in any large town — notably to the Monday 
 Popular Concerts held in London — and the chances are that a con- 
 siderable minority of listeners will be found with a score-book in their 
 hands. Even as regards composers our merits are at least respect- 
 able. Sterndale Bennett, the chief disciple of Mendelssohn, Macfarren, 
 Sullivan, and Smart constitute a remarkable group, and it is to 
 be noticed that they have each of them belonged to the Academy, 
 either as students or professors, or successively as both. Music is 
 essentially the most cosmopolitan of all the arts and sciences ; and 
 nothing is more to be desired for English music than that travelling 
 scholarships should be instituted in the national music colleges, the 
 successful candidates for which would thus have the opportunity of 
 studying the philosophy of sound in every part of the world. Mr. Du 
 Maurier has given us three pregnant illustrations of the music of the 
 past, the present, and the future. The first represents a lady, a 
 graceful little figure in Watteau costume, performing on the piano a 
 melody of Mozart's. She is surrounded by a group of intelligent and 
 appreciative hearers. Old and young — from the delighted grandfather 
 to the little girl who stands hushed and quiet at her mother's side — 
 are listening, as though the dreams of the gentle, pure-hearted com- 
 poser were understood, and their elevating influences confessed in 
 various measures by all present. Beneath we have the " Music of the 
 Present." A young lady is performing with much execution some 
 brilliant " Morceau " by a modern master, while groups of ladies and 
 gentlemen stand or sit about the piano, conversing among themselves, 
 with polite indifference to the melody. Then we have the " Music of 
 
 L L
 
 514 ENGLAND. 
 
 the Future " — portentous and terrific. A band of frantic, wild-haired 
 musicians are executing some piece of astounding loudness, while the 
 auditors rush away, distractedly covering their ears. There is a 
 story in the " Percy Anecdotes " which tells us that an organ sent by 
 the Emperor of the East, Constantine Cupronymus, to King Pepin of 
 France, a.d. 757, so strongly affected a lady who heard it for the first 
 time that she became delirious for the rest of her days. Possibly, 
 this event may be considered as prefiguring the character of the 
 musicians of the future. It may be doubted whether the popular 
 artist does not, in the first of these tableaux, exaggerate the musical 
 attainments of our ancestresses. Although a lady once performed in 
 the hearing of Dr. Johnson a sonata, the extreme difficulty of which 
 was proudly pointed out by her mother, only to provoke the charac- 
 teristic, " Madam, I wish it had been impossible ! " it was the very 
 rare exception a hundred years ago to find anybody who could 
 execute more than the simplest tunes on the spinet or harpsichord. 
 
 When we look at the more tumultuous picture in the set above 
 mentioned, we may perhaps recognise the reflection of the troubles 
 and perplexities of modern life in the music of the period. It is 
 probably only when they are regarded from this point of view, that 
 the extraordinarily intricate compositions of the Abbe Liszt or th£ 
 prodigious tone-pictures of Wagner become intelligible. Here, too, 
 may be discovered a reason why the palm of musical supremacy is 
 generally accorded to Germany. The soft and almost languid senti- 
 mentalism of Italian, the airy and sparkling brilliance of French com- 
 posers, are not the echoes of those manifold sounds which constitute 
 the gamut of human nature in the same way as the music of Germany. 
 There may be an infinity of charm in Italian sweetness and in French 
 variations, but for those harmonies which are the symbols in sound 
 of the greatest joys, deepest sorrows, highest hopes, most painful 
 conflicts of human nature, we must, probably, go to Teutonic minstrels. 
 If proof of this is wanted, it is to be found in Wagner's opera of 
 Tannhauser, and in Schumann ; at the same time the influences both 
 of Schubert and Chopin have had a profound effect in moulding the 
 musical taste of the day. 
 
 We pass on to another, and as, perhaps, some will think it should 
 lie rated, the first, element in the popular culture of the day. The 
 machinery for the teaching of science is even more highly organised 
 than that for the teaching of art ; nor does science lack the popularity 
 and fashionable prestige which art conspicuously commands. There 
 are classes for scientific instruction in all our great schools, and, 
 independently of our great schools, in all our great towns. The 
 universities award their highest distinctions to successful candidates 
 in the examinations of which natural science forms the subject ; and 
 the foremost writers upon scientific matters are certainly the most
 
 MODERN CULTURE AND LITERATURE. 515 
 
 popular among the authors of the clay, and for the same reason that 
 holds good of the artistic writers — namely, because their literary style 
 is alike pleasing and perspicuous. The influence of the British Asso- 
 ciation for the Encouragement of Science increases every year. 
 Naturalist and field-clubs are popular in country districts ; and 
 scientific institutes, with valuable scientific libraries attached, abound 
 in our leading centres of manufacturing industry. 
 
 In a very great degree the extent to which physical science is now 
 cultivated must be attributed to the individual influence of two dis- 
 tinguished men. Mr. Huxley and Mr. Tyndall would be eminent 
 as writers, even if they were not masters of scientific exposition. 
 It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that what Mr. Gladstone has 
 done for finance, Mr. Huxley has done for the facts of physical science. 
 Upon medical training as well as upon general education and culture 
 his influence has been equally manifest. The training of our future 
 doctors and surgeons should, according to Mr. Huxley, be a department 
 of the general education of the country — should, in fact, be a more 
 minute and perfect elaboration of that scientific discipline which ought 
 to be imparted in all national schools. Chemistry, botany, and physics 
 would thus be subjects as universally recognised in our educational 
 establishments as classics or mathematics. Those students who elected 
 to follow a medical career would pass from the general schools to 
 some one or other of the two or three great medical institutions with 
 which Mr. Huxley would replace the multitude of smaller ones that 
 at present exist. One may discover in the scientific writings of this 
 distinguished teacher qualities analogous to those which are the chief 
 notes of Mr. Ruskin as a writer on art. As Mr. Ruskin admires so 
 deeply the exquisite beauty of the works of Nature in the vegetable 
 world, so does Mr. Huxley explain, in language equally appreciative 
 and happily chosen, and enforce by arguments strikingly suggestive 
 and cogent, the marvellous thrift and wisdom which characterises all 
 creation. There can be no better example of his power of interesting 
 the popular attention on scientific matters than his essays and addresses, 
 avowedly having for their subjects yeast, the formation of coal, 
 the physical basis of life. In each of these we have not merely the 
 investigator and the philosopher, but the man of general culture, tbe 
 scholar, and — as his essays on Berkeley and Descartes, among other 
 writings show — the interested metaphysician. Take his illustration of 
 the nature of protoplasm as a singularly happy piece of popular ex- 
 position. He draws here a clever analogy between it and Balzac's 
 story of the " Peau de Chagrin." " The hero," he continues, " becomes 
 possessed of a magical wild ass's skin, which yields him the means of 
 gratifying all his wishes. But the surface represents the duration of 
 the proprietor's life, and for every desire satisfied the skin shrinks in 
 proportion to the intensity of fruition, until at length life, or the last 
 
 ll 2
 
 16 ENGLAND. 
 
 handbreadth of the peau de chagrin, disappears with the gratification of 
 a last wish.'' Accordingly to Huxley, this was the foreshadowing of 
 a physiological truth : "at any rate, the matter of life is a veritable 
 ]>eau de chagrin, and for every vital act it is somewhat the smaller. All 
 work implies waste, or the work of life results, directly or indirectly, in 
 the waste of protoplasm." Happily for mankind, he continues to ex- 
 plain, the waste continually going on can be repaired by eating beef 
 and mutton. " Mutton itself was once the living protoplasm, more 
 or less modified, of another animal — sheep. ... A singular inward 
 laboratory which I possess will dissolve a certain portion of the modi- 
 fied protoplasm ; the solution so formed will pass into my veins, and 
 the subtle influences to which it will then be subjected will convert 
 the dead protoplasm into living protoplasm, or transubstantiate the 
 sheep into man." The sheep, in turn, has received its protoplasm 
 from the vegetable world, and thus the matter of life and thought is 
 built up from the foundation to the summit of the common matter of 
 the universe. 
 
 In a degree perhaps even greater than Mr. Huxley, Mr. Tyndall is 
 the populariser of science. " Sound," " Light," " Radiation," are the 
 titles of books on subjects which, a few years ago, were strictly con- 
 fined to scientific circles. Mr. Tyndall has brought these topics, and 
 an enormous amount of matter necessary for their illustration, from 
 the laboratory, as the forecourt of the Temple of Philosophy, to the 
 lecture-hall of the Royal Institution. Like Mr. Huxley, Mr. Tyndall's 
 work has been directed to the annihilation of two great popular 
 delusions — the first, that either men or women will not be prac- 
 tically the happier and the better for the acquisition of scientific 
 knowledge ; the second, that education is finished when school is 
 left behind, and is not rather a process to be continued throughout 
 life. Here, then, we may discover one of the surest antidotes to that 
 mischievous tendency which some critics have discovered in modern 
 scientific teaching. If it can be said that physical science has given 
 man an exaggerated notion of his power, it has also, as taught by its 
 ablest exponents, shown him how infinite is his ignorance, and im- 
 planted in the popular mind a desire to gain a greater insight into 
 the operations of nature. 
 
 Nor is it only on intellectual grounds that the public is indebted 
 to scientific teaching. Physical research has a further popular attrac 
 tion : first, because it is perceived that some comprehension of it 
 • necessary for healthy living ; secondly, because it is daily more 
 and more recognised how truly philanthropic are its services. 
 Probably, no man now living has had the distinction of saving 
 more human lives than Sir Joseph Lister, Clinical Professor at 
 King's College, London. His antiseptic treatment — the result of much 
 patient inquiry and complicated research — has only slowly won
 
 MODERN CULTURE AND LITERATURE. ;">17 
 
 recognition in London, though it was long ago adopted in America, 
 and has alleviated the agonies of countless victims in the course of 
 recent European wars. On the death of Sir William Ferguson, the 
 Clinical Chair of Surgery at King's College was offered to Sir Joseph 
 Lister, who, feeling that here a signal opportunity had presented itself 
 for the fulfilment of his beneficent mission, gave up a lucrative practice 
 and a distinguished position in Edinburgh. In coming to London 
 Sir Joseph Lister may be said to have been invading the enemy's 
 country. He had not been in the capital a year before he may also 
 be said to have conquered it, by the combination of bigh personal 
 qualities with eminent scientific attainments and success. 
 
 Again, science occupies a conspicuous place among the forces which 
 contribute to the sum of modern culture, not only because it deals with 
 demonstrable verities, but because it opens a vista full of dazzling 
 fascinations to the imagination. In this department of science the 
 names of Sir Wyville Thompson and Dr. Carpenter are entitled to 
 prominent mention. The Challenger Expedition was organised by the 
 Government, in deference to the repeated and emphatic representa- 
 tions of Dr. Carpenter, for the purpose of fathoming the mysteries of 
 the ocean. That the subject of deep-sea exploration should have a 
 vivid attraction for the popular mind is natural in itself, and is signally 
 illustrated by the eagerness with which the public have flocked to hear 
 lectures and to read books on the subject. We begin to be aware that 
 we are entering upon the triumph of man over nature predicted by 
 Bacon. We have already measured the earth, gauged the depth of its 
 crust, ascertained the date of its genesis ; we have weighed the sun, 
 and constructed maps of the planets. It remained to sound the lowest 
 depths of the ocean, and to provide the materials for a picture of the 
 economy of its abysses. Here we have found Nature in the very midst 
 of that work which she has been carrying on for countless ages, as 
 busy now as when first she undertook the development of the planet 
 we inhabit out of mist, haze, and floating nebulae. 
 
 Mr. Huxley and Mr. Tyndall have both of them a distinguished 
 opponent in Mr. St. George Mivart, who, though a firm champion of 
 Roman Catholicism, would nevertheless admit some of the cardinal prin- 
 ciples of Mr. Huxley and Mr. Tyndall. Thus he would not deny that the 
 general appearance of the world justifies the conclusion that all species 
 have been introduced by a process of evolution. He would, however, 
 deny that evolution and the mere operation of secondary laws are 
 enough to explain those phenomena and those attributes which are 
 most especially distinctive of man. Granted, he might possibly allow, 
 that you can account for the formation of the human body in the 
 same way as you may account for the formation of the bodies of other 
 animals — how, he would ask, are you to account for the growth of that 
 intelligence which specially diffei'entiates a man from other animals, or
 
 518 ENGLAND. 
 
 for that sense of justice which, in however rudimentary a form, is im- 
 planted in the rudest and most savage of the human kind ? Apropos of 
 this second point, Mr. Mivart cites the instance of a ferocious and un- 
 civilised Australian tribe, one of whose punishments is the thrusting of 
 a spear into the thigh. If, for certain offences, he says, the weapon is 
 embedded too deeply in the human flesh, the victim of the wound pro- 
 tests. What, he asks, is this, if not a sense of justice, showing itself 
 in however primitive a form ? When Mr. Huxley and Mr. Tyndall 
 explain human intelligence and those sentiments which we recognise 
 as moral, by the simple statement that they have been evolved by the 
 ordinary operation of secondary laws actively in progress, through an 
 innumerable succession of generations, Mr. Mivart would observe that 
 the generations of the lower creatures have been infinitely more 
 numerous, not only as regards the rapidity of their sequence, but in 
 view of the period from which they date, than the generations of 
 men. If, therefore, the mere lapse of time has not given to animals 
 and insects, eminently endowed with a sort of intelligence, precisely 
 that variety of intelligence which is to be found in man, how is the 
 phenomenon to be accounted for save by the hypothesis of the 
 intervention of some superior power — in other words, of the Divine 
 action ? Mr. Alfred Wallace, himself a follower of Mr. Darwin, and a 
 believer in evolution, admits the existence of this difficulty, and seems 
 disposed to explain it by the assumed operation of spirits. Of the 
 numerous works of other followers of one or other of these master- 
 spirits, the "Unseen Universe," by Mr. Stewart and Mr. Tait, maybe 
 quoted as an illustration of scientific theorizing ; and Mr. Clifford's 
 " Essays " as an attempt to popularise science on an absolutely scep- 
 tical basis. 
 
 It was inevitable that the extraordinary advance and development 
 of scientific culture should influence both the literature and religion 
 of the clay. Physiology and psychology — the latter being, for the 
 most part, interpreted by the former — control or powerfully tincture 
 the imagination of at least one of the leading spirits of our modern 
 liteiature. Scientific terminology is introduced to indicate the facts, 
 feelings, and phenomena with which the novelist and the poet deal. 
 There are many phrases in the later works of George Eliot which are 
 absolutely unintelligible to the reader who has not been also in some 
 degree a student of physical or mental science. It is, indeed, no new 
 thing that the scientific conceptions of the period should be mirrored 
 forth in contemporary literature. Homer, Dante, and Milton all adopt 
 and illustrate the current cosmogonies of their several ages. In the 
 " Iliad " and the " Odyssey " there is the same scheme of the universe 
 shadowed forth as in the primitive charts of the geographer. The 
 " Divine Comedy " has well been described by a critic of our day — 
 Mr. Edward Dowden — as a harmony of philosophy, physics, and
 
 MODERN CULTURE AND LITERATURE. 519 
 
 poetry ; while in " Paradise Lost " the astronomical theories were not 
 more fancifully unsound than they were elaborately consistent. Nor 
 in the present age is the motto of all our poets " art for art's 
 sake." The doctrine of human progress penetrates the verse of Lord 
 Tennyson, and what has been called the " cosmical feeling for 
 nature" — the consciousness that in the infinite complexity of the 
 world there is still unity — is not more visible in Mr. Carlyle than in the 
 Laureate. When Teufelsdrockh exclaims, " Force, force, everywhere 
 force ; we ourselves a mysterious force in the centre of these ! " he 
 hints at the same truth as is embodied in the lines entitled " The 
 Higher Pantheism." 
 
 "Flower in the crannied wall, 
 I pluck you out of the crannies ; 
 Hold you here, root and all, in my hand, 
 Little flower — but if I could understand 
 What you are, root and all, and all in all, 
 I should know what God and man is." 
 
 But this is only a less characteristic illustration of the influence of 
 science upon literature. Literature has not merely been influenced by 
 science, but invaded by it ; and when a critic, able, learned, and in 
 this case profoundly sympathetic — Mr. Hutton — can only explain in 
 such a passage as the following the meaning of a poem, it is clear that 
 we are rapidly replacing the old school of literary by a new school of 
 scientific critics : — 
 
 " If I may venture to interpret so great a writer's thought, I should say that ' The 
 Spanish Gipsy' is written to illustrate, not merely doubly and trebly, but from four or 
 live distinct points of view, how the inheritance of the definite streams of impulse and 
 tradition stored up in what we call race often puts a tragic veto upon any attempt of 
 spontaneous individual emotion or volition to ignore or defy their control, and to eman- 
 cipate itself from the tyranny of their disputable and apparently cruel rule. You can 
 see the influence of the recent Darwinian doctrines, so far as they are applicable at all to 
 moral characteristics and causes, in almost every page of the poem. How the threads of 
 hereditary capacity and hereditary sentiment control, as with invisible cords, the orbits 
 of even the most powerful characters ; how the fracture of those threads, so far as it can 
 be accomplished by mere will, may have even a greater effect in wrecking character than 
 moral degeneracy would itself produce ; how the man who trusts and uses the hereditary- 
 forces which natural descent has bestowed upon him becomes a might and a centre in 
 the world, while the man, perhaps intrinsically the nobler, who dissipates his strength by 
 trying to swim against the stream of his past is neutralised and paralysed by the vain 
 effort ; again how a divided past, a past not really homogeneous, may weaken this kind 
 of power, instead of strengthening it by the command of a larger experience — all this 
 George Eliot's poem paints with & tragical force that answers to Aristotle's definition of 
 tragedy, that which ' purifies' by pity and by fear."* 
 
 The points of contact between science and religion are sufficiently 
 recognised by theological teachers of our time. No clergyman in 
 England, of any denomination, would venture to address for successive 
 weeks a congregation at all highly educated without keeping himself 
 
 * " Essays," by R. H. Hutton, pp. 348, 349.
 
 520 ENGLAND. 
 
 abreast of the scientific literature of the day. It is to be noticed that 
 the manner in which science is dealt with by theology, and theology 
 by science, is no longer what it once was. Science was used hy Paley 
 to overcome the religious difficulties suggested by reason ; reason is 
 now used to show that religion is capable of scientific treatment. Nor 
 does the professional teacher of religion altogether deny this ; for the 
 most part he admits the probable truth of many scientific hypotheses. 
 If he is a Roman Catholic or High Anglican, he meets the declaration 
 of the irreconcilable feud between the discoveries of geology and the 
 letter of the first chapter of Genesis, with the admission that it may 
 be as the geologists assert, and that the Church has not spoken autho- 
 ritatively on the subject. If he takes his stand upon the basis of a 
 liberal latitudinarianism, he is not concerned to deny the Darwinian 
 theory of evolution. Religion, he holds, begins where science ends. 
 There is a boundary which science is impotent to pass. Behind the 
 law of nature must be the Lawgiver ; beyond the phenomena must be 
 their great First Cause. 
 
 Nor is the attitude assumed by science towards theology hostile, 
 in the sense in which many of Faraday's contemporaries, most unlike 
 Faraday himself, were the enemies of revelation. Modern science 
 speaks with condescension of " our noble Bible," and affably prepares 
 the " Prayer Gauge " as the best solution of a dubious problem. A 
 similar rationalism, though manifested in a somewhat unattractive 
 way, is perceptible in the philosophical analysis of human sentiments 
 given by Professor Bain, who considers the affection of a mother for 
 her child — which Victor Hugo, in tbe happy phrase of genius, has 
 spoken of as " divinely animal " — as " purely animal." The late 
 Charles Kingsley, commenting upon the opinion of Professor Bain not 
 long before his death, said : " The end of such a philosophy must be 
 very near." It has been finely shown by one of the most distin- 
 guished of contemporary theologians tnat the great crowning fact of 
 Christian history is " not the solution, but the illumination of the 
 mysteries of life." This is a hypothesis at least as legitimate in its 
 way as many of the hypotheses of science. The truths of science are 
 eternal ; scarcely so the ascendancy over the individual of a science 
 which is apt entirely to ignore the imaginative element in man. 
 Physicism, in its present shape, can scarcely hope to supplant religion ; 
 and if it be said that science is really more of a creed at the present 
 day than theology, it is possible that the world may swing back from 
 that state which marks nothing more than the temporary supremacy 
 of Pessimism. Pessimism, as the correlative of Optimism, has always 
 existed, and it now sounds audibly, in a pathetic minor, through much 
 of our literature, philosophy, and art. If it really be the case that, 
 ■with many, natural science has at the present day taken the place of 
 faith, the question is not so much, Will the new reign of reason be
 
 MODERN CULTURE AND LITERATURE. 521 
 
 permanent ? as, For what limited period will it last ? Whoever the 
 Pope of the future may be, will his garb be that of the physical 
 inquirer '? It may be that the next era of philosophical investigation 
 will be one in which moral laws will take the place of physical laws as 
 the object of search. The physical order of the universe we have 
 now almost ascertained ; is there a moral law which will submit to the 
 same process of analysis and inquiry ? And in accordance with such 
 a view, a recent work of Mr. Druinmond on " Law in the Spiritual 
 World" draws an elaborate parallel between the laws of the spiritual 
 world and some of the best-established generalisations of physics. At 
 the same time the prospect of such an investigation involves the 
 assumption of a reaction against science which may be thought to be 
 extremely improbable. The importance of evolution, in its bearing 
 upon morals, is that it really tends to deprive ethics of its position as 
 an independent science — making it a mere appendage of physics, and 
 causing it to stand in the same relation to physics as political economy 
 stands to the larger science of sociology. 
 
 This analysis of the social and intellectual conglomeration spoken 
 of as modern culture is necessarily most imperfect. That the chief 
 elements in modern culture are the artistic and scientific can scarcely 
 be doubted. But when once these are subject to fresh influences, or 
 are combined in changed proportions, the result is what is practically 
 a novel substance. The new facilities of Continental travel have coin- 
 cided with the interest which art preachers have aroused in Conti- 
 nental picture galleries, and the mind thus passes, by a natural 
 transition, from the contemplation of objects to the events which 
 cluster round them. Art is the high priestess who takes the average 
 Englishman or Englishwoman to the threshold of history ; and the 
 culture with which history, as it is now studied, enriches the human 
 intelligence, is being more largely and vividly felt every day. Grote, 
 Freeman, Seeley, and Green — these are only the names of a few of 
 those writers who have taught the general public to regard history not 
 as the bare narrative of occurrences, or as a confused collection of dates 
 and names, but as the continuous illustration of the practical working 
 of moral and political laws. The difference between such historians 
 as these and those of an earlier age consists in the fact that at the pre- 
 sent day sociology is recognised as a science. There is now seen to 
 be a unity in the chronicles of all countries and all ages. The annals 
 of classical Greece and Rome are only a segment of the universal 
 annals of mankind, of which the history of France or England, of 
 Italy or Germany, is the sequel. The study of history is recognised 
 as involving whatever is characteristic of the exercise of the human 
 intellect, or commemorative of its toils and triumphs. Nor is the 
 history of a nation only to be found in its written records. It is 
 recognised as embodied in its art treasures and stored in its antiquarian
 
 522 ENGLAND. 
 
 remains. In this way art-culture becomes a portion of, and subsidiary 
 to, historical culture. 
 
 The same process had been applied to religion, which has afforded 
 ground for the exercise of the combined functions of art, history, and 
 6cience. It is not only by the services of an aesthetic ritualism that 
 the imaginative faculty is gratified ; free scope is given to it in many 
 of the literary products of ecclesiastical rationalism — the most decided 
 adversary of ritualism. Such works as " Ecce Homo," " Philo- 
 christus," and " Natural Religion," are steeped in a sympathetically 
 glowing imagination. To the picturesque description designed with 
 an eye to artistic effect must be added the critical study of the Bible, 
 this criticism itself being merely a manifestation of the general spirit 
 of the time. Only a school of commentators, immersed to their finger- 
 tips in nineteenth-century culture, would venture to lay such exclusive 
 stress on the moral side of Christ's life and teaching, and would 
 abandon not only the miracles, but entire episodes in the sacred 
 narrative of the New Testament. Only apt followers of such a master 
 as Mr. Matthew Arnold, the great professor of nineteenth-century 
 culture, would consider themselves competent to decide what passages 
 are genuine, what are the immoral perversions of ignorant disciples, 
 and what is the point at which it becomes desirable or necessary to 
 turn from the Calvinism of St. Paul to the milder Christianity of an 
 earlier date. It would be difficult to over-estimate Mr. Arnold's 
 influence either upon the religious or aesthetic thought of the day, and 
 with it must be classed the influence of Professor Max Midler's 
 " Science of lleligion," and the Hibbert Lectures generally. As for 
 the net result of both, is it not to evaporate religion itself into 
 "■ moi'ality touched with emotion," on the one hand, and into " his- 
 tory eked out by philology," on the other? 
 
 II. 
 
 Displays of literary activity abounding on every side and in every 
 department of knowledge, it may be considered a paradox to say that 
 this is not a literary age. The remark, however, is strictly true. 
 Never was there more writing ; never did the literary spirit occupy a 
 more subordinate place. Literature is didactic, theological, aesthetic, 
 scientific, anything but purely literary. To read for reading's sake is 
 unintelligible to the mass of the educated public. There is much to 
 be said in favour of the various contemporary manuals and biographies 
 of famous authors, ancient and modern, English and foreign, with 
 specimens of their writings and analyses of their more important 
 works. But they furnish a striking commentary on the truth of tho 
 proposition advanced. Twenty pages of the poet or the historian 
 studied in the original might give the student a better insight into the
 
 MODERN CULTURE AND LITERATURE. 523 
 
 spirit of an author, whether in prose or verse, than two hundred pages 
 of brightly written summary. But the facts are what is wanted. 
 We, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, have in some 
 things a passion for completeness and distinctness. We like outlines 
 sharp and clear. We prefer a decoction of a deathless bard in a 
 pocket volume, to periodically dipping into works that occupy half a 
 dozen shelves in our libraries. 
 
 On the prevailing tendency on the part of literature to merge 
 itself in something which is not literature, there could be no better 
 illustration than the distinguished man of whom in the former section 
 of this, as well as in a preceding, chapter, mention has more than once 
 been made. Mr. Matthew Arnold is master of a style of supreme 
 delicacy and subtlety ; he has enlarged the conceptions as well as 
 illustrated the true uses of literary criticism ; he is a writer whose 
 genius is, if genius ever was, literary above all things. But 
 although both his religious and his political position are exclusively 
 defined by his literary spirit, he breaks into the fields of politics and 
 religion. In other words, though his tests and standards are nothing 
 but literary, he insists on applying them to matters which are not 
 literary. Possessing a critical sense of exquisite fineness, he ven- 
 tures to define by its application the limits of the inspiration of 
 Scripture, and to decide by its voice what elements of a national 
 Church organisation are to be assimilated, what refused, by modern 
 culture. 
 
 While Mr. Arnold may be spoken of as the founder of the school 
 of aesthetic literature, his followers have contributed to it much which 
 is distinctively their own. Literary finish seldom reaches a finer- 
 point than in the writings of Mr. Pater and Mr. Symonds. Both may 
 have some artificialities as well as rare excellences of style, but both 
 have written books of solid learning and research. Mr. Symonds' 
 " History of the Renaissance " and his study of the Elizabethan 
 drama, are the products of study and scholarship. Mr. Pater's essays 
 on the same subject have a value which all impartial critics admit. 
 In each case, however, it is rather art than literature which gains. 
 Mr. Shairp, Professor of Poetry at Oxford, is a critic of a very dif- 
 ferent order. He, at least, has nothing in common with the school of 
 artistic hedonism. But he is as little content as they are with being 
 a critic of literature, pure and simple. He discovers in all that he 
 analyses elements which do not meet the common eye. One poet is 
 with him the oracle of an ethical system ; another, of a complex 
 scheme of the interpretation of nature. Another eminent authority, 
 Mr. Leslie Stephen, who has recently strayed into the uncongenial 
 pastures of philosophy, in his work " Science of Ethics," is an excep- 
 tion to this rule. In his criticisms he foregoes the temptation to 
 that scientific theorizing which pervades his miscellaneous writings ;
 
 524 ENGLAND. 
 
 and proceeds by a purely literary method, for success in which he is 
 specially qualified by wide reading, a thorough grasp of his subject, 
 and a discriminative faculty of the highest order. 
 
 The same holds almost equally good in the case of the poetry of 
 the day. Frequently, indeed, its inspiration is derived from distinctly 
 literary sources : from Homer, as in the case of so much which Lord 
 Tennyson has written ; from the Greek tragic poets, or the French 
 and Italian of the sixteenth century, as in the case of Mr. Swinburne. 
 But there is a disposition to regard the poetry which has not a mission 
 of its own as of small account. It is not enough that a writer should 
 be a poet, pure and simple. There is no writer living who stands in 
 quite the same relation to his age that Byron stood to his. The poet 
 of the period is either the musical oracle of paganism and the Revolu- 
 tion ; or he attempts to escape into the life of an old world, throwing 
 only a few accidental sidelights on that of the modern ; or he takes a 
 speculative interest in what men think and feel, and do and believe ; 
 or he is a philosopher in verse, a pathologist in metre, like Mr. Brown- 
 ing. Has poetry a message for a hard-toiling, anxious generation ? 
 What is that message ? Is it to be announced in language inspired by 
 the past, or the present ? Is there any gospel which the race of bards 
 may proclaim to mankind ? These are not questions which have as 
 yet been answered, or on which, if the effort to answer them has been 
 made, any unanimity can be said to exist. The whole poetic atmo- 
 sphere seems to echo with the din of controversy, sometimes loud and 
 sometimes faint. But noise is always there ; the issue always unde- 
 cided. Our modern bards are divided into factions, and each fresh 
 product of their muses might be described as a pamphlet in verse. 
 An outburst of magnificently melodious defiance, proclaiming that men 
 and gods are equally naught, elicits its response in the apotheosis of 
 the shadowy and intangible, and a writer like Mr. Philip Bourke 
 Marston pours forth a protest against Mr. Swinburne. 
 
 Mr. Browning, who has written some of the finest and most stirring 
 lyrics of the century, seems to have decided that poetry should be the 
 instrument for the dissection and analysis of the complex phenomena 
 of life. No modern writer has a stronger grasp of the great problems 
 of modern existence, or is less readily intelligible to the masses. Lord 
 Tennyson induces reverie ; Mr. Browning stimulates study : the one 
 charms, the other stretches on the rack. The poetry of the former 
 is as a melodiously whispering zephyr ; the poetry of the latter as a 
 searching blast from the north-east. The poems of Mr. Matthew 
 Arnold occupy a distinct place of their own. They are the distilled and 
 luminous essence of metrical thought, exquisite in idea, and master- 
 pieces of expression. There remains a host of writers of whom many 
 have attained a high standard of excellence. We have had few more 
 melodious singers than the late Mr. Mortimer Collins, a kind of
 
 MODERN CULTURE AND LITERATURE. 525 
 
 Rochester born out of his clue time. If music allied to power is 
 wanted, it will be found in the compositions of Mr. Buchanan. The 
 historical dramas of the lady who writes under the name of Ross Neil 
 have 'not only melody, but grace and power, while Mr. Aubrey de 
 Vere shows in the same class of compositions the same qualities. It 
 is impossible here to do more than mention such poets as Gosse, 
 Dobson, Frederic Myers, Ernest Myers, Meredith, Edwin Arnold, 
 William Morris, Lewis Morris, and Lang. 
 
 Mr. Alfred Austin is a poet of a different order. Beginning as a 
 satirist, and producing in " The Season " a satire which has the true 
 classical ring, he has gradually abandoned that department of litera- 
 ture, and has written a series of works, the most important of which 
 is perhaps the " Human Tragedy." Much that is memorable in the 
 history of contemporary Europe, in its state of feeling, and in the ideas 
 and controversies of the age, civil and religious, is reviewed in its 
 pages, and so, while the poem is thus eminently historical, it contains 
 a message as well, whose first key-note is struck in the opening 
 canto. 
 
 " Yet not of Love alone, its advent blind, 
 Swift raptures and slow penalties, I sing; 
 I must be lifted on a fiercer wind, 
 And from the lyre a louder anthem ring ; 
 Still as Keligion, Country, or Mankind 
 Bids my weak hand sound more sonorous string. 
 Ah, fatal four ! which by the dark decree 
 Of Heaven evolve the Human Tragedy ! " 
 
 In the first canto, or, as Mr. Austin prefers to call it, act, is traced 
 the development of love. In the second, the contest between love and 
 religion. In the third, the conception of country is added, and the 
 combined operation of each passion is illustrated in the events of 
 Italian history during the late autumn of 1867. In the fourth act a new 
 element in the complication is introduced by the appearance of " man- 
 kind " upon the stage, and the conflict is explained in these stanzas : — 
 
 " See then, my child, the tragedy, and see 
 What feeds it. Love, Religion, Country, all 
 That deepest, dearest, most enduring be, 
 That makes us noble, and that holds us thrall. 
 Once gone, the beasts were no more gross than we — 
 'Tis these for which the victims fastest fall ; 
 Man's self in days that are as days that were, 
 Suppliant alike and executioner ! 
 
 " Now once again this tragedy, this jar 
 Of conscience against conscience, hath, meseems, 
 In Paris struck the flinty flame of war ; 
 Likely, they slay for straws, they die for dreams, 
 But things that seem must still be things that are, 
 To half-experienced man, who perforce deems 
 He doth not dream, but knows not, nor can know, 
 Till death brings sleep or waking, is it so."
 
 52G ENGLAND. 
 
 Such is the Human Tragedy according to Mr. Austin, its factors 
 being love, religion, country, and mankind. The opposing forces 
 between which lies the struggle are innate in humanity ; how are they 
 to bo reconciled ? The answer is, by the agency of love ; and so the 
 first line of Mr. Austin's poem, "Oh, Love, undying Love, eternal 
 star," is also the last. 
 
 Of all the works that are read widely, the most widely read are 
 novels. They form nearly the sole literary nourishment of a large 
 class of the population. Among us they have much of the influence 
 which in other countries belongs to the stage. They regulate the views 
 of life of hundreds and thousands of women, especially in the lower 
 middle section of society, old and young. The mothers and daughters 
 of the English aristocracy out of the London season may read as many 
 novels as the daughter or wife of the small tradesman. But in the 
 latter case there is none of the opportunity possible in the former of 
 correcting the mawkish and mistaken impressions of existence con- 
 veyed by the class of writings which they devour. They are as much 
 possessed with the ideas introduced to their minds as a child in a 
 nursery is by the images and incidents of a fairy tale. They grow to 
 believe that life around them is full of those glittering possibilities 
 which may elevate them to the same social level as romance heroines. 
 For them the dramatis persona? of their favourite author have their 
 antitypes and originals in the world of flesh and blood. Cophetua 
 may descend to them in robe and crown at any moment. They go to 
 the dress-circle at the play with the word "kismet" trembling on 
 their lips, and they are anxiously expecting to see their "fate" at a 
 half-crown concert. 
 
 But while many novels are merely foolish stories, introducing the 
 reader to a world which is not that of real life, and is void of any 
 attempt to grapple with life's serious problems, there is a steady 
 increase in the number of those which have a sensible and wholesome 
 relation to actual existence, and both an historical and educational 
 value. The late Mr. Anthony Trollope's fictions are photographs of 
 nineteenth- century life in pen and ink. They have for contemporary 
 readers just the same kind of interest as have the domestic comedies 
 of the late Mr. Robertson, or the collection of cartes de visite which 
 used to be found in drawing-rooms more frequently than now. They 
 do not represent a great force in literature — though Mr. Trollope may 
 have many imitators — like George Eliot, but they give hundreds and 
 thousands of men and women, of all ages and of all ranks, exactly 
 what they want — light easy reading, that requires no special thought, 
 that is at once a pure recreation, and that presents to them, as if 
 reflected in a mirror, the society amidst which they live. Mr. Edmund 
 Yates, though he is no longer an active novelist, recognises more of 
 the seamy side of life than Mr. Trollope, and introduces us into an
 
 MODERN CULTURE AND LITERATURE. 527 
 
 atmosphere laden with different issues and associations, but his men 
 and women are realities, not abstractions. The incidents and the 
 episodes are taken from life ; the dialogue is that which may be heard 
 every day ; the moral, if moral is to be extracted from his writings, 
 may not be welcome, but the data on which it is based are those 
 collected from experience by a singularly acute mind equipped with a 
 large store of imagination, fancy, and humour. The late Mr. Charles 
 Reade may probably be spoken of with correctness as the greatest 
 master of English realistic romance who has appeared in our time. 
 Some there may be who will contend that the honours of this dis- 
 tinction should be divided between him and Mr. Wilkie Collins. As 
 creators and developers of a plot, both may advance the same claim 
 to consummate mastery. But there is this difference between the 
 two : Mr. Wilkie Collins always introduces an element which, if it is 
 not directly supernatural, is suggestive of the supernatural — of coinci- 
 dences so strange and weird that the enumeration of them gives us a 
 sentiment of uncanniness — 
 
 " The air is full of omens. Scarce had I set 
 My foot outside the threshold ere I met 
 A dog. He barked ; full well that bark I knew. 
 I met another, and lo ! he barked too." 
 
 The idea embodied in these lines is one of which it is impossible not 
 to be reminded by Mr. Wilkie Collins' writings, but there is nothing of 
 the sort to be found in those of Mr. Reade. Mr. Reade's novels are, 
 in fact, novels above all things with a purpose, and whatever of stirring 
 or sensational incident they may have, is introduced quite as much to 
 point the moral as to adorn the tale. Such works as " Hard Cash," 
 " It is Never too Late to Mend," and "Put Yourself in his Place," 
 have served to enlighten public opinion on subjects so important as 
 lunacy laws, criminal procedure, the regulation of prisons, and trades' 
 unions. Of three or four other novelists of the time it may be said 
 that they chiefly strive to do for the day that which Dickens or 
 Thackeray did. Colonel Lockhart, Mr. James Payn, Mr. Francillon, 
 Mr. George Meredith, master of a terse and pregnant style, Mr. Justin 
 M'Carthy, and Mr. Besant, each of them writes, or wrote, not only with 
 skill and humour, but with much knowledge of the world in which 
 they have lived. They all of them paint contemporary men and women, 
 and all have their value for the historian of the future. 
 
 There is the same desire to treat with fidelity and with fulness the 
 questions of the day, to illustrate the characters and the complications 
 which the events of the time are calculated to develop, in Mrs. 
 Oliphant, in Mrs. Lynn Linton, Mrs. Cashel Hoey,Mrs. Alexander, Mrs. 
 Edwards, Mrs. Riddell, Mrs. Henry Wood and many others. Cleverness 
 and ingenuity are the characteristics of the works of all these writtrs, 
 though the three first named are those who recognise more fully the
 
 528 ENGLAND. 
 
 gravity of the daily issues of our life, the perpetual conflict of duties, the 
 deeper motives of ordinary action, the ulterior tendencies of much that 
 is petty and trivial, the irony which besets existence. In two of these 
 authors, Mrs. Linton and Mrs. Hoey, it is impossible not to recognise 
 the influence of the most powerful of modern novelists. Both of tbem 
 resemble George Eliot in their habit of weighing the relative morality of 
 motives and acts, of showing how terribly complicated is the chemistry 
 of life, and in their appreciation of its perpetually conflicting issues. 
 As regards style and manner, treatment and phraseology, George Eliot 
 has had an incomparably wider influence than any author now or 
 recently living. This is partly, of course, because of the contagious 
 power which genius ever carries with it, but partly also because she 
 represented in her own writings so many of the tendencies of tbe 
 times ; because she was, as so many of our poets are, almost morbidly 
 introspective and analytical. Kightly understood, George Eliot's 
 novels are a complete system of moral philosophy. The position 
 taken by the author is that life is a tremendous series of human con- 
 sequences ; that the results of acts committed lightly or thoughtlessly 
 are infinitely far-reaching, involving the happiness not only of the 
 agents themselves, but of countless others ; and that each one of us 
 is thus under an appalling responsibility both to our fellows who are 
 alive and to the posterity as yet unborn. This great writer, taking a 
 view which is peculiarly her own of the relations of human life, not 
 unnaturally expresses that view in strange and unfamiliar language. 
 But in the terms thus employed there is no real pedantry. George 
 Eliot wrote as the high priestess of a special school of philosophical 
 thought, and it is necessary, in order to convey the precise shades of 
 her meaning, that she should have adopted technical words. 
 
 Of novelists such as " Ouida," Miss Braddon, and Miss Rhoda 
 Broughton, there is little remaining to be said. The first of these began 
 by placing in the setting of a feminine imagination the materials of pic- 
 tures drawn by George Lawrence and Whyte Melville. She has sinco 
 then come powerfully under the agency of that pagan rcstheticism which 
 is an important element in modern culture, and to this she has added 
 that experience of foreign countries and extended travel which is seen 
 in many others of the novelists of the period. Miss Braddon's popu- 
 larity with the middle classes does not seem to wane. She is an 
 excellent writer of clear idiomatic English, and she has of late years 
 shown that she can produce an interesting story without having 
 recourse to the sensational machinery which was supposed to be essen- 
 tial to her success. Miss Broughton is the leading representative of 
 tbe school of literary piquancy. She has brought freshness and inge- 
 nuity into the well-worn ways of domestic fiction. She has followers 
 and imitators, but she has few, if any, rivals. She does not lose sight 
 of the fact that manliness is wholesome. Miss Broughton may not
 
 MODERN CULTURE AND LITERATURE. 529 
 
 be a force of the highest kind, but a force, for all that, in modern 
 literature she distinctly is. Another lady has just proved herself an 
 accomplished novelist. In " The House on the Marsh," Miss Florence 
 Warden exhibits a faculty for combining sensationalism with domes- 
 ticity which reminds the reader of Miss Braddon and Mrs. Henry 
 Wood. Perhaps there could be no better proof of her popularity 
 than the fact that she is now engaged on a serial for Mr. Yates's 
 weekly periodical. 
 
 What has been witnessed in other walks of literature may also be 
 seen in the fictions of the day. There have recently been produced 
 several novels in which musical culture is the prominent element of 
 interest, the chapters being headed with bars of music. Here, 
 too, there may probably be traced the influence of George Eliot, 
 whose genius in her earliest novels was as distinctly towards music 
 as latterly, it was towards the philosophy of Positivism. With her, 
 in this matter, should be associated the name of Mr. George 
 Macdonald, whose novel, " Robert Falconer," was largely devoted 
 to subtle questions of melody. But Mr. Macdonald is only a novelist 
 incidentally; he is really a moral and religious homilist, who popular- 
 ises his sermons by giving them the form of fictions. Mr. Lawrence 
 Oliphant cannot be called a theological writer, but in ''Piccadilly" 
 and " Altiora Peto," which have had considerable influence upon the 
 writing of the day, he has probed very deeply some of the greatest of 
 modern problems. Although there is little that is similar in Dr. 
 Shorthouse and Mr. Marion Crawford, and it would be easier to draw 
 a contrast than a parallel between them, they have this much in 
 common. Both of them in their fictions take the reader somewhat 
 above the level and out of the atmosphere of everyday life by appeal- 
 ing to the taste of the public for mysticism. It is true Mr. Marion 
 Crawford's latest novels, " To Leeward," and " An American Poli- 
 tician," are merely clever sketches of contemporary life ; but there is 
 to be found, both in " Dr. Claudius " and " Mr. Isaacs," a good deal 
 of the same sort of thing as in the " Esoteric Buddhism " of Mr. 
 Sinnett. The mysticism of Dr. Shorthouse in "John Inglesant " is 
 of an entirely different character, being exclusively or chiefly religious. 
 As an artistic narrative this work is perhaps of unequalled interest, 
 and very few novels have of late issued from the English press of 
 which the atmosphere is so delicate and tranquillising. There are, 
 however, many novels, and some of them the best and most popular 
 of our time, which may be regarded as protests against the restless, 
 feverish, perplexed, and inquiring spirit which animates much of 
 modern fiction. The pleasant sketchy romances of Mr. Hamilton 
 Aide, Mrs. Walford, Mr. Julian Sturgis, and others, afford not only 
 a relief, but a remonstrance to that delirious unrest of which 
 Kingsley's "Yeast" may be taken as a type. Ascending higher in 
 
 M M
 
 530 ENGLAND. 
 
 the scale of literary excellence, we have, as distinguished ornaments of 
 what may be called the idyllic school, among ladies, Miss Thackeray, 
 the authoress of " Vera," and others ; among gentlemen, Mr. Hardy, 
 Mr. Blackmore, and Mr. Black. A variation of the same impulse 
 which causes Mr. Morris to invite his readers to accompany him in 
 his quest after an earthly paradise, induces these authors to dwell 
 with lingering love and profuse labour upon those aspects of 
 life which are in danger of being forgotten in this sophisticated, 
 urban, and smoke-begrimed age. They speak to us out of the 
 fulness of their hearts, and Mr. Blackmore shows us his dramatis 
 personao amid the cherry-orchards of Kent or on the open downs of 
 Sussex — as Mr. Black takes us to the Hebrides or the Land's End — 
 from an instinctive affection for those regions and a happy conscious- 
 ness that their abilities will find here the most congenial scope. The 
 tendency of some of the writers of this school is perhaps towards 
 a rather too nebulous picturesqueness. Colours are blended hazily 
 together. The clear, hard outline is lost. The senses begin to grow 
 drowsy under the influence of excessive sweetness, and the effect is 
 that of literary lotus-eating. Mr. Blackmore's fiction, in addition to 
 its artistic elegance and beauty, is always thrilling, is generally founded 
 on fact, is written in a nervous, vigorous style, is marked by a vivid 
 fancy and a strong sense of humour. Mr. Black's novels are invariably 
 graceful, and abound in charming descriptions of sea and shore, rocky 
 coast, green islands. Mr. Hardy, equally original as a writer and 
 thinker, displays the same disposition as Mr. Black to repeat himself, 
 and is apt to push the peculiarities of his style to the point of man- 
 nerism. As a sketcher of certain aspects of English rural life, and, 
 above all, of English peasants, he is in his way unrivalled. Like Mr. 
 Black, Mr. Blackmore, and Miss Thackeray, Mr. Hardy is fond of 
 heightening the effect of his idyllic and pastoral scenes by investing 
 them with a certain mysticism, and the accents of irresistible doom, 
 more or less disguised, seem audible in the murmur of every passing 
 breeze. The opening months of 1881 witnessed a new departure by 
 Mr. Black in his novel "Sunrise: a Tale of the Times." In it he 
 deserts the lochs and coasts of Scotland for town-life and the con- 
 spiracies of Socialism. But charmingly as the story is written, it 
 lacks that sense of repose which he conveys when safe amid his 
 familiar surroundii'gs. As with Mr. Black, so will it be with Mr. 
 F. J. Fargus. Mr. Fargus's name will always be associated with 
 "Called Back " and "Dark Days," and however skilfully he may 
 depart from the line he has there adopted, his works will probably 
 be successful in proportion as ho follows it. The reception of Mr. 
 Kargus's " A Family Affair " is closely analogous to that accorded 
 to Mr. Black's "Judith Shakspoare." Clever as both novels are, 
 and widely though they will be read, they have yet been less
 
 MODERN CULTURE AND LITERATURE. do I 
 
 cordially welcomed than those by which their authors have made 
 their mark. 
 
 It is to be expected that an age of which the literary taste is pre- 
 eminently for the literature of positive information and instructive fact, 
 should be favourable to the production of volumes of travel, biography, 
 and autobiography. These, indeed, issue from the press in an in- 
 cessant stream. Their subject matter is found in all lands and in all 
 periods. Every country in which the English language is spoken, or 
 in which it is deemed desirable by an ardent patriotism that the 
 English flag should float, finds its immediate and assiduous chronicler, 
 and in tbe footsteps of the imperial pioneer tbere inevitably follows the 
 literary memorialist. Our Australasian colonies, every part of our 
 Indian empire, every aspect of Indian life, South Africa, Central Asia, 
 Canada, have each of them yielded materials for a library of its own. 
 To record one's impressions of a foreign country has become a fashion, 
 and travellers of all kinds, from proconsuls to newspaper corres- 
 pondents, invariably signalise their return by the publication of a 
 more or less graphic and trustworthy account of what they have seen, 
 done, and thought whilst beyond their native shores. It matters little 
 whether it be the Marquis of Lome or Lady Brassey, the Earl of 
 Dufferin or Mr. Colquhoun, Mr. Marvin or Miss Gordon-Cumming, 
 the result of a trip abroad is the same. Some of these works are 
 picturesque and sketchy — to wit, Lady Brassey's " Voyage in the 
 Sunbeam" ; others, like Lord Lome's " Canadian Pictures," combine 
 scenery with politics and history ; others again, like Mr. Marvin's 
 " The Russians at Merv and Herat," are exclusively political. But 
 one and all are the outcome of personal experience and observation. 
 
 Tbe biographer has not lagged behind. The most popular book of 
 the time, a few years ago, was Mr. Hare's "Memorials of a Quiet Life." 
 In his work on Macaulay, Mr. Trevelyan not only showed that be had 
 powers which, if applied exclusively to letters, would win for him a 
 conspicuous place among nineteenth-century writers, but he achieved 
 a success not unworthy of the triumph which waited on the historical 
 acbievement of his illustrious uncle — a success which he has followed 
 up by an equally popular work, " The Early Years of Charles James 
 Fox," remarkable alike for its style and its discriminative selection of 
 facts. In his " Life of Lessing," Mr. James Sime produced as 
 enduring a monument as may be witnessed in tbe " Voltaire " or 
 " Diderot " of Mr. John Morley. It is out of the question to attempt 
 any comprehensive survey of the biographical and autobiographical 
 volumes which have flooded the literary market during the last year 
 or two. Chief among them, of course, is tbe record by which Her 
 Majesty has given her subjects an insight into the home of their 
 sovereign. Although there have been published in previous season, 
 many "lives " which have excited much criticism— such, for instances 
 
 M M JJ
 
 582 ENGLAND. 
 
 as that of Bishop Wilberforce, of Lord Lytton by his son, and of 
 Lord Byron by Mr. Jeaffreson — no single year has been more prolific 
 of biography and autobiography of the first importance than 1884. 
 Mr. Froude has laid the inner life and character of Carlyle bare 
 before his countrymen ; Mr. Louis J. Jennings has accomplished 
 an invaluable work in sifting and arranging the Croker papers ; and 
 Mr. Julian Hawthorne has written an instructive and entertaining 
 account of his father and mother. In the department of personal 
 narrative we have Mr. Edmund Yates's " Recollections and Expe- 
 riences," Lord Malmesbury's " Memoirs," Mr. A. Gallenga's " Second 
 Life," Mr. James Payn's "Literary Recollections," and Mr. Serjeant 
 Ballantine's " From the Old World to the New." 
 
 The literature of modern theology and history is even more abounding. 
 Of the first we have spoken already ; yet there remain one or two 
 names which should not be omittod, and on which further stress should 
 be laid. One of the greatest masters of English style, as he in- 
 disputably is also of English dialectic, whom the age has produced, 
 is, before all else, a theological writer. Cardinal Newman is a master 
 of the English language in the same sense that a perfect musician may 
 be called the master of his instrument. There is no note in its varied 
 scale which he cannot produce from it. He has conveyed, perhaps, a 
 fuller idea of its capabilities than any writer in our tongue, has shown 
 more completely how it may be made to yield alternate sounds of 
 majesty and pathos, of invective and persuasion, of irony and earnest- 
 ness. The religious sentiment is illustrated in all its manifold phases in 
 the " University Sermons ; " the clearest ratiocinative power shows 
 itself in the "Grammar of Assent ; " as an historian, he has given 
 us one of the best pictures of ancient Athens ever drawn ; as a poet, 
 in addition to the "Dream of Gerontius," such lyrics as "Lead, 
 kindly Light." The popularity of Archdeacon Farrar, the author of the 
 " Life of Christ" and the " Life of St. Paul," grows daily, and the 
 circle of the humanising influence of these works, and many other 
 works of the same order, perpetually spreads, The late Dean Stanley, 
 whether as a divine or historian, preacher or essayist, has as many 
 readers as Carlyle. Than the name of the accomplished Dean of West- 
 minster there could be no better connecting link between theology and 
 history. Froude, Kinglake, Lecky, Freeman, Green — these in their 
 different departments are writers who would be ornaments to the his- 
 torical literature of any century. Elaborate studies of special periods, 
 comprehensive surveys, pictures which bring the past as near and 
 make it as real to us as the present — these are the fruits of our con- 
 temporary historians. 
 
 A few years ago there was published a history by Mr- Wyon of 
 the reign of Queen Anne, which is not without much original infor- 
 mation and genuine research ; while Mr. Spencer Walpole has pro-
 
 MODERN CULTURE AND LITERATURE. 533 
 
 duced two volumes of a "History of England," dating from the end 
 of the Peninsular War, that is at once trustworthy, comprehensive, 
 full of social and political interest, and written in a style which sug- 
 gests much study of Macaulay, being both scholarlike and popular. 
 The late Mr. Green, who, in the series of primers which he followed 
 Mr. Freeman in editing, contributed to the formation o J intelligent 
 views on the entire course of history, took a wider sweep in his short 
 and in his longer " History of the English People," and collected and 
 arranged an immense mass of miscellaneous facts, with great regard 
 to dramatic grouping. To these works must be added Mr. Justin 
 McCarthy's " History of Our Own Times," a narrative of the chief 
 events of the Victorian era, and his " History of the Four Georges." 
 Both are written not only with finished literary skill, but with great 
 political knowledge and insight. Major Arthur Griffiths's " Chronicles 
 of Newgate " is a work which, for the first time, places before the 
 public a complete record of the chequered career of the Old Bailey. 
 Equally exhaustive is Mr. W. J. Loftie's " History of London." 
 But the most important historical works of the present day are not 
 perhaps the popular. Every age produces its own type of historian. 
 First comes the chronicler of events, who narrates without connecting 
 incidents, and who does not attempt to discover the thread of con- 
 tinuity that runs throughout the course of human affairs. He 
 is followed by the more thoughtful inquirer, who goes beneath the 
 surface and discovers the sequence of principles involved in suc- 
 cessive episodes ; thus the philosophy of history is made possible, 
 and, as time passes by, it is necessary that history should be repeat- 
 edly re-written. The accumulating experiences of humanity throw 
 new light not only on the prospect but on the retrospect. These 
 experiences are often of a special kind, and they are not to be found 
 unless they are diligently sought for. They are contained not 
 only in great national events, revolutions, and wars, but in public 
 records, parliamentary proclamations, decrees, and registers, house- 
 hold accounts and private documents. Much of the activity of 
 the present day has been exclusively devoted to unearthing these 
 buried sources of knowledge. Under the direction of the Master of 
 the Rolls, there has been publishing for years past a series of most 
 valuable papers which render it necessary to modify many of the views 
 once, held on such matters as the growth of the English Constitution. 
 To Dr. Stubbs, now Bishop of Chester, belongs pre-eminently the 
 honour, not only of having in many cases edited and collected them, 
 but of having illustrated their full significance, and having shown 
 what re-construction in our scheme of the early history of England 
 they necessitate. 
 
 If the influence of German thought may be seen in much of the 
 theological writing of the day, it is equally possible to discern the
 
 034 ENGLAND. 
 
 influence of French thought in much of that writing which, so far as 
 it treats of politics and philosophy as affording a practical guide for 
 life, may be considered almost religious. While Sir James Stephen 
 and Mr. Froude illustrate the potency of the doctrines of Carlyle, 
 whose " Hero Worship " has been largely nourished on German 
 materials, Mr. John Morley and Mr. Frederic Harrison are equally 
 noticeable as the exponents of the culture which is essentially French. 
 The sympathy of each is undisguisedly with the men either antecedent 
 to or immediately contemporary with the French Revolution. Mr. 
 John Morley's works on Voltaire, Rousseau, above all, his sympathy 
 with Diderot and the French Encyclopaedists, strike the key-note of 
 his practical philosophy. The view which both he and, in his " Order 
 and Progress," Mr. Frederic Harrison take of human society, is exactly 
 that which would have commended itself to these master spirits. 
 " Compromise" is the book which might almost be cited as a com- 
 pendium of Mr. Morley's philosophy of life. If society is npt so much 
 a great growth, whose foundations are rooted in the sentiments, the 
 prejudices, and even the superstitions of past ages, but something that 
 can be eminently and quickly modified from time to time, changing its 
 features with tolerable rapidity at the bidding and by the efforts of 
 eminent persons, it follows that every man who believes strongly in the 
 falsity of old notions, or in the truth of the new, is bound to lose no 
 opportunity of energetically expressing his dissent from the bulk of sur- 
 rounding opinion. Mr. Morley does not, indeed, ignore the historical 
 argument against sudden change, but he appears to think that it is 
 over-rated, and that timidity and indolence exaggerate the difficulties 
 of the process which he advocates. There are two other points to be 
 noticed in the political philosophy which Mr. Morley enforces, with 
 the eloquence of a literary master and the fervour of a political apostle. 
 In the first place, he does not distinctly tell us when compromise be- 
 comes criminal. It is permissible, he says, when the most sacred 
 feelings of family are involved. Surely this is itself a sanction of 
 compromise ; and the great moral of Mr. Morley's book is that a man 
 with strong convictions is bound to express those convictions only 
 when, in his opinion, a convenient season for their expression has 
 arrived. Again, Mr. Morley does not attempt to fix the degree of 
 belief or persuasion at which a man must have arrived before he com- 
 mences to place limitations upon the habit of compromise ; nor, per- 
 haps, does he give sufficient practical weight to the effects of the 
 destructive process which the conduct he commends would have upon 
 an old and complex society. The standard of practical life which Mr. 
 Morley sets beiore himself and others is of an exceedingly lofty cha- 
 racter. But though love of truth and a fearless pursuit of truth are 
 enough to insure its realisation in certain exceptional instances, it may 
 vory well be that they have not this coercive power with the mass of
 
 MODERN CULTURE AND LITERATURE. 535 
 
 men ; that most men are so constituted, are so much the creatures of 
 fear and hope, as to cause what Mr. Morley himself is persuaded are 
 lies and delusions to be absolutely necessary for them. 
 
 The same considerations which would be suggested by a minute 
 examination of the works of George Eliot are also those which present 
 themselves when the tenor of Mr. Morley's counsels is closely scanned. 
 Nothing in theory may sound more plausible than the postponement 
 of self and of family to the idea of mankind, but in practice can it 
 carry with it any guarantee of efficiency ? To the bulk of men and 
 women can the welfare and progress of society ever be anything more 
 than ideas ? Will it, as the education of the human race advances, be 
 possible for them to deduce their notions of moral duty from a just 
 estimate of the relations of the individual and of the family to society ? 
 Is there anything in the past history of the human race to make us 
 think that mortals can arrive at a knowledge of their duty to each 
 other unless the elements of that knowledge are drawn from a super- 
 human source ? Ideas of duty, it may be urged, have their origin in 
 something else than the daily intercourse of man ; and devotion to 
 society is as inadequate to explain them or to prompt them, as utili- 
 tarianism is to explain the higher virtues of humanity — heroism, self- 
 sacrifice, martyrdom. When the ends which Mr. Morley and George 
 Eliot admire are advocated, is it not possible that those who advocate 
 them may be under influences which they ignore ? This higher and 
 disinterested morality would surely never have existed without the 
 educating agency of Christianity ; and as to what future generations 
 may do without Christianity, is it possible to form any opinion ? Will 
 the social morality of " Compromise " or of George Eliot be an end 
 in itself, requiring none of the motives or sanctions implied by Chris- 
 tianity ? 
 
 But the popular and essentially humanising literature of the day is 
 not to be found in books alone. There is the vast multitude of maga- 
 zines, serials, and newspapers to be taken into account. Of news- 
 papers we shall have something to say in another chapter. Every 
 household, high or humble, has its own monthly or weekly miscellany 
 of instructive and amusing literature. If these encourage desultory 
 reading, it is certain that without them there are hundreds and thou- 
 sands of English men and women who would read very little, if at all. 
 In the same way the serial issues of great works are numerous, and 
 exceedingly effective in introducing them to the public. There are 
 many persons in every class of life who will readily pay a small sum 
 for each number of a large work issued in parts, but who would refuse 
 to pay a greater sum for such a work as a whole.
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 Change and Multiplied Variety of Popular Amusements — The Travelling Showman and 
 Photographer — The Development of the Excursion System — Scene on the Norfolk 
 Coast — Amusements in the Manufacturing Districts and the Black Country — Music- 
 halls — Museums — Art Exhibitions — Working Men's Clubs — The Institution and its 
 Working described — How to stamp out Drunkenness — The Stage — Change in its 
 Position — The Playgoing Public — Change in Social Position of Actors — The Stage 
 the Mirror of Contemporary Manners — Reasons of its alleged Decadence — Its 
 Realism and Lack of Poetry — Dangers of this Realism — What a Dramatic Censor 
 may prevent — Uses of a Dramatic Censor — Relations of English and French Public 
 to their respective Stages — The English Drama and the Divorce Court — French 
 Plays in England — Shakespearian revivals. 
 
 It would be impossible to form a better idea of tbe advance made by 
 Englisbmen of all classes, wbetber in town or country, in the art of 
 " popular amusement " than from a comparison of the advertisements 
 relating to sports, pastimes, and recreation in a newspaper of to-day 
 with those which made their appearance less than half a century ago. 
 One would look in vain now for the announcements of pugilistic 
 encounters arranged between bruisers of established and growing 
 reputation, cock-fights, dog-fights, and performances of terrier dogs, 
 backed for large sums to kill several scores of rats within a limited 
 space of time. One would have looked in vain then for the accounts 
 of cricket-matches, and of the scores made by their players, in different 
 parts of England, which now occupy entire pages of the sporting 
 journals ; for tbe notices to excursionists that are a regular feature in 
 every newspaper during the summer season ; for the miscellaneous 
 programmes of picture exhibitions, lectures, theatres, music-halls, 
 entertainments of all kinds, places of amusement of every variety, 
 which have become an essential part of the machinery of our social life. 
 Within the last five-and-twenty years cricket clubs and football clubs 
 have been formed in all the towns and mostof the villages in England. 
 The volunteer movement has supplied another opportunity of healthy 
 out-door exercise ; athletic sports have been added to our muscular 
 system ; open spaces and village greens are the recognised playgrounds 
 of the people. What were formerly wastes have been converted into 
 public gardens. There are pleasure-grounds in the East End of Lon- 
 don, and scarcely a year passes without an addition being made to
 
 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 537 
 
 the people's parks, which have been given by the bounty of great 
 landlords to the industrial cities of the north. 
 
 As it has been ■with open-air pastimes, so it has been with indoor 
 amusements. In the country the public-house, if still the chief, is not 
 the absolutely paramount and exclusive attraction. There are penny 
 readings, where the voice of the reader is varied by music, vocal 
 and instrumental ; there are book societies, lectures, and, in many 
 instances, reading-rooms furnished for the benefit of the members — all 
 working men — with a selection of the newspapers of the day. Even the 
 annual fair which, in the adjoining country town, was the great dissi- 
 pation of the year, is an institution almost out of date. Human mon- 
 strosities fascinate the eye no longer, and invitations to witness the 
 display of bicephalous womanhood inside a canvas booth meet with 
 so cold a response that they are seldom offered. The showman's van, 
 which, a quarter of a century ago, collected the whole country side to 
 view its contents, has almost ceased to exist. Neither the eloquence 
 nor the art which once added then never-failing embellishments to 
 this travelling world of wonders would suffice to secure patrons or 
 admirers now. The little black silhouettes, standing out in prominent 
 relief against a white background, in which this same thaumaturgist 
 would depict the profile of your countenance for the price of one 
 shilling, is a relic of the past, and the showman's reign ended when 
 that of tbe photographer began. Now it is the day of the roaming 
 photographer which is itself coming to a close. The proprietors of 
 nomadic exhibitions of every kind complain that business has lamentably 
 fallen off, and though equestrian troupes still manage to gain a living 
 by making periodical pilgrimages through the kingdom, other forms of 
 amusement are accessible all the year round in the immediately con- 
 tiguous capital of every country district. The cheap trains and railway 
 extension, which have proved the ruin of the old showman, have 
 multiplied indefinitely the opportunities of popular recreation among 
 the peasantry of England. 
 
 In the childhood of many a man and woman who is yet barely 
 middle-aged, the village feast was the great rural festival, the one 
 universally recognised holiday of the year. There was a substantial 
 dinner, there was a brass band, there were games and dances, cricket 
 and rounders for the boys, and kiss-in-the-ring for Giles and his sweet- 
 heart. But as soon as the neighbourhood became accustomed to the 
 snorting and puffing of the steam-engine, its old men and women, its 
 young men and maids, took advantage of it to explore the almost 
 unknown world which lay close to them. They were, in the parlance 
 of certain traffic managers, put upon the fidget, and the dividends of 
 railway companies rose in proportion. Just as it was the Exhibition of 
 1851 from which must be dated the first great steps towards improve- 
 ment made by English people in art and decorative design, so may the
 
 538 ENGLAND. 
 
 opening of the Crystal Palace at Sydenham be identified with a new 
 departure in the region of popular amusement. The Crystal Palace is 
 at the present day the rendezvous for country parties, which come from 
 all quarters within a radius of lifty or sixty miles from London. 
 
 These pilgrimages of pleasure have familiarised the masses with the 
 idea of jaunts taken with the same end in other directions. Our ever- 
 growing railway system has supplied the means, and now the excursion 
 may he said to be one of the chief amusements of our toiling millions. 
 Travel through any part of England on Saturday, Monday, or Tuesday, 
 and you will find that the local lines swarm with villagers going to or 
 returning from the town on missions of business or of pleasure, or, 
 more likely, of both combined. This is the way in which the money 
 formerly reserved for rustic holidays is disposed of. If those rural 
 pleasure-takers are within a convenient distance of London, to London 
 many of them will go. If not, they put by their savings and spend 
 them on trips to their provincial capital. 
 
 If one wishes to gain a true and graphic notion of what the modern 
 excursion system is, of how great is the hold which it has acquired 
 over the masses, a sight may be mentioned that can be witnessed 
 almost any day in the summer or autumn months upon the Norfolk 
 coast. It is eleven in the forenoon, and the beach is not only tranquil, 
 but almost desolate. Half a dozen fishermen are visible mending their 
 nets or smoking the pipe of moody silence. There is not a sound 
 which blends with the fretting of the waves against the pebbles, unless 
 it be the shrill cry of the sea-bird, or possibly the distant and muffled 
 scream of the whistle of the railway train, audible for many miles over 
 these treeless levels and bleak sand-hills. But a complete change is 
 at hand. It is a quarter-past eleven now, and in twenty minutes' time 
 an excursion train is due at the adjoining station. Presently you are 
 conscious of the murmur of strange arrivals and the bustling note 
 of preparation. You look round and find that upwards of a hundred 
 men have suddenly invaded the place, are setting up booths, furnishing 
 them with eatables and drinkables, are establishing Aunt Sallies, 
 and providing the machinery of other delectable pastimes. In less 
 than fifteen minutes the deserted beach has been transformed ; and 
 what was absolute solitude now presents the appearance of a fair, 
 which wants nothing to complete it except the advent of its patrons. 
 Here these patrons are, or presently will be. Puff-puff is the warning 
 ^'iind of the steam-engine in the distance, and the wreaths of smoke 
 which for a minute darken the heavens, and then are swept away by 
 the wind, are significant of the cloud of humanity that in a few 
 seconds will settle down upon the shore. Out they troop from the 
 carriages which have just drawn up at the platform — men, women, 
 boys, and children, a good thousand strong. It is likely enough that 
 there are other contingents yet to arrive. The excursionist is a
 
 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 539 
 
 gregarious animal, and the bigger the crowd in which he takes his 
 pleasure the more he enjoys it. It is by no means an uncommon 
 thing to see the shore, on which an hour ago not more human beings 
 were visible than could be counted on the fingers of one hand, covered 
 by three thousand human beings, restlessly moving to and fro like the 
 microscopic army of an ant-hill. Fun and frolic reigns all day until 
 the moment for departure on the return journey arrives. Then may 
 be observed the reverse of the phenomenon of the morning. Anima- 
 tion is gone almost as quickly as it came. The trains give a few 
 premonitory rumblings and disappear. The last notes of the excur- 
 sionists' songs die away on the wind ; the echoes are undisturbed by 
 peals of laughter ; and the hucksters who have waited on the great 
 army of pleasure-seekers pack up their belongings, fold up their 
 tents like the Arabs, steal away as silently and swiftly as they alighted, 
 and leave the philosopher to reflect in sudden solitude upon the moral 
 of the day's experience. 
 
 On the north-west coast of the United Kingdom the development 
 of the excursion system is even more conspicuous than on the east. 
 The manufacturers of the north and the great retailers, who, for the 
 most part, are north-countrymen, cannot be accused of neglecting the 
 social relaxations of those whom they employ. Lytham, Fleetwood, 
 and New Brighton are only a few of the marine resorts of myriads 
 of the operatives let loose from the great towns of northern industry ; 
 and if the goal of these is in too many cases the public-house bar 
 rather than the shore of the sea, it is permissible to hope that tobacco- 
 smoke and beer do not entirely neutralise the beneficent agencies of 
 oxygen and ozone. Generally it may be said that the labouring 
 classes are, in the north of England, better off as regards amusements 
 than in the south. Many large works or factories have attached to 
 them not only reading-rooms, but billiard-rooms and bowling-alleys. 
 When these are not provided by the employer, they are sometimes 
 secured by the men, who club together, and, applying the principle 
 of co-operation, wisely supersede the attractions of the tavern. Other 
 and more active recreations than these are forthcoming : cricket, 
 wrestling, and every variety of athletic sport command an increasing 
 popularity throughout the whole of the north of England. In the 
 Pottery Districts, and in the vicinity of Manchester, rabbit-coursing, 
 with a peculiar breed of little greyhound, is much in vogue. With the 
 shoemakers of Northamptonshire — and, indeed, among shoemakers of 
 all parts of England — foot-racing is a favourite pastime. The artisans 
 of Birmingham and Coventry rejoice in bicycles. Among the rural 
 and urban toilers of Yorkshire knurr and spell — a species of trap, bat, 
 and ball — still flourishes. In some counties (eminently in Nottingham- 
 shire) wherever there is a fair expanse of level and unoccupied grass- 
 land, the wickets are sure to be pitched, and boys and men practise
 
 510 ENGLAND. 
 
 with bat and ball — some of them destined to blossom into professional 
 players — after the day's work is over. 
 
 In rural districts there are hundreds of cottagers, now that cottage 
 gardening has received systematic encouragement in special shows 
 for cottage competitors, and that pi'izes are specially reserved for 
 these at more general horticultural exhibitions, whose spare hours 
 are entirely given to gardening. If one comes to London, it is not 
 necessary to mention Epping Forest as the Arcadia of the artisan of 
 the East End ; Ramsgate and Margate as the marine paradises of the 
 multitude ; or Battersea Park as the great Sunday lounge of various 
 social subdivisions of the community, from the head clerk down to 
 the junior porter. Naturally in such a climate as ours, the working 
 classes will always find the larger part of their amusement within 
 four walls. Thirty years ago, with the single exception of the theatre, 
 the only available resort for the masses was the public-house. We 
 are as completely outliving that state of things as we have outlived the 
 period when " Cross's Menagerie " was one of the great attractions of 
 the Strand, and the skeleton of the whale was the only lion in 
 Trafalgar Square. If there cannot be said to have been established 
 an absolute identity between instruction and amusement, the steps 
 actually taken in the direction of reform are immense. Music-halls 
 do not spread an atmosphere of pure refinement, and are not without 
 their mischievous influences upon the moral currency, but they are 
 none the less, if properly conducted, antidotes to the popular curse of 
 drunkenness. They exist in every large town in England, and the 
 composition of their audiences presents some points which are not 
 entirely unsatisfactory. It is claimed on behalf of the Frenchman 
 that while there may be no one who is at home so little, there is no 
 one who loves home so much. He takes, we are told, the influence 
 of the domestic hearth with him whenever he goes abroad. The 
 society, in fact, in which he chiefly moves is an extension of home ; 
 and if he is happy, and is really equally at home anywhere, it is 
 because he is not unaccompanied by his wife and children. A very 
 casual examination of the company that fills some music-halls, 
 whether in London or elsewhere, will convince one that at least a 
 portion of it consists of genuinely family parties — husbands and wives, 
 fathers, mothers, and one or two of their children. The attempt 
 which is now being made to establish coffee-house music-halls will 
 certainly prove a strong and wholesome antidote to the public-house 
 and the gin-shop. 
 
 There are other not less popular recreations of the masses which 
 stand on a much higher level. The statistics and figures published 
 in the newspapers from week to week show how large is the 
 measure of popularity which institutions like the South Kensington 
 Museum, the National Gallery, and others, enjoy. A wider experience
 
 POPULAB AMUSEMENTS. 541 
 
 than London, unhappily, affords of the working of the free library 
 system is necessary to convey a just conception of the immense boon 
 which free libraries are to the working classes. Look inside the doors 
 of these establishments in Manchester or Birmingham during the 
 dinner-hour, and note the attention and the evident enjoyment with 
 which the artisans are reading, not novels only, but the classics of 
 English literature and the manuals of modern science. Add to the 
 free libraries the working men's clubs, and a fair idea may be formed 
 of the character and extent of the humanising machinery which is 
 already at work among the masses throughout the length and breadth 
 of the land. 
 
 The working man's club is an institution not only from a political 
 point of view harmless, but under its social aspect eminently benefi- 
 cent. It is, too, an institution which is representative of a growing 
 class. There may be a score of such clubs for working men in Lon- 
 don, and they are to be found in every considerable town in England. 
 In some cases there is no mention of political principles of any kind 
 in the club rules. In others, the political cause with which the society 
 is identified is Conservative or Liberal ; the programme in a majority 
 of instances being of a decidedly Liberal and even democratic cha- 
 racter. Yet how groundless are any apprehensions as to the constitu- 
 tional peril latent in these professions may be judged from a glimpse 
 at the interior life of the club, and a comparison between its ostensible 
 objects and its practical functions. The institution which we will now 
 visit, and which may be taken as typical of many others, has been in 
 existence about half a dozen years. It has nearly six hundred mem- 
 bers, all of whom, without exception, are bond-fide working men — 
 some small masters, some highly-skilled mechanics making £3 or £i 
 a week, others whose weekly wages are from 25s. to 30s. The 
 admission to the club is by ballot among the members of the committee, 
 and any conduct which is offensive, or which threatens the harmony 
 of the institution, is punished as severely and after the same fashion 
 — by expulsion— as " conduct unworthy of a gentleman " would be 
 in one of the co-operative palaces of Pall Mall or St. James's Street. 
 The subscription is about 15s. a year, and it has lately been decided 
 that visitors' refreshments must be paid for by the friends who intro- 
 duce them — a rule which adds to the radical difference between these 
 establishments and the public-house. 
 
 This is the chief room of the building : a spacious hall for debate, 
 with a stage at one end for occasional dramatic entertainments. Im- 
 mediately adjoining it is a smaller chamber furnished with a refresh- 
 ment buffet. If our visit happens to be during the hours of daylight, 
 the place will be deserted save for the presence of a few stray mem- 
 bers, clad in their working dress, who have lounged in during the 
 dinner-hour to read the papers. In the billiard-room, the bagatelle-
 
 542 ENGLAND, 
 
 room, the chess-room, the refreshment-room, the reading-room, there 
 may also he found one or two mechanics who are taking a holiday, or 
 who are perhaps out of work. The reading-room is seldom absolutely 
 empty. Like the other apartments, it opens out of the central hall, 
 is well supplied with the chief newspapers of the day, with various 
 organs of different trades and industries, not only English, but Ame- 
 rican, and in a few cases German and French, and has in addition a 
 fair library. The works of John Stuart Mill are there, while those of 
 Thomas Carlyle for the most part are not. The writings of another 
 obscure heresiarch of a former generation, of a name of similar sound 
 but different orthography, Carlisle, are prominently visible on the 
 shelves. There, too, are the books whose authors are Herbert Spencer, 
 Thomas Hare, Lecky, Smiles, and Buckle ; while there are a multitude of 
 publications of which the titles have a strange sound to English ears, 
 but which have won great popularity on the transatlantic continent. 
 The room is further ornamented with portraits of certain of the more 
 advanced members of the House of Commons, distinguished patrons 
 of the Republican cause on the Continent, and notably of George 
 Washington and his family, which has been sent as a present to the 
 club from a group of sympathetic working men on the other side of 
 the Atlantic. 
 
 As the day draws to its close the club begins gradually to fill. 
 
 r/ ^ Here are the representatives of all the industries which have their 
 X head-quarters in great cities. They come in their working dress, yet 
 
 " not without having paid some preliminary attention to their personal 
 
 appearance. They have been home, have gone through a simple 
 toilette, have had their tea and a rasher of bacon with it, have pro- 
 bably smoked the pipe of domestic peace, and have not forgotten to 
 say good night to the little ones in bed. They want change of 
 scene and conversation, and they get it at their club. They read, 
 smoke, and chat by turns. There is sure to be some discussion in the 
 great hall on some topic of the day. One member reads a short paper, 
 let it be supposed, on the necessity of protection, or the justice of 
 reciprocity, to native trade, or direct representation of the interests of 
 labour in Parliament. A debate follows, and much of the speaking 
 which may be heard is surprisingly good. Sometimes there are 
 visitors. An American or German operative narrates his experiences, 
 or a gentleman who takes an interest in working men and their 
 doings addresses them on the subject of his travels in foreign parts, 
 or acquaints them with his views on matters nearer home. On Sun- 
 day night a kind of grand field-day of the club is held. There is 
 always a lecture ; the topics suggested are infinitely various, convey- 
 ing much valuable instruction. The theme chosen is seldom suited 
 to the sanctity of the day ; the moral pointed would not always com- 
 mend itself to the political quietist. lie that us it may, it is certainly
 
 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS, 513 
 
 better that these men should be in their clubs than at taverns or 
 gin-shops. If drunkenness is ever stamped out from among the 
 English working classes, it will be largely due to the agency of such 
 institutions as these. It is not Utopian to believe that clubs may, in 
 course of time, and as education advances, do for labouring men what 
 they have already done for the wealthier classes, and render open 
 intoxication a barbarous anachronism. As they have created among 
 the wealthier classes a public opinion which is unfavourable to excess, 
 so wherever Ihey exist among the humbler classes we find them doing, 
 or tending to do, the same good work. It is beginning to be recog- 
 nised that a man who is drunk is, for the time being, not only a brute, 
 but a nuisance. 
 
 Whatever may be the condition or the prospects of the drama in 
 England, there can be no doubt as to its claim to be considered a 
 popular institution, or that for an increasingly large number of persons 
 the stage supplies the chief, if not the only, culture which they know. 
 The theatre has become in London not merely an occasional amuse- 
 ment, but a regular pursuit. Among classes socially quite distinct 
 and different the chief idea of an evening's amusement is the play. 
 One finds it at the East End, where the same persons repair 
 nightly to witness over and over again the same performance. The 
 same fact meets one at the West End, where the theatre is not 
 only a place in which to sit still and laugh or wonder, according as 
 the spirit of comedy or tragic awe is in the ascendant, but a lounge 
 where cigarettes may be smoked, friends met and chatted with, and 
 the news of the evening obtained. This is an importation of Con- 
 tinental usages into England within the last few years. Evenings at 
 home are enjoyable and admirable in their way, but how many tens 
 of thousands are there in London and other large cities who have 
 evenings to spare yet no home in particular at which to spend them, 
 not to mention the daily influx of casual visitors from the country, or 
 of sojourners en route for India or the colonies, or of Americans of 
 passage to and from the Continent ? There is, further, a large per- 
 centage of young men sufficiently well-to-do, who, if they have their 
 offices in the day, and their chambers and clubs at night, are not 
 overburdened with social engagements, and may, perhaps, prefer the 
 independence of the playhouse to the hospitable constraints of a 
 decorous dinner-table. With these the theatre is not the least 
 important business of their lives. There is not a new piece that is 
 produced which they miss. They are seldom absent on first nights. 
 They know the critics by sight. They belong probably to some one 
 or other of the minor literary or dramatic clubs. They skim the 
 newspapers of the morning and evening, but serious study is not to 
 their taste, and the theatre is. 
 
 There is little or nothing in common between the modern playgoer
 
 544 ENGLAND. 
 
 and the ancient enthusiast in the classic days of the Patent Houses. 
 The cheap enjoyment of that period he would vote vulgar. He has 
 no notion of waiting a couple of hours outside the pit door, and then 
 fervently congratulating himself if he has secured a seat well in front 
 of the stage. When the play is over, it is not with stout and oysters 
 that he will refresh his inner man. On the contrary, he has con- 
 formed to the modern type of exquisite. He makes a point of appear- 
 ing in full evening dress. He never touches supper : it hurts his 
 digestion. He is afraid of stout : it is the declared enemy of his 
 liver. 
 
 The place which the theatre fills in the mind of society at large is 
 equally remarkable. Together with old china and new pictures, it 
 divides polite conversation in drawing-rooms and at dinner-tables. 
 It is considered quite as necessary to go to see the last new play as 
 the last new opera. Even society's conception of the calling and 
 personality of the actor has undergone a complete change. Directly 
 or indirectly, clubs have done a great deal to bridge over the gulf 
 that once existed between classes. If they have not promoted what 
 is called good fellowship, they have at least done the . important 
 service of bringing representatives of different orders of men into close 
 and friendly intercourse. The actor is of all others a clubable man. 
 The hours which he is compelled to keep make club life particularly 
 convenient to him ; and when he is at his club he finds himself in a 
 circle which includes men with whom thirty years ago it is not very 
 likely that he would have been on speaking terms. The compara- 
 tively intimate relationship which has been established between society 
 and the stage has had its influence on both parties to the arrange- 
 ment. The influence of the stage upon society does not end here. 
 Private theatricals may satisfy a trivial ambition, but not the eager 
 natures which require something more stirring ; for these there are 
 the excitements of the public audience. Thus do we hear of amateur 
 pantomimes and matinees at fashionable playhouses in the Strand. 
 
 That the stage is not at the present time a vehicle for the inculca- 
 tion of the higher morality, and that as matters are, it is not likely to 
 be one, must be confessed. The relaxation of public manners which 
 has been in process in this country during several years is reflected by 
 the footlights, and in the pieces which attain popularity behind them. 
 Paris has been, and remains, the metropolis of dramatic art or inven- 
 tion, as well as the resort of all the idlers and demireps of Europe. 
 Of late the facilities of locomotion and the whims of fashion have 
 cemented the connection between London and Paris, and the influences 
 exercised upon our social system by the Second Empire are still ram- 
 pant. It is not only our plays, but in some cases our domestic ethics, 
 which are taken from the French — of the Boulevards; and if the 
 spirit of the age tolerates the lowest standard of Parisian morality, it
 
 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 54.5 
 
 is not surprising that the plays, which are the presentations of this 
 morality, should be popular in English theatres. Something like an 
 analogy, too, may be traced between a London and a Paris audience. 
 French domestic life is not represented in the crowds that fill the 
 smaller theatres of the French capital; English domestic life is repre- 
 sented almost as little in some of the theatres of London. Prominent 
 among the patrons of the London stage are uncritical visitors from 
 the provinces and the not too refined members of our new plutocracy. 
 There are other reasons which can scarcely make us expect to find 
 any very elevated exemplar of morals or manners on the London 
 stage. We dine later and we work harder than ever, and the state 
 of body and mind which these habits superinduce is scarcely favour- 
 able to the highest sort of intellectual appreciation. Again, free trade 
 in theatres — an a bsurd confusion of industry and art — has dispersed 
 the few good actors that we had, has destroyed a school of acting, 
 and has made room on the stage for some of the crapulous buffooneries 
 of the music-hall. Indeed, while the music-hall is a grade above the 
 gin-shop, it is the curse of the stage. It vitiates and debases man- 
 agers, actors, audiences alike. As a consequence, it is only too likely 
 that were the Act of Parliament for regulating theatres repealed, the 
 result would be, not the conversion of music-halls into theatres, but 
 of theatres into music-halls. There are, perhaps, now more tolerably 
 good actors on the English boards than at any other period ; on the 
 other hand, there are very few actors who can be called great, and 
 the tolerably good actors are quite incapable of representing the 
 heroic or poetic drama. Their elocutionary powers are defective, and 
 they are not happy even in their attempted recitals of blank verse. 
 As for a subsidised national theatre, it must be pronounced an impos- 
 sibility in England ; nor should it be forgotten that the Comedie 
 Franchise is not merely a subsidised theatre, but also an incorporated 
 and endowed collegiate institution, having in some sort its exhibi- 
 tioners, its fellowships, its statutes, privileges, and pensions. 
 
 "La foule," says Jules Claretie, "est ainsi faite qu'elle s'en va 
 payer — et parfois tres cher — pour admirer dans un theatre ce qu'elle 
 peut librement, et a bon marche contempler dans la rue." The most 
 striking feature of our modern drama is its abject realism. This is 
 not a credulous, a poetic, a chivalrous, or an enthusiastic age. As is 
 the age, so is the theatre-going public, and the theatre itself. We 
 do not want impossible feats of ennobled heroism. We want to 
 see life as it is — life sometimes as it exists in St. Giles's, at others as 
 it exists in Mayfair or St. James's Street. We demand that actors 
 and actresses shall give us the best imitations they can of the ladies 
 and gentlemen who meet daily in Hyde Park ; who talk, laugh, and 
 flirt together ; who make love, and unmake marriages ; who go to 
 Hurlingham ; who dine at the Orleans Club. We pretend no high 
 
 N N
 
 54 G ENGLAND. 
 
 motive in all this, and aim at no particular moral. "We simply wish 
 to be amused, and we wish also to witness what we call a mise-en- 
 scene so perfect that we may enjoy some faint illusion into the bargain. 
 As the coats and dresses of the ladies and gentlemen on the stage are 
 made by the same tailors and milliners who make the coats and 
 dresses of the ladies and gentlemen in society, so do we expect that 
 the furniture shall be an exact likeness of that seen in the drawing- 
 rooms of the West End. If Old English decorations and Queen 
 Anne architecture are the vogue in real life, we must have them on 
 the stage. Nothing must be left to the imagination, and unless the 
 eye and ear can immediately perceive it all, it is not supposed to be 
 there. The more familiar the scene the better. There is nothing 
 which brings down the house like a view of Waterloo Bridge, 
 especially if a hansom cab happens to be going over it ; or the 
 counterfeit presentment of Hyde Park Corner by lamplight, espe- 
 cially if Piccadilly happens to be enlivened by the gay and festive 
 presence of some young gentlemen who have taken too much wine, 
 whose opera hats are crushed in, whose white ties are all awry, and 
 who are going home with the milk. Arcadia may be all very well ; 
 but the most beautiful glimpse of Arcadian forests and streams which 
 scenic artist ever gave would not provoke a tenth part of the applause 
 that a clever portrayal of Richmond Hill, with the " Star and 
 Garter " in the immediate foreground, and Eel Pie Island in the 
 middle distance, never fails to elicit. A view of the Bay of Naples, 
 with Herculaneum and Pompeii visible, would be all very well ; but 
 what is it to Brighton, with the green and gold ironwork of the Grand 
 Hotel ? 
 
 These tastes are not peculiar to the playgoing public or exclusively 
 gratified on the stage. The same thing may be witnessed in much 
 of our pictorial art and in most of our popular novels. What the 
 late Mr. Thomas Robertson, the author of Society, Caste, and the rest 
 of what are known as the "Prince of Wales' dramas," was to the 
 modern drama, the late Mr. Anthony Trollope was to contemporary 
 romance. The novelist must follow the example of the playwright, 
 and give us life as it is. On the stage the hero asks for a cigarette ; 
 in the novel the young lady asks her lover for a stamp. The first 
 consideration in every department of intellectual industry or activity 
 is not to fly too high for the public. The dramatist may write his 
 dramas with a quill which comes from the wing of the angel Gabriel, 
 but if he writes above the heads of his patrons, woe be to him. Tbe 
 romantic and historic drama has given place to the "cup and saucer" 
 domestic drama, and there is no reason to suppose that public taste 
 and morals are much the worse or better for the change. But what 
 is a harmless realism among the higher classes may conceivably 
 become a very dangerous realism if gratified in the case of the lower.
 
 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 547 
 
 It is a simple historical fact, that a few years ago a London managers- 
 was actually contemplating the production of the Ober Ammergau 
 Passion Play upon the stage of his theatre, and had he not received 
 timely warning from the responsible authority the experiment would 
 certainly have been made. Again, early in the month of December, 
 1875, it was announced on a series of yellow and black posters, fixed 
 upon every available vacant space in the town of Sunderland, that a 
 startling drama of real life was to be produced, founded on certain 
 incidents in the career of Henry Wainwright, who was then lying in 
 the condemned cell of Newgate under sentence of death for the murder 
 of his paramour ! The first act was to have Broxbourne Gardens as 
 its venue, and in the course of it the audience were to be made 
 acquainted with " the first meeting between Wainwright and his 
 victim ; the arts employed by men about town ; the friendly warning 
 disregarded." Among the scenes which followed were " high jinks in 
 the Whitechapel Counting-house," a "life of wild dissipation," the 
 " murder," and much else. If this hideous farrago of criminal tab- 
 leaux, rendered articulate with criminal speeches and vicious senti- 
 ments, had been actually given to the public, who can doubt that it 
 would have exerted a directly debasing and pernicious influence ? The 
 public know what is permitted, but not what is prevented. 
 
 Such experiences as these show that the Licenser of Plays has other 
 duties to perform than the interdiction of clumsy adaptations of un- 
 wholesome French dramas or obscene French farces. There is but 
 one commandment in the Decalogue which is a source of unfailing 
 capital to the Parisian playwright. The same sin, implied or ex- 
 pressed, perpetrated already, or with events apparently leading up to 
 its perpetration, is ever there. His ingenuity is devoted to varying 
 the conditions of the offence, inventing new combinations of offenders, 
 placing them in novel situations, and illustrating the Nemesis which, 
 sooner or later, overtakes the guilty in divers shapes. Sometimes the 
 action of the avenging deity assumes the form of laughter-moving 
 satire, sometimes of overwhelming tragedy. There are farcical comedies 
 in which the unholy conspirator against the peace of households is 
 depicted as merely ridiculous, the dupe of his own villany, a knave, 
 and, as events turn out, a fool into the bargain. There are, on the 
 other hand, comedies, such as the Supplice d'une Femme, which are 
 traversed by a vein of very tragic purpose, and which display the con- 
 sequences of matrimonial perfidy in the agonising aspects of lifelong 
 and irreparable remorse. Now these dramas stand in a relation 
 
 * There is, of course, no reference here to the advertised Tableaux at the Westminster 
 Aquarium a few years ago. The interposition of authority was not called for in this 
 instance, the Ober Ammergau peasants never having accepted any engagement in 
 England, and the representation of the Tableaux not having been announced to take 
 place at the Royal Aquarium Theatre — the only part of the building under the Lord 
 Chamberlain's jurisdiction. 
 
 N N 2
 
 548 ENGLAND. 
 
 towards French audiences and to French society radically different 
 from that which it is possible they should occupy towards English audi- 
 ences and English society. "With scarcely an exception, even our 
 best actors and actresses lack the finesse and the lightness of touch 
 which are the attributes, in a special degree, of their French brethren 
 and sisters. They are without the eminently Parisian art of swiftly 
 and gracefull) 7 gliding over delicate and dangerous ground. Though 
 the situations in a play should be subordinate to the moral, the moral 
 is still one thing and the situations are another. The real and unavoid- 
 able danger when English actors are intrusted with the performance 
 of a play whose spirit, conception, and situation are thoroughly 
 French, is that they should exaggerate the situations at the expense 
 of the moral — should bring the former into disproportionate pro- 
 minence, and should dwarf and obscure the latter. The final 
 moral, from a French point of view, may be unexceptionable, but 
 the situations are worse than hazardous, and, acted as such dramas 
 are likely to be acted in England, the temptation to an English 
 audience to fasten on the situations and forget the moral would be 
 I irresistible. 
 
 There are other reasons which cause dramas that are perfectly 
 possible and not glaringly improper in France to be wholly unadapt- 
 able to English audiences. If the sanctity of the marriage tie is 
 not always respected in England, the general terms on which the 
 sexes are associated with each other before and after marriage are 
 entirely different on the two sides of the Channel. In France flirta- 
 tion is supposed to be the common successor of marriage ; in England 
 it is at least considered theoretically more desirable that it should 
 precede the ceremony. A very considerable proportion of the Eng- 
 lish novels read by young ladies who are not yet brides — which are 
 mainly the products of feminine hands, and abound in warmly-coloured 
 love passages — would be considered quite as inappropriate or improper 
 for a French maiden as the polissonneries of the French stage are for 
 an English maiden. The cavalier servmte, the wife's lover, may have 
 an existence in England, but he has not a definite status as in France, 
 and the adaptations to the English stage of French plays in which he 
 figures are not faithful or acceptable pictures of English society. 
 Finally, it is to be borne in mind that the institution of a Divorce 
 Court in the one country, and the absence of such an institution 
 until recently in the other, have caused the public of each to regard 
 the presentation in a dramatic shape of conjugal treason with very 
 different sentiments. The records of the tribunal over which Sir 
 James Hannen presides acquaint Englishmen and Englishwomen with 
 the misery that follows systematic breaches of what is not in this 
 country a sacrament, but a civil contract, in all its vulgar and prosaic- 
 hideousness. Faithlessness in husbands and wives is not in England,
 
 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 549 
 
 as in France, a thing to be satirised by turning the laugh against the 
 betrayer ; and it is surely as sorry to jest with the iniquity which may 
 be punished with a heavy pecuniary mulct, and a scandalous publicity, 
 in a division of a High Court of Justice, as with the fate that over- 
 takes an apprentice who dips his hand into his master's till, or the 
 scamp who terminates his career by forging a friend's name. 
 
 If the general English public were able to protect itself in these 
 matters, or if English theatrical managers could be trusted never to 
 take advantage of its defencelessness and folly, then Parliament 
 might be petitioned to repeal forthwith the Act under which the 
 Licenser of Plays holds his office. But few, if any, managers 
 sufficiently bear in mind that many pieces which have succeeded in 
 Paris have not been exclusively, or even mainly, patronised by the 
 French middle class, but by the floating population of pleasure-seeking 
 foreigners, of whom Paris is always full. Again, theatres are labelled 
 and classified in Paris to a degree in which they are not, and cannot 
 be, in London. If one goes to the Palais Royal, to the Bouffes, the 
 Varietes, one knows in each case precisely what to expect. In Lon- 
 don, on the other hand, the audiences in all our theatres are mixed ; 
 and the most respectable mother and father of a family are apt to as- 
 sume that there is no temple of the drama to which they may not 
 safely resort with their children and friends. Further, it has been in 
 past times the policy of French Governments to render the theatre ai 
 place of distraction from politics for the French people, and so long as 
 the end was gained the means employed were not too minutely in -J 
 quired into. The specious argument which is sometimes employed, 
 that if a censorship of the stage is desirable a censorship of the press 
 also would at least be justified, admits of an easy and conclusive 
 answer. The rai son d'e tre of a censorship of the stage in countries 
 where the press and all other forms of literary publication are 
 absolutely free, is to be found in the essential difference between what 
 i s read and what is represented. The Police Neivs and other journals 
 of that description are not edifying sheets. But it is possible that 
 their perusal does no permanent injury to some, at least, of their 
 patrons. Imagine, however, the dramatic representation of the scenes 
 and incidents portrayed in an illustrated print of the character of the 
 Police News. The peculiar influence of dramatic representations \ 
 depends upon the contagious sympathy of a crowd. The effect pro- , / 
 duced upon an individual has to be enlarged and intensified indefinitely 
 before any notion can be arrived at as to the nature of the total 
 impression upon the aggregate multitude. The wild plaudits of the 
 collective occupants of the pit and gallery come to the ears of 
 each one present with a force that is exactly proportioned to the 
 numerical total of the audience and to the complete volume of irre- 
 sponsible voices.
 
 550 ENGLAND. 
 
 The jurisdiction of the Lord Chamberlain of Her Majesty's House- 
 hold for the time being, as Licenser of the metropolitan theatres, 
 •md of all new stage-plays intended for representation at any theatre 
 in Great Britain, is a curious and interesting survival. It is sometimes 
 loosely described as an anomaly ; but it is an anomaly only in the 
 sense in which the growth and permanence of our whole constitutional 
 system is an anomaly. Such anomalies preserve us from the logic 
 and the falsehood of extremes, from the opposite but equally oppres- 
 sive inquisitions of a jealous despotism and of a jealous democracy. 
 In France the dramatic censorship was never so severe as when the 
 censorship was formally abolished — that is, during the Reign of 
 Terror under the First Republic. In countries where no formal cen- 
 sorship exists, the interference of an arbitrary (and not always incor- 
 ruptible) police is by no means an enviable alternative. In England 
 the unscrupulous managers who would prefer absolute licence, tempered 
 b)' occasional police raids, are probably those who would desire to 
 introduce into their theatres the entertainments and the manners 
 of music-halls and casinoes, and who, therefore, naturally gravitate 
 to Scotland Yard. It may be doubted whether, as the basis of 
 government becomes more and more democratic, the supervision of 
 public entertainments will not become more rather than less exacting 
 and severe. 
 
 Some reason for this assumption may be found in the historical 
 antecedents of the Lord Chamberlain's authority over theatres. It 
 is altogether a mistake to suppose that the Act of George II., 
 introduced and passed by the Ministry of Sir Robert Walpole, 
 establishing a censorship of dramatic representations and placing it 
 under the Lord Chamberlain, was the beginning of his theatrical juris- 
 diction. The truth is, that before the great Puritan Revolution, which 
 closed all theatres and swept many of the poor players into the armies 
 of the king, the two or three dramatic companies that existed were 
 under the express protection of the sovereign. In those days stage- 
 players were looked upon as " rogues and vagabonds," and they were 
 glad enough to escape the ignominy of outcasts by being nominated 
 and appointed "His Majesty's Servants," and provided with royal 
 liveries. The functions subsequently entrusted to the Lord Chamber- 
 lain were in those days performed by the Master of the Revels, who was 
 the examiner of all theatrical entertainments. After the Restoration the 
 surviving players of the Puritan period, and their successors, were glad 
 enough to take refuge once more under the patronage of the Court, and 
 to be numbered again among " His Majesty's Servants." The Act of 
 I George II. (repealed by the Act 6 & 7 Victoria, chap. 68) was nothing 
 more than a legislative enactment and sanction of that authority which 
 1 bad previously belonged to the royal prerogative. It was certainly no 
 disgrace to the players to be treated as one of the liberal professions,
 
 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 0-51 
 
 and to be placed, like the Church, the Bar, and the naval and military- 
 services, under the control of a great officer of state. But with that 
 happy adaptation of old prerogative to modern liberty which cha- 
 racterises so many " anomalous " English institutions, the supervision 
 of the Lord Chamberlain over theatres or dramatic representations is 
 really exercised by a deputy, who by his condition and experience 
 as a man of the world and by his sympathies as a man of liberal 
 education, of art, of " letters," is likely to exercise the delicate and 
 difficult discretion of a censor (who, it must be remembered, is a 
 responsible administrator of an Act of Parliament) with at once a due 
 sense of the close relation of public manners to public morals, and 
 of the influence of dramatic representations on public manners, and 
 with a sensitive regard for the just rights and liberties of dramatic 
 literature and dramatic art. In point of fact, neither dramatic 
 literature nor dramatic art has ever had cause to complain of an 
 authority which has been felt as a censorship only by those lawless 
 managers who would turn theatres into houses of ill-fame. Oddly 
 enough, the most severe of censors — even to absurdity — was himself 
 a dramatic author, and not a squeamish one, George Colman. There 
 is no denying that the stage in this country, quite apart from foreign 
 influences, has never entirely recovered from the fanatical hostility of 
 Puritanism and from the libertinism of the Restoration, which was a 
 reaction from Puritanical excesses. It is the business of our dramatic 
 " censor" in these days to guard it alike from mere fanaticism and 
 from its own besetting sins in an opposite direction. And on the 
 whole, it may be said that this invidious responsibility is satisfac- 
 torily met. 
 
 The abolition of a dramatic censorship thus gently and generously 
 exercised, would almost certainly open the door of the stage to the 
 offensive personalities and the scarcely veiled sedition which, as 
 matters are, cannot be kept out of a good many of the popular 
 periodicals of the day. As a consequence, the theatres might be 
 expected to become the scenes of riot and disturbance. Detectives 
 in disguise would be quartered about, the stage would fall into 
 disi'epute, and English liberty would be in real danger of serious 
 abridgment. If it is said that the English public is at bottom 
 respectable, and in the long run may be trusted to make its respec- 
 tability prevail, the answer is that the dramatic censor helps these 
 respectable persons, in the first instance, towards a result which they 
 might only achieve with difficulty after some delay, and after their 
 good taste and moral sense had sustained a considerable outrage. 
 Such an officer is not likely, in point of ethical severity, to be much 
 superior to the general standard of his time. A Puritanic censor 
 of plays would only be possible when Puritanism was the recognised 
 ruling influence of the day. If the English public is — as it un-
 
 5o2 ENGLAND. 
 
 doubtedly is — for the most part highly respectable, the stage censor 
 reflects their respectability and the good sense which that respec- 
 tability generates ; and in doing this, he may do also not a little to 
 help the decent many to resist the despotism which an indecent few 
 might not be sorry to establish. 
 
 With respect to some farcical comedies which have been denounced 
 as objectionable, it may be argued that it is a mistake, even on high 
 moral grounds, to take such performances too seriously. After all, 
 a theatre is not a church or a chapel. As long as there are genuine 
 drollery and genuine laughter there is not much harm done. Nothing 
 is so dull as indecency, nothing the attractions of which are so soon 
 exhausted. But the dialogue of a piece may be harmless, and yet on 
 the stage it may be rendered vicious by the by-play, business, and 
 " gag " of vicious actors. Ever since dramatic art has existed, the 
 comedy of manners and of character has abounded in intrigue, as 
 tragedy has mainly resorted to the collisions between passion and 
 duty. For dramatic purposes the Decalogue has always been more 
 honoured in the breach than the observance. Indeed, if the Deca- 
 logue were always universally observed, the occupation of both stage 
 and pulpit would be gone. The Church, fortified by tremendous 
 sanctions, rebukes vice, and scares it away by the terrors of the wrath 
 to come. The play catches the conscience of an audience by tragic 
 terror and pity, or chastises vice by ridicule. An audience may be 
 laughed out of their vices at the theatre ; they cannot be preached 
 out of them. 
 
 As regards the production of French plays upon the English stage, 
 it is a delusion to suppose that more than a very limited number of 
 playgoers in London know enough of the French language genuinely 
 to enjoy them. The performers are French, the language employed 
 is French ; and if the Examiner of Plays licences in the original 
 language a farce or a drama which he might be slow to sanction in an 
 English adaptation, he has right and reason on his side. To borrow 
 an expression from the domain of international law, the stage censor 
 will scarcely err if he gives French plays performed in London a kind 
 of extra-territorial privilege — if, in fact, he treats the stage on which 
 they are presented as for the time being a part of France projected 
 by accident into England. At the close of these observations on the 
 contemporary English stage, there may be briefly noticed a question 
 which used often to be heard among playgoers — Is a revival of 
 Shakespearian dramas in England more probable than a revival of the 
 classic drama in France ? Four or five years ago the answer would have 
 been in the negative. All those existing conditions of the stage and of 
 society to which reference has been made in this chapter pointed to one 
 conclusion, which a flash of fashionable enthusiasm for a single actor 
 of originality and distinction, whose principal and most popular sue-
 
 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 553 
 
 cesses have been won in modern realistic drama and in modern 
 comedy, confirmed rather than contradicted. The more Shakespeare's 
 plays are read, it was thought the less, perhaps, would they be 
 represented. An audience sufficiently cultivated to enjoy the plays as 
 literature, to taste the quality of the poet's language, and the subtlety 
 of his imagery, was supposed to be proportionately less disposed to 
 tolerate the personation of all but one or two characters in the piece 
 by actors such as Hamlet describes in his advice to the players. This 
 anticipation, however, has been completely falsified by events, and at 
 no time has the Shakespearian drama been in greater favour with the 
 English public than at the present. This fact is the result chiefly 
 of the genius of Mr. Henry Irving, who has done more than any one; 
 else to popularise the plays of Shakespeare. It is, perhaps, due to 
 the brilliant success which has attended his revivals at the Lyceum 
 that we are at this moment witnessing at the Princess's a representa- 
 tion which will serve to recall to the minds of many persons the days 
 of Charles Kean.
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 PROFESSIONAL ENGLAND. 
 
 General View of English Professions — Civil Engineering— The Bar: Qualifications for 
 Success — Money Prizes of the Bar — Tendencies of fie Time reflected in English 
 Professional Life — New Professions called into Existence — How Science, Commerce, 
 Art, Literature, have each enlarged the Area of English Professional Life — School- 
 mastering as a Profession — Opportunities of Scientific Teaching — Manual v. Intel- 
 lectual Occupation — The Medical Profession — The Country Doctor — General Practi- 
 tioners and Pure Physicians — Income of London Medical Men — Devotion of the 
 Medical Men to Scientific Study — Progress of Medicine in England — Politics as a 
 Profession — Necessity of Money — The Diplomatic Profession — The Foreign Office — 
 The Army — Its Popularity : Growth of the Professional Soldier — Effect of Abolish- 
 ing Purchase — Mess Expenses. 
 
 It is with English professions in the last quarter of the nineteenth 
 century as it is with the various other aspects of our national life 
 which have been passed successively in review. One is confronted on 
 the one hand by the manifest increase of all that is comprised under 
 the head of organisation, and on the other by those signs of flux and 
 movement which indicate that the future and final development of 
 professional England is as yet undecided. To the former of these 
 categories may be referred the machinery of preliminary tests and 
 qualifying examinations ; to the latter, the indistinctness of the demar- 
 cating line between pursuits and trades on the one hand, and what are 
 specifically styled professions on the other. In all the occupations of 
 modern life there is an increasing demand for stringent guarantees of 
 efficiency. Physicians and surgeons, barristers and solicitors, soldiers 
 and sailors, are each of them called upon to furnish strong prima-facie 
 evidence of fitness for their career before they are able even in name to 
 (liter upon it. If to these we add clergymen, we shall have enumerated 
 the chief traditional departments of English professional life. Yet what 
 nearly innumerable and often anonymous varieties of honourable and 
 profitable occupation will there not be left behind? Though in this 
 chapter it will be necessary to dwell almost exclusively upon the con- 
 ventional professional divisions, it would be an unpardonable omission 
 to ignore the fact that the limit separating the mechanical industry 
 from the profession seems very often purely arbitrary. 
 
 At the head of all the new professions must be placed that of the 
 civil engineer. The calling is pre-eminently that created by the most
 
 PROFESSIONAL ENGLAND. 555 
 
 distinctively characteristic achievements and aspirations of the age, 
 while it opens up a vista of rich rewards to those who follow it with 
 the success which special aptitude and industry command. There is 
 also reason to believe that the profession of the civil engineer is one 
 which appeals with peculiar force to the imagination and ambition of 
 the youth of the day. It is the pioneer of progress and civilisation, 
 moral and material, all the world over ; it gratifies that adventurous 
 instinct which is the heritage of the English race. The civil engineer 
 who spans rocky defiles, pierces mountains, unites continents, and by 
 designing new schemes of railway and telegraphic extension annihilates 
 space and time, is the modern representative of the navigator of the 
 Elizabethan era — of the Hawkinses, Raleighs, Drakes, and Davises, 
 who sailed over remote seas in quest of new lands and fresh enemies 
 to subjugate. The head master of a large public school recently 
 observed to the present writer that three out of every four of his 
 pupils would, if polled, declare for engineering. In other directions, 
 too, the advance of science has greatly enlarged the horizon of English 
 professional life. Scientific farming is surely entitled to rank as a pro- 
 fession. And how is one correctly to speak of the whole race of 
 scientific specialists if not as members of a profession '? Experts in 
 naval architecture, chemists, geologists, and others, have all in reality 
 as definite a profession as the medical man, the lawyer, or the 
 divine. Every department of skilled industry, mechanical or intel- 
 lectual, has annexed to it, so to speak, a considerable specialist business 
 of its own. The development of commerce has been the opportunity 
 for creating a host of occupations, some of which have been glanced 
 at in preceding chapters. Art has proved scarcely less productive in 
 its way than science and commerce. There is not only more work for 
 painters of creative genius than ever, but for a class of artists who 
 never existed before — decorators and designers of all kinds and in all 
 materials. In literature the same movement has, or will have soon, 
 been experienced, and journalism has certainly acquired a true pro- 
 fessional status. 
 
 But though the exigencies of modern life, co-operating with the 
 principle of the subdivision of labour, have multiplied professions in 
 England, they have not multiplied them in such number as to provide 
 sufficient occupation for the sons of English parents. The opportuni- 
 ties of an empire established in each of the four quarters of the globe 
 are found too few, or not remunerative enough, for British lads who 
 have to make their own way in life, and who have small capital on 
 which to commence. Success in the learned professions is denied to 
 mediocrities. The navy requires strong interest, and the army a com- 
 petence. If the developments of British commerce have created a 
 host of new and lucrative callings, there are more candidates already 
 than work can be provided for, while the peculiar aptitudes which the
 
 556 ENGLAND. 
 
 occupation demands are not always forthcoming. The Bar means 
 starvation and idleness to the majority of those who are " called." 
 The Civil Service is underpaid, and the meanest position in it is only 
 to be won after success in an examination sufficiently difficult to act 
 as a formidable barrier. The Church offers small inducement for the 
 ambitious aspirant, and the profession of the schoolmaster is already 
 overstocked. 
 
 These are the complaints which one hears, and is likely for some 
 while to come to hear, on every side. The professions which natu- 
 rally suggest themselves to the two thousand young men who annually 
 take their degrees at Oxford and Cambridge, a majority of whom are 
 dependent for their livelihood on their own exertions, are the Bar, the 
 Church, education, or, possibly, civil engineering. If high academic 
 honours have been taken by the newly-fledged graduate, his path is 
 tolerably clear. He will, in all probability, win a fellowship, which, 
 if not tenable for life, will support him for a certain number of years 
 while he is making a start. He may either attempt to live on the 
 stipend attached to this distinction, or he may, residing in the univer- 
 sity, supplement his income with work done in his college as fellow 
 and tutor, or take private pupils, or he may accept a position as 
 schoolmaster ; or he may go to London, instal himself in chambers, 
 and woo success at the Bar. If he elects the last he will not 
 necessarily find his scholastic honours of any direct assistance to 
 him. Clients will not come, nor will solicitors trust him, more 
 readily because he is a double first, an Ireland Scholar, a Senior 
 Classic, or a Chancellor's Medallist. The chances are, it will be a 
 more appreciable advantage to him to have distinguished himself in 
 the cricket-field, on the river, or in the racquet-court. For one 
 solicitor who recognises that he is a fellow of his college, and the 
 most accomplished scholar of his year, half a dozen will hasten to 
 identify him with the famous stroke in the university eight, or the 
 irresistible bowler who took all the wickets of the rival academic team 
 at Lords. 
 
 Success at the Bar depends on a combination of circumstances, 
 and on a variety of gifts, physical quite as much as mental. A good 
 presence, an agreeable manner, are as valuable as the powerful, but 
 slowly moving intellect. In common law, plausibility, aplomb, and 
 ignorance of what timidity or nervousness mean are indispensable. 
 In addition to this, there should be, if possible, some connection with 
 a few influential solicitors, or the opportunity of establishing such, 
 and then, if most of these conditions are forthcoming, thei*e will be 
 the certainty of a moderate success. The personnel of English 
 lawyers is gradually experiencing a change. The examinations 
 which now precede the call to the Bar ensure not only some degree of 
 general culture, but a fair amount of legal knowledge. Hence, no lawyer
 
 PROFESSIONAL ENGLAND. 557 
 
 who is a barrister can be — as in the old days, when nothing beyond 
 attendance at the chambers of a pleader or counsel was required — 
 entirely ignorant of law. The university graduate is absolved from 
 the necessity of submitting himself to those merely educational tests 
 which are imposed in the case of other candidates, many of whom 
 are the sons or brothers of solicitors, while some have been solicitors 
 themselves. Even the university graduate who has taken high 
 honours occasionally recognises the expediency of acquiring some 
 purely technical education by apprenticing himself to a firm of 
 solicitors before he addresses himself to the business of the barrister. 
 Hence the Bar is much less of a professional lounge than formerly. 
 There are fewer idlers within the precincts of the Inns of Court, and 
 most of the young gentlemen who keep their terms intend to work, 
 and to win every prize which the profession affords. 
 
 The Law List shows that there are some five thousand barristers ; 
 and a writer in the Gentleman's Magazine, placing in juxtaposition with 
 these figures several other facts and statistics, has drawn some 
 interesting conclusions. Estimating the total of fees annually paid in 
 the High Court of Justice and the different Courts of Quarter Sessions 
 at £338,200, and dividing this sum by the number of barristers whose 
 names are in the Law List, the magazinist arrives at an average 
 income for each of £68. Adding to this sum the fees paid in County 
 Courts for Indian, colonial, and Scotch appeals, and by law students 
 to tutors, the writer computes the total of revenue to average £100 
 a head. But, he argues, the expenditure on the necessities of life 
 or of the profession by the barrister cannot be less than £187 a year. 
 Hence he is left with a deficit of £87. Now the money prizes of the 
 profession — the Lord Chancellorship, the other law offices of the 
 Crown, the judgeships, and the rest — are fixed in round numbers at 
 £500,000, which yields another £100 a year to each of the five 
 thousand candidates. This is an interesting and ingenious specula- 
 tion, but not one of much practical value. It does, however, circum- 
 stantially suggest the undoubted fact that the prizes of the Bar are 
 not many in number. It is unnecessary to say that, such as they 
 are, they are distributed among comparatively few of the com- 
 petitors. Here, as elsewhere, honours and the rewards of business 
 have a tendency to concentrate themselves in the hands of a small 
 minority. One success brings another, and the prosperous barrister 
 has no sooner enough to do than he has too much. Generally it 
 may be said that if a young man makes up his mind to succeed at 
 the Bar, he must see his way to being something of a specialist. 
 Let him master some particular department or branch of law, be 
 known as an expert in a certain sort of cases, and he will have an 
 infinitely better cbance than if he takes his stand simply upon the 
 basis of general utility.
 
 558 ENGLAND. 
 
 In a measure this remark is equally true of all professions at the 
 present time. Let us take the case of the university graduate, in fair, 
 but not in the highest honours, who is thrown upon the world with 
 a few college debts, and fewer pounds in his pocket. Unless he goes 
 into the Church, or wins a berth in the Civil Service, or finds some 
 chance opening, such as a secretaryship, or a private tutorship, or 
 makes his mark on the press, there is but one thing he can do if he is 
 to be a self-supporting institution : he must adopt the profession of 
 schoolmaster. Of the young men who have gone through an academic 
 course, without discredit but without lustre, the great majority 
 become curates, or schoolmasters, or emigrants. The mere university 
 degree, even when accompanied by moderate honours, is becoming a 
 drug in the market. As regards emigration, experience seems to 
 show that a young man who makes his home in one of the great 
 British colonies may do fairly well upon either of two assumptions — 
 that he has a certain amount of capital to start him, or that he 
 is willing to turn his hand to anything, and that one hour he can 
 teach boys ciphering, and writing, and Latin grammar, and the 
 next be making himself generally useful. If he elects to be a 
 schoolmaster in England, he may indeed ultimately attain wealth, 
 but that will not be as a schoolmaster, but as keeper of a school 
 boarding-house. Even the pedagogic career no longer presents all 
 its former opportunities. Of course the impetus given in the last 
 few years to education has resulted in a greater demand for school- 
 masters. But then while there is a larger supply than ever, the 
 material wanted is not always that which Oxford and Cambridge 
 supply. The demand for the instruments of scientific instruction 
 is increasingly greater than that for the instruments of literary 
 instruction. 
 
 If the problem of providing employment for a portion even of the 
 vast multitude which now seeks it, too often in vain, is to be satis- 
 factorily solved, the duty of sacrificing personal taste and prejudice 
 to proved necessity cannot be too peremptorily enforced. In many 
 quarters it is already recognised. Among the eligible occupations for 
 younger sons of great noblemen are now recognised not only com- 
 missions in the army and navy, Government appointments, stipendiary 
 magistracies and the like, but positions in mercantile and trading 
 houses, sheep-farming, ordinary farming, plantations in the colonies, 
 India, and America. When dukes are willing to apprentice the cadets 
 of their houses to merchants and to stockbrokers, an example has 
 been set which it is well should be widely followed. The crowds of 
 young men who now sigh for gentlemanlike employment, and despair 
 querulously because it is not forthcoming, will have to reconcile them- 
 selves to a perceptible descent in the social scale. The gospel of 
 levelling up has been preached to the point at which a reaction
 
 PROFESSIONAL ENGLAND. 559 
 
 against its precepts is unavoidable. It has done good in its way, and 
 has disseminated broadcast the leaven of a healthy and stimulating 
 ambition. Before long we are destined to witness a new social 
 movement. It will be felt that the practical knowledge of some 
 specific trade is a better preventive against want, poverty, and failure, 
 than a vague knowledge of clerkly acquirements and a general adap- 
 tability for clerkly duties. Lads who now seek to live at the desk 
 may succeed in securing for themselves the means of living at the 
 bench and in the engine-room ; and signs are now visible that a few 
 years hence no social stigma will be considered to rest upon those 
 who boldly accepted the change. Yet even then it is not possible to 
 forecast the future without some apprehensions. The depression in 
 trade is naturally making its influence felt with sinister force in the 
 domains of industry. Parents who would have been, in times past, 
 only too grateful for such a chance, hesitate to send their sons into 
 the offices of Manchester or Liverpool merchants, because the con- 
 ditions of business are bad, and the prospects of early material 
 improvement, which alone can bring the desired openings, are not 
 encouraging. 
 
 In the case of the medical profession, there may be seen evidence 
 of the same desire to guarantee the efficiency of those entering it as 
 at the Bar and in other callings. But the number of those doctors 
 who make really large incomes is comparatively small. We hear of 
 the successes, but we do not hear of the failures ; and not merely in 
 the provinces, but in London there are a great number of practitioners 
 who can scarcely contrive to support themselves and their families. 
 The life of the country doctor is exceedingly trying to the system 
 even of a strong man ; he is liable to be up at all hours of the night, 
 performs long journeys in the most inclement weather, receives poor 
 fees, and these not always paid with regularity or certainty. The 
 general practitioner, whether in London or elsewhere, is the lineal 
 successor of the apothecary, who in former days was resorted to in 
 the case of minor ailments, and who prescribed and sent out medicines. 
 This practitioner can sue for his fees in a court of law. On the other 
 hand, fellows and members of the Koyal College of Physicians are 
 prohibited by the bye-laws of the college, confirmed by recent Act ot 
 Parliament, from recovering fees by legal process. They are thus 
 placed upon the same footing as barristers, who must receive their 
 honorarium when tbe professional service is rendered, or run the risk 
 of losing it altogether. This is the most important distinction be- 
 tween the general practitioner, who very often is a Doctor of Medicine 
 of a Scotch or Irish University, and the pure physician, or F.R.C.P. 
 The last honour is reserved for those who, after having shown them- 
 selves conspicuous in the science or practice of medicine as members 
 of the College of Physicians, are after four years' membership nomi-
 
 560 ENGLAND. 
 
 nated by the council, and subsequently balloted for by the fellows of 
 the college generally. The average medical man in London can make 
 an income of £1,000 to £2,000 a year; the more distinguished from 
 £5,000 to £12,000. Incomes above this are very rare, for the simple 
 reason that there is literally not the time in which to do the extra 
 work. As in Germany, so in England, the fees charged for surgical 
 operation are small in comparison with those current in America and 
 Paris. Of the generous and disinterested attention of many doctors 
 to their patients at large the public knows something, but is, per- 
 haps, less acquainted with their devotion to science. A curious 
 instance of this which occurred a year or two ago in London may be 
 mentioned. There arrived one day in the English capital from France 
 a medical man who had been dedicating his energies exclusively to 
 the study of physiology. Suddenly he attracted notice, and was 
 astonished to find patients flocking to consult him on nerve diseases ; 
 very shortly he was in possession of a practice of more than £5,000 
 a year. He told his professional friends he should completely 
 surrender it as toon as he had secured an annuity of £300 a year. 
 It was not believed that he would persevere in his resolve ; he did 
 persevere, however, and when he had realised his modest ambition 
 went to America to pursue his old studies, and devoted himself to 
 science. 
 
 One of the most important and remarkable advances in modern 
 surgical practice is the revolution that has been effected by the 
 introduction of the antiseptic method of treating wounds. In the 
 medical profession, as in others, there is always a strong conservative 
 vein, and there are many surgeons who insist that this process has not 
 been the exclusive cause of the effects attributed to it. But the fact 
 that the antiseptic method gains ground daily in all countries, being 
 generally adopted in England, universally in Scotland, almost univer- 
 sally in Germany, to a large extent in America, and gradually in 
 France, is a sufficient testimony to its intrinsic merits. Nor is it only 
 danger to the patient which is diminished by this method. The 
 doctor himself is secured against many perils to which he was 
 previously exposed. The dangers under which the medical man 
 pursues his tasks are infinitely greater than are generally imagined. 
 Many young doctors are stricken down on the threshold of life 
 in the fever-wards of hospitals. The late Dr. Charles Murchison 
 was repeatedly at death's door before he could follow his fever studies 
 without imminent risk of being infected by the disease. He lost 
 two children from the effects of a malady which he had twice brought 
 home. A distinguished Scotch physician, Sir Robert Christison, 
 approaching, in 1879, bis ninetieth year, suffered from recurrent 
 attacks of fever, consequent on his exposure to morbid influences 
 in the exercise of his professional duties. Whether under fire on
 
 PEOFESSIONAL, ENGLAND. 5f)l 
 
 the battle-field, assisting the wounded, or in the not less deadly 
 arena of disease, statistics show with what fidelity the lives of medi- 
 cal men are spent in the service of mankind. According to the 
 returns of the Registrar-General, the mortality of medical officers is 
 nearly twenty per cent, higher than that of combatant officers of the 
 same age. 
 
 Politics, diplomacy, and, to a certain extent, the army, are orna^ 
 mental professions ; not money-making, but money-spending careers. 
 Successful politicians in England are seldom needy men. Neither 
 Lord Beaconsfield nor Mr. Gladstone rose from poverty or obscurity, 
 or started in life absolutely devoid of the advantages enjoyed by the 
 rivals and contemporaries whom they defeated or distanced. The con- 
 stituencies in 1874 and 1880 elected as their representatives the 
 richest assemblages in the world, and the House of Commons on both 
 occasions gave its confidence to a Cabinet of eminently rich men. The 
 instances in this century of a member of the House of Commons rising 
 to position and influence who did not belong to one of the two aristo- 
 cracies — the aristocracy of birth or wealth — or who did not contract an 
 alliance with one of these so closely that he became identified with 
 it, are rare exceptions. There are, certainly, members of the House 
 of Commons who have no regular income of their own, no estate, no 
 remunerative profession, and the Corrupt Practices Act of 1883 will 
 doubtless, by preventing excessive expenditure at elections, increase 
 their number. These members, however, make something out of 
 directorships, and occasionally pick up a windfall in the City. They 
 seldom have any very lofty ambitions. They do not mistake them- 
 selves for heaven-born statesmen, and they are quite satisfied if they 
 have enough to pay for their subscription to the best club in London, 
 and the other necessaries or luxuries of life. There is also in the 
 House of Commons a large allowance of professional men who would 
 be described as working for their daily bread. But what does this 
 really mean ? The professional men alluded to are either lawyers in 
 large practice or persons engaged in commerce. In the former case they 
 are for the most part in the position of being able to say adieu to their 
 clients to-morrow without any fear of starvation ; in the latter, their 
 business manages itself — they have deputies and agents in whom they 
 can thoroughly trust. If any supervision is needed it is of the slightest 
 possible kind, and their share of work is confined to pocketing a due 
 proportion of profits. Barristers go into the House for a definite reason. 
 A parliamentary seat, if they can get it, is a distinct advertisement. 
 Even then it is a costly mode of appeal to litigants and solicitors. A 
 country gentleman with an estate of £5,000 a year, a family, and a town 
 house, who goes into the House of Commons determined to make 
 politics a study, finds it not too easy to keep out of debt. A bar- 
 rister whose fees do not amount to more than £3,000 per annum will 
 
 o o
 
 502 ENGLAND. 
 
 probably find, if be only tbinks about augmenting nis business, tbat 
 he is without any adequate return for his expenditure of time and 
 money. A parliamentary career is and will remain open to talent ; but 
 only on condition that talent bas the ballast of wealth. Hard as this 
 may seem in individual cases, there is a sound reason for it, and it 
 works well and fairly in the long run. When the late Duke of Marl- 
 borough — then Marquis of Blandford — brought forward his Reform 
 Bill, as a sort of ballon d'essai, he proposed that members of Parlia- 
 ment should be paid, and the proposal was rightly characterised as 
 democratic in its tendencies. So long as poverty continues to be a 
 political disqualification, there will be generally insured integrity and 
 independence. If the House of Commons were a place for making 
 money rather than spending it, it would at once be degraded in the 
 national opinion. Thus it is that though, of those who succeed in the 
 House of Commons, some have more money and some less, the assist- 
 ance of money has been indispensable, and has been forthcoming to 
 almost all. 
 
 Passing from politics to diplomacy, we come to what is virtually 
 another unpaid profession. No sensible man would think of sending 
 his son into it unless he was prepared to allow him at the very least 
 four or five hundred a year, an allowance not to be withdrawn or 
 reduced wben he was promoted to the position of third secretary 
 with a salary of £150, but to continue throughout his career, and 
 to be secured to him after his parent's death. Such a profession, 
 though diplomatists may be the pets of society, can never be a really 
 popular one. With certain qualifications the same remarks apply to 
 the Foreign Office. The principle of competition does indeed to a 
 limited extent exist at the Foreign Office — ten candidates being usually 
 nominated to one vacancy. The severity of the examinations depends 
 not so much on the number as on the acquirements of those who 
 compete in it. Thus in the competition for the Indian Civil Service, 
 it is an exception if there are more than ninety lads whose ability and 
 knowledge are entitled to consideration. The vacancies are from 
 tbirty-five to forty ; and it follows that the cbances are less than three 
 to one against each of those who are really in the running. Now in 
 the Foreign Office competitions there are no men of straw. Not only 
 has the patronage list by no means invariably been adhered to, but 
 special invitations have been sent to certain famous heads of houses 
 at Oxford and Cambridge to suggest promising candidates. Nor is it 
 easy to see how this state of things is to be remedied. Make the 
 examinations for the Diplomatic Service competitive, and it is certain 
 that some at least of those personally and socially qualified in a high 
 degree will be excluded. For instance, young men who have been 
 educated in the traditions and atmosphere of diplomacy from infancy, 
 the sons, it may be, of ambassadors or charges d'aft'airse, who have 
 friendships and connections in every European capital, to whom it is
 
 PROFESSIONAL ENGLAND. 503 
 
 a second nature socially to conciliate and correctly to interpret public 
 feeling and political intention, would often be hopelessly defeated in a 
 general competitive examination. Again, supposing the Foreign Office 
 were to open its doors to all comers, means might, conceivably, be taken 
 to withdraw with one hand what was given with the other. If the 
 Foreign Office were to place itself under the new regulations known as 
 Scheme I., the open competition for it would take place at the same 
 time and place, and in the same subjects, as that for other high-class 
 offices. But it would be perfectly practicable for the authorities of the 
 Foreign Office to make their selection, not from any of the new-comers 
 and successful candidates,, but from young men already in the Civil 
 Service of pleasing manners, good connections, and independent means. 
 In a word, open competition at the Foreign Office might come to signify 
 in practice the adoption of that mode of nomination by transfer which 
 has created dissatisfaction at the Treasury. 
 
 There remains the army. That the profession of arms is extremely 
 popular with all classes, high and low, cannot be doubted any more 
 than that the tone and qualifications of officers of all branches of the 
 service have signally improved. The army, at the present day, is at 
 once aristocratic and national ; it enjoys the favour of society, and the 
 sons of the people gain Her Majesty's commission, and serve with 
 credit and success. On the one hand, the complaint is made, with 
 whatever degree of truth, by university authorities, that young men 
 of birth and position do not go to Oxford and Cambridge in the same 
 numbers as formerly ; on the other hand, since the abolition of pur- 
 chase, there have been certainly signs of the growth of a class which 
 was formerly strange among us, namely, that of the professional 
 soldier. Thus if there are more young men who adopt the army as a 
 kind of social training-school, and a substitute for academic life, there 
 are also more who enter it with a determination, like that which has 
 been already noted among barristers, to make out of it the business of 
 their lives. Nor is there anything to warrant the belief that the officers 
 of the English army are likely to be less efficient soldiers in the future 
 than in the past. The competition for commissions in the line is 
 tolerably keen, but the examination is simple. There is not the slightest 
 appearance of any deterioration in the physique or muscular accom- 
 plishments of candidates since competition has been established. On 
 the contrary, they are generally spoken of as being smarter than ever, 
 knowing better what their duties are, and being better able to perform 
 them. If they are better scholars they are also better soldiers. 
 
 So far as the aristocracy is concerned, it is intelligible that fewer of 
 their sons should go annually to the university. The taste for culture 
 among the upper classes of English society is not on the increase. In 
 the old days the bench of bishops was largely reinforced from the 
 sons of the great families. This natural process of ascent from the 
 purple to the prelacy has ceased to be the order of the day. The 
 
 o o 2
 
 561 ENGLAND. 
 
 Church of England is looked upon as an institution that holds its 
 existence upon a precarious tenure. There is nothing to prevent 
 young men in any rank of life from going to the university first, and 
 into the army afterwards. A certain number of commissions are 
 annually given to selected candidates from Oxford and Cambridge. 
 These nominations, however, are not to the army direct, but only to 
 Sandhurst ; and the young officer who prefaces a military career with 
 an academic training considers that he loses three or four years in 
 the competition for a colonelcy. 
 
 The army, like emigration, or indeed like many departments of 
 commercial life, is practically closed against lads who have not the 
 command of a certain amount of capital. In England the subaltern 
 in a marching regiment cannot possibly live on his pay ; in India 
 he may not only be independent of the support of his friends, but 
 may lay by money. When not on foreign service, the pay of the 
 sub-lieutenant is £'100 7s. 6d. per annum, of the lieutenant £118 
 12s. Gd. or £136 17s. 6d., according to the length of his service; 
 and of captain £211 7s. lid. ; from which must be deducted twenty 
 days' pay for band and mess — for though the former claim is not 
 now compulsory, it is generally admitted. To this must be added 
 the cost of entertainments of one kind and another; and while a 
 French subaltern, having no mess to pay, probably gets his meals 
 at a restaurant for £3 or £4 a month, an English officer of the same 
 grade will find his necessary expenses nearly four times that sum. 
 
 No account of the existing opportunities of professional England 
 would be complete without some brief survey of the career of letters. 
 Yet, though literature must be regarded not merely as an art, but 
 as a profession, or a trade, and while there are a greater number ot 
 persons in England now making a comfortable living by their pen 
 than was ever previously known, there is less of what can properly 
 be called a distinctly professional literary class. Most moderately 
 well-educated people nowadays are actual or potential authors. They 
 have dabbled in literature for purposes of pleasure or profit : they 
 have published a book, or they have written magazine or newspaper 
 articles. It is the enormous development of periodical literature of 
 one sort or another which is the great feature of the times. The 
 contributors to these publications are drawn from every class of 
 English society, and there are comparatively few persons realising 
 anything like a comfortable income from their pen who are indepen- 
 dent of the periodical press in some shape or other. A poet may 
 achieve a considerable reputation, and yet make nothing by his 
 writings ; a novelist may be steadily patronised by the circulating 
 libraries, and yet secure only the most moderate pecuniary returns. 
 Even an historian or a philosopher may have impressed the stamp of 
 his intellect upon the age, and yet be unable to live on what his work
 
 PROFESSIONAL ENGLAND. 5G5 
 
 brings in. Only those who have risen to the highest position in the 
 various departments of independent authorship, as philosophers, his- 
 torians, novelists, or poets, can command large prices. Undisputed 
 eminence may realise a handsome fortune ; respectable mediocrity 
 can barely keep the wolf from the door. 
 
 Without the assistance of journalism, no writer not of established 
 reputation can make what even to a modest ambition would seem a 
 comfortable fortune ; but journalism is a calling in which a fair 
 measure of success may be insured by most who are not egregiously 
 unfitted for the career. Yet even journalism, however handsome the 
 incomes made by the successful in it may appear, cannot be pro- 
 nounced otherwise than poorly remunerated, if compared with certain 
 other professions, such as the law or medicine. There are very few 
 cases known or possible, in which a newspaper writer, not being the 
 editor of a journal, can hope to realise more than £1,500, or at the 
 most £2,000, a year ; probably not half the sum that either a barrister 
 or doctor, occupying an analogous level of professional distinction, 
 earns. And though it may be said that the journalist who secures 
 this position is not doomed to wait like the one for briefs, or like the 
 other for patients, for an indefinite period, it must be remembered that 
 the necessary expenses of his life are not inconsiderable. He has, 
 indeed, no great establishment to keep up; but he probably finds it 
 necessary to live in a convenient, which is usually a costly, quarter of 
 the town, and in such matters as locomotion his disbursements are 
 often exceptionally heavy. The hours, too, and the conditions under 
 which his work has to be done, are not such as to suit all persons. 
 If he writes leading articles, he will have to hold himself at the dis- 
 position of his editor, and will very often have to turn night into 
 day. In this matter different arrangements are made in different 
 newspaper offices : in some, no regular engagement is given to the 
 writer of the leading articles unless he comes to the office between ten 
 and eleven every night ; in all, the development of telegraphic com- 
 munication renders it necessary for the professional journalist to be 
 ready to write at a moment's notice, and at any hour. 
 
 Most daily newspapers are now supplied with special wires : in the 
 case of the metropolitan press, between London and some one or 
 more of the Continental capitals ; in the case of the provincial press, 
 between the town of issue and the capital. Newspaper activity and 
 enterprise, as in London so in the provinces, have been displayed on 
 a very surprising scale. In most great towns in England there are 
 journals published every morning, equal in most respects to those 
 which appear in London. There is a variety of news, that news is 
 well arranged, and the comments on it have often the merit of com- 
 parative brevity. The views taken by the writers are, moreover, 
 sometimes more independent of official and parliamentary influence
 
 5G6 ENGLAND. 
 
 In his " Order and Progress," Mr. Frederic Harrison says : " The 
 enormous preponderance in the State with which the House of Com- 
 mons has gradually invested itself has overshadowed journalism, and 
 has converted journalism into something which is called a fourth estate, 
 hut is really an appendage to the Commons." At the same time it 
 is beginning to be recognised that mechanical adherence to a political 
 party does not increase the power of a newspaper, and that genuinely 
 independent journalism is one of the great products of the time. 
 
 There is more of originality, freshness, ability, vigour, and variety 
 displayed in the newspaper press of England than in that of any 
 other country in the world. It is customary to contrast the position 
 of journalism in England with its position in France, not a little to 
 the advantage of the latter, and there may be some truth in the con- 
 clusion. That it is much easier to gain a political position by writing 
 for the French than for the English press, is chiefly due to the cir- 
 cumstance that in France newspaper articles are signed, and in 
 England they are not. But the signed system is really impossible 
 in England, and may some day become impossible in France. For 
 every newspaper in England there are, probably, four in France — 
 exclusive organs of the countless cliques of which the French political 
 system is composed. Thus the French newspapers are sectarian 
 rather than national. Neither in Paris nor in the provinces is any 
 such phenomenon to be observed as a great journal which speaks to 
 the people as a whole. While parties are as infinitely divided and 
 subdivided as is the case in France, a journal which would really be a 
 symbol of national unity is impossible. Thus we have a host of petty 
 prints, insignificant in their influence and in their contents, consisting 
 of short occasional notes, novels, a brief narrative of contemporary 
 events, and articles penned by the acknowledged literary leader of a 
 political coterie. English journalism represents interests ; French 
 journalism represents opinions. 
 
 That which has been chiefly instrumental in making journalism a 
 not unprofitable profession for so many hundreds and thousands of 
 Englishmen is the development, the energy, and the enterprise of the 
 penny press. Few people have any adequate conception of the mag- 
 nitude of the interests which this press represents. Let us take the 
 case of one of the leading penny papers of the capital. Here is a 
 journal of which the average total expenditure is from £260,000 to 
 £270,000 a year, and the annual profit from £55,000 to £60,000. If 
 these figures are severally divided by 313 — the number of working 
 days in a year — we shall have the daily expenditure and profit of a 
 London paper, sold for the twelfth of a shilling. It will thus be 
 found that the expenses per diem of such a paper amount, roughly 
 speaking, to £860, and that the daily profit is close upon £200. This, 
 of course, includes every item on which, in a daily newspaper office.
 
 PROFESSIONAL ENGLAND. 5G7 
 
 it may be necessary to expend money — printing machinery, telegraphic 
 wires, telegrams, and the pay of editors, sub-editors, writers, reporters, 
 and others. These establishments do not only exist in London, but 
 in most large towns of the country ; and though the scale on which 
 they are carried on in the provinces is less considerable than it is in 
 London, the number of persons for whom emplo3 ? ment is afforded is 
 very large. The writing of leading articles is only one branch of the 
 profession of journalism. Within the office of a daily newspaper is a 
 staff of managers, clerks, cashiers, in addition to those persons con- 
 cerned in the actual production of it. Outside, there is a regiment of 
 reporters, some in the Houses of Parliament, some in the law courts, 
 perpetually busy, and earning for the most part sufficient to support 
 themselves and their families. In near and remote quarters of the world 
 are special correspondents — themselves representing a numerous and 
 important branch and interest of journalism — transmitting graphic 
 word-pictures by telegraph or mail of battles, sieges, celebrations, 
 festivals : now of a wedding, and now of a funeral ; to-day of a death 
 in Central Africa, to-morrow of a sudden disaster that has fallen upon 
 an entire neighbourhood in Central Europe. Peculiar qualifications 
 are indispensable in the case of the special correspondent. He must 
 not merely have the pen of a ready, a vigorous, and an effective writer, 
 but must possess a robust constitution capable of bearing extremes of 
 climate and temperature ; he must be able to write under any circum- 
 stances, and to contrive by some means or other to post himself 
 wherever anything of importance is taking place ; and, moreover, he 
 must be as insensitive to moral or social rebuff as he is indifferent of 
 physical fatigue. 
 
 Notwithstanding the development of new types of journalism : of 
 weekly newspapers embellished with every kind of illustration (some 
 of them employing special artists as the daily journal employs its 
 special correspondents), devoted to every kind of topic or interest — 
 literature, art, the stage, science, trade (for nowadays most traders 
 have their special representatives in the weekly press), amusement, 
 sport, " society" — notwithstanding these novel additions to the long 
 list of the newspaper press and their periodical multiplications (for 
 one success is sure to provoke a host of imitators, not necessarily 
 always failures), it may possibly be that in England the newspaper of 
 the future has yet to come into being. There are some persons who 
 think that under the present system we are overridden with leading 
 articles, and that a journal which should revert toils original function 
 of supplying in the first instance news, and of commenting upon this 
 news in the briefest and pithiest way, would command a large suc- 
 cess. It does not follow that if this prospect were fulfilled the 
 influence of the English newspaper press would be materially lessened. 
 As it is, the press has, probably, more power in the discussion of social
 
 5G8 ENGLAND. 
 
 than of political questions ; out in either its power does not arise exclu- 
 sively from its comments. The business of newspapers is not so much 
 to create or withstand popular cries, as to help to regulate them, and 
 to supply the public with materials for estimating their value. Foreign 
 correspondents, reporters of every kind, have almost as much oppor- 
 tunity of instructing the public mind by the news they give, and the 
 way in which they give it, as leader-writers themselves. If there be 
 any defect in English journalism at the present time, it is that it gives 
 us too much of opinion and too little of news ; and that in giving us 
 news, it does not always exercise sufficient discrimination as to what 
 does and what does not come within this category. There is not likely 
 to be any change in the methods by which alone success in newspaper 
 proprietorship is possible. While we may anticipate that newspapers 
 will give us more and more intelligence and less and less criticism, 
 and while it may be reasonable to anticipate for them an immensely 
 increased circulation, the cost of production will still be so enormous 
 that the proprietors can only hope substantially to recover their outlay 
 by advertisements. It is, and it will probably continue to be, the 
 literal fact that the multiplication of the copies sold is only useful as 
 an agency for increasing the number of advertisements ; and that 
 except when paper is unusually cheap, the actual profit realised on 
 each impression sold is infinitesimal. 
 
 There is a large and important section of professional England 
 which lies far outside the four seas. Official England and commercial 
 England exist in the foreign dependencies of Great Britain as well as 
 in Great Britain itself, and the fortunes spent in the mother country 
 have often been made in the tropics or at the antipodes. Firmly 
 wedded though England has been to a policy of non-intervention in 
 European affairs, she has never remained long without an opportunity 
 of showing in different parts of her colonial possessions that there still 
 breathes within her the spirit which has made her the mistress of a 
 vast empire. Her colonial dominions have not only supplied English- 
 men with an opening for their industry and peaceful enterprise, but 
 have also exercised them in the profession of arms. Not merely in the 
 eighteenth century, but in the nineteenth century too, have India and 
 our colonies provided much the same stimulus for English imagination 
 and for English enterprise as did the wars of Raleigh and Blake 
 against the Spanish in the Elizabethan age. India, however, while it 
 has been undoubtedly the nurse of tho military sentiment among 
 Englishmen, has been much besides. It has not only provided a 
 military career for hundreds and thousands of Englishmen, but it has 
 brought with it a great amount of purely civilian occupation — that of 
 the engineer, the merchant, tho tea planter, as well as of the civil 
 administrator. The competition wallah is now more than a quarter of 
 a century old, and under the new system the government of India has 
 been placed in the hands of the great multitude of the English middle
 
 PROFESSIONAL ENGLAND. 5G0 
 
 classes — with many advantages to them, and not a few to India itself. 
 Competition has unquestionably raised the average official standard. 
 Work in all its branches, and more especially in the lower, is better 
 done than formerly. The past generation of Anglo-Indian civilians 
 would, it may be assumed, have been infinitely less successful than 
 the present in making abstracts of evidence, in drawing up decisions, 
 and in writing reports. And while some scholars, and several littera- 
 teurs, have been the result of the competition wallahs, the class has 
 not proved deficient in men of action, or men of great business-like 
 aptitudes. 
 
 These great virtues are not without their corresponding defects. No 
 administrator of the highest distinction has yet appeared among the 
 new Indian civilians; nor can it be said that, as a body, these have 
 displayed the loyalty to the Government which was characteristic of 
 the period when the distribution of official honours was mainly a matter 
 of family arrangement. There were in those days innumerable abuses ; 
 but above and redeeming all, there was an idea that the general 
 interests of the Government were the interests of each individual 
 person serving under it. If extra duties had at any time to be dis- 
 charged they were discharged without grumbling, because the officials 
 felt that all exertion promoted the welfare of the firm. The competi- 
 tion wallahs, on the contrary, are not in every case alive to the same 
 kind of corporate interest. They have gone to India to make as much 
 money out of the country as possible, and to leave it as quickly ; to 
 realise an early annuity and return home. They are in the position of 
 men who have contracted with their employers to do a certain amount 
 of work and no more, and who, if any exceptionally heavy demand be 
 made upon them, resent it as an imposition. 
 
 Nor can the more general relations between England and India be 
 looked on as entirely satisfactory under the new system. There is less 
 of sympathy and acquaintance with the natives than formerly. The 
 wallahs are better linguists than their predecessors, but they see very 
 little of the native gentlemen of the country. This, of course, may 
 be in a great degree due to the relations which have been developed 
 between natives and Europeans as a consequence of the Mutiny ; and 
 it may be readily admitted that sometimes the old civilians were too 
 friendly with the natives — borrowing their horses and carriages, and 
 making them buy often useless articles when leaving the country on 
 furlough or for good. Still, it cannot be desirable that the natives 
 should say, as they are apt now to say, " We cannot have a chat with 
 your officers, or ask advice." Again, whereas in the old times possibly 
 all the officials were relatives or friends of the directors, and were in 
 constant personal communication with the representatives of tbe Home 
 Government, there is to-day little or no connection or common interest 
 between the wallahs and the department of the Secretary of State in 
 Whitehall.
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 IMPERIAL ENGLAND AND CONCLUSION. 
 
 Increasing Need of Emigration — Extent and Character of the British Empire — Past and 
 probable Future Increase of our Colonial Population — Relations of Colonies to Mother 
 Country: (1) Financial, (2) Commercial — Loyalty of Colonies to Mother Country 
 — Imperial Federation — Forces of Repulsion and Cohesion at Work in the Relations 
 between England and her Colonial Dependencies — Common Features of the Colonies 
 — Points on which the Condition of the Colonies may be considered prophetic of 
 the Condition of Things yet to be realised in England — General Nature of England's 
 Responsibilities — Imperial Duties of the Statesmanship of the Future — What will 
 that Future be? — Conclusion. 
 
 We have seen that among the chief wants of domestic England is that 
 of careers and professions for her sons. The estimated total popula- 
 tion of the United Kingdom was in 1881 close upon thirty-five and a 
 half millions. The average annual increase during the last ten years 
 was 340,000, and the rate may yet be accelerated. By the close of the 
 century the inhabitants of these islands can scarcely number less than 
 forty-five millions. How within the four seas are employment and the 
 means of subsistence to be found for so vast a multitude ? Here, 
 then, the opportunities for colonisation suggest themselves ; and it is 
 natural to turn from the smaller Britain, which is at home, to the 
 greater Britain, which is beyond the seas. 
 
 In 1883 no fewer than 320,000 of Queen Victoria's subjects left the 
 shores of their country for other lands, including the United States of 
 America. A larger number could well have been spared, as it is cal- 
 culated that in the agricultural districts alone 75,000 more persons are 
 born every year than can find employment. If such persons do not 
 emigrate they drift away gradually to large centres of population, and 
 by their presence increase all the evils attendant upon a congested 
 state of society. It is sometimes said that the chances which await 
 the emigrant in the colonies are not better than the chances he leaves 
 behind him in the country of his birth. This is partly because many 
 of those who yearly set sail for our dependencies are men who have 
 failed in England, and partly because the conditions of colonial life 
 and the qualifications requisite for colonial success are imperfectly 
 understood. Two things seem certain : one, that the intending colo- 
 nist who has not capital must be prepared to perform any work, how-
 
 IMPERIAL ENGLAND AND CONCLUSION. 571 
 
 ever irksome or humble, which is forthcoming ; the second, that emi- 
 gration should take place at a much earlier age than is now usual. A 
 national system of education is giving us annually, and in an increasing 
 measure, a number of fairly intelligent boys and girls, for all of whom 
 there cannot be sufficiently remunerative occupation here. In 1872 
 the average school attendance was 1,G50,000, in 1883 it rose to 
 4,028,000. In these may be recognised the material for colonists, who 
 would not only win prosperity and comfort for themselves, but who 
 would be a great acquisition to the dependency to which they hap- 
 pened to migrate. Emigration societies already exist in England. It 
 might surely be possible to extend the operations of these in such a way 
 as to draft off a certain annual percentage of the surplus population 
 before they could learn tbe evil ways of idleness. A movement has 
 lately been set on foot by philanthropists to secure from the Govern- 
 ment an acknowledgment of the principle of state-aided emigra- 
 tion. It is argued that private enterprise and benevolent efforts 
 of an isolated character are no longer sufficient to deal with the 
 problem of emigration. And precedents are cited to prove that public 
 revenue has been most judiciously expended when given to help a 
 distressed population to find new homes in an English colony. Both 
 in Canada and the Cape of Good Hope, state-aided emigrants have 
 proved by their work and example that it is only necessary to trans- 
 plant willing workers into a new country, and give them free scope, in 
 order to secure their immediate welfare. The advantages gained are 
 of a cumulative character, as such colonists benefit England by their 
 absence and the colony by their presence. Moreover they benefit 
 English trade by becoming buyers of English manufactures. Such a 
 prosperity as that of the Albany settlers of 1820, who were sent to the 
 Cape to reclaim the soil and guard the frontier, clearly indicates that 
 British colonists can thrive under the most difficult circumstances. 
 Moreover, the result furnishes a partial if not wholly convincing answer 
 to those who object to state-aided emigration as either an invasion of 
 the domain of private enterprise or a communistic appropriation of 
 public revenue. 
 
 The precise extent and population of the foreign dominions of Eng- 
 land cannot, perhaps, be estimated with absolute certainty, owing 
 to the difficulty of obtaining reliable statistics from every quarter, but 
 an approximate calculation can be made. From statistics quoted by 
 Sir Richard Temple before the British Association at Montreal, it 
 appears that the area of the British Empire may be taken at nearly 
 ten millions of square miles, or about one-fifth of the fifty millions of 
 square miles composing the habitable globe. This vast area includes 
 not only those countries which are reckoned as component parts of the 
 empire, such as our colonies in Australia and North America, but such 
 countries as parts of Borneo, Zululand, Beloochistan, and even of the
 
 572 ENGLAND. 
 
 Soudan, which are gradually falling under our political control. Out 
 of this enormous total there are only 120,000 square miles in the 
 United Kingdom. The dimensions of the empire have been ascertained 
 by professional surveys, and we learn that no less than two and a half 
 millions of square mileshave been topographically surveyed, and of this 
 nearly all had been surveyed minutely, field by field. Such a survey 
 is correctly described as one of the largest operations ever known in 
 the annals of administration. The coast-line of this colossal empire is 
 of extraordinary length, measuring about 28,500 miles, with forty- 
 eight large harbours, and for the whole of this marine surveys have 
 been prepared. 
 
 The population of the British Empire, it is calculated, amounts to 
 315,000,000. Christianity is the professed religion of about 46,000,000, 
 that is to say, one-seventh of the whole. The religion that attracts 
 the largest number of worshippers is Hindooism, there being no 
 fewer than 188,000,000 Hindoos under British rule. Further, it 
 the total population were spread over the total area of the empire, 
 the average would amount to thirty-three persons per square mile. 
 In the United Kingdom the average of population per square mile 
 is 485. As may be imagined, the Colonial Office- in London has to 
 deal with several kinds of communities. There are the military out- 
 posts, such as Gibraltar and Malta ; next there are those — like the 
 West India Islands, Ceylon, Natal, the Mauritius, and others — which 
 are known as Crown colonies, where also the executive is still with the 
 Crown ; thirdly, there are such self-governing colonies as the Austra- 
 lian group, the Canadian dominion, and the Cape Colony. The form of 
 government, therefore, which is applied to our foreign dominions varies 
 greatly. Moreover, as the British Empire lies on both sides of the 
 Equator, and is scattered over both hemispheres, there are varieties of 
 climate touching the extremes of heat and cold. Of the whole we 
 learn that about one-sixth is within the tropics, one-third in the 
 antipodes, one-third in North America, and the remaining one-sixth in 
 the temperate zones of Europe and Asia, The true home of all white 
 men is found in the temperate regions of the earth, and of these 
 regions Great Britain possesses 44 per cent., or nearly one-half of the 
 whole. Together with America, she occupies 88 per cent, of the whole 
 area. Such an empire, with its colonies extending themselves in every 
 part of the world and capable of indefinite expansion, offers peculiar 
 advantages to an English emigrant. 
 
 Physical conditions render it necessary for the British emigrant 
 seeking a home for himself and his children to go where the climate is 
 healthy ; social reasons induce him to go where the English language is 
 spoken, and where English institutions prevail. If he studies the habits 
 of the men and women around him he will find that he is still among 
 an English people who have only changed the place of their abode, not
 
 IMPERIAL ENGLAND AND CONCLUSION. 573 
 
 their real character. This character can only be understood by a 
 knowledge of English history and of English customs, and a proper 
 calculation of the force of English traditions. The British Empire 
 has been built up from time to time by a number of individual Eng- 
 lishmen who have left the indelible stamp of the mother country 
 upon it in its laws, customs, and society. An emigrant may turn to 
 any quarter of the globe he pleases, but still find himself a subject of 
 Queen Yictoria and a member of a great empire. In the colonies 
 themselves he will not only breathe the same atmosphere of freedom 
 he enjoyed in the mother country, but he will feel in a marked degree 
 the sensation of political expansion. The colonies of England grow at 
 a remarkable rate. It is calculated that there are now living beyond 
 the seas no fewer than ten millions of Englishmen, and that in the 
 space of fifty years the English colonists will equal the English at 
 home, and both together exceed a hundred millions. 
 
 It will be well, next, to inquire what are the financial relations 
 of the mother country to the colonies. So long as the colonies were 
 treated as places of exile for criminals, it was right that England 
 should contribute not only to their military defence but to their 
 civil government. The expenditure which the colonies now entail 
 upon the mother country is less than two millions a year. It is said 
 that her colonial empire imposes upon Great Britain a further cost in 
 the necessity of maintaining a much larger fleet than she would other- 
 wise require. But the obvious answer to this is, that under any 
 circumstances a fleet scarcely smaller than that which is now supported 
 would be necessary for the protection of British commerce. In ordei 
 to reduce the fleet, the commerce of the country as well as its colonies 
 must be sacrificed ; a result for which those who are willing to part 
 with the colonies are not prepared. Besides, an essential gain to 
 England from her colonies is found in the commercial relations which 
 subsist between the two. The expression, " Trade follows the 
 flag," is simply a way of saying that the lines of commerce coin- 
 cide with the limits of empire. It has been proved that the trade 
 of England increases as her dependencies increase. If imports and 
 exports be added together, it will be discovered that out of the sum 
 total of £660,000,000 per annum, the colonial trade has averaged 
 £160,000,000. The ambition of the political economist might be to 
 see the most unfettered interchange between England and her colonies 
 of what each grows or makes, and whatever might be said of pro- 
 tection against foreigners, nothing in the shape of protective duties 
 should impede commerce between parts of the same empire. The 
 commercial activity of this empire is unbounded, for if the main 
 elements of national industry be taken together — namely, commerce, 
 manufactures, mining, agriculture, carrying trade, and banking — the 
 total, two thousand millions sterling, annually is about the same for
 
 574 ENGLAND. 
 
 the United Kingdom and the United States. The United States are, 
 as might be expected, advancing the faster, their population being 
 fifty-five millions, or nineteen millions more than our own. That the 
 United Kingdom, in spite of this disparity of numbers, should be 
 able to do nearly as much as America is, in the words of Sir Eichard 
 Temple, a striking proof of the sustained vitality of the mother 
 country. But it cannot be doubted that, in the commercial world, 
 America is rapidly becoming a rival of England, and this fact should 
 be deeply and seriously considered. In proportion as British com- 
 merce with the United States decreases, and the United States 
 supplants England in her own domestic markets, the greater the 
 necessity to cement the commercial union between Great Britain and 
 her colonies. If America be a great free-trading community within 
 her own boundaries, it has been argued, with a good deal of plausi- 
 bility, that England might follow her example and emulate that 
 growth which has been even more rapid than her own. The dis- 
 tances which intervene between the scattered British settlements 
 constitute but a slight obstacle to an intercourse between the various 
 parts of the empire in these days of quick passages and reduced 
 freights. The idea of this possible extension of free trade, as well 
 as the example set us by the American Republic, are matters of 
 sufficient interest and importance to arrest the attention of political 
 economists. Notwithstanding the protectionist legislation which 
 exists in many colonies, they still take more English goods than any 
 other country or people. While in 1874 our nearest neighbours 
 bought less than 17s. a head of British commodities, our fellow- 
 countrymen at the antipodes purchased an average of £10 worth. 
 And it is calculated that from 18G8 to 1878 there was an increase 
 of 43 per cent, of trade with our colonies, but only 19 per cent, with 
 the rest of the world. 
 
 Even thus, it may be said, the connection between the colonies and 
 the mother country is not satisfactory, and until an imperial tariff has 
 been established, by which an approach to free trade is ensured 
 throughout the whole of the British empire, the colonies have the 
 power to place the mother country under a positive disadvantage. 
 The prospects of the ultimate accomplishment of such a scheme 
 depend upon the general political relations which events may develop 
 between the mother country and the colonies. That the last few 
 years have witnessed the assertion of the imperial sentiment in 
 England, not as a mere effervescence, but as an abiding phase of 
 national conviction, there may, or may not, be reason to believe. 
 When, in 1878, there seemed a prospect of a collision between Russia 
 and England, the offer was made repeatedly by the colonial subjects 
 of the English Crown in Canada and at the antipodes to despatch 
 battalions of volunteers. More recently, during the campaign in the
 
 IMPERIAL ENGLAND AND CONCLUSION. 575 
 
 Transvaal, aid was freely proffered by the Australians to help the 
 British Government against the Boers ; and at the present moment 
 Canadian boatmen are taking part in the Nile expedition under Lord 
 Wolseley. English colonists are willing to stand shoulder to shoulder 
 with imperial troops in whatever part of the world they may be needed. 
 These are circumstances which tend to justify the conviction that the 
 great colonies of England have no wish to sever the tie that binds them 
 to the mother country, even though the connection imposes on them the 
 perils and burden of responsibility. It is the almost unanimous opinion 
 of competent observers, who have by extensive travel made themselves 
 acquainted with colonial feeling, that our dependencies would scorn 
 to stand aloof from a war entered upon in defence of those principles 
 which lie at the foundation of English greatness, or in redemption of 
 those engagements which Great Britain has in time past undertaken. 
 There is, of course, another side to this question. It may be urged 
 that the colonies will not permanently consent to be liable for the 
 results of a policy which they have had no part in shaping ; and 
 certainly if this policy were to be systematically turbulent, aggressive, 
 and costly, that is a reluctance which would be very emphatically 
 displayed. The practical question thus arises, How will it be possible 
 to give the colonies the influence they may claim in moulding imperial 
 policy ? 
 
 For the direct dependence of the colonies on the mother country, 
 it is suggested that there may be gradually substituted a federation of 
 the whole : each self-governing as to the management of its local 
 affairs ; each bound to assist the other in time of imperial emergency ; 
 and each represented at some given imperial centre, which might be, 
 as now, London. But in addition to the practical difficulties in the 
 way of this proposal, and the confusion in the working of the repre- 
 sentative principle that it would involve, there is the fact that at the 
 present moment the colonies are directly or indirectly represented in 
 the House of Commons by men who have passed their lives there. 
 This does not dispose of the circumstance that there is much in the 
 position of the colonies which may lead to future conflict. Though 
 the self-governed dependencies make their own laws, the Crown has 
 a veto which is exercised through the Colonial Secretary of the day. 
 The existing relations may develop other difficulties than these. 
 It has been said, though, as a matter of fact, experience is seldom 
 likely to prove such to be the case, that the English system of party 
 government, and the chance which there always is of the colonial 
 policy of one Government being reversed by its successor, may keep 
 the colonists in a state of unrest that will become intolerable. There 
 is the further consideration that the political party which, for the time 
 being, is the depositary of power in England, may be opposed to 
 that which is in the ascendant in the colonies, and that thus want of
 
 576 ENGLAND. 
 
 political sympathy may pave the way for the disintegration of the 
 empire. 
 
 But if these are the apparent agencies of repulsion, what are the 
 forces of cohesion actually at work ? No more powerful influence 
 has exerted itself in the latter half of this century than that of 
 nationality. Italy has hecome united, the German Empire established, 
 while the American Union has been cemented by a war which cost 
 half a million of men and a thousand millions of money. The same 
 influence can scarcely fail to make itself felt among those of our own 
 race throughout the world. They have not only a common language, 
 but a common history. Moreover, the constitutional tie between 
 England and her colonies has, generally speaking, been of a most 
 elastic and popular kind. The progress of a settlement from the 
 necessarily autocratic condition of a Crown colony to that of a self- 
 governing community has been unvarying. The case of the island 
 of Jamaica, originally gifted with responsible government, then 
 deprived of it, but afterwards reseeking it, seems to establish the uni- 
 formity of the tendency. Rarely has England posed in the attitude 
 of an unjust stepmother towards her colonies during the last hundred 
 years. Political privileges have been given with an indulgent hand, 
 and this treatment must surely have removed suspicions and cleared 
 the path to a closer and more confiding union. This union neces- 
 sitates, as, for that matter, all political union must necessitate, a 
 firm friendship on both sides and a just appreciation of the value of 
 compromise. In order to secure the great good of the whole empire it 
 is necessary to sink, occasionally, local and individual interests. There 
 is also an attraction for the multitude in these dependencies in their 
 association with so ancient a sovereignty as that of England. But if 
 the connection between the mother country and the colonies is to be 
 sentimental mainly, it is clear that the mother country herself must 
 omit nothing that can promote and strengthen this sentiment in an 
 appropriate way. The colonists must not be treated like poor relations. 
 Hence Mr. Froude has suggested that, in addition to the single colonial 
 decoration — that of St. Michael and St. George — which now exists, 
 distinguished colonists should occasionally be elevated to the peerage, 
 or should be made members of the Privy Council— as was done in the 
 case of Sir John Macdonald, Prime Minister of Canada, in 1879 ; that 
 a certain number of vacancies in the various departments of the Civil 
 Service at home and abroad should be allotted to colonists ; that Oxford 
 and Cambridge should be encouraged to unite with the colonies in found- 
 ing scholarships and fellowships bearing colonial names, the candidates 
 for which should be educated in colonial schools ; and finally, that 
 there should be instituted in the British army and navy special oppor- 
 tunities for the display of colonial patriotism — that there should be 
 Australian and Canadian regiments, just as there are now Highland
 
 IMPERIAL ENGLAND AND CONCLUSION. 577 
 
 and Irish regiments. In addition to these suggestions Mr. Froude 
 might have added that the highest prize in the colonies themselves, 
 namely, that of the governorship, should be occasionally bestowed 
 upon eminent men of colonial birth. With regard to the idea that the 
 colonial navy should co-operate with that of England, it may be stated 
 that there has been recently a desire on the part of the Australians 
 that their war vessels should be placed on an equal footing with those 
 of Great Britain, so that no technical obstacle might prevent their 
 being used for imperial purposes. The prospect in the future of an 
 allied fleet of an imperial character carrying on the glorious traditions 
 of Blake, Rodney, Nelson, and the countless heroes of our naval 
 history, is one which may well fire the zeal of those politicians who 
 contend for the unity and unimpaired grandeur of the British Empire. 
 
 Considerations affecting the nature of the tie which may in the 
 future bind them together are not the only ones suggested by the 
 present relations of the colonies to the mother country ; and in the 
 extent and condition of the dependencies of Great Britain, other lessons 
 than those of the greatness of England may be found. As the opinion 
 of foreign nations is said to enable one to anticipate the verdict of 
 posterity, so is it possible that in the state of the English colonies 
 to-day the tendencies at work within the limits of the United King- 
 dom, and the direction in which British polity is drifting, may be 
 recognised more clearly than if the attention were restricted exclu- 
 sively to England. Such conditions as life in a new country presents 
 — the building up of new institutions, the release from old prejudices, 
 the possession of larger individual power, the absence of pauperism, 
 the avenues opened to personal ambition, the enjoyment of greater 
 plenty, though associated with more adventurous life — must tell on 
 the character of a people. On the other hand, the circumstances of 
 dealing with native races, the admixture of a foreign stock (such as 
 the French in Canada, or the Dutch in South Africa), the mode in 
 which society has constructed itself (for example, the existence in 
 some possessions of a convict element, the hasty attraction of popula- 
 tion by gold or diamond mines, or its leisurely consolidation under 
 less alluring temptations), and a great variety of other circumstances, 
 emphasise local peculiarities in the separate communities. Thus the 
 several colonies and dependencies of the empire are growing up with 
 many common and many widely divergent characteristics. 
 
 Their common characteristics are for the most part of an elevated 
 nature. Of these the consciousness of taking part in the formation 
 of a new state, the sense of individual power, the open-air life, the 
 vast areas ready for occupation, and the enjoyment of plenty, may be 
 named, while above all are the prospects of advancement to wealth 
 and influence. Indeed, the last presents a primd-facie reason for 
 anticipating in a colonial community an improvement of the stock 
 
 p p
 
 578 ENGLAND. 
 
 whence it sprung. The colonists represent the people who have had 
 the energy and courage to try to ameliorate their position — they repre- 
 sent, in other words, what a Darwinian would describe as the survival 
 of the fittest. Thus while the people of exterior Great Britain are 
 building up for themselves an important position in relation to their 
 fellow-countrymen at home, there may be discerned among them the 
 nascent qualities of independence, self-reliance, ambition, generosity, 
 and loyalty somewhat tempered by conceit and by intolerance of the 
 weaknesses of others. 
 
 An ordinary Englishman ai'rives in a colony with an idea that his 
 colonial fellow-subjects have much to learn, and that he will instruct 
 them. But the first few weeks in his new home are a succession of 
 disillusions. Colonists have their own ways of doing things, and they 
 believe in those ways. After a time the would-be teacher also grows 
 to believe in them. In the course of years he returns to the mother 
 country. He comes back with something of the same contempt for 
 the people at home that he originally carried out with him for the 
 people in the colony. He expects to find things very much as he left 
 them. Of course he is again undeceived. There has been no lack of 
 progress, and, as he discovers, there is no want of capacity. Yet he 
 is not unable, in spite of his protracted absence from the old country, 
 to hold his own with his countrymen, while on the whole he finds 
 that his own capacity has been improved by his colonial experiences. 
 The successes of returned colonists are neither few nor inconsider- 
 able. 
 
 To understand colonial institutions it is necessary to understand 
 the colonists ; for the virtues and faults of the latter are reflected in 
 the former. Although these communities are small and young, they 
 have intricate, complicated, and imperfectly developed organisms, 
 some of which may be glanced at with a considerable amount of profit. 
 The self-governing colonies are in a certain sense new departures, but 
 they bear the stamp of the English prototype in spite of local varia- 
 tions. As they are frequently passing through transitional stages, 
 they present opportunities for comparison between themselves, the 
 fixed type of society and the constitution at home, and the provisional 
 conditions of a Crown colony. The latter may be termed a self- 
 governing colony in embryo. Consequently there is presented to the 
 political philosopher in a study of the English colonies a series of 
 kaleidoscopic views, as it were, of the working of constitutional prin- 
 ciples. The problem of self-government becomes complicated when a 
 settlement of white men constitute an insignificant minority in the 
 midst of a nativo population. How far the franchise and other con- 
 stitutional privileges should be given to the indigenous masses of 
 coloured citizens in such colonies as Natal, the Cape, Tasmania, and 
 the Straits Settlements is a question constantly being pi'esented for 
 boiutiou to practical politicians. It may be scarcely realised with
 
 IMPERIAL ENGLAND AND CONCLUSION. 579 
 
 how free a hand the power of voting has been conceded to the coloured 
 population of such a colony as the Cape ; but a danger may be created 
 for the State if by a process of philanthropic but anticipatory legisla- 
 tion the rights of full citizenship are given before they are deserved. 
 
 The pi-ecise state of development when reason and justice demand 
 that a share in local, provincial, and, incidentally, imperial legislation 
 should be handed over to the aboriginal tribes cannot be exactly 
 defined. Constitutionally it may be said to coincide with that period 
 when colonies are emancipating themselves from the conditions ol 
 Crown dependencies. The last are the most antiquated ; they strangely 
 contrast not only with their mother but with their younger sisters. 
 Democracy has a certain force in Great Britain, a larger force in the 
 self-governing colonies, and little or no force in the Crown depend- 
 encies. And while colonial institutions do not appear to be approxi- 
 mating in character to those of the mother country, it is far from 
 certain that those of the mother country are not tending in the direc- 
 tion of the colonies. 
 
 Like causes issue in like effects. The democratic influences at work 
 in Great Britain are calculated to produce results, such as more 
 powerful waves of democracy have accomplished in her dependencies. 
 It is rather hastily assumed that the difficulty, which is characteristic 
 of colonial politics, of maintaining exclusively two strongly marked 
 parties and preventing them from splitting up into many sections, is 
 a consequence of want of age and tradition. Whoever analyses what 
 is passing in the mother country may at least suspect that there is a 
 tendency here also to destroy the distinctiveness of two political orga- 
 nisations, and to replace them by many schools of thought separated 
 rather by present interest than by broad and fundamental differences. 
 In the colonies, except during periods of peculiar political excitement, 
 it is regarded as somewhat humiliating if a candidate should do more 
 than promise support to a leader so long as he approves of his conduct. 
 To undertake to support him because he leads the party, and to ex- 
 press willingness to sink individual views to maintain party interests, 
 would not be the way for a colonial politician to recommend him- 
 self to his constituents. A colonial statesman is more blunt than 
 diplomatic. True, he has to face many combinations, and he is con- 
 stantly called upon to reconcile them by the exercise of more or less 
 tact. But indefinite promises and vague postponements will not meet 
 the difficulties with which he has to contend; he must show his hand, 
 and say what he means. And as those with whom he deals are not 
 njord reticent, political utterances have a robustness which at times 
 degenerates into a licensed freedom of language, apt to surprise public 
 men who make it a rule carefully to weigh their words. With this 
 freedom are associated a certain force and fluency from which it may 
 be predicted that colonial politicians will develop into vigorous, 
 capable statesmen, self-reliant, if somewhat wanting in refinement. 
 
 pp2
 
 530 ENGLAND. 
 
 The Government of a colony is very near to the people. Deputa- 
 tions are a recognised and frequent means of enforcing the popular 
 will. These will not confide their grievances to subordinate servants 
 of the Government. In the same way, parliamentary representatives 
 have to submit to the teachings of their constituents, who in turn are 
 disposed to be faithful to their choice. If a member is reasonably 
 assiduous, and does not fall a victim to some burning local question 
 concerning which he has shown himself half-hearted, he may look 
 upon his seat as a tolerably safe possession for a series of years. 
 Colonial constituencies generally approve of the payment of members 
 of the legislature. They take the plain view that they have no right 
 to expect services without rewarding those who give them, and pro- 
 bably they are a little impressed by the notion that in rewarding them 
 they strengthen their right of free criticism. In those colonies where 
 payment of members does not yet prevail there is a strong inclination 
 to adopt the system. The legislature is in almost every case com- 
 posed of two houses, and the upper house is not as a rule the popular 
 one. Rightly or wrongly, it is suspected that the members of the 
 upper house favour the possession of large estates, and make it then 
 business to protect the interests of the landowners. Still, with excep- 
 tions, the two houses pull well together. A great deal depends on the 
 tact and ability of the governor, who is nominated by the Sovereign. 
 An able governor keeps well in the background, and avoiding all sus- 
 picion of interference, quietly exercises a salutary influence. Greatly 
 to the credit of the colonies, they attach the highest importance to 
 education. Their public educational systems are of rare excellence, 
 and they grudge no expense in maintaining them. The universal feeling 
 is that no child should grow up uneducated, while for the most part, a 
 purely secular system is in favour. The colonies maintain at great 
 cost charitable institutions, without, however, admitting any special 
 legislation for paupers. They deal with pauperism as though its 
 nature was accidental, and the result of exceptional misfortune. It is 
 no part of their belief that one section of the people has the right to 
 look for constant support to another. In the absence of intricate 
 vested interests, colonial legislation is more prompt and thorough than 
 in the mother country. For instance, the laws relating to the transfei 
 of land are more simple in their character and easy in their application 
 than in England. At times there is a danger of the over-hasty enact- 
 ment of new laws. Especial importance is attached to local govern- 
 ment; many systems prevail, and the details are widely various. But 
 every colony aims at perfecting its own system, and accommodating it 
 to its own peculiarities. Local government is designed on very broad 
 foundations. Cities, towns, boroughs, road districts, hundreds, shires, 
 and counties are respectively included. The object is that the thinly and 
 the thickly peopled portions of the country should alike depend for
 
 IMPERIAL ENGLAND AND CONCLUSION. 5S1 
 
 local improvements on the exertions of the persons most concerned, 
 supplemented by such assistance as Parliament is willing to give from 
 the general revenue. The excellence of their local institutions develops 
 among the community at large a capacity for office which infinitely 
 assists the larger object of colonial self-government. The local poli- 
 tician wins his way, by well-tried service, to the most important 
 positions in the central government. The ordinary institutions of 
 government are closely modelled after those of the mother country. 
 Sometimes the models are improved upon. The colonists do rapidly 
 what they desire ; the Queen's Government, equally wishful, has to 
 defer until numerous interests can be sufficiently conciliated. The colo- 
 nists are vigorous; if they think that legislation is required, they make 
 short work of opposing forces, effecting in a session as much as would 
 take ten years' discussion in the Imperial Parliament. 
 
 Society in the colonies is as largely divided as in older com- 
 munities. There are sections and circles and cliques, each to itself a 
 host. Patrician blood and old family associations are respected to a 
 certain extent, but they do not lead society. Wealth, especially the 
 wealth represented by landed possessions, gives to its owner, as a 
 rule, the highest consideration, unless it is associated with want of 
 education or want of character. To have risen by personal industry 
 and perseverance is no bar to the attainment of the highest social 
 position. Whatever tendency there may be towards the formation of 
 an aristocracy lies in the direction of a landed aristocracy. Profes- 
 sional men and merchants, however, are held in great esteem. 
 
 There is something akin to contempt felt for those who, possessing 
 a certain amount of education and without a special occupation, are 
 only fit for clerks or appointments in the Government service. 
 Persons of this kind swarm in the colonies. They learn to envy the 
 men who have to depend only on their physical strength. For in 
 countries where labour is scarcely less valuable than capital, manual 
 exertion commands, as might be expected, more respect than in lands 
 crowded with inhabitants. That the labourer to-day should be his 
 own master to-morrow, and a few years later a rich man, excites no 
 surprise, for instances of the kind are plentiful. Politicians and 
 public men do not necessarily hold high social positions. It can 
 hardly even be said that the pursuit of politics is a good road to 
 social eminence. But exceptions must be made of the really suc- 
 cessful public men who show marked ability and high character. 
 Freedom and liberty inspire new ideas, and create a thirst for infor- 
 mation. The press is held in great respect, and colonial journalism 
 is distinguished by much ability. Art, the drama, and music are 
 well encouraged. The best paid " stars " in the mother country find 
 it profitable to make a colonial tour. Colonists, on the whole, are a 
 pleasure-loving people. Manly sports are enthusiastically puisued.
 
 582 ENGLAND. 
 
 Cricket, football, rowing, boating, bunting, and borseracing are as 
 much in favour in the distant colonies as in the mother country ; 
 and occasionally colonial competitors show that they are able to 
 hold their ground against the champions of a population ten times 
 greater than their own. The colonists are law-abiding and law- 
 loving people. Life and property are duly venerated. Occasion- 
 ally there are exceptions in some inland village in which the 
 convict taint has outlived the eradicating influences of education ; 
 but the rest of the community are unsparing in their enmity to law- 
 lessness. Whenever excesses become marked, they are hunted down. 
 The ringleaders are punished with extreme severity, while those who 
 secretly sympathise with the guilty learn at least the discretion of 
 expediency. It is seldom one hears now of the bushranging (as high- 
 way robbery is called) which was not uncommon years ago. There 
 is a strong disposition to support the independence of the law courts. 
 Colonial judges are generally possessed of considerable attainments 
 and learning. The decisions of the chief colonial courts are rarely 
 reversed on appeal to the Privy Council, and the minor tribunals are 
 well sustained. In some respects a longing eye may be cast to 
 colonial example. In many colonies there are public prosecutors, 
 whose duty it is to redeem criminal prosecutions from the suspicion 
 of being used for the exercise of private vengeance or the extortion 
 of civil claims, as is too frequently the case when the criminal law is 
 put into force by private persons. This is an example which we 
 have followed ; although at the present time the innovation is too 
 recent a one to permit of a decisive verdict as to its results. The 
 colonists, too, do not, as a rule, favour unpaid justices of the peace. 
 Even in thinly peopled districts they are disposed to employ capable 
 stipendiary magistrates. 
 
 " For my part," said Burke, in his speech on American taxation, 
 "I look upon the imperial rights of Great Britain, and the privileges 
 which the colonists ought to enjoy under those rights, to be just the 
 most reconcilable things in the world. The Parliament of Great 
 Britain is at the head of her extensive empire in two capacities : one 
 as the local legislature of this island, providing for all things at home 
 immediately, and by no other instrument than the executive power ; 
 the other, and I think her nobler capacity, is what I may call her 
 imperial character, in which, as from the throne of heaven, she 
 superintends all the several inferior legislatures, and guides and con- 
 trols them all, without annihilating any." There can be little doubt 
 that it is upon the degree of fidelity with which the mother country 
 fulfils these duties towards her dependencies that her tenure of them 
 rests. The empire of Great Britain is one which, having its begin- 
 nings in the fact of military superiority, finds the elements of its 
 growth and strength in the idea of moral service to mankind, and in
 
 IMPERIAL ENGLAND AND CONCLUSION. 583 
 
 recognising, while performing this service, that it is no part of its 
 duty to pose as a militant evangelist before the world, or to embrace 
 every opportunity for a crusade of arms, wherever there may arise the 
 semblance of a religious or imperial justification. The problem which 
 confronts England at the present time is to administer her empire on 
 principles that are in consonance not only with the national instincts 
 of Englishmen, but with the changed political habits of the race. It 
 is at least certain that no analogy can be drawn between the empire 
 of England and any other empire which ever existed. All other 
 empires have been based upon a despotism ; the empire of England 
 alone is based upon freedom and liberty. 
 
 It may be that the events of the next few years will decide the 
 imperial future of this country. The relations that exist between 
 Great Britain and her colonial dependencies may be strengthened 
 or weakened, may be made closer or more distant, but can scarcely 
 remain permanently what they now are. As it is at present con- 
 stituted, the British Empire is in a state of potential disintegration, 
 and the chief link which binds its different parts together is the senti- 
 ment of patriotism that is common to all Englishmen. India, with 
 her feudatory princes and semi-independent governments, revises 
 the idea of empire more than any other of the foreign possessions of 
 the Crown, but the connection between England and India is unique. 
 For the rest, the British Empire in its political and military aspects 
 is as full of anomalies and contradictions as the British Constitution. 
 The absence of immediate connection between the metropolis of the 
 empire and the colony, or the personal vie^s of a colonial governor, 
 may plunge the mother country at any moment into a colonial war 
 for which it is unprepared, and of which the Home Government dis- 
 approves. The exigencies of British empire in Europe entail a war 
 in Asia, and Parliament is unable definitely to fix the burden of pay- 
 ment in any one quarter. It is considered that British interests in 
 Europe are jeopardised, and the question of introducing the Indian 
 troops of the Crown to an island in the Mediterranean is canvassed 
 in a debate that raises the deepest constitutional issues. A deadlock 
 ensues in the political life of an Australasian colony, and after months 
 of negotiation with the Colonial Office in London nothing is settled. 
 Or occasionally a colony like Queensland or the Cape takes it upon 
 itself to annex a new territory. In deciding upon the justice or 
 expediency of the act, England's diplomatic relations with other 
 Powers may be strained to the uttermost. If she assents to the 
 Monroe doctrines of the Australasian colonies in the Pacific she may 
 find herself opposed by France ; or if, in another quarter of the globe, 
 she consents to stand surety for the act of the Cape Parliament 
 by which the littoral on the south-west coast of Africa has been 
 recently annexed, she may be confronted by Germany. La com-
 
 584 ENGLAND. 
 
 mercial and financial affairs the same chaotic conditions exist. 
 England is a nation of free traders. Yet as a man's worst enemies 
 are those of his own household, so those most hitterly opposed to free 
 trade are English subjects. The British Empire is held together by 
 no imperial tariff, while the British dependencies impose protective 
 duties on British exports, so heavy as sometimes to be almost pro- 
 hibitive. 
 
 Such is the actual state of things, and such are the tendencies 
 which this state of things discloses. Sooner or later it is inevitable 
 that these tendencies should assert themselves in a definitive shape. 
 On the one hand, there is the strong, if sometimes latent, force repre- 
 sented by community of race, language, and for the most part of 
 religion ; on the other, there are divergencies and distractions in 
 almost every department of the imperial system : which of these two 
 sets of powers is ultimately to accomplish itself? It maybe that 
 events outside the limits of the British Empire are destined to be 
 instrumental in answering this question. It is the age of big bat- 
 talions and colossal armaments, and the arbiter of Europe is he who 
 is the master of many legions. Moral force rests upon a basis of 
 military power, and no diplomacy is successful unless it is prepared, 
 in the last resort, to use the strong arm. Free trade and international 
 exhibitions have not brought the millennium appreciably nearer to 
 mankind. The military spirit was never stronger in England than it 
 is to-day ; the question, What must England do to retain her tra- 
 ditional place among the nations of the world ? was never more 
 anxiously discussed. She may be warned against pursuing that 
 imperial policy which would introduce India and the colonies as 
 elements into her international relations in Europe, and which would 
 teach her to use these dependencies as recruiting-grounds for her 
 imperial army. But if something of the sort be not done, England 
 may at any moment find herself in the position of an island pitted 
 against a continent. There is a point beyond which reliance cannot 
 be placed on the resources of the smaller England at home for men 
 and arms ; and may it not be necessary to go further than this, if 
 Englishmen would show themselves able to hold their own against 
 the great military empires of Europe ? Organisation for such an end 
 as this, and on an imperial scale, would mean some mode of imperial 
 federation ; and if the same spirit animates the English race in all 
 parts of the world that has animated it in other ages, it is conceivable 
 that England's place in the European system and the exigencies oi 
 the position may force her to the choice between imperial federation 
 and subsidence into a third-rate power. 
 
 There is much in tho temper which has of recent years been dis- 
 played both in England and in her colonies to justify the belief that 
 buch an era as this may not be so very remote. The problem will
 
 IMPERIAL ENGLAND AND CONCLUSION. 5S5 
 
 certainly have to be discussed and settled. If no Royal Commission 
 is heard of, specially appointed to investigate the existing relations 
 between those various parts of the British Empire with which, on 
 principles and by processes widely different, England has extended 
 her area and influence, the hour must yet come when those relations 
 will be considered and revised. The time and its necessities may be 
 trusted to bring the statesmanship which they require. Events make 
 the man, and it will be for the statesman of the future to assist in the 
 development or destruction of the imperial idea. Public interest and 
 public discussion are doing in a fashion the work of a Royal Commis- 
 sion. Both in the colonies and England herself the idea is gaining 
 ground that a sentiment of imperialism, existing hitherto in the 
 region of aspiration, should find some more formal expression and 
 develop into something more than a mere sentiment. Such an 
 event as the meeting of the British Association in Montreal points 
 to the significant fact that there exists throughout the British Empire 
 a certain moral unity leavening the whole. Although the interests of 
 England and her dependencies are not absolutely identical, neverthe- 
 less Englishmen and colonists possess, in a marked degree, a simi- 
 larity of character, which has been formed in a natural way by common 
 instincts, common laws, a common culture, and a common standard 
 of literary and scientific excellence. Some are found to say that this 
 moral unity is quite sufficient for the purposes of imperialism, the 
 strength of a nation or an empire being found in the animus or spirit 
 of its subjects. To a certain extent this statement may be true, but 
 it may be pointed out that a sentiment without a sphere, or some 
 practical means of making itself felt, is neither better nor worse 
 than an unemployed force in nature. Moreover, as in practical life, 
 the finer qualities of an individual appear only when exercised in some 
 proper province and directed along some well-known channel, so, in 
 the history of a nation and an empire, there must be a legitimate and 
 acknowledged way of revealing and asserting its character. Legislation, 
 in the shape of measures of consolidation, must touch the sentiments 
 of the whole society to make them effectual. Both German and 
 American unity, with all their beneficial results, were achieved in the 
 first place by an appeal to feeling, but in the second place by formal 
 acts of consolidation. In discussing the whole question of the possi- 
 bility of federation, the idea of a representative federal council is the 
 first to present itself. There are in England many men of ripe colonial 
 experience who have either discharged the duties of a colonial governor- 
 ship itself or have passed through a lengthened official career abroad. 
 Such men, replete with a valuable knowledge of local requirements, 
 and holding in their hands the threads, as it were, of colonial history, 
 so puzzling to Englishmen who have jiever lived in our colonies, 
 might form the nucleus of a colonial council, reproducing in its main
 
 586 ENGLAND. 
 
 features the Indian Council. Their province might be to examine and 
 discuss purely imperial questions, such as those of defence, trade, 
 annexation, naturalisation of British subjects, and the rest ; and their 
 influence might be felt in the Upper or the Lower House. Besides 
 bringing information to bear upon knotty points in colonial adminis- 
 tration, they might, incidentally, relieve the House of Commons of a 
 certain amount of toil, fulfilling occasionally the work of a Grand 
 Committee. The highest honours and emoluments of English political 
 life might be brought in this way within the reach of her colonists. 
 But whatever the future that awaits the idea of imperialism as well as 
 the consequent idea of a federal eouncil, one fact seems clear, viz. 
 that we have arrived at a point in our national development 
 when national unity must be either greater or less than it is at 
 present. To be a second Holland or a greater Britain : — such seems 
 to be the alternative before England. Whatever discussion, reason, 
 and legislation can do should be done by her citizens to secure for her 
 the unimpeded development of her manifest destiny. No party cries 
 should be heard where the issues are of so important a kind. Some 
 notion has been given of the extent and capacity of England's empire ; 
 what will England do with it ? Will the English democracy, whose 
 sovereignty is becoming in the last resort paramount, decide that it is 
 only a splendid encumbrance, or recognise that, without it, England 
 herself would lose her historic character ? Is that democracy about 
 to show that no more than others can it boast immunity from the 
 reproach of fickleness ? or, proving itself possessed of the traditional 
 constancy and firmness characteristic of the race, will it give assur- 
 ance that though supreme power may have found a new depositary, 
 the manner in which that power is exercised will not be changed ?
 
 INDEX. 
 
 A 
 
 Abolition of purchase: arguments for ana against, 442 — 444. 
 
 Absenteeism : of the squire, 9 ; of the rector, 15, 16 ; its evils in rural adminis- 
 tration, 43. 
 
 Accidents on railways, 258, 259. 
 
 Acting. (See The Stage.) 
 
 Action, a necessity of social distinction, 331. 
 
 Actor, The, social status and influence of, 334, 335. 
 
 Administration — of vast estates, 26 — 38; — of smaller estates generally, 39; advan- 
 tages of the control of a superior agent, ib.; administration of commercial 
 business, 120 — 129. (For Administration of Government Offices, Trade, 
 &c, see under different heads.) 
 
 Admiralty, The : constitution of the Board, 439 ; its unique independence, ib.; 
 the Controller and his duties, ib. 
 
 -^Esthetieism. (See Culture.) 
 
 Agent, The. (See The Land Agent.) 
 
 Agricultural area of England : how held, 180. 
 
 Agricultural capabilities of Great Britain, Mr. Caird on the, 180. 
 
 Agricultural labourer, The : the suspicious nature of, 13; the modern cottage, 163 
 — 164 ; the allotment, 164 : hours of labour, ib.; diet, 164 — 166. His career: 
 as a boy, 164, 165; his knowledge of nature; bird-scaring abolished; 
 influence of the School Boards, 165 ; as a man — arduous duties of the 
 shepherd, carter, milkman, 166; a day's work, 166, 167 ; pay in harvest- 
 time, 167 ; his recreations, 168. Squatters, poachers, and idlers, 169 ; ill 
 influence of the beerhouse, ib.; his dress, 169, 170; advantages of the co- 
 operative store, 170; effect of newspaper reading, 171; reforms still 
 necessary; overcrowding, sanitary evils, 172 — 174; influence of drink, a 
 striking example, 177 ; women as field labourers, 177, 178 ; satisfactory 
 examples from Northumberland, 178, 179 ; hiring of families, curious 
 instances, 178; agricultural wages, 182 — 184; special instances of, on a 
 given week throughout England, 183 — 184 ; value of milk diet in North- 
 umberland, 183 (footnote) ; improved condition of; cheapness of necessaries : 
 decrease of drunkenness, 184 ; beneficial effect of the Poor Law of 1834, 
 185 ; the Agricultural Union, 186 ; prospects of the peasant and effects u£ 
 education, 1S7 ; success of co-operation at Assington and at Badbourne, 
 234—237. 
 
 Agricultural Unions: objections to. 19; questions asked by them through Mr. 
 George Mitchell, ib.; their action, merits, and defects, 186, 187. . 
 
 Agricultural wages, 182 — 184. 
 
 Aldermen, 59 ; provincial aldermen, 65.
 
 588 INDEX. 
 
 Allotment, The, 164 ; Dr. Fraser on, 175. 
 
 Amusements, Popular: change of, in recent years, 536; disappearance of the 
 showman, 537 ; influence of railway communication, 538 ; the excursion 
 train, a scene on the Norfolk coast, 538, 539 ; greater opportunities of 
 recreation in the northern counties, 539 ; London recreations, 540 ; the 
 music-hall, its influences for good and evil, ib.; higher amusements, the 
 museum, the library, 540, 541 ; the working man's club, its constitution 
 and aims, 541 ; its aspect described, 541 — 543 ; expected beneficial result, 
 
 543 ; the drama, ib.; the theatre and its supporters, "old and new," 543 — 
 
 544 ; general features and aims of the modern stage, 544 — 548 ; Shake- 
 spearian revivals, 552, 553. 
 
 Analysis, Triumph of, in the present age, 499. 
 
 Arbitration : beneficial result of, 157, 158 ; special instances in the Cleveland 
 district, 158 ; Mr. Mundella's early advocacy of, 157. 
 
 Archdeacon, The, and his functions, 463 — 464. 
 
 Architecture of the day, 512. 
 
 Archives, variety and extent of, in a vast estate, 37. 
 
 Area of England, Agricultural, how held, 180. 
 
 Aristocracy, The (see also "~S6blesse" and Society) : decreaseof number in the House 
 of Commons, 387 ; elements of its perpetuation, 410 ; its influence and au- 
 thority in Parliament, 410 — 411 ; its inclination to the Church of Pome, 473. 
 
 Army, The : exceptional social rank of the officer, 336 ; army administration, 
 the War Office, 440 ; difficulties presented, ib.; recent reforms, concen- 
 tration, 441; supremacy of the Secretary for "War, ib.; functions of the 
 Commander-in-Chief, 442 ; abolition of purchase, arguments for and 
 against, ib.; compulsory retirement, 443 ; result of abolition of purchase ; 
 greater acquirements of officers, 444 ; introduction of short service, 445 ; 
 disadvantages of, 445, 446 ; recruiting, its procedure and safeguards, 447; 
 education of the soldier, 448 ; advantages of the service, merits and 
 defects of the rank and file, ib.; insufficiency of the forces for imperial 
 duties, 449; the militia, its importance, 449 — 451 ; volunteers, their 
 origin, zeal, and importance, 451 ; the staff, ib.; military strength, ib.; 
 armament, 452 ; as a profession, 563, 564 ; the officer of to-day a pro- 
 fessional soldier, and advantages, 563 ; pay and expenditure, 564. 
 
 Army and Navy Co-operative Society, The : its aspect and operations, 221, 222 ; 
 compared with the Rochdale store, 221 — 224 ; its progress, 230 ; its manu- 
 factories and benefits accruing therefrom, 231. 
 
 Arnold, Mr. Matthew : his theology, 459; his influence on religious and aesthetic 
 thought, 522 ; his writings, 523. 
 
 Artisan, The : the policy of the member of Parliament towards, defined, 68 ; pre- 
 dominance of working men in lartje towns, 79 ; advanced propaganda, the 
 Eleusis Club, 133; types of, 134; his virtues and vices, 135; his instinctive 
 conservatism, ib.; his view of State emoluments, ib.; his relation to the 
 State contrasted with that of the French and American workman, 136; 
 his moderation, 154; trade unions and their influence, 156 — 159; bene- 
 ficial results of arbitration, 157, 158; the masons' strike of 1877, 159; 
 political bias of, ib.; as members of Parliament, 160 ; the London and 
 provincial artisan contrasted, secularism of the former, ib.; his habits and 
 recreations, 160 — 162; his difficulties in co-operation, 161; points of 
 difference and causes thereof, 160 — 162 ; the Sunday dinner, 162. 
 
 Arts and Artists. (See Culture, Painting, and Music.) 
 
 '• Assington Experiment, The;" success of, in agriculture, 234 — 237. 
 
 Austin, Mr. Altred, as a poet, "The Human Tragedy,'' 525. 
 
 Authon, The: exceptional social status of, and reasons, 335. (See also Litera- 
 ture.) 
 Autobiography, 532.
 
 INDEX. 589 
 
 B 
 
 Bagehot, Mr. "Walter : on the new and old constitution, 352 — 353 ; on the 
 relations of Queen and Cabinet, and the Cabinet and people, 360, 
 361 ; on the vast prerogatives of the Queen, 362 ; the republic and 
 monarchy contrasted by, 363. 
 Bailiff, The. (See The Land Agent.) 
 
 Bain, Mr. Alexander: his contributions to philosophy, 495, 496; John Stuart 
 Mill on his method, ib. 
 
 Bank of England, 105 ; its relation to other banks, 106; its functions, 106, 107. 
 Banking-house, A : its aspect, 124 ; process of business in, 125 ; functions of the 
 partners ; the managing partner ; the financial partner, ib. ; its organi- 
 sation, heads of departments, 125 — 126 ; a banking-house and a bank con- 
 trasted, 126; estimate of capital employed, 127; necessity to watch the 
 course of politics, 128. 
 
 Banks and Banking. (See Financial England and Banking-house.) 
 
 Baptists, The. (See Nonconformity.) 
 
 Bar, The : exceptional social rank of the barrister, and reasons for it, 335 ; 
 Queen's Counsel, "silk" and "6tuff," 422; value of University "honours" 
 at, 556 ; prospects and income of the profession, 557. 
 
 Barrister, The. (See The Bar.) 
 
 Bath, the beauties of, 96. 
 
 Bedford, Duke of : feudal customs at Woburn Abbey, 28. 
 
 Benefit Society, The village, 14. 
 
 Betting, Evils of, in Sheffield, 78. 
 
 Bicycle, The : its advantages ; at Bushey Park, 268. 
 
 Biography, 531; Mr. Trevelyan's "Life of Macaulay," Mr. Sime's "Life of 
 Lessing," ib.; Mr. Fioude's " Carlyle," Mr. Jennings' " Croker Papers," 
 Mr. J. Hawthorne's Life of his Parents, 532. 
 
 Birmingham, 90 ; contrasted with Manchester, 91 ; universality of its products, 
 ib.; social reorganisation undertaken by its ladies, 92. 
 
 Bishop, The, 464—465. 
 
 Black Country, The : abu°es still extant in, 150. 
 
 Black, Mr., as a novelist, 530. 
 
 Blackley, Canon, on friendly societies, 208 — 211. 
 
 Blackmore, Mr., as a novelist, 530. 
 
 Block system on railways, The : its working explained, 257. 
 
 Board of Guardians. (See Guardians.) 
 
 Board Schools. (See The School Board.) 
 
 Board of Trade, The, and its duties, 370—371. 
 
 Borough magistrates. (See Magistrates.) 
 
 Braddon, Miss, as a novelist, 528. 
 
 Bradford. (See Yorkshire.) 
 
 Brick-yards : necessity for legislation in, evidence of Mr. George Smith, 141. 
 
 Bright, Mr. John, as an orator, 401. 
 
 Bristol, 95. 
 
 Broad Church, The. (See The Church of England.) 
 
 Brougham, L ;rd : his early advocacy of national education, 275 ; characteristic 
 contemporary opposition to it, ib. 
 
 Broughton, Rhoda, as a novelist, 528. 
 
 Browning, Mr., as a poet, 524. 
 
 Bureaux de Bienfaisauce, their operations, 200. 
 
 Burglar, operations of a practised, 241 — 242. 
 
 Burial Boards, 52. 
 
 Burne Jones, Mr., as an artist, 508, 509. 
 
 Buxton : restrictions in building imposed by the Duke of Devonshire, 37 ; as a 
 watering-place, its special attractions, 102.
 
 590 INDEX. 
 
 Cabinet Council, The : a meeting of, 372 ; its procedure in legislation described, 
 373. 
 
 Cabs, London, 265. 
 
 Cahill, Dr., testimony to the field employment of women, 179. 
 
 Caird, Mr., on the agricultural capabilities of England, ISO. 
 
 Canal population, need of legislation for, 142. 
 
 Canterbury, 96. 
 
 Capital : estimate of amount used in large businesses, 127. 
 
 Carlton Club, The, 344—345. 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas : bis bias for German philosophy ; as a writer, 500 ; influence of 
 his writings in the present day, 534. 
 
 Casual ward, The, its inmates and operations, 188. 
 
 Cathedral and chapter, The : the dean and his office, 464 ; the canons, ib.; rela- 
 tion of the bishop to, 465. 
 
 Cathedral city, The : its aspect, 93 ; the close and its denizens, 94 — 95 ; its social 
 life, " Mrs. Proudie," 95. 
 
 Caucus, The, 353 — 356; Mr. Chamberlain on, 353; "the six hundred," 354; 
 its aspect in the United States, ib. 
 
 Challenger Expedition, Results of the, 385. 
 
 Chamberlain, Mr. Joseph, on the Caucus, 353 ; on the perfection of the polity of 
 the United States, 354 — 355. 
 
 Chambers of commerce, 67 ; influence wielded by members of Parliament over 
 their action, 68. 
 
 Charity : treatment of charitable applications by great landowners, 26. 
 
 Cheltenham, 96. 
 
 Chemistry as a profession, 508. 
 
 Children : State protection of, 136 ; birth in workhouse no disadvantage to the 
 lowest clas>es, 189 ; career of the youthful criminal, 240 — 241 ; the clever 
 boy, accidental nature of his education under old system, 271 — 272 ; 
 advantages now offered, 272 ; effect of changed social life on parents and 
 children, 307 — 308 ; predilection for the sea and advantages offered by a 
 naval career, 434. 
 
 Church of England (see also The Rector): influence in parish affairs, 8, 9; results 
 of the agitation of Dissent, 20, 21 ; allowably preferable in rural districts, 
 21 ; its influence in, 22, 23; responsibility for its defence rests with the 
 clergy, 20; necessity of tolerance and common sense, 18; example of 
 effect of tolerance, 22—23 ; procedure in ecclesiastical courts, 429 — 431 ; 
 its numerous sects analogous in this respect to the Romish faith and Non- 
 conformity, 455 ; statistics of services in London, ib.; other signs of ex- 
 ternal activity, 456 ; inspiration and other questions of the day and issues 
 involved, 457. The Broad Church : Dean Stanley on the progress of 
 theology, 457 — 458 ; on science and refigion, 458 ; theology and religion, ib.; 
 Mr. Jowett's and Mr. Matthew Arnold's theology, 459. The High Church : 
 460 — 461 ; Canon Liddon, 461 ; common aspect of ritualism, 460 ; its occa- 
 sional disregard of culture, ib.; its attractions, 461. The Low Church : 
 tendency and vitality of Evangelicalism, 461 — 462. Tithes, 462 ; Queen 
 Anne's bounty, 463; the archdeacon and his functions, 463 — 464; the 
 churchwarden, 464 ; the cathedral and chapter, the dean and his office, 
 ib.; the canons, ib.; relation of the bishop to, 464 — 465; the rural dean, 
 405; Convocation, ib.; patronage, sale of advowsons, and next presenta- 
 tions, 466. 
 
 Church of Rome, The : a missionary organisation directed by the congregation 
 of the Propaganda, 472; establishment of the English hierarchy, 472 — 
 473 ; organisation and rank of the clergy, 473 ; its present influence, ib.; 
 lailmc to establish a Catholic University, ib.
 
 INDEX. 591 
 
 Churchwarden, The, 464. 
 
 City Corporation, The, 70. 
 
 City guilds : their estates and their management, 39. 
 
 Civil engineering: its attractions, 555 — 556; youthful predilection for, 555. 
 
 Civil Service Co-operative Society : its origin, progress, and organisation, 230. 
 
 Civil Service Supply Association : the difficulties of membership, 223 ; its origin 
 and progress, 227 — 228 ; organisation, 228 — 229 ; associated tradesmen, 
 229 ; extent of its operations, ib.; treatment of profits, ib. 
 
 Clergy, The : exceptional social status of, and. reasons, 335. (See also The 
 Rector and The Church of England.) 
 
 Cleveland, Duke of : organisation of his estates at Darlington, 32 — 33 ; at Raby 
 Castle, 33 — 35 ; description of the property ; gradual and beneficial change 
 to pasture, 33 ; workshops at Raby Castle, 34 , method of securing royalty 
 on mines, 35. 
 
 Clifton, 96. 
 
 Club, The : club life in Manchester and Liverpool, 87 ; club life in London, its 
 political influence, 342 ; its conditions and expense, ib.; advantages of 
 membership, 343 ; types of habitues, ib.; political clubs, 344 — 345 ; the 
 Carlton and Rtform, ib.; unwise action of, 344 ; the working man's club : 
 its constitution, aims, and occupations, 541 — 543 ; its literature, 542 ; 
 expected beneficial result of, 543. 
 
 Coleridge, German philosophy introduced by, 499 — 500. 
 
 Collins, Mr. Wilkie, as a novelist, 527- 
 
 Colonial office, The : its administration described ; the Registry Office, 365 ; 
 duties of the Assistant, Permanent, and Parliamentary Under-Secretaries, 
 366 — 367 ; co-ordinate power of the two latter, 366 ; work of the Colonial 
 Minister, 367. 
 
 Colonies and the colonists : prospects for the university graduate in, 558 ; neces- 
 sity of emigration, 570 ; prospects of the colonies, ib.; requirements of 
 the emigrant, ib.; Crown dependencies and self-governing colonies, 572 ; 
 extent and population of British possessions, 571 — 572 ; financial relations 
 of the State with the colonies, 573 ; extent of trade with, ib.; loyalty of, 
 574 ; the suggested federation, 575 ; Burke thereon, 582 ; forces of cohesion, 
 576 ; suggested extension of privileges to, 576 ; features of colonial life, 
 colonial institutions, their nature and progress, 577, 578 ; supremacy of 
 democracy in, 576 political government, ib.; position and influence of 
 the governor, 580 ; social lite, 581 ; titles to consideration in, ib.; respect 
 for law, colonial judges, 582 ; supremacy of physical power in, 581 ; the 
 future of England in relation to, 583—586. 
 
 Commander-in-Chief. (See The Army.) 
 
 Commercial administration : centralisation of authority in, typical illustrations 
 of — the cotton mill : process of manufacture, 120, purchase of raw cotton, 
 sale of cloth, organisation of the factory, of the warehouse, 121, the 
 managing partner, his functions and control, 122. An ironworks: its 
 aspect, organisation in the works, ib., the mines, the "puddler," ib., sale 
 of the iron, the managing partner, his functions and control, 124. A 
 banking-house : its aspect, 124, process of business, functions of the 
 partners, the managing partner, the financial partner, its organisation, 
 heads of departments, 125 — 126. A banking-house and abank contrasted, 
 126, functions of the former, amount of capital engaged in large busi- 
 nesses, 127 ; custom of delegated authority to one partner, 127 — 128 ; need of 
 watching the course of politics; advantages of rich concerns, 128; the 
 gradual process of their construction, 129. 
 
 Commercial England (see also Financial England and Commercial Administra- 
 tion) : London the centre of commerce, 103 ; causes of depression and 
 inflation of trade, 104, 115 — 118 ; cosmopolitan and gradual development
 
 592 INDEX. 
 
 of trade, 104 — 105 ; ramifications of, 103 — 105 ; commerce the first 
 essential of prosperity, our advantages in enterprise and skilled labour, 
 113, in accumulated capital, 113, in free imports, 114 ; inseparable 
 connection with banking, 114; recent waves of depression, 115 — 117; 
 tendency of English trade to grow, 118; excess of imports over exports 
 proof of a country's wealth, 118 — 119 ; railway expenditure and income, 
 258 ; recent influx of the aristocracy, 315 ; its prospects and lessened at- 
 tractions as a career, 558 — 559 ; extent of trade with the colonies, 573 — 574. 
 
 Commercial towns. (See Towns of Business.) 
 
 Commissioner, The. (See The Land Agent.) 
 
 Common sense : necessity of, in religious matters, 18 ; the Scotch philosophical 
 school of, 481—482. 
 
 Commoner, The : social advantages possessed by ; exceptional social rank some- 
 times achieved by, 329. 
 
 Competitive examination : the "crammer," inducements held out to university 
 graduates, 290. 
 
 Compstall (Cheshire), a model manufacturing village, 81. 
 
 Compulsory education, how enforced, 273 ; early objections to, 274 ; its strange- 
 ness to the Englishman, 274. 
 
 Comte, Auguste: his Positivist doctrines and their influence on English philo- 
 sophy, 483; O. H. Lewes's tribute to, 484. 
 
 Congregationalists, or Independents. (See Nonconformity.) 
 
 Conservative Club, The : unwise political action of, 344. 
 
 Conservatives, The : conservatism ot the working man, 135 ; treatment of the 
 rank and file by the leaders, 345 ; their organisation, 356 ; prevalence of, 
 in the Upper House, 411. 
 
 Constitutional monarchy (see also The Crown), its real position defined, 357 ; 
 the guarantees of its stability, 358 — 360. 
 
 Controller of the Navy, The : his special duties, 439. 
 
 Convict, The. (See Prison and Prisoners.) 
 
 Co-operation : the village co-operative store ; its introduction and advantages, 
 170 ; Eochdale and London : the Rochdale Pioneers, 221 — 223 ; theArmy 
 and Navy Stores, 222 ; London and Rochdale stores contrasted, 224 ; Civil 
 Service Supply Association : difficulties of membership, 223, its origin, 
 progress, and organisation, 227 — 229 : the Co-operative Wholesale 
 Society, 227 ; the Army and Navy Co-operative Society, 227 ; the Civil 
 Service Co-operative Society, 230 ; advantages of co-operation to the 
 higher classes, 224, to the working classes, 225, 231 — 233 ; its educational 
 value, its prospects, 233 ; general benefits of the movement, 237 ; the 
 "Assington" agricultural co-operation, and its success, 234 — 237 ; the 
 Redbourne Manor Farm, 234—236. 
 
 Co-operative Wholesale Society, 227. 
 
 Corporate bodies : advantages of tenancy under, 182. 
 
 Cottage, The : the modern cottage, 163 ; overcruwding, need of increase in 
 number of cottages, 172 ; small returns on capital, 175. 
 
 Cotton-mill, The ; description of, 81 — 83 ; a day's toil at, 82 — 83 ; process of 
 manufacture, 120 ; purchase of raw cotton, 121 — 122 ; sale of cloth, 121 ; 
 organisation in the factory, ib. ; in the warehouse, ib. ; the managing 
 partner, his functions and control, 121 — 122 ; estimate of capital em- 
 ployed, 127. 
 
 Country house, The modern, 306; constituents of social life in, 341 — 342; dis- 
 appearance of " the wit," 342. 
 
 Country town, The. (See The Town.) 
 
 County Court, The, 427 — 429 ; facilities offered to suitors, 427 ; a representative 
 case, " servant v. employer," 426 — 429; its aspect and procedure, 427 — 
 428 ; typical cases in, 428 ; appeals from, 429.
 
 INDEX. 593 
 
 County suffrage, Possible results of, 412 — 413. 
 
 Court, The. (See The Crown.) 
 
 " Crammer," The, 290. 
 
 Crawford, Mr. Marion, as a novelist, 529. 
 
 Crime: difficulties in estimating its origin and nature, 238; improvements in 
 legislation, 239 ; evils of transportation, 239 ; prevention and its difficul- 
 ties, 240; benefits of reformatories and industrial schools, 240, 241; 
 career of the criminal, ib. ; the burglar, 241 — 242 ; receivers, 242 ; 
 criminals from the middle classes, and causes of crime, 244 ; brutal 
 crimes, 244 — 245 ; the princes of crime : their career traced, 245 ; opera- 
 tions of the police, 246 — 249, merits and demerits of, 246, the detective, 
 247 — 249 ; prosecution of a prisoner — the process, 249 — 250 ; effects of the 
 Prison Act of 1877, 250 ; treatment of the ordinary prisoner and of the 
 convict, 251 — 253 ; average number of convicts during the last ten years, 
 253 — 254 ; discharged prisoners and the Aid Society, 255 ; effects of 
 education on crime, 283, 284 ; "theft from the person," procedure in, 416 
 — 417 ; Dr Maudsley on evolution of crime, 489 — 490. 
 
 Criticism. (See Culture and Literature.) 
 
 Crown, The : disposition of the masses to accept political situation, 349 — 350 ; 
 enthusiasm for royalty, 350 — 351 ; docility of the modern "firebrand," 351; 
 ovations to ministers, 351 — 352 ; Mr. Bagehot on the new and old consti- 
 tution, 352 — 353 ; Lord Derby on the relation of the Government to tho 
 masses, "employers and employed," 357; supremacy of the democratic 
 polity, constitutional monarchy, its real aspect defined, 357 ; checks on 
 democracy, 358 ; guarantees of the stability of the Constitution, 359 ; Mr. 
 Bagehot on the relations of Sovereign to Cabinet, and of Parliament to 
 the masses, 360, 361 ; approximation of classes in Government, and 
 influences at work, 361 ; the Queen's prerogative, its vastness, but limited 
 use, Mr. Bagehot thereon ; services of a Sovereign, 362, and of a court, 
 363 ; monarchy and republic contrasted by Mr. Bagehot, 363 ; a Privy 
 Council meeting described, 371 ; the Premier and the Sovereign, method 
 of communications from ministers to the Queen described, 372 ; probable 
 results of County suffrage, 412, possible difficulties in strife between 
 classes, possible national calamities, secure tenure of the Crown, 413, 414 ; 
 loyalty of the colonies, 574 ; and the suggested federation, 575 ; the^ 
 different power of democracy in the colonies, at home, and in the Crown 
 dependencies, 579 ; the present and future of England, 583 — 586, specially 
 in relation to the colonies, 583. 
 
 Crown dependencies, 572 ; absence of democratic feeling in, 579. 
 
 Culture (see a^so Painting, Music, Literature, and Science) : sesthetinism in modern 
 houses, 503 — 504 ; a sex in taste, feminity of the period in decorations and 
 literature, 503 ; debt of art to Prince Consort, 504, to Mr. Ruskin, ib., School 
 of Art, South Kensington, ib. ; aestheticism in female dress and recrea- 
 tions, 505 — 506 ; art criticism : Mr. Ruskin, Mr. Humerton, Mr. Pater, Mr. 
 Augustus Hare, 511 ; art patronage, the State and art. ib., schools of 
 design, 512; rapid spread of musical culture, 512 — 513; influence of 
 Mr. Matthew Arnold and Max Miiller on aesthetic thought, 522 ; summary 
 of the results of culture, 521 — 522. 
 
 D 
 
 Dairy farms, Increase in number of, 181. 
 
 Darwin : philosophy of, 498 — 499 ; " Origin of Species," 498 ; his theory of 
 
 evolution and its wide influence, 499. 
 Democracy: its part in the structure of society, 314 ; a democratic polity now 
 
 established, 356 — 357 ; checks upon democracy, 357 — 358 ; its force — first, 
 
 Q Q
 
 594 INDEX. 
 
 in the colonies, secondly at home, thirdly in the Crown dependencies, 579 ; 
 what use will it make of its power ? 586. 
 
 Derby, Lord, on the Ministry and the masses, "employer and employed," 357 
 —359. 
 
 Devonshire, Duke of: works at Chatsworth, 36 ; customs on the Devonshire 
 estates, 30 — 37 ; farms let on annual agreement and re- valuation, compara- 
 tive fixity of tenure, organisation of, 36 ; restrictions on building at 
 Buxton and Eastbourne, 37. 
 
 Diet of the rural labourer, 164 — 167 ; the milk diet in Northumberland, 183. 
 
 Diplomacy: as a profession, 562 ; necessity of wealth and position to its followers, 
 ib.; diplomatic establishment (see Foreign Office). 
 
 Discharged Prisoners' Aid Society, beneficial operations of, 255. 
 
 Dissent. (See Nonconformity.) 
 
 Diversity of the working classes a guarantee of order, 133 — 134. 
 
 Doctor, The. (See The Medical Profession.) 
 
 Domesticity : effects of changed social life on, 307 — 308 ; fashionable parents 
 and children, 308 ; present feminine independence, 309. 
 
 Drama, The. (See The Stage.) 
 
 Du Maurier, Mr., as an artist, 503 — 513 ; " the music of the past, the present, 
 and the future," 513—514. 
 
 Durham, 94. 
 
 E 
 
 Earnestness of an Englishman's pursuits, 331. 
 
 Eastbourne : the Duke of Devonshire's property there, 30 ; his restrictions on 
 building, 37. 
 
 Ecclesiastical Commissioners, The, are the largest landowners ; management of 
 their estates, 38. 
 
 Ecclesiastical Courts, The procedure in, 429 — 432. 
 
 Economy of force, a feature of the present age, 6. 
 
 Education (see also School Boards, Universities, and Schools) ; the village school 
 and its advantages, 163; prospective effect on the peasant, 187; the clever 
 boy: accidental method of his advancement under the old system, 271 — 
 272, his patrons, 271 ; the School Board and its procedure, 273 — 281 ; 
 compulsory education, 273 — 274 ; State and voluntary aid under the old 
 regime ; Education Acts of 1870 and 1876, 274 ; operations of the former, 
 275 — 276; secular and religious teaching, 276; the Education Department, 
 277 ; educational machine at work, 277 — 279 ; effects of the New Code of 
 1883, 279 — 281 ; the working man's ignorance of the economy of life, 
 282 ; non-increase of crime a result of education shown by statistics, 283 — 
 284; handicrafts taught in Board Schools, 285—286; "overpressure," 
 287 ; grammar schools, endowed schools, and public schools, 288 — 289 ; 
 competitive examinations and the "crammer," 290 ; inducements held out 
 to university graduates, ib.; recent advance made by the universities — 
 middle-class examinations, unattached students, ib.; the College of Pre- 
 ceptors, 292 ; types of inefficient masters, 293 — 294 ; direct and indirect 
 inspection of school, and great value of the latter, 294 ; responsibility of 
 parents, stimulated neglect of learning, and preference for play, 295 ; 
 organisation of the public schools, 295 — 297 ; increased 6cnse of responsi- 
 bility of the modern boy, 297 ; the higher teaching of girls, and doubtful 
 result, 298 — 299 ; organisation the key of the present system, 299 ; when 
 public grants became denominational endowments, 300 ; the education of 
 the soldier, 447, 448. 
 
 Education Act, The : compared with the Corporations Act, 57 ; intimate connec- 
 tion with, factory legislation, 143 — 145; satisfactory result of, 144; reforms 
 necessary, 144 — 145 ; abuse of, where manufacturing and agricultural dis- 

 
 INDEX. 595 
 
 tricts overlap, 145 ; its relation to School Boards and operation, 274 — 277 ; 
 
 the New Code, 279—281. 
 Education Office, The : in relation to the rector, 12 ; aim of the department in 
 
 respect to School Boards, 276—277. 
 Edwards, Rev. W. W., on friendly societies ; suggested reforms, 211. 
 " Elherfield experiment, The," 200. 
 Eleusis Club, Advanced propaganda of, 133. 
 Eliot, George, her works an instance of the invasion of science into literature, 
 
 518 ; her novels, 528 ; her doctrine of " the religion of humanity," 535 ; 
 
 parallel teaching of John Morley, ib. 
 Embankments, The Thames, 72. 
 Emigration. (See The Colonies.) 
 Employer and employed : moderation of the latter — example, the cotton famine, 
 
 154 ; instances in contrast, the Nottingham framebreakers, 155 ; rarity of 
 
 violence in our time, ib. 
 Enclosure Commissioners, The, 181. 
 Endowed Schools Act, The, 288. 
 Engineer, The mining, 151. 
 Engineering, Civil, as a profession, 555 — 556. 
 
 Equity and law defined, 422 ; their amalgamation through recent reforms, ib. 
 Established Church. (See Church of England.) 
 Estates, Landed. (See Landlord.) 
 Evangelicalism. (See The Church of England.) 
 Evolution. (See Philosophy.) 
 Exeter, 95 ; its special attractions to residents, ib. 
 
 Factory legislation : state protection of women and children, 136 — 137 ; excessive 
 interference a blunder, 139; its progress traced, 137 — 143; benefit of 
 limited hours, 137; summary of Factory Acts, 139 — 140 (footnote); con- 
 nection with the Education Act, 143 — 145 ; beneficial results of, 148 — 149; 
 Mr. Redgrave thereon, 149. 
 
 Factory operative, The : predominance of, in Lancashire towns, 80 ; his intelli- 
 gence, his singular indulgences, ib. ; his recreations — curious examples, 
 80 — 81; early marriages and their effect, 80 ; his day's work described, 81 
 — 83 ; extraordinary independence of, 88 ; his physical deterioration and 
 its causes, 80, 150 — 151. 
 
 Fagging and the prefect, 295 — 296. 
 
 Families hired as field labourers, curious customs, 178. 
 
 Fargus, Mr. F. J., as a novelist, 530. 
 
 Farmer, The: different types of, a modern farmer's family, 21 ; his relation to 
 the Board of Guardians, 42 ; doubtful results of peasant proprietorship, 
 176 ; effects of Acts of Husbandry and rotation of crops, 179 ; advantages 
 of the large farmer, 180 ; Mr. Caird on the agricultural capabilities of 
 England, ib. ; disappearance of the yeomen, ib. ; increased number of 
 dairy-farms and market-gardens, 181 ; speculative remedies, re-distribution 
 of land, 182 ; tenancy under corporate bodies, ib.; tolerance by the labourer 
 of the farmer, 180. 
 
 Federation, Imperial, 575 — 584. 
 
 Female independence is the result of our changed social life, 309 ; its effect in 
 the present day, possible ultimate benefit of, 311. 
 
 Feudal customs at Woburn Abbey, 28. 
 
 Financial England : conventional mystery of money market and credit, 103 ; 
 impossibility to trace finance from general to particular, 104. The Bank 
 of England : its relation to other banks, 105 ; excellence of the London 
 
 qq2
 
 596 INDEX. 
 
 banking system ; its simplicity, 106 ; London the international clearing- 
 house, 106 — 107. The Stock Exchange, its operations and aspect ; the 
 jobber, 108; investment business, 109; gambling or speculative busi- 
 ness, 109 — 110; issue of a foreign loan, 110 — 111; deceptions practised 
 towards the public, 111; inseparable connection between banking and 
 commerce, 114 ; the financial partner in a banking-house, 125 ; a banking- 
 house and a bank contrasted, 126 ; functions of the former, 127. 
 
 Fine arts, Cultivation of, in towns of business, 75—76. (See also Culture.) 
 
 Flats, Life in : Victoria Street, Westminster, 302 ; its advantages, 303. 
 
 Foreign loans : process of issue, 110; deceptions practised on the public, 111. 
 
 Foreign Office, The : its administration, 368 — 370 ; secrecy necessary, 368 ; the 
 departments, 369 ; organisation of the Treaty Department, 369 — 370 ; the 
 Diplomatic Establishment, 369 ; numerous troublesome applications to, 378. 
 
 France : The French artisan in his relation to the State, compared with 
 that of the English, 136 ; effect of intercourse with, on our social life, 302, 
 the imprint of French habits, ib., cases in which overdone, 303 — 304, its 
 effect on the stage, 304, on the relations of the sexes, ib., on marriage, 308 — 
 309 ; its influence on literature, 533 — 534, on the writings of Mr. Frederic 
 Harrison and Mr. John Morley, 534 ; influence of the French school on 
 our stage, 544 ; French domestic morality unsuitable to English actors and 
 audiences, 547 — 548; French plays in London generally have limited audi 
 ences, 552 ; French and English newspapers and journalism contrasted, 566. 
 
 Fraser, Dr. (Bishop of Manchester) : on defects in the Sanitary Act, 173 ; on 
 over-crowding and propagation of disease, 174; on allotments, 175; on 
 employment of women in agriculture, 178. 
 
 Free discussion, Beneficial results of, 133. 
 
 Free trade: benefits of, 114; possible extension of, between Great Britain and 
 her colonies, 574. 
 
 Freeman, Mr., as a historian, 533. 
 
 Friendly societies (see Thrift): the village benefit society, 14. 
 
 Frugality of the Yorkshire manufacturer, 77. 
 
 Future of England. The, discussed, 583 — 586 ; and especially in relation to the 
 colonies, 583. 
 
 Garden, A, preferable to the allotment, 175. 
 
 Germany: influence of German thought on the philosophy of to-day, 499 — 501, 
 introduced by Coleridge, 499 — 500, fostered by Carlyle, 500 ; influence of 
 Hegel, 500 ; growing influence of its music, Liszt, Wagner, 514. 
 
 Giffen, Mr., on the working classes, 212 — 217. 
 
 Girls, The higher teaching of, 298 ; its doubtful results, 299. 
 
 Government, Imperial. (See The State.) 
 
 Grammar schools, the advantages offered by, in certain towns, 288. 
 
 Great landowners. (See Landlords.) 
 
 Greater Britain. (See Imperial England.) 
 
 Guardians, Board of, 41 ; claims of candidates, 41 — 42 ; privilege of ratepayers, 
 41; its duties, 42; influence of the rector and farmer, ib. ; desirable 
 reforms, 44 ; a scene in a board-room, 44 — 45, composition of the board, 
 45, its labours described, 45 — 47 ; importance of sanitary duties, 46. 
 
 Hamerton, Mr. P. G., as an art critic, 511. 
 
 Hardy, Mr., as a novelist, 530. 
 
 Barley, Mr., testimony to the employment of women in field labour, 178 — 179.
 
 INDEX. 597 
 
 Harrison, Mr. Frederic : on the relation of the French artisan to the State, 136 ; 
 as a Positivist, 484 ; influence of French thought on his writings, 534 ; 
 on the press and its power, 566. 
 
 Hegel, influence of his writings on English thought, 500. 
 
 High Church, The. {See Church of England.) 
 
 Highland railway, Eccentricities of travel on a, 260. 
 
 Highway boards, 52. 
 
 History and historians : Mr. Wyon, Mr. Spencer Walpole, Mr. Green, Mr. 
 Freeman, Mr. Justin McCarthy, Major Griffiths, Mr. Loftie, 532 — 533 ; 
 earnings of the historian, 564 — 565. 
 
 Hoey, Mrs. Cashel, as a novelist, 527 — 528. 
 
 Holyoake, Mr. Jacob : " History of Co-operation," 225 ; on the benefits accruing 
 to the working classes from co-operation, 232 — 233. 
 
 Hotels : the modern hotel, its advantages and disadvantages, 268 — 270 ; gradual 
 disappearance of small inns, 268 ; table d'hote, 269 — 270 ; its unsuitability 
 to the ordinary Englishman, ib., the hotel drawing-room, ib. 
 
 House of Commons : the process of parliamentary reform, 352 — 353 ; influence 
 of with the masses, 360 — 361 ; decrease in desire for a seat in, 379 : 
 reasons, opportunities offered by literature — the review, the platform of 
 the individual, 3S0 ; membership does not necessarily confer social dis- 
 tinction, 380 — 381; its value, interesting nature of its duties, its attractions, 
 its severe labours, 381; duties of members to constituencies, 382; com- 
 parative independence of representatives of small constituencies, ib. ; a 
 day in the House, 383—386, 388—389, 391—395, its procedure, 395 ; pri- 
 vate business and petitions, 384 ; aspect of the House and its members, 
 385 — 387, age of members, decrease of the aristocracy in, 387, a question 
 of privilege, 388 — 389, its oratory, 389, loss of classic oratory and reasons, 
 399 — 401 ; the whip and his functions, 390 ; the division, 391 ; progress 
 of a Bill, 391 — 393 ; royal assent, 394 ; the Speaker, his duties and pri- 
 vileges, 394 — 397 ; rules and practices of the House, 395 — 396; supply 
 committees, 397 ; rights of private members, ib. ; select committees, 398 ; 
 educational mirror of the nation, 400 ; essentials of popularity, 401 ; rarity 
 of collision between the two Houses, 403 — 404. 
 
 House of Lords : its importance not below that of the Commons, 402 — 404 ; rarity 
 of collisions between the two Houses — instances, 403 — 404 ; difficulties of 
 aspirants in, 404 ; an afternoon in the House, 405 — 410, exterior and 
 interior aspect of, 405, its members ; the Speaker, 406, a debate, 407 — 409, 
 oratory, 408, comparedj-with that of the Commons, 410 ; rules and practices, 
 409 ; the division, 410 ; elements for the perpetuation of the aristocracy, 
 410 ; possible reforms in, 410 — 411 ; influence and authority of its members, 
 411; prevalence of Conservatism, 411 — 412; possible results of county 
 suffrage, 412 ; a court of appeal, 424 — 426. 
 
 Husbandly, Acts of, and their effect, 179. 
 
 Huxley, Professor: his method and services, 515, 516; on "the protoplasm," 
 . 516 ; opposition offered by Mr. St. George Mivart, 517. 
 
 I 
 
 Imperial England : necessity of emigration, 570 ; extent and population of the 
 Empire, 571 — 572 ; attractions to emigrants of English-speaking commu- 
 nities, 572 — 573 ; financial and commercial relations with the colonies, 573; 
 necessity of imperial tariff, 574 ; imperial federation, 575 — 585 ; forces of 
 cohesion, 576 ; imperial navy, 577 ; the State and the colonies, 573 — 583 ; 
 Burke thereon, 582 ; suggested grant of privileges to, 576 — 577 ; influence 
 of democracy, (1) in the colonies, (2) at home, (3) in Crown dependencies, 
 579 ; position and policy of the governor of a colony, 580 ; basis of the
 
 598 INDEX. 
 
 English Empire, 583 ; the present and future of England in relation to 
 
 the colonies, 583 — 586. 
 Imperial Government. (See The State.) 
 
 Independents, The (or Congregationalists). (See Nonconformity.) 
 India as a profession, 568 — 569 ; the competition wallah, ib. 
 India Office, The : its administration, 367 — 368. 
 Industrial schools, Beneficial result of, 240 — 241. 
 Inflation and depression of trade, Causes of, 104 ; recent waves of depression, 
 
 115—116. 
 Inn, The: its absorption by large hotels, 268. 
 Irish element in Liverpool and unskilled labour, 83 — 84. 
 Ironworks, An : its aspect, 122; organisation in the works, 122 — 123; at the 
 
 mines, ib. ; the " puddler," 123 ; sale of iron, 124 ; the managing partner, 
 
 his functions and control, ib. ; estimate of capital employed, 127. 
 
 J 
 
 Jews, The: their numbers and sectarian differences, 474 ; the Reformed English 
 Synagogue, ritual and belief; toleration of other faiths; marriage, 475 ; 
 aversion to proselytism, absorption in nations, 476 ; the Rabbi, training 
 for the priesthood, ib. ; education of the young, 477 ; provision for the 
 poor, 478. 
 
 Journalism : occupations and earnings of the journalist, 565 ; the special corre- 
 spondent, 567 ; features and prospects ol, 567 — 568. 
 
 Jowett, Mr., Theology of, 459. 
 
 Justices of the peace. (See Magistrates.) 
 
 K 
 
 Kensington : old and Kensington, 72, 73 ; necessity for tree protection, 73. 
 
 Labourer, The. (See The Artisan and The Agricultural Labourer.) 
 
 Lancashire (see also Manchester and Liverpool) : improvements in the last sixty 
 years, 75 — 76 ; regularity of factory earnings, and necessary beneficial 
 result, 78 ; the factory hand, his intelligence and habits, 79 — 81 ; descrip- 
 tion of a cotton-mill, a day's work, 81 — 83; greater opportunities of 
 popular amusement in northern counties, 539, 540. 
 
 Land agent, The : duties of the Duke of Northumberland's commissioner, 31 — 32; 
 bailiwicks and agents on the property, %b. j advantages of the control of a 
 superior agent, 39. 
 
 Landed estates. (See Landlord.) 
 
 Landlord, The : conventional estimate of the occupations of the great landowner, 
 its errors, 24 — 25 ; the actual creditable fulfilment of his duties, his respon- 
 sibilities, 25 ; daily routine life of, his treatment of charitable bequests, 
 26 ; organisation and administration of vast estates, 26 — 39 ; complete- 
 ness of accounts and checks upon them, 27 ; feudal customs rarely seen, 
 27 — 28 ; feudal customs at Woburn Abbey, the Duke of Westminster's 
 estate (Eaton), organisation of, security of tenure of the workmen employed, 
 28 ; Duke of Northumberland's estate (Alnwick Castle), organisation of, 
 29 ; Tynemouth excavations ; Tynemouth, 29 — 30 ; vast properties of the 
 Northumberland estate, 30 ; the farms upon it, duties of the chief com- 
 missioner, 31 ; bailiwicks and agents, 32 ; the Duke of Cleveland's estates 
 (see Cleveland, Duke of) ; Duke of Devonshire's estates (see Devonshire, 
 Duke of) ; archives, their variety and extent, 37 — 38 ; general condition of
 
 INDEX. 599 
 
 leases, 38 ; lands of Crown and Ecclesiastical Commissioners (the largest 
 landowners), the system of their management, ib. ; lands of the City guilds, 
 their management, 39 ; smaller estates, their general management, advan- 
 tages of the control of a superior agent, 39 ; influence of great landlords, 
 ubiquitous, 29 ; agreements between landlord and tenant, 34 ; the close 
 and open village, 174 {footnote) ; increased sense of responsibility, 175 ; 
 effect of abolition of old Poor Law, 175 ; small returns of cottage property, 
 ib. ; Acts of Husbandry, 179 ; gradual passing of estates from poor men, 
 175 ; agricultural area of England, how held, 180 ; political influence, 339. 
 
 Land question, The : doubtful result of peasant proprietorship, 176 ; different 
 habits of French and English peasants, ib. ; agricultural area of England, 
 how held, 180 ; limited State interference, the Enclosure Commissioners, 
 181; speculative remedy, redistribution of land, 182. 
 
 Law and equity defined, their amalgamation under recent reform, 421. 
 
 Law courts, The: the police court and its procedure, 415 — 416; nature of cases 
 brought before it, 417; a representative case, "theft from the person," 
 416 — 417 ; Quarter Sessions, aspect of, 417 — 419 ; Court for Crown Cases 
 Reserved, its procedure and disabilities, 419 ; advantages of a final court 
 of appeal, 420 ; ordinary litigation and its difficulties, a representative 
 case, "the repairing lease," 420 — 421; the preliminaries, pleadings, 420 ; 
 interrogatories, 422 ; trial, ib. ; appeal to Divisional Court, 424 ; appeal 
 to the House of Lords and final judgment, 425 — 426 ; law and equity, 
 definition of, 421; Judges' Chambers, 422; Queen's counsel, "silk" and 
 " stuff," ib. ; dress of the judges, 425 ; the House of Lords and life peers, 
 ib. ; national dread of the law, 426 ; the County Court, 426 — 429 ; a repre- 
 sentative case, " servant and employer," ib. ; County Court procedure, 
 427 ; its aspect, 428 ; appeal from, 429 ; ecclesiastical courts and their 
 procedure, 429 — 431 ; Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, its aspect 
 and constitution, 430 ; typical cases, 431 ; transitional state of the law 
 courts; their advance with the times ; suggested modifications, 432; colonial 
 law, 582. 
 
 Leamington, 96. 
 
 Leases, General conditions of, on large estates, 38. 
 
 Leeds. (See Yorkshire.) 
 
 Legislation, Modern: effects of, 3; state protection of women and children, 136 — 
 137; excessive interference a blunder, 137; progress of recent factory 
 legislation traced, 137 — 142; summary of factory legislation, 139 (foot- 
 note) ; legislation in shops, 142 — 143 ; results of the Education Act, 143 — 
 145 ; the truck system not yet abolished, 146 ; necessity of elasticity in 
 application, 148; mining legislation, 151 ; legislation for friendly societies, 
 202 — 207 ; improvement in criminal legislation, 239 ; beneficial effect of 
 the Prison Act, 250; railway enactments, 261 ; the Railway Commis- 
 sioners, 262 ; method of procedure in legislation on the part of the 
 Cabinet, 373. 
 
 Lewes, G. H. : his Positivism, tribute toComte, 484 ; his philosophy, 496 — 497 ; 
 " History of Philosophy," 496 ; contempt for metaphysics, 497 ; excellence 
 of his style and method, 496 — 497. 
 
 Liberals, The : the treatment of the rank and file by the leaders, 345. 
 
 Licenser of Plays, The, 547 ; his functions described, 550 — 552 ; defence of his 
 office, ib. 
 
 Life in the nineteenth century. (See The Present Age.) 
 
 Lister, Sir Joseph, his influence in physiology, 516; advocacy of "antiseptic 
 treatment," 517, 560. 
 
 Literature : exceptional social status of the author and its cause, 335 ; the 
 review the platform of the individual, 380 ; Carlyle as a writer, 500 ; 
 invasion of literature by psychology, 518 ; by physiology, instanced in the
 
 COO INDEX. 
 
 writings of George Eliot, 518 ; popularity of manuals, 522 ; Mr. Arnold's 
 writings, 523 ; modern extension of literary criticism, ib. ; Mr. Pater, Mr. 
 Symonds, Mr. Shairp, and Leslie Stephen as critics, ib. Modern poetry 
 and poets ; Browning, Swinburne, Tennyson, 524, Alfred Austin, " The 
 Human Tragedy," 525, Mortimer Collins, 524. Novel readers, novels and 
 novelists, good and bad novels, 526 ; Anthony Trollope, ib., Edmund 
 Yates, ib., Charles Beade, Wilkie Collins, 527; lady novelists— Mrs. Oli- 
 phant, Mrs. Lynn Linton, Mrs. Cashel Hoey, Mrs. Henry Wood, 527, 
 "Ouida," Miss Braddon, Miss Broughton, 528; Miss Warden, George 
 Eliot ; George Macdonald, Mr. L. Oliphant, Mr. Marion Crawford, 
 Dr. Shorthouse, 529; idyllic noyels — Mr. Hardy, Mr. Blackmore, Mr. 
 Black, Mr. Fargus, 530. Travel, biography, and autobiography, 531 — 
 532. Theological literature: writings of Cardinal Newman, of Arch- 
 deacon Farrar, of Dean Stanley, of the Dean of Westminster, 532. His- 
 tory and historians — Froude, Lecky, Green, Kinglake, &c. Services of 
 Professor Stubbs, 533 ; influence of the French school, ib. ; Mr. Frederic 
 Harrison ; writings of Mr. John Morley, 534 ; popularity of the magazine 
 and serial, 535 ; literature considered as a profession, 564 ; universality of 
 writing in the present day, 564 ; estimated gains of the poet, novelist, 
 historian, and philosopher, 565 ; the journalist, his duties and income, ib. ; 
 the daily press, its influence, economy, and features, 565 — 567 ; the 
 weekly press, 567 ; characteristics and prospects of modern journalism, 
 567—568. 
 
 Litigation: its difficulties — a representative case, "the repairing lease," 420 — 
 421 ; popular aversion to law, 426. 
 
 Little, Mr. II. J., on the rural labourer, 167, 168, 175 ; on agricultural wages, 
 183; on the intelligence of the north of England peasant, 185; on the 
 prospects of the field labourer, IS 7. 
 
 Littre, M., as a Positivist, 484. 
 
 Liverpool : a capital of commerce yet centre of culture, 75 ; cultivation of the 
 fine arts, 76; contrasted with Manchester, 79 — 80, 86 — 87; diverse popula- 
 tion of, 83—84 ; the nautical and foreign element, 83 ; immigration from 
 Ireland, 83 — 84 ; unskilled labour in, 84 ; its popular recreations, ib. ; cos- 
 mopolitan character of, 85 ; its society and recreations, ib. ; Wellington 
 rooms, Aintree and Altcar, 86 ; its clubs, 87 ; stringent police rule, 88 ; 
 the American " bar," its introduction and evils, ib. ; excellence of educa- 
 tional institutions, the press, and theatres, 89 ; the river and docks, ib. 
 
 Loans to municipalities, how raised, and securities against excess, 60 — 61 ; the 
 Public Works Loan Commissioners, 61. (See also Foreign Loans.) 
 
 Local Acts of Parliament : large number of, 57 ; their scope and prospective 
 increase, ib. 
 
 Local Board, The : a connecting-link between rural and municipal administra- 
 tion, 55 ; its duties, ib. 
 
 Local Government Board : its controlling power, 60 ; its method of action, ib. 
 
 London : comparative impotenco of the London ratepayer, 69 ; scheme for a 
 metropolitan municipality, ib. ; its present constituents and costliness of 
 the system, 70 ; operations of the vestries described, ib. ; beneficial action 
 of the Board of Works, ib. ; London Government Bill, 70 — 72 ; London 
 improvements, the embankments, 72 ; old and new Kensington, 72 — 73 ; 
 the parks, 73 ; necessity of tree protection, ib. ; the toiling population 
 only partly visible, 79 ; the centre of commerce and finance, 103 ; the 
 international clearing-house, 106 — 107; peculiarities of the London artisan, 
 161 — 162; vehicles in, 265 ; the season, 307 ; popular amusements in, 540 
 —543. 
 
 Lord Chamberlain, The, as Licenser of Plays, his functions described, and defence 
 of his office, 550—552.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 G01 
 
 Lord Chancellor: appointments to the magistracy, 48 — 49; his position in the 
 House of Lords, 406. 
 
 Lord Lieutenant: his influence in rural administration, 42 — 43; evils of absentee- 
 ism, ib. ; appointment of magistrates, 48 — 49. 
 
 Love, Herbert Spencer's analysis of the passion of. 493. 
 
 Low Church, The. (See The Church of England.) 
 
 Lynn Linton, lira., as a novelist, 527. 
 
 M 
 
 McCarthy, Mr. Justin, as a novelist, 527 ; as a historian, 533. 
 
 Macdonald, Mr. George, as a novelist, 529. 
 
 Magistracy, The : high estimation of the office of Justice of the Peace, 48 ; 'curious 
 advertisement, ib. ; method of appointment by Lord Lieutenant and Lord 
 Chancellor, 48 — 49 ; influence of political andreligious bias, 49 ; the village 
 reeve and port reeve, 51 ; popular election and gradual desuetude of it, ib. ; 
 the unpaid magistracy, 52 — 54 ; provincial aldermen not magistrates, 65 ; 
 qualifications and disqualifications of borough magistrates, ib. ; chiefly 
 elected for political reasons, 66 ; evils of the process, ib. ; protest of certain 
 towns against it, ib. 
 
 Manchester : first to use Corporation Act, 57; a capital of commerce but centre of 
 culture, 75 ; cultivation of the fine arts in, 75 — 76 ; the plutocrat not the 
 only type of successful manufacturer, 76 ; visible predominance of the 
 toiling population, 79 ; "the mill hand," prevalence of, 80 ; Manchester 
 and Liverpool contrasted, 79 — 81, 86 — 87 ; permanence of families in, and 
 reasons, 84 ; Manchester toilettes and entertainments, 86 ; recreations and 
 balls, ib.; revolution in the hours of business, 87 ; early dinners, ib.; its 
 clubs, ib.; affected patois of the millowner, 88 ; excellence of educational 
 institutions, 89 ; of the press, ib. ; of the theatres, ib. ; contrasted with 
 Birmingham, 91. 
 
 Manufacturing. (See Commercial England.) 
 
 Marines, The : their duties, 436 ; essentially a cotys d 'elite, 437. 
 
 Market-gardens, increase in number of, 181. 
 
 Marriage and married life, effects of French habits on, 304, 308 — 309. 
 
 Martineau, Miss, on Positivism, 479, 484. 
 
 Masses, The. (See The People.) 
 
 Match trade, The, improvement in, 141. 
 
 Maudsley, Dr., on mental phenomena, 489 — 490 ; on the evolution of crime, 490. 
 
 Mayoralty, The : functions, honourable position, and unceasing duties of a 
 mayor, 64 ; idem of the Lord Mayor of London, 64. 
 
 Medical profession, The (see also Physiology): social status of the doctor, 335; 
 considered as a profession, its prospects, 559 ; estimated gains of, 560 ; its 
 perils, ib.; instances of sacrifice, ib.; the antiseptic treatment, 560. 
 
 Melbourne, Lord : characteristic opposition to national education, 275. 
 
 Members of Parliament (see also House of Commons) : their influence in chambers 
 of commerce and trade councils, 67 — 68 ; their policy towards industrial 
 electors defined, 68; working men in Parliament, 160; large number of 
 public school men, 298 ; decline in demand for the career, and reasons, 
 379 — 381 ; increased social distinction not absolute, 380 — 381 ; value and 
 attractions of a seat, 381 ; interesting nature of the occupation, ib.; 
 severity of the labours, 381 — 382 ; duties to constituencies, 382 ; greater 
 freedom of repi-esentatives of small constituencies, ib.; age of members, 
 386 — 387; oratory in the House, 389, 399 — 401; advantages of unpaid 
 membership, 562 ; politics as a profession, 561 — 562. 
 
 Merchant, The: the merchant prince of to-day and yesterday, 315; social status 
 of, 332 — 333 ; contrasted with that of the stockbroker, 333 ; lessened
 
 G02 INDEX. 
 
 attractions and promise of a mercantile career, 558, 559. (See also Com- 
 mercial England and Commercial Administration.) 
 
 Mersey : the river Mersey and its docks, 89. 
 
 Metaphysics : subordinated to philosophy, 481 ; G. H. Lewes' contempt for, 
 498. 
 
 Methodists, or "Wesleyans. (See Nonconformity.) 
 
 Metropolis, The. (See London.) 
 
 Metropolitan Board of Works, benefits conferred by, 70. 
 
 Middle-class crime and its causes. 244. 
 
 Middle-class examinations, 291 — 292. 
 
 Militia, The, 450— 451. 
 
 Milk diet : value of the cow to the Northumbrian peasant, 183. 
 
 Mill, John Stuart : philosophy of, 485—488 ; his special training, 485 ; on utili- 
 tarianism, and. its uses, 488 — 489 ; on Mr. Bain's method, 495. 
 
 Mining engineer, The, 151. 
 
 Mining population, The : excess and irregularity of wages account for absence 
 of thrift, 78 ; Yorkshire miners a tine race, ib.; mining legislation, 151 ; 
 the mining engineer, ib.; varieties of the miner, 152; life of, 152 — 154; 
 better aspect of, 153; career of the apprentice "putting," 154; of the 
 miner "hewing," ib. 
 
 Mivart, Mr. St. George, his opposition to Messrs. Huxley and Tyndall, 517 — 518. 
 
 Moderation of the working classes in times of trouble, 154 — 155. 
 
 Morley, Mr. John, on Positivism, 480; influence of French thought on his 
 writings, his works, " Compromise," 534 ; a preacher with George Eliot 
 of the religion of " humanity," 535. 
 
 Miiller, Max, his influence on religious thought, 522. 
 
 Mundella, Mr., his early advocacy of arbitration, 157. 
 
 Municipal Corporation Act, The, 57 ; first adopted in Manchester, ib. 
 
 Municipal government : the Local Board a connecting-link between town and 
 country, its duties; imperceptible growth of village into town, 55; 
 country towns and country villages contrasted, 56 ; desire for indepen- 
 dence, 57 ; the Municipal Corporation Act of 1835 first applied in Man- 
 chester ; vast number of local Acts of Parliament, their scope and pro- 
 spective increase, ib.; Education Act of 1870, influence of School Boards, 
 increased zeal of the citizen, 56 ; the Town Council, its constitution and 
 duties, 58 — 59 ; the administration of, described— the municipal offices, the 
 committees, the aldermen, 60 ; contact of imperial and local government, 
 ib.; power and action of the Local Government Board, 60 — 61 ; municipal 
 loans, how raised ; the Public Works Loan Commissioners, provision 
 against any excess, 61 ; aspect of a Town Council, 61 — 62 ; its training, 
 good and bad, 63 — 64 ; functions, position, and exacting duties of the 
 mayor ; the Lord Mayor of London, 64 ; the borough magistracy, 65 — 66 ; 
 influence of politics in municipal affairs, 67 ; trade councils, 67—68 ; com- 
 parative impotence of the London ratepayer, 69 ; scheme for a metro- 
 politan municipality, ib.; the City Corporation, the Westminster autho- 
 rities, the vestries, and the Board of Works ; costliness of the system, 70 ; 
 beneficial action of the Board of Works, ib.; proposal to create a single 
 municipality for London, 70—72; recent metropolitan improvements, 
 72—73. 
 Music : encouraged by Prince Consort, 512—513; its widely increasing influence, 
 513 ; modern English composers, ib.; growing influence of Germany- 
 Liszt, Wagner's Tannhau&er, Schumann, 514; Du Maurier on the "music 
 of the past, present, and the future," 513. 
 Music-hall, The : its good and evil influences, 540 ; probable good results of the 
 coffee music-halls, ib.; its influence on the stage, 545.
 
 INDEX. 603 
 
 N 
 
 Navy, The : social status of officers, 336 ; national importance of, 433; nautical 
 aptitude of the nation our chief security ; predilection of youth for the 
 sea; advantages of a naval career, 435 ; the life of a blue-jacket — training 
 as a boy, 435; as an A.B., 436; as a non-commissioned officer, ib.; the 
 marines — their duties, 436 — 437 ; other classes constituting the personnel of 
 a man-o'-war, 437; the life of the officer — as a cadet, ib.; as an officer, 
 438; aspect of a man-o'-war, ib. ; administration— the Admiralty, consti- 
 tution of the Board, the Controller and his duties, 439 ; our naval force, 
 ib. (footnote). 
 
 Newcastle-on-Tyne, 89 ; its factories and antiquities, ib.; altered course of the 
 river, 90. 
 
 Newman, Cardinal, his theological writings, 532. 
 
 Newspapers. (See The Press.) 
 
 "Noblesse," The: our aristocracy not "noblesse," 316 — 319; extreme exclusive- 
 ness of, in Austria, 318 — 320 ; comparison of the system with association 
 of diverse ranks in our society, 319 — 320. 
 
 Nonconformity : its admission of the importance of the rector and his work, 15 ; 
 its objections to him and the Established Church, 18 — 20; results of the 
 agitation of Dissent, 20 ; Dissent in rural districts and in towns, its influ- 
 ence in the latter, 21 — 22 ; debt due to it by religion, 22 ; its attitude to the 
 Church, and consequent responsibility of the clergy, 20 ; prevalence in 
 Yorkshire households, 77; the sects of: position of Unitarians; Inde- 
 pendents (or Congregationalists), their activity for disestablishment, 466, 
 the Liberation Society, 467, autonomy of congregations, ib., training for 
 the ministry, 467 — 468, ceremony of ordination, 468, relation of the pastor 
 to his flock, ib., the Congregational Union, 469 ; the Baptists, the Pres- 
 byterians, 466; the Wesleyans (or Methodists) — constitution and powers 
 of the Conference, 470—471, the itinerant system, 471, training tor the 
 ministry and preliminaries of candidature, 471 — 472. 
 
 Norfolk, Duke of, and his kinsmen : an instance of precedence, 329. 
 
 Northumberland, Duke of: organisation of his estates (Alnwick Castle), 29, ex- 
 cavations, etc., at Tynemouth, 29 — 30 ; vast properties of the duke, 30 — 
 31 ; the farms upon his estate, 31 - duties of the chief commissioner, 31, 
 bailiwicks and agents, 32. 
 
 Northumberland peasant : women beneficially employed in field labour, 178 — 179 ; 
 value of milk diet to, 183 (footnote) ; intelligence of, 185. 
 
 Novels and novelists : novel readers, 526 ; good and bad novels, ib. ; Mr. Trol- 
 lope as a novelist, ib. ; Mr. Edmund Yates, ib. ; Mr. Charles Reade, Mr. 
 Wilkie Collins, 527. Lady novelists : Mrs. Oliphant, Mrs. Lynn Linton, 
 Mrs. Cashel Hoey, Mrs. Henry Wood, ib. ; " Ouida," Miss Braddon, 
 Miss Broughton, 528, Miss Warden, George Eliot ; George Macdonald's 
 novels, Mr. Lawrence Oliphant, Dr. Shorthouse, Mr. Marion Craw- 
 ford, 529 ; the idyllic novel— Mr. Black, Mr. Hardy, Mr. Blackmore, 530, 
 Mr. F. J. Fargus, ib. ; modern demand for " realism," 546 ; gains of novel- 
 ists, 565. 
 
 O 
 
 Odd Fellows, Manchester Unity of, 209, 210, 211. 
 
 Official England : exterior aspect of Government offices, 364 ; the Colonial Office, 
 its administration described, 365 — 367, Registry Office, 365, Under Secre- 
 taries, 366 — 367, individual work of the Colonial Minister, 367 ; the India 
 Office, its administration, 367 — 368 ; the Foreign Office, its administration, 
 368 — 370, secrecy, 368, its departments, 369, privileges of the diplomatic 
 department, ib., the Board of Trade and its duties, 370 — 371 ; the Treasury,
 
 604 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 370 ; the Privy Council, its duties, 370—371 ; the Premier and the Sove- 
 reign, 372 ; duties of the Premier to his colleagues, ib., ministerial commu- 
 nications to the Sovereign described, ib. ; meeting of a Cabinet Council, 
 ■ib., procedure in legislation described, 373 ; arduous duties of a minister 
 of State, 373—378; the daj^'s routine, 373— 374 ; numerous troublesome 
 applications to, 374—378 ; Secretary for War (see The Army.) 
 
 Oliphant, Mrs., as a novelist, 527. 
 
 I ►Hphant, Mr. Lawrence, as a novelist, 529. 
 
 Organisation : the feature of the present age, 5—6 ; the key to the present system 
 of education, 299; in religion, 478. (For Organisation of Government 
 and Trade, &c, see under the different heads.) 
 
 " Ouida " as a novelist, 528. 
 
 Out-door relief: what it consists of, 188 ; consideration of it, 192—200 ; its evils, 
 193; its fallacies exposed, 194; its effect on honest labour, 195; Mr. 
 Pretyman on dispauperisation, 195—197; deserted wives and neglected 
 parents, 197; degrading effects of, 198—199; condemnation of it, 199 — 
 200 ; Mr. Stansfeld on the difficulties of its abolition, 200 ; the Elbertield 
 experiment, 193, 200. 
 
 Over-crowding, 172—174 ; Dr. Fraser on it, and propagation of disease thereby, 
 174. 
 
 Overseers of the poor, 52. 
 
 Oxford : new Oxford, 93 ; effect of railway communication, ib. ; married 
 fellows, 94. 
 
 Painting: social status of the artist and reasons, 334, 335; potterv-painting by 
 ladies, 506 ; modern painting, 506—511 ; loss of the " grand'style," 507— 
 508; "action" in Turner's paintings and its absence to-day, 507; the 
 morbid school, 508—511, Mr. Burne Jones, 508, 509 ; Mr. Whistler, 510 ; 
 Tissot's "Autumn," ib. ; excellence of the water-colour school, 509 ; critics 
 —Mr. Euskin, Mr. Hamerton, Mi-. Pater, 511 ; art periodicals, 511. 
 
 Palgrave, Mr., " The House of Commons," 381, 392, 395. 
 
 Palmerston, Lady, and the salon, 346; her exceptional power, ib. ; remarkable 
 instance of it, " the expelled minister," ib. ; her careful management, ib. 
 
 Parents and children, Effects of changed social life upon, 307—308. 
 
 Parish, The {see also The Village) : influence of Church of England in, 8—9 ; the 
 parson's difficulties in, 11—12 ; disestablishment of its officials (Mr. C. S. 
 Read thereon), 40 ; gradual loss of individual power of the parish, 41—42. 
 
 Parks, The London, necessity for tree protection, 73. 
 
 Parliament. {See The House of Commons and The House of Lords.) 
 
 Parliamentary representatives. {See Members of Parliament.) 
 
 Parsloe, Mr. Joseph, " Our Railway Svstem," 257. 
 
 Parson, The, a proper title, 462. {See The Rector.) 
 
 Pater, Mr. \V. II., as an art critic, 511, his style, 523. 
 
 Pauperism: the workhouse, out-door relief, the casual ward, 187; "the failures 
 of civilisation," 189 — 190; accidental pauperism, professional pauperism, 
 necessity of the Poor Law, 191 ; out-door relief, iis evils, 192—193; fal- 
 lacies exposed, 194 ; bad effect on honest labour, 195 ; its defenders, 199 ; 
 number and cost of pauper*, 193 ; effect of rates on wages and land, 196— 
 197 ; audacity of the professional tramp— instance, 197 ; the Elberfield 
 experiment ; foreign pauperism ; Bureaux de Bientaisance, their operations, 
 200. 
 
 Peasant, The. (See The Agricultural Labourer.) 
 
 Peasant proprietors, doubtful result of their creation, 176; difference of their 
 habits in France and England, ib. 
 
 Wnny banks, their operations and popularity, 212.
 
 INDEX. G05 
 
 People, The : their moderation in times of trouble, 154 ; disposition of the masses 
 to accept political situations, 349 — 350 ; moved by facts, not theories, 349 ; 
 effects of agitation, ib. ; their demands, 350 ; enthusiasm for Royalty, 350, 
 357; docility of the modern "firebrand," 351; ovations to political 
 leaders, 351 — 352 ; the scene in Palace Yard described, 351; Lord Derby on 
 relation of Crown and people, "employers and employed," 357; Mr. 
 Bagehot on the relation of the Crown to the masses through the Ministry 
 and Parliament, 360 — 361 ; approximation of classes in Government, 361 ; 
 possible results of county suffrage, 412 — 413 ; nautical aptitude of the 
 people our chief security, 434. 
 
 Perpetual curate, The. {See The Rector.) 
 
 Philosophy: recent revival of psychology in England, 481 ; supremacy of philo- 
 sophy over metaphysics, ib. ; the Scotch philosophy of " common sense " 
 and its supporters — Dugald Stewart, Reid, Hume, 482, its influence in 
 France, 482 — 483 ; Positivism, doctrines of Augusto Comte and their in- 
 fluence on English philosophy, 483, tribute to Comte by G. H. Lewes, 484 : 
 psychology attacked, 483 ; " humanity," its system, ib. ; M. Littre, reli- 
 gious Positivism, Frederic Harrison, its greatest element, " evolution of 
 thought," 484 ; John Stuart Mill as a philosopher, 485 — 488, his special 
 training, 485, utilitarianism, 487 — 488 ; Dr. Maudsley on mental pheno- 
 mena, 485, on evolution of crime, 490 ; Herbert Spencer as a philosopher, 
 490 — 495, his high position, theory of evolution, 490, " first principles," 
 ib., "principles of psychology," 493, his analysis of the passion of love, 
 493 — 494 ; Alexander Bain's contributions to rjhilosophy and his method, 
 495 — 496 ; G. H. Lewes as a philosopher, " History of Philosophy, 49y, 
 his contempt for metaphysics, excellence of his style and method, 497 ; 
 Darwin's " origin of species," and wide influence of his theories, 498, 499 ; 
 the influence of German thought, introduced by Coleridge, fostered by 
 Carlyle, 495 — 500 ; Hegel and Kant, 500 ; the future of philosophy, 501, 
 its prospects as the religion of the f uture, " who is to be Pope?" 521, 
 Christianity and philosophy, 534 — 535. 
 
 Physician, The. {See The Medical Profession.) 
 
 Physiology : growing influence of Sir Joseph Lister in, 516 ; its invasion of 
 literature, instanced in the works of George Eliot, 518. 
 
 Placing of the Lords, Act for the, 320—324. 
 
 Plutocracy, its gradual identification with aristocracy, 314 ; the merchant princes 
 of to-day and yesterday, 315. 
 
 Poacher, The, 169. 
 
 Poetry and poets : Browning as a poet, 524 ; Swinburne, ib.; Tennyson, ib. ; 
 Mortimer Collins, ib.; Alfred Austin, " The Human Tragedy," 525 ; re- 
 muneration of the poet, 564, 565. 
 
 Police, The : stringent rule at Liverpool, 88 ; opera^ ms of the police, 246 — 250 ; 
 objections to, 246 ; their undoubted efficacy, 247 ; the detective, opera- 
 tions of the Department of Criminal Investigation described, 247 — 249, 
 advantages possessed by the foreign detective, 24 7, improvement in our own 
 since the Kurr-Benson disclosures, 249, duties and services of the police- 
 man ; " a tribunal of the first instance," 415 — 416 ; a police court and its 
 aspect, 416 — 417, typical cases, 416, procedure in a case of " theft from the 
 person," 416—417. 
 
 Politics : influence of, in magisterial appointments, 49, especially in appointment 
 of borough magistrate, and evils of the process, 6(> — 67 ; operation of, in 
 municipal affairs, 67 ; influence of members of Parliament in local bodies, 
 67 — 68, their policy towards industrial electors defined, 68 ; the course of, 
 carefully watched by merchants, 128; political bias of the artisan — "a 
 big England, but primarily trade," working men in Parliament, 159 — 160 ; 
 thrown open to the middle classes by the Reform Bill, 330 ; influence of
 
 60G INDEX. 
 
 the great families in, 338 — 340 ; effect of the levelling up of the middle 
 classes ; statesmanship not acquired from scholarship, 340 ; social influences, 
 female interest in, 340 — 341 ; political element in the country house. 
 341 — 342 ; clubs and their influence, 342 — 343 ; unwise action of political 
 clubs, 344 ; Conservative and Liberal clubs contrasted — the Carlton, the 
 Reform, 344 — 345. The salon, 345 : reasons for its declining influence, 
 346, exceptional power of Lady Palmerston, remarkable instance of it — 
 " the expelled minister," 346 — 347, its present scope, political dinners, 347 ; 
 parliamentary reform, 352 — 353 ; the Caucus — its aim, 353 — 356 ; 
 supremacy of democratic polity, 356 — 357 ; statesmanship — its changed 
 nature and its necessities, 319, 360 ; considered as a profession, the necessity 
 for wealth, 561, 562 ; the value of an unpaid legislature, 562 ; democracy 
 in the colonies and at home, 579. 
 
 Polity and laws, prevalent ignorance of, 6. 
 
 Poor Law, The : overseers and guardians, 52 ; beneficial action of, 185 ; necessity 
 of it, 191 ; ill results of the Scotch Poor Law, 198 ; evil tendencies of its 
 operations, 199 ; its defenders — the Spectator, ib. ; its counterpart in con- 
 tinental countries, 200. 
 
 Poor rates, their incidence on wages and on land, 196 — 197 ; ill effect of reliance 
 on " the rates," 196. 
 
 Positivism : its effect and doctrine, 479 — 480 ; Miss Martineau on it, 479 ; 
 Mr. John Morley, 480 ; difficulties not met, ib. ; influence of the doctrines 
 of Comte, 483 ; tribute to Comte from G. H. Lewes, 484 ; its attack 
 on psychology, 483 ; its system — " humanity," 484 ; its greatest ele- 
 ment — " evolution of thought," ib. ; Positivism of M. Littre, ib. ; reli- 
 gious Positivists— Mr. Frederic Harrison, Dr. Congreve, Dr. Brydges, 484. 
 
 Post Office savings-banks, Deficiencies of, 212. 
 
 Posting, as it is, 267. 
 
 Pottery trade, The : what legislation has done for the employes, 141. 
 
 Precedence in England, 320—329. 
 
 Prefect, The, and fagging at public schools, 295 — 297. 
 
 Premier, The : the Premier and the Sovereign, 372 ; his duty to his colleagues, 
 ib. ; Mr. Gladstone on his duties, ib. ; numerous and troublesome applica* 
 tions to, 377. 
 
 Prerogatives of the Queen, their vast extent and limited exercise, 362. 
 
 Presbyterians, The. (See Nonconformity. ) 
 
 Present age, The : characteristics of life in the nineteenth century, 1 — 3, 4 — 6, 
 its difficulties, ib., issues presented thereby, 3 ; is essentially transitional, 
 5 — 6 ; and an epoch of organisation and economy of force, ib. 
 
 Press, The : excellence of, in provincial towns, 89 ; the rural labourer and his 
 newspaper, 171; the journalist, his occupation and income, 565; the 
 daily press — its influence, ib., Mr. Frederic Harrison thereon, 566, its 
 features, ib. ; comparison of the French and English newspaper, ib. ; 
 economy and staff of a large "daily," 566 — 567; the special corre- 
 spondent, 567; the weekly press, ib. ; prospects of modern journalism, 
 567—568. 
 
 Pretyman, Mr., on dispauperisation, 195 — 197. 
 
 Primogeniture : its value, 315; probable exclusive and disastrous result of the 
 substitution of the French law, 316. 
 
 Prince Consort, The, debt of art to, 504, of music, 512. 
 
 Princes of crime, similarity of career of, 245 ; their careers traced, 244 — 246. 
 
 Prisons and prisoners : contraction of Quarter Sessions power through transfer 
 of, 50, result of the transfer not decided, 60 ; procedure in prosecution of 
 a criminal, 249—250; beneficial effect of the Prison Act of 1877, 250; 
 treatment of the prisoners — of the ordinary prisoner, 251 — 252, of the 
 convict, penal servitude, 252 ; earnings of prisoners, 252, 253 ; statistics
 
 INDEX. 607 
 
 relating to prisons and prisoners, 253 — 254 ; discharged prisoner, 254 — 
 255, beneficial operations of the Prisoners' Aid Society, 255. 
 
 Privy Council, The : its office, 370 ; its duties, 371 ; a council, ib. ; the Premier 
 and the Sovereign, 372 ; its aspect and constitution as a court of appeal, 
 430, typical cases brought before it, 431 — 432. 
 
 Professional England : status of the professions, actual and popular estimate, 
 332 — 337 ; merchant and stockbroker compared, 332 — 333 ; status of the 
 painter, actor, doctor, solicitor, the author, barrister, 334 — 335 ; exceptional 
 rank of the clergyman, author, barrister, and soldier, 336 ; reasons thereof, 
 335 — 336 ; State recognitions of these pretensions, 336 ; transitional state 
 of the professions and effacement of old lines of demarcation, 554 ; efficiency, 
 a present essential, ib. ; insufficiency of openings in ; the civil engineer, 
 — attractions of, and predilection for the career ; the chemist, 555 ; the 
 university degree — its value at the Bar, 556, little value of an ordinary 
 degree — the graduate's career as a colonist, as a schoolmaster, 558 ; com- 
 mercial life, 559 ; the medical career — its prospects, income, and perils, 
 559 — 560; politics as a profession, 561 — 562; diplomacy as a profession, 
 562; the army as a profession, 563 — 564; literature as a profession — 
 its gains and prospects, 564 — 568 ; journalism and its duties, 565 ; the 
 professional career in India, 568 — 569 ; the competition wallah, ib. ; pro- 
 fessional incomes — the hamster, 557, the doctor, 559 — 560, the soldier, 
 564, poets and authors, ib., the journalist, 565. 
 
 Prosecution of a criminal, procedure in, 249—250. 
 
 Prospects of England discussed, 583 — 586 ; and especially in relation to the 
 colonies, 583. 
 
 Prosperity, Commerce the first essential of national, 112 — 113. 
 
 Provinces, The. (See Towns.) 
 
 Psychology: recent revival of, in England, 481 ; attacked by Positivism, 483 ; 
 Herbert Spencer's " Principles of Psychology," 493, his analysis of the 
 passion of love, 493 ; its invasion of literature, 518 — 519. 
 
 Public-house, The : the evils of the village beer-house, 169. 
 
 Public Schools, The : operation of the Public Schools Act, 289 ; increase in, ib. ; 
 progress made by, ib. ; neglect of parents — stimulated preference of play 
 to study, 295 ; their interior economy, 295 — 296 ; the prefect and fagging, 
 ib. ; product of the public school, 297, increased sense of responsibility of 
 the modern schoolboy, ib. ; the public schools in Parliament, 298 ; excel- 
 lence a necessity of social influence in, 332. 
 
 Public Works Loan Commissioners, The, 61. 
 
 Puddler, Independence of the, 123. 
 
 Pullman car, The, 260. 
 
 Pupil teachers, 287 ; need of secondary schools, 287, 288, 293. 
 
 Q 
 
 Quarter Sessions, Court oi(see also Magistrate), 47 — 48 ; a meeting described, 49, 
 417 — 419 ; its duties, 49, 50, 51, 417 — 419 ; importance of its members in 
 times gone by, 49 : decline in the present day, 50. 
 
 Queen, The. (See The Crown.) 
 
 Queen's Counsel : " silk " and " stuff," 422. 
 
 R 
 
 Railways : general excellence of their management, 256 ; signals — the semaphore, 
 night signals, 257 ; Mr. Parsloe, " Our Railway System," 257 (footnote) ; 
 the " block system," its working explained, 257 ; expenditure and income, 
 258 ; accidents, ib. ; great speed attained, 259 ; Pullman cars, 260 ; ecceu-
 
 608 INDEX. 
 
 tricitips of progress on a Highland railway, 260 ; want of punctuality and 
 difficulties, ib.; State control and enactments, 261 — 262 ; the Railway Com- 
 missioners and their functions, 262 — 263 ; inconveniences of independent 
 action. 263 ; advantages of State control, 263 ; unsatisfactory supply of 
 refreshments, 264 ; railway communication and popular amusements, " the 
 excursion train," 536, 539. 
 
 Railway Commissioners, The, and their functions, 262 — 263. 
 
 Kank, Professional : popular and actual estimate of, 332 — 333 ; the merchant and 
 stockbroker, ib. ; the painter, actor, doctor, solicitor, 334 ; exceptional 
 rank of the barrister, soldier, author, and clergyman, and reason for it, 
 335 — 336, State recognition of these pretensions, 336. 
 
 Ratepayers, their privileges in relation to guardians, 41 : comparative impotence 
 of the London ratepayer, 69, benefit from friendly societies, 201 — 202. 
 
 Kates and taxes, heaviness of, in London, 69. 
 
 Read, Mr. C. S., on the disestablishment of the parish official, 40 ; on agricultural 
 wages, 183. 
 
 Reade, Mr. Charles, as a novelist, 527. 
 
 Receiver of stolen goods, The, 242 ; his comparative immunity, ib. 
 
 Recruiting, its procedure and sateguards, 445 — 448. 
 
 Rector, The: his position, influence, and multifarious occupations, 9 — 15; the 
 rectory, 10 ; his importance admitted by Dissenters, 15, their objections 
 to him and the sysiem, 18 — 19 ; the absentee rector, 15 — 16 ; the learned 
 rector, and the scholastic rector, 17 ; necessity of tolerance and common 
 sense, 18 ; example of its use, 22, negligent rectors, 18 ; his responsibility to 
 maintain the influence of the clergy, 20 ; his relation to the Board of 
 Guardians, 42 ; the title "parson," 462; the rector and vicar discrimi- 
 nated, ib. ; tithes and their commutation, ib. ; perpetual curates, ib. ; 
 Queen Anne's Bounty, 463. 
 
 Rectory, The: its aspect described, 10. 
 
 Redesdale, Earl of: his unique position in the Plouse of Lords, 405. 
 
 Redgrave, Mr., on the results of factory legislation, 148 — 149. 
 
 Reform : the process of parliamentary reform, 352 — 353. 
 
 Reform Bill, The : its effect on social life ; first, in the extinction of the claims of 
 mere men of fashion; secondly, in throwing open politics; thirdly, in 
 stimulating the aristocracy, 330 — 331 ; prospective results of household 
 suffrage, 412—413. 
 
 Reform Club, The, 344 — 345 ; unwise political action of, 345. 
 
 Reformatories, Beneficial results of, 240, 241. 
 
 Registry ( >ihce. (See The Colonial Office.) 
 
 Religion {see also Church of England, Nonconformity, the Church of Rome, and 
 the Jews) : debt due by religion to Nonconformity, 22 ; influence of, on 
 magisterial appointments, 49; secularism of the London artisan, 160; 
 religious education in Board Schools, 276 ; the pending question of secular 
 and religious education, 300 ; variety of sects, 453 ; general charac- 
 teristics, activity and toleration, the former not necessarily devotion, 454 ; 
 Dr. Ince on the vicissitudes of English theology, 456 ; the question of 
 inspiration; other questions of the day and issues involved, 457; Posi- 
 tivism — effects and doctrines of, ."Miss Martineau and Mr. Morley on, diffi- 
 culties unmet, 479 — 480 ; Dean Stanley on progress of theology, 457 ; the- 
 ology and religion; religion and science, 458; their contact not necessarily 
 opposition, 519 — 521 ; Christianity and philosophy, 534, 535. 
 
   Repairing lease, The:" a representative case of the difficulties of the law, 
 420—426. 
 
 Hi public, The : Mr. Chamberlain on the perfection of the polity of the United 
 States, 354 — 355; temporary despotism of the presidential system, 361 ; 
 contrasted with monarchy, 363.
 
 INDEX. . 609 
 
 Reserves, The, 452. 
 
 Responsibility of the Government, increased m present age, 3 — 4. 
 
 Review, The, the political platform of the individual, 380. 
 
 Ritualism and the ritualist. (See The Church of England.) 
 
 Rochdale Pioneers, The, 221; their operations described. 222, 223 : contrasted 
 with the London stores, 223 — 224 ; advantages offered to the working 
 classes, 224—225. 
 
 Rome. (See The Church of Rome.) 
 
 Rotation of crops, effects of the custom, 179. 
 
 Royalty and the Royal Family. (See The Crown.) 
 
 Rural administration : the small squire dying out ; disestablishment of parish 
 officials ; Mr. C. S. Read thereon, 40 ; election to the Board of Guardians, 
 41 ; claims of candidates, 41 — 42 ; privileges of ratepayers, 41 ; power 
 of the parish declining, 41, 42 ; influence of the rector, and the 
 farmer, 42 ; of the Lord-Lieutenant, 43 ; evils of absenteeism, desirable 
 reforms, 43 — 44; the Board-room; composition of the Board, 44; its 
 labours described, 45 — 47 ; the Courtof Quarter Sessions, 47 — 48 ; a meeting 
 described, 49 ; declining importance of its members, 49 — 50 ; method of 
 appointment of magistrates, 48 — 49 ; objections to the unpaid magistracy, 
 52 — 54 ; neglect of representative principle in rural administration, 51 ; 
 evils of divided authority in rural administration, and advantages of con- 
 centration, Mr. R. S. Wright thereon, 52 ; overseers, guardians, highway 
 boards, burial boards, magistrates, ib. ; the Local Board, a connecting- 
 link between rural and municipal government, bo. 
 
 Rural dean, The, and his office, 465. 
 
 Rural districts (see also The Village) : Church of England preferable in, 20 ; 
 influence of Dissent in villages and towns, 21 — 22. 
 
 Rural labourer, The. (Sec Agricultural Labourer.) 
 
 Ruskin, Mr., debt of art to, 504 — 505; "Modern Painters," ib. ; as an art 
 critic, 511. 
 
 S 
 
 Salon, The, 345 ; reasons for its declining power, 346 ; exceptional influence 
 of Lady Palmerston, remarkable instance of it, the "expelled minister," 
 346 — 347 ; its present scope, 347. 
 
 Sanitation : an important duty of guardians, 46 — 47 ; overcrowding in rural 
 cottages, 172 — 174 ; ignorance of the working classes respecting, 173 ; 
 defects of the Sanitary Act, ib. ; Dr. Eraser thereon, 173 — 174. 
 
 Scarborough, 101. 
 
 School Board, The : relation to municipal government, 58 zeal of its members, 
 ib. ; the Education Act— its results, deficiencies and abuse, 143 — 145, 'li'-\ ; 
 operation of, 275 — 276 ; its influence on tne condition of the rural labourer, 
 ] 65 ; the visitor, 272 — 273 ; operation of the by-laws, 273 ; system of 
 enforcing compulsory attendance, ib. ; early objections to, ib. ; its newness 
 to Englishmen, 274 ; the attendance committee, 273 — 274 ; State and 
 voluntary aids under old system, 274 ; Lord Brougham's advocacy of 
 national education, 275 ; progi'ess of State aid and control, ib. ; operations 
 of the School Boards, 275 — 276 ; secular and religious teaching, the 
 "London compromise," 276; authority of the Education Department, 
 277 ; condition of State grants, ib. ; remuneration of schoolmasters, ib. ; 
 a visit to a Board School, ib. ; the official inspection, 278 ; generally un- 
 satisfactory result of the teaching— iearning by rote, 278 — 279; the new 
 code, 279 — 281 ; anxiety to secure parliamentary grants, 283 ; decrease of 
 crime, 284 — 285 ; technical schools, 285 — 286 ; pupil teachers, 287 ; neces- 
 sity for secondary schools, 287 — 288. 
 
 R R
 
 G10 INDEX. 
 
 Schoolmasters: the pay of School Board officials, 277; conferences of head 
 masters. 292 ; the College of Preceptors, ib. ; types of inefficient mas- 
 ters, 293 ; the refuge of the ordinary graduate, 558 ; teaching as a pro- 
 fession, ib. 
 
 Schools (see also The School Board and Puhlic Schools) : the village school and 
 its advantages, 163 ; necessity for secondary schools, 287, 293 ; grammar 
 schools, 288 ; advantages offered by them in certain towns, ib. ; the En- 
 dowed Schools Act, ib. ; schools of design, 512 ; attitude of the universities, 
 291 ; direct and indirect inspection, efficiency of the latter, 294. 
 
 Science : science and religion, 458 ; their contact not necessarily opposition, 
 519 — 521 ; Huxley's method and services, 515 — 516 ; on the " protoplasm," 
 515 ; services and procedure of Professor Tyndall, 516 ; influence of Sir 
 Joseph Lister on physiology, ib. ; results of the Challenger expedition, 
 
 517 ; Mr. St. George Mivart's opposition to Huxley and Tyndall, 517 — 
 
 518 ; invasion of science into literature, 518 — 519. 
 Scope of this work, 6. 
 
 Seaside resorts, 99 ; attractions necessary, 100 ; the seaside builder, ib. ; patro- 
 nised by the middle classes, 101 ; aspects common to all of them, ib. ; 
 Scarborough, ib. 
 
 Secondary schools, The need of more, 287— 28S, 293. 
 
 Secretaries of State. (See Official England.) 
 
 Sects : the great variety of religious sects, 453. 
 
 Secularism: of the London artisan, 160 ; secular education, 276 ; the London 
 compromise, ib. ; the pending question of secular and religious educa- 
 tion, 300. 
 
 Services, The. (See The Army and The Navy.) 
 
 Shairp, Professor, as a critic, 524. 
 
 Sheffield. (See Yorkshire.) 
 
 Shops, Legislative interference in, 142 ; the Saturday half-holiday, 143 ; diffi- 
 culties of, ib. 
 
 Shorthouse, Dr., as a novelist, 529. 
 
 Short service in the army, its introduction and deficiencies, 445—447. 
 
 S'Lcuals on railways, use of semaphores and night signals, 257. 
 
 Smith, Mr. George, on reforms in brickyards, 141. 
 
 Social life (see also Society) : loss of insularity of English character, the effects 
 of travel, 301 ; of intercourse with France ; the imprint of French habits, 
 living in "flats" in Victoria Street, &c, its advantages, 302 ; extreme 
 adoption of French habits, 303 — 304 ; effects of, on the stage, 304, on 
 marriage and the relation of the sexss, 304, 308, 309 ; decline of patriotic 
 enthusiasm; " change " the habit of the aristocracy, 305 ; the squire of 
 the old school and of the new, their home and life, 305 — 307 ; effects on 
 domesticity, fashionable parents and their children, 307 — 308 ; effects on 
 feminine independence, 309 ; the daily life of the modern young lady 
 described, 309 — 311; effects of this novel liberty and possible ultimate 
 beneficial result, 311 ; country life and sport past and present, 311 — 313 ; 
 society in a country house, its constituents, 341 — 342 ; club life, 342 — 345 ; 
 social life in the colonies, 581. 
 
 Society (see also Social Life) : its elements, aristocratic, plutocratic, democratic ; 
 gradual identification of the aristocratic and plutocratic elements, 314; 
 the merchant prince of to-day and yesterday, 315 ; the aristocracy and 
 commerce, ib.; primogeniture, its value, and probable disastrous results of 
 substitution of Fiench system, 316 ; English nobility not noblesse, ib.; 
 Peers and Commoners, 316—319 ; advantages of a noblesse, meeting of 
 divers ranks in society, and reserve arising therefrom, 319—320 ; prece- 
 dence, 320 — 329 ; social advantages possessed by commoners, 329 ; effect 
 of the Reform Bill (1) in extinction of claims of pure men of fashion, (2) 

 
 INDEX. Gil 
 
 in throwing open politics, (3) in vitalising the aristocracy, 330 ; "action " 
 a necessity of distinction; earnestness of an Englishman's pursuits, 331 ; 
 professional rank ; the actual and popular estimate of it, 332 — 337 ; the 
 merchant and the stockbroker compared, 332 — 333 ; of the artist, actor, 
 painter, doctor, attorney, author, harrister, 334 ; reasons for exceptional 
 position of the author, barrister, soldier, or clergyman, 335, State recog- 
 nition of these pretensions, 336 ; its influence in politics, 341 ; want of 
 cohesion in, 347 ; a seat in Parliament emphasises rather than exalts 
 social position, 380 — 381 ; titles to social consideration in the colonies, 
 581. 
 
 Solicitor, The social status of, 334. 
 
 Sovereign, The. (See The Crown.) 
 
 Speaker, The ; his duties and privileges, 392 — 395 ; the Speaker of the House 
 of Lords, 406. 
 
 Special correspondent, The, 567. 
 
 Spencer, Herbert : philosophy of, 490 — 495 ; extreme importance of, 490 ; 
 "System of Philosophy," bis theory of evolution, " First Principles," 
 491 ; bis theory of " the First Cause,'"' 494 ; " Principles of Psychology," 
 493 ; his analysis of the passion of love, ib. 
 
 Squatter, The village, 168—169. 
 
 Squire, The : his position and occupation, 8 ; absenteeism, 9 ; the small squire 
 dying out, 40, 175 ; a squire of the old school and ot the new contrasted, 
 their homes and life, 306 — 307. 
 
 Stage, The : excellence of, in provincial towns, 89 ; effects of intercourse with 
 the French, 304 ; social status of the actor, its recent improvement, 334 
 — 335, 544 ; the theatre and its supporters, " old " and " new," 543 — 544 ; 
 does not aim at moral instruction, 544 ; influence of the French school, 
 ib.; and of the music-hall, 545 ; public demand for realism and necessity 
 of restraint in its lower aspects, 546 ; the " Ober-Ammergau " play, 547; 
 French morality not suitable to our stage, and reasons, 547—548 ; the 
 Lord Chamberlain as Licenser of Plays, his functions, and defence of his 
 office, 550—552 ; French plays in London, 552 ; Shakespearian revivals, 
 553. 
 
 Stage-coach, The : the old and the new, 265 ; amateur coaches, 265. 
 
 Stanley, Dean : on the progress of theology, 457 — 458 ; on science and religion, 
 458 ; his theological writings, 532. 
 
 Stansfeld, Mr., on out-door relief, 200. 
 
 State, The (see also The Crown and Official England) : increased responsibilities 
 of, 4 ; contact of imperial and local governments, 60 ; relation to friendly 
 societies, 205 — 207; its relation to railways, 261 — 262; advantages of 
 State control of railways, 263 ; its relation to education — limited aid and 
 interference under the old system, 274, progress of its aid and control, 275, 
 conditions of State grants, 277, how educational grants may become! 
 denominational endowments, 300 ; State recognition of exceptional social 
 rank in certain professions, 336 ; probable result of county suffrage, 412 ; 
 possible strife between classes, 413; secure tenure of the constitution, 
 413 — 414; the State and art, 512; financial relation with the colonies, 
 573 ; its relation to the colonies, 574 ; Burke upon this relationship, 582. 
 
 State emoluments, The artisan's view of, 135. 
 
 Statesmanship : not acquired through scholarship, 340 ; its changed nature in 
 modern times, and necessities, 359. 
 
 Statute fair, The : its evils, 178 ; happily dying out, ib. 
 
 Stephen, Mr. Leslie, as a critic, 523. 
 
 Stewart, Dugald, and the Scotch philosophy of "common sense," 482. 
 
 Stockbroker, The : social status of, 332 — 333 ; contrasted with that of the mer- 
 chant, ib.
 
 '-12 INDEX. 
 
 Stock exchange, The : its operations, 108 ; its aspect described, 108 ; investment 
 business, 109 : gambling or speculative business, ib. ; issue of a foreign 
 hum, 110 — 112 ; deception practised on the public, 111. 
 
 Structure of English society, The, 314. 
 
 Stubbs, Dr., his services to literature, 533. 
 
 Surgeon, The. (Sec The Medical Profession.) 
 
 Swinburne, Mr., as a poet, 524. 
 
 Symonds, Mr. J. A., as a critic, 523. 
 
 T 
 
 Table d'hote, The, 269—270 ; ur-suitability to the ordinary Englishman, 269. 
 
 Tennyson, Lord, as a poet, 524. 
 
 Thames Embankment, The, 72. 
 
 Theatres. (See The Stage.) 
 
 Thett, Legal procedure in a case of, illustrated, 416 — 417. 
 
 Theological literature, 532. 
 
 Theology. (See Religion.) 
 
 Thrift : regularity of wages in Lancashire contributory to ; excess in mining 
 districts accounts tor absence of, 78 ; friendly societies, 200 — 212 ; neces- 
 sity of co-operation of employers, 201 ; attitude of the State towards 
 friendly societies, 202; Post Office savings-banks, 211 — 218; Mr. Giffen 
 on the working classes, 212 — 217 ; penny banks, 212, 219. 
 
 Tithes and their commutation, 462. 
 
 Toleration : a necessity in religious teaching, 17 ; a feature of the religion of 
 the day, 545 : in this respect, what does it portend ? 478 — 479. 
 
 Town, The : Dissent in towns and in rural districts, 21 — 22 ; imperceptible 
 growth of the village into town, 55 ; country town and village compared, 
 56 ; characteristics of the former, 56 — 57 ; provincial and London artisan 
 contrasted, 160 — 161. (£ee Towns of Business inul Towns of Pleasure.) 
 
 Town Council, The, constitution and duties of, 56 — 65. 
 
 Town labourer, The. (See The Artisan.) 
 
 Towns of business : the industrial town embodies science and industry, cheer- 
 less aspect of; sudden change from rural to industrial districts, 74: 
 iusion of the elements of life, a source of national power ; money-getting 
 not the sole impulse, 75 ; Lancashire sixty years since and to-day ; Man- 
 chester and Liverpool, capitals of commerce, yet centres of culture, 75 — 76 ; 
 cultivation of the tine arts; the plutocrat not the only type of the pros- 
 perous manufacturer, 76 ; the Yorkshire manufacturer's household, ten- 
 dency towards increased luxury, Bradford and Sheffield houses, 77 ; love 
 of sport in Yorkshire ; pay of the Lancashire factory hand and Yorkshire- 
 miner — regularity of the one, excess and consequent absence of thrift 
 with the other, 78 ; the toiling population, hardly visible m London, pre- 
 dominant in Leeds and Manchester, 79 ; Liverpool and Manchester con- 
 trasted, 79 — 81, 86 — 87 ; smaller manufacturing towns and villages, 81 ; 
 population and Society of Liverpool and Manchester, 83 — 88; niillhands 
 of the towns ; Birmingham and Leeds, 90 — 92. 
 
 Towns of pleasure : aspect of a cathedral city ; changed Oxford; effect of railway 
 communication, 93 ; married fellows, 94 ; the cathedral close, 94, its deni- 
 zens, its social life, " Mrs. l'roudie," 95 ; Bristol, Durham, Exeter and its 
 attractions, Plymouth, 95; Canterbury, York, Cheltenham, Leamington, 
 Bath and its beauty, Clifton, 96; necessities of prosperity — medical repute, 
 a school or college, churches, 97 — 98; jealousies of inhabitants, recrea- 
 tions — croquet, lawn-tennis, 98 ; increased intercourse of the young 
 through these pastimes; seaside resorts, 99 ; features common to all, 101 ; 
 attractions essential, the seaside builder, 100 ; Scarborough, Buxton, and 
 its special advantages, 102.
 
 INDEX. 613 
 
 Trade. (See Commercial England and Financial England.) 
 
 Trade councils, 67; the influence on them of the member of Parliament, 67 — 68 ; 
 the council dinner, 68. 
 
 Trade unions: their influence not baneful, 156 — 158; results of arbitration, 
 157 — 159 ; the masons' strike of 1877, 158, 159 ; objection to foreigners, 
 159. 
 
 Tramp, Audacity of the, an instance, 197. 
 
 Transition : the present an age of transition, 5 — 6 ; transitional state of the law, 
 432 ; of the professions, 554. 
 
 Transportation, Evils of the system of, 239. 
 
 Travel, biography, and autobiography, 531 — 532. 
 
 Travelling : cheapness of, in the present day ; general excellence of railway man- 
 agement, " travelling third class," 256 ; the railway system, 257 — 265 ; 
 great speed attained, 259 ; Pullman cars, 260; a Highland railway, id.; 
 railway refreshments, 264 ; London vehicles, 265 ; the stage-coach, old 
 and new, 265 — 266 ; the bicycle and its advantages, 268 ; the modern 
 hotel, 268—270 ; the table d'hote, 269—270 ; effects of travel on our 
 social life, 301 ; influence of railways on popular amusements, 537. 
 
 Treasury, The: its position, 370; numerous troublesome applications to the First 
 Lord, 377 
 
 Treaty Department, The. (See The Foreign Office.) 
 
 Trees in London : need of protection, 73. 
 
 Trollope, Mr. Anthony, as a novelist, 526. 
 
 Truck system, The, 145 ; not absolutely extinguished, 146. 
 
 Tyndall, Professor : his procedure in science, 516 ; his services, ib.; opposition 
 of Mr. St. George Mivart, 517. 
 
 Tynemouth, Excavations at, 29 ; the ducal interests represented on the com- 
 mission, ib.; the Duke of Northumberland's properties at, 29 — 30. 
 
 U 
 
 Under-Secretaries of State. (See Official England.) 
 
 Unions. (See Agricultural Unions, Trade Unions.) 
 
 Unitarians. (See Nonconformity.) 
 
 United States, The : the artisan of, in his relation to the State contrasted with 
 that of the English, 130 ; excessive State interference in, 137 ; Mr. 
 Chamberlain on the perfection of her polity, 354 — 355 ; the Caucus in, 
 354. 
 
 Unity of Udd Fellows, The Manchester, 209, 210, 211. 
 
 Universities, The: inducements held out to graduates by the State, 290, 291 ; 
 professional value of " honours," 556 ; at the Bar, ib. ; the ordinary 
 graduate's career, 558; his prospects in the colonies, ib.; as a school- 
 master, ib. 
 
 Utilitarianism and its application, 487 — 488. 
 
 Vehicles, London, 265. 
 
 Vestries, The London, 70 ; their operations described, ib. 
 
 Vicar, The. {See The Hector.) 
 
 Village, The : a microcosm of, 8 ; constitution, position of the squire, 8; position 
 and duties of the rector, 9 — 15 ; influence of the Church of England, 
 9, 22 ; absenteeism, 9, 15, 16 ; an ideal village, 9 — 10 ; the rectory, 
 10 ; parochial difficulties, 11 — 12 ; suspicious nature of the peasant,
 
 CI 4 INDEX. 
 
 13; the Benefit Society, 14 ; disreputable clergymen, 18; inflammatory 
 indictments against clergymen, 19; the future of the Establish- 
 ment in the hands of the clergy, 20 ; different types of farmers ; a modern 
 farmer's family, 21 ; Dissent in rural districts, 21 — 22 ; debt of Christianity 
 to Nonconformity, 22 ; imperceptible growth into a town, 55 ; a country 
 village and a country town contrasted, 56 ; modern improved aspect of, 
 163 ; advantages offered by the village school, ib. ; the modern cottage, 
 163 — 164 ; sanitary defects of, 172 — 174 ; the co-operative store, 170 ; the 
 close and open village, 174 {footnote). 
 
 Violence, Crimes of, 244 — 245. 
 
 Volunteers, The, 450 — 451 ; their origin, 451 ; zeal and importance, ib. 
 
 W 
 
 Wages: agricultural wages, 182 — 184; special instance of wages paid in a 
 given week throughout England, 183 — 184 ; cheapness of necessaries, 184. 
 
 Wallah, The competition, 568—569. 
 
 Walpole, Mr. Spencer, as a historian, 532 — 533. 
 
 Warden, Miss Florence, as a novelist, 529. 
 
 War Office and Secretary for War. (See The Army.) 
 
 Watering-places. {See Seaside Resorts.) 
 
 Wesleyans, The (or Methodists). {See Nonconformity.) 
 
 Westminster authorities, The, 70. 
 
 Westminster, Duke of, organisation of his estates at Eaton Hall, 28 ; security of 
 tenure of employment upon them, ib. 
 
 Whip, The Parliamentary, and his functions, 390. 
 
 Whistler, Mr., as an artist, 510. 
 
 Woburn Abbey, Feudal customs at, 28. 
 
 Women: State protection of, 136 — 137 ; as field labourers, 177 — 179 ; satisfactory 
 employment of, in Northumberland, 178 — 179; higher teaching of girls, 
 298, its doubtful results, 299 ; independence resisting from changed social 
 life, 309; present effect of it and possible beneficial result, 311 ; life of a 
 modern young lady described — Rotten Row, and five-o'clock tea, 309 — 311 ; 
 influence in politics, 341, 346; sestheticism in dress and recreations, 
 505—506 ; lady novelists, 527—529. 
 
 Workhouse, The : its appearance and inmates, 188 ; out-door relief and casual 
 wards, 188 ; scrutiny of applicants, 188 — 189 ; one treatment for all, 189 ; 
 children born in " the house," 189. (See Out-door Relief.) 
 
 Working classes, The (see also The Artisan, The Agricultural Labourer, The 
 Factory Operative, and The Mining Population) : enormous power of, 130 
 — 132 ; persons occupied in 1881 (footnote), 130 — 132 ; diversity of thought 
 a guarantee of order, benefits of free discussion, 133 ; advanced propaganda 
 — the Eleusis Club, 133 — 134 ; the working man's conceptions of the func- 
 tions of the State, 135 ; State protection of women and children, 136 ; ex- 
 cessive legislation a blunder, 137; course and effects of legislation, 136, 137; 
 the Factory Acts, 137 — 144 ; reforms yet necessary, 144 — 145 ; abuses ex- 
 tant in the Black Country, 150 ; employer and employed, moderation of the 
 latter, 154, contrast with past times, the Nottingham frame -breakers, 154 — 
 155 ; trade unions, 156 — 158 ; political bias of, 159 ; working men in Par- 
 liament, 160 ; the Loudon and provincial artisan compared, 160 — 162; im- 
 provements in the home of tho labourer, 163 ; peasants' career, 164 — 168 ; 
 overcrowding and indifference to sanitation, 172 — 174 : wages of theagri- 
 oultural labourer, 182 — 184; Mr. Giffen on the working classes, 212 — 217; 
 advantages accruing to them from co-operation, 224 — 225, 231 — 232
 
 INDEX. 615 
 
 ignorance of the economies of life, 282 ; their amusements in the northern 
 counties, 459 ; the working men's club, its constitution, aims, aspect, and 
 prospects, 541 — 543. 
 Wright, Mr. R. S., on the concentration of rural administration, 52. 
 
 Yates, Mr. Edmund, as a novelist, 526; his "Recollections and Experiences," 
 532. _ 
 
 Yeomen, Disappearance of the, 180. 
 
 York, The city of, 96. 
 
 Yorkshire : frugality of the Yorkshire manufacturer, 77 ; excellence of his house- 
 hold, ib. ; tendency to luxury in towns — Sheffield, Bradford, 77; York- 
 shire love of the horse — the St. Leger, 78 ; sport in Sheffield, ib., evils of 
 betting, ib. ; the mining population a fine race, ib., excess and irregularity 
 of their earnings and consequent absence of thrift, ib. ; the future of 
 Leeds, 99. 
 
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