REESE LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Received __ .c^^^l^^^^fl 
 
 "s 
 
 Accessions No.__3L&4t0f Shelf No.. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS 
 
 BY 
 
 W. R. GREG 
 \\ 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 TRUBNER & CO., LUDGATE HILL. 
 
 1882. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
y . 
 
 V" v^ V 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAQ1? 
 ROCKS AHEAD AND HARBOURS OF REFUGE 1 
 
 II. 
 
 FOREIGN POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN IMPERIAL OR 
 
 ECONOMIC! ...... 29 
 
 III. 
 
 THE ECHO OF THE ANTIPODES . . . . 58 
 
 IV. 
 
 A GRAVE PERPLEXITY BEFORE US . . , . 81 
 
 V. 
 
 OBLIGATIONS OF THE SOIL ..... 98 
 
 VI. 
 
 THE RIGHT USE OF A SURPLUS j OR, REMISSION OF TAXES 
 
 AN ABUSE OF REVENUE . . . .112 
 
 VII. 
 
 THE GREAT TWIN BRETHREN . . . 149 
 
iv CONTENTS. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 PAGE 
 IS THE POPULAR JUDGMENT IN POLITICS MORE JUST THAN 
 
 THAT OF THE HIGHER ORDERS ? . .. . 161 
 
 IX. 
 
 HARRIET MARTINEAU . . .176 
 
 X. 
 
 VERIFY YOUR COMPASS . ... 206 
 
 XL 
 
 THE PROPHETIC ELEMENT IN THE O03PELS . . 221 
 
 XII. 
 
 MR FREDERIC HARRISON ON THE FUTURE LIFE . 248 
 
 XIU. 
 
 CAN TRUTHS BE APPREHENDED WHICH COULD NOT HAVE 
 
 BEEN DISCOVERED 1 , . , 259 
 
UNIVERSITY 
 
 ROCKS AHEAD AND HARBOURS OF REFUGE. 
 
 SOME five or six years ago I ventured, under the allu- 
 sive, but not inappropriate pseudonym of Cassandra, 
 to call attention to a few of the dangers which 
 appeared to me to threaten our social well-being in 
 some very material points. My representations 
 excited considerable notice, and produced several 
 replies. The country, however, had then been 
 revelling in a long period of almost unexampled 
 prosperity, and was little inclined to listen to gloomy 
 forebodings, or to criticisms of a disparaging character, 
 or to take cognisance of the small clouds on the 
 horizon, " scarcely bigger than a man's hand," which 
 appeared to me ominous of coming storm and dark- 
 ness. Indications of mischief, which could not be 
 altogether denied, I was held to have exaggerated ; 
 I was generally regarded as a prophet of evil, consti- 
 tutionally disposed to look at everything en noir ; 
 and on the whole my warnings met with little more 
 belief or practical recognition than did those of my 
 namesake in the days of Troy. Since the publication 
 of my first note of caution a marked " change has 
 come over the spirit of our dream ; " the small cloud 
 
 A 
 
2 ROCKS AHEAD AND HARBOURS OF REFUGE. 
 
 has overspread a very considerable part of the sky, 
 the prevalent prosperity of 1872 has been replaced 
 by heavy losses and by distress at once wide- spread 
 and severe ; commercial activity has been succeeded 
 by commercial stagnation, disaster and alarm ; and, 
 speaking generally, the spirit of sanguine self-confi- 
 dence and self-satisfaction characteristic of Englishmen 
 in their periods of sunshine, is giving way to a tone of 
 depression and uneasiness not perhaps more dignified, 
 but at least of more hopeful augury for the future, 
 and indicative of a mood of mind in which warnings 
 are more likely to be listened to. "Sweet" not 
 are, but may be " the uses of adversity " ; and 
 assuredly the lessons of the last two or three years, 
 harsh enough, no doubt, have neither been few, nor 
 trivial, nor conveyed in language difficult to read. 
 On the deplorable and unsuspected unsoundness in 
 certain circles of the mercantile and monetary world, 
 revealed by the disasters of 1878, I am not going to 
 dwell, nor do I wish to enter on the unprofitable and 
 irritating field of mere party politics, though both 
 might furnish texts for sermons more than ordinarily 
 impressive. But I think I am justified, by the 
 bearing of the facts upon two of my former warnings, 
 in reminding my readers, first., that we have been 
 under the management of Ministers, who, rightfully or 
 wrongfully, wisely or unwisely, have changed the 
 spirit of British policy ; who, in doing this, and by 
 their mode of doing it, have given great offence and, 
 as far as can be yet discovered, have achieved no 
 
ROCKS AHEAD AND HARBOURS OF REFUGE. 3 
 
 beneficent aims, but have created or exasperated bitter 
 enmities in three quarters of the globe ; who, in the 
 pursuit of this course of action, have increased expen- 
 diture heavily and enhanced taxation somewhat, 
 though how much no one can predict and few have 
 the courage honestly to calculate, but enough at least 
 to change a surplus into a deficit ; and who (which 
 is to our more immediate purpose) in acting thus and 
 entailing these consequences on the country, have 
 been supported, cheered, hounded on, and glorified, 
 not only by the " residuum/' but by a majority of 
 those electors whose ignorance, thoughtlessness, and 
 excitable temperament I ventured to point out as 
 valid reasons against too hastily endowing them with 
 that electoral franchise which, in the judgment of all 
 Liberals, they have so sadly misused. 
 
 The second point relates to the various dangers 
 which I enumerated as threatening the economic and 
 productive supremacy of Great Britain, unless our 
 artisan classes could be warned and moralised in time. 
 These warnings were unhappily disregarded for the most 
 part by those classes themselves, and made light of, or 
 absolutely denied by too many not only of their profes- 
 sional leaders, but of their more sanguine advocates 
 and advisers among philanthropic natures. The 
 probability of foreign rivalry was not believed in, or 
 was treated as at least distant and problematic ; the 
 alleged deterioration of British labour was stoutly 
 contested ; in the undeniably unfortunate disputes 
 between the workmen and their employers, it was 
 
4 ROCKS AHEAD AND HARBOURS OF REFUGE. 
 
 maintained that the former were generally right and 
 the objects they aimed at were at all events desirable 
 and probably attainable ; while it was confidently 
 urged that the artisans might be trusted to under- 
 stand and manage their own interests better than 
 their masters could do for them. The experience of 
 the last two years, and more especially the disastrous 
 proceedings of 1878, have lowered the confident tone 
 of the soberer among the workmen's friends, and 
 brought about, more speedily than I had hoped, and 
 far more painfully than I could wish, a recognition of 
 many facts once noisily denied, and justified assuredly 
 nearly all the neglected warnings of Cassandra. The 
 state of trade has been stagnant, gloomy, and 
 disastrous in the extreme, and it cannot be denied 
 that much of its deplorable condition has not been 
 immediately traceable to the specific causes which I 
 pointed out as so ominous in the approaching times. 
 But still less can it be controverted indeed it is 
 almost universally admitted that this condition has 
 been enormously aggravated by the almost incredible 
 blunders and perversity of the working classes them- 
 selves, all the more disheartening because the true 
 facts and bearings of the case have been fairly and 
 anxiously laid before them by friends whose sincere 
 and well-proved sympathy should have secured at least 
 a patient hearing. 
 
 It has been shown by practical proofs and special 
 instances that the possibility and even imminence of 
 foreign competition in more than two or three of 
 
EOCKS AHEAD AND HARBOURS OF REFUGE. 5 
 
 our established industries, which we asserted some 
 years ago, has turned out anything but unreal or 
 exaggerated. It is needless, and would perhaps be 
 tedious, to cite examples or to go into details ; they 
 are notorious to all who have followed the disturb- 
 ances and conflicts which led to such ruinous losses 
 and so much ill-blood during the last year. Orders 
 and contracts, which might have given adequate, and 
 possibly even profitable, occupation to our artisans, 
 had over and over again to be declined by capitalists 
 here, and were taken up in continental countries, 
 simply because the men, while fully recognising the 
 disastrous state of trade, obstinately refused to accept 
 any reduction in the rate of wages which were legiti- 
 mate and possible only in prosperous times, and 
 virtually insisted on a selfish and unjust exemption 
 from sharing in the misfortunes of their employers- 
 It has proved ineffectual to remind them that losses 
 of orders and contracts, thus caused and thus begun, 
 mean in the end, and probably an early end, the loss 
 of the entire trade thus rashly played with ; and that 
 foreign rivals, thus gratuitously despised, will not 
 readily give up what our folly has once thrown into 
 their hands. 
 
 Similar incomprehensible and suicidal errors have 
 pervaded the proceedings of nearly the whole of the 
 artisan classes during the past year, and curiously 
 enough of many of the best paid miscellaneous la- 
 bourers as well. Some of their most energetic 
 friends have endeavoured to persuade and enlighten 
 
6 ROCKS AHEAD AND HARBOURS OF REFUGE. 
 
 them, but hitherto almost entirely without success. 
 Strikes have been all but universal ; at least, they 
 have been the rule rather than the exemption. They 
 have been attended by two peculiar features, both 
 condemnable, but one certainly, though not quite un- 
 precedental, never so general or so prominent or so 
 uncontrovertible as of late. The first is, the extent 
 to which the funds of the Unions have been lavished 
 on " strike-pay," I might say unwarrantably lavished, 
 because the original intention of these funds was to 
 lay up resources for interrupted employment, or " bad 
 times," or failure of capacity of earnings during sick- 
 ness or accident, though often no doubt, of late 
 especially, levies from wages have been made osten- 
 sibly and avowedly collected distinctly for the pur- 
 pose of supporting trade disputes and strikes. The 
 amount of these funds thus wasted must be reckoned 
 by hundreds of thousands of pounds taking in the 
 whole perhaps by millions. 1 To this extent have 
 
 1 We have no reliable means of knowing the aggregate amount 
 of the funds collected by these Unions, nor the mode of their 
 expenditure. One of their principal defenders, however, has 
 given some figures which show how large they must be. Mr 
 George Howell states in a recent article in Fraser's Magazine,, 
 that the expenditure of four of the greatest of these associations 
 in 1877 reached 215,664, " exclusive of strike-pay " he says. 
 Of this 126,000 or more than one-half was distributed to men 
 " out of work." The accumulated " funds in hand " of these 
 four societies he states to be 446,323. The payments which 
 produce these funds are said to be only Is. a week per head, and 
 the strike-pay to vary from 10s. to 15s. Frasei^s Magazine, 
 January 1879. The great masons' strike in London, which col- 
 lapsed after a conflict of thirty weeks, began, it is reported, with 
 
ROCKS AHEAD AND HARBOURS OF REFUGE. 7 
 
 the savings of the operatives been simply thrown 
 away ; the operatives themselves impoverished and 
 disheartened, and prevented from in time becoming 
 capitalists, which some at least of them no doubt 
 must have looked forward to. The other feature is, 
 that in these strikes against a reduction of wages 
 (here and there even for an advance, incredible 
 as it may seem) they were almost universally 
 and obviously hopeless, and usually recognised 
 avowedly as such by the leaders of the workmen 
 themselves. They had no justification whatever, not 
 even a plausible one, nor as far as could be discovered, 
 any distinct meaning whatever. The mere fun of 
 fighting seemed to some the motive cause. Some of 
 the less charitable observers were inclined to regard 
 the real causa causans to be the necessity felt by 
 their official chiefs for assigning in action a present- 
 able raison d'etre for their existence. But without 
 recurring to any such discreditable suggestion, this 
 much at least is certain, that while in times of brisk 
 trade and large demand and scanty supply of labour 
 strikes are often warrantable and usually successful 
 if indeed differences between the contending parties 
 are suffered to reach the point of striking strikes in 
 periods of stagnant and unprofitable business like 
 
 a special levy of 300 a week, and a balance in hand of 15,000, 
 and after spending it is calculated about 50,000, has left nearly 
 500 men permanently out of work. Capital and Labour, March 
 20, 1878. Another return, but evidently an imperfect one, 
 gives 250,000 as the annual income (aggregate) of the larger 
 Unions. 
 
8 ROCKS AHEAP AND HARBOURS OF REFUGE. 
 
 1878, when mills and collieries, and furnaces, and 
 foundries, by the score, are stopped or put upon 
 short time, are foredoomed to failure, and are there- 
 fore self-condemned. In a word, they indicate and 
 establish one of three conclusions often and pro- 
 bably all three either grievous misguidance of the 
 artisans by their advisers ; or, that the artisans have 
 altogether escaped from the control of their recognised 
 leaders ; or, as more frequently the case than is be- 
 lieved, that the wiser counsels of the older men have 
 been overpowered by the rashness of the younger un- 
 married men, who either do not remember or have 
 refused to profit by the experience of former struggles 
 and the sufferings they entailed. 
 
 The more buoyant of' the critics who contested my 
 former warnings, even while admitting the basis of 
 truth they might contain, insisted that they were 
 unwarrantably over-coloured ; that the people were 
 growing wiser and better educated year by year ; 
 especially were becoming rapidly conversant with 
 sounder notions of political economy ; that I had no 
 right to appeal to past blunders as indicative of future 
 ones ; and that the new generation would be certain 
 to bring a more sensible class of operatives to the 
 front. To a considerable extent I shared these hope- 
 ful prospects, though I was less sanguine than most 
 as to the rapidity or thoroughness of the advance 
 predicted. I confess to sad and heavy discouragement. 
 Never during the experience of a generation and a 
 half can I remember to have seen the artisans through- 
 
ROCKS AHEAD AND HARBOURS OF REFUGE. 9 
 
 out the length and breadth of the land acting so 
 entirely in defiance of common sense and right feeling, 
 and with so total a disregard of plain and repeated 
 warning. This may be said of the employes in 
 nearly every branch of ^industry spinners and 
 weavers, colliers, dock labourers, iron-founders, 
 builders, ship-builders, engineers, and a host of less 
 important avocations. Labourers, perhaps even in 
 want of a meal, will be idle rather than accept 28. 6d. 
 where they have been accustomed to earn 3s. 6d. 
 2say, much more than this : they have constantly 
 resorted to law-breaking and outrage in order to 
 prevent fellow-workmen, more sensible, peaceful, and 
 nearer to starvation, from availing themselves thank- 
 fully of the earnings they had spurned. They have 
 forced inaction and want upon thousands who were 
 eager and clamorous for offered employment simply 
 because they needed to be fed. In many places, and 
 systematically in Liverpool, in Sheffield, in Blackburn 
 and elsewhere, they have carried on their contests by 
 unscrupulous intimidation, which is naked cruelty 
 and injustice, because only by such means could 
 strikes under existing conditions be sustained. Even 
 this is not all : the roughs have been let loose against 
 the property and persons of their employers, and 
 violence and incendiarism on a formidable scale have 
 occurred in districts where scenes of this sort had been 
 almost or altogether unexampled. This is a harsh and 
 positive indictment, but who can say that it is in any 
 particular overcharged? And what has been the object 
 
1 ROCKS AHEAD AND HARBOURS OF REFUGE. 
 
 and significance of it all? Simply, in naked exactitude, 
 because these artisans, whom we hoped were so ad- 
 vanced towards better sentiments and sounder views, 
 were determined not to bear their portion usually a 
 moderate as well as a deferred portion of those 
 disastrous times and grievous losses which had hitherto 
 fallen exclusively upon their employers, but which 
 those employers felt unwilling and often unable longer 
 to sustain. How, under this combination of dis- 
 heartening spectacles, are we to keep our confidence 
 in the timely wisdom of our operatives, either to 
 maintain the foreign manufacturing rivalry which 
 lies before us, and which every year becomes more 
 severe, or to use soberly and righteously the growing 
 power which is being put into their hands ? As to 
 the first question, do not let us deceive ourselves as 
 to its precise bearings. I am not prepared to con- 
 tend that the general depression under which we are 
 now suffering is not mainly and primarily the reaction 
 from the over-production of the years which preceded 
 1873, and that it may not therefore soon pass away. 
 I will not even argue that in spite of the competition 
 of energetic rivals which is rising all around us, and 
 of the short-sighted protectionist legislation which 
 has been resorted to to foster it, England may still 
 for many years be able to keep her manufacturing 
 productiveness and exports up to the level they had 
 just attained. But this, as 1 pointed out some years 
 ago, will not be enough, or nearly enough. We need, 
 not only to maintain our present height in these 
 
ROCKS AHEAD AND HARBOURS OF REFUGE. 1 1 
 
 respects, but to advance year by year. England's 
 continued prosperity is dependent upon her continuous 
 progress. Her population augments at the rate of 
 about one per cent, per annum. If the well-being of 
 those increasing numbers is to be secured, her indus- 
 trial production must increase pari passu, and her 
 commerce and her exports must go ahead in the 
 future as they have done in the past. She has 
 reached her present wealth by maintaining her in- 
 dustrial supremacy. It will not suffice to keep where 
 she is : she must continue to advance as she is used 
 to do ; that is, to keep in front of the trade of the 
 world. But even this statement does not com- 
 prise the whole gravity of the position. Year 
 by year our imports are increasing at a very rapid 
 rate, and those imports are purchased and paid for by 
 our exports. Now of these a larger proportion 
 every year consists of articles of food. 1 I am not, 
 
 1 Mr Caird, the great authority on these subjects, writes as 
 follows (Landed Interest) : The progressive increase of foreign 
 supplies during the past twenty years (1857-78) is marvellous. 
 The value of foreign cereal and animal food imported into the 
 United Kingdom has increased from 35,000,000 in 1857 to 
 110,000,000 in 1875. The greatest proportional increase has 
 been in the importation of animal food. Living animals, meat 
 (fresh and salted), fish, poultry, eggs, butter and cheese, have 
 risen (1857-76) from 7,000,000 to 36,000,000 per annum. 
 More than one-half of the farinaceous articles imported, other 
 than wheat, are used in the production of beer and spirits. 
 When the price of meat in this country about fifteen or twenty 
 years ago (1858-63) began to move steadily up, rising in a few 
 years from 5d. to 7o?., 9d, and even 12c?. a pound ; enterprise, 
 with skill and capital, were called into rapid action to meet the 
 
12 ROCKS AHEAD AND HARBOURS OF REFUGE. 
 
 as many are, inclined to feel or to affect alarm at this 
 dependence on foreign lands for our supplies. On the 
 contrary, I feel enhanced security in the vast extent 
 of the area from which we draw them. But assuredly 
 I should begin to feel grave uneasiness if the produc- 
 tion of our articles of exchange the purchase-money 
 of those indispensable supplies were doomed to fall 
 away in consequence of the folly or the conceit or the 
 supineness of our workmen, if at the very time when 
 our working men were consuming more they were 
 producing less, and were increasing their wants and 
 
 growing demand. . . . The cost of transporting live animals 
 from great distances is obviously considerable. This could be 
 abated by the importation of fresh meat, and by the aid of specially 
 contrived steam conveyance ; large quantities of fresh meat have 
 come from America during the colder part of the year. The 
 Americans are greater consumers of meat, man for man, than 
 the English. The English producer has the advantage of at 
 least Id. a pound for cost and risk of transport, as against his 
 American competitor an advantage equal to 4 on an average 
 ox. Of this natural advantage nothing can deprive him, and 
 with this he may rest content. In 1868, the foreign supplies of 
 the principal articles to the people of the United Kingdom was 
 20 per cent, (one-fifth) of the whole. In 1878, it has become 
 40 per cent. ; as regard wheat, we now receive our bread in 
 equal proportions from our own fields and from the foreigner. 
 ... In the United Kingdom we appear to have approached a 
 point in agricultural production beyond which capital can be 
 otherwise more profitably laid out than in further attempting to 
 force our poorer class of soils. It has become cheaper for us, as 
 a nation, to get the surplus of the richer soils of America and 
 Southern Eussia, or India." A valuable return of the Board of 
 Trade called for by Sir George Balfour, gives the following figures 
 of the consumption per head of imported articles of food (ani- 
 mal and cereal) in the last thirty years. Its increase is sur- 
 prising, being more than threefold. 
 
ROCKS AHEAD AND HARBOURS OF REFUGE. 1 3 
 
 their demands, while squandering and reducing their 
 means of satisfying either. 
 
 The rocks ahead of our course are plain enough, 
 and the period of adversity that we are passing 
 through is making them manifest to thousands who, 
 three years ago, resolutely shut their eyes. The re- 
 cognition makes way but slowly the more slowly 
 because our rulers are so averse to admit the extent or 
 the gravity of the facts before them, conscious that, 
 however unjustly, these facts are to be held to reflect 
 discredit on their rule. I doubt whether any imputa- 
 tion of this nature can fairly be maintained. I doubt 
 whether the Government is specially to blame for the 
 depression of trade and the consequent suffering of the 
 working classes, and of others more highly placed in 
 the social scale, except in as far as we may be entitled 
 to expect from them a clearer and quicker perception 
 of coming circumstances, than from others less emin- 
 ently placed, and, under those circumstances, a curtail- 
 ment instead of an enhancement of expenditure. The 
 truth is that all classes have been to blame, and to 
 blame much in the same way the upper ten thousand 
 probably more than the humbler ranks, as having 
 wider means of knowing facts and more trained habits 
 and capacities of thought. I doubt if any one of the 
 couches sociales has the right to throw stones upon the 
 others in reference to the calamity that has come upon 
 us all. Reckless self-indulgence, extravagant expend- 
 iture, determination to enjoy the present and leave 
 the future to take care of itself, have been character- 
 
1 4 ROCKS AHEAD AND HARBOURS OF REFUGE. 
 
 istic of all alike. All have " made haste to be rich " ; 
 few, if any, to store up their riches. Five years of 
 prosperity, nearly five years of sudden and astonishing 
 profits, excited the spirits, often turned the heads of 
 masters and men alike in most of our largest industries 
 and of several branches of commerce ; but the gains of 
 those years, in place of being hoarded up to carry 
 British artisans and merchants through the reactionary 
 and disastrous years which were to follow, were too 
 often lavishly and unprofitably squandered, as if re- 
 action was not a thing to be dreamed of so that 
 when the turn of the tide came it found most of our 
 productive classes unprovided, and many, both high 
 and low, unprovided and in danger. Much scarcely 
 warranted vituperation has been cast upon capitalists 
 who boldly, perhaps rashly, extended their works to 
 meet a brisk and unwonted demand, opened new coal 
 mines, and built new furnaces and factories, for the 
 demand was real and would not be ignored. Nor are 
 the artisans and operatives to be condemned because, 
 in such a time of glowing sunshine, they insisted on 
 sharing in the warmth, and forced up their wages to 
 perhaps an extravagant degree. Where both parties 
 were alike, if not equally, to blame was not that they 
 made hay while the sun was shining, but that the hay 
 was not laid up for winter seasons, but was consumed 
 as fast as it was made. 1 
 
 1 Mr W. H. Smith, in a recent and instructive speech to his 
 constituents at Westminster a few weeks ago, was inclined to 
 doubt the alleged inadequacy of saving habits among our work- 
 
ROCKS AHEAD AND HARBOURS OF REFUGE. 15 
 
 Here we begin to see glimpses of Harbours of 
 Eefuge amid the gloom and storm, or to recognise at 
 least the direction in which the vessel's course must 
 be steered to find safety. The essential truth is very 
 simple, and when once pointed out, is very obvious. 
 We have nearly all of us been living up to our income 
 in those bright times ; many, no doubt, beyond it ; 
 the natural consequence is, that now hundreds of 
 thousands are reduced to live upon their capital or on 
 the capital of others. Thousands, moreover, have been 
 guilty of the folly (which might be called by a harsher 
 name) of aping the modes of life of those above them 
 in the social scale. What we have to do is to fall 
 back upon common prudence and common sense, and 
 cheerfulness and security will once more come in view. 
 
 ing population. "If there were universal distress," he said, 
 " there would be some disposition to avoid putting money in the 
 savings banks. People would be withdrawing their money from 
 the savings banks. I find this : That on January 11, 1877, the 
 deposits in the savings banks were 70,963,555 ; in January 
 1878, 73,534,000 that is to say, in the year 1878 an additional 
 2,600,000 had been deposited in the savings banks. Well, on 
 January 11, 1879, after a year of very great depression, the 
 working clashes had managed to increase these deposits by 
 1,300,000 that is to say, the deposits, which were in 1878 
 73,534,000, were in January 1879, 74,637,000. I think that 
 is a very significant fact. It shows that after all, though there 
 is great distress, there is also a considerable amount of what I 
 call local wealth. Seventy-four millions represent the savings of 
 the working classes. The increase of 1,300,000 represents the 
 amount which they could afford to put by after having spent all 
 that was necessary for their own comfort, after having with- 
 drawn all that was necessary to keep them alive. That was 
 going on this year since the llth of January in a very remarkable 
 
16 ROCKS AHEAD AND HARBOURS OF REFUGE. 
 
 Perhaps I estimate even more seriously than most, both 
 the reality and the gravity of the present crisis. I 
 admit the sharpness of the warning that has been sent 
 us. But I see in it no reason for despondency to 
 which indeed Englishmen are seldom prone ; but every 
 reason for the adoption, individually and nationally, of 
 sounder principles of action, of less luxurious and self- 
 indulgent habits of life, of more conscientious and 
 sagacious industry, and of that systematic economy in 
 which as a people we are so woefully and undeniably 
 deficient. I do not believe, and I refuse to admit, 
 that Britons are intrinsically wanting in the gifts 
 requisite to win and keep supremacy in any line to 
 which they may devote their energies. They only need 
 
 manner. I have tables from the Post Office which forms only a 
 portion of these figures, showing that on the 18th of January the 
 deposits were 266,000 for the week against withdrawals of 
 178,000, being a balance in favour of an increase of deposits of 
 upwards of 88,000. On the 25th of January the deposits were 
 276,000 against withdrawals 184,000 ; so that the difference 
 in favour of deposits was 92,000 ; and on the 1st of February 
 the deposits were 312,000 against 136,000 withdrawals, so that 
 the deposits were more than double the amount of the with- 
 drawals." The figures are very interesting. Their weak point is 
 in the assumption that these " 74,000,000 represent the savings 
 of the working classes" exclusively or even mainly. They may 
 represent to a great extent the savings of various portions of the 
 poor and the industrious specially among the lower middle ranks. 
 But it is more than doubtful whether the artisans as a rule, the 
 manufacturing operatives of whom 1 was chiefly speaking, favour 
 " Savings Banks" as a mode of investment. Unfortunately they 
 too often prefer " Local Friendly Societies " and Trade Unions. 
 Moreover Mr Smith omits to notice that in the year 1878 the 
 balance of the increase in store was not equal to the interest due 
 on the deposits. 
 
HOCKS AHEAD AND HARBOURS OF REFUGE. 17 
 
 somewhat less conceit as to their own incontestable 
 pre-eminence, somewhat better education, and con- 
 siderably wiser guides, or sagacity to choose such, 
 perhaps also absit omen a harsher lesson of suffer- 
 ing than has yet been forced on them. I am con- 
 vinced, too, that these amended habits of life and 
 thought difficult, no doubt, to begin with need 
 involve no deterioration, no steps downwards or back- 
 wards, in any of the essential comforts and respec- 
 tabilities of family existence (I say nothing as to mere 
 idle luxuries), probably, indeed certainly, the reverse. 
 By adopting these they will conquer a securer, less 
 anxious and less precarious position, for the next 
 generation at all events, if the passing one be too 
 rigid and too old to change. 1 
 
 1 The following extract from the Economist's Commercial 
 Eeview of 1878 will be interesting : Within the last twelve 
 years our labouring classes have had opportunities of setting 
 aside a considerable amount, and there ought to be no reason for 
 the excessive distress complained of at this moment. A certain 
 amount has doubtless been saved by the thrifty and careful, as 
 witnessed by the larger amount held by the Savings Banks, 
 Friendly, and Building Societies, 1 a large portion of which 
 
 1 The amount held by the Savings Banks in 1866 and 1877 was as 
 follows : 
 
 Trustee Banks. Post Banks. Total. 
 
 1866 . 36,000,000 8,121,000 44,000,000 
 1877 . 44,000,000 28,741,000 72,000,000 
 
 Increase 28,000,000 
 
 The amount held by friendly societies in 1865 was 5,362,000, and in 
 1874, 9,039,000. increase, 3,676,000; total of both savings banks and 
 friendly societies in ten years, 32,113,000 or an average of 3,200,000 per 
 annum. On December 31, 1877, the liabilities of building societies, in 
 which the working classes have largely invested, to the holders of subscrip- 
 tion or incomplete shares, of completed or realised shares, and of pre- 
 ferential shares, to depositors, and also for unappropriated profits, were 
 in England and Wales 23,916,000; Scotland, 1,126,000; and Ireland, 
 678,000. total, 25,720,000. 
 
 B 
 
1 8 ROCKS AHEAD AND HARBOURS OF REFUGE. 
 
 In writing thus hopefully we can point to examples 
 and illustrations at our door as proofs that we are in- 
 dulging in no baseless dream. Eight years ago our 
 nearest neighbours had to encounter a reverse almost 
 unparalleled among modern nations, to pay a debt or 
 a fine (whichever we may call it) about equally un- 
 exampled, to meet a drain upon their resources which 
 to critical and observant Europe appeared too exhaust- 
 ing. France had to part with a considerable portion 
 of her territory, to promise an indemnity of five mil- 
 liards, and to provide taxation to meet this enormous 
 
 belongs to the working classes. But a considerable proportion 
 of the extra amount earned, especially from 1871 to 1873, has 
 been spent in maintaining a standard of comfort higher, pro- 
 bably, than a labouring man is warranted in looking for, unless 
 he has first put by something for the rainy day, and more 
 especially in an excessive expenditure for eating, drinking, and 
 smoking. 2 A wiser and more economical appropriation of wages 
 is the great want of the British working population. In no 
 other country are the wages more liberal, but in no other country 
 are they more wastefully used than in the United Kingdom. 
 Here there is scope enough for practical education touching the 
 moral, quite as important as the intellectual, bringing up of the 
 new generation. 
 
 The consumption of the following imported and excisable articles of 
 food and drink per head of the population in 1866 and 1877 was as 
 follows : 
 
 Articles. 
 
 1866. 
 
 1877. 
 
 Increase. 
 
 Bacon and Ham per Ib. 
 
 Wheat 
 
 2-13 
 104-50 
 
 8-04 
 203-26 
 
 277 per cent. 
 94 
 
 Sugar . 
 
 21-21 
 
 64-96 
 
 57 
 
 Tea . 
 
 3-42 
 
 4-52 
 
 32 
 
 Tobacco 
 
 1-39 
 
 1-49 
 
 10 
 
 Spirits . gallons 
 
 1-01 
 
 1-23 
 
 21 
 
 Malt . bushels 
 
 1-82 
 
 1-92 
 
 5 
 
ROCKS AHEAD AND HARBOURS OF REFUGE. 19 
 
 sum. There was no help for it. She accepted the 
 tremendous fate, spent no time in whining, but set to 
 work with admirable fortitude and spirit to redeem 
 the vast misfortune, complicated as it was with 
 revolution and civil war. The incalculable wealth and 
 the unexpected strength that lie hid in economic 
 habits when inherent in a nation then came to light 
 and astonished all Europe. We began to realise the 
 full meaning of the maxim, Magnum vectigal est 
 parsimonia. 1 The immense resources of a country 
 where every peasant was a proprietor and almost 
 every citizen a patriot, enabled her to nearly double 
 her debt without impairing her credit, and to nearly 
 double her revenue without crushing her productive 
 powers ; and the result has been that probably France 
 has suffered less from the calamitous years that have 
 swept over the world than either Germany, Great 
 Britain, America, or Russia. How can we seriously 
 entertain any doubt that, if English artisans as a rule 
 had the careful habits, and the modest, though 
 thoroughly comfortable, requirements, of the French 
 peasantry ; still more if they were aided and encour- 
 aged in the practice of these unfamiliar virtues by the 
 example of those captains of industry who have 
 
 1 Mr Smith's comparison of the taxation, local and imperial, 
 of the three great capitals of the world is curious and rather 
 consolatory : 
 
 s. d. 
 
 London, . . . 3811 per head. 
 Paris, . . . . 5 14 1 
 New York, . . . 6147 
 
20 BOOKS AHEAD AND HARBOURS OF REFUGE. 
 
 hitherto taught them rather how to make money than 
 how to hoard it, we might have tided over far 
 more easily and speedily a crisis imcomparably less 
 severe ? l 
 
 It is now nearly a generation since our great 
 philosophical economist laid his finger on one of the 
 
 1 We may be reminded of one special difference between the 
 French and English people, which makes saving so much easier 
 and more natural to the former, viz., their much slower rate of 
 increase. To this may be added that their laws of inheritance 
 foster habits of economy, which the English ones certainly do 
 not. This is true enough ; but to discuss fully the bearings of 
 the subject would take us too far from our present topic. It may 
 suffice at present to say that we have the vast and almost inex- 
 haustible resources of emigration, of which our neighbours make, 
 perhaps can make, comparatively so little use. England thus 
 disposes of those redundant numbers which in France do not 
 appear. In the thirty-nine years, 1837-76, there left the United 
 Kingdom as voluntary emigrants, destined chiefly to North 
 America and Australia, 8,000,000 of persons, or an average of 
 22,800 persons per annum. It has been computed that each 
 emigrant was worth to the country or colony to which he went, 
 quite 175 ; that is to say, speaking in commercial language, his 
 infancy, education, training, skill, and the stock of clothes, money, 
 and goods he brought with him were worth 175 to the new 
 country of his choice. On the average of the thirty-nine years, 
 1837-76, this country has contributed 40,000,000 per annum in 
 emigrants to the progress of North America and Australia, and 
 no discussion of the progress of these new countries can be of any 
 value which does not assign due prominence to this wonderful 
 phenomenon. Of late years the emigration to Australia has 
 assumed larger dimensions. In 1866-70 it was 9 percent, of the 
 whole ; in 1876 it was 29 per cent. Shorter and cheaper passages 
 to Australia have produced a large effect. No part of the social 
 changes of the last forty years is more satisfactory, both to the 
 mother-country and the colonial and foreign countries than 
 this voluntary emigration undertaken by the free choice, and 
 paid for out of the savings, of the emigrants themselves. 
 
ROCKS AHEAD AND HARBOURS OF REFUGE. 21 
 
 most serious blots in our social economy the un- 
 soundness of our distributive system ; that is, the 
 excessive proportion which the distributors bear to 
 the producers, the number of retailers of consumable 
 articles in comparison to the need for them. Retail 
 trade required, in reference to other occupations, little 
 professional skill or knowledge, and little capital ; and 
 in consequence many scarcely qualified easily took up 
 this line of business, or added it to their other functions. 
 The mischief grew, and with it grew its many disas- 
 trous consequences. Small shopkeepers multiplied 
 beyond any actual demand ; they competed with each 
 other for a business inadequate for all, and those who 
 might have made a decent and an honest livelihood 
 out of a hundred customers could not do so out of 
 fifty. Those, again, who have capital sufficient to 
 enable them to buy their stores cheaply because on a 
 large scale, might be satisfied with moderate profits 
 in retailing them ; those who were destitute of these 
 advantages were forced either to ask higher prices or 
 to serve out inferior qualities. Those, too, who gave 
 credit to their customers did not always get paid : 
 thence came the practice of making punctual pur- 
 chasers pay for those who paid tardily or perhaps 
 never paid at all at once a cruelty and an injustice. 
 Unsoundness thus crept into the whole practices of 
 retailers in smaller towns and among poorer popula- 
 tions, and buyers that is, the whole body of 
 customers were mulcted, paid more than they need 
 have done, or ought to have done, and found that their 
 
22 ROCKS AHEAD AND HARBOURS OF REFUGE. 
 
 earnings did not go as far as was essential. This was 
 the case in manufacturing districts. In the metropolis 
 and in the larger cities the same unsoundness pre- 
 vailed, in a somewhat varied form and on a more 
 extensive scale. A larger proportion of those who 
 dealt at retail shops were wealthy, and cared com- 
 paratively little what prices they paid ; numbers 
 were too busy to look closely after such matters, and 
 were growing rich fast enough to despise them ; and 
 these two classes gave the tone to others. Numbers 
 of them, moreover, were not over-punctual in their 
 payments, as well as too important to be pressed, and 
 therefore could not with any propriety demur to ' the 
 inflammation of their weekly bills/ Thus, in the late 
 prosperous times, since the advent of free trade, there 
 has been an alarming growth of household expenditure 
 which has at last led to a natural and most wholesome 
 reaction out of which, unless I am much mistaken, 
 there will come a safety, both moral and economical, 
 the extent of which will amaze many and prove a 
 genuine " harbour of refuge " to not a few. 
 
 The truth is to speak it broadly that the sudden 
 and enormous prosperity of the country and the extra- 
 ordinary advance in the prices of nearly all articles of 
 general consumption during the ten years which pre- 
 ceded the actual collapse coupled with the natural 
 and inevitable rise in the style and standard of living 
 as it is called were fast bringing to ruin the numerous 
 classes known as " people of fixed incomes." The 
 luxuries of the parents were becoming the necessaries 
 
ROCKS AHE1D AND HARBOURS OF REFUGE. 23 
 
 of the children ; and what had been competence to 
 one generation was, or was being deemed to be, a 
 scanty pittance to the next. The civil servants, the 
 landholders, the officers of the army and navy, and 
 clergymen above all others, felt that if they were not to 
 sink altogether into a lower social position, they must 
 bestir themselves in earnest. They did so bestir them- 
 selves; and a few among them, instinctively discerning 
 where the fault lay, combined to correct it and estab- 
 lish " Co-operative Stores." Never was there a more 
 simple, more timely, more practical, more successful, 
 more wholesome or righteous movement, or one which 
 we incline to believe will approach nearer to a social 
 revolution, and rectify, directly or indirectly, several 
 symptoms in England's condition that may be safely 
 characterised as unhealthy. 
 
 In the course of the controversy that has arisen out 
 of this movement, many absurd aspersions, and not a 
 few thoroughly unjust ones have been vented on both 
 sides ; l but the irritation of conflicting interests will 
 
 1 We need not enter into these allegations and disputes. 
 "Where the ordinary retailers have any foundation for declaring 
 that co-operative establishments are unduly favoured by law, as 
 in escaping the income tax while dividing large profits among 
 their shareholders, by all means let this inequity he rectified, 
 by treating them as, what in fact they have become Joint-Stock 
 companies. But as to the indignation expressed against those 
 establishments conducted on the original principle of supplying 
 themselves cheaply hy purchasing on a large scale and selling 
 cheaply by selling only for prompt payment, and who make no 
 profits because they lower their prices as they find the prices 
 they had fixed yield a surplus over their expenses, this indigna- 
 tion is manifestly misapplied. While the outcry against civil 
 
24 ROCKS AHEAD AND HARBOURS OF REFUGE. 
 
 gradually subside, and the motives to the movement 
 are obviously too strong to be effectually resisted. 
 The truth of the case is in fact too clear, and lies too 
 near the surface to be either concealed or contested. 
 The wealthy, who do not need to spare their shillings 
 or their guineas, but who do wish to have the ordi- 
 nary transactions of life made smooth and facile, and 
 surrounded by as much beauty and splendour as are 
 attainable, will deal with butchers and grocers who 
 come to their doors for orders and take all trouble off 
 their hands ; will give their custom to tailors and 
 dressmakers who suit their tastes; will frequent shops 
 which lie within easy reach, whose plate glass and 
 decorations attract their fancy, and the fashionable 
 locality of their premises involve high rents ; and will 
 have to pay, and be content to pay, for all these 
 facilities and pleasures : and no one can fairly main- 
 tain that the tradesmen who supply their wants on 
 this comfortable fashion are not entitled to be well 
 paid for the expenditure which this fashion involves. 
 Equally, on the other hand, must the more numerous 
 classes with fixed and inadequate incomes, whose 
 peace and respectability in life depends on keeping 
 within these incomes, who must watch and calculate 
 
 servants, naval or military officers, clergymen or others, who give 
 their vacant hours to superintending such establishments which 
 are and must be practically managed by paid employes, is too 
 unfounded even to deserve discussion. It is on a par with the 
 objections of those who would prohibit struggling barristers 
 from devoting their unemployed evenings in writing for the 
 Press. 
 
HOCKS AHEAD AND HARBOURS OF REFUGE. 25 
 
 every shilling of expenditure, and who grudge no time 
 or trouble which will enable them to limit its amount, 
 be permitted to follow their course without being 
 sneered at or reviled. They find thousands of trades- 
 men ready enough to meet their requirements ; and 
 they find, too, that by combination they can attain 
 their ends to the mutual gain of all parties concerned. 
 For this is one of the features of the change of system 
 which is now in progress : the primary producers, 
 makers, and purveyors of the articles of consumption 
 usually obtain more for those articles than they used 
 to do, while the purchasers of them pay less; the 
 difference being that in the transference from the 
 original creator to the ultimate consumer, the articles 
 pass through fewer hands, and in a less costly fashion, 
 and are mulcted in fewer and minor profits. The 
 supernumerary distributors alone will be edged out, 
 and have to find occupation and livelihood elsewhere. 
 The distributors who hold their ground, doing a far 
 larger business and in a more legitimate manner, will 
 make at once more considerable, and less questionable, 
 gains. 
 
 The essence of the whole question lies in these 
 two points : first, what is practically and usually 
 the difference between the price which the actual 
 consumer or purchaser of any articles of food, clothing, 
 or furniture, pays for it, and the share of that price 
 which ultimately reaches the producer say, the 
 farmer, the importer, the tailor, the shoemaker, the 
 dressmaker, the upholsterer, and others who among 
 
26 BOCKS AHEAD AND HARBOURS OF REFUGE. 
 
 them provide for the hundred wants of our compli- 
 cated lives ? and, secondly, what proportion of this 
 difference is really necessary and legitimate. Few 
 who have not been compelled to go into this inquiry 
 have an adequate notion of how great this difference 
 is, nor how small a part of it is genuinely inevitable. 
 We have no intention of entangling ourselves in 
 interminable controversy by venturing on positive 
 assertions or precise figures. Bat a few suggestions 
 rnay induce our readers to believe that we are not 
 very wide of the mark when we express our convic- 
 tion that if we brought adequate information, sagacity, 
 vigilance, and trovble to bear upon our proceedings, 
 the average expenditure of most of our households 
 might be reduced 25 per cent, at least, without the 
 loss of one single comfort worth retaining. Let any 
 one ascertain from a farmer friend, the price which he 
 receives per carcase from the butcher he supplies, or 
 from a Liverpool merchant the price at which his 
 cargoes of dead meat or live bullocks are sold on 
 arrival from America, and compare it with the price 
 the identical butcher or purchaser insists upon charg- 
 ing him for similar qualities of beef or mutton. Or 
 let him, knowing if a merchant or broker, knowing 
 to his cost that of late the tea, or the coffee, or the 
 sugar he is in the habit of importing will only fetch 
 in the market 75 per cent, of its price two or three 
 years ago, apply to his family grocer for something 
 like a proportionate reduction in his quarterly bills, 
 and see the curt refusal he will receive, as if the bare 
 
ROCKS AHEAD AND HARBOURS OF REFUGE. 27 
 
 proposal was amazing ; or let any man accustomed to 
 deal with an ordinary West End tailor not an 
 especially extravagant or fashionable one find himself 
 obliged by press of losses to inquire what price he 
 really need pay for an equally well-made suit furnished 
 by some a little further or a little less known, and then 
 calculate the difference in his family expenditure the 
 transfer of his custom in that one item will effect. 
 Or, finally, let him take a little pains, and he will be 
 surprised to find that a pair of boots for which he has 
 been accustomed to pay 35s. or 40s. in Mayfair 
 without a murmur, can be obtained in quarters 
 scarcely nearer Temple Bar, just as good, quite as 
 lasting and almost as seemly for 14s. or 21s., with no 
 better reason for the difference than that on inquiry 
 he may learn that the latter article is " country made." 
 In a word, while the wholesale cost of many articles 
 of general consumption has dropped 30 per cent., 
 how few of us have been able to obtain a reduction of 
 even 1 per cent, from our retail suppliers, at least 
 till it was made clear that the alternative was the 
 transfer of our custom to " the Stores." In conclusion, 
 has not the conviction been gradually forced upon 
 all most careful housekeepers dealing with inexpansive 
 incomes of 2500 a year or under, that what with 
 illicit connivance between their servants and their 
 trades-people in the form of " tips," and laxity as to 
 weight and quantities, and eschewing or neglecting the 
 righteous claims of ready money, and paying for the 
 bad debts of slipping fellow- customers, to say nothing 
 
28 ROCKS AHEAD AND HARBOURS OF REFUGE. 
 
 of their own idleness and lack of vigilance they have 
 been in the habit undeniably of simply wasting, 
 through one channel or another, at least one -fourth of 
 their annual expenditure, which in future they will 
 be resolute to save ? 
 
 Inevitably, in the course of a change from an 
 unhealthy to a thoroughly sound system of dealing 
 between man and man as in all analogous improve- 
 ments since our complicated social arrangements grew 
 up, some parties will suffer and find the ground cut 
 from under them. All that can be confidently asserted 
 is that they cannot mend matters by opposing what 
 is at once irresistible, righteous, and for the good of 
 the mass of the community. Unquestionably many 
 retail dealers will have to abandon a business which 
 they have rarely found a satisfactory or profitable 
 one, or one possible to carry on without resorting to 
 practices more or less questionable. Many more will 
 be driven to change from an unsound and unsafe 
 system to a sound and safe one. Many who are now 
 competitors will find it their interest to be associates 
 instead. Still, numbers of the weaker, and least 
 qualified, and least wanted, will be crushed out ; but 
 few probably or none whom it is the interest of the 
 community to preserve ; and these will ere long, we 
 may be pretty certain, be absorbed into other avocations. 
 

 
 (UIIVEESITYJ 
 ii. 
 
 i 
 
 FOREIGN POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN IMPERIAL OR 
 
 ECONOMIC ? 
 
 THERE are two opposite and hostile schools of foreign 
 policy prevalent in England, based on quite distinct 
 principles, breathing a different temper, and aiming at 
 irreconcilable results. Each has a great deal to say 
 for itself, each can be defended by very powerful 
 arguments, each sets before itself respectable and even 
 righteous issues ; and we do not know that either is 
 entitled to despise or to denounce the other. Each 
 appeals to distinct doctrines, and will be a favourite 
 with different characters and dispositions. We are 
 not inclined to pronounce dogmatically in favour of 
 either. What is perfectly clear, however, is that it is 
 increasingly important, and will soon become absolutely 
 essential, that the country should definitively and de- 
 cidedly choose between them. Its credit, its great- 
 ness, its success, and, what is more important still, its 
 beneficence and repute as a nation, depend upon the 
 choice being made. The determination still lies within 
 our reach. Whatever be the class of aims we finally 
 resolve to set before us, we need not question our 
 ability to attain them, provided only the resolve be 
 
30 FOREIGN POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 national, deliberately taken, and unswervingly pursued. 
 What can bring us neither respect, nor gratitude, nor 
 grandeur, nor friends, is to come to no decision to 
 stumble on from opportunity to opportunity, from crisis 
 to crisis, with no clear, fixed, persistent foreign policy 
 whatever to fall first undey the guidance of one school 
 of statesmen, and then under their rivals and anta- 
 gonists to be swayed to-day by one set of doctrines, 
 to be tempted and dazzled by purposes of one character, 
 and to-morrow by their exact opposites to profess this 
 year the most generous and spreading doctrines, and 
 next year the most selfish and confined, and to hold 
 language in conformity thereto in a word, to pose 
 before Europe alternately as the devotee of a principle 
 and as the victim of a passion. Yet this is what we 
 have done too often, and what we are in danger of 
 continuing to do to our infinite peril and discredit, un- 
 less we can make up our mind deliberately, and keep 
 it when once made up. 
 
 The two schools of foreign policy we speak of have 
 hitherto been commonly distinguished by the phrases 
 Intervention and Non-intervention. We do not wish 
 to prejudge the discussion we invite by adjectives, or 
 we might qualify them respectively as the Imperial 
 and the Parochial, the Lavish and the Economic, the 
 European and the Insular, the Generous and the 
 Egotistic, the Grandiose and the Self-effacing. But 
 as to the essential characteristics at the root of each, 
 there can be no mistake. Many valid pleas may be 
 urged on behalf of each, which it would be impossible 
 
FOREIGN POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN. 31 
 
 for fair and wide-seeing antagonists to deny. Many 
 weighty objections to each can be pleaded, the reality 
 and applicability of which no candid reasoner can 
 question or ignore. The duty of statesmen, therefore, 
 and of such political inquirers as wish neither to waste 
 time, nor to obscure truth, nor to abuse mental strength, 
 is frankly to admit, as facts which form the bases and 
 the raw materials of the investigation, both the pleas 
 and the objections, and to confine themselves to the 
 simpler and more profitable task of measuring the one 
 against the other, and assigning the respective force 
 to each. Inevitably the conclusion will be different 
 with discrepant temperaments and in varying moods ; 
 but at least all classes of thinkers and feelers in the 
 nation will have a clear conception of the true grounds 
 of their determination and desires, and may be expected 
 to show some resolution and persistence in their course 
 of action. We shall try not to state on either side 
 anything that is open to dispute by well-informed 
 observers, and to state what we do state as briefly and 
 unrhetorically as we can. We have such strong sym- 
 pathies with both sets of views in their essential 
 features that impartiality at all events will not be 
 difficult. 
 
 We need not go back into English history beyond 
 the last century. Previous to that date there was 
 much that was glorious in our national career, and not 
 a few episodes that were disgraceful. Our recent 
 annals that portion of them at least which is closely 
 linked with the present times may be said to begin 
 
32 FOREIGN POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 with that great upsetting of European countries of 
 which the French Revolution was the origin, and in a 
 great measure the cause. The decided and pertinacious 
 part which England took in the wars which arose out 
 of that event, and which lasted nearly fi ve-and-twenty 
 years a part often no doubt mistaken, sometimes 
 perhaps mischievous, but always influential, often 
 grand and noble, and ultimately successful covered 
 the nation with glory, endowed her with power, placed 
 her indisputably at the head of European nations, and 
 (what is more to our present purpose) settled in the 
 minds of her own people as well as in the mind of 
 foreign countries that she must thenceforth be not only 
 mixed up with all Continental interests and struggles, 
 but must exercise a potential voice in their decision. 
 For a quarter of a century foreign matters had affected 
 and swayed the policy of the country far beyond any 
 domestic topics of discussion ; and the peace of 1815, 
 which closed that period, found and left our statesmen 
 occupied with those outside matters in an unwhole- 
 somely paramount degree. At that time Great Britain 
 had, and could not help having, an " Imperial policy ; " 
 and the country would scarcely have respected or even 
 tolerated the Government had it been otherwise. 
 Naturally the position flattered our pride ; it gratified 
 the feelings and fell in with the interests, real or 
 fancied, of the ruling classes to be appealed to by all 
 other countries for support in their disputes ; it dazzled 
 the imagination of the masses ; and it was delightful 
 to the professional zeal and ambition of the two great 
 
FOREIGN POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN. 33 
 
 Services to feel or to fancy that Great Britain could 
 rule and regulate the world. 
 
 A few years passed away, and the reaction came. 
 The old generation, the warriors who had conquered 
 in the fight, the statesmen who had directed the cam- 
 paigns, and the people who had been sharers and 
 spectators in the exciting struggle, began to die away; 
 politicians and orators of an alien mode of thinking, 
 who had scarcely been listened to (and, we are bound 
 to say, had not always deserved to be listened to) in 
 the heat of strife, came to the front and insisted on a 
 hearing. Blood cooled down ; reflection took the 
 place of passion ; bills came in for payment, and were 
 enormously, unexpectedly, sometimes almost over- 
 poweringly heavy ; trade became dull, and inflated 
 profits sank to a reasonable level ; and taxation, not 
 always very judiciously contrived, grew burdensome. 
 In the midst of the growing discontent the new 
 economic doctrines came up for a hearing, and their 
 claim in time became irresistible ; while democratic 
 politics, so long discredited, revived and gained strength 
 from year to year. The poverty and suffering of 
 millions of the working classes came in aid of the 
 reactionary party and the more egotistical line of 
 policy. Home interests, which had become imperious 
 home necessities, forced themselves upon attention, 
 and brought their advocates into power. The new 
 ideas of " peace, retrenchment, and reform " got their 
 innings, and amid much struggle, and with a few 
 occasional episodes, have ruled the national policy 
 
34 FOREIGN POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 from 1830 till 1875. Now, at last, owing to a 
 variety of combined influences which we need not 
 pause to specify, the spirit of the old policy has 
 come uppermost once more, and has much to say for 
 itself, though it says what it does say, in our judg- 
 ment, much less powerfully, less wisely, and less 
 scrupulously than it might. 
 
 The principles and motives to action which dictate 
 and inspire the imperial course are three love of 
 glory, love of power, and love of usefulness. It may 
 be defended on the ground of right and on the plea 
 of duty. Having a high position among nations, it 
 would seem idle, selfish, and pusillanimous to forego 
 it. Not using it, moreover, would probably enough 
 involve losing it. Inactive strength is usually decay- 
 ing strength. Talents laid up in a napkin are not 
 only unprofitable talents, but are apt to become rusty 
 talents in the end. Wealth and might employed only 
 for the comfort and security of the owners win neither 
 respect nor regard, and may ultimately fail to obtain 
 either the security or the well-being to which they are 
 too exclusively devoted. Moreover, when a State begins 
 to think more of prosperity than of glory to dwell 
 rather on the actual than the ideal, on material pos- 
 sessions and material gains, on what it has than on 
 what it is in the estimation of the world it loses one 
 of the grandest inspirations of human action. Besides 
 this, it is not to be denied that prestige, sadly as the 
 phrase is misused, has a distioct meaning of its own. 
 The word may not be English, but the reality that it 
 
FOREIGN POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN. $5 
 
 expresses is English enough in all conscience. Power, 
 too, is a grand endowment, which it is foolish to 
 despise, and would be wrong to throw away, and 
 cowardly to let slip from us out of indifference. It 
 has been inherited, and ought therefore to be trans- 
 mitted. 
 
 But these, to the more serious natures among us, 
 are only the outskirts of the question. Power, wealth, 
 and wide possessions, confer capacities and oppor- 
 tunities of good which it would be simply criminal to 
 neglect or to forego. The ownership of a vast Empire 
 commands and imposes something Imperial in our 
 policy and our ideas. We may rejoice in and be 
 grateful for the insularity of our position, but we 
 cannot escape from the inherent solidarity of all 
 civilised races. It may be objected that these are dim 
 conceptions and a vague phraseology. Still we are, or 
 flatter ourselves that we are, the representatives, the 
 leaders, the advocates and protectors of the two great 
 interests of Peoples justice and freedom ; and till 
 now we have had a right thus to conceive of ourselves, 
 and thus to pose before the world. We believe that 
 in the main we stand at the head of European civil- 
 isation, of which justice and freedom are the first 
 elements and the most essential conditions. We can- 
 not help sympathising with all classes, all races, all 
 nationalities, which aspire to and are struggling for 
 these most indispensable of attainments. Ought we 
 not to manifest this sympathy in action, whenever we 
 can do so wisely and with a prospect of success ? Can 
 
36 FOREIGN POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 we help doing so ? Should we not be failing in our 
 duties did we abstain from doing so ? 
 
 Again, does not this same sense of solidarity and 
 consciousness of duty to our neighbour bind us to pro- 
 tect, where we can, one nation against the aggressions 
 of another at least and especially where the sufferer 
 is feeble and the aggressor is in the wrong ? And 
 practically is not the difference between a " spirited 
 foreign policy" and a weak and dawdling one, in nine 
 cases out of ten, simply the difference between a 
 Minister in whom this sense of solidarity and con- 
 sciousness of duty is prompt, sensitive, and vigilant, 
 and one in whom it is languid, timid, and undecided ? 
 
 Lastly, though the insular position of Great Britain 
 might appear to give us a rare and most enviable 
 potentiality of abstinence from Continental quarrels 
 and from foreign politics in general, yet this advantage 
 is apparent rather than real, inasmuch as our outlying 
 Empire is the most wide-spread, extensive, and frag- 
 mentary in the world. Our Dependencies which, if 
 attacked, we should unanimously, wisely or unwisely, 
 fight to the death to defend, whatever might be the 
 private opinions of some among us as to their profit- 
 able or burdensome character are scattered in the 
 most distant quarters, and are coveted by near neigh- 
 bours. Our Colonies whatever be our legal obliga- 
 tions, whatever our occasional tiffs t whatever the 
 foolish language and the flighty boasts in which both 
 we and they every now and then indulge are peopled 
 by our fellow-citizens and bound to us by the closest 
 
FOREIGN POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN. 37 
 
 ties of interest and affection ; and there can be little 
 doubt that any insult to them, or interference with 
 them, or attack upon them, would be resented just as 
 promptly as if it were offered to the mother-country. 
 So that, in truth, while the best protected, the 
 wealthiest, and probably the most powerful nation in 
 Europe, we are also, looked at as a whole, if not the 
 most vulnerable, at least the most sensitive touch- 
 able and assailable at more points than any other. 
 We are the very octopus of nations, with feelers out in 
 both hemispheres and in all quarters of the globe. 
 There can scarcely be a serious movement or external 
 action of any State which would not affect us and our 
 possessions more or less directly. We are, therefore, 
 whether we like it or not, bound to the most especial 
 vigilance, and by the strongest obligations. Our policy 
 must be Imperial in its character and its range, so 
 long as our possessions constitute us an Empire in 
 extent. Those who wish that policy to be Parochial, 
 and our Government a Vestry, must first restrict our 
 territories to the dimensions of a home estate. 
 
 Now, if these three positions are conceded and it 
 is difficult to see how, thus stated, they can be gain- 
 said, and certain that Englishmen in the mass and in 
 the abstract will never dispute them are not the two 
 fundamental doctrines of the advocates of an "Imperial 
 policy " established ? And thenceforth is not the 
 controversy between them and their antagonists reduced 
 to questions of detail, and in a great measure even to 
 matters of fact ? to the discussion, first, whether the 
 
38 FOREIGN POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 application of those principles to the particular case in 
 hand is just and sound ; secondly, whether intervention 
 should be active or merely diplomatic i.e., whether 
 success is certain enough to make action wise, and 
 whether justice to our own people warrants us in laying 
 fresh burdens upon them for the sake of others ; and 
 whether the immediate or remote interests of Great 
 Britain are so involved as to bring fresh elements into 
 our consideration ? 
 
 In a word, will it not appear that the discrepancy 
 of view between the adherents of the wider and the 
 narrower policy is not a discrepancy of principle, or 
 even of sentiment, at all, but merely that one party 
 assigns greater weight to one set of considerations, and 
 the other party to another set, or that each are prone 
 to ignore special considerations altogether ? * 
 
 Those who look at the reverse of the shield the 
 advocates of that line of policy which its enemies 
 characterise as selfish and parochial, and its friends as 
 
 1 This, according to Sir Louis Mallet, in his late lucid and 
 interesting introduction to " Cobden's Political Writings," was 
 the idea of that eminent statesman. " Except as regards inter- 
 vention in the internal dissensions of other countries, Cobden 
 never, so far as we are aware, advanced or held the opinion that 
 all wars not undertaken for self-defence were always wrong or 
 inexpedient. The question with him was one of relative duties. 
 It is clear that the duty and wisdom of entering upon a war, 
 even in the most righteous cause, must be measured by our 
 knowledge and our power ; but even where our knowledge is 
 complete and our power sufficient, it is necessary that, in under- 
 taking such a war, we should be satisfied that, in doing so, we 
 are not neglecting and putting it out of our reach to fulfil more 
 sacred and more imperative duties." (Introd. p. xiv.) 
 
FOREIGN POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN. 39 
 
 sagacious and economic have many valid pleas to 
 urge on its behalf, and can appeal to many impres- 
 sive lessons of history. While not denying or 
 meeting in face the doctrines just alleged, they main- 
 tain that these are of a nature peculiarly liable to rash, 
 passionate, and indiscriminate application ; that the 
 pleas of generous sympathy are constantly put forth 
 to disguise and gild a course of conduct which would 
 be more accurately qualified as impertinent and 
 meddlesome ; that " British interests " are habitually 
 put forward where no such interests are endangered or 
 involved, and even where, truly regarded, they would 
 rather dictate abstinence from action ; that, under the 
 pretext of Imperialism and farseeing statesmanship, 
 the habitual and hitherto incurable fault of our 
 Governments especially of Tory Governments has 
 been to look too far ahead, and to commit the danger- 
 ous error of fancying that they can provide for a 
 future which, when it comes, will find circumstances 
 altogether changed and pointing in a quite different 
 direction ; that in fact, far too many of the concep- 
 tions of feudalism linger in the minds of our rulers, and 
 that what we dignify by the phrases " national 
 interests," and " courageous and vigilant statesman- 
 ship," is, when stripped naked, often but the interests, 
 tastes, ideas, and passions of the " Upper Ten Thou- 
 sand ; " and, finally, that when all is said that can be 
 said, and all conceded that is true, we simply cannot 
 afford thus to play the liberal Magnifico ; that charity 
 begins at home, that our own people are grievously 
 
40 FOREIGN POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 overburdened already in consequence of old wars and 
 former interventions, and are suffering from many 
 defects and wrongs in our administrative arrangements 
 and social condition which imperatively demand remedy 
 and redress evils which fresh interventions would 
 not only largely aggravate, but certainly cause to be 
 again neglected ; that, in a word and to sum up the 
 whole, while not prepared to maintain, and not feeling 
 it at all incumbent on them to maintain, that a 
 " spirited foreign policy " may not conceivably and 
 at times be wise and justifiable, they declare their firm 
 conviction that, neither now nor in our fathers' day, 
 have such cases been other than extraordinarily rare. 
 
 Almost all these allegations are incontrovertible, and 
 thus and thus only can the position of the Imperialists 
 be effectually assailed and turned. Let us see, there- 
 fore, what are the weak points, if any, of the position 
 taken up by the economists, and where and how it 
 needs, or may admit of, modification. 
 
 We are not, as is often said but too often forgotten, 
 the " Policemen of the world ; " nor can we under- 
 take to be. Our hands are full. We have much 
 more to do than we can do adequately, deliberately, 
 or with the promptitude required. We have thirty- 
 five millions of home citizens, whose affairs are 
 clamouring for attention, whose most important in- 
 terests and questions sanitary, social, educational, 
 administrative, industrial, and legal are constantly 
 pushed into a corner, or transacted in a hurry, or 
 treated with an oblivious negligence which is at once 
 
FOREIGN POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN. 41 
 
 discreditable and dangerous ; for our civilisation has 
 become curiously complicated, and our institutions 
 have not kept up with that complication, and some of 
 the gravest and deepest topics, critical to our welfare 
 as a people, can secure only casual glances in the place 
 of the quiet reflection they demand. The remanets of 
 every session are disheartening and alarming to all 
 earnest thinkers, and are increasing year by year. 
 Our Colonial Empire numbers about ten millions of 
 brethren, whose views, purposes, circumstances, and 
 tastes are as varied as they well can be, are little 
 understood at home either by Englishmen, or English 
 Parliaments, or English statesmen ; and who, in con- 
 sequence of this lack of information and comprehen- 
 sion, are left to follow their own devices perhaps we 
 ought to say the devices of the least foreseeing and 
 cultivated among them to a degree which threatens 
 to lay up embarrassing and bitter results for a future 
 which cannot be remote. Besides all this we have 
 two hundred millions of Indian subjects (to say no- 
 thing of the fifty millions whose government we have 
 to superintend almost as much as if they were our 
 subjects), presenting in all aspects law, language, 
 habits, and religion one of the most difficult and 
 perplexing problems that ever taxed the strength or 
 the wisdom of a politician. The condition of those races, 
 both in their internal and external relations, keeps 
 hundreds of us in a state of unmanly nervousness, and 
 lies upon the better and more conscientious spirits 
 among us with the sense of an almost intolerable 
 
42 FOREIGN POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 burden, a task to which our best intelligence and 
 our liveliest vigour are felt to be but barely equal. 
 The claims of these Indians upon us swell and multi- 
 ply with each year that passes over us, while our 
 revenues, heavy enough in the views of the contribu- 
 tors, are not adequate, and increase in no satisfactory 
 proportion, and offer grounds of growing anxiety. 
 Yet Indian debates are listened to with the most 
 languid attention in Parliament, and can scarcely 
 command a House ; the Indian Budget is relegated 
 to the dregs, the very last week often, of an exhausted 
 session ; while zealous Indian reformers (happily it 
 may be) can scarcely get a hearing. Yet thus 
 fearfully over- weighted, thus habitually scamping our 
 work, having already on our hands and on our 
 conscience, to speak broadly, 250 or 300 out of the 
 1,200 millions of the human race, 1 there are poli- 
 ticians among us (now in power and apparently backed 
 up by the unthinking masses) who are always ready 
 
 1 This is of course a rough estimate, and excludes the savages 
 and the unknown semi-savages of the interior of Africa and 
 Australia, whose numbers can only be guessed out. If we put 
 aside China and Japan, the so-called civilised races do not reach 
 700 millions, for whom we are responsible for more than one-third. 
 The usual calculation is as follows : 
 
 Europe . 
 America 
 Africa . 
 Asia 
 Australia 
 
 . 270,000,000 
 85,000,000 
 30,000,000 
 . 290,000,000 
 5,000,000 
 
 680,000,000 
 
 China . 
 Japan . 
 
 405,000,000 
 33,000,000 
 
 488,000,000 
 
FOREIGN POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN. 43 
 
 to add to these obligations, to take up fresh duties 
 and scatter guarantees broadcast. Does this look like 
 conscientious or forecasting statesmanship ? 
 
 Not one word of these considerations can be con- 
 troverted, and yet they have been for generations 
 urged in vain. The only arguments that can be 
 urged against them are equally true : it is for our 
 readers to decide whether they are equally weighty. 
 The first is that our power is the measure of our 
 duty ; we cannot suffer the cause of justice or free- 
 dom to be crushed if effort on our part can secure its 
 victory, on the plea that our strength is limited and 
 the claims upon it many and imperative. The second 
 is that if we, when called upon, shrink into our shell, 
 shrug our shoulders, muttering in foreign languages 
 the un-English sentiments, " Non possumus," or " (Ja - 
 ne nous regarde pas," we must expect to be met in a 
 corresponding spirit when our day of trial and emer- 
 gency shall arrive ; and that, if we are cold and deaf 
 to the appeals of others, we may find ourselves in time 
 of need (and such times come even to the most power- 
 ful) without a friend or an ally. It is true that 
 friendship or assistance in political cases is little 
 dependent upon either gratitude or admiration, and 
 that we shall be aided only if it be for the interest of 
 other States to range themselves beside us ; ut will 
 the maintenance of a nation which habitually acts 
 upon the selfish system be an object of concern to 
 any one ? England will be sustained if she . is 
 useful ; but to whom will a nation that is systemati- 
 cally isolated and unsympathetic be useful ? 
 
44 FOREIGN POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 Against the argument that "imperial" statesman- 
 ship is peculiarly prone to the error of looking too far 
 ahead, and spending vast resources of every kind in 
 providing against perils that it is easy to fancy, but 
 nearly impossible really to foresee, we do not believe 
 that any valid counterbalancing arguments can be set 
 up. We are living in a peculiarly fermenting epoch, 
 the like of which has not been seen since the first 
 French Revolution, and the fermentation, if not so 
 violent as then, is perhaps even deeper and more 
 widely spread. The whole civilised world, in both 
 the eastern and the western hemispheres, is seething 
 with excitement and pregnant with unpredicted 
 possibilities of change ; and the changes may not 
 improbably affect the social yet more than the 
 political relations of nations, governments, and classes. 
 Whatever else is doubtful, this at least is certain 
 that the circumstances which the statesman of the 
 next generation will have to work under will not be 
 those of the generation now alive ; the problems he 
 will have to solve will be of a different order ; the 
 dangers he will have to guard against will be of a 
 different order, and may menace him from unexpected 
 quarters ; he will probably have to seek a new set of 
 allies, and very likely to aim at a new set of objects. 
 To toil, and spend, and slay, and die in the last 
 quarter of the nineteenth century on behalf of a 
 course of action which may defeat, delay, and 
 counteract the aims for which the first quarter of the 
 twentieth century will be passionately eager, would 
 
FOREIGN POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN. 45 
 
 appear to be a policy elaborately costly and unwise. 
 In such times, surely, the dictates of true sagacity and 
 prevision would counsel us to abstain from unnecessary 
 obligations; to decline all engagements and guarantees 
 which bind us in an unconjecturable future ; to keep 
 our strength well in hand, our " bankers' balance " 
 ample, unexhausted, and in readiness ; and our national 
 will as free as possible for every conceivable emer- 
 gency ; in a word, to pursue the policy of " masterly 
 inaction," taking care above all things to entrench 
 ourselves in such a position that no nation, however 
 powerful or however ambitious, shall dream of meddl- 
 ing with us, and to be so beneficently peaceful, that 
 none, however cantankerous, shall desire to harass or 
 to weaken us. 
 
 The favourite and most ordinary plea of the 
 economic school we think it would do well not to 
 press too far or apply too indiscriminately, There is 
 much truth in it, and it is often undeniably appro- 
 priate and decisive. In the days when Mr Cobden 
 used it with such efficacy, it was incomparably truer 
 than it is now. Since that time the earnings of the 
 masses have greatly increased, as well as the supply 
 of articles consumed by them, while the taxation 
 levied on them has been steadily reduced. Still our 
 burdens are unquestionably heavy, and our indebted- 
 ness unquestionably great. It is undeniable, more- 
 over, that of the eight hundred millions of our 
 national debt and the twenty-five millions of our 
 consequent yearly taxation, a large proportion was 
 
4(j FOREIGN POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 incurred in unwise and needless wars a large pro- 
 portion also was due to the reckless and clumsy mode 
 in which those wars were carried on. Nevertheless, 
 we cannot deny that in the Napoleonic wars which 
 occupied the first fifteen years of the century, the part 
 played by this country was a righteous and a serviceable 
 part, and well worth what it cost us ; and we fancy 
 the Whigs have long since regretted the course they 
 took in opposition. It is undeniable, moreover, that 
 we are far less heavily burdened than our fathers and 
 our grandfathers, and that our burdens are both more 
 equitably and more judiciously apportioned than were 
 theirs, 1 that our shoulders are much broader, and our 
 wealth much greater. We are still able to do what- 
 ever we ought to do, and whatever it is our interest 
 to do ; and we cannot admit that the poverty of 
 Great Britain can ever be pleaded with either dignity 
 or truth as a reason against any policy which is 
 dictated by wisdom or justice. The economists, 
 however, take up an unassailable position when they 
 
 1 We do not wish to burden our pages with figures. Calcula- 
 tions bearing out these statements were given in a paper called 
 " The Eight Use of a Surplus," which appeared three or four 
 years since in the Contemporary Review. It was there shown 
 that in the last quarter of a century the assessable income of the 
 nation had nearly doubled, while its taxation had increased only 
 20 per cent. ; that the wages of the labouring classes had risen 
 about 25 per cent., and the consumption of most imported and 
 excisable articles in the same proportion or a greater ; and that 
 the classes who possess property, as compared with the working 
 classes, pay in taxes six times as much per head, and nearly twice 
 as much in proportion to income. The consumption per head 
 of imported articles of solid food was 18s. in 1858. In 1877 it 
 waa 59s. 6d. 
 
FOREIGN POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN. 47 
 
 urge upon meddlesome or inconsiderate rulers that 
 war, or any action which holds war over us as a 
 probability, not only cramps trade, curtails demand, 
 checks production, and unavoidably reduces the earn- 
 ings and the comforts of the industrial classes, whether 
 employers or employed, but must add seriously if not 
 alarmingly to unprofitable government expenditure, 
 while at the same time diminishing the resources out of 
 which the taxation to meet that expenditure has to be 
 drawn. The surest indeed the only sure result of 
 a meddling and dictatorial, a warlike, or a " spirited " 
 foreign policy (usually but a gilded and softened 
 phrase for the same thing), is, no one can deny, dis- 
 turbance and distress to nearly all classes, to the 
 poorest in particular ; and something more than mere 
 distress to those who habitually live up to their 
 income that is to four-fifths of the community. The 
 economists, therefore, are indisputably right in insist- 
 ing upon our rulers pondering this consideration with 
 a solemnity and in a temper which is too rare among 
 them. And they are right, moreover, and simply 
 within the limits of imperative duty, when they remind 
 hasty politicians that there is yet a further element 
 in the question to be weighed which is, not only 
 whether the cause of war be righteous and its purpose 
 valuable, not only whether its issue, if successful, 
 would be beneficent to other lands, and its undertak- 
 ing, therefore, warrantable in the abstract but 
 whether its cost be not far greater than it would be 
 just to lay upon our own people. Duties are relative, 
 and our own citizens are entitled to our first considera- 
 
48 FOREIGN POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 tion. If it may be questioned whether a British 
 Government has a right to harass and impoverish 
 millions in Lancashire and Yorkshire to feed the 
 starving denizens of Northern China, the same doubt 
 may be felt when the sufferers are the semi-barbarians 
 of Bulgaria or Asia Minor. 
 
 One representation of the same school of politicians 
 is irrefragable and significant. It cannot be denied 
 that both the aristocrats and the upper ten thousand 
 generally have interests, objects, and associations which 
 incline them with portentous force to become the 
 supporters of that spirited foreign policy which is so 
 apt to drift into a warlike one. Nor is this tendency 
 by any means confined exclusively to one party in the 
 State ; though the Whigs, as leaning mainly on the 
 middle and commercial classes for support, have a 
 strong counterbalancing influence to keep them right. 
 The pressure of the entire military and naval services 
 with a few creditable exceptions among the older 
 and more experienced generals and admirals, who 
 know what war means, and can recollect and realise 
 its horrors acts in the same direction. The prospect 
 of a campaign a " brush," as they term it, with any 
 one sends a thrill of pleasurable excitement through 
 every soldier and sailor in the country, and most of 
 all through the bosoms of young officers, and largely 
 of their connections also. It is inevitable that it 
 should be so. It is no discredit to them that 
 it is so. Peace to them means a dull and 
 monotonous career, stagnant promotion, and a grey 
 and rusty life during their most eager years. War 
 
FOREIGN POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN. 49 
 
 means activity, progress, tbe satisfaction of that thirst 
 for distinction which burns in the breast of all who 
 are worth their salt. The idle classes, especially 
 numerous among the wealthy and noble, those influ- 
 ential and affluent circles who abound in younger sons 
 pining for a career of some sort, yet despising trade, 
 averse to emigration, unfit for the intellectual profes- 
 sions, who cannot dig, would be ashamed to beg, but 
 are ready enough to fight, and while young rather like 
 the fun of it, constitute a powerful phalanx ever 
 urgent in one direction ; a phalanx, too, with terribly 
 close connections with both Houses of Parliament, and 
 with every Cabinet that ever holds the reins of power. 
 Without endorsing the brief and graphic language of 
 Mr Bright, who described the Services as " a gigantic 
 system of outdoor relief for members of the aristo- 
 cracy," we must all admit that they do create a cease- 
 lessly operative pressure in a dangerous direction a 
 pressure, too, which augments with the swelling wealth 
 of England and the unequal distribution of that wealth. 
 Every minister knows and feels this ; every conscien- 
 tious minister will be anxiously on his guard to with- 
 stand its operation. 
 
 But there is yet another clause which must of late 
 years be added to this indictment ; a grave aggravation 
 of the danger thus signalised an aggravation, more- 
 over, for which the Liberal party are mainly responsible, 
 and to which they have remained curiously and 
 resolutely blind. We are not now blaming the course 
 of action which has culminated in this result that 
 
 D 
 
50 FOREIGN POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 would lead us into too wide a field of controversy we 
 only say that the result lies at their door, and they 
 must endure it as they best may, or counteract it, if 
 by chance they can. The case is plain the moment it 
 is stated, and it may be stated in the briefest words. 
 For the last thirty or forty years the most urgent 
 efforts of the Liberals, and especially the Liberals of 
 the pacific and economic schools, have been directed 
 towards relieving the industrial classes of the country, 
 manufacturing and agricultural alike, from the pressure 
 of taxation. They have toiled for this object in a 
 great measure at the dictate of benevolence and justice, 
 as well as from sound economic doctrines. They have 
 continued this action from year to year with single- 
 minded and unremitting zeal, so that at last they may 
 be said to have indoctrinated their antagonists. They 
 have succeeded so completely that they have relieved 
 the classes in question from nearly all taxation, except 
 that raised from drinking and smoking, of which they 
 still pay a large share. The people are now taxed 
 almost solely for indulgences which they can dispense 
 with when they please, the chief portion of which is 
 deleterious, and which their most earnest friends are 
 indefatigably labouring to induce them to forego. 1 
 
 1 In 1877 the total revenue levied on these articles was as 
 follows : 
 
 Tobacco and Snuff, .... 7,775,000 
 Spirits (Customs), .... 5,770,000 
 
 Spirits (Excise), 14,873,000 
 
 Malt, 8,040,000 
 
 36,458,000 
 
 It can scarcely be doubted that at least one-third of this amount 
 represents excessive indulgence. 
 
FOREIGN POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN. 5'1 
 
 From all indirect taxes, except those on malt, spirits, 
 and tobacco, and a trifle still on tea, they have been 
 freed ; and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, it seems, 
 has yet to be born who will have skill to devise, or 
 equity and courage to impose, a direct tax upon the 
 masses. When these are as sober and sensible as 
 we hope to see them,, and are striving to make 
 them, upwards of twenty- five millions of our present 
 revenue will lapse, will have to be made good, 
 and who believes that it will be made good by a 
 poll-tax ? 
 
 But while this operation has been going on amid 
 general plaudits from both sides of the House, 
 and from nearly all financiers, whatever their poli- 
 tical opinions, another operation has been going 
 on pari passu, and with almost as promiscuous 
 applause. 
 
 We have given household suffrage to the borough 
 population ; we are about to extend it to the county 
 population ; and when this wholesale enfranchisement 
 is complete we shall have made those classes who live 
 on weekly wages, as distinguished from those who live on 
 incomes derived from property, commerce, or professions, 
 potentially masters of elections because the majority of 
 the electorate. Those classes with all their excellen- 
 cies, with all their capabilities of good are yet unde- 
 niably the least informed, the least competent to anticipate 
 the future, the most excitable, and probably also, with 
 the exception of the upper ten thousand, the most 
 likely, under excitement, to give their votes for war. 
 
52 FOREIGN POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 Ultimately, no doubt, this section of the community 
 would be the greatest sufferers by the consequences of 
 that " spirited foreign policy " for which they might 
 at first be the loudest clamourers ; but, to begin ^u^ih ) 
 the higher classes might find their surest supporters in 
 the lowest classes, whom we have thoughtlessly relieved 
 from the sensible pressure of those fiscal burdens 
 which could once be calculated upon for restraining 
 them from so suicidal an alliance. 
 
 To conclude. One of the weightiest reasons for 
 that habitual abstinence from intervention in foreign 
 quarrels which Cobden used to preach so earnestly, 
 may be found in our prevalent and almost inevitable 
 ignorance. It is impossible that we should know 
 thoroughly, comprehensively, and to the bottom, the 
 rights of disputes between distant nations. It is per- 
 haps as difficult for us to be competent to judge 
 between contending sections in distant communities. 
 Our blood may boil at hearing of atrocities committed, 
 without being able to ascertain how those atrocities 
 were provoked, or how they may have been retaliated. 
 We cannot help sympathising with sufferers, and we 
 seldom pause to reflect that the suffering cause is not 
 always, nor exclusively, the righteous cause. Still 
 more, we may see clearly that great wrong is being 
 done, but be entirely in the dark as to how to set it 
 right, and be very liable to do mischief where our 
 sole aim is to do good, and prone to aggravate by our 
 misconceived intervention the very evils we are 
 thirsting to rectify. We rarely, moreover, remember 
 
FOREIGN POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN. 53 
 
 that all of us people as well as Governments, Her 
 Majesty's Opposition just as much as Her Majesty's 
 Ministers are apt, almost unavoidably apt, to derive 
 our information from special sources, often tainted or 
 partial sources, from correspondents of our own tone 
 of thought and feeling, from irritated travellers or 
 residents who are not careful to be accurate in their 
 reports. We can seldom know a case all round its 
 antecedents, its bearings, its surroundings, its probable 
 consequences. We are even now, with all our new 
 and extensive avenues of information, at the mercy of 
 the newspaper or the two or three newspapers we 
 read, just as those journals are dependent on the tone, 
 the leanings, and the talents of the special correspon- 
 dent they send out, just as ministers depend upon 
 the specialities of their consuls and ambassadors. We 
 have surely had warnings enough to this effect of late. 
 If it were not so, how could we account for the 
 astounding discrepancy of views and sympathies which 
 has severed Englishmen so widely during the last two 
 years a discrepancy which has so harassed and dis- 
 turbed our domestic peace ? x Two years ago, passions 
 here were so excited that we were almost on the eve 
 of going to war; and perhaps were only saved from 
 such calamity and sin by the fact that the nation did 
 not know which side to take nay, has not even yet 
 made up its mind as a whole whether to sympathise 
 with Turkey or her conquerors. War is a tre- 
 
 1 The same lesson might be gathered from the memory of the 
 American Civil War. 
 
54? FOREIGN POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 mendous thing surely a thing that only the most 
 absolute and complete knowledge of our premisses can 
 justify. 
 
 So much for the general principles bearing on this 
 mighty controversy. We may be allowed a few 
 closing words on their application to the case im- 
 mediately before us, which may guide us to a decision 
 as to which set of views and tendencies appears safest 
 and wisest. Seldom has a nation been so torn between 
 the two. We have just escaped being dragged into 
 war. We have not escaped being dragged into inter- 
 vention of the most active and portentous kind. Our 
 two most notable, and, for the time, most popular 
 ministers have taken the lead, and, in defiance of the 
 protests of the most eloquent and enthusiastic oppo- 
 sition, have been backed in their proceedings by a large 
 majority, and rewarded by the most clamorous applause 
 of the masses, and by the most signal honours that 
 Royalty could bestow. We may say, therefore indeed 
 we cannot help saying that what they have done 
 England has done has not condoned, but approved 
 and sanctioned. In this great Areopagus of States, 
 then, England, a year ago the great upholder of the 
 independence and integrity of the Ottoman Empire, 
 has sanctioned and shared in its partition ; has handed 
 over two reluctant provinces to Austria ; two fortresses, 
 a coveted port, and some trifling territory to Russia, 
 clearly against the wish of the Porte and the indignant 
 and armed protest of the inhabitants ; and has agreed 
 to the entire independence and severance of the 
 
FOREIGN POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN. 55 
 
 rebellious country out of whose ill-treatment the war 
 arose. She has prevented that country from being 
 large and strong enough to stand by her own strength, 
 as she certainly has not wisdom for self-government, 
 and has thus secured her autonomy being little more 
 than nominal, and probably far from beneficial. She 
 has at the same time succeeded in dragging back 
 another province, Eastern Roumelia, under the partial 
 control of Turkey, and has claimed praise for doing 
 so. She has committed the grave error of doing 
 nothing for the only very hopeful race in South- 
 Eastern Europe, whom she had encouraged to 
 expect much to say no more. Finally, she has in- 
 duced the Porte to hand over to her an unhealthy 
 island on the Syrian coast having been prepared to 
 seize it if the Sultan had ventured to refuse its peace- 
 able surrender. As an offset to these curious proceed- 
 ings, after sanctioning and aiding the Congress in 
 despoiling Turkey of nearly the whole of her Euro- 
 pean territories, distinctly and almost avowedly because 
 she was unable to retain them and utterly unfit to 
 govern them, she undertakes single-handed the pro- 
 tection and maintenance of the enormous range of 
 countries known as Turkey in Asia ; and this osten- 
 sibly not in the least in the interests of her protege, 
 but simply because the maintenance of this Empire, 
 notoriously the most scandalously and hopelessly in- 
 capable and cruel among nations called civilised, is 
 thought necessary as a bulwark for British India 
 against possible attack from Russia an attack which, 
 
5G .FOREIGN POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 in the opinion of nearly every competent statesman, 1 
 will come, if it ever comes, from an entirely different 
 quarter, and need not be at all dreaded even then ; 
 thus encountering a probable, proximate, most dis- 
 advantageous, and most costly conflict with a power- 
 ful adversary on the plea of warding off a distant and 
 unreal danger ; and doing this by guaranteeing and 
 supporting a rule so incurably and admittedly bad 
 that to keep one acre of God's earth or one tribe of 
 God's creatures under its sway one unnecessary year is 
 a crime with few parallels. It is true there is talk of 
 inducing and instructing the Porte to govern better, 
 to alter her nature and amend her ways, though few 
 know better than British Ministers that, if this inten- 
 tion be serious, it can only be realised by superseding 
 the Sultan and his Pashas, and governing Asia Minor 
 as we govern India in a word, taking possession of 
 Anatolia and Mesopotamia as well as Cyprus, and pro- 
 bably having to fight the Porte instead of defending 
 it. Do they contemplate such a scheme ? Dare they 
 undertake it ? How long would Great Britain sanction 
 it, or provide them with funds for carrying it out ? 
 If, on the contrary, it is a sham, not a serious inten- 
 
 1 Forty years ago Lord Hardinge declared that an invasion of 
 India by Eussia was only possible by one route, that of Herat 
 and Afghanistan, and that the obstacles to this route are so 
 great that practically it may be set down as a "political night- 
 mare." The Duke of Wellington endorsed this dictum. Lord 
 Northbrook said the same thing six weeks ago in the House of 
 Lords, adding, " I am supported in my views by the most 
 experienced of Indian administrators by Lord Canning, Lord 
 Mayo, and Lord Lawrence." 
 
FOREIGN POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN. 57 
 
 tion, but mere clouds of dust thrown in our eyes, then 
 few such deceptions have ever been practised on a 
 bewildered and confiding nation. 
 
 Could the opponents of an Imperial policy by pos- 
 sibility point to a complication of occurrences so aptly 
 illustrative of every objection they have set forth ? 
 
 UNIVERSITY] 
 
III. 
 
 THE ECHO OF THE ANTIPODES. 1 
 
 FAS est et ab hoste doceri. Still more permissible and 
 appropriate must it be to profit by the experience of 
 our children, because still closer must be the analogy 
 between the characters and the circumstances of those 
 so nearly allied by blood, and probably identical in so 
 many of their antecedents. I cannot but believe, 
 therefore, that much interest will attach to the follow- 
 ing contribution to some of our most imminent politi- 
 cal and social problems, which reached me a few days 
 ago, from one of a group of colonies which, no doubt, 
 is destined to a future of great prosperity and power. 
 The writer holds a position of eminence and wealth in 
 New South Wales, has made his home in that colony, 
 intends to live and die there, is a man of influence 
 among his fellow-citizens, and much concerned with 
 commercial and industrial undertakings, and, con- 
 sequently, well qualified to give us reliable information 
 on the subject in question. 
 
 "SYDNEY, NEW SOUTH WALES, 
 
 10^ March, 1875. 
 
 " DEAR SIR, If I venture to intrude myself upon you in this 
 letter, it is that, having perused with great interest your latest 
 
 1 Contemporary Review, July 1875. 
 
THE ECHO OF THE ANTIPODES. 59 
 
 work, * Rocks Ahead/ I considered that it might be gratifying 
 to you to hear ' A Voice from the Antipodes ' echo by an example 
 the truth of your vaticinations. We have in New South Wales 
 an Anglo-Saxon community, with all its energy and doggedness, 
 with all its virtues and its prejudices ; and, as far as we can 
 judge from its wealth, its population, and its influence upon 
 the markets of the world, one that, though still a colony, has 
 placed its foot upon the first round of the ladder of nationality ; 
 and it is a worthy study for the philosopher to see how that 
 nationality is shaping its future. In the year 1853 a constitu- 
 tion was granted to the colony, creating two Houses of Parlia- 
 ment the Senate, or Upper House, nominated by the Crown, 
 and an Assembly elected by the people. As the result of 
 continual amendment, the qualification for election to the 
 Assembly, being only a six months' residence in the electorate, 
 becomes almost universal suffrage more particularly as the 
 franchise attaches to lodgers as well as householders. Inasmuch 
 as the proposal that the University should return a member 
 has been always rejected, it is fair to assume that the numeri- 
 cal majority have no desire that education (simply as education) 
 should have a voice in their councils. The members of the 
 Assembly are not chosen on account of their pre-eminent talent, 
 or commanding wealth, or individual worth, but entirely from 
 personal influence, or their expressed accordance with the popu- 
 lar cry of the day. But it would be vain for any one, however 
 talented, influential, or wealthy, to seek to obtain a seat in the 
 Assembly, unless he bowed down before the Juggernaut of the 
 sovereign people, and avowed his sympathy with the ' working 
 man ; ' and yet, properly so called, the working man does not 
 exist in New South Wales. The hours of labour are but eight, 
 and wages vary according to the skill employed, from Is. to 2s. 
 (occasionally 2s. 6d.) per hour. These extreme rates, in a 
 country where bread is plentiful and cheap, meat only 4d. per lb., 
 and clothing not dearer than in Europe, are maintained by the 
 efforts of powerful trades-unions, with the knowledge that Par- 
 liament dare not propose any scheme of immigration, the effect 
 of which would be to bring competition to the colony and reduce 
 the rate of labour. It must not be imagined that the climate 
 will not permit of more than eight hours' daily labour, for most 
 men work on their own account after hours, and will occasionally 
 deign to do so for their employers, under the temptation of 
 
60 THE ECHO OF THE ANTIPODES. 
 
 extra pay. Land in the suburbs being cheap, a very large pro- 
 portion of the labouring classes are their own landlords, and 
 many, by the aid of building societies, have erected neat and 
 pretty cottages, surrounded by well-cultivated gardens. Of 
 course a large proportion of the amount received for wages is 
 handed over to the union, and I will venture to quote a few 
 examples as indicative of the despotic power these associations 
 exercise : The owner of one of our coasting steamers will not 
 employ men who are members of the union, and very recently 
 when the steamer arrived into port she commenced discharging 
 cargo at a wharf where union men were employed ; very shortly 
 after, the secretary of the union went to the wharf, and forbade 
 the men on shore to receive cargo from the vessel. Again, the 
 steamer Rapide being under repairs, the captain observed that 
 one of the men employed was an habitual idler, and one day 
 on finishing his work desired him not to return : the following 
 morning all the rest of the men were absent, and intimated their 
 intention of not returning until their fellow-unionist was taken 
 on again. In the iron trade, the men, after compelling the eight 
 hours' concession upon their employers (without diminution in 
 the rate of wages), determined that the eight hours should be 
 broken, one for breakfast and one for dinner, instead of having 
 only one break as formerly. The masters being aware that the 
 continual blowing off furnaces would entail a certain loss, de- 
 clined to concede, and all the works were closed ; the strike 
 lasted about three months, and was friendly arranged by an 
 agreement that, during six months in the year the men should 
 have only one break in the day, and two breaks in the day 
 during the other six months. Some time since the coal miners 
 struck work, and the strike, it was arranged by the delegates of 
 the union, should be terminated by all the collieries in the country 
 (irrespective of the greater or less facilities of any one colliery) 
 agreeing to charge the public an uniform price of 14s. per ton 
 for screened coal, of which 5s. per ton should be paid to the 
 coal-getter, his wages rising or falling 3d. per ton as the price 
 of coal to the public varied by a shilling a ton. I might multi- 
 ply instances innumerable to show that in the capital, where the 
 unions exist in greatest force, all real power is in their hands, 
 and at the last general election they returned one of their body 
 to Parliament, and who sits as their paid delegate. It is not 
 then extraordinary that in constituencies thus constituted, the 
 
THE ECHO OF THE ANTIPODES. 61 
 
 educated classes should as a rule (though there are many worthy 
 exceptions) hold themselves aloof from the political arena. The 
 result is exactly what you have predicted, that there is no party 
 but merely a struggle between the Ins and Outs as to who shall 
 enjoy power, and the parliamentary loaves and fishes, both sides 
 rivals in personal abuse, but both following exactly the same 
 policy. The State is certainly doing its utmost to place within 
 the reach of all the advantages of education, but in consequence 
 of religious dissensions that education is of a very elementary 
 character, for the study of history and all cognate subjects upon 
 which differences of opinion exist is prohibited. It is quite 
 absurd, therefore, to consider that the colony is educating the 
 rising generation up to the extent of its political power, for it 
 is left in the most complete ignorance of all economic questions, 
 which are not even attended to in the addresses of the candi- 
 dates for legislative honours, for the best of all reasons, that 
 but few understand them. As might be expected, the Assembly 
 are exceedingly impatient at the control of the Upper House as 
 a co-ordinate branch of the legislature ; and when a measure 
 has been rejected by the voice of the Senate, often resort to 
 popular clamour to compel the Upper House to give way ; but 
 the innate vigour in the life of the young colony is such that it 
 continues to advance and prosper, not aided by, but in spite of 
 its despotic democracy. All contractors and heads of depart- 
 ments acknowledge that there is ample work at the present 
 moment for at least eight thousand able-bodied men, which 
 means an immigration of about thirty thousand souls ; but 
 notwithstanding the urgent requirements of the colony, not one 
 member of the Assembly can be found to raise his voice in 
 favour of immigration. The colony exports over a million tons 
 of coal, the supply of which, appears to be absolutely inexhaus- 
 tible, the best hematite iron ore, lime and clay are found in 
 close proximity to some of the pits ; copper and tin ores abound, 
 capital is abundant, but the capitalist is afraid of investing in 
 manufacturing industries, as he would be completely at the 
 mercy of the men in his employ. To give an example : a ship- 
 builder has now a vessel on the stocks, and was offered a very 
 handsome price for it if he would engage to complete it by a 
 fixed date. The shipbuilder knew that the work could and 
 would be done by the date required, but dared not make the 
 contract, feeling sure that if it came by any chance to the ears 
 
G2 TIIU ECHO OF THE ANTIPODES. 
 
 of the union they would take advantage of the circumstance to 
 raise the rate of wages upon him. I believe that what I have 
 written will be quite sufficient, without further occupying your 
 valuable time, to show that you have certainly not exagger- 
 ated your prognostications of England's future." 
 
 The above communication needs no commentary, 
 but I may perhaps be allowed to supplement it by a 
 reference to one or two events wbich have occurred 
 since the publication of the first edition of " Rocks 
 Ahead," which, if I am not mistaken, are gradually 
 leading thoughtful minds to believe that there may be 
 more sober truth and Jess flighty fancy in the gloomy 
 prognostics of that volume than most of its readers 
 were originally inclined to admit. 
 
 In a note at p. 80, I ventured to predict that "the 
 year 1874 bade fair to be a year of conflict and of 
 strikes, which would waste a vast amount of capital 
 and of earnings, teach us many lessons, and clinch 
 many of the arguments of this paper." Whether it 
 has taught us many lessons may be questioned, but 
 assuredly it has done everything else that was antici- 
 pated from it. It has been pre-eminently a year of 
 strikes, and of hopeless, gigantic, and wasteful ones, 
 in this country ; and in others also, so differently 
 situated as, one might have fancied, to have been 
 exempted from our troubles. The Sydney letter just 
 quoted shows us the operation of trades unions just 
 as selfish, just as cruel, just as anti-social, short- 
 sighted, and suicidal, in a new country lacking labour, 
 cramped and kept back for want of labour, and where 
 labour in consequence can, in a great measure, com- 
 
THE ECHO OF THE ANTIPODES. 63 
 
 in and its own terms as in an old country like 
 England, where labour is, or is alleged to be, redundant, 
 and therefore the soi-disant " slave of capital." 
 America has been suffering from strikes so menacing 
 and so prolonged that the troops, even in that land of 
 democracy, have been called out to repress disturbances. 
 The Philadelphia correspondent of one of the New York 
 journals writes : l 
 
 " Scarcely any other topic has been prevalent in business 
 circles during the past week than the all-absorbing one of the 
 coal strike, the situation at the mines, the departure of troops 
 from this and other points to the scene of trouble, and the con- 
 flicting rumours constantly received by wire as to the actual 
 condition of affairs. Probably at no period since the war has 
 there been so gravely serious a position of affairs in our country 
 as that now existing between the various labour unions and the 
 industries with which they are connected. Here we have the 
 largest manufacturing city in the world, with positively no more 
 than three weeks' supply of coal on hand, even for household 
 uses. From the interior the most reliable information exists 
 that few if any of the furnaces and other ironworks have any 
 fuel, even for present uses, while their previous production has 
 been seriously interfered with. It is estimated that not less than 
 one hundred thousand persons, and even five hundred millions of 
 capital, in this commonwealth alone, are to-day producing noth- 
 ing. At the ordinary price of skilled labour, 2 dollars per day, 
 this number of persons unemployed represents a daily loss of 
 200,000 dollars, a loss which no community can stand. The 
 additional loss to capital by injury and deterioration of idle 
 machinery, and loss of interest, will swell the aggregate damage 
 to one of frightful proportions, and one which must soon be 
 sensibly felt by the general public. The settlement of the labour 
 
 1 Other papers add the calculation that the value of the 
 capital lying idle in Pennsylvania is about five hundred millions 
 of dollars, and the loss of interest not less than 75,000 dollars 
 per day. 
 
6-fc THE ECHO OF THE ANTIPODES. 
 
 troubles of the country is now the subject which should and must 
 engage the earnest attention of all classes of citizens, or we are 
 inevitably drifting into a condition of anarchy and lawlessness, 
 which will be followed by a more serious financial panic than 
 that from which we had hoped we were recovering. There are 
 grave wrongs on both sides to be settled, and nothing seems 
 more likely to secure any permanent relief than a well-digested 
 plan of arbitration in all labour disputes, which shall be com- 
 pulsory on both parties. The latest reports as to the coal strike 
 indicate a possibility of a settlement, but in other branches 
 among ironworkers, weavers, glass - blowers, and the very 
 numerous tradesmen on strike there seems no greater prospect 
 of improvement than a month since. To the capitalist and 
 manufacturer the situation is, therefore, one of extreme con- 
 cern, and through them reflected on the entire business com- 
 munity." 
 
 Lastly (to pass over several struggles of a similar 
 character, but of slighter dimensions, which have taken 
 place in Belgium, Germany, and France), the great 
 South Wales conflict in the iron and coal trade, which 
 has absorbed so much public attention this spring, has 
 presented features unusually disheartening. We have 
 no desire to enter upon any points which might excite 
 or renew controversy or painful feeling, or to express 
 opinions on subjects on which, perhaps, only those on 
 the spot, and who have followed the subject in all its 
 details and antecedents, are qualified to pronounce. 
 The lock-out may have been an injudicious and pos- 
 sibly an unwarrantable step ; more patience might 
 have been shown at the outset, and fuller information 
 might have been vouchsafed even to unreasonable 
 men ; the conduct of the union leaders may have been 
 less condemnable than appears. But three or four 
 features stand out, and have stood out, undisputed 
 
THE ECHO OF THE ANTIPODES. 65 
 
 from the outset. It was obvious to all qualified out- 
 side observers from the first that the men had no case 
 and no chance of success ; the essential facts were 
 patent to the whole world ; it is difficult to believe 
 that the colliers or their leaders really disbelieved the 
 statements of the masters as to prices and profits ; the 
 subject was one on which (if on any) the working men 
 were especially qualified to judge ; not a single organ 
 of the independent press failed to point out the mis- 
 take of the colliers, and to prove that they were hope- 
 lessly in the wrong. Yet all this was of no avail. 
 The struggle was one of singular obstinacy. Numbers 
 wished to return to work on the offered terms ; but 
 whenever a meeting was held to pass a resolution and 
 to open negotations to this effect, the windy oratory of 
 some voluble speaker re-fanned the flame, re-awakened 
 the flagging passions, and overpowered the awakening 
 good sense of the auditors, and the meeting ended by 
 determining to return to another period of distress and 
 idleness. This went on week after week, in spite of the 
 efforts of Lord Aberdare, Mr Brassey, and other tried 
 friends of the colliers, to guide them to a wiser sense of 
 their own interests, and a truer view of facts every week 
 sacrificing 90,000 to the workers, and incalculable 
 sums to their employers, plunging the labourers deeper 
 and deeper into suffering and debt ; and it was not 
 till the retail traders could no longer give credit ; till 
 the masters had been forced to announce that any 
 return to work must be at 15 per cent., and not at 10 
 per cent, reduction, that the conflict was given up, and 
 
 E 
 
66 THE ECHO OF THE ANTIPODES. 
 
 then only gradually, slowly, and partially. From the 
 first there was no aid (or none worth speaking of) 
 from union funds, given or promised ; from the first 
 there was no hope of victory ; from the first the work- 
 men could quote no facts or calculations to afford even 
 a colourable justification of their proceedings ; from 
 the first there was the experience of two years ago to 
 warn and to instruct them ; yet from first to last did 
 every public meeting held allow itself to be turned 
 aside from the obviously wise and inevitable course, by 
 exhortations addressed solely to the feelings. The 
 millions wasted constitute the least sad feature of this 
 sad history ; * the only bright feature is the singu- 
 
 1 The conflict lasted nearly twenty-two weeks, and the num- 
 ber of miners, &c., directly out of work was upwards of 58,000, 
 besides many more, probably 12,000, employed in subsidiary 
 labour in all 70,000. We have now lying before us more than 
 one careful calculation of the loss of earnings to the men, and of 
 interest on capital to the masters resulting from this disastrous 
 contest. The following, from the Merthyr Express, includes all 
 collateral losses, and may perhaps be regarded as extreme if not 
 extravagant : 
 
 Coalowners in sale of coal, . . 2,100,000 
 
 Ironmasters in iron and steel, . . 2,150,000 
 
 Railway companies, . . . 264,000 
 
 Waggon hire, .... 100,000 
 
 Eoyalties, 150,000 
 
 Dock dues, 100,000 
 
 Maintenance of pits, plant, horses, &c., 250,000 
 
 Local trade, 1,000,000 
 
 Workmen's wages, direct, . . 3,000,000 
 
 Relief administered by Guardians, . 25,000 
 
 Total, 9,139,000 
 
 Lord Aberdare, in a letter to the South Wales Daily News, 
 
THE ECHO OF THE ANTIPODES. C7 
 
 larly orderly and peaceful behaviour of the workmen 
 out of employ behaviour so different from what it 
 has often been elsewhere, and from what it used to be 
 in similar circumstances in former years. But for 
 those who hoped that the labouring and well-paid 
 poor the masses of the new constituencies would 
 prove in real emergencies their fitness to exercise the 
 franchise, to recognize their true friends, to manifest 
 the courage of individuality, and to withstand the 
 misrepresentations of fluent declaimers the lessons 
 of the conflict just ended have been dispiriting indeed. 
 
 We see nothing in all this wherewith to reproach 
 the Welsh miners, no reasonable matter for surprise. 
 Reproach should be reserved for the stump orators and 
 union leaders who so successfully excited and misled 
 them ; surprise, and perhaps some specific condemna- 
 tion, for the politicians, of whatever party, who, in 
 ] 867 and afterwards, so resolutely maintained that 
 working men everywhere were now far too sober- 
 minded and enlightened to be excited by stump 
 oratory, or led astray by fallacious misrepresentations, 
 and were capable of standing firm to their own know- 
 ledge and judgment against the swaying sympathy of 
 surrounding and shouting numbers. Partisans now 
 are heard to express surprise and dismr / at the results 
 
 shows that the loss of wages to the men must have reached 
 3,000,000. The loss to capitalists is, he says, incalculable. 
 
 The ordinary estimate to all parties is 5,000,000, and this will 
 probably be found not far from the truth. 
 
68 THE ECHO OF THE ANTIPODES. 
 
 of the late elections at Stoke, Stafford, Merthyr, 
 Stroud, and other boroughs, who were among the fore- 
 most to insist a very few years ago upon quadrupling 
 or sextupling their constituencies. Blind guides ! to 
 affect amazement at the first fruits of their own work ! 
 In what country, I would ask, would an uneducated 
 and unprepared class, thus suddenly invested with 
 potentially supreme power, have acted with so much 
 discretion, or wrought so little mischief? Let us 
 look a little in detail at what was done by the Act of 
 1867. In nearly every one of the boroughs whose 
 elections have caused disappointment and anxiety to 
 the nation the constituency was not enlarged, but 
 wholly changed. The former electors included (to 
 speak broadly) the whole of the educated classes : 
 the great mass of the new electors must therefore have 
 consisted of the wholly or comparatively uneducated 
 classes. Yet the new ones are four or five to one of 
 the old. That is, the electoral supremacy was virtually 
 wrested from the men of trained political intelligence, 
 and given over, by a vast preponderance, into the hands 
 (to express the fact as guardedly as possible) of men 
 who had not had any such intelligent training. To 
 say that the borough electors of England and Wales 
 were suddenly raised from 514,000 in 1866 to 
 1,452,000 in 1875 (or nearly 200 per cent.), is only 
 a most inadequate and disguising statement of the 
 case, for that only says that every elector had two fresh 
 ones placed on the register ^to countervail his vote. 
 We must look at individual instances, where the work- 
 
THE ECHO OF THE ANTIPODES. 
 
 G9 
 
 ing classes are strongest and most concentrated ; and 
 here often the new out-number, eclipse, and neutralize 
 the old in the proportion of five, six, sometimes eight 
 and nine to one. We append a table giving the pro- 
 portions in which the electors have been multiplied by 
 what my readers will, I think, now admit, I had a 
 right to call "the revolution" of 1867. 
 
 BATE AT WHICH THE ELECTORS HAD INCREASED BETWEEN 
 1866 AND 1875. 
 
 Under 
 
 50 and 
 
 100 and 
 
 300 and 
 
 500 
 
 50 
 
 under 
 
 under 
 
 under 
 
 per cent. 
 
 per cent. 
 
 100 per cent. 
 
 300 per cent. 
 
 500 per cent. 
 
 and above 
 
 in 
 
 in 
 
 in 
 
 in 
 
 in 
 
 5 
 
 38 
 
 107 
 
 22 
 
 14 
 
 Boroughs. 
 
 Boroughs. ! Boroughs. 
 
 Boroughs. 
 
 Boroughs. 
 
 To those who look at the matter from a purely party 
 point of view, it may be a sufficient sedative with 
 alarmist temperaments to reply, that, of two Parlia- 
 ments elected under household franchise, one returned 
 a large Liberal and the next a large Conservative 
 majority. To others, whose uneasiness lies in the 
 direction of diminished reverence for property, it is 
 enough to remark that probably no Parliament ever 
 contained so many plutocrats as that of 1875. But 
 we may explain our meaning without personality 
 (except, perhaps, one which will be with most people 
 its own excuse) by reference to a few special returns. 
 The constituency of Merthyr Tydvil sprung up from 
 1387 to 15,866, or about twelve-fold, and Merthyr 
 returned Mr Richards, an eminently respectable Non 
 conformist minister, in the place of Mr Bruce, an 
 
70 THE ECHO OF THE ANTIPODES. 
 
 eminent and experienced statesman and Cabinet min- 
 ister. Morpeth increased its constituency from 485 
 to 5,559 or upwards of eleven-fold, and has exchanged 
 another Home Secretary, veteran and popular, for a 
 working-men's candidate, thoroughly respectable and 
 trustworthy, we believe, but as yet untrained. Wolver- 
 hampton, indeed, has quintupled its number of electors, 
 but retains its old representatives, and so in the main 
 has Wigan. But poor Stroud, with more than a, four- 
 fold augmentation of the electorate, is so disorganised, 
 that, since the lamented Mr Winterbotham's death, it 
 has never been able to get a representative at all. 
 While, to crown the list, Stoke -upon- Trent, on the 
 retirement of Mr Melly (a member of sufficiently ad- 
 vanced political opinions), has replaced him by Dr 
 Kenealy, who was certainly not elected on account of 
 any political opinions at all. But then the Stoke 
 which Mr Melly represented had 3,500 electors, while 
 the Stoke which is contented to be represented by Dr 
 Kenealy has 19,500 and, therefore, in no rational 
 sense can the two electorates be said to be the same. 
 It may very well be that the whole of the 6,110 who 
 voted for Kenealy may have been made by Mr Dis- 
 raeli's Reform Act. 
 
 Now, what does Dr Kenealy 's return indicate and 
 prove ? Circumstances in this case happily enable us 
 to speak with perfect plainness, and at the same time 
 without offence. EITHER the electors of Stoke (by no 
 means a peculiarly uneducated or unintelligent set ; 
 perhaps rather the reverse) really believed the Claim- 
 
THE ECHO OF THE ANTIPODES. 71 
 
 ant to be Tichborne, and his advocate the gallant 
 defender of an oppressed man that is, they were con- 
 vinced of the truth of a position which two Courts of 
 Justice, after investigations of unequalled searching- 
 ness and duration, had pronounced to be unquestion- 
 ably false a pronouncement which the House of 
 Commons confirmed with a unanimity quite unparal- 
 leled, for the only dissentients were Dr Kenealy and 
 his seconder a conclusion which, after the summing 
 up of the Lord Chief Justice, it seems impossible for 
 rational rninds to withstand. In this case it is not 
 too much to assume that men who believe such a 
 position are not unlikely to believe anything in spite 
 of any evidence and any arguments ; their intelligence 
 and fitness for the franchise must be far below the 
 level which their friends have hitherto maintained. 
 OR, as no doubt was the case with many, they sup- 
 posed, with the rest of us, that the Claimant was 
 Orton ; but his defender was popular just because his 
 cause was bad because, in fact, here was a daring 
 lawyer who had stood up against the world for a 
 butcher against a baronet in short, Dr Kenealy's 
 election was the result of a class feeling of the very 
 worst sort. Oil, the real pervading impression assigned 
 by Punch to the mass was the correct one, however 
 dim and self-contradictory : " I don't care whether 
 he was Tichborne, or Castro, or Orton, or who he was ; 
 but I don't like to see a poor man kept out of his 
 rights." OR, finally, and with too many, the motive 
 impulse of their vote was simply that they had found 
 
72 THE ECHO OF THE ANTIPODES. 
 
 a man (not himself of too spotless antecedents) with 
 audacity and pluck to assail, on behalf of one of their 
 own order, judges, juries, gentlemen, nobles, hostile 
 witnesses, an outvoting Parliament any one, in short, 
 however high in reverence and station in a foul- 
 mouthed fashion, which almost sanctioned or threw 
 into the shade their own too customary language. In 
 a word, the popularity and success of Dr Kenealy at 
 Stoke, whether regarded as the product of deficient 
 intelligence or distorted sentiment, are almost equally 
 of evil omen ; for there is not the faintest reason for 
 supposing the Stoke constituency to be an exceptional 
 one, or that any large borough might not do as Stoke 
 has done ; and if we are right in this assumption, 
 then we have no security whatever that on any ques- 
 tion class, personal, religious, international, or other 
 the vast majority of the constituency may not, 
 swayed by a coarse species of oratory, arrive at deci- 
 sions utterly at variance with evidence, sound sense, 
 wise policy, and the national interest, or even safety. 
 There is no reason in the world why half a dozen 
 topics (more naturally stimulating than the Tichborne 
 case) might not, under the management of a skilful 
 declaimer (and there are scores far abler than Dr 
 Kenealy), get extraordinary hold upon the popular 
 mind, be selected as the crucial question at elections, 
 sweep over the length and breadth of the land, and 
 throw all others into the background. Nor, obviously, 
 if we are to judge by Stoke, is there any reason why, 
 on each one of these, the great body of tLe working- 
 
THE ECHO OF THE ANTIPODES. 73 
 
 classes the new electorate should not be misled 
 into a decision as absurd as the one just sent us as a 
 warning. Nor. in the last place, is there the slightest 
 doubt that if they should be so misled, they will be 
 able to place the representative of their delusion at the 
 head of the poll. 
 
 It appears to me that not one of these positions can 
 be gainsaid or weakened, and that, as a whole, they 
 are full of evil omen. In 1867 you placed in the 
 hands of the uneducated masses the power of return- 
 ing whatever members of Parliament they please : in 
 1875 they showed you that, under excitement, not of 
 the fiercest or grandest order even, they may exercise 
 that power in a fashion that seemed incredible to all 
 men of intelligence may endorse enthusiastically a 
 monstrous delusion which no subsequent delusion can 
 surpass or even match. It will be said, " This was a 
 purely accidental and abnormal phrenzy : the artisans 
 are not as a rule given to such aberrations ; look how 
 few candidates of their own class they returned." 
 True, I reply, they do not and will not usually go so 
 far astray, and they have not very great trust in their 
 own leaders ; but grant that a man arises among them 
 with character to gain their confidence, and eloquence 
 to command their allegiance and sway their minds 
 and the supposition is possible enough and where 
 will be your antidote to the supremacy which you have 
 given them at the poll ? " You are conjuring up 
 imaginary dangers," others will allege ; " the mass ot 
 the householders admitted by the Act of 1867 are far 
 
74 THE ECHO OF THE ANTIPODES. 
 
 shrewder than those at Stoke ; and, after all, where 
 are the questions on which they will listen to the non- 
 sense of damaged and extravagant orators ? " Again 
 I answer : Do you not in your heart believe that if 
 by any legal flaw the Claimant had escaped his doom 
 and been set free, he might have been returned to 
 Parliament by fifty constituencies at least more than 
 Lamartine in 1848, or Thiers in 1872, across the Chan- 
 nel ? And as to questions regarding which the majority 
 of borough electors might on occasions be aroused to 
 an excitement at once discreditable, ignorant, irra- 
 tional, sweeping, and pernicious, what do you think of 
 No Popery, the Contagious Diseases Act, Masters and 
 Servants Act, the Conspiracy Act, and the like ? 
 What would be the prospect of a general election, if 
 the country were adequately harangued by itinerant 
 declaimers, when a second Trent affair was the upper- 
 most topic in the public mind ? And, to conclude, 
 who can be blind to the fact that a vast majority of 
 our population are far less well off than they fancy 
 they have a claim to be, and than they are satisfied 
 that certain social, legal, or political changes, or hazard- 
 ous anti-economical experiments might make them, 
 that they are dangerously prone to listen to eloquence 
 of the shallowest sort on these topics, and that skilful 
 and plausible orators might easily, in periods of distress, 
 combine all this floating feeling into a focus, and per- 
 haps even drive it into united action ? " Struggles 
 where the very framework of modern society is threat- 
 ened are as ominous for ourselves as for our neighbours. 
 
THE ECHO OF THE ANTIPODES. 75 
 
 The history of trade unionism, for example, is the 
 history of a gradually spreading organisation which 
 tends to unite the working classes of the country 
 against the capitalists. The ideal at which it aims 
 would be one in which the labourers of all countries 
 should be united in one vast alliance. The workmen 
 who begin to see the danger of foreign competition 
 answer, not by abandoning their own combinations,but 
 by endeavouring to bring foreign workmen into har- 
 mony with themselves. The attempts made in that 
 direction have hitherto been feeble ; but they have a 
 tendency to extend. However much we may laugh 
 at the nonsense talked at Geneva conferences, they 
 indicate the spread of a discontented feeling beyond 
 the limits of any one country, and a disposition in the 
 working classes throughout the world to regard them- 
 selves as natural allies in a struggle with their em- 
 ployers. Questions, such as we have been recently 
 discussing, about extension of the franchise and the 
 disestablishment of the Church, may amuse workmen 
 for a time ; but they naturally feel that they could 
 use the power of which they are becoming conscious 
 for purposes much more closely affecting their own 
 interests. The belief that a man can get better food 
 and lodging as the reward of a successful agitation is 
 much more exciting than any prospect of purely 
 political changes." 
 
 Dangers that are comparatively insignificant when 
 single, magnify enormously in dimensions when two 
 or three come upon us simultaneously or in combina- 
 
76 THE ECHO OF THE ANTIPODES. 
 
 tion. Given two bad harvests in succession, a dull or 
 failing trade in many branches, a couple of leaders 
 moderately fluent and skilled in organization, and 
 unions with treasury chests tolerably full, and we may 
 then begin to see with some amazement what we did 
 when we gave over the electoral supremacy of England 
 to a majority of householders, of whom the 6,110 who 
 voted for Kenealy are not unfair samples. 
 
 Our parochial and municipal representative bodies 
 are not usually regarded as models of enlarged or 
 enlightened wisdom. Yet if only we voted for the 
 empire on as safe and sagacious a principle as that 
 which we follow in voting for a parish ! if only we 
 elected our House of Commons as rationally as we 
 elect our vestries ! we might escape some grave perils 
 and some startling anomalies. I never like giving 
 arguments in my own words when I can avail myself 
 of better and weightier words by others. I will there- 
 fore crave permission here to quote (largely abridged) 
 a letter which appeared several weeks ago in the Pall 
 Mall Gazette, and which seems to me to need no 
 addition, and to admit of no refutation. 
 
 " SIR, To study my countrymen, I often go to that assembly 
 which Sir Henry Maine tells us is far older than either Parlia- 
 ment or Monarchy the parish vestry. I there can become 
 acquainted with the lowest class of voters, and see what sort of 
 men our future masters are likely to prove. Scarcely less in- 
 structive, perhaps, are those elections to the local boards of 
 health which from one end of the country to the other have just 
 been held. In these great weight is given to wealth and to 
 wisdom, for, in spite of all the rich fools and poor saints that can 
 be brought forward to refute me, wisdom is, I maintain, the 
 
THE ECHO OF THE ANTIPODES. 77 
 
 companion of wealth, and not of poverty. For the most part, 
 the man who has saved a pound is wiser than the man who has 
 not saved a penny ; the man who has a good coat on his back is 
 wiser than the man who is in rags ; the man who has a good 
 roof above his head is wiser than the man who lives in a hovel. 
 We may carry it further, and say that there is more wisdom to 
 be found in a house of eight rooms than in a house of four ; and 
 that he who can afford to pay a rent of 60 is likely to be a 
 wiser man than he who can only afford to pay a rent of 30. 
 In a local board of health election, then, it would be reasonable 
 to expect that the more intelligent classes would, without much 
 trouble, carry the day ; for while in the parliamentary election 
 a man of wealth has but one vote, in a board of health election 
 he may have no fewer than twelve. It so happens that I have 
 myself just taken an active part in one of these elections, and 
 though we fought under the most favourable circumstances, and 
 though there was a singular agreement among the larger house- 
 holders, yet our victory was but a narrow one. Had we voted 
 for men to provide us with pure water and well-ventilated 
 sewers on the same plan as that on which we vote for men to 
 provide us with those trifling matters an army, a navy, or laws, 
 we should have been hopelessly defeated. 
 
 " All growing villages and towns are, I hold, in one of three 
 states. They have either had a visitation of typhoid fever, or 
 they are having it, or they are going to have it. "We, happily, 
 have had our visitation. The lesson was a very sharp one, but 
 it has left us those of us who are left, that is to say better 
 citizens, and far more alive to the duties which attach to us as 
 members of a community. A few years ago it was with us a 
 reproach to a man to take part in parish matters. It is now an 
 honour. For years the elections to the board of health had 
 excited no interest. Their proceedings, indeed, from time to 
 time amused us, as we read in our local paper that one member 
 had threatened to punch another's head or pull his nose. Mean- 
 while, this ignorant board was quietly turning all the streams 
 into open sewers, and, to meet the needs of the rapidly growing 
 population, had half poisoned the pure supply of water which we 
 got from the chalk by mixing with it the landspring water 
 drawn from beneath a large market-garden highly dressed with 
 London manure. If London half poisoned us, we in our turn 
 did our best to poison London. An ingenious market-gardener 
 
78 THE ECHO OF THE ANTIPODES. 
 
 was allowed to tap the drain that came from our hospital a 
 hospital in which our fever cases are nursed and to turn the 
 sewage on to his watercress beds. But I need not go into 
 further details. The death-rate steadily rose, rents as steadily 
 fell, houses stood empty, the cemetery was enlarged, the under- 
 takers looked cheerful ; we talked of mysterious dispensations, 
 but for a time we blamed the board but little, ourselves not at' 
 all. We had, indeed, at last begun to make a stir, and had 
 done something, when there came upon us an outbreak of 
 typhoid fever. In a few weeks over 300 persons were struck 
 down with it, and in that year fevers carried off between forty 
 and fifty. The Local Government Board sent down one of 
 their medical inspectors. He did not confine his attention to 
 our foul ditches, our unventilated sewers, our impure water 
 supply. Bad though these were, he was bold enough to show 
 us that we ourselves were almost worse. We had neglected our 
 plainest duties by so long leaving to the ignorant the care of the 
 health of the whole community. He gave us some lessons in 
 sanitary matters as admirable as they were simple, and urged us 
 to form a sanitary association. This we at once did. We in- 
 structed ourselves, and by means of pamphlets and broad-sheets 
 we did all we could to instruct our neighbours. When the next 
 election came round, we carried in two of the best members of 
 our association. 
 
 " The opposition that had been organized now for the first 
 time looked formidable, and the publicans, with one bright 
 exception, were to a man against us. If I am not mistaken in 
 my numbers, we had an embattled phalanx of no fewer than 
 fifty-one publicans to fight. Each side worked its hardest. The 
 enemy took to prophesying, and we took to facts. The parish 
 was canvassed from house to house as it had never been canvassed 
 before. In the course of the canvassing I happened to come 
 across a French refugee who lives in the parish. He flatly 
 refused to vote at all, as the voting was not by universal suffrage. 
 In vain I pointed out that as the occupier of a house he was surely 
 entitled to secure for his house a good supply of pure water. 
 He did not recognize, he loftily replied, houses or property. He 
 knew of nothing but men. As he did not vote as a man, he 
 would not vote at all. Well, sir, to cut a long story short, we 
 carried three out of four seats, but we carried them by very hard 
 work and by small majorities. Had we been voting not for 
 
THE ECHO OF THE ANTIPODES. 79 
 
 members of a local board, Imt for members of the great council of 
 the empire, we should have been hopelessly beaten. We fought 
 with success in a great measure because we fought with con- 
 fidence, and we fought with confidence because we knew that 
 intelligence would not be swamped by mere numbers. We had 
 left, indeed, nothing undone to win the votes of the smallest 
 voters, and not a few we did secure. We put a plain statement 
 of facts before them, but we found that the printing-press was 
 no fair match for the pot-house. 
 
 u Now, sir, if the scene of this contest had been Stoke, and if 
 Dr Kenealy had chosen to put himself forward as a candidate 
 for the board of health of that town, I have no doubt that 
 neither his resemblance to Cromwell and Milton nor his own 
 impudence would have saved him from utter defeat. The men 
 of property, the men of character, the men of sense, the men 
 who had shown strength of mind to overcome the temptations 
 of the present, and to lay up for the future, the men who had not 
 eaten or drunk up to their earnings, but had begun with small 
 savings, and had seen these small savings grow into large savings, 
 would have all gone eagerly and heartily into a contest where 
 their worth and their knowledge would not be swamped by the 
 ignorance of a mob. The day may come when some monstrous 
 delusion, some lie gross as a mountain, open, palpable, may 
 throughout England seize on the lowest and largest body of 
 voters as a class, as it has lately seized on the new voters of 
 Stoke. Should such a storm of passionate prejudice sweep over 
 the land, the men of common sense, the men who have made 
 England what it is, would, if they tried to stem it, find them- 
 selves clean swept away. Parish politics have often been a 
 byword among us. I, for my part, in my search after political 
 wisdom, would rather watch the people voting in their parishes 
 than study all the works of all the philosophers who have begun 
 by studying, not men, but Man. I am, Sir, your obedient 
 servant, A PARISH POLITICIAN. 
 
 " April 20*A." 
 
 For dangers such as those to which I have for the 
 second time ventured, Cassandra-like, to call the 
 attention of my countrymen, there are obviously but 
 two safeguards, the spread of education and of property 
 
80 THE ECHO OF THE ANTIPODES. 
 
 extensively among the labouring classes. But are 
 those safeguards adequate ? Are they coming ? and 
 will they come in time ? Is the education we are 
 giving of the right sort, and given to the people who 
 need it ? And is the accumulation of property be- 
 coming the characteristic of our well-paid artizans ? 
 For my part I can scarcely rely on the timeliness or 
 efficacy of a medicine gingerly administered in 1875, 
 and not even expected to operate till 1890 ; and how 
 far have the extraordinary wages paid for the last few 
 years gone to turn our mechanics and operatives into 
 capitalists ? What proportion of the millions dis- 
 tributed has gone with the savings banks, and what 
 to the publican and sinner ? 
 
IV. 
 
 A GRAVE PERPLEXITY BEFORE US. 
 
 MANY persons especially practical men, busy men, 
 and men charged with the toils and difficulties of 
 administration are prone to fancy that it is useless 
 and unwise to call attention to " rocks ahead " un- 
 less they are close upon us, or unless we have some 
 distinct and well-digested remedy or safeguard to 
 propose. Our rulers especially, whether executive 
 or legislative, are apt to resent such embarrassing and 
 meddlesome forecasting, and to snub and silence the 
 over-anxious prophets of danger who indulge therein. 
 " Sufficient to the day," they tell us, " is the evil 
 thereof let the future take care of itself." 
 
 There are several reasons why I do not share and 
 cannot approve this habit of thought and feeling, and 
 why I deem it shallow, indolent, and noxious. In 
 the first place, dangers which threaten us in the 
 future often take their origin in the action or the 
 negligence of the day that is passing over us. The long 
 years that usually elapse between the seed-time and 
 the harvest of irreparable mischief easily lay vigilance 
 to sleep, and fan us into a false security which is 
 full of peril. These difficulties, which might have 
 
 F 
 
82 A GRAVE PERPLEXITY BEFORE US. 
 
 been readily met and conquered if boldly faced as 
 soon as they were perceived, grow into giants if 
 foolishly denied, or hidden from the blind, or fled 
 from by the cowardly. We may be torn to pieces by 
 the eagle which we could have smashed in the egg, or 
 by the tiger which it would have been easy to grapple 
 with while yet a cub. Rocks ahead, which mean 
 shipwreck if unobserved by the look-out man on the 
 prow or at the masthead, are without risk if recog- 
 nised in time for the vessel to cast anchor or to 
 modify her course. To drop metaphor, administrative 
 dangers may be creeping upon the nation with rapid 
 steps, silent and insidious, and therefore practically 
 unnoticed, which it is not even now too early to con- 
 front or, at least, to consider coolly and profoundly 
 how we propose to confront them when they can no 
 longer be neglected or ignored. 
 
 There are two other reasons, finally, why the ob- 
 servation and deliberation I am urging should not be 
 postponed too long, or be too hastily or perfunctorily 
 made especially in reference to such matters as I 
 now allude to. The nation as a whole embracing all 
 classes of the community has more and more of late 
 years taken its affairs into its own hands, and (not- 
 withstanding passing appearances to the contrary) is 
 less and less disposed to allow arrangements to be 
 made behind its back, or to permit its rulers for the 
 time being to act for it without consulting it and 
 obtaining its consent. It likes to know what is 
 being done and why it is being done ; and since it is 
 
A GRAVE PERPLEXITY BEFORE US. 83 
 
 undeniably, as a whole, both very imperfectly informed 
 and very inadequately trained to habits of reflection, 
 the processes of the needful instruction and persuasion 
 are difficult, and the result by no means clear or 
 certain. The English people, moreover, are slow to 
 take in new ideas, to alter old conceptions, to arrive 
 at clear conclusions on difficult and complex questions, 
 especially on such as involve their interests, and are 
 not unlikely to arouse their passions or their pre- 
 judices. Now all classes are concerned in the satis- 
 factory and just determination of the problem to 
 which I wish to direct attention ; and therefore, if it is 
 not to be determined wrong, it is essential that time 
 should be allowed for all its conditions to sink into 
 the nation's mind, there to ferment, germinate, and 
 ripen. 
 
 The problem is neither imaginary nor remote. On 
 the contrary, it is imminent, practical, and, as it 
 seems to me, peculiarly serious. It is not precisely 
 new, but our eyes have been rudely awakened, both 
 to its gravity and its imminence, by some of the 
 events of the year that has just closed over us. The 
 numberless and bitter conflicts between employers and 
 employed in nearly every branch of industry, especially 
 in the North of England, have brought it to the front. 
 The essence and the crux of it lie in small compass, 
 and admit of being stated clearly and with brevity. 
 Distress among the working classes has been very 
 general and very severe ; and while much of it has 
 been inevitable, and has been due to the disturbed 
 
84 A GRAVE PERPLEXITY BEFORE US. 
 
 and depressed state of trade throughout the world, it 
 has been enormously aggravated and prolonged by 
 their own mistaken and perverse proceedings. For 
 a great deal of it they have themselves been directly 
 and exclusively responsible. Work has been deplor- 
 ably scarce, but they have made it, by their own 
 voluntary action, far scarcer than it would otherwise 
 have been. In many instances masters have been 
 ruined, and their works have been closed in conse- 
 quence, and the men they employed have been thrown 
 upon their own resources, and not unfrequently reduced 
 to destitution, by no fault of their own. But in 
 many other instances the men have voluntarily thrown 
 themselves out of work by refusing to accept it at 
 the reduced rate of wages, which was all their im- 
 poverished employers could afford to offer them. 
 They deliberately deprived themselves of employment, 
 and their consequent privations, however severe, were 
 entirely gratuitous. Of course, therefore, in strict 
 equity they were not entitled either to relief from the 
 rates or to assistance from charitable neighbours ; 
 and, to do them justice, they have not usually applied 
 for either. Earnings and usually ample earnings 
 for these times of unprofitable trade and cheap food 
 were within their grasp if they chose to stretch 
 forth their hands to take them ; but they preferred 
 to be idle rather than work except on their own 
 terms which they had an irrefutable claim to do. 
 They were within their legal rights, however foolish 
 or short-sighted they may have been thus to exercise 
 
A GRAVE PERPLEXITY BEFORE US. 85 
 
 those rights. So far the problem was simple enough 
 or, rather, there was no problem at all to solve. 
 
 But here the f difficulty and the complexity come 1 
 in. In the intricate system of our manufacturing 
 industry one set of workmen are inextricably bound 
 up with others who cannot for any length of time 
 continue to labour or to earn a sustenance without 
 them. For example, to make the matter clear to 
 outsiders, we will take the case of the cotton manu- 
 facture. The hands in a mill may be roughly divided 
 into three classes : the preparers (scutchers, carders, 
 drawers, &c.), the spinners (whether hand-spinners 
 or self- actors), and the weavers. If the spinners 
 turn out on a question of wages or of rules, and cease 
 work, the preparers are not needed, and cannot be 
 kept on, and the weavers can no longer be supplied 
 with warp or weft, and must stop also. Likewise, if 
 the weavers strike, neither preparers nor spinners (as 
 a rule) can be kept at work. If one class of hands 
 quarrel with their masters, both the other classes are 
 paralysed, and the entire machinery is thrown out of 
 gear, as the phrase is, though only one class out of 
 the three is concerned in the dispute, and the other 
 two may be in no degree either discontented or to 
 blame. Often, no doubt, all of them pull together 
 and support one another ; and this is usually true 
 where the question at issue concerns a percentage 
 reduction or advance of wages throughout the mill ; 
 but it has often happened that the spinners only (or 
 separately] strike work, and thus force the employer 
 
86 A GRAVE PERPLEXITY BEFORE US. 
 
 either to yield or to give notice of cessation of em- 
 ployment to the preparers and weavers who are 
 possibly quite innocent, possibly disapprove the 
 spinners' action, at all events who may or may not 
 be accomplices, and who therefore technically cannot 
 be said to refuse offered work, but have work and 
 earnings both taken from them. 
 
 This used very generally to be the modus operandi 
 in trade disputes, though less usual now since the 
 introduction of self-acting mules, and made such cases 
 peculiarly difficult to deal with. The embarrassment 
 was enhanced by the fact that the spinners, being the 
 most highly paid class of cotton operatives, and having 
 comparatively rich unions to maintain them through 
 the contest, could hold out with ease, while the weavers 
 and others had seldom such resources. The spinners 
 in a factory, again, were but few, and it might and 
 may happen that perhaps fifty spinners could at their 
 pleasure stop the mill, and thus deprive five hundred 
 fellow operatives of their bread. 1 Much the same may 
 be said in relation to the weavers, though in a more 
 mitigated form. 
 
 Now it is generally held that all persons and families 
 actually destitute are entitled to claim support from 
 the poor rates, however that destitution may have 
 
 1 Similar divisions and subdivisions of workmen, entailing 
 analogous embarrassments, exist in most other branches of in- 
 dustry ; but I do not quote them, being anxious to make 
 my exposition of the problem to be considered as lucid as 
 possible. 
 
A GRAVE PERPLEXITY BEFORE US. 87 
 
 been originally produced. It may have arisen from 
 drunkenness or habitual misconduct, from waste of 
 adequate means, from quarrels with their employers 
 which could not be reconciled, from incessant turbul- 
 ence and unmanageable conduct which had driven 
 trade from the locality, as well as from accidents or 
 misfortunes or outlying causes such as come under the 
 general description of " the visitation of God." Still, 
 if the destitution be real, if the applicants be indis- 
 putably out of work, and if they are provably unable 
 to obtain work by seeking for it, no guardians of 
 the poor or relieving officers would hold themselves 
 justified in refusing them assistance and support. This 
 may possibly not be the rigid meaning of the law 
 according to its legal and literal interpretation ; but 
 this is the interpretation put upon it by those who 
 have to administer it, and by the public at large, and 
 this is the practical working of the system. The 
 original design of the Poor Law, and probably its 
 strict and formal meaning still is, that the guardians 
 are to find employment for all the destitute, to find them 
 work, or to feed and house them in default of work if 
 it cannot be found or made ; and, as we all know, the 
 real operation of the system is that as soon as the 
 workhouses are full, and often long before (and the 
 workhouse accommodation is notoriously insufficient to 
 meet any extraordinary crisis), the destitute are main- 
 tained at their own houses by relief ordered by the 
 guardians. Nor is this all. In the majority of cases 
 they live rent free, for no house-owners dream of turn- 
 
88 A GRAVE PERPLEXITY BEFORE US. 
 
 ing the really destitute out of their dwellings because 
 they cannot pay their rent, and the guardians, properly 
 enough, will not, and we believe may not, pay their 
 rent for them. They are therefore, as a rule, housed 
 by the landlords of the parish, arid fed and maintained 
 by the ratepayers. There is no abuse or maladminis- 
 tration in all this. It is simply the result of a 
 recognised legitimate obligation, the normal working 
 of a law which no one dreams of disobeying or denying, 
 which no one thus far, so far as we know, has pro- 
 tested against or proposed deliberately to repeal. 
 
 Now, how are the various classes of applicants we 
 have just enumerated to be dealt with ? This is no 
 idle, or imaginative, or premature question ; for such 
 applicants are already appearing on the scene in the 
 iron districts, and the coal districts, and the cotton 
 districts, in Wales, in Yorkshire, in Lancashire, in 
 Durham, in Northumberland, and this not by thou- 
 sands, but by tens and hundreds of thousands. Let 
 us look only at the representative instance we have 
 chosen, the cotton-manufacturing operatives of Preston, 
 Blackburn, and other populous hives of industry in the 
 north-west. The spinners, who have refused work 
 and wages for themselves, and by so doing have 
 stopped the machinery which gave employment and 
 support for five times their own numbers, may be 
 dealt with in a comparatively simple fashion, even if 
 they were obstinate enough to prolong their contest to 
 the last extremity, and mean enough to apply for 
 relief when their union funds were exhausted both 
 
A GRAVE PERPLEXITY BEFORE US. 89 
 
 of which are unlikely in the extreme. The guardians, 
 if endowed with sense and nerve equal to the occasion, 
 could sternly send them away empty as voluntary and 
 persistent idlers, and, if they were really destitute, 
 commit them to prison for neglecting to support their 
 families. The same stern and effectual measure of 
 justice might be dealt out to the weavers, if they were 
 the delinquents and the strike were confined to them 
 alone. But these are not the difficult cases. What 
 could the guardians do with the applicants who crowded 
 the doors in immeasurably larger numbers, whose 
 claim was based upon the true and legally unanswer- 
 able plea that " they had been turned out by no fault 
 of their own, that they wished to work, and had 
 applied for work, but that, owing to the fault of some 
 other branch of their fellow-workmen, the mills were 
 closed against them, and that they and their children 
 were starving ? " These are no fancied cases they 
 have been seen by thousands last year in Lancashire. 
 How are the administrators of relief to refuse their 
 application ? and would the law sustain them in a 
 refusal ? But there are other cases probably still more 
 numerous and perplexing fathers of destitute families 
 who were crying out in their wretchedness for work at 
 any rate of wages, who had voted and protested against 
 the foolish and suicidal strike, but had been outvoted, 
 bullied, and overborne by their younger and unburdened 
 fellow- operatives, and who could not keep body and 
 soul together on the miserable pittance allowed them 
 by the trades-unions a pittance dwindling away week 
 
90 A GRAVE PERPLEXITY BEFORE US. 
 
 by week. How impossible it was felt to be to with- 
 stand their supplicating claims for aid was shown in 
 all the towns in which the silly conflicts occurred last 
 year, where the masters were constantly found support- 
 ing the families of the very workmen who had turned 
 out from their mills, sheltering them gratuitously in 
 cottages for which they paid no rent, and furnishing 
 them with food which (under compulsion from their 
 misled associates) they had refused to earn. 
 
 Such being the law, or the recognised interpretation 
 and the practical administration of the law, what 
 provision or safeguard do we possess, or can we devise, 
 against a crisis and possible catastrophe which is already 
 looming in the distance, the preparatory causes of 
 which are distinctly and undeniably in operation, 
 which may come upon us at almost any time, unless 
 foreseen and averted by timely precaution, and which 
 assuredly will overtake us if the present stagnation in 
 the most important branches of the national industry 
 should continue and increase, as there is every apparent 
 likelihood that it will ? 
 
 This brings us to the closing feature of the grave 
 social condition before us to which I am calling 
 attention perhaps not the least ominous feature of 
 the whole. Who are the principal ratepayers of the 
 districts on which this exhausting calamity has fallen 
 or been brought ? Whose property has to provide 
 the funds to meet the drain of feeding a starving 
 population, counted already by hundreds of thousands 
 -soon, probably enough, by millions starving, more- 
 
A GRAVE PERPLEXITY BEFORE US. 91 
 
 over, as I have shown, directly or indirectly, to a 
 great extent, by their own voluntary act ? The first 
 fund to be drawn upon, no doubt, is the accumulated 
 resources of the trades-unions, the savings of the 
 foreseeing operatives savings, let us remember, con- 
 tributed originally with the object of meeting periods 
 of slack demand, of failing work, of accidental stop- 
 pages of mills and iron foundries, of sickness and old 
 age in short, all the varieties of inevitable bad times 
 which are certain to occur periodically in all extensive 
 and complicated industries ; but which savings are 
 now habitually wasted, at the pleasure of the leaders, 
 in futile and disastrous struggles for higher wages than 
 the state of the trade or the redundance of numbers 
 seems able to permit. Usually the next resource of 
 those out of work consists of special levies from those 
 still employed, avowedly to support the strike or the 
 lock-out. These resources, however, seldom last long, 
 and can never meet prolonged periods of disaster or 
 unprofitable production such as are now upon us ; nor 
 do they ever provide adequate maintenance for more 
 than a portion of the numbers affected by the catas- 
 trophe. It is only a few of the more highly paid 
 classes of artisans who have stored up funds adequate 
 to sustain either an obstinate contest or a prolonged 
 period of distress. Then, and generally not till then, 
 the destitute, or those threatened with destitution, fall 
 back upon charitable aid, voluntary or obligatory 
 soup-kitchens, relief associations, and, last and largest, 
 the poor rates. The first two are nearly always liberal 
 
92 A GKAVE PEEPLEXITY BEFOKE US. 
 
 and prompt, and often admirably organised, and seldom 
 inquire too closely as to how far the destitution has 
 been brought about by the folly or perversity of the 
 sufferers. And this is the explanation of the fact, so 
 unfairly used by the Ministers and ministerial defenders, 
 of the small and slow increase of recognised and 
 reported pauperism. The industrial classes the real 
 workers, especially in the manufacturing districts do 
 not become paupers till every other resource has been 
 exhausted. But all the three resources I have named 
 are alike fed and furnished by the owners of property 
 in each locality. The philanthropists, the shopkeepers, 
 and the proprietors are all ratepayers, and on them 
 the burden ultimately and inevitably falls in the end 
 and that end, in prolonged crises like the present, 
 comes early, and comes rapidly at last. And this is 
 the special point which I am anxious the public 
 should distinctly recognise. Now who are the rate- 
 payers in those districts where distress specially 
 prevails, where coal-mines are unworked, where iron 
 foundries are silent and furnaces blown out, where 
 factories are shut up, where half-time prevails and 
 spreads week by week in fine, where strikes and 
 lock-outs are the order of the day, and workmen by 
 thousands persist in resisting any reduction of wages, 
 and refuse 20s. a week because they cannot obtain 
 22s. ? The ratepayers here consist mainly of two 
 classes the retail tradespeople, the shopkeepers, whose 
 profits have been deplorably cut down or swept away 
 by the prevalent distress and the consequent curtail- 
 
A GRAVE PERPLEXITY BEFORE US. 93 
 
 ment of their custom, and who, moreover, are sadly 
 impoverished by the credit they are virtually forced to 
 give, and which frequently eventuates in hopeless 
 loss ; the mill-owners, the iron founders, the colliery 
 proprietors, and other " captains of industry," whose 
 gains have, for some years, been exchanged for losses, 
 and who see their property the result of a life of toil 
 rapidly drained away, and ruin perhaps staring 
 them in the face ; and the owners of house-property 
 who can obtain no rent from the occupiers, who are 
 often the immediate causes or instruments of the 
 disastrous scene. 
 
 Now, let us sum up all these facts, none of which 
 will be denied, and which I believe to be stated with- 
 out undue colouring or exaggeration, and draw from 
 them a succinct picture of the position of which they 
 are the salient features. According to the existing 
 law, or to the usual understanding and the practical 
 administration of that law sanctioned and sustained 
 by the prevailing sympathies of the community, all 
 labouring families, however numerous, all the working 
 classes in whatever branch of industry, are entitled to 
 be maintained at the expense of the property of the 
 locality in which they happen to reside as soon as 
 they become undeniably destitute or unable to earn a 
 livelihood for themselves, however that destitution 
 may originally have been caused, and however pro- 
 longed the period during which it may continue. At 
 the same time the vast extent and variety of these 
 
94 A GRAVE PERPLEXITY BEFORE US. 
 
 industries, their singular complexity and close and 
 intricate connections, render it possible (and by no 
 means infrequent) for disturbance in one branch to 
 entail stagnation on others, and perhaps for a hundred 
 or a thousand dissatisfied artisans indirectly to deprive 
 many thousands of their usual employment and their 
 daily bread and in such a fashion or under such 
 peculiar circumstances as to render it practically im- 
 possible to ignore or refuse their claims to gratuitous 
 subsistence out of the income or the earnings of 
 their neighbours nay, moreover, that it has become 
 feasible, and not wholly unexampled, for special 
 classes of artisans, by dexterous and well-understood 
 if not openly avowed combination, so to assist each 
 other vicissim in their conflicts with their employers 
 as to render resistance on the part of these employers 
 enormously difficult, costly, and perhaps ruinous, 
 however righteous and even obligatory this resistance 
 may have become. So that, strictly and practically 
 speaking, those struggles between masters and men 
 for the division of the wealth created by their joint 
 exertions, which have of late been so frequent, so 
 angry, and so obstinate, are carried on under condi- 
 tions intrinsically and indefensibly unfair ; inasmuch 
 as not only are the masters heavily weighted in the 
 strife by the enormous costliness of their fixed plant, 
 but are further weighted (often actually, always 
 potentially) by the liability of having to furnish their 
 antagonists with the means of continuing the strife 
 ad libitum. It is as though the defenders of a 
 
A GRAVE PERPLEXITY BEFORE US. 95 
 
 beleaguered fortress were compelled to furnish their 
 assailants with powder and ball when their own 
 supplies fell short ; or, to vary the similitude, as if 
 the besiegers were bound to send daily supplies of 
 food and ammunition into the city to enable them to 
 hold out the longer modes of proceeding, either of 
 which would be regarded as alike grotesquely iniqui- 
 tous. It is scarcely too much to say that the present 
 state of the law and practice virtually give to discon- 
 tented, grasping, or ambitious artisans so far at least 
 as the necessaries of life are concerned a command 
 over the property of their fellow-citizens which has a 
 sinister resemblance and approach to the pretensions 
 of Socialism ; and this at a time when those very 
 artisans are perversely engaged in sapping the founda- 
 tions of that property and waging war against the 
 prosperity of those fellow-citizens. And we have not 
 been left without warning how possible it is, not 
 only on the Continent but even in sober England, for 
 dreamers, demagogues, and agitators often rather 
 shallow than distinctly designing or ill-disposed to 
 organise the masses when distressed and unemployed, 
 and direct their hostility against the most firmly 
 established institutions of the land. 
 
 As it is, no doubt, the actuality of the position 
 so undeniably inequitable and even monstrous, when 
 thus laid before the world in its logical nakedness is 
 materially mitigated by one important consideration, 
 viz., that the sustenance legally claimable by and 
 commonly supplied to the destitute is much below 
 
96 A GRAVE PERPLEXITY BEFORE US. 
 
 what they could have earned by regular industry, and 
 therefore would never be grudged where the destitution 
 resulted from inevitable circumstances and not from 
 their voluntary act. But, on the other hand, the 
 position of the employers is strengthened, as it seems 
 to me, enormously, by the consideration, equally 
 relevant and equally notorious, that they never reduce 
 wages and thereby give occasion to the struggles in 
 question, unless when they have worked without 
 profit or at an actual loss for considerable periods of 
 time that is, have long handed over to the men the 
 whole or more than the whole of their joint earnings. 
 Nevertheless, when we have given both these facts 
 the full consideration which is their due, the problem 
 which it is desirable for the public to ponder and, if 
 possible, to probe and solve, while there is time, 
 remains grave, complicated, and approaching. I have 
 been more bent on stating it than on attempting, 
 here at least, 1 to offer a solution. Its gravity and its 
 complexity will be obvious as soon as it is fully realised. 
 Its proximity will, I think, be plain to all who have 
 watched and studied adequately the lessons which the 
 very serious industrial distresses and conflicts of 1878 
 
 1 In passing, and as bearing incidentally on this ques- 
 tion, I would desire to call attention to a remarkable paper on 
 " National Insurance," published in the December number of 
 the Nineteenth Century a paper which I cannot help believing 
 contains, or will contain when thoroughly matured and cleared 
 of its apparent omissions arid defects, the outlines of a scheme 
 which may lead to a rectification of many of our graver diffi- 
 cultion. 
 
A GRAVE PERPLEXITY BEFORE US. 97 
 
 were suited to convey. These are not yet over, nor 
 are the lessons yet laid to heart ; and their gravity 
 and imminence will be most adequately comprehended 
 by those who realise at once the increasing influence 
 of the operative classes in the political arena, and the 
 warm sympathy which, in spite of their grievous 
 misguidance and their perverse mistakes, their con- 
 dition still commands among the thinking and stirring 
 classes of the nation. 
 
V. 
 
 OBLIGATIONS OF THE SOIL. 
 
 THERE is a notion widely prevalent, habitually asserted 
 by some, carelessly admitted by others, often formal- 
 ised into a proposition, and usually taken for granted 
 because scarcely ever denied or argued, which never- 
 theless would appear to be questionable ; and which, 
 till questioned and sifted, must not be suffered to grow 
 into an axiom. The earth, we are told, has been 
 given as an inheritance to mankind at large, not to 
 this or that generation, or to this or that tribe or 
 nation, far less to this or that class or section of a 
 people, but as a source of sustenance to all, for the 
 support and maintenance of succeeding and increasing 
 generations of men ; that, in fact, it was designed to 
 grow food for man ; that by no right, or justice, or 
 propriety can it be diverted to any other purpose or 
 neglected for this purpose ; that its allotment to this 
 or that set of holders, whether communal or individual, 
 can only be warranted on the plea that such appro- 
 priation is best fitted to develop its resources : that, 
 in fine, and to speak broadly, it is the duty of the land 
 to support as large a population as possible, and that 
 the criterion by which all use and tenure of land must 
 
OBLIGATIONS OF THE SOIL. 99 
 
 be judged is its fulfilling, or tendency to fulfil, this 
 great end. 
 
 The proposition is asserted and proclaimed with 
 every gradation of latitude and positiveness ; and, 
 primd facie, it contains so much truth and plausibility, 
 that it is not easy to detect, in its varying forms, 
 where fallacy and extravagance begin. The advocates 
 of the masses, who Affect to defend their interests and 
 to speak in their name, boldly maintain the inde- 
 feasible natural claim of every man to as much land 
 as is needed to support him, and denounce the pro- 
 prietor who turns sheep-farms into deer forests, and 
 the crofts and holdings of wretched cottiers into sheep- 
 walks, as a robber and oppressor, and the nobleman 
 who insists upon his acres of ornamental but unprofit- 
 able lawn, while the labourers a score of whom that 
 lawn, if in potatoes, might support are half starving 
 round his park, as not far off a murderer. Others 
 point out that all civilised nations scout the claim of 
 the savage hunter, who needs fifty square miles of 
 forest and wild land to supply him with the game on 
 which he feeds, and make no scruple of dispossessing 
 him and turning his land to more productive uses : 
 and then ask wherein his case differs from that of the 
 Highland Ducal Chief, who keeps thousands of acres 
 as wilderness and wood for the sake of the stags and 
 grouse which give him little beyond sport. A recent 
 writer, more moderate in appearance, holds the land- 
 owners of England to have grievously failed in their 
 duty to their countrymen because the soil produces 
 
100 OBLIGATIONS OF THE SOIL. 
 
 only half what it might be made to yield, and implies 
 not obscurely, that this failure on their part ought to 
 be remedied by a different distribution of their neg- 
 lected acres. Adherents of the Land and Labour 
 League would have the State gradually obtain the 
 ownership of the soil, and allot to every man the five 
 or ten acres which they deem his due ; while Mr 
 Atherton is more precise, and would solve the problem 
 by assigning to every baby an acre of land in the 
 parish in which it happened to be born. Political 
 economists, as a rule, have not troubled themselves to 
 contest the fundamental assumption that it is obliga- 
 tory on the land to produce as much food, and to 
 maintain as large a population as it can ; indeed, 
 have tacitly accepted the doctrine evading rather 
 than discussing it ; and have argued merely that 
 private proprietorship, and probably large properties, 
 offer the greatest likelihood of obtaining this maximum 
 result ; or they have met all practical inferences of 
 a subversive or spoliative tendency by pointing out 
 that though a man may be entitled to five or ten acres 
 as his portion of God's bequest, he is not entitled to it 
 in any special locality he may prefer ; that practically 
 the land of the globe is unlimited in extent, and a vast 
 proportion of it still virtually unappropriated ; and 
 that till all this is disposed of, no man can be entitled 
 to dispossess his neighbour. 
 
 We think it is time to ask whether the fundamental 
 assumption on which such a superstructure is coming 
 to be built is a truism or a fallacy whether the soil 
 
OBLIGATIONS OF THE SOIL. 101 
 
 is bound to produce as much human food as possible 
 whether, in very deed, Providence designed the 
 earth to be cultivated and peopled up to its maximum 
 capacity and whether it should be the aim of states- 
 men to co-operate in the fulfilment of that supposed 
 design whether, in fine, the whole globe cultivated 
 and cropped like one vast market garden England 
 " with every rood of ground maintaining its man " 
 is precisely that golden age, that culminating point of 
 progress, that finished goal and ideal of humanity, that 
 we contemplate and desire. 
 
 Now, one of the safest and most effectual modes of 
 dealing with a doctrine of which you scent the un- 
 soundness, but do not distinctly discern wherein the 
 error lies, is to trace out the consequences which flow 
 from it, and the conclusions to which, logically followed 
 out, it will ultimately lead us. If these are obviously 
 inadmissible, then the doctrine may confidently be 
 pronounced fallacious. This is the reductio ad absur- 
 dum of geometry. Let us apply it to the case 
 before us. 
 
 First, then, if it be true that land ought to be 
 made as productive as it can be, and that every owner 
 or occupier is bound, in justice to his fellow-men or 
 fellow - countrymen, to make the soil he cultivates 
 yield the maximum amount of human food, it follows 
 indisputably that those crops, only or preferentially, 
 must be grown which give this maximum result. A 
 farmer or proprietor who grows a comparatively innu- 
 tritive crop is guilty proportionally of the same derelic- 
 
102 OBLIGATIONS OF THE SOIL. 
 
 tion of duty as the one who grows no crops at all. 
 Now, though we have no authorised calculations, it is 
 generally estimated that potatoes offer the crop that 
 produces this maximum amount of human food, and 
 that more men can live on (say) twenty acres of this 
 root than on the same area applied in any other way. 1 
 If it were so, then all soil ought preferentially to be 
 thus planted (allowance of course being made for what- 
 ever rotation of crops was needed to keep up fertility), 
 and England, or the world, ought to become one vast 
 potato-garden. Next come grain crops, wheat or oats, 
 though in what precise ratio is scarcely ascertained. 
 However this may be, there can be no question that 
 arable land laid out in the produce of cereals will sup- 
 port a far larger population than an equal extent of 
 pasture or meadow land applied to the production 
 of animal food, probably in the proportion of five 
 to one. 
 
 Obviously, then, and, if the thesis we are con- 
 sidering be sound, the proposition seems to admit of 
 110 dispute, since animal food is notoriously not 
 
 1 I have been unable to arrive at any consentaneous or perfectly 
 reliable information on this point, though I have consulted all 
 the authorities published and personal within my reach. The 
 most competent parties disagreed, however, widely as to the 
 quantity of food producible on a given acreage, and materially as 
 the quantity needed for human sustenance. But according to the 
 best data I have been able to collect, it may be roughly calcu- 
 lated that a given amount of land of good quality and fairly 
 treated, will yield food in potatoes for five persons, in wheat for 
 four, and in butcher's meat for one. The details, however, 
 accurate or inaccurate, are immaterial as regards the argument. 
 
OBLIGATIONS OF THE SOIL. 103 
 
 essential to life, health, or reasonable strength in 
 human beings, 1 the application of land to the breeding 
 or feeding of sheep or cattle is distinctly wrong if 
 carried beyond that very limited extent which is 
 needed for milk, 2 manure, hides or wool, or unless 
 confined to those districts (if any) where from climate 
 that is, from poverty of soil, excess of wet, or 
 deficiency of sunshine harvests are so precarious that 
 a given acreage would yield actually less in root or 
 grain crops than in animal food. As cereals and 
 potatoes support, acre per acre, five times as much 
 human life as butcher's meat, potatoes or cereals only, 
 wherever possible, ought to be grown. 
 
 The next corollary is that no portion of the soil 
 ought to be occupied in the production of any articles 
 not needed for the supply of human wants. A certain 
 portion of the surface of the earth must of course 
 always be covered with forests, because wood is needed 
 for houses, shipbuilding, and fuel, but no purely orna- 
 mental timber can be allowed : and forests should, as 
 a rule, be rigidly confined to those latitudes and 
 altitudes where no crops will grow in fact, to high 
 mountains and cold countries. Wine, again, is as- 
 
 1 We need not discuss this point, or call specially vegetarian 
 writers to confirm us. A reference to well-fed and housed agri- 
 cultural labourers who never taste meat ; to the Scotch peasantry 
 who live almost exclusively on oatmeal (see Somerville's " Auto- 
 biography of a Working Man " ) ; and to various graminivorous 
 races scattered over the warmer countries of the world, is suffi- 
 cient for our purpose. 
 
 2 It may perhaps be doubted whether milk, however nutritive, 
 is at all essential. 
 
104 OBLIGATIONS OF THE SOIL. 
 
 suredly no necessary of life, though an exquisite luxury; 
 vines therefore must be planted only in the poorest 
 soils, which are available for no more nutritive crops. 
 A perfect revolution would thus take place in many 
 European countries ; for one-sixth of the surface of 
 France is said to be occupied with vineyards, and a 
 considerable, though smaller, proportion of Spain, Italy, 
 and Germany. The same restriction must be placed 
 on the cultivation of barley and hops, though, perhaps, 
 one less absolutely prohibitive, as beer may be held 
 to contain certain important elements of nutrition. 
 Assuredly, no tobacco must be grown, for tobacco does 
 nothing towards supporting life ; it needs good soil, 
 and is, I believe, an exhausting crop. It is doubtful 
 whether mulberry trees for silk will not also come 
 under the ban of the principle we are now considering, 
 for mulberry trees take up some land, and land usually 
 of good quality ; while, by the same rule, flower gar- 
 dens, which are wholly unproductive, must everywhere 
 be swept away in favour of kitchen gardens, which 
 maintain many households. 
 
 A further logical consequence though perhaps one 
 which will not weigh very heavily against the doctrine 
 from which it flows will be the extermination of all 
 wild animals, except such as dwell in those northern 
 forests or tropical wastes and jungles which can never 
 be made available for cultivation ; and, further, the 
 reduction in the numbers of our domestic animals 
 (horses, sheep, and domestic cattle) to the limits 
 required for actual utilitarian purposes, such as draught 
 
OBLIGATIONS OF THE SOIL. 105 
 
 and clothing. Game, chevaux de luxe, deer, and foxes 
 must disappear ; and perhaps we need not concern 
 ourselves greatly with their disappearance. 1 Another 
 consequence, however, and the last we shall notice, is 
 far more serious. In the name of the same principle 
 we shall have to dispense with public as well as 
 private parks, with village greens and commons, with 
 all open spaces, in fact, except such as may be needed 
 near or in our cities for ventilation, health, and exer- 
 cise not recreation, be it observed ; that is barred 
 by the conditions of the problem. 
 
 1 It may even he a question whether the doctrine under con- 
 sideration would not prohibit and preclude the existing practice 
 of burying our dead, and thus solve at once the agitated con- 
 troversy about cremation. In rigorous logic, and by calculation 
 carried far enough, a time must come when the dead in our 
 country will outnumber and dispossess the living. We have a 
 natural prejudice likely to grow stronger and more imperious 
 rather than to die away against disturbing the bones of those 
 who have once been committed to the earth ; and one not quite 
 so general, but still a growing one, against depositing many in 
 one grave, or at least in the same spot. It is usually felt that 
 each person is entitled to have his " six feet of earth " to lie in, 
 and that it shall be his for ever; and grave-yards are "con- 
 secrated " and set apart for this purpose. Now, it is found that, 
 allowing for walks and necessary side spaces, 1,200 graves can be 
 made out of one acre ; the deaths in England and Wales (being 
 now above 500,000 annually, and increasing year by year) will, 
 therefore, need the allotment in perpetuity of about 500 acres 
 per annum, or 50,000 in each century. Every year, that is, those 
 who die in England require, monopolise, and taboo as much land 
 as would suifice for the sustenance of 50 families. Thus, as the 
 area of England and Wales extends to about 3 7,000,000 acres, in 
 a period easily calculated the dead (if we still eschew cremation) 
 will have eaten or elbowed out the living. 
 
106 OBLIGATIONS OF THE SOIL. 
 
 It is difficult to picture to ourselves the condition 
 to which a country thus logically acting on the 
 principle insisted upon by popular declaimers, and 
 carelessly conceded by many economists, would, in a 
 few generations, be reduced. The decline of civilisa- 
 tion would go hand in hand with the progress of 
 cultivation, and the growth of population. The entire 
 aspect of these islands especially would be trans- 
 mogrified out of recognition. When every field is 
 allotted to its proper crop, and taught to produce its 
 maximum amount of food, and that food of the most 
 nutritious sort, when the claims of the people are 
 satisfied by their being allowed to multiply as fast 
 and far as the productiveness of the soil will warrant, 
 all may have enough to eat and wherewithal to clothe 
 themselves (on condition, always, that they cease all 
 multiplication at that point] ; but the golden age 
 thus reached will be one of comparative barbarism, 
 not of culminating civilisation. Men's actual neces- 
 sities, their lowest natural wants, may be satisfied ; 
 but all artificial wants must be denied or crushed, 
 since the very ground- work of the principle assumes 
 that land must be devoted to the production of the 
 necessaries of life to the exclusion of its luxuries ; and 
 as we all know, it is out of artificial, increasing, 
 and encroaching wants that all civilisation has it 
 origin. Nations grow from tribes, man advances from 
 the savage state, simply by becoming dissatisfied with 
 what is merely needed for life and health, by demand- 
 ing the superfluous, by insisting upon luxuries and 
 
OBLIGATIONS OF THE SOIL. 107 
 
 comforts, by making some provision for the fanciful 
 and the ideal, by refusing any longer to be content 
 with food and raiment only ; by solacing the mind as 
 well as filling the stomach ; by adding to the lust of 
 the flesh the lust of the eye also, and the pride of life. 
 Moreover, there can be no greater delusion than to 
 picture this golden age of consummate production and 
 maximum population as one of idleness or ease. No 
 life, as experience shows, is comparable for grinding 
 hardship and incessant toil with that of the peasant 
 who tries to live out of a minimum of acres cultivated 
 up to the highest limit of productiveness. Man as he 
 should be, and as we aspire to see him, eats that he 
 may live live something that is worthy to be called 
 life. The people of a country " where every rood of 
 earth maintains its man," must be content to live 
 that they may eat, and to spend all their time and 
 energies in providing for the merest animal neces- 
 sities. 
 
 We shall be answered, of course, by the maintainers 
 of the doctrine we are questioning " Oh ! but we 
 never intended to push our principle so far. We simply 
 argued that no man in any country has a right to 
 monopolise land i.e., to keep it for his delectation 
 while others require it for their sustenance. Nor 
 should we ever maintain in its nakedness the extreme 
 proposition that the soil must be made to support as 
 many persons as possible, but merely as many 
 valuable and desirable persons not as large a 
 population of all sorts or of any sort, but as large a 
 
108 OBLIGATIONS OF THE SOIL. 
 
 population of that class and character, of that vigour, 
 capacity, and full development in all directions, which 
 suitable citizens of a civilised State ought to possess. 
 Thus limited and guarded, we still consider our 
 principle as not only defensible, but sound. We have 
 no desire to see a potato-fed people, however numerous, 
 because we know that a potato diet will only produce 
 an inferior race ; and we should never propose even 
 to confine the population to wheaten or oaten bread, 
 because we believe that a fair proportion of animal 
 food and perhaps even stimulants in modertion are 
 needed for the developing the healthy, vigorous, and 
 complete powers of the human frame." 
 
 Very well ! I am not inclined, and have no need, 
 to demur to the proposition thus limited ; the 
 principle involved in the limitation containing every- 
 thing for which I argue everything, in fact, required 
 to reduce it to a harmless truism. We are agreed 
 that the object to be kept in view is not to cover 
 the earth with mere swarms of human beings without 
 reference to quality, but to make it the habitation of 
 as ample numbers as may be of such men as statesmen, 
 patriots, and philanthropists desire to see as, in a 
 word, we all aspire to make the human race consist of. 
 Man, it is conceded, cannot live on roots at all, nor on 
 bread alone ; he must be allowed meat. Man, I add, 
 cannot live even upon all three elements of sustenance 
 combined : he must be allowed much else ; he needs 
 far other nutriment if he is to be what we wish him 
 to become ; he has something beyond his body to be 
 
OBLIGATIONS OF THE SOIL. 109 
 
 nourished something else beside his stomach to be 
 filled. It is admitted that he needs not only food, 
 but succulent and strengthening food ; not only 
 clothing, but warm clothing ; not only shelter from 
 the elements, but sufficing and comfortable dwellings. 
 But this list by no means comprises the total ef his 
 wants, nor the total possessions to which he is entitled, 
 if by industry, talent, and the frugality that leads to 
 accumulation, he can procure and retain them. Our 
 ideal man requires for his development the elegancies 
 and even perhaps the luxuries which are the condi- 
 tions of refinement. He needs the beauties of nature 
 to rejoice his eye and cultivate his taste ; flowers in 
 his garden, however small it be ; shrubberies and 
 groves about his house ; forest trees in his park, if he 
 can afford one ; not a vast expanse of corn-fields and 
 green crops, which can please the eye of no one but a 
 farmer or a market gardener. He requires home 
 animals dogs and singing birds around his path- 
 way ; not merely cattle that he can eat, and sheep 
 that he may shear. He needs something, however 
 little, of superfluity around him ; something that is 
 not merely useful. He needs a dwelling that shall 
 not be strictly four walls and a roof ; an abode that 
 shall satisfy his higher tastes, as well as his bare 
 necessities ; a residence a mansion, if you will - 
 that shall be rich in associations and suggestions, and 
 an object of beauty to the neighbourhood around. 
 He needs two other things besides, if he is to be 
 the worthy, happy, and fully-ripened man we are con- 
 
1 1 OBLIGATIONS OF THE SOIL. 
 
 templating; two things which imply and include much 
 room and leisure. He must have time for study, time 
 for research, time for mental acquisition of every kind; 
 above all, time for thought, if either man or mankind 
 is to make progress ; and this leisure time is not to 
 be secured without superfluous means and accumulated 
 wealth. Lastly, he must have space space to be 
 alone in ; space to exonerate him from that eternal 
 presence of his fellow men which is fatal to the growth 
 of the higher and profounder life ; space for that 
 sometime solitude without which no man can know 
 what he is, or become what he might be. I quoted 
 lately in this Revieiv the testimony of one lately 
 departed and much venerated philosopher, who was 
 penetrated with all human sympathies, and assuredly 
 not less alive than any of us to the claims of the poor 
 upon the soil ; but it is so true, and so appropriate to 
 the matter at issue, that there is no harm in quoting 
 it again : 
 
 "There is room in the world, no doubt, and even in old 
 countries, for an immense increase of population, supposing the 
 arts of life to go on improving, and capital to increase. But 
 although it may be innocuous, I confess I see very little reason 
 for desiring it. The density of population necessary to enable 
 mankind to obtain, in the greatest degree, all the advantages 
 both of co-operation and of social intercourse, has, in all the 
 more populous countries, been attained. A population may be 
 too crowded, though all be amply supplied with food and 
 raiment. It is not good for man to be kept perforce at all 
 times in the presence of his species. A world from which 
 solitude is extirpated is a very poor ideal. Solitude, in the 
 sense of being often alone, is essential to any depth of medita- 
 tion or of character ; and solitude, in the presence of natural 
 
OBLIGATIONS OF THE SOIL. Ill 
 
 beauty and grandeur, is the cradle of thoughts and aspirations, 
 which are not only good for the individual, but which society 
 could ill do without. Nor is there much satisfaction in contem- 
 plating the world, with nothing left to the spontaneous activity 
 of nature, with every rood of land brought into cultivation 
 which is capable of growing food for human beings ; every 
 flowery waste or natural pasture ploughed up ; all quadrupeds 
 or birds which are not domesticated for man's use exterminated 
 as his rivals for food ; every hedgerow or superfluous tree rooted 
 out, and scarcely a place left where a wild shrub or flower could 
 grow without being eradicated as a weed in the name of improved 
 agriculture." J. S. MILL. Principles of Political Economy : 
 11 The Stationary State." 
 
 The true consideration, then, which should govern 
 the distribution and the use of land is, not what 
 system will yield most food and support the densest 
 population, but what will produce and sustain the 
 finest race physically, morally, and intellectually. The 
 quality, rather than the quantity, of human existence 
 is the purpose to be set before us. 
 
VI. 
 
 THE RIGHT USE OF A SURPLUS ; l OR, REMISSION OF 
 TAXES AN ABUSE OF REVENUE. 
 
 IN a progressive country like Great Britain, each 
 successive generation has its special danger to avert, 
 its special reform to establish, its special duty to 
 discharge. In the time of the fathers, one set of 
 mischiefs are paramount and rampant; and practically 
 it may be advantageous that the attention of reformers 
 should be exclusively directed to these, and not 
 disadvantageous even that the national zeal should 
 exaggerate their importance and the perils which they 
 menace. It is in this piecemeal fashion that progress 
 with us has been in the habit of marching ; and 
 perhaps it is owing to this fashion that our work is 
 often done so efficiently that it has not to be done 
 over again. But one grave evil attends this system. 
 The notions, the animosities, and the fears of the 
 fathers are frequently transmitted to the sons who 
 live under the reformed regime, and have an entirely 
 different set of dangers to contend against ; yet they 
 go on repeating phrases and formulas that have lost 
 their meaning ; fighting against antagonists that are 
 
 1 Contemporary Revieiv, September 1875. 
 
THE RIGHT USE OF A SURPLUS. 113 
 
 dead and buried, or at least have become shadowy 
 and insignificant ; and pursuing objects that perhaps 
 have already been pursued too far. The prevalent 
 habit of mind, the direction or set of principles and 
 maxims, survive the circumstances which were their 
 origin and justification ; and, like all such survivals, 
 become noxious as soon as they cease to be useful. 
 Weapons and tools should be religiously buried when 
 they have won their victory and finished their work. 
 Unfortunately, however, this maxim is little in favour 
 among us ; like men who have grown rich by rigid 
 parsimony, but continue the practices of saving and 
 self-denial when ample wealth has converted wise 
 economy into miserly un worthiness, we make an end 
 of our means, an idol of our instrument, and perma- 
 nent principles out of what were merely the fitting 
 expedients of a pressing crisis or a passing hour. 
 
 Now, it appears to me that we are grievously in 
 danger of making this mistake at present in many of 
 our national transactions. We are forgetting that a 
 virtue out of season easily degenerates into a vice, and 
 that the wisest maxims of public life cease to be sound 
 by ceasing to be timely. The stem and vigilant 
 economy, which was worthy of all praise, and was 
 perhaps the first requisite in a statesman in an age 
 when the public revenue was noxiously collected and 
 extravagantly squandered, becomes simply a timid 
 weakness or a bad mental habit, when objects immea- 
 surably more valuable than money are sacrificed or 
 postponed lest money should be spent even though 
 
 H 
 
114 THE RIGHT USE OF A SURPLUS. 
 
 the money needed for effecting them is attainable at 
 a moment's notice, without traversing one sound prin- 
 ciple of taxation or laying one objectionable burden on 
 the people nay, when the money is actually in our 
 Treasury, but is given away, almost as a matter of 
 course, as an unrequired surplus. 
 
 Thirty or forty years ago the pension list was large, 
 lavish, and not too well fitted to bear investigation ; 
 articles of food and first necessity coming from abroad 
 were either entirely prohibited, or so heavily taxed as 
 to be virtually almost inaccessible, and at all events 
 to maintain high prices for home produce ; customs 
 duties were levied upon upwards of 500 principal 
 articles of import many upon raw materials, thus 
 burdening our own industry many upon foreign 
 manufactures, designed to afford an artificial and mis- 
 chievous protection to that very industry many so 
 complicated and perverse as materially to interfere 
 with commerce ; others so high as largely to check 
 consumption, and limit the trade which should have 
 paid for them. In short, at that time the whole 
 spirit which presided over the collection of the revenue 
 was so noxious and perverse that British statesmen 
 might well be pardoned for regarding the liberation of 
 trade, the reduction of expenditure, and thereby of 
 taxation, and the cheapening of the main articles of 
 food and general consumption, as about their most 
 pressing functions ; and Liberal politicians were almost 
 excusable in considering retrenchment, economy, and 
 repeal of customs and excise duties as constituting 
 
THE RIGHT USE OF A SURPLUS. 115 
 
 the first, if not comprising the whole, duty of man. 
 They said so daily, and soon got into the habit of 
 thinking so. 
 
 But in 1875 everything is changed ; the old evils 
 no longer exist ; the old language is no longer appro- 
 priate. The politicians who persist in wielding the 
 old weapons, using the old maxims, running on the 
 old lines, are like artillery-men who keep pointing 
 their guns and firing away in the same direction as 
 before when their foes have retreated, made a flank 
 movement, and are now menacing their rear. The 
 pension list has been reduced and purified, and job- 
 bery has scarce a hole or corner wherein to hide itself. 
 The principal articles liable to customs dues have been 
 reduced to about five, and those are so levied as to be 
 no longer practically a fetter upon commerce ; articles 
 of food, and raw materials, as well as foreign manufac- 
 tures, can be imported absolutely free ; the main pro- 
 portion of our indirect taxes (nearly six-sevenths) are 
 raised from articles of luxury, and probably I ought 
 to say, of noxious luxury certainly of luxuries that 
 needy men can well dispense with namely, spirits, 
 tobacco, beer and wine, and licenses therewith con- 
 nected. Specially objectionable duties, or those so 
 regarded, such as "taxes on knowledge," advertise- 
 ment duties, fire insurance, &c., have been repealed ; 
 indeed, the entire amount repealed within the last 
 fifteen years has exceeded 37,000,000. In fine, I 
 doubt if a single tax remains which can be fairly 
 represented as either a real fetter upon trade, or an 
 
116 THE RIGHT USE OF A SURPLUS. 
 
 unfair or heavy burden on the people. The incidence 
 of our taxation is, I believe, as equitable as it can 
 be made ; the amount of it is far lighter than it used 
 to be, and, I believe, lighter, too, than that of any 
 other great country with which a fair comparison can 
 be instituted. But this is not all : during the forty 
 years that this astonishing relief from our burdens has 
 been going on, the wealth of the country i.e., its 
 power of bearing those burdens has been increasing 
 at an altogether unprecedented rate ; the aggregate 
 wealth subject to the income tax has nearly doubled, 
 and the wages of labour, taking one branch of industry 
 with another, have risen twenty- five per cent. With 
 those few, and as I hold utterly unsound, fiscal 
 authorities who condemn all indirect taxation as ob- 
 jectionable, I enter here into no controversy. No 
 others, I apprehend, will demur to the above repre- 
 sentation ; but we append in a note a few confirmatory 
 facts. 1 
 
 1 Absolute exactitude in the following figures I do not pre- 
 tend to claim ; nor can I enter into the lengthened explanations 
 which would be necessary to lay before my readers all the sources 
 from which these estimates are framed. But any one who is dis- 
 posed to question, or desirous to verify, them, will I think be 
 satisfied if they will consult not only the annual official returns, 
 but the following works : 
 
 Edinburgh Eeview. January 1860 ' . British taxation. 
 
 " Taxation of the United Kingdom" . By Dudley Baxter. 
 
 "National Debts" Do. 
 
 " Wages, Earnings, and Taxation of the 
 
 Working Classes of Great Britain " Leone Levi. 
 
 " Pressure of Taxation " . . George Norman. 
 
 " Political Problems for our Age " . W. E. Greg. 
 
 The Statesman's Year Book, 1875 . Fred. E. Martin. 
 
THE RIGHT USE OF A SURPLUS. 1 17 
 
 Our position, then, is this and it seems desirable 
 to place it broadly and plainly before the country, so 
 plainly and broadly that, if contested at all, it must 
 be contested not on details of figures, where errors 
 
 I. COMPARATIVE TAXATION OF THIS AND OTHER COUNTRIES. 
 
 I have endeavoured in vain to reach any near approximation to 
 a correct result. The proportion which the State bears to the 
 Federal expenditure in the United States, to say nothing of their 
 large revenue derived from the sale of waste lands; the various 
 items which are paid out of local funds in one country, and out 
 of imperial taxation in another ; and the moneys reckoned pro- 
 perly enough as sources of revenue, which are in no sense taxa- 
 tion (such as our post-office and telegraph net receipts), combine 
 to baffle any but the most elaborate and lengthened calculations 
 and explanations. Some notion of all this may be gained by 
 reference to the above-named article in the Edinburgh Review. 
 I will therefore content myself with giving side by side in round 
 numbers the population and taxation in the three countries 
 which most concern us : 
 
 Population. Taxation. Per head. 
 
 United Kingdom . . 32,000,000 93,000,000 58s. 
 
 France .... 36,000,000 113,000,000 63s. 
 
 United States of America 39,000,000 130,000,000 66s. 
 
 N.B. (1). The real revenue from taxation, properly so called, 
 for the United Kingdom (for, of course, the profits made by the 
 post-office and telegraphs must be put out of consideration), 
 would seem to be as follows : 
 
 Customs 20,340,000 
 
 Inland Eevenue (various branches) 40,000,000 
 Income tax ..... 5,690,000 
 
 66,030,000 
 Local taxation 26,440,000 
 
 92,470,000 
 
 See Statesman's Year Book for 1875: pp. 213, 220. 
 
 (2). The sum given for France is taken from Goschen's work 
 
118 THE EIGHT USE OF A SUKPLUS. 
 
 may be easily fallen into and not easily detected, 
 but on general grounds which no errors of detail 
 can appreciably weaken or affect our entire system 
 of taxation has, in the course of the last generation, 
 been so largely amended, and its amount in reference 
 to our wealth and our population so greatly reduced, 
 
 on local taxation, p. 122 ; and includes the communal taxation, 
 but probably not a further sum for departmental expenditure, 
 which should be included. See Economist for September 27th, 
 1873. 
 
 (3). The figures for the United States (with a trifling reduc- 
 tion, rendered necessary by considerations which I need not 
 particularise) are taken from an official document " Eeport of 
 Commissioners appointed by the State of New York," dated 
 1871, and signed by David A. Wells and two colleagues p. 9. 
 
 (4). Mr Baxter classes the relative wealth of several nations 
 thus : 
 Income per head. 
 
 United Kingdom . 28 
 United States of America 26 
 France . 21 
 
 Germany . 19 
 Austria . . 17 
 
 Russia . . 7 
 
 II. INCREASING WEALTH OF THE NATION. 
 A very few figures will suffice to satisfy our minds on this 
 score. First, we may refer to the remarkable calculation, signed 
 " Surplus," which was published in the Times of April 12th, of 
 this year, and appears to rest mainly on the authority of the 
 first financial authority in the kingdom, from which it results 
 that the average annual growth of the yield of our taxes (all due 
 allowances for remissions and impositions made), had been as 
 follows : 
 
 18401852 . . . 1,000,000 
 1852-1859 . . 1,240,000 
 
 18591865 . . . 1,780,000 
 
 18651875 . . . 2,500,000 
 
 Secondly. The total amount of property and income assessed 
 

 THE RIGHT USE OF A SURPLUS. 119 
 
 that economists and statesmen are bound to change 
 their phraseology, and reconsider their popular maxims, 
 in regard thereto. To continue to declaim against it 
 as either unduly heavy, or unfair in its pressure, or a 
 stimulant to fraud, or a fetter upon commerce, has 
 become simply an abuse of language a^^^^^ijec* 
 
 under the income tax has risen thus (Ireland bynj^ettipa^(Hoi > 
 the first ten years) : *** R S I T V 
 
 ' 1843, . . . 2^Q,t)0p,QOQ ^ 
 
 1859, . . . 266,b 
 
 1868, . . . 386,000, 
 
 1871, . . . 420,000,000 
 
 1873, . . . 453,000,000 
 
 Thus, while in the course of a quarter of a century the assess- 
 able income of the nation had nearly doubled, the taxation levied 
 had risen only about ten millions, or twenty per cent. 
 
 Thirdly. While it is notorious that during the same period 
 the wages of our population have increased in a corresponding 
 ratio with the incomes of the propertied classes, we have no 
 means of accurately measuring this augmentation. But the fol- 
 lowing table, of the increasing consumption of imported and 
 exciseable articles per head, will leave us little to be desired on 
 this head : 
 
 CONSUMPTION OF IMPORTED AND EXCISABLE ARTICLES PER HEAD 
 OF THE TOTAL POPULATION OF THE UNITED KINGDOM. 
 
 1853. 1863. 1873. 
 
 Bacon, Ib. . . 0'81 6'09 9'07 
 
 Butter, Ib. . . 1'61 3'65 4'39 
 
 Cheese, Ib. . . 1*55 2'85 4'6d 
 
 Eggs, number . . 4'48 9'08 20'56 
 
 Kice, Ib. . . 2-25 5'58 11'37 
 
 Sugar, Ib. . . 29'57 36'01 51'56 
 
 Tea, Ib. . . 2'14 2'90 4'11 
 
 Tobacco, Ib. . . T07 1*27 T41 
 
 Wine, gallons . . 0'25 0'35 0'56 
 
 Malt, bushels . . 1-49 1'67 1'98 
 
 Spirits, home and foreign, gal. I'lO 0'85 T23 
 
120 
 
 THE RIGHT USE OF A SURPLUS. 
 
 tion of the national mind. These statements may 
 still have some insignificant fraction of reality about 
 them, but it is a fraction as insignificant as can apply 
 to any system of taxation. Watch expenditure as 
 closely as you choose, for it may be injudicious, it 
 may be clumsily levied, it may even be wasteful and 
 misapplied ; but cease to denounce it as oppressive or 
 extreme. It is notoriously no more than a nation so 
 
 INCIDENCE OF TAXATION. 
 
 This is a matter peculiarly difficult to ascertain with any preci- 
 sion. Perhaps the best plan is to place side by side the results 
 of three careful calculations, the one my own, the two others by 
 Mr Baxter and Mr L. Levi, both statisticians of eminence. (See 
 " Political Problems," p. 309.) 
 
 
 Taxation per head. 
 
 Taxation in proportion to 
 Income. 
 
 1869. 
 
 Propertied 
 classes. 
 
 Proletariat. 
 
 Propertied 
 classes. 
 
 Proletariat. 
 
 
 s. d. 
 
 s. d. 
 
 
 
 Greg, . 
 
 830 
 
 160 
 
 14 per cent. 
 
 9 percent. 
 
 Baxter, 
 
 700 
 
 183 
 
 10* 
 
 7 
 
 Levi, . 
 
 650 
 
 120 
 
 14 
 
 5 
 
 Average, . 
 
 728 
 
 155 
 
 13 
 
 7 
 
 That is, the classes who possess the property, as compared with 
 the working classes, pay six times as much per head, and nearly 
 twice as much in proportion to income. The proportion will, of 
 course, vary according to the severity of the income tax in each 
 year. Since the above calculations were made, the tea duty has 
 been reduced, and the sugar duty repealed. On the other hand, 
 the income tax has been reduced ; so that probably the compari- 
 son has not been much affected. 
 
THE RIGHT USE OF A SURPLUS. 121 
 
 extraordinarily perhaps mischievously 1 wealthy can 
 bear with ease. If, for the sake of words, you insist 
 upon calling our actual amount of revenue a burden 
 on the people, add to your now pedantic phraseology 
 that there are far heavier burdens pressing upon them 
 from which the fitting use of that revenue would 
 relieve them ; that the money of the nation is 
 entrusted to the Government not to be spent as 
 sparingly, but as beneficially and as efficiently as 
 possible ; and that it is disreputable and scandalous 
 to forego any great object, or to decline any manifest 
 improvement, or to shirk any international obligation, 
 on the plea that we cannot afford the outlay, because 
 that plea is simply an untruth. We are the richest 
 nation on the earth, and yet we submit to be told daily 
 by our orators in Parliament that we are not rich enough 
 to discharge our duties, or to mend our social evils, 
 
 1 I consider that wealth may be mischievous to a nation, as 
 history has shown ere now, when it comes upon it suddenly, in- 
 ordinately, or as the result of conquest or mineral discoveries and 
 not of industry ; and when, therefore, its immediate and perhaps 
 only consequence is a vast outburst of luxury an increase in 
 the consumption of perishable commodities which yields no 
 added dignity to life, and no extended powers of usefulness, and 
 whose main results are felt in a great inflation of prices and an 
 enhanced system of expenditure, which together render life diffi- 
 cult to that portion (the large residue) of the community whose 
 share in the increased riches of the nation has not been propor- 
 tionate. When the influx of wealth is rapid, the production of 
 needed articles, individual or family, rarely keeps pace with con- 
 sumption, nor does the character of expenditure improve with 
 the augmentation of its amount. Has not this been the case of 
 late years in England 1 
 
122 THE RIGHT USE OF A SURPLUS. 
 
 i 
 
 or avert our coming perils. 1 We find ourselves with 
 millions of surplus revenue when our annual budget is 
 unveiled to us last year it wa.s six millions yet our 
 constant question is not, " What best can we do with 
 it ? " but, " To what clamorous interest or class shall 
 we give it away ? " The budget-night is a scramble 
 for alms, not an honourable competition for the means 
 of supplying a grievous public need, or reaching a 
 beneficial achievement. Even those among our legis- 
 lators who still condescend to take lessons from the 
 wisdom of Scripture, in place of bandying its ana- 
 themas, seem to forget that praise and reward were 
 lavished on the administrators who used their five 
 talents and their ten in active operations, while only 
 scorn and penalty were bestowed upon the timid and 
 
 1 It is true the argument is not put forward in this naked 
 form : shallow arguments seldom are, lest their fallacy should be 
 too easily detected. But all who have had much opportunity of 
 watching ministerial proceedings know too well the pressure 
 that is put upon every department to cut down its estimates as 
 low as possible; the earnest, and often peremptory remonstrances 
 of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who has to provide the 
 funds, with his colleagues, who have to spend them ; the rivalry 
 between successive ministries as to which shall ask least money 
 from the country rather than as to which shall lay out its money 
 most profitably ; and the perpetual recurrence of the resistless 
 plea " Oh ! that is all very true, but we dare not dream of 
 naming such a figure ; it would be simple madness ; the House 
 of Commons would not listen to it for a moment. What ! pre- 
 sent heavier estimates than our predecessors!" Mr Gladstone 
 proposes to remit five millions of taxation. Sir Stafford North- 
 cote never dreams of saying, " If you will trust me, I will spend 
 that five millions so that it shall be worth ten to the nation." 
 He simply wins popularity at the outset by promising to remit 
 six. 
 
THE RIGHT USE OF A SURPLUS. 123 
 
 idle minister who could give no better account of the 
 funds entrusted to him, than that he had wrapped 
 them up in a napkin, and held them ready for remis- 
 sion. 
 
 It will be asked, " What then are these items of 
 public expenditure which ought to be enlarged before 
 we think of any further remission of taxation ? What 
 are the obligations we are ever seeking to evade on 
 the ground of poverty, in place of pressing to meet 
 them with liberality out of the abundance of our 
 overflowing wealth ? What the preparations for the 
 future claims of less happy years that we ought to be 
 
 We are all familiar with the perennial plea of the Cobden 
 School of economists, "It is absolutely essential to reduce every 
 vote of the larger departments as a rule, however plausible the 
 grounds they make out for its inflation. This is practically the 
 only way of enforcing moderation in the public expenditure. 
 We simply cannot trust the Government with money; it is impossible 
 to check the outlay in detail ; ministers themselves cannot do it ; if 
 they have the millions, their subordinates will be certain to con- 
 trive to spend them. The only real way of saving is to say to 
 ministers, ' You shall have no more than so much wherewith to 
 carry on the State machine, whatever be your exigencies or your 
 aims ; and you must make that sum do.' " I appeal to the re- 
 collection of my readers whether this has not been the constant 
 language of the Manchester School, whether in or out of power; 
 and I appeal to their good sense whether any language could 
 be more undignified or helpless. " These schoolboys who rule 
 us whom we select to rule us must be kept on short allowance; 
 cash slips through the fingers of all of them ; empty purses are 
 the only guarantees against waste ; fifteen millions are probably 
 wanted for the army or the navy, though the Cabinet dare only 
 ask for twelve ; let us vote them no more than ten, and they will 
 contrive to spin it out, and leave us scarcely weaker or less de- 
 fensible as the result." And this passes for policy and saving ! 
 
124- THE EIGHT USE OF A SURPLUS. 
 
 eager to make in these years of fat and teeming pro- 
 sperity ? What those costly but profitable lines of 
 liberal outlay which will repay us a thousand-fold ? 
 What, finally, especially those unsupplied wants, those 
 urgent needs which lie as burdens on the nation far 
 heavier than any impost we could name ? " I have 
 no intention of drawing out a complete programme, 
 but will content myself with a few suggestions. 
 
 I. THE STATE OF THE ARMY. 
 
 My readers need not be afraid lest I should drag 
 them through the discussions on this topic, both in 
 Parliament and in the press, which have wearied us 
 from year to year, in which pictures the most irrecon- 
 cilable were drawn by equally qualified members of 
 the Government and the Opposition, and the most 
 contradictory opinions confidently bandied about be- 
 tween very able civilians and very respectable military 
 authorities. I will confine myself to facts, as to which 
 little discrepancy appears to exist among those quali- 
 fied to speak, most of which, indeed, might be inferred 
 beforehand, and the conclusions pointed at by which 
 are too obvious to need elaborate argument. And for 
 the sake at once of brevity and lucidity, instead of 
 complicating my text with references and quotations, 
 I will compress into a note a sufficient number of the 
 authorities on which I rely for confirmation. 1 
 
 1 In the debate which took place in the course of May, in the 
 two Houses of Parliament, we find the following admissions from 
 quarters where such admissions mean much, and may be taken 
 
THE RIGHT USE OF A SURPLUS. 125 
 
 It is admitted, then, on all hands, that the state of 
 the army is far from satisfactory, and that, whether 
 painted en beau by the Ins or en noir by the Outs, 
 whether its condition be owing to a bad system or to 
 
 without discount. The recruits, the Duke of Cambridge allowed, 
 are too young. "No doubt," the Duke said, "it would be better 
 to have no recruits under twenty. I should be delighted to find 
 that every recruit who entered the service was of that age. . . . 
 But how are we to know a young man's age ] We are obliged to 
 take his word for it, and sometimes he may say he is twenty 
 when he is only seventeen. I repeat that I should prefer men of 
 twenty, but it is impossible to get them at that age. At twenty 
 a young fellow has become a seasoned man, who has entered 
 upon his career in life, and if he is at all a good workman or a 
 good labourer, he will not come into the army, whereas a boy of 
 eighteen or nineteen, who has not yet taken his position in life, you 
 can enlist" In other words, the army can compete successfully 
 with the labour-market for what, in the Duke's view, are the less 
 desirable class of recruits, but not for the more desirable. Indeed 
 he said as much in plain words. The real difficulty, he avowed, 
 " is the state of the labour-market." " That is the difficulty, and, 
 unless you can get over it, you cannot have an army such as we 
 should wish to see, or a reserve worthy the name of a reserve ; for 
 the reserve at present, is much more on paper than in reality." 
 And again, in almost the very last words of his speech, the 
 Commander-in-Chief said " I repeat, if you wish to keep up the 
 army, and to have short service, you must look to the labour-mar- 
 ket, and pay your men accordingly" 
 
 Lord Cardwell, who rose next, expressed his " entire agree- 
 ment" with the Duke's concluding observations. Conscription, 
 as the Commander-in-Chief had said, was not to be thought of, 
 and the question therefore resolved itself into a " matter of esti- 
 mate." " // you would rather see full battalions, the Chancellor 
 of the Exchequer must have a fuller estimate" Lord Cardwell 
 added, that " in time of peace neither the present Government 
 nor any other would venture to submit largely-increased estimates 
 to the House of Commons" 
 
 The Secretary-at-War told the House plainly his view of the 
 
126 THE EIGHT USE OF A SURPLUS. 
 
 the stinginess which, has ruined a good system, it is 
 such as, but for our navy and our " silver strip of 
 sea," would not content the country for an hour. It is 
 equally beyond question that our recruiting system is 
 
 case : " Twenty per cent, of our recruits," he said, " will never 
 become efficient soldiers at all ; other twenty per cent, are not at 
 present efficient soldiers, but will or MAY in process of time become 
 so." 
 
 Medical Inspectors of the Army Dr Adams, Dr Cameron, 
 and others, say : u A deplorable deterioration has taken place 
 in the quality of the rank and file in the last few years." " I 
 must candidly assert that the physique of our infantry is not up 
 to the standard of our race, and unless remedial measures be 
 adopted at once, it will fall lower and lower." "We are enlisting 
 the very scum of society." 
 
 The Commander-in- Chief, at the Lord Mayor's dinner, said : 
 " It is impossible to keep the army up unless you pay for it. 
 And the question is, are you prepared to pay what is necessary ] 
 I am convinced you are, and that the reason you receive this toast 
 so well is because you know perfectly that by contributing the 
 sums essential to keep the services efficient, you are caring more 
 effectually for your own interests than in any other way you 
 could devise. This is really the view which we must take. It 
 is my duty, and the duty of those who have to work with me, to 
 manipulate the article when we have got it ; and it is for you, 
 the members of Parliament who surround me, and for the con- 
 stituencies, to enable us to have the means of producing a good 
 result. Unless you give us those means liberally, it is impossible 
 we can attain efficiency. But all that requires money, and with- 
 out money we cannot attain the object in view. Then, again, I 
 am constantly hearing of economy and efficiency. Well, I think 
 I am a most economical man in the right direction. I do not 
 understand how it is that when we economise we are supposed to 
 have become more efficient. I never have been able to see how 
 efficiency was to be attained unless you spend money. I believe, 
 if it were fairly and fully put by members to their constituents, 
 they would enable you to be generous. But there ought to be no 
 mistake about it ; we ought to speak out freely, as I have en- 
 
THE RIGHT USE OF A SURPLUS. 1 27 
 
 most disappointing in its results ; that our enlistments 
 are deplorably too few, and our desertions shamefully 
 too many ; that, in short, for some reason or other, 
 the service, whatever changes we now make in it, is 
 not attractive to the population ; that we do not get 
 the sort of men we want and that we used to get ; and 
 that, as the special point of all, we are forced to be 
 content with the scum instead of the elite (physically) 
 of the masses ; with the weakened or diseased riff-raff 
 
 deavoured to do to the best of my ability, in placing this ques- 
 tion in a common-sense way before my fellow-citizens in this 
 great metropolis, wherever I have had the opportunity of speak- 
 ing on this suhject." 
 
 The rejections out of the recruits offering themselves have 
 risen, in the last thirty years, from 30 to 44 per cent., accord- 
 ing to one account. According to a more favourable one, 
 they are now one in three. " Why," asks Captain Home, 
 " are the rejections so numerous ] Because we are compelled 
 now, and have always been compelled in emergencies, to enlist 
 largely from town recruits of immature age." In 1872, 31 per 
 cent, of the recruits were enlisted in London, and 52 per cent, in 
 five other largest towns. In the same year, 27 in every 1000 
 were under seventeen years of age, and 582 under twenty years 
 of age. The ratio of deserters to recruits has never, since the 
 earliest years of this century, "been so high as now : it was over 
 30 per cent, in 1872. According to Mr Holms, from official 
 estimates, the average number of recruits wanted annually is 
 32,449 ; the average number obtained has scarcely exceeded 
 20,000. Yet it is absurd to argue that sufficient numbers cannot 
 be obtained by fitting inducements. There is no difficulty what- 
 ever in obtaining an adequate supply of men of the fitting age 
 (twenty-one and upwards) for the Police force (43,000 men), nor 
 by the lower branches of the Civil Service (the Customs, Excise, 
 &c.), nor by the great Eailway Companies, whose servants on 
 weekly pay equal in numbers our home army. (See Holm's 
 " British Army," pp. 73, 74.) 
 
128 THE RIGHT USE OF A SURPLUS. 
 
 of the towns instead of the hardy rustic of the country ; 
 with boys instead of men ; with youths of 17 instead 
 of 20 ; that is, with fellows who may become good 
 soldiers in two or three years instead of fellows who 
 will be ready for the field in six months, and this at 
 an era when wars are matters of weeks instead of 
 years. I offer no opinion as to the wisdom of short 
 service or long service, or any of the other alterations 
 of system recently introduced ; as a civilian, I do not 
 feel qualified to form one ; as a pleader, having one 
 clear point in view, I am anxious to avoid all disput- 
 able matter. The two or three essential truths which 
 concern my argument, and which no one, I apprehend, 
 will deny or endeavour to extenuate, are : first, that 
 whereas formerly we used to be able to recruit the sort 
 of men we wished for in the numbers we wished, we 
 can no longer do so ; secondly, that we cannot do so, 
 because we no longer offer them the same relatively 
 equal or superior inducements in pay, pension, treat- 
 ment, &c. compared with other claimants for their 
 services, that we formerly did ; in a word, that we are 
 thus beaten in the competition for suitable men by the 
 railway contractors, engineers, iron masters, emigra- 
 tion agents, and other employers of labour, because we 
 do not bid so high as those rivals ; in fine, because the 
 State the wealthiest of all employers of labour, since 
 its wealth, being that of the nation, is simply inex- 
 haustible the one whose service would seem to have 
 in some sort both a prior claim and a special dignity 
 will not offer its servants as good pay (pay includ- 
 
THE RIGHT USE OF A SURPLUS. 129 
 
 ing remuneration and attractions of all kinds) 1 as 
 commercial companies, private individuals, colonies, or 
 the back States of America ; because, while it might 
 be the best paymaster, it is the worst. For no one 
 doubts that if we chose to bid high enough, we might 
 command as many recruits of the right sort and the 
 right age as we desire; that, in short, if, instead of 
 giving back our surplus to the most clamorous and 
 pertinacious of the tax-payers, we were to allot two 
 millions, one million, or less (say even 6d. a day extra 
 to every one of our soldiers), 2 to dealing with our 
 army on signally generous terms, we could command 
 the labour market instead of having to make shift 
 with its refuse; unless, indeed, our military authori- 
 ties were actual idiots in their way of laying out the 
 extra money. But what reception would a Secretary- 
 at-War who proposed thus to raise the pay of the 
 soldiers to the market price receive from his Chancel- 
 
 1 Pray let it be observed that I by no means wish to give an 
 opinion as to which special inducement is inadequate. It may be 
 bounty, or daily pay, or pension, or comfortable quarters, or 
 fitting provision for married soldiers, or decent, kindly treat- 
 ment. It must somehow, however, be something which the army 
 service lacks, and which the railway service, the police force, the 
 navigators, and even the Customs, Excise, and Post-office, con- 
 trive to offer. I am inclined to believe (with Mr Holms), that 
 the army might be made as attractive to 30,000 young men 
 every year, with little or no increase of actual outlay, if only our 
 military authorities, parliamentary and others, knew how. That 
 they could be got there can be no doubt. 
 
 2 Even men who agree with me and with each other in little 
 else, agree in recommending this advance. (See Holms, p, 72. 
 Capt. Hime's Prize Essay p. 29.) 
 
 I 
 
130 THE RIGHT USE OF A SURPLUS. 
 
 lor of the Exchequer ? On the other hand, what 
 reception ought a ministry which shrinks from such a 
 proposal to meet with from a country which has con- 
 fided its destinies, its safety, and its fair fame to such 
 timid and short-sighted stewards ? 
 
 It is to no purpose that some writers, like Mr 
 Holms, 1 maintain that we might make our army 
 splendidly and adequately effective, at its present cost, 
 by wiser management. The position may be sound, 
 but it is irrelevant, for no man urges more strongly 
 than Mr Holms that we do not now get or keep the 
 quality of recruits we so imperatively need. It is 
 futile to argue, as I have heard others do, that we 
 ought to take the scum of the population for the 
 army ; that soldiering is the best use we can put them 
 to ; and military discipline the best school for them. 
 Granted to a great extent; it may be the moral and 
 social scum that we might and ought to utilise, but 
 not the physical scum ; and even those we don't want 
 till they are full grown, otherwise we cannot give them 
 the adequate discipline they need we cannot wait 
 three years till they become ripe for service. The 
 fact remains that we want a better and an older set 
 than we get, and that we don't get them, simply 
 because we won't pay for them. If any proofs, refer- 
 ences, or confirmations were needed to clinch this fact, 
 they are to be found in the two proposals that have 
 been so vehemently urged from time to time during 
 the last four years ; one class of orators and writers 
 
 lu The British Army in 1875." By John Holms, M.P., p. 7. 
 
THE RIGHT USE OF A SURPLUS. 181 
 
 insisting that we shall never have a decent army till 
 we adopt conscription and the ballot, as in France; 
 the other maintaining that our only safety lies in 
 universal military service, as in Prussia, in passing our 
 whole male population through the ranks. 1 I confess 
 both propositions fill me with infinite disgust, for 
 what do they both mean at bottom ? Simply, the 
 press-gang revived. " Seize your men, because you 
 are too stingy to pay them fair wages. Force them to 
 
 1 The Royal United Service Institution has just awarded its 
 annual prize to an Essay by Capt. Hime, E.A., entitled " Uni- 
 versal Conscription the only answer to the Recruiting Question." 
 His Essay is full of such military learning as bears upon the sub- 
 ject, but we cannot praise its logic or adopt its conclusions. Its 
 entire argument is this : that in order to obtain the number and 
 class of suitable recruits the country needs, you must (for the 
 home forces at least) render the whole population liable to serve, 
 even if you do not pass the whole population through the ranks 
 as they reach the age of twenty (for his " Plan," Part III., is 
 not very clear in its summary) BECAUSE the army as at present 
 recruited, is growing poorer in quality year by year, as well as 
 more costly, and BECAUSE in no other manner can you obtain the 
 men you need, in the numbers you need, without having to pay 
 more than the country will ever consent to pay. He argues (virtu- 
 ally), that it is cheaper to take men than to offer them adequate 
 inducements to come; and, like all military reasoners, in Prussia 
 as well as here, entirely leaves out of view the indirect and in- 
 calculable cost to the country of a system which would take every 
 young man from his art, his profession, his craft, just as he was 
 beginning to master it, and had found his niche, for a year or 
 two at first, and at any time when he was wanted afterwards ; 
 thus deranging the organisation of every establishment in the 
 country. Curiously enough, however, at p. 29, he writes : 
 " But, in the meantime, you must go into the labour market, and 
 say, ' If you won't come for the pay and pension we offer, what 
 will you come for 1 ' and give it them." Precisely my argument 
 not only for " the meantime," but for all times. 
 
132 THE RIGHT USE OF A SURPLUS. 
 
 serve you, because you think it too costly to induce 
 them." And this, you fancy, would be the more 
 economical measure of the two ! and you disguise its 
 monstrous injustice and oppression some of you, 
 under the wretched screen of the ballot, which is leav- 
 ing the incidence of the iniquity to chance, or throwing 
 it on Providence ; others under the scarcely less trans- 
 parent curtain of universal service, which, if purchas- 
 able exemptions were forbidden, would be impossible 
 and extravagant, and if they were allowed, would be 
 simply a more wasteful and irregular system of recruit- 
 ing. Would you dare would you even propose to 
 fix an unremunerating rate of salary for your civil 
 servants, and then collect them by conscription ? And, 
 if not, why should you recommend such a system for 
 the military service of the State ? 
 
 II. THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE. 
 
 It will be admitted on all hands and it would be 
 a waste of time to argue the point that the most im- 
 portant and imperative duty of the State, after pro- 
 viding for the safety and independence of the country, 
 is to secure the prompt, efficient, and pure administra- 
 tion of justice to all its subjects. That justice should 
 not be over-costly, is of signal consequence also ; but 
 is not half so essential as that it should be accessible, 
 equally reliable for rich and poor, and> in fact, never 
 impeded or denied, directly or indirectly ; that every 
 man who is wronged should have a remedy, easy and 
 at hand ; that every crime should be promptly and 
 
THE RIGHT USE OF A SURPLUS. 133 
 
 adequately punished; and that a legitimate litigant 
 should be able to obtain a conclusive decision to his 
 lawsuit ; that no man should have to endure a wrong, 
 because it is so tedious and costly to get righted ; or, 
 dread an appeal to the law, as a worse calamity than 
 submission to a fraud or an oppression. A Govern- 
 ment which does not secure this full and ready justice 
 to its people clearly fails in one of its most solemn and 
 urgent obligations ; if it fails because the discharge of 
 this obligation would cost money, the excuse would 
 seem only to add to the guilt of the failure ; and if, 
 having sufficient funds in hand, it prefers to use that 
 money in purchasing popularity by remission of taxa- 
 tion, rather than in doing justice by strengthening 
 the staff appointed to administer the law, it is difficult 
 to characterise, in moderate language, the degree or 
 the nature of its laches. Now, that the State in Eng- 
 land is, and has long been, habitually guilty of this 
 grave iniquity, is only too notorious; and the expense, 
 cruelty, and injustice thus inflicted on the community 
 is known to be enormous and incalculable, but un- 
 luckily does not admit of being laid before the public 
 in precise or provable figures. 
 
 The state of affairs referred to has been denounced 
 as a scandal for more than a generation, yet it exists 
 as a scandal still, and, probably, a scandal almost un- 
 mitigated in its essential points. Many attempts have 
 been made to remedy it, but none have been effectual, 
 and few have been actually carried into operation. No 
 one denies the allegations, yet the facts adduced are of 
 
THE EIGHT USE OF A SURPLUS. 
 
 the most astounding order. I enter into no discussion 
 as to the remedy: it would be pure impertinence in 
 me even to pretend to an opinion on the subject. I 
 only know that the present judges cannot, by any 
 diligence, get through their ever-increasing business, 
 far less overtake arrears. I know that, under the 
 existing system, this inadequate judicial staff, instead 
 of sitting continuously and what institutions should 
 be constantly open and in action, if not courts of 
 justice ? suspend operations for several months in the 
 year in the metropolis, and hold assizes only twice or 
 three times a year in the provinces. The appellate 
 system, too, is a source of indescribable oppression. 
 The impossibility of getting through the work has led 
 to the use of the less occupied Queen's counsel to 
 supplement the j udges in trying causes at assizes ; and 
 to a far worse evil the practice of almost forcing 
 parties (by the most urgent advice from the bench) to 
 submit their disputes to arbitration i.e., to a most 
 costly and unsatisfactory method of decision. 1 The 
 hardest source of cruelty of all upon the suitors is the 
 remanets i.e., the cases which are postponed from 
 session to session, simply because the judges have not 
 time to hear them. They have therefore to be left 
 over till another assize or another time ; and what this 
 means, in the way of added fees, renewed expenses for 
 the journeys and maintenance of witnesses, and other 
 items of outlay, may be imagined by many of us, but 
 
 1 See " Statistics of the Courts of Justice," &c., by F. H. Jan- 
 son, Esq., read before the Statistical Society, Feb., 1874. 
 
THE RIGHT USE OF A SURPLUS. 135 
 
 can be known only in its full bitterness by the un- 
 happy victims. Yet, what was told us a few weeks 
 ago by a late law officer of the Crown ? Sir H. 
 James's speech on the Judicature Bill of last Session 
 says : 
 
 " It seemed to him most unadvisable to bring the legal busi- 
 ness of the country to a dead-lock by reducing the number of 
 those judges. The 15 judges could not perform the duties which 
 now devolved upon them. The trials of heavy commercial causes 
 took place only at short sittings held three times a year, and the 
 present state of things was in consequence a scandal to the 
 country. The number of remanets, some of which had been 
 standing for two years, was, in the Court of Queen's Bench, 
 186 ; in the Court of Exchequer, 92 ; and in the Court of Com- 
 mon Pleas, 37; and to these there had just been added 108, 111, 
 and 112 new causes in those three courts respectively. The cir- 
 cuits required 14 judges, and there must be one judge sitting in 
 chambers ; consequently there was no provision made for the 
 Central Criminal Court, or for cases of indisposition, and it would 
 be impossible, under the Bill, to have continuous sittings in Lon- 
 don during the circuits. 7 ' 
 
 Two other quotations from the Law Reports, given 
 in the Times, will suffice for illustrations : 
 
 " EXCHEQUER CHAMBER, 
 
 " Dec. 5, 1871. 
 " BUSINESS OF THE COURT. 
 
 " Mr Justice Mellor said there were other judgments to be 
 delivered, but on account of the engagements of the judges, 
 several of them having to go the Winter Circuit, and his own 
 Court being short-handed, the Court had been unable to prepare 
 their judgments in the other cases, and they must therefore stand 
 over until February. 
 
 " Mr Justice Willes announced that, from a similar cause, this 
 Court must suspend its sittings, and could not hear any of the 
 cases of error from the Court of Exchequer, which, therefore, 
 must stand over until February. Thus the Court was leaving 
 
136 THE EIGHT USE OF A SURPLUS. 
 
 the greater part of its business undisposed of, and most of the 
 cases have been pending two or three years. 
 
 " From the same cause, only two out of the eight cases in error 
 from the Common Pleas were heard at this sittings, and the other 
 six stand over." 
 
 Again 
 
 " COURT OF ERROR IN THE EXCHEQUER CHAMBER, 
 
 " Nov. 30, 1872. 
 
 " (Sittings in Error from the Court of Exchequer, before the 
 Lord Chief Justice, Mr Justice Blackburn, Mr Justice 
 Keating, Mr Justice Denman, and Mr Justice Archibald.) 
 " The Court, as thus constituted, sat to take cases in error 
 from the Court of Exchequer, of which there were 18 enough 
 to occupy the Court for two or three weeks, especially as many 
 of them are cases of great weight. Three days only, however, 
 could be appointed, consistently with the other probable demands 
 upon the time of the judges as judges of ordinary or first instance 
 jurisdiction ; and the Lord Chief Justice, upon the judges taking 
 their seats, had to announce that it was found it would be im- 
 possible to sit on Monday, owing to the Winter Circuits, so that 
 the sittings will be curtailed to a single day, scarcely sufficient 
 to dispose of one case. The consequence was that all the cases 
 but the first one or two had to stand over until after next Term. 
 Before taking any of the new cases, judgment was delivered in 
 one which had stood over for consideration from the last sit- 
 tings." 
 
 Now, I have not a word to say as to the variety of 
 remedies which have been suggested during the dis- 
 cussions of the last two sessions. Legal doctors differ 
 too much to make it decent for an unprofessional lay- 
 man to offer an opinion. Nor is it necessary. All 
 that is essential to my argument stands out above all 
 controversy viz., that all these ruinous remanets 
 and enforced arbitrations, which are the disgrace and 
 opprobrium of our system, and so grievous a cruelty 
 
THE RIGHT USE OF A SURPLUS. 137 
 
 to our suitors, might have been avoided had there 
 been a timely addition to the number of our judges, 
 and 'had those judges sat de die in diem both at 
 assizes, in appeal courts, and in courts of first instance 
 as they would have done had they been numerous 
 enough and adequately paid ; and yet that, session 
 after session and parliament after parliament, for a 
 generation back or more, successive Governments have 
 gone on remitting millions upon millions of surplus 
 revenue in preference to rectifying, by a reasonable 
 expenditure, this grievous, scandalous, and admitted 
 wrong. I know few more flagrant examples of want 
 of moral courage, or want of sense of the comparative 
 importance of measures, or of both combined. 
 
 III. IRISH NATIONAL EDUCATION. 
 
 We shall not attempt to guide our readers through 
 the utterly irreconcilable statistics on the subject of 
 the condition and efficiency of the Primary Schools in 
 Ireland which were laid before the House of Commons 
 in the early August debates by official and opposition 
 speakers ; by the Chief Secretary on the one side, and 
 Mr Lyon Playfair and Mr O'Reilly on the other ; nor 
 shall we quote in any detail from the voluminous 
 report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry. On this 
 topic, as throughout this paper, we shall prefer to 
 confine ourselves to data which are not, or scarcely, 
 disputed, so that if any persons dissent from our 
 general conclusions, their controversy with us shall 
 concern only our logic and our inferences, and not at 
 
138 THE EIGHT USE OF A SURPLUS. 
 
 all our premisses. It will not, then, we apprehend, be 
 disputed that among the most desirable objects which 
 Government can aim at should be a thoroughly good 
 education for the Irish people, conducted as far as 
 practicable by well -qualified and well-disposed in- 
 structors ; that such a system, fairly, zealously, and 
 liberally followed out for a generation ought to have 
 gone far towards solving the eternal "Irish difficulty;" 
 and that almost any number of millions successfully 
 spent in bringing about such a result would be public 
 money laid out to no ordinary profit. Theoretically, 
 indeed, this proposition has been avowed and re- 
 avowed for the last forty years, by every political 
 party, whether in or out of office. It will be admitted, 
 further, that the teachers appointed to train the 
 youthful intellects of the Irish people, and sway their 
 sentiments at the most impressible ages, ought to be 
 as well qualified as can be found ; so well treated as 
 to make them almost inevitably contented, and the 
 spreaders of content around them ; and so comfortable 
 as, by the nature of things, tq be earnest friends of the 
 system and the connection to which they owed their 
 comfort. So far there can surely be no difference of 
 opinion. 
 
 Yet it is admitted with almost equal unanimity 
 for controversy on the matter only deals with figures 
 and details of degree that the instruction given in 
 the primary, and so-called " national" schools of Ire- 
 land, is defective in the extreme ; inefficient, when 
 compared, not by an ideal standard, but by the imper- 
 
THE EIGHT USE OF A SURPLUS. 189 
 
 feet practical ones of England ; that only a portion 
 of the teachers are even nominally trained for their 
 occupation, and that the training they have had is, for 
 the most part, ostentatiously inadequate ; that their 
 salaries are wretchedly scanty, and residence for them 
 rarely provided, and when provided sadly insufficient. 
 No one disputes these things : scarcely any one denies 
 either that, as a natural consequence, these teachers 
 are (as a rule, and notoriously) disaffected, and pro- 
 pagators of disaffection in fact, are too often to be 
 ranked among the worst foes of England, in place of 
 being her fastest friends. 1 
 
 The comparison, according to Mr O'Reilly, gives as 
 the entire average income of the Irish national school 
 teachers 43, against 103 in England, and 110 in 
 
 1 The following is the summing up of the Spectator : " For 
 several years the National School Teachers had been agitating 
 for an increase of salary, and their case is simply irresistible. 
 They are paid at a lower rate than London scavengers ; with ex- 
 ceptions not deserving notice, they are without residences ; and 
 they receive no pension in old age. They have, therefore, neither 
 the present means of saving, nor a future provision, and con- 
 sequently they have only the workhouse to look forward to as the 
 reward of a lifetime of faithful service. Leaving common justice 
 and right feeling entirely out of the question, it is evident that 
 ordinary prudence would hasten to redress the grievances of the 
 teachers. The wretchedness of their condition closes the profes- 
 sion against competently qualified persons, and necessarily renders 
 the schools inefficient. Nor are the political consequences less 
 disastrous. Every one can see the folly of uniting great powers 
 with physical wretchedness, and that is what is done in the case 
 of those teachers. After the priests, they exercise the greatest 
 influence over the minds of the Irish people, and they are so 
 starved, that discontent and disaffection are inevitable results." 
 
140 THE RIGHT USE OF A SURPLUS. 
 
 Scotland ; and one training school in Ireland, against 
 five in Scotland, and thirty in England. The same 
 authority says that last year, out of 9,960 teachers in 
 the Irish primary schools, only 3,842, or little more 
 than one-third, had been trained. The Royal Com- 
 mission gives (1870) fuller and rather different figures, 
 but none at all invalidating the general conclusion : 
 the result is, that taking all sects into account, about 
 half the male teachers, and two-thirds of the female, 
 are untrained. 
 
 The report gives the salaries of the male teachers 
 as ranging for trained from 18 to 52, and for un- 
 trained from 18 to 44 ; female from 16 to 30 
 and 40 pay which the Commissioners declare in- 
 sufficient for securing the needed character and talent. 
 Out of 5,265 schools, only 1,430 have free residences ; 
 the Commissioners recommend that they should be 
 attached to all. The inadequacy of the proposals of 
 Sir M. Hicks Beach on moving the relative vote in 
 August last to meet those recommendations on the 
 requirements of the case, is obvious at a glance. I 
 fully admit the force of collateral considerations, and 
 the objections to an increase of grant in any form 
 which would have the effect of fostering the inveterate 
 tendency of the Irish to live on English liberality, 
 and shut their own purses. I am merely concerned to 
 point out that here we have a third instance in which 
 a portion of the surplus funds that have been remitted 
 to the tax-payers during the last forty years might 
 have wrought a national good, now, perhaps, out of 
 
THE EIGHT USE OF A SURPLUS. 
 
 our reach for ever. An additional quarter of a million 
 yearly, imperceptible to the English contributor to 
 whom it was remitted, would have won the hearts of 
 the Irish schoolmasters, to whom it was denied. 
 
 IV. REDUCTION OF THE NATIONAL DEBT. 
 
 This question has been so often, so recently, and 
 sometimes so exhaustively treated, and the ablest 
 statesmen and writers are so nearly in accord as to the 
 principle involved, however they may differ as to the 
 special measures by which that principle should be 
 carried into operation, that a very few words of re- 
 minder are all that are necessary here. Our National 
 Debt fluctuates about 800,000,000. It reached 
 900,000,000 at the peace of 1815. Thirty-nine 
 years of peace reduced it to 800,000,000. The 
 Crimean war, which lasted two years, added 
 30,000,000. Every war, every great and unex- 
 pected claim negro emancipation, the Irish famine, 
 the Crimean expedition, the fortifications voted in 
 1865, the purchase of the telegraphs in 1869 is 
 met wholly or in part by loans, and, as we well know, 
 will always be ; and, as most of us admit, ought to be 
 so ; and for that very reason large reductions of the 
 debt (thus inevitably and periodically augmented) 
 ought to be held one of the first and most solemn 
 obligations in every year of prosperity and peace. 
 Hitherto, in spite of a long cycle of such prosperity, 
 and an enormous increase in the wealth of the nation, 
 we have only nibbled at such reductions. We have no 
 
142 THE RIGHT USE OF A SURPLUS. 
 
 right to count on the continuance of such prosperity 
 or such increase ; we have man}?- reasons to count on 
 its diminution or cessation ; intimations to this effect 
 have been sounded in the people's ears of late, both by 
 writers and statesmen with every claim to be listened 
 to ; and almost every one whose reputation entitles 
 him to a hearing has in turn sounded the note of 
 warning. We have no right to leave such an enor- 
 mous burden on our posterity, who may most probably 
 be far less able than ourselves to bear it. What is 
 oppressive to us may be simply ruinous to them. It is 
 scarcely honest scarcely safe to borrow for emergen- 
 cies unless we repay proportionally in ordinary years. 
 And, in fine, few will contest our conclusion that to 
 remit taxation whenever there is a surplus or even 
 to consider that we have a surplus till a large sum has 
 been set aside to pay off the debt is a misappropria- 
 tion approaching to iniquity. 1 The practical recogni- 
 tion of this truth by Sir Stafford Northcote, though 
 inadequate, is worthy of all appreciation. 
 
 V. SANITARY MEASURES. 
 
 This subject has been so fully discussed, has occupied 
 public attention for so many years, and has given rise 
 to so much local and general legislation, more or less 
 abortive, more or less inadequate, that I need drag 
 
 1 Perhaps I may venture to refer for particulars to " Eocks 
 Ahead," chap, ii., "the Economic Eock." (See also Mr Glad- 
 stone's Budget Speech, 1866 ; and J. S. Mill's speech in the House 
 of Commons, April 17th, same year. Also Dudley Baxter's 
 " National Debts.") 
 
THE RIGHT USE OF A SURPLUS. 143 
 
 my readers through no details. Sanitas sanitatum 
 omnia sanitas, said Mr Disraeli a year or two ago. 
 It is admitted that nowhere in this country do our 
 hygienic arrangements even approach perfection. It 
 has been all but proved, and is, I believe, not denied, 
 that in the United Kingdom 200,000 deaths out of 
 600,000 may be traced to preventible causes, and that 
 these represent at least three times the number of 
 cases of impaired health and spoiled life. It is felt, 
 too, that as our population increases and towns extend, 
 the mischief arising from neglected, misunderstood, or 
 inadequate sanitation is growing serious and menacing 
 to a hitherto unconceived degree. A good deal has been 
 done, as we all know, not always wisely ; but what re- 
 mains to be done assumes year by year larger and wider 
 dimensions. It is not very certain that we are 
 altogether on the right tack ; it is quite certain that 
 the task before us presents appalling difficulties, and 
 will involve enormous cost. 1 It has been determined 
 that a sound and complete system of sewerage and 
 drainage is essential, and must somehow be provided 
 for every town and city; and towns and cities are 
 growing up all round us, and swelling yearly as we 
 watch them. The Pollution of Rivers Act, which 
 was introduced last session, and will be re-introduced 
 and probably carried next year, first began to open 
 
 1 The main drainage of the metropolis, from first to last, is 
 estimated to cost about five millions ; and if, as is probable, the 
 proposal to supply London with pure water from Westmoreland, 
 or the Bala district in Wales, be renewed, we must prepare for 
 an outlay of many mi ions more. 
 
14 4 THE EIGHT USE OF A SURPLUS. 
 
 our eyes to the tremendous task before us a task 
 which can scarcely be accomplished, it is supposed, for 
 less than one hundred millions a sum which can 
 scarcely be added to our already vast local taxation. 
 That Act provides, in effect, that while our sewerage 
 system shall be universalized and perfected, God 
 Almighty's sewers, our streams and rivers, " for that 
 end made and provided," shall no longer be used for 
 that purpose ; that our rubbish, manufacturing refuse, 
 and household excrementa shall no longer be turned 
 into the natural watercourses, and so carried off into 
 the sea, but shall be disposed of and find depositories 
 elsewhere. In that last phrase lies the essence of the 
 subject. "Elsewhere!" Where? Concentrate your 
 attention for a moment on the valley of the Thames 
 alone. Every one of the numberless towns, large 
 and small, which make that valley one vast hive of 
 life, must no longer use its grand river as an outlet 
 must do as London has done 1 must find some issue, 
 more or less distant, where, possibly miles off, it may 
 convey its inevitable filth ; and that issue must be 
 unoccupied land wastes, bogs, marshes, &c. away 
 from other habitations, where it shall be out of the 
 reach of poisoning air or water for other human beings, 
 present or future. In other words, the excrementa of 
 some ten or fifteen millions which has hitherto, for the 
 most part, floated away to the ocean, shall be retained 
 in the country, and concentrated into what may 
 
 1 And every town has not, like London, Barking Marshes and 
 the sea at its service. 
 
THE RIGHT USE OF A SURPLUS. 145 
 
 become centres of pestilence. It may be questioned 
 whether this is wise, whether it is possible, whether it 
 is based upon sound scientific or engineering doctrine. 1 
 What cannot be questioned, and what alone concerns 
 my present purpose, is, that somehow or other the 
 end must be attained if it be attainable ; that scheme 
 after scheme will be tried ; that any scheme be it 
 hundreds of miles of piping, the purchase and consecra- 
 tion of thousands of acres, or the erection of elaborate 
 machinery for pumping and deodorizing will ne- 
 cessitate outlay on an enormous scale, which means 
 rates by the million or borrowing by the million ; and 
 that, with such a prospect in view, giving back 
 surpluses, neglecting to hoard surpluses, remitting 
 one shilling of established taxation (now that our 
 taxation is so easy and so light, and, in the main, so 
 equitable), would appear to be a grievous error and a 
 curious want of foresight, needing, but scarcely likely 
 to obtain, justification. 
 
 VI. RELIEF OF LOCAL TAXATION. 
 
 I have no intention of entering into the question of 
 the degree or the mode in which local rates ought to 
 be relieved at the expense of the imperial revenue ; 
 
 1 Even while I write, the town of Richmond has gone into 
 court to prove that it is not possible for it to carry out the require- 
 ments of the law ; and has adduced the declarations of very high 
 engineering authorities in support of the plea authorities which 
 affirm that the whole scheme and theory of the actual system 
 will have in a very few years to be reconsidered, and probably 
 abandoned. 
 
 K 
 
146 THE RIGHT USE OE A SURPLUS. 
 
 but that some such relief should be given, has been, I 
 think, a conclusion forced upon most minds by the 
 discussions of the last few years. The Conservative 
 party have long urged this principle upon Parliament, 
 though without tracing out a plan which approved 
 itself to the public mind. Mr Goschen, when at the 
 head of the Local Government Board, collected and 
 published an enormous mass of information bearing 
 on the subject ; and in the name of the Liberal party 
 conceded the principle, and as a sort of empiric and 
 interim step, suggested that the house tax, which 
 yields about a million, should be set aside to meet the 
 immediate claims. But the proposal satisfied no one, 
 and the matter was felt to demand bolder and more 
 systematic handling. Very recently, Sir Baldwyn 
 Leigh ton than whom on such a topic no one deserves 
 better to be listened to in his published letter to 
 Lord Lyttelton, has insisted upon the absolute neces- 
 sity, in the interests of the poor themselves, of the 
 cessation of all outdoor relief and no competent 
 observer, we believe, will differ with him. To insure 
 this great end, he recommends (and Mr Rathbone 
 also an authority of large experience in the essentials, 
 supports his proposal) that half the cost of indoor 
 maintenance shall be borne by the Treasury. 1 This 
 
 1 " If by charging half the indoor, or necessary poor on the 
 Treasury, which justice as much as policy demands, and througli 
 persuasion and example inculcated by different inspectors in 
 their districts, as has already been commenced the outdoor 
 pauperism could be reduced to the level of the best-managed 
 unions, the saving in money would amount to 2,000,000 a year 
 
THE RIGHT USE OF A SURPLUS. 
 
 particular scheme may, or may not, be the best con- 
 ceivable ; but probably we can scarcely be wrong in 
 assuming that in a very short period a sum not far 
 off two millions per annum will have to be provided 
 ad hoc by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who will 
 then be less ready than at present to give back the 
 surplus with which the natural increase of the revenue 
 has provided him. 
 
 I think that I have now shown that there are at 
 least six classes of measures for the public good, of a 
 character which the imperial revenue ought to take 
 cognizance of and cannot without blame neglect, funds 
 for which should be provided before the Government 
 gives back to the nation any portion of the millions 
 which it has confided to them to expend on its behalf, 
 in its service, for its safety, and in discharge of its 
 obligations formal or implied. There may be many 
 more than six ; the secular increase of the yield of 
 existing taxation, so boldly counted upon, may any 
 
 indeed to nearly 3,000,000. If, in addition to this, Scotland 
 were added to the grant from the Treasury for half the indoor 
 maintenance, amounting to about 800,000 a year, the saving to 
 the ratepayers would equal 4,000,000 ; but the saving to the poor 
 themselves (in habits of self-reliance, &c.,) would be something 
 like ten times that amount, and their improvement in moral and 
 material welfare thereby would be quite incalculable. I look on 
 this matter entirely from the point of view of the amelioration 
 of the poor ; and it is of course the consideration which would 
 and should have the greatest weight in the House of Lords." 
 ( u Depauperisation," by Sir Baldwyn Leighton, Bart., p. 15. 
 " Local Government and Taxation," by William Eathbone, M.P.. 
 pp. 29-36.) 
 
148 THE RIGHT USE OF A SURPLUS. 
 
 year receive a startling check ; new indirect taxes 
 cannot easily be imposed ; direct taxes cannot be 
 levied on the labouring masses ; large and exclusive 
 augmentations of the income tax, which falls upon the 
 comparatively rich, will not, we may be certain, be 
 endured, except for sudden and rare emergencies ; 
 and, to sum up the whole, any such marked improve- 
 ment in the habits and character of the working 
 classes as we all hope for, and many of us labour for, 
 may, ere long, sweep away from the resources of the 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer six or seven millions of 
 the revenue now derived from the consumption of 
 spirituous liquors. In short, our financial resources 
 may very probably diminish, while the claims on those 
 resources are very certain to increase. And in the 
 face of these considerations all I believe indisputable 
 the courage of the finance minister who ventures to 
 remit his surplus, instead of hoarding it for future 
 use, or spending it on present and pressing needs, 
 should, I submit, be called by another name. 
 
VIL 
 
 THE GREAT TWIN BRETHREN. 
 
 ELABORATE parallels between eminent historical 
 characters, after the manner of Plutarch, are out of 
 date, and usually out of taste ; but some public men 
 still occasionally, from time to time, appear simultane- 
 ously on the stage, whose characters and careers present 
 such singular analogies, that the most casual observer 
 can scarcely fail to be surprised into following out the 
 comparison. Sometimes those resemblances are con- 
 fined to the mere accidents of fortune or of life, in 
 which case the delineation of them belongs only to the 
 " curiosities of literature." Sometimes they have no 
 reality at all, but are of the nature of pure paradox, 
 and then they are but the exercitations of an ingeni- 
 ous fancy. Sometimes they are discoverable between 
 men whose capacities and dispositions are almost iden- 
 tical, but whose course of life and whose position in 
 the world are so utterly dissimilar as to render their 
 resemblances of character doubly curious and instruc- 
 tive. But occasionally the analogies we speak of 
 pervade the whole nature of the men, and explain the 
 secret, because they constitute the cause, of the success 
 or failure, as well as of many of the details, of their 
 
150 THE GREAT TWIN BRETHREN. 
 
 respective careers ; and when they are seen working 
 under external circumstances, various indeed, but 
 not unlike, they offer about the most suggestive 
 psychological studies which can beguile a leisure 
 hour. 
 
 Now there are at this moment in the great arena 
 where history is made two men who fill, and have 
 long filled, a large space in the public eye ; both 
 unique men, both successful men, both exercising, 
 directly or indirectly, considerable influence on the 
 world's affairs ; and who, in the fundamental features 
 of their characters, as well as in the general outline 
 and some of the particulars of their careers, present 
 perhaps more points of resemblance than can be 
 found in any of the famous parallels with which 
 genius has made us all familiar. We mean the 
 Emperor of the French, and the leader of the House 
 of Commons one, the first man in France; the other, 
 officially and really, one of the most influential men in 
 England. 
 
 The principal, if not the single, contrast between 
 them renders their numerous resemblances the more 
 remarkable. Few men can have had more dissimilar 
 origins. Mr Disraeli is the son of a literary man in 
 comparatively humble circumstances, much respected, 
 but never eminent, who bequeathed to him little 
 except his talents and his ambition. Louis Napoleon 
 was born in the purple, the son of a king and the 
 nephew of the greatest conqueror and military genius 
 the earth has seen since Caesar. Louis Napoleon, in 
 
THE GREAT TWIN BRETHREN. 151 
 
 spite of the adverse surroundings of his youth, had 
 everything to feed and foster that confident anticipa- 
 tion of the ultimate grandeur of his destiny which, as 
 we know, he never lost, and which helped so largely 
 to realise itself. Mr Disraeli had nothing to inspire 
 the conviction of his future greatness beyond his innate 
 consciousness of power and resolution. 
 
 Both come of a different stock from the nation 
 they have been called to govern ; and this difference, 
 which we believe to have been a great assistance to 
 the Frenchman, has constantly aggravated the difficul- 
 ties of the Englishman. Without even glancing at 
 rumours and surmises, which, having no consistency 
 and being capable of no proof, it would be worse than 
 idle to introduce into our thesis, we need only remem- 
 ber that the Emperor's father, like his uncle, was a 
 Corsican, and therefore less French than Italian ; and 
 from his Italian blood he probably derives much of 
 that concentration and power of silence and reserve 
 which, whether it be really profundity or not, at 
 least produces the impression of profundity on the 
 volatile and excited people over whom he has attained 
 so strange a sway. No one who has studied the 
 biographies of the subtle, patient, impassive, daring 
 Italian statesmen of the palmy days of the Peninsula, 
 can fail to be struck with the family resemblance both 
 to each other and to the present Emperor. His mother, 
 too, was not French but West Indian. [It is curious 
 to note, in passing, that three of the most eminent 
 statesmen who at various times have ruled France, 
 
152 THE GREAT TWIN BRETHREN. 
 
 and largely modified her destinies, besides the two 
 Napoleons, have been of foreign origin and birth, 
 Mazarin was Italian, and Neckar and Guizot were 
 both Genevese.] Mr Disraeli, though born in Eng- 
 land, as Louis Napoleon was born in France, has 
 nothing English about him beyond that unimportant 
 local accident. Jewish by descent and feature, and 
 belonging in every fibre to that old Caucasian race 
 which he has so pertinaciously set himself to glorify, 
 he is devoid of the peculiar British instincts and 
 sympathies, so essential to a leader who has to govern 
 Englishmen by persuasion and allurement, and not by 
 authority. It is impossible to watch him or his pro- 
 ceedings, or his countenance even, in the House of 
 Commons during long debates and on critical occasions, 
 without perceiving how thoroughly he is an fond out 
 of harmony with his followers, and without recognis- 
 ing in this want of sympathy and perception the cause 
 of many of his blunders. His deficiencies and his 
 superiorities alike stand in his way with the party it 
 is his singular fate to lead, and to lead to a great 
 degree against their will ; his subtlety, his inveterate 
 love of mystery and intrigue, his elaborate and tortuous 
 ingenuity, are precisely the qualities most alien from 
 the taste and comprehension of the country gentle- 
 men of England, who do not appreciate clever craft, 
 and are revolted by want of openness and daring. 
 They, as a rule, like all men whose morale is higher 
 and more wakeful than their intelligence, think more 
 of means than of ends, or at least feel more acutely 
 
THE GREAT TWIN BRETHREN. 153 
 
 about them ; and they are in consequence perpetually 
 offended by the tactics of a leader who by nature 
 prefers stratagem to force, and who, while as tenacious 
 of his purposes as his Gallic analogue, is almost as 
 unscrupulous in reference to the paths and measures 
 by which he would achieve them. 
 
 Both men from the outset believed in themselves 
 a mighty means and usually a sure augury of success. 
 They believed in themselves when no one else did, 
 and when there was no reason why any one else 
 should. There is something touching and worthy of 
 reverence in this unswerving faith, founded no doubt 
 on a consciousness which cannot be imparted, but 
 which, on the other hand, cannot be shaken or rea- 
 soned away. Mr Disraeli kept to it through years of 
 obscurity and failure Louis Napoleon through years 
 of exile and imprisonment. The conviction enabled 
 them to set their aim steadily in view in very early 
 youth, to shape their course deliberately towards it, to 
 labour hard and appropriately for it, and to suffer 
 nothing to beguile them from it. 
 
 " All my life long," says Philip von Artevelde 
 
 " I have beheld with most respect the man 
 Who knew himself, and knew the ways before him, 
 And from among them chose considerately, 
 With a clear foresight, not a blindfold courage ; 
 And, having chosen, with a steadfast mind 
 Pursued his purposes. I trained myself 
 To take my place in high or low estate, 
 As one of that small ord,er of mankind." 
 
 Louis Napoleon early announced and never doubted 
 
154 THE GREAT TWIN BRETHREN. 
 
 that he would recover the imperial throne of France. 
 It is said that when Mr Disraeli applied to Lord 
 Melbourne for employment, and was offered the post 
 of Private Secretary, he declined it as below the pre- 
 tensions of a man who had made up his mind sooner 
 or later to be Prime Minister of England, and assigned 
 this as his reason, to the astonished nobleman in 
 question. Those, moreover, who read " Vivian Grey," 
 the first production of Mr Disraeli's fertile pen (pub- 
 lished, we believe, when he was barely of age), will be 
 both amused and surprised to see how early and dis- 
 tinctly his ambitious schemes were sketched out, and 
 how closely they have been pursued and realised. 
 
 Both began their public careers in a direction almost 
 in appearance, at least diametrically opposite to 
 their ultimate position. Louis Napoleon began as a 
 Carbonaro and conspirator, and narrowly escaped the 
 fate which terminated the course of his elder brother 
 and removed at least one rival out of his way. Mr 
 Disraeli began life as a romantic novelist almost a 
 rhapsodist ; the actual leader of the Tory party wished 
 to enter Parliament as a Kadical under the auspices 
 of Joseph Hume. Both inaugurated their race of 
 wonderful triumphs with almost as wonderful fiascoes, 
 and fiascoes, curiously enough, of precisely the same 
 character. Mr Disraeli published some astounding 
 stuff ; rubbish it was not, for there was a strange wild 
 vigour about everything he wrote which redeems it 
 from contempt, though by no means from ridicule ; 
 but there was a ludicrous amount of rhodomontade in 
 
THE GREAT TWIN BRETHREN. 155 
 
 some of his productions which, had critics not heen 
 strangely merciful, or their patient singularly pachy- 
 dermatous, might well have extinguished the ambitious 
 litterateur for ever. His ddbut in Parliament, too, 
 was a marvel of false taste and bombast, utterly 
 unsuited to such an arena ; and as the House at last 
 entirely refused to listen to his rhetorical display, the 
 discomfited but not disheartened orator sat down, 
 declaring that those who would not hear him then 
 should hear him soon. Such, at least, is the tradi- 
 tion, and the prophecy has been amply fulfilled. But 
 the next time Mr Disraeli addressed the House he had 
 profited by experience, and adopted a wholly different 
 style from his earlier attempt, viz., that personal, acid, 
 epigrammatic manner of which he has since shown 
 himself so consummate a master. Louis Napoleon's 
 blunders, as Mr Bright the other evening said of Mr 
 Gladstone's moderation, " are known unto all men." 
 The tame eagle and the pistolled gendarme at Bou- 
 logne, the feeble and futile attentat at Strasbourg, the 
 bombastic proclamations which accompanied these 
 ambitious failures, and the first address to the French 
 people in 1848, appeared to indicate a mind altogether 
 extravagant and unsound, unable to measure chances 
 or to adapt means to ends ; and if the Emperor's 
 career had terminated there, no feeling save that of 
 contempt could have been associated with the memory 
 of one who now, after the lapse of twenty years, is 
 universally recognised as nearly the ablest and quite 
 the most remarkable statesman of the age. This in- 
 
156 THE GREAT TWIN BRETHREN. 
 
 sensibility to failure which is common to the two men 
 this want of feeling, or of seeming to feel, the 
 mortification and ridicule attending it this admirable 
 capacity of drawing from each error and defeat its 
 practical instruction, and ignoring or despising its 
 mere personal annoyance constitute of themselves a 
 power so rare and so efficient as almost to reach to 
 the dignity of genius, and beyond all question have 
 been among the chief causes of the success of both 
 careers. Both turned to the best account, the one his 
 period of imprisonment, the other that of his enforced 
 obscurity ; and a comparison between the " Yivian 
 Grey " and the " Coningsby " of the novelist, and 
 between the Strasbourg attentat and the December 
 coup d'etat of the political adventurer, will give us 
 the measure of the growth of the intellectual stature 
 of the two in the respective intervals between their 
 several achievements. 
 
 Passing over a few minor coincidences, such as 
 that both men, though not built in the mould which 
 is popularly supposed to fascinate the sex, owed the 
 first and most essential steps of their success to women; 
 that both, though eminently men of action, have been 
 voluminous, varied, and ambitious authors ; and that 
 the utterance of both, whether in speeches or in books, 
 has been peculiarly distinguished, and will be ex- 
 clusively remembered, by phrases of brilliant and 
 epigrammatic incisiveness, we go on to notice that 
 in many most characteristic and fundamental features, 
 their dispositions are as similar as their careers. Both 
 
THE GKEAT TWIN BRETHREN. 157 
 
 are singularly patient and persistent pertinacious in 
 their purposes, flexible in their measures; knowing 
 that there are usually many ways to the same end ; 
 having learnt from written history as well as from the 
 history of their own experience that in political life 
 nearly everything depends upon a happy choice of 
 times and opportunities and religiously convinced 
 " que tout vient a bout a qui sait attendre " they 
 have both known how to play a waiting game : 
 Cunctando restituit rem. The policy of both has in 
 one and the same sense been tentative, that is, they 
 have tried this door and that to the temple of grandeur 
 and of fame, and as they found each in turn barred 
 against them or stiff in opening, they have gone on to 
 another, or waited till the barrier was relaxed or 
 removed. They have in common a curious mixture 
 of daring and of prudence ; they have neither of them 
 any sentimental or fanatical preference for plans and 
 instruments, and paths and means ; they never, or 
 most rarely, attempt " to force the hands of Pro- 
 vidence ; " they recognise in a certain amount of diffi- 
 culty, in a given measure of obstacle or resistance, 
 an indication that victory is not intended for them 
 then and there; they watch, that is, for divine guid- 
 ance and intimations, as they respectively conceive 
 such, or for what in their minds does duty for such. 
 It is probable that neither man will ever come to 
 ruin through obstinacy. In this respect the contrast 
 between the Emperor of the French and his imperious 
 uncle is most remarkable ; the first Napoleon was full 
 
158 THE GREAT TWIN BRETHREN. 
 
 of passion, and his passion wrecked his genius. He 
 never knew when to temporise, when to give way, 
 when to recede and acknowledge himself beaten. No 
 intellect, so grand and so piercing, was ever so mis 
 led or so blinded by impetuous and unconquerable 
 pride. What was vehement self-will in the first 
 Napoleon is quiet and tough volition in the second. The 
 one would never yield and so was utterly crushed in 
 the end. The other yields often, yields in time, yields 
 with sagacity, and so usually gains his aim at last. 
 The result has been that the nephew with not a tithe 
 of his uncle's genius, utterly destitute of his wonder- 
 ful faculty of dazzling men's imaginations and sub- 
 jugating their wills, surrounded by more powerful 
 rivals, and fallen upon a less favourable conjuncture 
 has already reigned longer than his uncle. The uncle 
 became First Consul at the end of 1799, and Emperor 
 in 1804, and fell in 1814 ; that is, he was on the 
 throne for ten years, and first magistrate of France for 
 fourteen. The nephew was elected President in 
 December 1848, and Emperor in December 1852; 
 that is, he has been on the throne for fourteen years, 
 and first magistrate for eighteen, and he is there still. 
 Mr Disraeli is two years older than his analogue, 
 and has been in power almost as long. He entered 
 Parliament for the first time in 1837, and became 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the Tory 
 party in the year of the coup d'etat, 1852 ; and he 
 like the Emperor, is there still. Our readers can 
 draw the rest of the parallel for themselves, and by 
 
THE GREAT TWIN BRETHREN. 159 
 
 the light of the days that are passing over us now. 
 Never have the mingled persistence and pliability ot 
 the man been more striking than in the present 
 session. 
 
 This paper has grown to a far greater length than 
 we designed at first, and the points of comparison are 
 far from being exhausted. We will, however, only 
 glance at two more. Both men are possessed with 
 the same fundamental idea in politics, that of basing 
 the throne of authority despotism in the one country, 
 Toryism in the other on universal suffrage. Both 
 recognise in the ignorance, the passion, the excitable 
 prejudice, or the immovable stupidity of the masses, 
 their natural allies, their surest supporters, the most 
 inaccessible and indefeasible foundation of their power. 
 Democracy at the root autocracy at the summit. Both 
 men, finally, we believe, are unusually free from what are 
 ordinarily called passions certainly from the malignant 
 or unkindly passions. One of Louis Napoleon's bitterest 
 antagonists surprised us, in the earlier days of his great- 
 ness, and not long after the coup d'etat, by describing him 
 as a singularly " inoffensive" man. " He was (he said) 
 amiable and considerate to those about him, kind to his 
 dependents, steady to old friends, not exactly generous 
 or forgiving, but quite without vindictiveness never 
 hesitating at a necessary crime or cruelty, but at the 
 same time never committing a superfluous one." He 
 did not, our friend said, like wickedness or brutality, 
 and never wasted either. Much the same thing, we 
 believe, may be said of Mr Disraeli. We are assured 
 
160 THE GREAT TWIN BRETHREN. 
 
 that he hates no antagonist ; that he is generous and 
 considerate to the younger members of his party and 
 a great favourite with them ; that he would promptly 
 and without mercy crush an enemy in his way, but 
 never one out of his way, simply because he was an 
 enemy, and that he would find little difficulty in taking 
 his most inveterate foe by the hand and acting cordi- 
 ally with him if the object he had in view dictated this 
 course of conduct. 
 
VIIL 
 
 IS THE POPULAR JUDGMENT IN POLITICS MORE JUST 
 THAN THAT OF THE HIGHER ORDERS ? 
 
 Contributed to a discussion on this subject in the "Nineteenth Century" 
 for June and July 1878, commenced by Mr Gladstone. 
 
 MR GLADSTONE'S proposition as understood by Lord 
 Arthur Russell, and indeed as originally enunciated 
 by himself, seemed startling and questionable enough. 
 As it promises to issue from the alembic of this dis- 
 cussion guarded and mitigated in its terms, limited 
 in its scope, interpreted and exemplified by some of 
 its exponents, and modified by the suggestions of 
 more cautious but still sympathetic minds it seems 
 impossible to deny to it a considerable measure of 
 suggestive, encouraging, and prolific truth, for which 
 it is well worth while to secure a less loose and exces- 
 sive, and a more precise expression. 
 
 Probably it will be found that the essence and 
 sound kernel of the broad proposition we are criticising 
 may be reduced to the following dimensions : that 
 the mass, the populace, the uneducated classes, are in 
 their political views and conclusions more guided by 
 impulse and less by reflection than those above them 
 in the social scale ; that they look rather to the larger 
 
 L 
 
162 THE POPULAR JUDGMENT IN POLITICS. 
 
 and more obvious, which are often the more essential, 
 points of a question, than to its minor and modifying 
 features ; that their sympathies are, if not always 
 truer, at least prompter, keener, more unqualified, 
 more imperious than those of the higher orders. 
 Nay, we may perhaps go further and recognise that 
 they are as a rule certainly often more generous 
 and hearty in those sympathies, especially with the 
 wronged and the oppressed or those they deem such, 
 and far more to be counted on for obeying these 
 estimable feelings, when once aroused, without regard 
 to selfish interests and consequences, than classes who 
 might be expected to take loftier, wider, and more 
 complex views. It will follow from these admissions 
 that in those grand and simple political issues which 
 every now and then come up before a community for 
 solution, into which morals enter more largely than 
 considerations of expediency, and in which the im- 
 pulses of natural and unperverted men, and usually of 
 aggregated men (that is, of masses}, may be trusted 
 for substantial kindliness and justice in questions 
 where the equitable features lie upon the surface and 
 are written in sunbeams, or where the principle 
 involved is so great and clear that the details which 
 obscure and the collateral consequences which compli- 
 cate may safely be neglected in those cases, few and 
 rare, yet whose existence cannot be denied, where (to 
 use the noble and convincing expression of Burke) 
 * the heart of youth may be wiser than the head of 
 age ' it may well be granted, I say, that in issues of 
 
THE POPULAR JUDGMENT IN POLITICS. 163 
 
 this character the ' popular ' judgment may be sounder 
 than that of classes far better educated and informed. 
 
 But such decisions are much slower to be reached by 
 virtue of the far wider range of the considerations that 
 have to be weighed and searched for, and the vision, 
 we must also allow, is apt to be dulled and deflected 
 by inescapable but very grave egotistical bearings. 
 
 Further than this I cannot go with Mr Gladstone. 
 Several of his representations I cannot recognise as 
 more than partially correct ; and I entirely demur 
 to the large practical conclusions which he and his 
 supporters draw as being, I consider, but loosely con- 
 nected with their premisses. Even in the admissions 
 I have made above I can scarcely conceal from myself 
 that the same facts might have been stated in less 
 flattering language, and perhaps less ungrudgingly. 
 I might remark that the masses are apt to be led and 
 governed by their impulses, even when these take the 
 form of vehement passions rather than of generous or 
 kindly emotions. Nor, while recognising to the full 
 the curious sagacity and racy powers of reasoning 
 often very skilfully applied, with which numbers 
 among them are truly credited by Mr Harrison, and 
 which, as he justly says, constitute in themselves a 
 political education far more properly deserving of the 
 name than that of the idler ranks who may have 
 passed or graduated at Eton or at Oxford, can I re- 
 cognise, as a general feature of the working classes, 
 that freedom from prejudice and power of doing justice 
 to the arguments of their superiors in rank, nor that 
 
164 THE POPULAR JUDGMENT IN POLITICS. 
 
 facility to welcome instruction and guidance even 
 where they must be conscious of their own ignorance 
 and inaptitude, in which Mr Gladstone appears to 
 have so large and generous a faith. The Tichborne 
 case, referred to by Lord Arthur Russell, appears to 
 me, in spite of the sarcasm of Mr F. Harrison, to be 
 singularly significant. The ' Claimant ' was upheld, 
 followed, admired, and stuck to with strange enthusiasm 
 by the masses, and not by those of London only. His 
 advocate, with even less rationality, was almost more 
 noisily applauded. Note, too, the analysis, which can 
 scarcely be questioned, of the ' Claimant's' worshippers 
 among the crowd. Half of them gave the measure of 
 their reasoning capacity by retaining their belief and 
 their adherence in defiance of the crushing demolition 
 of his case by the Lord Chief Justice ; the other half, 
 who probably never believed in the justice of his 
 claims at all, were his loyal adherents to the end, and 
 would have given him a verdict without turning in 
 the jury box (while by implication avowing its in- 
 equity), because cordially admiring ' the pluck of a 
 butchers son for standing up with such gallantry 
 against a baronet. 9 
 
 Nor, again, can I observe that the working classes 
 have of late shown much of the readiness to be guided 
 by the advice and arguments even of their own ad- 
 mitted friends and recognised leaders, on questions 
 relating to their own interests and where they might 
 be expected to be acquainted with the facts of the 
 case and to be competent to form a sagacious judg- 
 
THE POPULAR JUDGMENT IN POLITICS. 165 
 
 merit. I do not refer to instances, too many and 
 surprising enough, alas ! where Trades Union chiefs 
 have taken up the shallowest doctrines and the most 
 untenable positions. I speak of the many occasions 
 of disputes about wages which have occurred during 
 the last two disastrous years, when the choice of the 
 men lay between work on the master's terms or no 
 work at all ; when the leaders, who saw this, counselled 
 submission, but the men, who could scarcely deny the 
 truth, found the truth too unwelcome to be candidly 
 recognised ; nay more, when meetings were held to 
 which most of the attendants went with the intention 
 of accepting the inevitable and closing with the offered 
 rates, but when this wholesome temper was entirely 
 turned aside and changed into bitterness by the fire- 
 brand speech of some reckless agitator, and a prolong- 
 ation of the strike was carried by an overpowering 
 vote. And this observation reminds us of another 
 danger which reflective public men should be the last 
 to ignore or undervalue the peculiar proneness, 
 namely, of popular assemblies to be swayed by oratory 
 rather than by reasoning and knowledge : a proneness 
 to which they are liable just in proportion as they are 
 popular (i.e. composed of the excitable and unculti- 
 vated masses) just in proportion, one might possibly 
 add, as the sentiments involved and appealed to are 
 generous and sympathetic. 1 Susceptibility to eloquence 
 
 1 It may perhaps be not quite safe to appeal to the sentiments 
 of the masses during the phase of popular excitement through 
 which we are now passing ; but it is questionable whether the 
 
] 66 THE POPULAR JUDGMENT IN POLITICS. 
 
 is the notorious danger of liberal constitutions and 
 democratic assemblies, perhaps we might say their 
 besetting sin ; and eloquence is mightier far when 
 championing passionate emotion than when pleading 
 the cause of sober wisdom ; mightier, too and this is 
 a matter for grave consideration when giving utter- 
 ance to the awakened animosities and prejudices of the 
 hour than when anxiously forecasting graver and re- 
 moter but no less certain issues. 
 
 ' This is no discussion about a Reform Bill,' says 
 Mr Harrison, ' nor are we settling the respective 
 claims of popular or oligarchic government/ I beg to 
 remind him that the discussion grew out of the 
 proposal for a new Reform Bill,, and the special 
 proposition we are criticising, its soundness or un- 
 soundness, directly involves the justice of those claims. 
 Mr Gladstone's entire argument implies this ; so does 
 Mr Button's skilful and ingenious historical retrospect 
 of the last seventy years. The very proposition itself 
 
 majority of the people of those whom we may speak of as the 
 unpropertied classes is not to be ranged on that which Mr 
 Gladstone has taken such effective pains to persuade us is the 
 wrong and the unrighteous side. ' Society/ we know the idler 
 and military ranks, the 'upper ten thousand/ &c. incline 
 mainly and passionately to the Turkish side ; the middle, the 
 intellectual, the commercial classes, are chiefly Russian, or at 
 least hostile to the Porte ; but is it not the case, especially in the 
 metropolis, that far the larger portion of those below them, in 
 spite of Bulgarian atrocities, in disregard of Mr Gladstone's 
 campaign, are still the vehement backers of the most recklessly 
 warlike and Chauvinist minister we have had for long, in his 
 policy of involving us in hostilities for the maintenance of about 
 the worst government with which we have ever been mixed up 1 
 
THE POPULAR JUDGMENT IN POLITICS. 167 
 
 appears to have been announced in so broad a form 
 distinctly in order to cover and to justify a large 
 modification of our Parliamentary institutions in a 
 popular direction, and to discredit oligarchical pre- 
 tensions. Both interlocutors argue that the experience 
 of the Past may be taken as a guarantee against the 
 foreseen or fancied perils of the Future that, because 
 our previous extensions of the franchise have brought 
 us no evil, but, on the contrary, good, therefore we 
 may venture without anxiety nay, with sanguine 
 confidence on an extension yet wider and more 
 sweeping. 
 
 The plea appears to me to break down, or rather 
 to be inexact and inapplicable ; and the immense 
 reliance on it shown by two men so unusually trained 
 in political experience and conversant with political 
 philosophy, may almost be characterised as startling. I 
 demur to the conclusions, drawn from Mr Hutton's 
 appeal to the experiments of the last sixty years, 
 confidently as it is made, because those experiments 
 do not embrace any, properly speaking, popular, or 
 perhaps I ought to say populace, electorates ; and I 
 object to Mr Gladstone's apparent hopes from the 
 newest and rashest extension of the franchise, because 
 it has not yet really and fully come into operation, 
 and for another reason which I shall come to presently. 
 To exact reasoners the Past offers no safe augury for 
 the Future. The analogy being far too partial and 
 imperfect. 
 
 We have seen several Reform Bills framed on 
 
1G8 THE POPULAR JUDGMENT IN POLITICS. 
 
 different lines and directed to different issues 
 essentially and fundamentally different. The original 
 plan, the great and beneficent one, was designed 
 to correct certain flagrant abuses and anomalies in 
 our representation, and to supply certain still more 
 undeniable omissions and defects. It was framed (to 
 speak broadly) with the object of embracing within the 
 electoral pale as many as might be of the qualified 
 classes i.e. of those possessing property of whatever 
 sort, and education of suitable degree : in a word, 
 that enormous proportion of our population whose 
 claims were universally allowed to be, as a rule, at 
 least equal to the average of those already endowed 
 with the suffrage, and in many cases far superior. So 
 far was that act from giving votes to the working 
 classes properly so called those who might be broadly 
 described as habitually uneducated and living mainly 
 or exclusively on wages that it distinctly recognised 
 their then unfitness I would rather say unripeness 
 by ultimately disfranchising all of this description 
 who at that period were on the electoral register, 
 namely, freemen and scot-and-lot voters. The two 
 subsequent measures brought forward by Liberal 
 Governments were, if I remember rightly, framed on 
 the same general lines, but with lower suffrage 
 qualifications as justified by the progress of the times. 
 The two last Reform Bills the Tory measure of 
 1867, conferring the franchise on the householders in 
 boroughs, and the Liberal measure proposing to extend 
 the same privilege to the county population were 
 
THE POPULAR JUDGMENT IN POLITICS. 169 
 
 entirely different, not to say alien, in their principle, 
 their object, and their bearings. They admitted to 
 the electoral register en masse, originally all ratepayers, 
 finally all householders and lodgers even who preferred 
 their claim. They were designed to enfranchise 
 virtually nearly the whole class of operatives in towns 
 and labourers in rural districts, with no reference to 
 either property or education. The great distinction 
 then between the two sets of measures may be thus 
 stated with substantial accuracy: The first demanded 
 a property qualification for admission to the franchise; 
 so far from lowering, it practically raised the educa- 
 tional standard of the electoral body, and, while 
 enormously enlarging and liberalising the basis of the 
 Parliamentary Register, it did not enable the new 
 voters to outnumber and to swamp the old ones. 
 The second pretty nearly reversed these features ; 
 made a vast stride in the direction of manhood 
 suffrage by requiring a merely residential in place of 
 a property qualification ; conferred the franchise 
 wholesale on the millions who live on weekly wages ; 
 thus enabling these classes, whenever they please, or 
 as soon as their natural leaders or designing agitators 
 instruct them in the secret of their strength, to 
 outvote all the previous electorate putting it in their 
 power, that is (for I am anxious not to overstate the 
 case), to acquire the command of both the administra- 
 tive and legislative functions, and to direct and 
 control both our foreign policy and the amount as 
 well as the incidence of our taxation, perhaps the 
 
170 THE POPULAR JUDGMENT IN POLITICS. 
 
 two subjects which can least safely be entrusted to 
 their decision. 
 
 These are the enormous discrepancies between the 
 old Reform measures and the new ; and yet Mr 
 Gladstone and Mr Hutton deem themselves logical 
 and safe in arguing from the beneficent operation of 
 the one to the safety and the desirableness of the 
 other; and our Liberals would proceed with the coeur 
 leger of Emile Ollivier to confer a gift which is not 
 needed, which cannot be resumed, and which may be 
 so fatally abused. 
 
 But is Mr Gladstone, in sober earnest, as confident 
 about the salutary effects of our hitherto reforms on 
 the Parliamentary institutions of to-day as his sanguine 
 temperament and his quivering popular sympathies 
 have almost persuaded himself? Is he in very truth 
 satisfied with the House of Commons, such as Reform 
 Bills and especially the last one, the household 
 suffrage of 1867, incomplete and inchoate as it yet is 
 have made it? Does he think the 'People's 
 Chamber' of 1878 in all the most essential charac- 
 teristics so indisputable an improvement on that of 
 1834, that it can be appealed to as undeniable proof 
 that all previous extensions of the franchise have 
 worked well, and an encouragement to go further and 
 at once in the same direction ? Certainly his latest 
 writings do not indicate that such are the final con- 
 victions of the experienced politician, who must be 
 anxious to take the most favourable view he can. 
 On the contrary, in many passages he holds, and I 
 
THE POPULAR JUDGMENT IN POLITICS. 171 
 
 think justly, language of disappointment, discourage- 
 ment, and sadness though as yet not of repentance 
 at his own share in the work. And, curiously enough, 
 Mr Lowe, dissenting from him in most points, and 
 most of all in tone, coincides with him here and uses 
 phraseology almost identical. 
 
 What the general public observes in looking at the 
 representative assembly which we owe to the latest 
 Reform Act, and the widened electorate is probably 
 this : that the popular j udgment, which Mr Gladstone 
 regards as nearly always right, has replaced the most 
 conspicuously pacific minister of our times by the 
 most apparently warlike and Chauvinistic, and a 
 premier specially and, as many fear, dangerously 
 liberal, for a rival whose most rooted notions (as far 
 as it is possible to gather them from the aggregate of 
 his utterances) tend, like those of his great Imperial 
 prototype, towards personal government and the in- 
 crease of the power of the Crown resting on a demo- 
 cratic basis ; that this same popular judgment (so 
 instinctively sound, we are assured) has given to the 
 chief it has enthroned a working majority of about 
 100, which, added to his own singular genius for 
 swaying the wills and views of all who come under his 
 influence, promises to render him nearly irresistible ; 
 that, expressing itself so largely through the publican 
 element in the constituencies, that element by no 
 means the noblest has naturally been largely con- 
 sidered by the Government which owed to it so 
 much ; and that the budgets of the Cabinet thus 
 
172 THE POPULAR JUDGMENT IN POLITICS. 
 
 chosen bear traces only too manifest of a disposition 
 to pander to the interests and the errors of the lower 
 portion of its supporters ; in fine, that neither the 
 financial nor the foreign policy of the House of 
 Commons elected by far the most numerous con- 
 stituency yet known is such as we can consider either 
 creditable, wise, or safe; and that, neither in courtesy, 
 dignity, nor decorum have its manners been worthy of 
 the past or models for the future. 
 
 What Mr Gladstone condemns and dreads in the 
 House of Commons he states candidly and with force, 
 though as yet he entirely declines ' to ascribe them to 
 the extension of the suffrage/ But 
 
 the evils of our Parliamentary system I regard as great and 
 growing. . . . The longer I live the less do I see in the public 
 institutions of any country even a tendency to approximate to an 
 ideal standard. 
 
 Yet every year, and everywhere, do they become 
 more democratic. 
 
 Turning to our own, amidst all our vaunted and all our real 
 improvements, I see in some very important respects a sad 
 tendency to decline. It seems to me that, as a whole, our level 
 of public principle and public action was at its zenith in the 
 twenty years or thereabouts which succeeded the Eeform Act of 
 1 832, and that it has since perceptibly gone dovvn. I agree with 
 Mr Lowe that we are in danger of engendering both a geronto- 
 cracy and a plutocracy. . . . The two circumstances which 
 strike me most forcibly and most painfully are, first, the rapid 
 and constant advance of the money power ; secondly, the reduc- 
 tion almost to zero of the chances of entrance into Parliament 
 for men who have nothing to rely upon but their talents and 
 their character nothing, that is to say, but the two qualities 
 which certainly stand before all others in the capacity of ren- 
 dering service to the country. 
 
THE POPULAR JUDGMENT IN POLITICS. 173 
 
 The place of the young and highly trained whose 
 absence he deplores, has, Mr Gladstone says, 
 heen taken mainly by men who have been recommended to their 
 constituents by the possession of money. . . . The loss has been 
 among those who had the very best capacity to serve the country. 
 The gain has accrued to those whose main object is to serve 
 themselves. I do not mean in a corrupt sense. It is to serve 
 themselves by social advancement. The total exclusion of such 
 men is probably not to be desired, but their swollen and swelling 
 numbers are a national calamity. It is a calamity with a double 
 edge. y^Vv^-^- *-/5/?>f^v 
 
 The excluded, Mr Gladstone says, are driven mainly 
 to the press, which affords ; them a very much less 
 valuable education. 
 
 ^^/Pfl/C U\E*"^ 
 
 It gives them a laborious training in irresponsible, anonymous, 
 pungent criticism, in lieu of the manly and^Hoble discipline 
 which a youth spent in Parliament imparts. In the light of day, 
 under the eye and judgment of the best, at once stimulated and 
 restrained, at once encouraged and abashed, our youth had 
 everything to sustain a high sense of political warfare, to develope 
 the better parts of a knightly nature, to rebuke the sordid and 
 the base. Invert all these expressions, and we attain a tolerably 
 accurate description of the kind of education which our modern 
 arrangements have provided for the most ready, brilliant, and 
 serviceable of the young men of England in lieu of a seat in 
 Parliament. These are not pleasant things to say, but it is 
 perhaps time they should be said. 1 
 
 The discussion on this subject has led me to re- 
 peruse Mr Lowe's testimony to the lowered tone and 
 character of the actual House, so strikingly corrobora- 
 tive of Mr Gladstone's, though dwelling upon different 
 
 1 Nineteenth Century, November 1877, p. 555 et seq. 'Two new 
 articles, pretty closely associated together, have lately been 
 added to the Tory creed, not by a general council, but by silent 
 consent faith in the long purse, and faith in what Mr Bright 
 in one of his many happy phrases dubbed the residuum* (p. 557). 
 
THE POPULAR JUDGMENT IN POLITICS. 
 
 points, and ascribing the degeneracy to its more 
 obvious causes. 
 
 No one but the most bigoted partisan will deny that after four 
 Sessions the Government is just as strong in the House as it was 
 when it began. This has been achieved by consulting the 
 wishes of the House ; that is, by a lavish expenditure of public 
 money, by a studious deference to all powerful interests, by a 
 dexterous use of committees and commissions to stave off trouble- 
 some subjects, by a copious use of permissive legislation, and by 
 never carrying or even proposing a single measure or broaching a 
 single idea which soars above the level of the dullest and most 
 self-satisfied mediocrity. As was said the other day by a gentleman 
 who did not appear to be aware that he was passing the most 
 crushing sentence on the existing state of things, the duties of the 
 House of Commons now resemble those of a municipal council or 
 a board of guardians rather than those which the House used to 
 discharge. Most true they do so, but why is it 1 Not because 
 there are no problems in the higher regions of statesmanship 
 unsolved and earnestly craving a solution. Four millions of 
 persons in London are left without the powers of self-government 
 which are granted to most towns with ten thousand inhabitants 
 and to many with much less ; the government of the counties is 
 left to a number of intersecting boards that is to say, is 
 abandoned to a state of the most hideous confusion ; the law in 
 all its branches requires revision and codification ; the state of 
 the navy is to all thinking persons a subject of the deepest 
 anxiety ; and the whole question of the higher education requires 
 a complete and searching revision. If it be asked, Why do not 
 these things and many others, of which thes< are only a specimen, 
 occupy the attention of government? the answer, if given 
 candidly, would doubtless be, that these things do not pay. 
 They require a great deal of trouble and research, they inevitably 
 give much offence to the influential persons immediately con- 
 cerned, and there is no popularity to be got by them. Those 
 who elect the House which virtually appoints the Government, 
 care for none of these things, and so very naturally none of these 
 things are cared for. Politics in the higher sense of the term, are 
 almost banished from the House of Commons, and no one seems 
 to regret their loss. 1 
 
 1 Fortnightly Review, Oct. 1877. 
 
THE POPULAR JUDGMENT IN POLITICS. 175 
 
 Certainly, whether we attribute the fact to the Irish 
 Home Rulers, to a government unable to control or 
 guide its supporters, or to the perverted views and 
 passionate temperament of the bulk of those supporters, 
 is it too much to say that the least noble-minded and 
 the worst-mannered House of Commons we have 
 known has been the one chosen by the most popular 
 and broad-based electorate that has ever crowded 
 round the hustings or expressed its wisdom and 
 judgment at the poll ? Nor, I fancy, would Mr 
 Gladstone at all deny the description, however he 
 might question the explanation I suggest. 
 
IX. 
 
 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 1 
 
 THE biography of this remarkable woman has been 
 received by the public with the eagerness and interest 
 which her fame and her works were pretty sure to 
 command, and has been so widely read that all who 
 see this notice may be confidently assumed to be 
 familiar with the book itself. We can, therefore, 
 dispense with the task of following the narrative step 
 by step, or in any material detail. At the same time 
 the reviews of it which have appeared have, with 
 scarcely an exception, been so discriminating and 
 appreciative, and on the whole so kind and just, that 
 little is left to correct and not a great deal to supply. 
 But, deeply interesting as the work is, it is im- 
 possible to deny that it has given more pain than 
 pleasure to large numbers of those friends who knew 
 her best and valued her most truly. Her own 
 autobiography does her so much less than justice, and 
 the needless, tasteless, and ill-conditioned memorials 
 of the lady to whom she injudiciously entrusted the 
 duties of editor, have managed to convey such an 
 unsound and disfiguring impression of her friend, that 
 
 1 Harriet Martinecm's Autobiography, with Memorials. By 
 Maria Western Chapman. 3 vols. 
 
HARRIET MARTINEAU. 177 
 
 the testimony of one who enjoyed her intimacy for 
 many years, and entertained a sincere regard for her 
 throughout, seems wanted to rectify the picture. 
 
 It is idle to criticise the egotism of autobiographies, 
 however pervading and intense. Their egotism is 
 their raison d'etre. It is certain that all persons 
 know much about themselves which no one else can 
 know, look and must look at themselves from a 
 special standpoint, and from one which has, if ex- 
 ceptional dangers, exceptional advantages as well ; 
 and the more thoroughly searching and self-observing 
 that is, the more egotistical their narrative is, the 
 more valuable is it likely to prove. All that we are 
 entitled to require is that it shall be unflinchingly 
 honest and sincere according to the writer's light. 
 Self-knowledge, humility, just and moderate apprecia- 
 tion of their qualities and achievements, we may 
 desiderate, but we have no right to demand. The 
 very absence of these mental or moral gifts may be 
 among the most salient characteristics which it is the 
 worth of autobiography that it reveals "to us. We 
 cannot claim from the painters of their own portraits, 
 or the writers of their own lives, that they shall tell 
 us truly what they were, only that they shall tell 
 us truthfully what they appeared to themselves to 
 be and this requisite of biography Miss Martineau 
 rigidly fulfils. Writing invariably with the most 
 patent candour and courage, she tells the truth 
 wherever and so far as she could see it, and betrays it 
 
 M 
 
178 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 
 
 almost as plainly where it was obviously hidden from 
 her eyes. 
 
 But not only is the book preporideratingly full of 
 herself, as it was quite right that it should be ; not 
 only does it describe everything exclusively and un- 
 questioningly from her own point of view, as was 
 inevitable : it will appear to most readers to paint the 
 world itself as also extravagantly full of her, and to 
 represent herself as occupying a larger space in its 
 horizon, and making a more prominent figure in its 
 drama, than was really the case. She describes 
 herself, from her first sudden plunge into publicity 
 and fame in 1832 (when the extraordinary success of 
 her Political Economy Tales took the world by 
 surprise), as run after, feted, flattered, beset with 
 admirers, haunted and beleaguered by politicians who 
 wanted to use her, publishers who wanted to secure 
 her services, worshippers of celebrity who wanted her 
 presence in their saloons, real adorers of talent and 
 worth, who out of simple kindliness and interest 
 wished to know and to befriend a writer of such rare 
 promise ; and she narrates all this with a certain 
 natural excitement and vividness of colouring which 
 irresistibly convey the impression of exaggeration. 
 The answer is that all this was true. The London 
 world did run after her in a fashion to which it is 
 often prone. Her advent created a sensation which 
 was extraordinary, which, looking back upon the 
 circumstances, seems now somewhat disproportionate 
 to its cause, and which continued for a longer period 
 
HARRIET MARTINEAU. 179 
 
 than is usual with sudden enthusiasms of that nature. 
 The digito monstrari et dicier hcec est haunted her 
 steps for many years and in far-distant scenes. ' The 
 United States/ says Mrs Chapman, ' seemed for the 
 moment a mere whispering gallery for the trans- 
 mission of her opinions/ Fussy patriots of several 
 lands applied to her to make constitutions for them, 
 and to plead their cause before the world's tribunal. 
 Small blame to her if she took herself at the world's 
 estimation, and believed, what hosts of people assured 
 her, hour by hour namely, that she was a rising 
 star, a new power come upon the stage, gifted with 
 astonishing capacities and destined to an exceptional 
 career. She was not exactly spoiled by her metro- 
 politan reception, novel and stimulating as it was ; 
 but it developed the seeds of already existing faults 
 into a singularly rapid growth. She was suspiciously 
 on her guard against its dangers ; she resented the 
 bare notion of being ' lionised ' and constantly fancied 
 she was being lionised in circles whose tone, if she had 
 understood it, would have secured her from anything of 
 the sort. She accepted homage readily enough, and 
 enjoyed it thoroughly, though scarcely simply ; for she 
 took up the absurd position of refusing to be sought for 
 her eminent talent and success, 'would not be visited or 
 invited as a blue-stocking, but as a lady, &c.' forget- 
 ting that, as a mere unknown lady and apart from her 
 literary powers, she had no claim to be visited at all ; so 
 that no wonder her genial and experienced friend, Mr 
 Hallam, thought her conceited and presuming. There 
 
J 80 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 
 
 is scarcely an indication of simple gratification at 
 having obtained entrance and cordial greeting into a 
 class of society incomparably superior, intellectually 
 and politically, to that she had been used to no 
 trace of a perception that it was in any way superior 
 no attitude of mind towards it except the critical 
 one ; and her criticisms were, in the vast majority of 
 instances, depreciating even to unseemliness. 
 
 The tone in which she speaks of at least half her 
 London acquaintances, her sketches of friends and foes 
 alike, the sovereign contempt in the one set of por- 
 traits, the rancorous animosity in the other, and the 
 utter injustice and almost libellous character of many, 
 are probably the features of her book which will leave 
 the most painful impression. The Whigs, as a body, 
 though the party to whose gallant efforts the wonder- 
 ful progress of the nation in those days was incon- 
 testably due, were, for some reason or other, the 
 objects of her vehement detestation. 
 
 " The young Eomillys had virtuous projects when they entered 
 political life, and had every hope of achieving service worthy of 
 their father's fame ; but their aspirations were speedily tamed 
 down, as all high aspirations are lowered by Whig influences" 
 " The Whig touch perished it (the voice of the people) at once ; 
 the poverty and perverseness of their ideas and the insolence of 
 their feelings were precisely what might have been expected 
 from that remarkably vulgar class of men" " There was nothing 
 to be expected from the official Whigs now (1848) that they were 
 spoiled by the possession of place and power. [They had been 
 her earliest admirers and most eager assistants, but they had 
 made the mistake of offering advice.] I had seen that they had 
 learned nothing by their opportunities ; that they were hardened 
 in their conceit and prejudices, and as blind as bats to the new 
 lights which time was introducing into society. ... I have 
 
HARRIET MARTINEAU. 181 
 
 seen a good deal of life, and many varieties of manners ; and it 
 now appears to me (1855) that the broadest vulgarity I have en- 
 countered is in the families of official Whigs, who conceive them- 
 selves the cream of society, and the lights and rulers of the 
 empire." 
 
 Her abuse of Brougham we shall not contest, and 
 there may have been excuse enough for her remarks 
 on Lockhart and Croker. But her de-haut-en-bas 
 judgment of Macaulay is perhaps widest of the mark. 
 He was all blossom and no fruit ; " he wants heart ;" 
 his speeches " were fundamentally weak ; " "he has 
 never (1855) achieved any complete success. As a 
 politician his failure has been signal/' &c., &c. 
 
 Her sketch of Bishop Stanley is ludicrously astray ; 
 he, remarkable for pluck and spirit, and liberal in 
 days when liberality was rare, " had no courage or 
 dignity under the bad manners of his Tory clergy ; 
 and he repeatedly talked to me about it in such a 
 style as to compel me to tell him plainly that dis- 
 senters like myself are not only accustomed to ill-usage 
 for difference of opinion, but are brought up to regard 
 that trial as one belonging to all honest avowal of con- 
 victions, and to be borne with courage and patience 
 like other trials ! " 
 
 But " good Mr Porter, of the Board of Trade," an 
 intimate friend of her own, the eminent publicist and 
 statistician, perhaps fares the worst. He was " amiable 
 and friendly, industrious and devoted to his business, 
 but sadly weak and inaccurate, prejudiced and borne 
 in ability." " Nothing could be more untrustworthy 
 and delusive than his statistics." His great book, still 
 
182 HARRIET MARTTNEAU. 
 
 an authority, on the Progress of the Nation, is de- 
 clared to be full of the shallowest and most ludicrous 
 blunders. " Not his innocent vanity, which was far 
 from immoderate, but his deficiency in sense and intel- 
 lectual range, together with his confidence in himself 
 and his want of confidence in all public men, was an 
 insuperable disqualification for the sound discharge of 
 his functions," &c., &c. 
 
 Now it is difficult for those who read this gallery of 
 portraits shallow, contemptuous, condemnatory, and 
 curiously astray as, in spite of occasional shrewdness, 
 they for the most part are who remember, too, that 
 they are the judicial sentences delivered posthumously 
 upon a number of eminent contemporaries by a writer 
 whose most marked characteristic it was that she 
 would neither endure nor pardon the faintest censure 
 on herself, nor admit for a moment that any human 
 being had the slightest claim to sit in judgment on 
 her, far less to express an opinion or pronounce a 
 verdict and who find that these depreciating pictures 
 were painted, laid by in closets, embalmed for the 
 enlightenment of posterity, for twenty years before the 
 painter's death without any dream of revision it is 
 difficult for readers not to receive the impression that 
 Miss Martineau was essentially ill-natured and given 
 to bitterness and depreciation. In conveying this im- 
 pression she does herself grievous injustice. There has 
 seldom been a more kindly-hearted or affectionate 
 person, or even one more given to an over-estimate of 
 her friends, perhaps even more prone to make idols 
 
HARRIET MARTINEAU. 183 
 
 out of not quite the finest clay, more watchfully con- 
 siderate to all dependent upon her, more steadfastly 
 devoted to those who had once got hold of her imagina- 
 tion or attachment, unless they tried her constancy too 
 hardly by criticism, opposition, or condemnation. All 
 her geese were swans. .All her servants and junior 
 relatives were devoted to her, and with good reason, 
 for there was a vast element of geniality about her. 
 In spite of the painful description she gives of hei 
 early life (which we believe her connections scarcely 
 recognise as faithful), she was, we should pronounce, 
 from the time she had once found her work and made 
 her mark, a singularly happy person ; and continued 
 to grow happier and happier, illness notwithstanding, 
 till near the end. Her unflinching belief in herself, 
 her singular exemption from the sore torment of doubt 
 or hesitation, helped to make her so. Now, happy 
 people, where really good-hearted and sociable, are 
 genial ; their enjoyment is so simple and genuine, and 
 their confidence in the prompt cordial sympathy of 
 those around them is so undoubting and so provocative 
 of response. The charm of Harriet Martineau's inter- 
 course (passing over the fits of indignation her dog- 
 matic damnation of your bosom friends would often 
 rouse) may be understood by those who read the 
 " Sixth Period " of her autobiography especially the 
 description of the joyous epoch when, in the midst of 
 rest, and health, and vigour, she settled among the 
 lakes and mountains of Westmoreland, built her 
 Windermere home, and reorganised her recovered 
 
1 84 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 
 
 life for a fresh burst of animation and productive- 
 ness. 
 
 Her character was easy to read, for in one sense it- 
 was consistent enough and presented no mysteries or 
 depths ; and her faults, which were neither few nor 
 small, were readily forgiven her, for she loved much 
 and laboured hard for the happiness of others. In 
 an unusual degree it was to be said of Harriet Martin- 
 eau quelle avait les defauts de ses qwalites. It 
 would indeed have been difficult for her to have had 
 the mental and moral gifts which distinguished her so 
 signally without the analogous errors, in the way of 
 deficiency or excess, which impaired their perfection 
 and detracted from their value. " Authors," says 
 Southey, " may be divided into two classes, spiders 
 and silk-worms those who spin because they are 
 empty, and those who spin because they are full." 
 Miss Martineau was one of the latter. She never, 
 after her very youthful years, wrote either for money 
 or for fame. She wrote because the matter was borne 
 in upon her, because the idea or the subject had taken 
 possession of her, because the thing in her conception 
 "wanted saying," and it was in her to say it, and was 
 not open to her to withhold it. With the prompti- 
 tude and force of irresistible conviction the work 
 assumed in her mind the position of a duty to be 
 done almost of an inspired utterance that must be 
 given forth. Hence the curious arrogance with which 
 she resented the slightest approaches towards sugges- 
 tion, remonstrance, or advice, the noli me tangere 
 
HARRIET MARTINEAU. 185 
 
 vehemence with which she insisted that no other 
 mind should ever be permitted to interfere with the 
 operations or visions of her own. Hence also the 
 extraordinarily rapid imaginations she poured out, and 
 the unhesitating confidence with which, when once 
 written, she hurried them to the press. She not only 
 would not alter at the suggestion of others; she would 
 rarely if ever revise or correct in consequence of any 
 caution or misgiving of her own. Misgiving seems, 
 indeed, to have been a sensation that was alien to her 
 constitution. Like Balaam, the word that the Lord 
 put into her mouth, that she must speak. Her mar- 
 vellous productiveness, the unequalled rapidity with 
 which she turned out her admirable stories, might 
 well cultivate her self-confidence to an extravagant 
 degree. No one who worked so quickly or so hard 
 ever worked so well. It seemed almost quite so to 
 herself " as if it were given her in that same hour 
 what she should say." There was no long brooding, 
 no meditation, no slow process of hatching inchoate 
 germs, no painful collection of ample and carefully 
 sifted materials ; the plan and the table of contents of 
 her books, as it were, flashed upon her like the intui- 
 tions of a poet ; the executive efficiency of her intel- 
 ligence was absolutely unrivalled ; her style was always, 
 nearly from the outset, clear, lucid, vigorous, and 
 simple, without a trace of effort, and never, as far as 
 we remember, betraying the faintest lapse into those 
 faults of fine or ambitious writing which are the beset- 
 ting sin of youth. 
 
186 HAKRIET MARTINEAU. 
 
 Considering, then, these extraordinary powers, her 
 consciousness of abounding energy, the suddenness 
 and brilliancy of her success, and the fame and adula- 
 tion with which she was surrounded at such exciting 
 times and amid such dazzling circles, the self-confi- 
 dence which promptly grew upon her, however regret- 
 table, was not only natural, but its absence would 
 have been all but miraculous. The truth is that 
 doubt seems to have been a state of mind unknown 
 to her. She never reconsidered her opinions, or mused 
 over her judgments. They were instantaneous insights, 
 not deliberate or gradual deductions. It scarcely 
 seemed to occur to her that she could be wrong ; that 
 thousands of eminent or wise men differed from her 
 never appeared to suggest the probability ; we never 
 recollect her views, if once formed, being changed or 
 materially modified during a discussion. And this 
 was the more remarkable because, in the first place, 
 her confidence in her opinions was not irrational con- 
 ceit in her own powers ; on the contrary, her estimate 
 of these was not at all inordinate, but, as may be seen 
 especially in her last obituary notice of herself in the 
 Daily News, rather below the truth, not to say wide 
 of it. And in the second place, she was by no means 
 an unimpressible person, but the reverse. If you 
 spoke to her of men or things before she had formed 
 any judgment of either, you usually found little diffi- 
 culty in writing your impressions on her mind ; but 
 if you were a day too late, if you missed your innings, 
 it was almost hopeless to effect a change she was 
 Wax to receive, and marble to retain. 
 
HARRIET MARTINEAU. 187 
 
 Given, then, a mind of really almost unrivalled 
 innate powers, and, as was inevitable, a strong con- 
 sciousness of those powers and an irrepressible impulse 
 to use them, a vivid imagination incessantly at 
 work, and owing partly to deafness and partly 
 to the early want of exuberant sympathies around 
 her working usually in solitude ; courage, fortitude, 
 and pertinacity of something like the Stoic stamp, 
 a force of conviction akin to that of the fanatic 
 and the martyr, an impatience of temperament 
 amounting to a sort of incapacity for doubt, and ren- 
 dering suspension of judgment an unnatural frame of 
 mind and the fair analyst of character is driven to 
 pronounce that Harriet Martineau could not easily 
 have been less dogmatic, less hasty, or less imperious 
 than she was. One grievous mistake the parent of 
 countless errors and injustices she might indeed have 
 escaped, and it is strange that so clear an intelligence 
 as hers should have become so habitually its victim ; 
 for the rock was staringly above water. Her deafness 
 absolutely disqualified her either for accurate observa- 
 tion or positive judgments of men yet she never 
 appears to have dreamed of the disqualification. In 
 society she heard only what was directly intended for 
 her, and moreover only what was specially designed to 
 pass down her trumpet ; and comments, sentiments, 
 and statements that must go through this ordeal are 
 inevitably manufactured, or at least modified for export. 
 A hundred things are dropped or whispered which are 
 never shouted, or pronounced ore rotundo or oracularly 
 
188 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 
 
 and these former are precisely the things which 
 betray character and suggest true conclusions. As 
 Sydney Smith remarked in reference to her, ' she took 
 au serieux half the sayings I meant as mystifications.' 
 Moreover, not only was she not on her guard 
 against this obviously fertile source of blunders not 
 only did it inspire no sense of misgiving but she 
 aggravated its unavoidable mischief by a practice, 
 which grew upon her as life went on, of laying down 
 the trumpet before the sentence or the paragraph of 
 her interlocutor was complete, or sometimes, we must 
 add, when she had decided that it would not be worth 
 listening to, or when it was apparently tending in an 
 unwelcome direction. Thus the information or im- 
 pression conveyed to her by a conversation was often 
 altogether inaccurate or imperfect, but never on that 
 account for one instant mistrusted. Those who knew 
 her were fully aware of this peculiarity, and those of 
 her readers who remember the times, and scenes, and 
 people of whom she writes can trace innumerable 
 instances of it, and will be on their guard against too 
 absolute a reliance on narratives and statements 
 written down twenty years after date, then printed 
 and laid up in lavender for another twenty years, and 
 now in many cases out of reach of authoritative cor- 
 rection. 
 
 In another point Miss Martineau had les defauts 
 de ses qualites. She was conscientious, we may say, 
 in the extreme ; her conscience was not only command- 
 ing it had something about it excessive, morbid, or 
 
HARRIET MARTINEAU. 189 
 
 awry. She obeyed it like an oracle, but she rarely 
 took the precaution of requesting it to reconsider its 
 decisions. Now, with all reasonable deference to 
 popular axioms of morality, it is not at all impossible 
 for men and women to have too imperious and im- 
 petuous a conscience in fact, to carry more sail than 
 their ballast will warrant or can bear. Harriet 
 Martineau did this in a signal manner. Having no 
 power of doubt and no sense of fear, she christened all 
 her impulses with the name of Duty, and followed 
 them resolutely and in defiance of remonstrance. 
 Like many of us, only more than most, she abounded 
 in ' views/ which she called ' principles/ and then 
 anointed and enthroned. Conscience was rather her 
 tyrant than her guide, and was installed before it had 
 been anxiously enlightened. 
 
 Perhaps the most interesting portion of the auto- 
 biography to many will prove to be the narrative of 
 the writer's theological, or, as she names it, anti- 
 theological progress, the gradual movement of a 
 curiously courageous, honest, and inquiring mind 
 one, too, singularly earnest in tone and religious in 
 temperament from positive belief to equally ( positive 
 philosophy/ l She began as a Unitarian of the 
 
 1 ' It was very kind of you to write that last letter to me. I 
 agree in, and like, almost every word of it ; but I was especially 
 pleased to see your distinct recognition of the good of the old 
 superstitions in their day. As a necessarian, you are of course 
 bound to recognise this ; but the way in which you point it out 
 pleases me, because it is the great idea I have before me in my 
 book. I have found the good of those old superstitions in my 
 
190 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 
 
 dryest and most dogmatic form, and ended life as an 
 enthusiastic Agnostic. She began as a disciple of 
 Belsham, and finished as a disciple of Comte ; and of 
 each faith in turn she was, we need scarcely say, an 
 
 day. How it might have been with me (how much better) if I 
 had had parents of your way of thinking, there is no saying. As 
 it was, I was very religious (far beyond the knowledge and inten- 
 tions of my parents) till I was quite grown up. I don't know 
 what I should have done without my faith ; for I was an un- 
 healthy and most unhappy child, and had no other resource- 
 Yet it used to strike me often, and most painfully, that whatever 
 relief and comfort my religion gave to my feelings, it did not 
 help me much against my faults. Certainly, my belief in a 
 future life never was either check or stimulus to me in the 
 matter of self-government. Five-and-twenty years ago I became 
 a thoroughly grounded necessarian. I have never wavered for 
 an hour on that point since ; and nothing ever gave me so much 
 comfort. Of course this paved the way for the cessation of 
 prayer. I left off praying, however, less from seeing the absurdity 
 (though I did see it) of petitioning about things already ordained, 
 than from a keen sense of the impiety of prayer. First, I could 
 not pray for daily bread, or for any outward good, because I 
 really did not wish to ask for them, not knowing whether they 
 would be good for me or not. So, for some years I prayed only 
 for good states of mind for myself and others. Of course, the 
 feeling grew on me that true piety required resignation about 
 spiritual matters as much as others. So I left off express prayer, 
 and without remorse. As for Christ's example and need of 
 prayer, I felt that he did not mean what we did by prayer ; and 
 I think so still. I think he would condemn our prayers as much 
 as he did those of the Pharisees of his time, and that with him 
 prayer was contemplation and aspiration chiefly. Next, I saw 
 very painfully (I mean with the pain of disgust) how much 
 lower a thing it is to lead even the loftiest life from a regard to 
 the will or mind of any other being, than from a natural work- 
 ing out of our own powers. I felt this first as to resignation 
 under suffering, and soon after as to moral action. Now, I do 
 know something of this matter of resignation. I know it to the 
 very bottom. I have been a very great sufferer subject to 
 
HAKKIET MARTINEAU. 191 
 
 ardent and undoubting proselytizing preacher. Her 
 earliest literary success consisted of three prize essays 
 on the arguments for converting Catholics, Moham- 
 medans, and Jews to Unitarian Christianity. Her 
 
 keen miseries almost all my life till quite lately ; and never, I 
 am pretty confident, did any one acquiesce in God's will with a 
 more permanent enthusiasm than I did, because this suited the 
 bent of my nature. But I became ashamed of this ashamed of 
 that kind of support when I felt I had a much higher ground of 
 patience in myself.' .... 
 
 ' As to what my present views are, when clearly brought to 
 the point of expression they are just these. I feel a most 
 reverential sense of something wholly beyond our apprehension. 
 Here we are in the universe ! this is all we know ; and while 
 we feel ourselves in this isolated position, with obscurity before 
 and behind, we must feel that there is something above and 
 beyond us. If that something were God "(as people mean by 
 that word), and I am confident it is not, he would consider those 
 of us the noblest who must have evidence in order to belief 
 who can wait to learn rather than run into supposition. As 
 for the whole series of faiths, my present studies would have 
 been enough, if I had not been prepared before to convince 
 me that all the forms of the higher religions contain (in their 
 best aspect) the same great and noble ideas, which arise naturally 
 out of our own minds, and grow with the growth of the general 
 mind ; but that there"' really is no evidence whatever of any sort 
 of revelation at any point in the history. The idea of a future 
 life, too, I take to be a necessary one (I mean necessary for 
 support) in its proper place, but likely to die out when men 
 better understand their nature and the summum bonum which it 
 encloses. At the same time, so ignorant as I am of what is 
 possible in nature, I do not deny the possibility of a life after- 
 death ; and if I believed the desire for it to be as universal as 
 I once thought it, I should look upon so universal a tendency as 
 some presumption in favour of a continual life. But I doubt 
 the desire and belief being so general as they are said to be ; and 
 then the evidence in favour of it is nothing except some un- 
 accountable mesmeric stories. What a long confession of faith I 
 have written you ! Yes, it is faith, is it not ? and not infidelity, 
 
192 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 
 
 last took was the Letters on Mans Nature and 
 Development, which she undertook in concert with her 
 final ' guide, philosopher, and friend/ Mr Atkinson, 
 for the conversion of Judaism, Islamism, Christianity, 
 
 as ninety-nine hundredtlis of the world would call it. As for 
 the loneliness I spoke of, I don't generally mind it ; and there is 
 ahundant ground of sympathy between me and my best friends, 
 as long as occasion does not require that I should give names to 
 my opinions. I have not yet had any struggle with my natural 
 openness or indiscretion. I never could conceal any opinion I 
 hold, and I am sure I never would ; and I know, therefore, that 
 I am at the mercy (in regard to reputation and some of my 
 friendships) of accident, which may at any hour render an 
 avowal necessary. But I do not fear this. I have run so many 
 inferior risks, and suffered so little in my peace by divers 
 avowals and heresies, that I am not likely to tremble now. 
 What does give me a qualm sometimes is thinking what such 
 
 friends as and as will suffer, whenever they come to 
 
 know that I think their " Christian hope " baseless. They are 
 widows, and they live by their expectation of a future life. I 
 
 seriously believe that would go mad or die, if this hope 
 
 were shaken in her ; and my opinions are more to her than any 
 others since her husband's death. But I say to myself as you 
 would say, that these matters must take care of themselves. If 
 the truth comes to me, I must believe it. Yes, I should not 
 wonder if there is a prodigious clamour against me some day, as 
 you say perhaps after this book comes out. But I don't think 
 I should care for that, about a matter of opinion. I should (or 
 might) about a matter of conduct, for I am sadly weak in my 
 love of approbation ; but about a matter of opinion I can't and 
 don't believe what I once did ; and there's an end. It is a thing 
 which settles itself ; for there is no going back to discarded 
 beliefs. It is a great comfort to me to have you to speak to, 
 and to look to for sympathy. It is a delightful indulgence and 
 refreshment ; but if you were to die, or to be engrossed by other 
 interests and occupations, so as to diverge fro ID me, I think I 
 could do without sympathy in a matter so certHt-; as my inability 
 to believe as I once &\& Autobiography, vol. ii. pp. 288-91. 
 
HAREIET MARTINEAU. 193 
 
 and Deism from all forms of theological belief alike. 
 Her Unitarianism was early discarded, and discarded 
 with what seems to us, according to her own account, 
 irrational and uncharitable contempt. She was first 
 shaken by the necessarian doctrine, then altogether 
 upset by a strong impression of the deep selfishness 
 and almost shocking notions of God which appeared 
 to lie at the root of the whole scheme of damnation 
 and redemption embodied in the popular creed an 
 impression by no means uncommon with those who 
 either approach Christianity from the outside, or 
 eventually get outside it. 
 
 The departure of these and many more kept the subject of 
 death vividly before me, and compelled me to reduce my vague 
 and fanciful speculations on ' the divine government ' and human 
 destiny to a greater precision and accuracy. The old perplexity 
 about the apparent cruelty and injustice of the scheme of ' divine 
 government ' began at last to suggest the right issue. I had long 
 perceived the worse than uselessness of enforcing principles of 
 justice and mercy by an appeal to the example of God. I had 
 long seen that the orthodox fruitlessly attempt to get rid of the 
 difficulty by presenting the twofold aspect of God the Father 
 being the model of justice, and the Son of love and mercy the 
 inevitable result being that he who is especially called God is 
 regarded as an unmitigated tyrant and spontaneous torturer, 
 while the sweeter and nobler attributes are engrossed by the 
 man Jesus whose fate only deepens the opprobrium of the 
 Divine cruelty : while the heretics whose souls recoil from such 
 a doctrine, and who strive to explain away the recorded dogmas 
 of tyranny and torture, in fact give up the Christian revelation 
 by rejecting its essential postulates. All this I had long seen : 
 and I now began to obtain glimpses of the conclusion which at 
 present seems to me so simple that it is a marvel why I waited 
 for it so long that it is possible that we human beings, with 
 our mere human faculty, may not understand the scheme, or 
 nature, or fact of the universe ! I began to see that we, with 
 
 N 
 
194 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 
 
 our mere human faculty, are not in the least likely to understand 
 it, any more than the minnow in the creek, as Carlyle has it, 
 can comprehend the perturbations caused in his world of exist- 
 ence by the tides. I saw that no revelation can by possibility 
 set men right on these matters, for want of faculty in man to 
 understand anything beyond human ken : as all instruction 
 whatever offered to the minnow must fail to make it comprehend 
 the action of the moon on the oceans of the earth, or receive the 
 barest conception of any such action. Thus far I began to see 
 now. It was not for long after that I perceived further that the 
 conception itself of moral government, of moral qualities, of the 
 necessity of a preponderance of happiness over misery, must be 
 essentially false beyond the sphere of human action, because it 
 relates merely to human faculties. But this matter of a truer 
 standpoint will be better treated hereafter, in connection with 
 the period in which I perceived it within my horizon. As to 
 death and the question of a future life, I was some time in 
 learning to be faithful to my best light, faint as it yet was. I 
 remember asserting to a friend who was willing to leave that 
 future life a matter of doubt, that we were justified in expecting 
 whatever the human race had agreed in desiring. I had long 
 seen that the ' future life ' of the New Testament was the 
 Millennium looked for by the apostles, according to Christ's 
 bidding the glorious reign of 1,000 years in Judea, when the 
 Messiah should be the Prince, and his apostles his councillors 
 and functionaries, and which was to begin with the then exist- 
 ing generation. I had long given up, in moral disgust, the con- 
 ception of life after death as a matter of compensation for the 
 ills of humanity, or a police and penal resource of ' the divine 
 government.' I had perceived that the doctrines of the im- 
 mortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body were in- 
 compatible ; and that, while the latter was clearly impossible, 
 we were wholly without evidence of the former. But I still 
 resorted, in indolence and prejudice, to the plea of instinct the 
 instinctive and universal love of life, and inability to conceive of 
 its extinction. . My sick-room book shows that such was my 
 view when I wrote those essays ; but I now feel pretty certain 
 that I was not, even then, dealing truly with my own mind 
 that I was unconsciously trying to gain strength of conviction 
 by vigour of assertion. It seems to me now that I might then 
 have seen how delusive, in regard to fact, are various genuine 
 
HARRIET MARTINEAU. 195 
 
 and universal instincts ; and, again, that this direction of the 
 instinct in question is by no means so universal and so uniform 
 as I declared it to be. I might then have seen, if I had been 
 open-minded, that the instinct to fetishism, for instance, is more 
 general is indeed absolutely universal, while it is false in regard 
 to fact ; and that it is, in natural course, overpowered and 
 annihilated by higher instincts, leading to true knowledge. 1 
 
 Much that Miss Martineau says about the Atkinson 
 letters seems to us very touching much curiously 
 blind and almost absurd. Her mind, while marching 
 onward towards unbelief, was very lonely and some- 
 times sad, and the perhaps scarcely warranted influence 
 obtained over her by Mr Atkinson was due to the fact 
 that from him she first obtained full sympathy in her 
 new and isolating views ; 2 and neither of them pro- 
 bably was quite able or inclined to recognise how 
 shallow and inconclusive many of the arguments, which 
 seemed to them so decisive, really appeared to pro- 
 founder and better trained intelligences. Certainly 
 neither of them dreamed how arrogant and irritating 
 the whole tone of the work and scores of the dogmatic 
 and contemptuous expressions must have seemed to 
 the majority of readers, whose tenderest convictions 
 
 1 Vol. ii. pp. 184-7. 
 
 2 l Do you not feel strangely alone in your views of the highest 
 subjects. I do. I really know of no one but you to whom I 
 can speak freely about mine. To a great degree I always did 
 feel this. . . . But I do feel sadly lonely, for this reason that I 
 could not, if I tried, communicate to any one the feeling I have 
 that the theological belief of almost everybody in the civilised 
 world is baseless. The very statement, between you and me, 
 looks startling in its presumption/ Letter to Mr Atkinson, vol. 
 ii. p. 283. 
 
196 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 
 
 were thus roughly handled. Many of the friends 
 whose anger and antagonism she aroused, no doubt 
 took up a temper and a style of rebuke utterly and 
 often ludicrously inadmissible among devotees of 
 truth, who are not entitled to wonder at differences of 
 opinion or to resent them; but it never seems to have 
 crossed her mind that on the whole her own language 
 was often the unseemlier of the two. 1 On the whole, 
 by the publication of that book, though she gave 
 infinite pain, she suffered little if she ventured much ; 
 and considering the vastness and deep gravity of the 
 questions at issue, the space devoted in her auto- 
 biography to the purely personal and sensitive portion 
 of the subject strikes us as rather below the dignity 
 of Miss Martineau, and we pass on to what interests 
 us far more. 
 
 Twice in her life she stood for a long period face 
 
 1 The unnecessary volume appended to the Autobiography by 
 Mrs Chapman, full as it is of faults, both of taste and discretion, 
 we should not have felt compelled to notice but for one section 
 where her blind devotion to her friend has led her into mis- 
 representation and injustice. The Atkinson Letters drew forth 
 one severely condemnatory review, and this, coming as it did 
 from one to whom Harriet Martineau had from childhood been 
 warmly attached, naturally pained and mortified her much. 
 She herself passes over the criticism with one undeserved sentence 
 of irritation : her editor devotes to it a whole chapter of un- 
 seemly and inaccurate comments, heading the section i A Life- 
 Sorrow,' forgetting that Miss Martineau repeatedly paints this 
 portion of her career as about the happiest of the whole, and 
 connects this happiness directly with the new convictions which 
 Mr Atkinson had succeeded in implanting. Neither lady was in 
 any way entitled to speak of the Review in the terms they use ; 
 for, in the first place, the Letters are distinctively treated by the 
 
HARRIET MARTINEAU. 197 
 
 to face with death, and studying that position day by 
 day with all the courage, sincerity, and solemn earnest- 
 ness of a deep and very honest nature. There was 
 no doubt of the genuineness of the position, even 
 though both she and her medical advisers may have 
 been in error, or at issue, with regard to the imminence 
 of her danger. And she has left us a singularly 
 plainly drawn portrait of her mental and moral state, 
 analysed with courage, and as she saw it under the 
 influence of two antagonistic creeds. Perhaps such a 
 contrasting and vivid portrait has never been left on 
 record by any equal intellect. It is well worth 
 dwelling on. 
 
 The passage we have already quoted, combined 
 with a reference to the ' Sick Room ' of which she 
 speaks, will show how she met and regarded her 
 approaching end in the light and under the support 
 
 critic as the work of Mr Atkinson (which Miss Martineau 
 insisted that they were), and he and he only, if any one, might 
 have complained of the severity with which the Reviewer felt 
 obliged to handle them Miss Martineau being, as far as we 
 remember, carefully spared painful as it must have been to the 
 writer to see such an intellect under the misleading of such a 
 guide. Mrs Chapman's reckless assertion that the co-editors of 
 the Prospective Review were perfectly dismayed at the appearance 
 of the article, being now proved, by the testimony of the sur- 
 vivor, to be not only without foundation, but the very reverse 
 of true. But, unfortunately, as the Autobiography shows, the 
 position assumed by Miss Martineau throughout her life was 
 that she was to be at liberty to condemn others without reticence, 
 gentleness, or moderation, but that to mete her back the same 
 measure in return was to be resented as a positive offence against 
 equity, good manners, and good taste. And her editor has been 
 weak enough to endorse the assumption. 
 
198 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 
 
 of the ordinary views of believers in a future life and 
 a presiding Providence. We will presently quote a 
 passage describing the more genuine confidence and 
 peace with which she prepared to die when convinced 
 that death was the final close of individual or con- 
 scious existence, and of the greater comfort as well as 
 certainty to her mind of the latter faith. For, sur- 
 prising and startling as it will be to most of her 
 readers, let no man question that these convictions (to 
 most so desolate) were to her positive beliefs and not 
 mere negations, a creed not an atheism, as firmly held 
 as doctrines which take martyrs to the stake, and, 
 moreover, seemingly as joyous as any which ever 
 brightened the last hours of an intelligent and beauti- 
 ful career. Nothing seems more curiously clear than 
 that her course of thought and sentiment became step 
 by step more enthusiastically cheerful and even glad 
 as, to use her own expression, she exchanged the 
 delusions of theology for the certainties of science, or, 
 as others would describe the same march, as she shook 
 herself gradually free from Christianity, revelation, 
 and dogmatic theism, and took refuge in what some 
 call Agnosticism, and others Knowledge. These views 
 may not be ours ; they may be far, indeed, to us from 
 either giving confidence or inspiring joy, but it is 
 simply idle and foolish to deny that they are com- 
 patible, at least, with the truest peace and cheerful- 
 ness to hundreds with whose intellects we can claim 
 no equality ; no one perhaps has explained what 
 comfort they are capable of yielding with such bold 
 
HARRIET MARTINEAU. 199 
 
 and simple nakedness as Harriet Martineau ; and it 
 is to lose one of the richest lessons of her book to 
 disbelieve the truthfulness of these pages of self- 
 development. 
 
 I have already told where I was in the pursuit of truth when 
 Mr A;kinson found me. Learning what I could from him, and 
 meditating for myself, I soon found myself quite outside of my 
 old world of thought and speculation under a new heaven and a 
 new earth ; disembarrassed of a load of selfish cares and troubles ; 
 with some of my difficulties fairly solved and others chased away 
 like bad dreams, and others again deprived of all power to 
 trouble me, because the line was clearly drawn between the 
 feasible and the unknowable. I had got out of the prison of 
 myself. . . . The hollowness of the popular views of philosophy 
 and science was by this time the clearest thing I ever saw ; and 
 the opposite reality, that philosophy founded upon science is the 
 one thing needful . . . had become the crown of my experience, 
 and the joy of my life. 1 
 
 Again : 
 
 My comrade and I were both pursuers of truth and bound to 
 render our homage openly and devoutly. We both care for our 
 kind, and we could not see them suffering as we had suffered, 
 without imparting to them our consolation and our joy. Having 
 found, as my friend said, a spring in the desert, should we see the 
 multitude wandering in desolation, and not show them our 
 refreshment? We never had a moment's doubt or misgiving, 
 though I anticipated all manner of consequences which never 
 ensued. ... In younger days I was more ardent , . . now the 
 forecast and love of ease which belong to age are coming upon 
 me. Then / believed in a Protector who ordered me to do the 
 work and would sustain me under it ; and however I may now 
 despise that sort of support, I had it then, and have none of that 
 sort now. 2 
 
 When in the evenings of that spring I experienced the new 
 joy of feeling myself to be a portion of the universe, resting on 
 the security of its universal laws, certain that its cause was 
 
 Vol. ii. p. 335. 2 2lid. p. 345. 
 
200 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 
 
 wholly out of the sphere of human attributes, and that the special 
 destination of my race is infinitely nobler than the highest pro- 
 posed under a scheme of i divine moral government/ how could 
 it matter to me that the adherents of a decaying mythology (the 
 Christian following the heathen as the heathen followed the 
 barbaric fetish) were fiercely clinging to their man-dog, their 
 scheme of salvation, their reward and punishment, their arro- 
 gance, their selfishness, their essential pay-system, as ordered by 
 their mythology ? As the astronomer rejoices in new knowledge 
 which compels him to give up the dignity of our globe as the 
 centre of the universe, so do those who have escaped from the 
 Christian mythology enjoy their release from the superstition 
 which fails to make happy, fails to make good, fails to make 
 wise, and has become as great an obstacle in the way of progress 
 as the prior mythologies which it took the place of nearly tv/o 
 thousand years ago. For three centuries it has been undei- 
 mined, and its overthrow completely decided, as all true inter- 
 preters of the Reformation very well know. 1 
 
 Now, whatever estimate we may form as to the 
 distinctness of the ideas here conveyed, the correctness 
 of the predictions, or the taste and judgment of some 
 of the phraseology employed, no one can doubt the 
 sincerity of the relief expressed ; nor can any who 
 knew Miss Martineau question for a moment that the 
 last twenty-five years of her life, the unbelieving 
 portion as it would be termed, were incomparably the 
 happiest and most buoyant. Yet the last twenty of 
 these were passed, in her own conviction at least, 
 under sentence of imminent and probably sudden 
 death. And the following is her deliberate account 
 of her feelings and reflections under the solemn 
 prospect : 
 
 I have now had three months' experience of the fact of constant 
 expectation of death ; and the result is as much regret as a 
 
 * Hid. p., 356. 
 
HARRIET MARTINEAU. 201 
 
 rational person can admit at the absurd waste of time, thought, 
 and energy that I have been guilty of in the course of my life in 
 dwelling on the subject of death. It is really melancholy that 
 young people (and, for that matter, middle-aged and old people) 
 are exhorted and encouraged as they are to such waste of all 
 manner of power. I romanced internally about early death till 
 it was too late to die early ; and even in the midst of work and 
 the busiest engagements of my life, I used always to be thinking 
 about death partly from taste, and partly as a duty. And now 
 that I am waiting it at any hour, the whole thing seems so easy, 
 simple, and natural, that I cannot but wonder how I could keep 
 my thoughts fixed upon it when it was far off. I cannot do it 
 now. Night after night since I have known that I am mortally 
 ill, I have tried to conceive, with the help of the sensations of 
 my sinking fits, the act of dying, and its attendant feelings ; and 
 thus far I have always gone to sleep in the middle of it. And 
 this is after really knowing something about it ; for I have been 
 frequently in extreme danger of immediate death within the last 
 five months, and have felt as if I were dying and should never 
 draw another breath. Under this close experience, I find death 
 in prospect the simplest thing in the world a thing not to be 
 feared or regretted, or to get excited about in any way. I 
 attribute this very much, however, to the nature of my views of 
 death. The case must be much otherwise with Christians, even 
 independently of the selfish and perturbing emotions connected 
 with an expectation of rewards and punishments in the next 
 world. They can never be quite secure from the danger that 
 their air-built castle shall dissolve at the last moment, and that 
 they may vividly perceive on what imperfect evidence and 
 delusive grounds their expectation of immortality and resurrection 
 reposes. The mere perception of the incompatibility of immor- 
 tality and resurrection may be, and often is, deferred till that 
 time ; and that is no time for such questions. But, if the in- 
 tellect be ever so accommodating, there is the heart, steady to 
 its domestic affections. I, for one, should be heavy-hearted if I 
 were now about to go to the antipodes to leave all whom I 
 love, and who are bound up with my daily life however certain 
 might be the prospect of meeting them again twenty or thirty 
 years hence ; and it is no credit to any Christian to be 'joyful/ 
 ' triumphant/ and so forth in going to ' glory/ while leaving any 
 loved ones behind whether or not there may be loved ones 
 
202 HARRIET MARTTNEAU. 
 
 1 gone before.' An unselfish and magnanimous person cannot 
 be solaced, in parting with mortal companions and human 
 sufferers, by personal rewards, bliss, or anything of the sort. I 
 used to think and feel all this before I became emancipated from 
 the superstition ; and I could only submit, and suppose it all 
 right because it was ordained. But now the release is an inex- 
 pressible comfort ; and the simplifying of the whole matter 
 has a most tranquillising effect. Conscious as I arn of what my 
 anxiety would be if I were exiled to the antipodes or to the 
 garden of Eden if you will for twenty or thirty years, I feel no 
 sort of solicitude about a parting which will bring no pain. 
 Sympathy with those who will miss me I do feel of course ; yet 
 not very painfully, because their sorrow cannot, in the nature of 
 things, long interfere with their daily peace ; but to me there is 
 no sacrifice, no sense of loss, nothing to fear, nothing to regret. 
 Under the eternal laws of the universe I came into being, and 
 under them, I have lived a life so full that its fulness is equi- 
 valent to length. The age in which I have lived is an infant 
 one in the history of our globe and of man ; and the consequence 
 is a great waste in the years and the powers of the wisest of us ; 
 and, in the case of one so limited in powers and so circumscribed 
 by early unfavourable influences as myself, the waste is some- 
 thing deplorable. But we have only to accept the conditions in 
 which we find ourselves, and to make the best of them ; and my 
 last days are cheered by the sense of how much better my later 
 years have been than the earlier, or than in the earlier I ever 
 could have anticipated. Some of the terrible faults of my 
 character which religion failed to ameliorate, and others which 
 superstition bred in me, have given way more or less since I 
 attained a truer point of view ; and the relief from all burdens, 
 the uprising of new satisfactions, and the opening of new clear- 
 nessthe fresh air of nature, in short, after imprisonment in 
 the ghost-peopled cavern of superstition has been as favourable 
 to my moral nature as to intellectual progress and general enjoy- 
 ment. Thus, there has been much in life that I am glad to have 
 enjoyed ; and much that generates a mood of contentment at the 
 close. Besides that I never dream of wishing that anything 
 were otherwise than as it is, I am frankly satisfied to have done 
 with life. I have had a noble share of it, and I desire no more. 
 I neither wish to live longer here, nor to find life again else- 
 where. It seems to me simply absurd to expect it, and a mere 
 
HARRIET MARTINEAU. 203 
 
 act of restricted human imagination and morality to conceive of 
 it. It seems to me that there is not only a total absence of 
 evidence of a renewed life for human beings, but so clear a way 
 of accounting for the conception, in the immaturity of the human 
 mind, that I myself utterly disbelieve in a future life. If I 
 should find myself mistaken, it will certainly not be in dis- 
 covering any existing faith in that doctrine to be true. If I 
 am mistaken in supposing that I am now vacating my place in 
 the universe, which is to be filled by another if I find myself 
 conscious after the lapse of life it will be all right of course ; 
 but, as I said, the supposition seems to me absurd. Nor can I 
 understand why anybody should expect me to desire anything 
 else than this yielding up my place. If we may venture to 
 speak, limited as we are, of anything whatever being important, 
 we may say that the important thing is that the universe should 
 be full of life, as we suppose it to be, under the eternal laws 
 of the universe ; and, if the universe be full of life, I cannot see 
 how it can signify whether the one human faculty of conscious- 
 ness of identity be preserved and carried forward, when all the 
 rest of the organisation is gone to dust, or so changed as to be in 
 no respect properly the same. In brief, I cannot see how it 
 matters whether my successor be called H. M., or A. B., or Y. 
 Z. I am satisfied that there will always be as much conscious 
 life in the universe as its laws provide for ; and that certainty is 
 enough, even for my narrow conception, which, however, can 
 discern that caring about it at all is a mere human view and 
 emotion. The real and justifiable and honourable subject of 
 interest to human beings, living and dying, is the welfare of 
 their fellows surrounding them or surviving them. About this 
 I do care, and supremely : in what way I will tell presently. 1 
 
 It is difficult for minds brought up in the conviction 
 of continuous or renewed existence in some altogether 
 different sphere, some world of solved problems and of 
 realised ideals, where every perplexity will be cleared 
 up, every limitation melt away, every corner of space 
 be visited, and every avenue to knowledge opened to 
 
 1 Vol. ii. pp. 435-9. 
 
204* HARRIET MARTINEAU. 
 
 our purified vision during eternal years it is difficult 
 for such minds either to acquiesce in the cessation of 
 conscious being and identity here described, or to 
 thoroughly believe in the cheerfulness of this acquies- 
 cence. That so curiously active an intellect should be 
 so content in the prospect of inaction ; that one who 
 so thirsted after science should be satisfied, having 
 learned so little, never to learn more ; that one so 
 wakeful should thus welcome everlasting sleep ; that 
 one who to her last breath felt so intense an interest 
 in the future of the race to which she was to belong 
 no more, should yet be so happy in view of a non- 
 existence in which that future must be absolutely 
 dark, seems all but incredible, would be quite incred- 
 ible did we not know it to be the case with hundreds 
 who yet calmly submit to the inevitable. But there 
 is something behind yet harder to receive that those 
 whose blessedness in this world has lain, not in philo- 
 sophy but in affection, not in the accumulation of 
 knowledge but in the interchange of love, whose joy 
 too has consisted rather in the lastingness than the 
 mere fact of their unitedness, should, out of pure sub- 
 mission not to ' God's will ' but to the ' laws of Nature/ 
 be able, when the hour comes to die, willingly and 
 even gratefully to utter the Vale vale, in ceternum vale, 
 to the sharers of their life on earth. This is un- 
 questionably the harder may it not also be the 
 higher form of pious resignation ? the last achieve- 
 ment of the ripened mind ? The following is Harriet 
 Martineau's last view of the world : 
 
HARRIET MARTINEAU. 205 
 
 I am confident that a brighter day is coming for future gener- 
 ations. Our race has been as Adam created at nightfall. The 
 solid earth has been but dark, or dimly visible, while, the eye 
 was inevitably drawn to the mysterious heavens above. There, 
 the successive mythologies have arisen in the east, each a con- 
 stellation of truths, each gloriously and fervently worshipped in 
 its course ; but the last and noblest, the Christian, is now not 
 only sinking to the horizon, but paling in the dawn of a brighter 
 time. The dawn is unmistakable ; and the sun will not be long 
 in coming up. The last of the mythologies is about to vanish 
 before the flood of a brighter light. 
 
 With the last of the mythologies will pass away, after some 
 lingering, the immoralities which have attended all mythologies. 
 Now, while the state of our race is such as to need all our 
 mutual devotedness, all our aspiration, all our resources of 
 courage, hope, faith, and good cheer, the disciples of the Christian 
 creed and morality are called upon, day by day, to ( work out 
 their own salvation with fear and trembling,' and so forth. Such 
 exhortations are too low for even the wavering mood and 
 quacked morality of a time of theological suspense and un- 
 certainty. In the extinction of that suspense, and the discredit- 
 ing of that selfish quackery, I see the prospect, for future gener- 
 ations, of a purer and loftier virtue, and a truer and sweeter 
 heroism than divines who preach such self-seeking can conceive 
 of. When our race is trained in the morality which belongs to 
 ascertained truth, all ' fear and trembling ' will be left to chil- 
 dren ; and men will have risen to a capacity for higher work 
 than saving themselves to that of ' working out ' the welfare of 
 their race, not in ' fear and trembling,' but with serene hope and 
 joyful assurance. 
 
 The world as it is is growing somewhat dim before my eyes ; 
 but the world as it is to be looks brighter every day. 1 
 
 1 VoL ii. pp. 460-2. 
 
X. 
 
 VERIFY YOUR COMPASS. 
 
 OF the many ethical errors to which humanity is 
 prone, is one which is curiously common, and yet 
 against which, as curiously, we are little on our guard. 
 It is difficult to correct because it is not easy to re- 
 cognise. It is not that we are habitually given to 
 follow our impulses, that error is too universal to be 
 astonished at, or written about. It is that we are so 
 apt to be proud of our failings, to worship our weak- 
 nesses, to canonise our defects, to mistake the beacon 
 which should warn us off the rocks for the lighthouse 
 which was intended to direct us into port to enthrone 
 in our blindness the very qualities and fancies and 
 predilections which we ought sedulously to watch, and 
 severely to imprison, to dress them up as idols and 
 then worship them as gods to glorify them with a 
 hallowed name, and then to obey them with a devoted 
 loyalty which is almost touching, and which would be 
 admirable were it not so easy, so mischievous, and so 
 tenacious. We take some Will of the Wisp as our 
 guide in life, which is the mere miasma of our fancies 
 and our passions, and follow it as if it were the Pillar 
 of Fire which was sent to point our course amid the 
 
VERIFY YOUR COMPASS. 207 
 
 pathless wilderness and the forest gloom. We do this 
 in all sincerity often indeed almost unconsciously 
 nay, it may even be that those who fancy themselves 
 virtuous, and who pass as virtuous in others' estima- 
 tion, are specially liable thus to swerve from the true 
 line and then when we have gone far astray and 
 have done much wrong, some of us pause amazed and 
 aghast, and a few very few indeed perceive their 
 error and repent. 
 
 Probably of all qualities which have done most 
 business in this way, one of the most notable and the 
 least recognised is that characteristic which goes by 
 the name of Conscientiousness. In noting the curious 
 amount of mischief this has wrought in the world, as 
 well as the smiling self-approval and inflated com- 
 placency of the perpetrators, we are provoked to 
 inquire whether in five cases out of six, this may not 
 be among the most active of 'the faults which contrive 
 to get themselves canonized as virtues or at least 
 knighted or coronetted as such by an inconsiderate 
 and hasty public. 
 
 We have most of us the misfortune to be connected, 
 or at least acquainted with, a man who is a ' slave to 
 his conscience/ and who prides himself on being so. 
 The Italians have a special word for this particular 
 sort of pride they call it pavoneggiarsi to peacock 
 oneself. Probably we shall agree that of all our 
 circle of associates such a man is often the most 
 bothering, provoking, unmanageable, incalculable, and 
 occasionally the most cantankerous. He does not 
 
208 VERIFY YOUR COMPASS. 
 
 reason on ordinary principles ; he does not act on 
 commonly received doctrines ; he is not guided by the 
 axioms or habits which govern the conduct of the 
 mass of men. You never know where he may turn 
 up ; and when he has turned up anywhere, you can 
 scarcely ever move him. ' He must/ he tells you, 
 ' act uprightly fiat justitia mat coelum. He must 
 do whatever his conscience tells him ' and some- 
 times his conscience whispers very odd commands. 
 Sometimes, also which is more to our present pur- 
 pose other voices usurp the functions of conscience, 
 forge its exact signature, speak in its name, and 
 imitate its very tones. 
 
 Often what a man takes for the dictate of conscience 
 is nothing more than a whiff of impulse, a caprice, a 
 crotchet, which an undisciplined mind cannot distin- 
 guish from the deliberate decision of a competent 
 intelligence ; and the more irresistible the impulse, 
 the more sudden and vehement the caprice, the more 
 it is likely to represent itself to his imagination as an 
 imperious command of the monitor within. There 
 are some persons who can no more discriminate 
 between a desire and a duty than others who have a 
 mere smattering of arithmetic can cast up a long 
 addition sum right. Yet these are precisely the 
 characters most prone to be dogged and persistent in 
 their noxious blunder, and to dress it, both to them- 
 selves and to the world, in the gaudiest guise. How 
 frequently do we meet with men incapable of injustice 
 or cruelty themselves, who will defend the most 
 
VERIFY YOUR COMPASS. 209 
 
 scandalous instances of both if perpetrated by women 
 whom they love, and maintain that c chivalry ' forbids 
 them to do otherwise, or who if they themselves had 
 wronged a fellow-creature would be prompt with the 
 amplest apology, but who would repudiate as pusil- 
 lanimous the suggestion of enforcing similar atonement 
 when a wife is the offender. 
 
 In most instances of this sort, mental confusion or 
 defect must bear the blame, because it really is the 
 origin of the faults which are laid at the door of con- 
 scientiousness, and unrighteously suffered to pass under 
 its name. But in five cases out of six, mere conceit 
 is the fans et origo mali ; and in such the deceitful 
 veil should be rudely torn away not the less rudely 
 because the deceit is often self-deception, and genuine 
 self-deception too. We are all of us probably familiar 
 with men usually young men, or narrow-minded men, 
 often mere prigs and puppies who affect a course 
 of action, or a standard of right and wrong, at variance 
 not only with that of the general world (which might 
 often be permissible enough and even praiseworthy), 
 but with that of those whom they are bound to defer 
 to, and cannot but respect, whom in their secret 
 hearts perhaps they do respect not only fathers and 
 mothers whose character they cannot fail to reverence, 
 whose experience they must recognise as at least 
 affording a prima facie probability of wisdom, and 
 whose views they know to be the very reverse of 
 inconsiderate or low moralists by profession whose 
 tone and thoughtful depth only the most presumptu- 
 
 o 
 
210 VERIFY YOUR COMPASS. 
 
 cms could dare to criticise. They venture to condemn 
 where their teachers would acquit, and to admire 
 where these teachers would reprobate or deplore ; to 
 become enthusiasts in a cause which older and wiser 
 men regret and which in riper manhood they are 
 nearly certain to abandon. They are 'conscientiously' 
 resolute in acting up to their own convictions, fancy- 
 ing all the while that they are true and more far- 
 sighted than others, when in truth it is only that they 
 are more inexperienced, and pluming themselves on 
 the simplicity and purity of their vision, while their 
 shallowness and narrowness are leading them astray. 
 Life abounds in specimens of this class, and the 
 character is a favourite one with novelists. 1 They are 
 often cured, but usually too late. They sometimes 
 repent of their errors, frequently outgrow them, but 
 not till they have done endless mischief, and inflicted 
 incalculable pain, and perhaps embittered and embar- 
 rassed their whole after life. Meanwhile the plea of 
 conscience, and the supposed obligation of obeying 
 the orders it issues as those of a despot by divine 
 right, enable them to escape alike condemnation and 
 contrition. 2 
 
 1 Literary and Social Judgments, p. 135, quoted at the end of 
 the paper. 
 
 2 Mrs Gaskell's beautiful novel Ruth affords an excellent in- 
 stance. Euth, innocent and beautiful, left an orphan and with- 
 out connections, is turned out of doors at sixteen by a rash and 
 hasty mistress, in whose establishment she had been placed to 
 learn dress-making ; and not knowing whither to turn in her 
 despair, is persuaded by a gentleman, who had already half- 
 engaged her youthful fancy, to accept shelter and assistance from 
 
VERIFY YOUR COMPASS. 211 
 
 Often, again, what is called conscientiousness, is 
 simply the egotism of a wilful and intolerant nature. 
 We are passionate advocates of our wrong opinion 
 because it is ours ; we insist upon following our mis- 
 taken or mischievous course for the same reason, and 
 because our unchastened temper is impatient of con- 
 tradiction or control ; we make a virtue out of one of 
 
 him. She goes astray, scarcely if at all conscious that she is 
 doing wrong, but from a gentleness of nature that never dreams 
 of resisting the influence of those she loves .... The process 
 by which her character is purified and elevated, and her fault 
 redeemed through the influence of Mrs Benson, and her pas- 
 sionate attachment to her child, is described with a fidelity to 
 the deeper secrets of our nature as beautiful as it is unique. 
 Among the members of Mr Benson's congregation is a wealthy 
 and influential merchant, Mr Bradshaw the very distilled 
 essence of a disagreeable Pharisee ; ostentatious, patronising, 
 self-confident, and self- worshipping ; rigidly righteous accordiDg 
 to his own notion, but in our eyes a heinous and habitual 
 offender ; a harsh and oppressive tyrant in his own family, with- 
 out perceiving it, or rather without admitting that his harsh 
 oppression is other than a grand virtue ; yet driving by it one 
 child into rebellion, and another into hypocrisy and crime, and 
 arousiog the bad passions of every one with whom he comes into 
 contact ; having no notion of what temptation is, either as a 
 thing to be resisted or succumbed to, for the simple reason that 
 all his temptations those of pride, selfishness, and temper are 
 yielded to and defended as virtuous impulses ; prone to trample, 
 and ignorant of the very meaning of tenderness and mercy. 
 This man, reeking with the sins Christ most abhorred, turns 
 upon the unhappy Euth (who, after six years had become gover- 
 ness in his house) as soon as he learns her history, with a brutal 
 violence and a coarse unfeeling cruelty which we need not scruple 
 to affirm, constituted a far greater sin than poof Euth would 
 have committed if her lapse from chastity had been persistent 
 and deliberate, instead of being half -unconscious, transient, and 
 bitterly and nobly atoned for. 
 
21 2 VERIFY YOUR COMPASS. 
 
 the most dangerous and offensive of our vices. We 
 sail under false colours, and go through life a sort of 
 moral pirates, carrying a lying flag at our masthead. 
 Occasionally the case is even worse, and it is pure love 
 of power which uses the plea to throw dust into the 
 eyes of an unpenetrating and indulgent world. A 
 position of command about the weightiest burden of 
 responsibility which can be laid upon a scrupulous 
 nature is too constantly exercised merely as the 
 privilege of an imperious volition ; and the pressure 
 and obligation which might be in danger of paralysing 
 action in a truly conscientious man is scarcely even 
 felt by one who only credits himself with being such, 
 and fancies he is discharging his duty when he is, in 
 fact, only obeying his propensities. 
 
 Probably, however, the most notorious and flagrant 
 instance of conscientious crime is religious persecution. 
 It is also the most widely spread and the most endur- 
 ing. It has been the curse and the obloquy of man- 
 kind for the last twenty centuries. It did not exactly 
 come in with Christianity, because specimens of it, or 
 what looks like it, are traceable in classic times, and 
 the temper and ideas which are its excuse and inspir- 
 ation now, were partly at least its inspiration among 
 the early Israelites in their treatment of the Canaanitic 
 tribes ; but it can scarcely be denied that its preval- 
 ence, its systematisation, its elevation to the rank of 
 a duty and a virtue, is due to those who would 
 m( nopolise what they abuse the name of Christians; 
 and Islamism, which commands the extermination of 
 
VERIFY YOUR COMPASS. 213 
 
 infidels, only follows our example and betters our 
 instruction. It would almost seem as if the habit 
 and the principle of persecution had begun with the 
 first dawn of a true faith, had spread with the spread 
 of monotheism, and had culminated with what the 
 world has agreed to recognise as its purest and loftiest 
 form. Nay, more, it must be admitted, we fear, that 
 the spirit of religious intolerance lids been rampant 
 just in proportion as belief has been enthusiastic 
 and dogmatic, and that the periods of most earnest 
 convictions have precisely and invariably been those 
 when persecution has been most active and most 
 barbarous. 
 
 Now, while unquestionably this form of misguided 
 conscientiousness is of all the most noxious and de- 
 solating, it is probably at the same time the most 
 honest and the most logical. While as wrong-headed 
 as any, it has in it less of semi-conscious self- 
 delusion or self-indulgence than most. It has in 
 it more of principle and less of passion. No 
 doubt, impatience of difference of opinion to which we 
 are all so prone, and that domineering temper which 
 is among the least amiable of our faults, lies at the 
 bottom of much religious intolerance, and is mixed up with 
 nearly all ; but the doctrine which really dictates and 
 sustains persecution without which it could scarcely 
 have survived the growth of our intelligence and the 
 increasing tenderness of our nature is a legitimate 
 inference from the Gospel teaching; a false conclusion 
 and conviction common to nearly every Christian 
 
2 1 4 VERIFY YOUR COMPASS. 
 
 Church, professed by nearly every sect of sincere 
 believers, and warranted, it is vain to dispute, by the 
 Scriptures which nearly all receive. The received 
 creed, which we are only slowly beginning to outgrow 
 or to expurgate, pronounces that men's salvation 
 depends not on what they do, but on what they think, 
 not on righteous conduct and a Christian spirit, but 
 on sound dogma and correct belief, not on being im- 
 bued with and governed by ' the mind which was in 
 Jesus/ but on having accepted right ideas as to who 
 Jesus was and what he taught. Till this fatal notion 
 is exploded, Christianity can neither bear its destined 
 fruits nor deserve its borrowed name. So long as it 
 reigns paramount, religious persecution can neither be 
 denounced as illegitimate, nor resented as iniquitous. 
 If my eternal salvation really depends upon the faith 
 I hold, it is impossible to argue that any severity, any 
 barbarism, any oppression which offer the prospect of 
 converting me to the faith that opens the gates of 
 heaven, may not be the most righteous and kindly 
 treatment to pursue towards me is not, or may not be, 
 not only a justifiable course, but a sacred and a solemn 
 duty. ' The theory of persecution/ it has been well 
 said, ' would be invulnerable, if its major premiss were 
 not unsound/ 
 
 To mention other instances in which ' conscience ' 
 is quite astray, or rather in which what calls itself 
 conscience must be content with the more appropriate 
 name of prejudice or ignorance, we may refer to two 
 which have cropped up not unfrequently of late. The 
 
VERIFY YOUR COMPASS. 215 
 
 error in each case maintains itself upon a scanty but 
 undeniable fragment of argument and fact. 
 
 The ' Peculiar People/ as they are termed by those 
 they puzzle, are a small sect of Christians of the most 
 uneducated class, who, if their children fall ill, refuse 
 to have recourse to ordinary use of drugs or doctors, 
 but pray over the invalid and leave the issue of the 
 matter in ' the Lord's hands/ If the child in the 
 course of nature recover, they thank God. If he die 
 the, British magistrates commit the parents for man- 
 slaughter, as having neglected to employ the recognised 
 means of cure. Both the law and the offenders have 
 much to say for themselves ; and the parents, granting 
 the assumed premisses common to both, have undeniably 
 the best of the argument ; they are the closer logicians, 
 but the greater fools. They plead : ' We are ignorant 
 and simple folk, but we must obey our consciences. 
 Our teachers, Christian lawgivers, Christian magis- 
 trates, Christian ministers, all agree in telling us 
 that the New Testament is the best guide for people 
 like us, and indeed you say an infallible guide for all. 
 Now James, an inspired Apostle of Christ, speaking 
 in the Holy Scriptures (James v. 14, 15) saith, "Is 
 any sick among you ? Let him call for the elders of 
 the Church ; and let them pray over him, anointing 
 him with oil in the name of the Lord : and the 
 prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall 
 raise him up." We acted as God by the mouth of his 
 prophets ordered us ; and whether " it be right in 
 the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto 
 
216 VERIFY YOUR COMPASS. 
 
 God, judge ye," as another apostle, Peter, said.* 
 Whereupon the magistrate, if he be an honest man, 
 is considerably puzzled ; if he be a sceptic, he replies 
 that such is the law, and that he must obey it, and 
 that the peculiar person is very ignorant and simple 
 (which is precisely the groundwork of his argument) ; 
 if he be an ordinary believer, he mutters something 
 about unlearned folk ' wresting Scripture to their own 
 destruction/ abuses him for want of sense, and assures 
 him that he is mistaken in his interpretation of 
 Scripture. But one and all send the unfortunate 
 defendant away with his sentence of fine or imprison- 
 ment added to the loss of his child, quite unconvinced, 
 greatly shaken in his understanding by this conflict 
 between law and Scripture, probably fancying himself 
 a martyr, and his condemner a cruel oppressor, and at 
 all events resolved to sin again. But no one regards 
 him as a man who can ' afford to keep a conscience ' 
 or is entitled to so high a privilege. 1 
 
 Another set of unqualified devotees of conscience 
 are to be found among more educated circles, and 
 
 1 We must observe, however, that the most decisive argument 
 of the magistrate in favour of enforcing obedience to the common 
 law is that the father is dealing with the case of his children ; 
 he is playing, as is believed, with the lives of others, not with 
 his own. He is charged with manslaughter, not with suicide. 
 Now no man is entitled to be whimsical in dealing with the lives 
 of others. Justice as well as law (as far as may be) requires 
 that these shall be governed and determined by the common 
 sense of the world at large. You may not choose to take physic 
 yourself ; but you are not entitled to deny it, any more than 
 food, to those whom you are bound to support. 
 
VERIFY YOUR COMPASS. 217 
 
 have more to say for themselves. Their error is 
 traceable less to want of knowledge than to partial 
 and incomplete knowledge. We refer to those who 
 refuse to have their children vaccinated, as the law 
 requires, on the plea that the (vaccine) lymph used 
 for the operation has, or may have, become vitiated 
 by long transmission through the human constitution, 
 of which it may have contracted, and does occasionally 
 convey, some of the impurities, and even some of the 
 diseases one, at least, certainly of the most offensive. 
 The fact on which the plea is advanced is admitted is 
 undoubtedly valid for requiring the amendment and 
 modification of the law ; whether it ought to be recog- 
 nised as warranting violation of the law may assuredly 
 be questioned. The arguments pro and con lie in a 
 nut- shell, and the premisses on which they are founded 
 are not disputed. Small-pox is about the most loath- 
 some disease to which our race is liable, and was for 
 long the most fatal. It was also the most rapidly and 
 inescapably contagious. Nobody could argue that it 
 concerned himself or his family alone. Every small- 
 pox patient was a curse and a probable agent of death 
 to all with whom he came in contact. Vaccination, 
 when pure and well administered, used to be an almost 
 absolute preservative. It is so still, even as at present 
 administered, in ninety cases out of every hundred. 
 Still, it is admitted that the lymph employed is not 
 as good as it once was, having been 'humanised,' as 
 we are assured, to the extent of two and a half per 
 
218 VERIFY YOUR COMPASS. 
 
 cent., and even diseased in quality in very rare cases. 1 
 But vaccine lymph procured direct from the animal 
 has now been introduced, in Belgium (and now, we under- 
 stand, in St Petersburg) with the most complete and un- 
 exceptional success, and without the slightest liability 
 to the objection which has to some slight extent given 
 countenance to the aversion which has arisen here. 
 With this amendment of the system once introduced, 
 it becomes obvious that the law of 'compulsory vac- 
 cination ' is a righteous one, and that the dislike and 
 opposition of any individual to a beneficent arrange- 
 ment determined by the sense, and appointed for the 
 safety of ninety-nine of every hundred in the com- 
 munity qualified to form a judgment, ought to be 
 sternly over-ridden. Conscience is a far more unen- 
 durable plea for disobedience in this case than in the 
 last. There disobedience threatened only the life of 
 the offender's child ; here it threatens the lives, health, 
 and comeliness of thousands of his fellow-citizens. 
 
 The practical conclusion to be drawn from all these 
 considerations, stated nakedly and broadly, would 
 strike most persons as somewhat startling. It is 
 this : that conscientiousness in its absolute form 
 that is, being a slave to your conscience, always doing 
 what it tells you to do, is commendable or defensible 
 only on the preliminary assumption that you have 
 taken every available pains to enlighten and correct 
 it. You can be safe and justified in obeying it im- 
 plicitly only when you have ascertained, or done all in 
 1 See Sir Thomas Watson Nineteenth Century, June, 1878. 
 
VERIFY YOUR COMPASS. 219 
 
 your power to ascertain, first, that it is qualified to 
 command, and secondly, that what you take for con- 
 science is not in reality egotism, ignorance, incapacity, 
 intolerance, or conceit under a thin disguise. To 
 make sure of this is no easy business. It requires 
 not only good sense (a much rarer gift than we fancy), 
 but great intelligence, a cultivated mind, modest as 
 well as earnest searching after truth, to entitle a man 
 to give himself over to his conscience. Never must 
 he be allowed to plead it as an excuse for mistake or 
 wrong. In fine, and in plain truth, it is not every 
 man perhaps we might say it is but few men that 
 can afford to keep a conscience a conscience of this 
 absolute and imperious sort at least. To direct 
 floundering or blinded souls, just as much as to cure 
 diseased bodies, needs a licence and a diploma from 
 some college competent to confer such. 
 
 In the navy, and I believe in the merchant service 
 as well, it is the practice, as soon as a ship is ready 
 for sea, or ordered on a expedition, to pass her through 
 a preliminary ceremony, known technically as ' being 
 swung.' It is absolutely indispensable : she is not 
 held to be fit for duty till it has been performed. It 
 consists in verifying her compasses ascertaining by 
 actual and minute comparison with compasses on 
 shore that those instruments by which she is to direct 
 her course throughout her voyage are perfect and 
 accurate, point aright, are impeded in their operation 
 by no fault of construction,, and liable to no deviation 
 from the influence of disturbing attractions. As a 
 
220 VERIFY YOUR COMPASS. 
 
 matter of fact the magnetic compasses of few ships are 
 found to be thoroughly exact, or to point truly and 
 precisely to the north sometimes swerving from that 
 direction as much as ten degrees, and owing this 
 variation most commonly to the position and amount 
 of iron of which the ship is partially constructed. 
 Before the ship is suffered to sail, this variation must 
 be either rectified, or, as is more commonly the practice, 
 registered and allowed for. It is obvious that, unless 
 this were done, not only would the vessel not know 
 for certain whither she was steering, nor arrive except 
 by accident at her intended port ; but that ship, 
 cargo, and the lives of the crew might every day be 
 wrecked on any hidden rock or headland, in fact, 
 that her course and fate would be at the mercy of 
 chance. 
 
 In the case of ships setting forth upon voyages 
 across the Atlantic Ocean all this anxious caution is 
 observed lest the guiding instrument to which they 
 trust should be imperfect or misleading. Yet men 
 habitually set out upon the voyage of life far longer 
 in duration, beset with perils from rocks and hurri- 
 canes immeasurably greater, and fraught with issues 
 incontestably more serious with a compass as their 
 guide, which they trust as blindly and obey as 
 implicitly as any mariner who ever sailed the seas, 
 yet which in countless instances they have never been 
 at the pains to test before installing it in a position of 
 command, and which they seldom, if ever, pause to 
 question, verify, or adjust. 
 
XL 
 
 THE PROPHETIC ELEMENT IN THE GOSPELS. 1 
 
 THE paper from the pen of Mr Hutton which appeared 
 in the July No. of this Revieiv was in my judgment 
 at once so frank and candid in its admissions, so fair 
 and so bold in the ground on which it placed the 
 argument involved, and so original and striking in the 
 line of reasoning pursued, as to be refreshingly rare in 
 the field of theological controversy, and to merit the 
 gravest consideration and the most respectful treatment 
 at the hands of all of us, even though we cannot 
 unreservedly concede his premisses, and must demur 
 to the most important of his inferences. It cannot 
 fail to have much weight with those who are still 
 pausing on the middle ground between Scepticism and 
 Conviction, and will probably appear absolutely con- 
 clusive to settled believers. A first perusal, I confess, 
 somewhat shook the confidence I had placed in one or 
 two of my previous opinions, but a second began to 
 show the weak places in Mr Button's argument, and 
 when I had read the paper a third time I felt satisfied 
 that it need not have staggered me at all. It is to 
 these weak places and inadmissible assumptions that 
 
 1 Contemporary Review, November 1875. 
 
222 THE PROPHETIC ELEMENT IN THE GOSPELS. 
 
 I now propose, with all deference and moderation, to 
 direct attention ; and if in the course of my remarks 
 his readers and mine should be inclined to object that 
 I am occasionally myself arguing on assumptions not 
 yet proved or generally recognised in their complete- 
 ness, and which would require a whole volume 
 thoroughly to establish, I can only ask that they be 
 accepted simply as provisional bases for the inferences 
 I draw from them. If they be deemed unsound, of 
 course my conclusions will be pro tanto invalidated. 
 But their correctness I am myself satisfied of, and 
 hope some day to demonstrate. 
 
 The article may be conveniently regarded as 
 divisible into two sections : 
 
 1. Reasons for believing in the actual resurrection 
 of Jesus, notwithstanding the irreconcilable contradic- 
 tions and other admitted difficulties in the narratives 
 of that event transmitted to us in the four Gospels. 
 
 2. Thesis, that the various predictions of Christ, 
 scattered throughout his career, as recorded in the 
 Gospels, are distinctly indicative of supernatural know- 
 ledge or foresight, and taken together with their 
 fulfilment are only explicable on the supposition of 
 his being what he professed to be, the inspired Son of 
 God. 
 
 I. 
 
 The remarkable and suggestive discrepancies in the 
 various accounts of the four Gospels Mr Hutton, with 
 one important omission } states fully and recognises 
 
THE PROPHETIC ELEMENT IN THE GOSPELS. 223 
 
 freely. The genuine Gospel according to Mark (which 
 ends, as is now admitted, with the eighth verse of the 
 sixteenth chapter) says nothing of any appearance of 
 Jesus to any one, but merely records that the women 
 found the sepulchre empty, and a young man who 
 gave them a message to the disciples that they should 
 see him in Galilee, whither he was gone before them ; 
 adding that they were afraid and told no man. 
 Matthew narrates the same message about Galilee, 
 adding a legendary earthquake, and turning Mark's 
 " young man " into an " angel," but says that the 
 women at once ran to tell the disciples, to whom 
 Jesus then in person appeared and repeated the in- 
 junction to meet him in Galilee which they did 
 though, when they did, it is said " some doubted." 
 If these accounts stood alone, they would of course be 
 generally felt to be both inconclusive and inadequate, 
 not to say quite invalid. But the Third Gospel 
 describes the sitters at the empty sepulchre (who have 
 now ceased to be angels, but instead of one young 
 man, have become two), who inform the women, who 
 in their turn tell the apostles, but are received by 
 them as bearers of " idle tales," and disbelieved 
 accordingly. Several appearances of Jesus himself, 
 however, follow, but all in or near Jerusalem, 
 ending with an ascension into heaven from Bethany, 
 apparently on the fourth day after the crucifixion, the 
 command to go into Galilee being not only ignored, 
 but distinctly (Acts i. 4, Luke xxiv. 49) contradicted 
 or reversed. The Fourth Gospel has special discrep- 
 
224 THE PROPHETIC ELEMENT IN THE GOSPELS. 
 
 ances of its own : the " young man " of Mark, the 
 " angel " of Matthew, the " two men " of Luke have 
 grown into " two angels ; " the risen Lord appears first 
 to Mary Magdalene, and then three times to the 
 disciples, one of which was in Galilee. Mr Hutton 
 winds up his summary of these inconsistencies and 
 contradictions fairly enough thus : 
 
 " I think every candid person will admit that this condition 
 of the merely external evidence is not of the kind which any one 
 would wish for the purpose of establishing by direct testimony a 
 very marvellous and unprecedented event." 
 
 But Mr Hutton has omitted to mention what seems 
 to me about the most significant and suggestive of the 
 details in these varying narratives the indications 
 namely, and even the distinct statements that so many 
 of the disciples who saw our Lord in the first instance 
 " did not recognise him" l that doubts existed in the 
 minds of those whose convictions and testimony one 
 would have expected to be most positive and certain, 
 and in some minds these doubts continued to the end, 
 long after the resurrection of Jesus had been estab- 
 lished as the fundamental creed of his followers. 2 
 
 " Matthew relates two appearances, in very general terms. Of 
 
 1 " Those who had lived with him for years and parted from 
 him on the Friday did not know him again on the Sunday. If, 
 then, he was so changed so entirely not his former self that 
 they did not recognise him, how could they, or how can we, 
 know that the person assumed to be Jesus was actually their 
 risen Lord 1 " 
 
 2 1 Cor. xv. 12 : " Now if Christ be preached that he rose 
 from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection 
 of the dead?" 
 
THE PHOPHETIC ELEMENT IN THE GOSPELS. 225 
 
 the second he says, 'but some doubted.' Mark (the genuine 
 portion) says nothing of any appearances ; but the spurious 
 portion repeats twice that those who asserted that they had seen 
 him were disbelieved, and that Christ, when he appeared him- 
 self to the eleven, ' upbraided them with their unbelief.' Luke 
 narrates two appearances, and incidentally mentions that ' the 
 eleven' reported a third, to Simon. With reference to the first, 
 he says of the two disciples, Cleophas and a friend, who walked, 
 talked, and ate with Jesus at Emmaus for several hours, ' their 
 eyes were holden that they should not know him.' With refer- 
 ence to the second appearance (that to the eleven) it is said, first, 
 that ' they were affrighted, thinking they had seen a spirit,' and 
 shortly afterwards that they ' yet believed not for joy, and 
 wondered.' But it is in the fourth Gospel that the non-recogni- 
 tion feature becomes most marked. Mary Magdalene, after 
 Jesus had spoken to her and she had turned to look at him, still 
 ' supposed him to be the gardener.' His most intimate disciples, 
 when they saw him in Galilee, ' knew not that it was Jesus,' 
 even though he spoke to them ; even John himself only inferred 
 the presence of his master in consequence of the miraculous 
 draught of fishes, and Peter only accepted the inference on John's 
 authority. * Therefore, the narrative says, * that disciple whom 
 Jesus loved saith unto Peter, It is the Lord. Now when Simon 
 Peter heard that it was the Lord, he girt on his fisher's coat, and 
 did cast himself into the sea.'" Introduction to the Creed of 
 Christendom, p. 33. 
 
 However, I am not disposed to press this curious 
 oversight at present, because my dissent from Mr 
 Hutton's argument begins at a later point, and because 
 I am glad to find that his view of the character of 
 these narratives appears to be nearly the same as my 
 own. After admitting the unsatisfactory nature of 
 the Gospel narratives as positive and direct testimony, 
 lie proceeds 
 
 " But I think every candid person will also admit that it is 
 just the sort of evidence we might expect if there had been no 
 attempt to take records at the time, a good number of accounts 
 
 P 
 
226 THE PROPHETIC ELEMENT IN THE GOSPELS. 
 
 (narrated by different persons) of different appearances in different 
 places, a certain amount of local prepossession in favour of Galilee 
 as the appropriate place for Christ's renewed intercourse with his 
 disciples, and a complete conviction that Christ after his resur- 
 rection had been so often seen, and by so many persons, that 
 
 there was no real dispute about the matter In fact, 
 
 with an event not supernatural, it would be evidently far the 
 simplest and most natural explanation of the testimony to assume 
 that the fact happened, though under circumstances rendered very 
 doubtful by the discrepancies in the narratives. 11 
 
 I think I am not pressing an inference too far if I 
 assume that Mr Hutton conceives the accounts in 
 question to be a collection of the recollections, tradi- 
 tions, and convictions prevalent in the early Church 
 at the time when the Gospels were drawn up, but 
 that the details of those chapters are historical in no 
 other sense. In fact it appears to me next to im- 
 possible to arrive at any other estimate when we 
 remember what very questionable matter the chapters 
 contain. We are thus relieved of the grievous diffi- 
 culties of having to accept as historical the command 
 of Christ to his disciples to employ a formula of 
 baptism 1 that was not in vogue till a far later period, 
 when the views of the early Church had been con- 
 gealed into a dogmatic system ; the statement that 
 Christ there and then conferred upon the Twelve 
 (whose infirmity and faithlessness had been so lately 
 made manifest) the authority of determining the future 
 fate of their fellow-men, by the retention or remission 
 of their sins ; 2 and, finally, the fact of their Lord's 
 
 Matthew xxviii. 19. 2 Mark xvi. 16 ; John xx. 23. 
 
THE PROPHETIC ELEMENT IN THE GOSPELS. 227 
 
 visible ascension into the sky, 1 involving, besides the 
 startling miracle itself, the further inadmissible con- 
 clusion that a human body (whose distinct materiality 
 had just been proved by the demand for food 2 ) went 
 up as it was into that heaven which, as we are told 
 by Paul, " flesh and blood cannot inherit/' 3 
 
 Mr Hutton, there can be no doubt, is perfectly 
 right in placing at the head of the evidences for the 
 resurrection of Jesus, not the narrations in the Gospels 
 which vary so strangely and whose date and author- 
 ship are, and must remain, conjectural, but the un- 
 questioned historical fact which Paul records, and as 
 to which no essential doubt need be entertained, viz., 
 that within fourteen to twenty years after the cruci- 
 fixion, the belief in the resurrection and reappearance 
 of our Lord was established as the enthusiastic creed 
 
 1 Luke xxiv. 50 ; Acts i. 9-11 ; Mark xvi. 19. 
 
 2 Luke xxiv. 30, 39, 43 ; John xxi. 5, 12, 13. 
 
 3 " One more difficulty a very grave one raised by the 
 traditional accounts transmitted to us in the Gospels, must be 
 indicated, but needs nothing beyond indication. These accounts 
 all insist in the strongest manner upon the detailed demonstration 
 that it was Jesus in bodily shape, in the same actual form, with 
 the same hands and feet, the same digestive organs and human 
 needs, whom they had seen nailed to the cross three days before, 
 who now came again among them and conversed with them. 
 Jesus himself is made to assure them that he was not a spirit, 
 but flesh and bones that could be handled. In this well-known 
 presence, with these bodily organs and this earthly frame, he is 
 said to have been seen to ascend into heaven. Can flesh and 
 blood inhabit the spiritual kingdom 1 or where was the body 
 dropped ? and when was the transmutation carried out 1 " 
 Introduction to the Third Edition of the Creed of Christendom, 
 p. xxxv. 
 
228 THE PROPHETIC ELEMENT IN THE GOSPELS. 
 
 of the Christian Church ; and further, that (according 
 to the Acts 1 ) within a very few weeks of that occur- 
 rence which had at first so dismayed and scattered 
 the Twelve and other followers of Jesus, they had 
 sprung from the depths of despair to the height of 
 confidence, and began thenceforth to preach and pro- 
 claim the resurrection and Messiahship of Christ with 
 a courage and devotion with which no doubt or dis- 
 couragement ever again mingled ; that, in fact, their 
 whole character seemed changed, and their whole 
 career was thenceforward inspired by their absolute 
 conviction that they had seen and spoken with him 
 after he had risen from the grave. And Mr Hutton 
 then, pertinently and triumphantly, asks 
 
 " Can this result he accounted for on any principle nearly so 
 simple as that the facts which produced those transformations 
 really took place ? With such hopes as the apostles had enter- 
 tained so suddenly blasted by the disappearance of the one 
 person in whom they centred, does it seem possible that they 
 would as suddenly have revived without some great substantial, 
 and even physical stimulus 1 " 
 
 This is the great, essential, difficult question, on 
 which we think Mr Hutton and believers generally 
 are wise in resting the whole issue. Is it probable, 
 is it even rationally conceivable, that such absolute 
 inspiring conviction as that of the apostles, could have 
 taken possession of their souls without some unmis- 
 
 1 It must, however, be a matter of surprise that Mr Hutton 
 should treat the details of this narrative so confidently as histori- 
 cal, when the date of the book, as is now believed, cannot be 
 placed earlier than from A.D. 95-110, and its reliability is not 
 unquestioned. 
 
THE PROPHETIC ELEMENT IN THE GOSPELS. 229 
 
 takable fact which they had, or were convinced that 
 they had, witnessed ? Must not the apostles have 
 seen their risen Lord actually and (sinking all dis- 
 crepant details) substantially as was believed and 
 handed down among the early Christians ? 
 
 The argument thus stated we agree with Mr Hutton 
 in deeming enormously strong and resistible only 
 because irrelevant. The mistake the weak place in 
 the logical chain is in assuming that the miracle 
 of the Resurrection is either a necessary or a natural 
 or a permissible inference from the acceptance of the 
 premisses. On the contrary, I cannot but regard this 
 as a leap, and an unwarrantable one. Doubtless it 
 was one which the disciples excitable, untrained to 
 inquiry, unioured to doubt, ignorant, and impressible 
 to all religious emotions as we know them to have 
 been made instantly. Their beloved Master appeared 
 in the midst of them, and they naturally and almost 
 of course (with the exception of the half-logical Thomas) 
 jumped to the conclusion that he had been raised by 
 his Father from the dead. The only strictly legiti- 
 mate and cogent inference was that he had risen from 
 the grave. Even, therefore, if we agree with Mr 
 Hutton in the basis of fact which he regards as 
 necessary to account for the sudden and vivifying 
 conviction of the enthusiastic Apostles, we hold that 
 that basis ought not to have satisfied them, and we 
 take leave to maintain that it would not have satisfied 
 him. 
 
 The whole strength of the argument, as he puts it, 
 
230 THE PROPHETIC ELEMENT IN THE GOSPELS. 
 
 obviously rests upon the assumption that Jesus had 
 actually and definitively died upon the cross. This 
 assumption he makes no attempt to prove he does 
 not even indicate that he has ever heard it doubted. 
 Yet I can scarcely be contradicted when I urge that 
 the facts as he has enumerated them are as satisfac- 
 torily, and more simply, explained by assuming that 
 Christ had recovered from a state of syncope, as by 
 assuming that he had been miraculously reanimated 
 after actual and conclusive death. The problem to be 
 solved, be it remembered that is, the circumstance 
 to be accounted for is the confident conviction of 
 the Apostles, amounting to certainty, that they saw 
 Jesus and spoke with him after they had seen him 
 nailed to the cross, and knew that he had been laid 
 in the grave. 1 The fact of his re -appearance to 
 them suffices to account for their conviction equally, 
 whatever were the correct details of its antecedents. 
 They never dreamed never could have dreamed, 
 being the men they were of asking whether his 
 death on the cross had been real or only apparent. 
 The doubt would not occur to them ; but that is no 
 reason why it should not be considered by us. And 
 few now will dispute the recognised philosophical 
 axiom that between a natural and a supernatural 
 explanation of a given occurrence, the former, if 
 maintainable and not improbable, is to be preferred. 
 
 1 I omit the verses as to Jesus " giving up the ghost," because 
 we are agreed in admitting that the details in the Gospel accounts 
 cannot be regarded as reliable. 
 
THE PROPHETIC ELEMENT IN THE GOSPELS. 231 
 
 I do not desire definitively to adopt the conclusion 
 that Jesus did not die upon the cross : but I dis- 
 tinctly say that the difficulties attending this conclu- 
 sion appear to me slighter than those which attend 
 any other ; and the supposition is not without corro- 
 borative indications in the sole materials we have for 
 reconstructing the actual occurrence these materials, 
 we must not forget, being four discrepant collections 
 of the traditions current among the early Christians 
 from forty to ninety years after the event, put 
 together we do not know by whom, and not without 
 the strongest signs of subsequent interpolations and 
 legendary accretions. I do not intend here to discuss 
 these indications in detail. I would merely remind 
 my readers that it does not clearly appear that Jesus 
 remained more than five or six hours upon the cross ; 
 that death in so short a space of time was most 
 unusual in the case of crucifixion a mode of punish- 
 ment which left all vital organs untouched ; that 
 Pilate marvelled when he heard that Jesus had died 
 so soon ; and that the two criminals crucified at the 
 same time were still alive when taken down. It 
 must be borne in mind further, that we have no inti- 
 mation whatever of the length of time Jesus re- 
 mained in the grave. It may only have been an 
 hour or two. He may have revived almost immedi- 
 ately after his body had been delivered to Joseph of 
 Arimathea. 
 
 I am, of course, aware of the ordinary objection to 
 the supposition I suggest viz., that those who adopt 
 
232 THE PROPHETIC ELEMENT IN THE GOSPELS. 
 
 it have to account for the subsequent disappearance 
 of the risen Jesus from the scene of action. But, in 
 the first place, I entirely repudiate this obligation, and 
 decline the unsatisfactory task of conceiving imagin- 
 ary explanations. In the next place I would remind 
 those who urge the objection in question that precisely 
 an equal obligation lies upon those who, like Mr 
 Hutton, accept the miraculous resurrection from the 
 dead ; for I cannot conceive for a moment that 
 he will put forward or rest in the explanation 
 given in the Gospels and the Acts of a visible 
 ascension into heaven i.e., into the clouds of that 
 sky beyond which in popular fancy heaven was be- 
 lieved to lie. 
 
 II. 
 
 Mr Hutton argues with much earnestness that the 
 various predictions which Christ is said to have 
 uttered in the course of his preaching, coupled with 
 their precision, their complete fulfilment, and the 
 primd facie unlikelihood of that fulfilment, display 
 an amount and character of foreknowledge which 
 could only have been superhuman. Let us examine 
 this argument in two or three of the more significant 
 and weighty instances specified, and see how far his 
 confidence and his inference are justified. 
 
 First. Take Christ's alleged prophecies of his own 
 resurrection. Mr Hutton accepts all these as genuine, 
 and thinks that even rationalistic critics are disposed 
 
THE PROPHETIC ELEMENT IN THE 
 
 to regard them as such. 1 My impress!) 
 been just the reverse, viz., that the 
 nected with these prophecies were so 
 ous as to render the notion of their having really" 
 ceeded from the mouth of Christ inadmissible by any 
 who do not hold the doctrine of the verbal inspiration 
 of the Gospels. These, of course, maintain that all 
 their statements must be absolutely correct, and that 
 there must exist an explanation of every difficulty, 
 irreconcilability, and contradiction, however apparently 
 insurmountable. But Mr Hutton is not one of these. 
 The first point that has to be noticed with regard 
 to our Lord's predictions of his resurrection is that, 
 though repeated more than once in each of the 
 Synoptical Gospels, 2 they simply record the anticipated 
 fact in the most cursory way and without the slightest 
 detail " and the third day he shall rise again ; " 
 whereas the prophecy of his crucifixion with which 
 
 1 " The more frankly we admit that the second Gospel has no 
 ending at all, the first a very abrupt and hurried one, not at all 
 in keeping with the later tradition, and both the third and 
 fourth most fragmentary accounts of the evidence of the resur- 
 rection the less can it be maintained that the Gospels were 
 afterwards so retouched as to make the prophecies accord with 
 the subsequent faith of the Church. I do not think that any- 
 thing could be weightier testimony to the early preparation and 
 complete freedom from dogmatic purpose of the first and second 
 Gospels than the absence from them of even those details as to 
 the resurrection which had become already for the Church of St 
 Paul's time the very alphabet of the Christian faith." Contem- 
 porary Review, p. 224. 
 
 2 Matthew xvi. 21 ; xx. 18, 19 ; Mark viii. 31 ; ix. 30 ; x. 
 34 ; Luke xviii. 32-34. 
 
234? THE PROPHETIC ELEMENT IN THE GOSPELS. 
 
 those words are mixed up, though an incomparably 
 less important and astonishing occurrence, contains 
 the minutest particulars. It is difficult for this 
 peculiarity not to suggest the inference that the words 
 we have quoted were made either by tradition or by 
 the Evangelist, as seemingly appropriate, and needed 
 in order to complete an account which, at the period 
 when the Church was organized and the record com- 
 mitted to paper, might appear unfinished without 
 them. This, however, is merely a surmise though 
 one not easy to avoid. 
 
 The second point is that in the only recorded pre- 
 diction of the Resurrection, in which details are 
 condescended to viz., that in Matt. xii. 40 the 
 details are incorrect, and the prophecy was not ful- 
 filled ; inasmuch as Christ was not " three days and 
 three nights in the earth," but only one day and two 
 nights. The prediction, therefore, if really uttered by 
 our Lord, would be an instance of error, not of fore- 
 knowledge. But as it stands, and as the analogy of 
 Jonah is purely fanciful, critics have had no hesitation 
 in pronouncing the passage in question to be clearly 
 ungenuine ; and I apprehend that Mr Hutton would 
 make no scruple in agreeing with them. Indeed, a 
 reference to Luke xi. 29-32, showing what is almost 
 certainly the true version of Christ's discourse on the 
 occasion in question, seems to make the critic's con- 
 clusion quite irresistible. 
 
 But the third point, which Mr Hutton does not 
 even allude to, but which appears to my mind decisive 
 
THE PROPHETIC ELEMENT IN THE GOSPELS. 235 
 
 against the genuineness of the predictions in question 
 (at least in any thing like the precision and definite 
 form in which they are recorded *), is the indisputable 
 fact that they were wholly unknown to the disciples. 
 Those who are said to have heard them repeatedly, 
 and on whom they must have made a most startling, 
 and one would imagine, indelible impression, either 
 never did hear them, or heard them absolutely without 
 notice or attention, or entirely disbelieved and disre- 
 garded them, or forgot them totally and at once. If 
 one conclusion from the records be more certain than 
 another it is that Christ's most intimate friends and 
 disciples, even the Twelve, looked upon his crucifixion 
 as the termination of his career, the prostration and 
 crushing of all their hopes, the end of all things, as 
 far as their faith and future were concerned. They 
 not only had no expectation of their Lord's resurrec- 
 tion : they had plainly never dreamed of such a thing, 
 the bare idea of it appears never to have crossed their 
 minds, the rumour of the occurrence, when reported 
 to them, " seemed to them as idle tales ; " nay, they 
 had the greatest difficulty in realising the fact even 
 when Jesus appeared to them. Now, is it credible 
 is it even conceivable that this should have been 
 their state of mind if the resurrection had been re- 
 peatedly foretold to them by their beloved Master 
 
 1 I can quite understand that Jesus must often have spoken of 
 his approaching end, and may have had intimations enough that 
 it would probably be a violent one, even without preternatural 
 foresight, and this Mr Hutton seems to admit, but scarcely 
 that he could have specified the particular details. 
 
236 THE PROPHETIC ELEMENT IN THE GOSPELS. 
 
 and specifically as the sequel of the crucifixion ? 
 Could the previous announcement of so astounding an 
 event have failed to create the most intense excitement 
 at the time, and the most vivid expectation after the 
 crucifixion had already three days previously so im- 
 pressively recalled those (alleged) predictions of his 
 sufferings and death, with which the prophecy of his 
 rising from the dead was, according to the Evangelists, 
 so inextricably mingled ? I confess it appears to me 
 simply inconceivable. 1 If Christ did so utter himself, 
 wishing thereby to prepare the minds of his disciples, 
 the least that can be said is that he entirely failed in 
 his purpose. 2 
 
 It is needless to treat of the prophecy of the cruci- 
 fixion in its details, nor of that as to the treachery of 
 Judas, nor of the universal publication of the deed of 
 the woman who anointed Jesus with the alabaster-box 
 of ointment ; because Mr Hutton, though obviously 
 himself much impressed, declines to lay great stress 
 upon them, admitting that it is at least arguable that 
 the latter may have caused its own fulfilment, and the 
 two first may not fairly be attributed to a reasonable 
 amount of ordinary insight and foresight, coupled with 
 the added speciality of detail which the disciples or 
 the Evangelists would not unnaturally have given to 
 
 1 The incongruity appears to have struck two at least of the 
 Evangelists, if we may trust to their attempts at an explanation. 
 See Luke xviii. 34, and Mark ix. 32. 
 
 2 See " Creed of Christendom," ch. viii. I must apologize for 
 referring to my own writings ; but I know not where the whole 
 argument can be found so concisely stated, and not overstated. 
 
THE PROPHETIC ELEMENT IN THE GOSPELS. 237 
 
 the remembered utterances of Christ, when tradition 
 had unconsciously mingled them with the actual 
 events. Nor, even if we admit that the solemn and 
 pathetic language of Jesus, when, at the last festival 
 of which he was to partake with his disciples, he 
 instituted the Lord's Supper as a memorial of his 
 mission and his end, is probably recorded with essen- 
 tial accuracy, can we avoid regarding the view as 
 excessive, to say the least, which led Mr Hutton to 
 maintain that 
 
 " The clear and steady vision of death which led our Lord to 
 treat the bread he broke as his body, and the wine he was pour- 
 ing out as his blood given for the world, is as clear a case of 
 supernatural knowledge as history could produce of natural 
 knowledge," .... and ' ' the rite thus instituted is in fact the 
 most durable of historical monuments of a steady and lucid pre- 
 vision of the future, implying a knowledge far deeper than that 
 of men." 
 
 Let us proceed to the predictions of the destruction 
 of Jerusalem. These predictions, as is well known, 
 in all the Gospel narratives (which, by the way, are 
 singularly consentaneous, implying that all the Evan- 
 gelists drew from one consolidated tradition) are inex- 
 tricably mixed up with prophecies of the second 
 coming of Christ and the end of the world a confu- 
 sion which Mr Hutton fully admits. The portion 
 relating to the destruction of the city is singularly 
 definite, and corresponds very closely with the actual 
 event. The other portion, on the contrary, is vague 
 and grandiloquent, and refers chiefly to natural pheno- 
 mena and catastrophes. From the precision of the 
 
238 THE PROPHETIC ELEMENT IN THE GOSPELS. 
 
 one portion most critics infer that the Gospels were 
 compiled after or during the siege and conquest 
 of Jerusalem. From the confusion of the two por- 
 tions Mr Hutton draws the opposite inference 
 namely, that the prediction existed in the present 
 recorded form before that event. It is in the greatest 
 degree improbable, he argues, that if Jerusalem had 
 fallen and the other signs of Christ's coming showed 
 no indication of following, the writers should not have 
 recognised and disentangled the confusion, and cor- 
 rected their records to bring them into harmony with 
 what it was then beginning to be seen might be the 
 real meaning of Christ or the actual truth of history. 
 We confess we fail to recognise the cogency of the 
 argument, but we give it as he puts it. 
 
 But the real perplexity lies here. The prediction, 
 as we have it, makes Christ distinctly affirm that his 
 second coming shall follow " immediately," " in those 
 days," after the destruction of Jerusalem, and that 
 "this generation (the generation he addressed) should 
 not pass away till all these things are fulfilled." Mr 
 Hutton believes that these words were intended by 
 Christ to apply only to the destruction of the Holy City. 
 He is entitled to his opinion ; and in itself it is not 
 an improbable solution. But it is, under the circum- 
 stances, a somewhat forced construction. For it must 
 be remembered, first, that it is rendered necessary only 
 by the assumption which Mr Hutton is maintaining 
 namely, that the prophetic powers of Jesus could 
 not be at fault ; secondly, it assumes or implies that 
 
THE PROPHETIC ELEMENT IN THE GOSPELS. 239 
 
 the Gospel narratives of the utterances of Jesus are 
 to be relied upon, even though in these especial pre- 
 dictions he admits them to be essentially confused ; 
 and, thirdly (what we think he ought not to have 
 overlooked), the sentence he quotes is by no means 
 the only one indicating that Jesus himself held the 
 conviction, which he undoubtedly communicated to 
 his followers, that his second coming to judge the 
 world would take place at a very early date. Not 
 only was it to take place " immediately " after the 
 destruction of the city (Matt. xxiv. 29), but it would 
 be witnessed by many of those who heard him. And 
 these predictions are in no way mixed up with those 
 of the destruction of Jerusalem. " There be some 
 standing here that shall not taste of death till they 
 see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom "(xvi. 28), 
 " Verily I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone over 
 the cities of Israel till the Son of Man be come " 
 (x. 23) ; " If I will that he tarry till I come, what is 
 that to thee?" (John xxi. 23); and the correspond- 
 ing passages in the other Synoptics. 
 
 If, therefore, Jesus did not say these things, the 
 Gospels must be strangely inaccurate. If he did, his 
 prophetic faculty cannot have been what Mr Hutton 
 conceives it to have been. That his disciples all con- 
 fidently entertained this erroneous expectation, and 
 entertained it on the supposed authority of their 
 Master, there can be no doubt whatever. (See 1 Cor. 
 x. 11 ; xv. 51 ; Phil. iv. 5 ; 1 Thess. iv. 15 ; Jas. v. 8; 
 1 Pet. iv. 7 ; 1 John ii. 1 8 ; Rev. i. 13 ; xxii. 7, 1 0, 
 
240 THE PROPHETIC ELEMENT IN THE GOSPELS. 
 
 12.) Indeed Mr Hutton recognises this at least as 
 frankly and fully as we have stated it. 
 
 The last instance of Christ's supernatural know- 
 ledge of the future which we propose to examine is 
 perhaps that on which Mr Hutton rests with the 
 greatest confidence. We refer to our Lord's repeated 
 predictions of the success of the kingdom he and his 
 disciples were to establish by their preaching in defi- 
 ance of all opposition, without the aid of force or poli- 
 tical alliances, and by instruments apparently the most 
 inadequate and unpromising ; and to the fact that 
 this kingdom was established and rules to this day 
 over the mightiest though not the widest portion of 
 the earth. 
 
 " I never hear," says Mr Hutton, " without the thrill of a new 
 surprise, that calm, strange, and unique prophecy, addressed at 
 the very outset of his short career to a dozen peasants, l Fear 
 not, little flock, it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the 
 kingdom,' when I remember that a kingdom has really been 
 given them, though not a kingdom of this world. Nor is this a 
 case of what has often happened trust in the eventual ascendency 
 over men of great ideas. It is a case of the selection of special 
 instruments, and of building up a human organisation explicitly 
 designed for work of a most laborious and difficult kind. ' Fol- 
 low me,' Christ says to one or two couples of fishermen on the 
 shores of the Lake of Galilee, ' and I will make you fishers of 
 men/ And they were made fishers of men, and made such 
 solely by him who thus chose them from a calling apparently so 
 little qualified to fit them for the hopeless task. It is remark- 
 able enough that by far the greatest of the apostles he in whom 
 human insight might have discerned the elements of marvellous 
 force and moral influence was not chosen for his work during 
 Christ's earthly life. 'The little flock,' to whom our Lord 
 announces so early and so peremptorily that l they are not to 
 
THE PHOPHETIC ELEMENT IN THE GOSPELS. 241 
 
 fear, because it is their Father's good pleasure to give them the 
 kingdom,' are such a little flock as no one before ever proposed to 
 make the founders of a new world." P. 227. 
 
 The argument is a weighty one, and Mr Hutton 
 puts it with much force. We will not attempt to 
 impugn it by reminding our readers that he relies 
 perhaps too much on special phrases which those who 
 hold our joint views of the traditional origin of the 
 Gospels cannot feel confident were uttered precisely 
 as we now have them, because we do not doubt that 
 Jesus entertained an enthusiastic conviction of the 
 spread of his doctrine and the corning of the Chris- 
 tian era and the spiritual kingdom which he preached. 
 We recognise, too, as fully as the writer we are criti- 
 cising, the unsuitable and almost hopeless character of 
 the human elements by whose agency he proposed to 
 found it. Nevertheless we cannot accept Mr Button's 
 conclusion, and we think the flaw in his method of 
 reasoning will be made manifest by duly pondering 
 the following scarcely disputable considerations. 
 
 I. The first weak place seems to us to lie in the 
 sentence of the above quotation, which we have 
 printed in italics. We think, on the contrary, that 
 there has seldom in all history been a clearer or more 
 instructive instance of confiding and warranted " trust 
 in the eventual ascendency over men of great ideas." 
 The splendid and lofty conceptions, the touching and 
 tender sympathies, the noble precepts of self-proving 
 and inspiring morality, and the elevating tone of 
 spiritual religion which filled his mind and breathed 
 
 Q 
 
242 HRE PROPHETIC ELEMENT IN THE GOSPELS. 
 
 through all his utterances, our Lord might not unrea- 
 sonably trust to as fitted to revolutionise the senti- 
 ments and ethics of the world to live by their 
 inherent vitality, to stand and conquer by their native 
 strength independently of earthly learning or of 
 worldly power. In fact, it is these elements that have 
 through all ages remained as the salt of Christianity, 
 though often concealed and crusted over, and by no 
 means the main or sole direct causes of its diffusion. 
 It is these that have helped it to survive in spite of 
 the errors and accretions with which human passions 
 have so often stained, disgraced, and overlaid it. It 
 is these which, age after age, have drawn back to 
 allegiance and admiration the finest natures who 
 have been compelled to reject and protest against the 
 errors and accretions we refer to. It is these which 
 recalled John Mill, and have recalled thousands like 
 him, to the feet of Christ, whence the Christianity 
 taught in his name had driven them in righteous and 
 irrepressible repugnance. Such at least is our ex- 
 planation of the success of the faith which Jesus 
 preached and exemplified, wherever it can be truly 
 said to have made its way and established its supre- 
 macy. 
 
 II. But the point to which we would specially 
 crave attention is this : Does Mr Button real]y 
 mean to assert that the kingdom which Christ came 
 to preach and found is in any sense the one which 
 has been established ? Is the Christianity in whose 
 spread and conquest and prevailing sway he sees 
 
THE PROPHETIC ELEMENT IN THE GOSPELS. 243 
 
 the literal and miraculous fulfilment of our Lord's 
 prediction, the kingdom which Jesus of Nazareth de- 
 signed, desired, or prophesied ? a kingdom not of 
 this world a kingdom, to use the writer's own 
 expressions, " of which a little child is the true type, 
 a kingdom in which it is the ' meek ' who are to in- 
 herit the earth, and of which the i poor in spirit ' are 
 to be the rulers ? " Will he maintain, or does he for 
 a moment fancy, that the kingdom of heaven which 
 Jesus intended and foresaw, and trusted to his un- 
 lettered fishermen to bring about, bore even a recog- 
 nisable resemblance to the proud, cruel, crushing, 
 darkening, oppressive despotism which has for ages 
 held sway in his name from the chambers of the 
 Vatican ? l or even to the mitigated and modified 
 travesties which reign or have reigned at Lambeth, 
 Geneva, or Byzantium ? Has not the mockery of 
 likeness which the " successors of the apostles" pre- 
 sent to those prototypes whom Jesus consecrated to 
 his work passed into a proverb ? How then can it 
 be argued, with the slightest approach to sound rea- 
 soning, that the Church, the organisation, the king- 
 dom, which now exists, is that which Jesus prophesied 
 and for which he toiled and died ? 
 
 1 Of all the prophecies really uttered by Jesus, it is curious that 
 Mr Hutton does not even allude to the one which has been most 
 undeniably and literally fulfilled " Think not that I am come 
 to send peace on earth. I am not come to send peace, but a 
 sword." 
 
244 THE PROPHETIC ELEMENT IN THE GOSPELS. 
 
 III. But further. Waiving this consideration, can 
 it be said with truth that the Christianity which has 
 prevailed or even that primitive faith which spread 
 so rapidly in the first two or three centuries was 
 established by those chosen disciples whose selection 
 by Christ to establish it, being the unpromising in- 
 struments they were, Mr Hutton regards as a miracle, 
 and whose success in establishing it he points to as 
 so clear and triumphant an instance of prophecy ful- 
 filled? Is it not, on the contrary, as so many theologians 
 conclude, more than probable nay, is it not, judging 
 by the light of reason, almost certain that if it had 
 been left in their hands alone, the teaching of their 
 Master would have created merely an amended and 
 purified sect of Judaism, instead of being the tiny 
 mustard-seed which has grown into a tree overshadow- 
 ing the whole earth. Did not Jesus himself design 
 it to have been this ? saying to the twelve whom he 
 sent forth, " Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and 
 into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not, but go 
 rather to the lost sheep of the House of Israel ; " and 
 to the Syrophenician woman who besought his aid as 
 a miraculous prophet " I awi not sent but to the lost 
 sheep of the House of Israel ; " adding in seemingly 
 uncourteous phrase, that his gifts were the special and 
 exclusive privilege of the chosen race. Is it not un- 
 deniable and admitted a known fact of history that 
 this religion became what it has been, did what it has 
 done, conquered nations, converted the armed and 
 crowned warriors and monarchs who spread it by 
 
THE PROPHETIC ELEMENT IN THE GOSPELS. 245 
 
 imperial decree, through the instrumentality of that 
 mighty unforeseen apostle, whose existence and con- 
 version Jesus assuredly never predicted, and gave not the 
 faintest indication of having foreseen ? Was not the 
 preaching of Christianity to the Gentiles, to which we 
 owe its character, its conquests, and its actual supre- 
 macy (and which would appear to have been un- 
 intended and discouraged by its Founder, and originally 
 at least objected to by his representatives), distinc- 
 tively and mainly the work, not of the ignorant and 
 unlettered followers to whom our Lord entrusted it, 
 but of the subtle and cultivated Paul, of whose ardent 
 and singular career apparently he never even dreamed? 
 Nay, may we not, must we not, go further, and urge 
 (what few but the most rigidly orthodox theologians 
 can deny to be at least plausible, and what to us seems 
 almost self-evident) that Paul's success in the wider 
 field to which his labours were extended, and in fact, 
 the attractions and the spreading triumph of the 
 Christianity he promulgated, were due not to its in- 
 herent essence as it came from its Founder not to 
 the spirit of love, of filial devotion, of saintly virtue, 
 which breathed from the lips and life of Jesus, but 
 peculiarly and in preponderating measure to dogmas 
 which Jesus never taught, and to assertions and accre- 
 tions which he would have repudiated and denounced ? 
 Is it too much to say that the wonderful expansion 
 and empire of what we know as Christianity is mainly 
 traceable to the preaching of Paul ; and that to speak 
 
246 THE PROPHETIC ELEMENT IN THE GOSPELS. 
 
 broadly, the Christianity Paul preached was not that 
 which Jesus taught, and the speedy supremacy of 
 which he foretold with so sublime a confidence I 1 
 
 Now, weighing calmly and dispassionately these 
 several considerations which I put forward assuredly 
 in no spirit of disrespect, but desiring only that our 
 reverence for Christ shall not be based on any crumb- 
 ling foundation is not this the logical result ? that, 
 of all the instances which Mr Hutton has most boldly 
 relied upon as indisputable proofs of Christ's super- 
 natural foreknowledge, one prediction was almost cer- 
 tainly never uttered at all ; a second was not properly 
 a prophecy ; a third has suspicious features of subse- 
 quent specialization ; a fourth, about the most fre- 
 quently repeated and the most universally received 
 among his disciples, admittedly implies the most 
 thorough misconception ; while those prophesying the 
 coming of his kingdom and the supremacy of his 
 religion, when read with candour and without pre- 
 possession, must be held to have been falsified rather 
 than realized by the event. 
 
 Of our Lord's enthusiastic and inspiring conviction 
 that the noble faith, ethics, and temper which it was 
 his mission to announce, had within them the vital 
 force to convert the world, and in time to transmute 
 
 1 We cannot of course enter here upon so wide a field as the 
 maintenance of this thesis would require. To do so would need 
 almost a volume. I would, however, suggest a reference to an 
 article entitled " Primitive Christianity," by F. W. Newman, in 
 Frazer's Magazine for August, 1875, and a study of Kenan's 
 "StPaul." 
 
THE PROPHETIC ELEMENT IN THE GOSPELS. 247 
 
 its aspect, we should agree with Mr Hutton in most 
 he says, except in regarding it as indicative of super- 
 human knowledge. In his firm impression of the 
 exceptional grandeur of his mission, and of his nature 
 (or at least characteristic features) being apart and 
 different from those of ordinary men, and of the signifi- 
 cance of that impression, we think with Mr Hutton 
 that no reasonable doubt can be entertained. And 
 that Jesus had one of those gifted natures, rarely met 
 with, and never in equal perfection, the purity and 
 absolute harmony of whose mental and moral elements 
 confer a clearness of vision wherein insight readily 
 ripens into foresight, and almost rises to the quality of 
 prophecy, is an opinion I am little disposed to con- 
 trovert. And that this should have stamped itself so 
 deeply on the popular mind as to have become, in 
 some sense, to the world " an evidence of Christianity/' 
 is not surprising ; and the inference should be signal- 
 ized perhaps as rather untenable than essentially, 
 unsound. 
 
XIL 
 
 MR FREDERIC HARRISON ON THE FUTURE LIFE. 
 
 [Contributed to a Discussion in the Nineteenth Century, in October 
 1877, commenced by Mr Frederic Harrison.] 
 
 IT would seem impossible for Mr Harrison to write 
 anything that is not stamped with a vigour and racy 
 eloquence peculiarly his own ; and the paper which 
 has opened the present discussion is probably far the 
 finest he has given to the world. There is a lofty 
 tone in its imaginative passages which strikes us as 
 unique among Negationists, and a vein of what is 
 almost tenderness pervading them, which was not ob- 
 served in his previous writings. The two combined 
 render the second portion one of the most touching 
 and impressive speculations we have read. Unfortu- 
 nately, however, Mr Harrison's innate energy is apt to 
 boil over into a vehemence approaching the intemper- 
 ate ; and the antagonistic atmosphere is so native to 
 his spirit that he can scarcely enter the lists of con- 
 troversy without an irresistible tendency to become 
 aggressive and unjust; and he is too inclined to forget 
 the first duty of the chivalric militant logician, namely, 
 to select the adversary you assail from the nobler and 
 
MR FREDERIC HARRISON ON THE FUTURE LIFE. 249 
 
 not the lower form and rank of the doctrine in dis- 
 pute. The inconsistencies and weaknesses into which 
 this neglect has betrayed him in the instance before 
 us have, however, been so severely dealt with by others, 
 that I wish rather to direct attention to two or three 
 points of his argument that might otherwise be in 
 danger of escaping the appreciation and gratitude they 
 may fairly claim. 
 
 We owe him something, it appears to me, for 
 having inaugurated a discussion which has stirred so 
 many minds to give us on such a question so much 
 interesting and profound, and more especially so much 
 suggestive, thought. We owe him much, too, because 
 in dealing with a thesis which it is specially the 
 temptation and the practice to handle as a theme for 
 declamation, he has so written as to force his antago- 
 nists to treat it argumentatively and searchingly as 
 well. Some gratitude, moreover, is due to the man 
 who had the moral courage boldly to avow his adhe- 
 sion to the negative view, when that view is not only 
 in the highest degree unpopular, but is regarded for 
 the most part as condemnable into the bargain, and 
 when, besides, it can scarcely fail to be painful to 
 every man of vivid imagination and of strong affec- 
 tions. It is to his credit, also, I venture to think, 
 that, holding this view, he has put it forward, not as 
 an opinion or speculation, but as a settled and deli- 
 berate conviction, maintainable by distinct and reput- 
 able reasonings, and to be controverted only by pleas 
 analogous in character. For if there be a topic within 
 
250 MR FREDERIC HARRISON ON THE FUTURE LIFE. 
 
 the wide range of human questioning in reference to 
 which tampering with mental integrity might seem at 
 first sight pardonable, it is that of a future and con- 
 tinued existence. If belief be ever permissible per- 
 haps I ought to say, if belief be ever possible on the 
 ground that " there is peace and joy in believing/' it is 
 here, where the issues are so vast, where the concep- 
 tion in its highest form is so ennobling, where the 
 practical influences of the Creed are, in appearance at 
 least, so beneficent. But faith thus arrived at has 
 ever clinging to it the curse belonging to all illegiti- 
 mate possessions. It is precarious, because the flaw 
 in its title-deeds, barely suspected perhaps and never 
 acknowledged, may any moment be discovered ; mis- 
 givings crop up most surely in those hard and gloomy 
 crises of our lives when unflinching confidence is most 
 essential to our peace; and the fairy fabric, built up not 
 on grounded conviction but on craving need, crumbles 
 into dust, and leaves the spirit with no solid susten- 
 ance to rest upon. 
 
 Unconsciously and by implication Mr Harrison bears 
 a testimony he little intended, not indeed to the future 
 existence he denies, but to the irresistible longing and 
 necessity for the very belief he labours to destroy. 
 Perhaps no writer has more undesignedly betrayed his 
 conviction that men will not and cannot be expected 
 to surrender their faith and hope without at least 
 something like a compensation ; certainly no one has 
 ever toiled with more noble rhetoric to gild and illum- 
 inate the substitute with which he would fain per- 
 
MR FREDERIC HARRISON ON THE FUTURE LIFE. 251 
 
 suade us to rest satisfied. The nearly universal 
 craving for posthumous existence and enduring con- 
 sciousness, which he depreciates with so harsh a scorn, 
 and which he will not accept as offering even the 
 shadow or simulacrum of an argument for the Creed, 
 he yet respects enough to recognise that it has its 
 foundation deep in the framework of our being, that 
 it cannot be silenced and may not be ignored. Hav- 
 ing no precious metal to pay it with, he issues paper 
 money instead, skilfully engraved and gorgeously 
 gilded to look as like the real coin as may be. It is 
 in vain to deny that there is something touching and 
 elevating in the glowing eloquence with which he 
 paints the picture of lives devoted to efforts in the 
 service of the race, spent in labouring, each of us in 
 his own sphere, to bring about the grand ideal he 
 fancies for humanity, and drawing strength and reward 
 for long years of toil in the anticipation of what man 
 will be when those noble dreams shall have been 
 realised at last even though we shall never see what 
 we have wrought so hard to win. It is vain to deny, 
 moreover, that these dreams appear more solid and 
 less wild or vague when we remember how close an 
 analogy we may detect in the labours of thousands 
 around us who spend their whole career on earth in 
 building up, by sacrifice and painful struggles, wealth, 
 station, fame, and character for their children, whose 
 enjoyment of these possessions they will never live to 
 witness, without their passionate zeal in the pursuit 
 being in any way cooled by the discouraging reflection. 
 
252 MR FREDERIC HARRISON ON THE FUTURE LIFE. 
 
 Does not this oblige us to confess that the posthumous 
 existence Mr Harrison describes is not altogether an 
 airy fiction ? Still, somehow, after a few moments 
 spent in the thin atmosphere into which his brilliant 
 language and unselfish imagination have combined to 
 raise us, we ninety-nine out of every hundred of us 
 at the least sink back breathless and wearied after the 
 unaccustomed soaring amid light so dim, and craving 
 as of yore after something more personal, more solid, 
 and more certain. 
 
 To that more solid certainty I am obliged to confess, 
 sorrowfully and with bitter disappointment, that I can 
 contribute nothing nothing, I mean, that resembles 
 evidence, that can properly be called argument, or 
 that I can hope will be received as even the barest 
 confirmation. Alas ! can the wisest and most san- 
 guine of us all bring anything beyond our own personal 
 sentiments to swell the common hope ? We have 
 aspirations to multiply, but who has any knowledge to 
 enrich our store ? I have of course read most of the 
 pleadings in favour of the ordinary doctrine of the 
 Future State ; naturally also, in common with all 
 graver natures, I have meditated yet more ; but these 
 pleadings, for the most part, sound to anxious ears 
 little else than the passionate outcries of souls that 
 cannot endure to part with hopes on which they have 
 been nurtured and which are intertwined with their 
 tenderest affections. Logical reasons to compel con- 
 viction, I have met with none even from the inter- 
 locutors in this discussion. Yet few can have sought 
 
MR FREDERIC HARRISON ON THE FUTURE LIFE. 253 
 
 for such more yearningly. I may say I share in the 
 anticipations of believers ; but I share them as aspira- 
 tions, sometimes approaching almost to a faith, 
 occasionally and for a few moments perhaps rising 
 into something like a trust, but never able to settle 
 into the consistency of a definite and enduring creed. 
 I do not know how far even this incomplete state of 
 mind may not be merely the residuum of early up- 
 bringing and habitual associations. But I must be 
 true to my darkness as courageously as to my light. 
 I cannot rest in comfort on arguments that to my 
 spirit have no cogency, nor can I pretend to respect 
 or be content with reasons which carry no penetrating 
 conviction along with them. I will not make but- 
 tresses do the work or assume the posture of founda- 
 tions. I will not cry " Peace, peace, when there is 
 no peace/' I have said elsewhere and at various 
 epochs of life why the ordinary " proofs " confidently 
 put forward and gorgeously arrayed " have no help in 
 them ; " while, nevertheless, the pictures which imag- 
 ination depicts are so inexpressibly alluring. The 
 more I think and question the more do doubts and 
 difficulties crowd around my horizon and cloud over 
 my sky. Thus it is that I am unable to bring aid or 
 sustainment to minds as troubled as my own, and 
 perhaps less willing to admit that the great enigma is, 
 and must remain, insoluble. Of two things, however, 
 I feel satisfied that the negative doctrine is no more 
 susceptible of proof than the affirmative, and that our 
 opinion, be it only honest, can have no influence 
 
254 MR FREDERIC HARRISON OX THE FUTURE LIFE. 
 
 whatever on the issue, nor upon its bearing on 
 ourselves. 
 
 Two considerations that have been borne in upon 
 my mind while following this controversy may be 
 worth mentioning, though neither can be called exactly 
 helpful. One is that we find the most confident, un- 
 questioning, dogmatic belief in heaven (and its corre- 
 lative) in those whose heaven is the most unlikely and 
 impossible, the most entirely made up of mundane and 
 material elements, of gorgeous glories and of fading 
 splendours 1 just such things as uncultured and un- 
 disciplined natures most envied or pined after on earth, 
 such as the lower order of minds could best picture 
 and would naturally be most dazzled by. The higher 
 intelligences of our race, who need a spiritual heaven, 
 find their imaginations fettered by the scientific train- 
 ing which, imperfect though it be, clips their wings in 
 all directions, forbids their glowing fancy, and annuls 
 that gorgeous creation, and bars the way to each suc- 
 cessive local habitation that is instinctively wanted to 
 give reality to the ideal they aspire to ; till, in the 
 
 1 " There may he crowns of material splendour, there may he 
 trees of unfading loveliness, there may he pavements of emerald, 
 and canopies of the brightest radiance, and gardens of deep and 
 tranquil security, and palaces of proud and stately decoration, 
 and a city of lofty pinnacles, through which there unceasingly 
 flows a river of gladness, and where jubilee is ever sung by a 
 concord of seraphic voices." Dr. Chalmers's Sermons. 
 
 " Poor fragments all of this low earth 
 Such as in dreams could hardly soothe 
 A soul that once had tasted of immortal truth." 
 
 Christian Year. 
 
MR FREDERIC HARRISON ON THE FUTURE LIFE. 255 
 
 effort to frame a future existence without a future 
 world, to build up a state of being that shall be worthy 
 of its denizens, and from which everything material 
 shall be excluded, they at last discover that in re- 
 nouncing the " physical " and inadmissible they have 
 been forced to renounce the " conceivable " as well ; 
 and a dimness and fluctuating uncertainty gathers 
 round a scene, from which all that is concrete and 
 definable, and would therefore be incongruous, has 
 been shut out. The next world cannot, it is felt, be 
 a material one ; and a truly " spiritual " one even the 
 saint cannot conceive so as to bring it home to natures 
 still shrouded in the garments of the flesh. 
 
 The other suggestion that has occurred to me is 
 this : It must be conceded that the doctrine of a 
 future life is by no means as universally diffused as it 
 is the habit loosely to assert. It is not always dis- 
 coverable among primitive and savage races. It 
 existed among pagan nations in a form so vague and 
 hazy as to be describable rather as a dream than a 
 religious faith. It can scarcely be determined whether 
 the Chinese, whose cultivation is perhaps the most 
 ancient existing in the world, can be ranked among 
 distinct believers ; while the conception of Nirvana, 
 which prevails in the meditative minds of other 
 Orientals, is more a sort of conscious non-existence 
 than a future life. With the Jews, moreover, as is 
 well known, the belief was not indigenous, but im- 
 ported, and by no means an early importation. But 
 what is not so generally recognised is that, even among 
 
256 MR FREDERIC HARRISON ON THE FUTURE LIFE. 
 
 ourselves in these days, the conviction of thoughtful 
 natures varies curiously in strength and in features at 
 different periods of life. In youth, when all our 
 sentiments are most vivacious and dogmatic, most of 
 us not only cling to it as an intellectual creed, but are 
 accustomed to say and feel that, without it as a solace 
 and a hope to rest upon, this world would be stripped 
 of its deepest fascinations. It is from minds of this 
 age, whose vigour is unimpaired and whose relish for 
 the joys of earth is most expansive, that the most 
 glowing delineations of heaven usually proceed, and on 
 whom the thirst for felicity and knowledge, which can 
 be slaked at no earthly fountains, has the most excit- 
 ing power. Then comes the busy turmoil of our mid 
 career, when the present curtains off the future from 
 our thoughts, and when a renewed existence in a dif- 
 ferent scene is recalled to our fancy chiefly in crises of 
 bereavement. And finally, is it not the case that in 
 our fading years when something of the languor and 
 placidity of age is creeping over us, just when futurity 
 is coming consciously and rapidly more near, and when 
 one might naturally expect it to occupy us more in- 
 cessantly and with more anxious and searching glances 
 we think of it less frequently, believe in it less con- 
 fidently, desire it less eagerly than in our youth ? 
 Such, at least, has been my observation and experience 
 especially among the more reflective and inquiring 
 order of men. The life of the hour absorbs us most 
 completely, as the hours grow fewer and less full ; the 
 pleasures, the exemptions, the modest interests, the 
 
MR FREDERIC HARRISON ON THE FUTURE LIFE. 25 7 
 
 afternoon peace, the gentle affections of the present 
 scene, obscure the future from our view, and render it 
 curiously enough, even less interesting than the past. 
 To-day, which may be our last, engrosses us far more 
 than to-morrow, which may be our FOREVER ; and the 
 grave into which we are just stepping down troubles 
 us far less than in youth, when half a century lay 
 between us and it. 
 
 What is the explanation of this strange phenomenon ? 
 Is it a merciful dispensation arranged by the Ruler of 
 our life to soften and to ease a crisis which would be 
 too grand and awful to be faced with dignity or calm, 
 if it were actually realised at all ? Is it that thought 
 or that vague substitute for thought which we call 
 time has brought us half unconsciously, to the con- 
 clusion that the whole question is insoluble, and that 
 reflection is wasted where reflection can bring us no 
 nearer to an issue ? Or finally, as I know is true far 
 oftener than we fancy, is it that threescore years and 
 ten have quenched the passionate desire for life with 
 which at first we stepped upon the scene ? We are 
 tired, some of us, with unending and unprofitable toil '/ 
 we are satiated, others of us, with such ample plea- 
 sures as earth can yield us; we have had enough of 
 ambition, alike in its successes and its failures ; the 
 joys and blessings of human affection on which, what- 
 ever their crises and vicissitudes, no righteous or 
 truthful man will cast a slur, are yet so blended with 
 pains which partake of their intensity ; the tbirst for 
 knowledge is not slaked, indeed, but the capacity for 
 
 R 
 
258 MR FREDERIC HARRISON ON THE FUTURE LIFE. 
 
 the labour by which alone it can be gained has con- 
 sciously died out; the appetite for life, in short, is 
 gone, the frame is worn and the faculties exhausted ; 
 and possibly this is the key to the phenomenon we 
 are examining age CANNOT, from the very law of its 
 nature, conceive itself endowed with the bounding 
 energies of youth, and without that vigour both of 
 exertion and desire, renewed existence can offer no 
 inspiring charms. Our being upon earth has been 
 enriched by vivid interests and precious joys, and we 
 are deeply grateful for the gift ; but we are wearied 
 with one life, and feel scarcely qualified to enter on 
 the claims, even though balanced by the felicities and 
 glories, of another. It may be the fatigue which comes 
 with age fatigue of the fancy as well as of the frame ; 
 but somehow, what we yearn for most instinctively at 
 last is rest, and the peace which we can imagine the 
 easiest because we know it best is that of sleep. 
 
XIII. 
 
 CAN TRUTHS BE APPREHENDED WHICH COULD NOT 
 HAVE BEEN DISCOVERED ? l 
 
 IN treating this subject, I desire rather to propound a 
 question than to maintain a thesis. I feel, too, as if 
 it were a matter rather for reflection than for argu- 
 ment, one on which it is more possible to reach a 
 sort of persuasion in one's own mind, than to offer 
 cogent pleas to satisfy the minds of others. I bring 
 it forward, therefore, rather in the hopes that meta- 
 physicians with more trained instruments of thought 
 than mine may be able to throw light upon it, than 
 with any expectation that I can do so myself. 
 
 The question, then, is briefly this : Can any truth 
 be received that is, accepted and assimilated by 
 the human intellect, which that intellect might not in 
 the course of time have reached or wrought out for 
 itself ? Does not the power of apprehending a propo- 
 sition imply and involve the power, by the processes of 
 research and meditation, of constructing or divining 
 it ? Can anything which could not have been dis- 
 covered by us be so revealed to us as to make it our 
 own ? or as I should prefer to express myself, do not 
 
 1 Contemporary Preview, February 1875. 
 
260 CAN TRUTHS BE APPREHENDED WHICH 
 
 the discernment, recognition, absorption by the mind 
 of a truth, when once announced, indicate and postu- 
 late precisely the same faculties as those needed to 
 originate it, i.e., to arrive at it by native mental 
 operations ? These are somewhat unscientific and 
 unprecise expressions of my meaning, I am aware, but 
 they may suffice to convey the essence of it. 
 
 It would seem that in matters distinctly within 
 human cognisance whether information communicated 
 by scientific inquirers, or truths established by the 
 reasonings of the wise the conclusion is certain, and 
 the above questions may be answered confidently in 
 the negative. What man has done man may do. 
 Matters of positive knowledge, the facts of science, the 
 operations of nature, and the laws or principles dedu- 
 cible from those operations can be verified by those to 
 whom they are announced ; the observations and expe- 
 riments can be repeated, the results tested, and the 
 informers cross-examined, by the recipients or hearers ; 
 the faculties and mental processes needed thus to test 
 and verify are (with perhaps the exception of the 
 scientific imagination) the same as those employed 
 in the original discovery; and the results can only be 
 truly accepted, embraced, stored away among our 
 intellectual possessions, after and as a consequence of 
 such verification. The same, it would appear, must 
 be admitted in the case of ethical and philosophic 
 truths. These are wrought out, meditated, harmonised, 
 by patient thinkers, and are then laid before the mass 
 of intelligent men for examination and acceptance ; 
 
COULD NOT HAVE BEEN DISCOVERED ? 261 
 
 and only in as far as they are thus examined and re- 
 thought (so to speak) only, that is, in as far and 
 when they have been subjected, in the minds of those 
 to whom they are brought, to precisely the same 
 operations as they had undergone (and as they origi- 
 nally sprang from) in the minds of the bringers can 
 they be regarded as discovered, or established, or 
 qualified to take their rank as acquisitions or registered 
 items of our mental wealth. In the domain of human 
 knowledge, therefore, it may probably safely be assumed 
 that whatever we can receive and comprehend we can 
 also ascertain and discover. 
 
 If matters of this character are revealed to us ab 
 extra or by superior beings, such revelation is nothing 
 more than anticipation the helping and hastening 
 of the prompter the giving us in complete form 
 what, left to ourselves, we should have arrived at 
 piecemeal and more tardily or the announcement to 
 us in infancy of matters which in our maturer intelli- 
 gence we should have made out for ourselves. Science 
 has already ascertained a vast amount of truth as to 
 the constitution and laws of motion in the solar system ; 
 has almost discovered the mode and order of its evo- 
 lution out of chaos, and of the development (though 
 not the origination) of life upon this globe ; and 
 these discoveries, as our instruments of observation 
 and analysis are gradually perfected, will probably 
 arrive at the stage of positive knowledge. If they 
 had been announced to our ancestors long centuries 
 ago, as a statement from without or from above, 
 
262 CAN TRUTHS BE APPREHENDED WHICH 
 
 they would have been called a " revelation/' though, 
 in fact, only an " anticipation " of future attain- 
 ments. If announced to us on human authority, 
 by an exceptional sage, a fitter term perhaps would 
 be " precocity/' prophecy, foresight, forestalment ; 
 but, however named, is it not equally the case that 
 they could only have been imbibed and apprehended 
 because there was in the human faculty that which in 
 its gradual growth and maturity would have elaborated 
 them from its own inventiveness and accumulated 
 materials of thought ? Would they otherwise have 
 been conceivable by it, or capable of assimilation and 
 belief ? 
 
 We now come to another class of truths or, to 
 speak more guardedly, of propositions doctrines 
 probable, but unascertainable such, for example, as 
 the existence of a Personal Creator and Ruler of the 
 Universe, and a Life renewed or continued beyond the 
 grave. It can scarcely be supposed that any future 
 perfectation either of our mental faculties or of our 
 material instruments of vision will enable us to solve 
 these problems i.e., strictly speaking, to arrive at 
 certainty of proof (as distinguished from internal con- 
 viction) regarding them. If this certainty is ever 
 attained, it must to all appearance be from positive 
 information conveyed to us from higher and adequate 
 authority. Higher powers might communicate it in 
 the form of an assertion, which is what in common 
 parlance I believe is meant by " Revelation ;" or in 
 the form of a suggestion of such a line of observation 
 
COULD NOT HAVE BEEN DISCOVEKED ? 263 
 
 or ratiocination as would guide mankind to a conclu- 
 sive or logical proof of the truth in question. If in 
 the latter form, what is this virtually but a solution 
 of the problem, in some hours of unexampled bright- 
 ness and insight, by those very human faculties which, 
 as the intellectual history of our Race assures us, have 
 in all ages had such hours of abnormal penetration 
 and brilliancy vouchsafed to them ? And how, then, 
 are we to distinguish such suggestions from those other 
 apocalyptic flashes of imaginative insight which in all 
 ages have constituted the initial step by which the 
 mind of man has made its great advances, and 
 achieved its best discoveries ? If, on the other hand, 
 the revelation of the conclusion, the merging of our 
 doubts in certainty, the authoritative announcement 
 of the truth, comes to us as an assertion from on high, 
 then, in what mode or language can that announce- 
 ment be conveyed so as to dispense with or not to 
 demand, by the very constitution of the human mind, 
 that verification which precedes and clinches certainty, 
 if not conviction ? How are we to test the source and 
 channel of the announcement ? If the announcement 
 be of such a nature as to need no such verification 
 as to convey and include its own credentials 
 as to be self-evident or self-proving as soon as made 
 does not that imply such an adaptation, such a 
 native fitness and preparation for its reception in the 
 very framework of the spiritual intelligence, as could 
 scarcely fail in time to reach the goal and to discern 
 the light ? Finally, with regard to the matters 
 
264 CAN TRUTHS BE APPREHENDED WHICH 
 
 referred to the human mind has long been exercised 
 upon these problems, has long been weighing proba- 
 bilities, nay, has for the most part long felt that the 
 probabilities leaned by a vast preponderance towards 
 the one scale, and only asked from Revelation a 
 confirmation of its verdict and its hopes. And do 
 not this ceaseless pre-occupation with the problems and 
 approximation to their solution establish the existence 
 of a strange devotion and aptitude within us to the 
 subjects, which could scarcely fail to be crowned with 
 success at last ? 
 
 In fine, must not what is called " Revelation " be 
 simply either Anticipation, or Suggestion, or Confir- 
 mation ? Some favoured and highly-strung natures 
 tell us that they have arrived at this confirmation by 
 " spiritual discernment," and can feel not the shadow 
 of a doubt about the matter. Very well. Is not that 
 confident and unhesitating spiritual discernment the 
 strongest conceivable testimony to that very special 
 native " aptitude " of which I have spoken ? The 
 truth, they say, was revealed to them, " borne in upon 
 their souls," vouchsafed to them in a sudden gleam of 
 light, " in a dream, in a vision of the night," and so 
 on ; and the moment it thus flashed upon them, it 
 wrote itself upon their mental frame- work by its own 
 illumination. What is this phraseology but simply a 
 more lofty and excited, or more poetical way of saying 
 (as we often hear contemplative thinkers of soberer 
 temperaments say) that the conception suddenly 
 " occurred to them/' flashed upon them, and was 
 
COULD NOT HAVE BEEN DISCOVERED ? 265 
 
 instinctively recognised at once as the true solution 
 of the problem which had exercised their minds so 
 long ? And what in reality is this instantaneous 
 recognition this svpqxa cry but the proof that the 
 mind was capable of the discovery, and had long been 
 on the brink of it ? What, in fact, is this sudden 
 " flashing " but a normal mode in which the patient 
 working brain has in all ages discovered the truths it 
 sought ? And as to the character of the confirmation 
 which ordinary minds desire to derive from " Revela- 
 tion," is it not generally, when strictly analysed, 
 simply the increased confidence in their own conclu- 
 sions which they feel in finding those conclusions 
 echoed in positive and dogmatic language by other 
 men ; or, as they would say, by specially endowed or 
 authorised minds who proffered " signs and wonders " 
 in proof of their special endowments, authority, or 
 knowledge signs and wonders now no longer recog- 
 nised as such proof among logicians ? Or if this 
 confirmation be alleged to lie (as it usually now is) in 
 the essential loftiness or divine characteristics of the 
 truth announced what is this again but falling back 
 upon the assumed capacity of man's soul to recognise 
 and discriminate and at once adopt the nobility and 
 grandeur of this truth, which yet it is at the same 
 time supposed to be incapable of finding out ? 
 
 No doubt, there are certain theological doctrines or 
 specific dogmas, believed by many to be revealed, which 
 the human mind never could have arrived at by itself ; 
 
 s 
 
2 GO CAN TRUTHS BE APPREHENDED WHICH 
 
 but I think it will be found that these are precisely 
 doctrines which can scarcely be properly said to be 
 " received or apprehended ;" they rather lie on the 
 surface of the mind than sink into it ; they are pro- 
 positions about which civilized mankind is divided, 
 which are different and discrepant, not to say con- 
 tradictory, in various countries, and which numbers of 
 qualified thinkers altogether repudiate, and consider 
 can no more be accepted than they could have been 
 discovered by the natural intelligence of men. They 
 must, therefore, take rank as opinions not as truths ; 
 they could never have been discovered, and cannot be 
 rightly said to be assimilated or imbibed ; and are 
 assented to rather than believed (without being in any 
 proper sense comprehended) because assumed to have 
 been told us by an authority it would be sinful and 
 monstrous as well as dangerous to doubt. 
 
 Perhaps the fittest way of stating the position would 
 be this : No truth can, properly speaking, be appre- 
 hended and made a portion of our mental acquisitions, 
 which cannot be verified when told to us ; and any 
 proposition which we can verify, we could discover 
 that is, what man can verify man could have reached 
 and worked out for himself. Take a concrete case : 
 The doctrine of the Incarnation, the Trinity, or the 
 Atonement, it is conceded that the human mind could 
 not have discovered for itself. It is, I apprehend, con- 
 ceded also that these doctrines do not approve them- 
 selves to the mind as soon as announced, in virtue of 
 
COULD NOT HAVE BEEN DISCOVERED ? 267 
 
 any intrinsic and obvious fitness or inherent pro- 
 bability ; for, if they did, this would indicate in them 
 some quality which would have rendered them dis- 
 coverable arrivable at likely to suggest themselves 
 as well as promptly approvable. No ; they are 
 believed (where they are believed truly) or accepted, 
 where accepted, because they are held to have been 
 announced by some superior authority who, it is 
 assumed, must know the truth and intend to state 
 it. Very well ; then on what does this assumption 
 rest ? and how has the announcement been made ? It 
 must have been made either in plain words by some 
 being whose supernatural power shown in action leads 
 us to infer that his knowledge must be also super- 
 natural and his truthfulness unimpugnable inferences 
 which it is now admitted, even by orthodox reasoners, 
 do not necessarily follow from supernatural power ; 
 or it must have been breathed or flashed into the 
 mind in the shape of a sudden suggestion in which 
 case it is impossible for the mind to discern whether 
 the suggestion did not arise spontaneously, or may not 
 have come from below as well as from above from 
 a deceiving as well as from an enlightening spirit. 
 Statements, therefore, which from their nature cannot 
 be verified, could not, it is true, be discovered, but 
 neither can they be accepted definitively or confidently 
 because we cannot ascertain whether the source of 
 them, however supernatural, be divine or devilish, or 
 whether it may not be spontaneously human. 
 
268 CAN TRUTHS BE APPREHENDED, ETC. 
 
 If we can ascertain that a proposition came to us 
 from a superhuman source, it must surely be by . 
 applying some test or standard which can judge the 
 doctrine; judging it would seem to imply the means 
 of verifying it ; and the power of verifying it, as we 
 have seen, implies the power of discovering it. 
 
 TURNBULLAND SPEARS PEJXTEKS. 
 

 
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