THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 X^ecr /^/^
 
 LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 OF 
 
 GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE
 
 GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE. 
 
 (1882.)
 
 LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 OF 
 
 George Jacob Holyoake 
 
 BY 
 
 JOSEPH McCABE 
 
 AUTHOR OF "peter ABELARD," " TALLEYRAND," ETC. 
 
 VOL. II 
 
 [issued for the rationalist press association, ltd. J 
 
 London : 
 
 WATTS & CO., 
 17, JOHNSON'S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C. 
 
 1908
 
 IDA 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 XX. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 NEARING WESTMINSTER . 
 
 THE IDEALIST IN POLITICS 
 
 FROM THE strangers' GALLERY 
 
 SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL WORK 
 
 THE ORGANISATION OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 VISITS TO AMERICA .... 
 
 THE PRESENT DAY . 
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH GLADSTONE AND 
 BERLAIN ..... 
 
 CHAM- 
 
 AMONGST THE CO-OPERATORS ABROAD 
 EASTERN LODGE .... 
 
 LABOUR CO-PARTNERSHIP . 
 THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION 
 HOLVOAKE AS A WRITER . 
 A CHEERFUL OCTOGENARIAN 
 THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..... 
 INDEX ...... 
 
 PAGE 
 I 
 
 22 
 
 44 
 69 
 
 89 
 
 109 
 
 135 
 
 161 
 184 
 206 
 229 
 
 251 
 
 271 
 287 
 313 
 329 
 345 
 
 879038
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PHOTOGRAVURE PORTRAIT OF G. J. HOLYOAKE TAKEN IN 
 1862 {^Frontispiece). 
 
 PORTRAIT OF MR. HOLYOAKE TAKEN IN 1 888. 
 
 PORTRAIT OF MR. HOLYOAKE TAKEN IN 19OI. 
 
 EASTERN LODGE, BRIGHTON (mR. HOLYOAKE'S RESIDENCE FROM 
 1886 TO 1906). 
 
 THE MEMORIAL ON MR. HOLYOAKE'S GRAVE IN HIGHGATE 
 CEMETERY.
 
 LIFE AND LETTERS OF 
 GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 NEARING WP:STMINSTER 
 
 The first half of Holyoake's public life was, like the first 
 half of the nation's life in the nineteenth century, neces- 
 sarily tentative in many important respects. He was 
 an articulate part of the new national spirit. His 
 boyish eyes had opened upon a world that had not fully 
 emerged from the chrysalis-stage of feudalism, but was 
 stirred with the deep, vague instinct of advancing to a 
 brighter and freer existence. It was still swathed in a 
 hundred bonds, and its bursting vitality angrily strained 
 against them. But intellectual instinct, or instinct 
 touched with intelligence, has not the sure march of 
 the animal's unconscious impulse. Vision sees many 
 possible paths where the blind have no choice. The 
 aspiring mind of the worker, which Holyoake expressed, 
 broke along many courses that led only to failure and 
 disappointment. The vast energies and rude heroisms 
 that the first vision of reform had inspired passed into 
 forms that the historian must dismiss as futile. 
 
 Holyoake, peculiarly sensitive to the larger move- 
 ments of his class and age, followed or accompanied 
 the erratic pioneers, but was young enough to find him- 
 self the wiser and stronger at each failure. It is always 
 
 VOL. II. B
 
 NEARING WESTMINSTER 
 
 something to learn for certain that a particular road is 
 the wrong road. The name of " thinker " has been too 
 jealously reserved for men who are successful in leaving 
 the earth and mounting the ether toward the empyrean. 
 It is a high quality of thought to discern the path amid 
 social and political confusion. We saw that Holyoake 
 had much of this quality. Cast amongst embittered rebels 
 from the start, he nevertheless pleaded for cool judgment 
 and sober action, and avoided the excesses of most of 
 his colleagues in public agitation. His fiftieth year 
 found him, not only in a position of distinction and 
 influence, not only with a record of service that every 
 social historian now commends, but in active leadership 
 of two movements that he would never have to regret. 
 One of these movements aimed at the rectification of 
 speculative errors, the other at an improvement of 
 industrial conditions. But he had always held that, for 
 all purposes of the social pathologist, the heart of the 
 nation beat at Westminster, and in his mature years his 
 thoughts turned more and more to politics. 
 
 He has said somewhere, against those who urged an 
 exclusive attention to social reform, that the true reformer 
 must be ever alert to the chance of a politician arising 
 any day who may lose a century's savings in a sea of 
 imperial blood. That is a narrow expression of his 
 feeling for political action, taking colour from passing 
 events. In reality he had an extremely broad and high 
 ideal of political life. As a Co-operator, he would, of 
 course, keep industrial life apart from politics, except for 
 a humane supervision. He shrank from the " State- 
 Socialism" which was then being introduced into Eng- 
 land from Germany, and remained always very hostile to 
 it ; though he did not follow its later modifications very 
 closely. But he was as little in favour of Mill's ideal, 
 competition, as the vSocialists were, and would merely set
 
 N EARING WESTMINSTER 
 
 up a separate scheme of corporate or collective action — 
 pure Co-operation — for industry and commerce. For 
 all other reforms he looked to political life ; and, apart 
 from considerations of utility, he urged upon the workers 
 a sense of the manly dignity of sharing political power, 
 and laboured for the discriminate extension of the fran- 
 chise and the freeing of the political organism from its 
 incrustation of medieval growths and parasites. We 
 have traced the steps which brought him to this position. 
 He discarded the futile terrors of the Chartists to try 
 the opposite venture of wooing the enfranchised middle 
 class in the interest of the workers. His own experience 
 of them was encouraging. He met scores of professional 
 and business men who felt keenly that the stunted and 
 squalid life of the workers was a blot on the nation's 
 honour. 
 
 The other interest that brought him within the parlia- 
 mentary sphere — helped him to realise that Parliament 
 was not a mere " talking shop " — was his sympathy with 
 continental insurgents. To return for a moment to 
 the fifties, we may recall how the attempt to blow up 
 Napoleon in 1858 with bombs manufactured in England 
 led to warm remonstrance on the part of the French 
 Government. Lord Palmerston listened complacently 
 to its appeal, and brought in a Conspiracy-to-Murder 
 Bill. On the first reading it had 299 votes against 91. 
 Just as it seemed in principle, the measure was dreaded 
 by the foreign refugees and their friends. If the Bill 
 passed, foreign rebels might at any time be officially 
 described as " suspect " and driven from their one sure 
 refuge in Europe. 
 
 Holyoake, Stansfeld, Ashurst, Shaen, and others, met 
 in the Political Exchange at 147 Fleet Street — "the new 
 Cato Street," some called it — from whose windows so 
 many defiant flags had waved, and formed an Anti-
 
 NEARING WESTMINSTER 
 
 Conspiracy Bill Committee. The little group of prac- 
 tised agitators had less than a week for the task of 
 destroying Palmerston's huge majority, and they suc- 
 ceeded brilliantly ! Holyoake was treasurer, and he 
 made a vigorous appeal for funds. I find a letter to him 
 from the distinguished Nonconformist, Samuel Morley, 
 enclosing five pounds, but asking for the suppression 
 of his name. With the funds he collected a few meet- 
 ings were held, and London was quickly covered with a 
 garment of striking placards, giving, especially, strong 
 quotations from the aged Lord Russell. But it was 
 probably enough to point out to London that the Govern- 
 ment was " truckling to the foreigner," one of the seven 
 deadly sins of English political ethics. 
 
 Before the end of the week all London was discussing 
 the *' French Colonels' Bill," as it was cleverly nicknamed. 
 The work was the most triumphant piece of agitation in 
 which Holyoake was ever engaged. Their first meeting 
 was held on Monday, February i6th,and the vote on the 
 second reading of the Bill was taken on the following 
 Friday. Holyoake followed the debate from the Re- 
 porters' Gallery. Milner Gibson moved the rejection of 
 the Bill, and it was soon seen that the angry waves that 
 beat against the House from London and the country 
 were felt appreciably within it. Gladstone and Peel 
 made impassioned protests, and deadly jets of hostility 
 continued to fall on Palmerston until two o'clock on the 
 Saturday morning. On the division being taken at that 
 hour, his majority of 208 had vanished, and the Bill was 
 rejected by 234 votes to 215 ! The Government resigned 
 the same day, but the agitation the Committee had raised 
 was too powerful for them to control. They had an- 
 nounced a demonstration in the Park for the following 
 Sunday, and, though they issued placards counter- 
 manding it, and the police opposed it, some 200,000
 
 NEARING WESTMINSTER 
 
 people burst into the Park and boisterously expressed 
 their delight at the fall of Palmerston. 
 
 Holyoake has written a fine estimate of the statesman 
 whom he had learned to hate in his youth, when he 
 joined a secret society that whispered of assassination. 
 He says he had for Palmerston " respect without sym- 
 pathy." Palmerston had great personal generosity, and 
 had shown a "diplomatic sympathy" with the aims of 
 the continental reformers. His action in regard to the 
 Garibaldi Legion will be remembered. He was a great 
 foreign minister — " if pricked he would have bled dis- 
 patches " — and it could at least be said for him that 
 foreign tyrants hated him. But in home affairs he was 
 as Punch drew him — the man with a straw in his mouth. 
 He expressed no hostility to reform, but he " had learned 
 from Lord Melbourne the art of doing notiiing," and 
 " in his turn he impressed Disraeli with the advantage 
 of gaiety in politics." He "did not know the world 
 below his carriage steps," as Thornton Hunt, who knew 
 him well, told Holyoake. In 1854 he visited Bradford, 
 and Holyoake, whose English Leader wd^s much read there, 
 helped to defeat the attempt to force a welcome. Yet 
 when Holyoake begged him to put Feargus O'Connor's 
 sister on the Civil List, he regretted that there was no 
 vacancy, and offered her ^100 out of his own pocket ; 
 and when Hunt asked him to find a seat for Holyoake, 
 he promised to do so — " he knew Mr. Holyoake would 
 often vote against him," he said, " but at the same time 
 he would find in him a fair adversary." But possibly 
 Holyoake's respect for him was more closely connected 
 with his telling the Glasgow authorities that they would 
 do more to arrest the cholera by cleaning their city than 
 by recommending a public fast. 
 
 The Orsini attempt had other sequels that interest us. 
 The ethic of tyrannicide became a common topic of
 
 N EARING WESTMINSTER 
 
 discussion, and a Mr. Adams asked Holyoake to publish 
 for him a pamphlet in defence of it. Holyoake refused, 
 and it was published by Truelove. It was afterwards 
 suggested that Holyoake shrank with some cowardice 
 from the publication, and alleged that he was negotiating 
 with Mazzini for a similar work. This is mere calumny. 
 His real reasons were that the original title was objec- 
 tionable, and that the author refused to put his name to the 
 pamphlet. It was altered in both these respects before 
 Truelove published it. On the other hand Holyoake 
 exceeds a little in his references to Mazzini {Bygones^ I, 
 226). He says that " only enemies of Mazzini sought to 
 connect him with Orsini's plot." I have quoted letters 
 in which T. Allsop speaks of Mazzini's approval of it ; 
 and I find a letter of Mazzini's in which he begs Holy- 
 oake to publish a translation of a pamphlet entitled 
 Tyrannic et Tyrannicide, though the letter has no date. 
 
 Most of Holyoake's political friends held liberal views 
 about tyrannicide in the days of Napoleon III. Culti- 
 vated men so dissimilar as T. Allsop, W. Savage Landor, 
 and Percy Greg advocated it. Holyoake himself made 
 a very plain defence of it even thirty years afterwards 
 (Sixty Years, ch. Ixvii).^ It is summed up in the brief 
 sentence : " In a free country tyrannicide is a worn-out 
 theory." He points out that it is generally kings who 
 have been the regicides of history. At the time, he 
 published a series of " Tyrannicide Literature," which is 
 quite enough to answer the charge of cowardice. Some 
 of the pamphlets were old Royalist fragments. One of 
 them was written by the revolutionary, Felix Pyat, and 
 had already brought trouble on a previous publisher. 
 A Pole, Stanislaus Tschorzcwski, had published it in the 
 
 ^ Though Mr. Knowles was a warm friend of Holyoake's, and pressed 
 him for contributions, he declined to publish this chapter, as an essay, in 
 the Nineteenth Century. Even the Nen'castle Chronicle declined it.
 
 NEARING WESTMINSTER 
 
 original French, and, though the sale must have been 
 very meagre in this form. Napoleon's agents secured 
 his arrest. One of the French spies sat beside the 
 London magistrate during the trial. Holyoake was in 
 Sheffield, and was very indignant when he read of the 
 proceedings. He telegraphed to his brother to issue at 
 once an English translation of the pamphlet, which 
 Francis Newman described as "judicial." Holyoake 
 sent the first copy to Lord Derby, who had just succeeded 
 Palmerston, and politely invited him to prosecute, if 
 he dared. Derby remembered too well the fate of his 
 predecessor. No action was taken against Holyoake, 
 and that made it necessary to abandon the prosecution of 
 Tschorzewski. Meantime Truelove had been arrested 
 for publishing Adams's pamphlet. As the list of 
 subscribers to his defence included Francis Newman, 
 J. S. Mill, W. Coningham, and other distinguished 
 writers or public men, and a vigorous agitation was 
 afoot, that prosecution also had to be abandoned. 
 
 In this circuitous way Holyoake was realising more 
 truly the importance of Westminster. Co-operation in 
 schemes of violence seemed to be the only remedy for 
 social and political disorder abroad. In his own country 
 there were constitutional paths to the goal of social 
 reform ; and he had not merely to dissent from Chartist 
 dreams of violence, but to lead his many followers into 
 those paths. This is the task on which we find him 
 chiefly engaged in the second half of his active career. 
 The picture has less colour and romance than the 
 earlier one. It is set in the sober and familiar frame 
 of our parliamentary history ; nor can we now expect 
 him to play the commanding part he has done in the 
 smaller worlds of rebellious action. But what we have 
 already seen of his character will prepare the reader to 
 expect situations of interest, as Holyoake's flexible and
 
 HEARING WESTMINSTER 
 
 discriminating sense encounters the rigid divisions of 
 party politics. 
 
 The great political problem of the sixties was a revival 
 of that which had agitated England when Holyoake first 
 learned the meaning of politics. The generation that 
 had won the great Reform Bill of 1832 had almost 
 passed away, and a new generation was knocking at the 
 doors of Parliament. A fresh extension of the franchise 
 was inevitable, and the national question was, whether 
 peace could be bought by the small and complicated 
 extension proposed by the Tories and the older Whigs, 
 or the larger and simpler extension proposed by the 
 new Liberals ; or whether the Radicals and surviving 
 Chartists could at last secure manhood suffrage. At 
 once Holyoake faced the problem from a point of view 
 that was peculiarly his own. He saw a lack of principle 
 in Tory and Liberal proposals, and a lack of judgment 
 in those of the extremists. For him the question was : 
 How shall we adjust the abstract right of every adult to 
 the vote with the patent incompetence of large numbers 
 of them to exercise it with safety or profit to the country? 
 His solution was characteristic, and was much discussed 
 at the time. He first proposed it in a letter to the Daily 
 News in 1858, which he then published as an open letter 
 to Lord Russell, with the title The Workman and the 
 Suffrage. Universal suffrage he felt to be " in the remote 
 future," but he resented any form of " income-franchise." 
 What was wanted, he said, was an " intelligence 
 franchise." Applicants for the vote ought to submit to 
 an examination in their fitness to exercise it properly. 
 *' Franchise Examiners " were to be sent to every town 
 and large village twice a year, hold public examin- 
 ations, that would be open to all adults (male and 
 female), and give certificates entitling the successful 
 candidate to a vote. For the subjects of study he
 
 NEARING WESTMINSTER 
 
 suggests " Political Economy and English Constitutional 
 History." 
 
 The plan was singularly impracticable for so practical 
 a man, but its ideal justice will not be questioned, and it 
 was warmly approved by many thoughtful writers and 
 politicians. The editor of the Athencsum, for instance, 
 wrote to Holyoake : 
 
 " Dear Sir, 
 
 " I have to thank you for the courteous manner 
 in which you have introduced my name into an important 
 letter written by you and inserted in the Daily News, 
 on 'The workman and the suffrage.' The suggested 
 character-franchise you judge would be objected to as the 
 certificates would be issued by employers and 'betters.' 
 I am aware how difficult it is to remove prejudice from 
 the mind of a working man. I should, however, hope 
 that if the option is presented to him thus easily to 
 obtain what is so much desired, on reflection — and 
 working men do reflect — the reluctance would be over- 
 come, and thus many thousands who should be voters 
 would possess the privilege. I like much your proposed 
 educational examination. ..." 
 
 Dr. Bird wrote to remind him that the vSociety of Arts 
 already held periodical examinations of working men, 
 and might, with some extension, serve his purpose. In 
 March (1859) a much wider publicity was given to the 
 scheme, when it was discussed by Lord Stanley (later 
 Lord Derby) in the House. The passage, in what is 
 described as " the finest speech he ever made " (during 
 the debate on Disraeli's Reform Bill), runs : 
 
 " There are many members of this House, and many 
 more of the working classes, who are familiar with the 
 name of Mr. Holyoake. (Murmurs and ' Hear, hear.') 
 He is chiefly known in connexion with philosophical 
 speculations of an unpopular character, and also as 
 warmly and earnestly sympathising with the cause of
 
 lo NEARJNG WESTMINSTER 
 
 democratic institutions in Europe. No one is a more 
 fitting representative in that respect of the feelings of 
 that section of the working class which interests itself 
 most strongly in politics. (Cries of ' Oh, oh ! ') Mr. 
 Holyoake may fairly be taken to represent the feelings 
 of persons of extreme political opinions, and it is with 
 his political opinions alone that I have to do. Well, 
 what is it that Mr. Holyoake says in a pamphlet 
 published within the last few weeks? ... I agree with 
 him in the general tenour of his remarks, and he fairly 
 expresses the principle that I have endeavoured to 
 establish — admission of the working classes by selection 
 and not by mass." ^ 
 
 Lord Stanley concluded tamely that the educational 
 test was new and difficult, and passed on to other points. 
 But his generous and courteous reference gave Holyoake 
 great pleasure. He thought he owed the reference to 
 J. S. Mill, but Mill replied : " I have had no opportunity 
 of conversing with him on the subject. His mention of 
 you, which I was glad ox\ every account to see, is to 
 be ascribed only to his honest and straightforward 
 character." In reply to Holyoake's letters, however, 
 Lord Stanley dwelt on the difficulties of the scheme : 
 
 "The difficulty of an absolutely uniform test of 
 knowledge is considerable : the pressure upon examiners 
 to alter or lower the standard, and the suspicion to which 
 they would be exposed of acting from political motives 
 in fixing it at the precise level selected, are serious 
 objections : nor is the feeling of the House of Commons 
 friendly to a simply intellectual test." 
 
 Stansfeld offered to introduce it into the House — *' if 
 no better man can be found " — but insisted that it should 
 be made more practical. He felt sure the House " would 
 not stand a system of examinations and certificates." 
 He urged Holyoake to consult with Mr. Ellis. 
 
 ' Times, March 22nd, 1859.
 
 NEARING WESTMINSTER ii 
 
 That Holyoake's limitation of the franchise, even in an 
 ideaHst form, should embitter some of his old associates 
 is not a matter of wonder. He was angrily reminded 
 that he had dropped one of the main points of the 
 Charter — manhood suffrage. It was not an entirely fair 
 charge. He looked forward to the granting of a national 
 system of education that should in time qualify every 
 man and woman to face a moderate test. However, a 
 Reform Bill was the topic of the hour, and the Radicals 
 pressed for the immediate grant of manhood suffrage. 
 His first conflict with them occurred in May i860. On 
 the 17th there was a large meeting of workers in the old 
 St. Martin's Hall, in Long Acre, " to protest against the 
 recent Parliamentary insults to the unrepresented," and 
 Holyoake was included in the list of speakers. Lord 
 Elcho was one of the delinquents ; but he came to the 
 meeting to protest that he was not an outright opponent, 
 and seriously to face their criticism. Holyoake knew 
 that Lord Elcho supported his own intelligence-franchise, 
 and admired his action in coming. Hence when Lord 
 Elcho appealed to him to correct the misrepresentation 
 of his words, he did so. He says in his diary : " Lord 
 Elcho asked me to speak as to his political character, 
 which I did." Since Lord Elcho supported what Holy- 
 oake regarded as the fairest scheme of suffrage, he could 
 speak in his defence without inconsistency ; but the bulk 
 of the meeting only saw the spectacle of Holyoake 
 defending a wealthy landowner and anti-democrat. 
 
 The incident led later to a friendship with Lord Elcho, 
 as we shall see, but for the time being the question of 
 electoral reform was shelved. By this time Holyoake 
 was doing a good deal of political journalism. He wrote 
 leaders in the Star and political letters in the Daily News 
 (over the signature of "Disque"). In December 1859 
 Cowen writes to him: "Hurrah! 'Disque' improves
 
 N EARING WESTMINSTER 
 
 every letter . . . send me 2| dozen Daily News of 
 yesterday." Holyoake also worked on several com- 
 mittees — Constitutional Defence, Garibaldi, and Press 
 Committees — and represented the Northern Reform 
 Union at London. In one way or other he was 
 becoming a familiar figure in the environs of the 
 House. When Palmerston resumed office (June 1859) 
 with a powerful coalition ministry, he was anxious to 
 include Cobden or Bright in the Cabinet. Cobden 
 refused, and Palmerston told Thornton Hunt — who 
 visited him frequently, and often had Holyoake in his 
 carriage — to ask Holyoake to find out Bright's disposi- 
 tion. Holyoake approached Bright indirectly, but he 
 refused office. Cobden and Bright had little hope of 
 substantial profit to the country from Palmerston's lead, 
 and preferred the position of free and vigilant critics. 
 Holyoake was not sure that they might not seriously 
 influence the Cabinet, and so did not hesitate to convey 
 Palmerston's hint to Bright. Cobden was still friendly, 
 as I find a brief note he sent to Holyoake a little later. 
 " I will do my best to promote your objects," he says. 
 
 His connection with the Northern Reform Union also 
 brought Holyoake into touch with parliamentary life. 
 The Newcastle Radicals discovered that a good deal of 
 corruption was practised at Berwick in the 1859 election, 
 and in their interest the secretary of the Union, Mr. 
 Reed, took action for bribery. His opponents astutely 
 laid a plea before Baron Bramwell that the complainant 
 should find security for the heavy costs of the case. 
 Reed was quite unable personally to do such a thing — 
 though it was understood that the Union would find the 
 money, if the case were lost — and Baron Bramwell put 
 him out of court with contemptuous observations on his 
 "puritan society." "To commence actions against 
 people for penalties when the plaintiff cannot pay the
 
 HEARING WESTMINSTER 13 
 
 costs is," he said, " a cheap way of becoming a patriot — 
 cheap, I tliink, and nasty ; " and he made light of the 
 bribery that was alleged. The Union drew up two 
 petitions to Parliament, and Holyoake had them 
 presented in the House. From Cowen's letter it appears 
 that Lord Chelmsford (the late Lord Chancellor) strongly 
 approved their petition for a censure of Baron Bram- 
 well, and Disraeli promised to support both petitions. 
 Holyoake had considerable difficulty in inducing any 
 member to take charge of the petitions, but it was done 
 eventually, and a Commission was appointed. 
 
 This was in the early part of i860, and we saw that 
 the second half of that year was occupied with the 
 business of the Garibaldi Legion. The four succeeding 
 years had no stirring political episodes. The two events 
 that stand out in their dull chronicle are the signing of 
 a commercial treaty with France and the sensational 
 budgets of Mr. Gladstone, who had become Chancellor 
 of the Exchequer. It is rather curious to find Holy- 
 oake active in connection with both to a slight extent. 
 During the debate on the French Treaty he received 
 a letter from Sir J. Stansfeld putting to him what the 
 writer felt to be insoluble difficulties in regard to certain 
 clauses. I have not Holyoake's reply, but Stansfeld 
 evidently expects a solution from him — a singular 
 tribute from a future President of the Local Government 
 Board ! 
 
 On the other hand, it will be remembered that Holy- 
 oake was one of the active workers for that repeal of the 
 paper-duty which Mr. Gladstone carried in 1861. In 
 the following year the Chancellor of the Exchequer 
 visited Newcastle, and the Cowens determined to give 
 him a princely reception. Holyoake was engaged to 
 write a series of articles on Gladstone and his work 
 in the Newcastle Chronicle. Largely owing to these
 
 14 NEARING WESTMINSTER 
 
 articles the population gave Gladstone a remarkable 
 welcome. He sailed down the Tyne for eleven miles, 
 and both banks were black with masses of enthusiastic 
 workers. Numbers of them swam after the vessel in 
 the river, and thousands of miners pressed to touch his 
 hand. Holyoake was there as representative of the 
 Daily News, and as Cowen's guest. He went with the 
 party to see the foundries at Middlesborough, and he 
 earned Mrs. Gladstone's gratitude by warning her of 
 danger from the molten metal where she stood. He 
 afterwards wrote to tell her privately that Mr. J. Cowen, 
 junior, who had been hardly visible during the whole 
 of the trip, was really responsible for the wonderful 
 warmth of their reception. 
 
 During these years of political slackness Holyoake 
 was chiefly occupied with Secularist and Co-operative 
 work, as we saw, and with routine journalism. In 1863 
 he reported for the Newcastle Chronicle a famous prize- 
 fight between Heenan and Tom King. The curious 
 in such matters will find a very ample account of his 
 experiences in his Sixty Years (ch. Ixxvii). At mid- 
 night, in the depth of winter, he set out from London, 
 with the editor of the Sporting Life and a pugilist 
 " nurse," who would protect him from injury for a guinea. 
 There can be few more striking indications of the 
 advance in public opinion during the last fifty years 
 than in this expedition of a journalist and moralist of 
 Holyoake's refined temper upon a mission that he 
 might have avoided, and his writing thirty years after- 
 wards that he looked back on it "with satisfaction." 
 Holyoake certainly shrank from the barbaric features of 
 the fight, yet such a thing could not happen to-day. 
 Public feeling was so different at that time that Holy- 
 oake's account of the fight was telegraphed to the Prince 
 of Wales at Windsor Castle before it went to Newcastle.
 
 NEAR IN G WESTMINSTER 15 
 
 Palmerston had, shortly before, headed a subscription 
 that was made for Saycrs in the House of Commons.^ 
 
 Holyoake had sporting instincts from his earlier 
 years, and association with Dr. Shorthouse and Mr, J. 
 Cowen revived them. He often reported cricket matches 
 and rowing races for the Chronicle. In 1864 he reported 
 a public execution at London, and helped to kindle a 
 tardy feeling of protest against such things. The 
 spectacle of thousands of debased men and women, 
 largely sodden with drink, assembling to enjoy — not to 
 shudder at, as the theory implied — such an event gave 
 fire to his pen. He reprinted his article in the pamphlet, 
 Public Lessons of tlie Hangman, which had much to do 
 with the subsequent agitation. Another pamphlet that 
 he published about the same time was his Suppressed 
 Lecture at CheltenJiani. He had advertised a lecture with 
 the foreboding title, "The changes of religious opinion 
 in England since 1841," and the authorities were not 
 minded to have the story of his trial repeated at Chelten- 
 ham. The Lord of the Manor sent men to cut off the 
 gas at the Corn Exchange, where it was to be delivered, 
 and the police intimidated the owners of theother halls. 
 The " changes " were not quite so great as he had in- 
 tended to say. In the end he gave his lecture 'at "an 
 inn. He noticed three detectives among-st his audience. 
 
 Besides writing in the Northern 5/rtr and the Newcastle 
 Chronicle, and occasionally in other dailies, he^^was still 
 editing his own monthly, the Secular World, and writing 
 at times in the new monthly magazines. ■■ The National 
 Review began in i860, the Whitehall Review (one of his 
 
 ^ I may recall that the preceding- wintcr'had been one of the most 
 ghastly and audacious criminality. Garrotting- was so common, even 
 in Oxford Street and Piccadilly, that people went about by night with 
 sword-sticks, revolvers, or bull-dogs. The risksj'men ran led to some 
 renewal of the popularity of the art of boxing. Thirty years later the 
 Chronicle, under the younger Cowen, declined to print asimilar article 
 of Holyoake's.
 
 1 6 NBA RING WESTMINSTER 
 
 numerous god-children — he suggested the name to 
 Major Bell), and the Fortnightly (to which he was intro- 
 duced by George Henry Lewes) in 1865. In June 1864 
 he founded a new weekly of his own, the English Leader. 
 It was a political and general organ of liberal views, 
 giving special attention to Co-operative matters. Holy- 
 oake edited it and wrote most of the leaders. Francis 
 Newman, Mazzini, and Dr. Shorthouse were conspicuous 
 contributors. J. S. Mill sent him ;^20 toward the 
 " publicity fund " of it, saying : *' I think your projected 
 paper has a chance of being very useful ; " but in a 
 month or two he wrote to say he " did not like it," and 
 asked Holyoake to regard the money as given " towards 
 preventing you from being out of pocket by your 
 experiment." A distinction he noticed somewhere in 
 it between " ladies " and '* women of the humbler 
 class" irritated him. Holyoake replied that his friends 
 and he wrote only part of the paper, and the rest 
 was " supplied," for reasons of economy. Other corre- 
 spondents spoke highly of it. " I wish you success 
 heartily with your paper, and will recommend it wher- 
 ever I get a chance," Mr. Thomas Hughes (author of 
 Tom Browns Schooldays), his earlier Christian Socialist 
 opponent, wrote to him. Mr. Henry Campkin wel- 
 comed it on the political side. " For want of other 
 information," he says, " I regard jj'^?^ as the ^ header.' " 
 It ran for twenty weeks (until October 15th, 1864), and 
 then failed from lack of funds. But Holyoake spoke of 
 it as a " pleasant experience " and very fair success.^ 
 
 ' He revived \\\<^ English Leader on January 6lh, 1866, and again edited 
 it until July 14th, when he gave it to a Mr. Gooding. After that date Holy- 
 oake wrote little in it, and came to dislike it for change of principles. 
 It ended finally in December. The numbering of the copies is perplexing, 
 as the new series began with a fresh number, and reverted to the original 
 succession in March. In other words, the first ten issues in 1866 were 
 w«'x-numbered i to 10, instead of 21 to 30.
 
 NEARING WESTMINSTER 17 
 
 In 1865 the political world awakened to fresh activity. 
 Lord Palmerston's period of office was approaching its 
 term, and it was apparent to all that the statesman's 
 career was itself drawing" to a close. Liberals and 
 Radicals began to prepare for the electoral struggle, 
 and the stir runs through Holyoake's correspondence 
 and diaries. From the preceding summer Thornton 
 Hunt, now a journalist of great influence, in the confi- 
 dence of Palmerston, had been urging Holyoake to 
 expend his gifts of agitation on the approaching contest. 
 His repeated entreaties to Holyoake to come and talk 
 over the situation show the great esteem he continued 
 to have for him. He writes, for instance : 
 
 "... But I want especially to s'^o.you. I am confi- 
 dent there is good work to be done, although many are 
 wavering, slow, irresolute, supine, sceptical, dead, mis- 
 trustful, stagnant, cold, contradictory, indifferent, de- 
 sponding, dogmatically dead, and prone to let old and 
 exploded assumptions block out the opportunity they 
 might make, or rather accelerate. / am bent on trying 
 to bring about the reunion and reawakening of the 
 Liberal party. It is just now very fainthearted — there- 
 fore, the burnt feathers for its recovery. The leaders 
 know its state of debility as well as possible, but have 
 not the nerve, or zeal, to arouse its energies — they all 
 want doses of bark. ... I am convinced that you 
 could afford material aid in preparing for the next 
 session." 
 
 The elections came on in July 1865, and it is clear 
 that Holyoake gave the " material aid " that Hunt had 
 anticipated. He not only spoke constantly as a repre- 
 sentative of the Reform League, but gave personal 
 assistance to several candidates, and wrote a useful 
 pamphlet on The Liberal Situation. J. S. Mill wrote of 
 the pamphlet : 
 
 VOL. II. C
 
 1 8 N EARING WESTMINSTER 
 
 " I think it is one of the best of your writings, and 
 well calculated to stir up the thinking minds among the 
 working classes to larger views of political questions. 
 So far as I am myself concerned, I cannot but be pleased 
 to find you in sympathy with some of the most generally 
 unpopular of my political notions." 
 
 Mr. (afterwards Sir) C. Buxton also wrote of it: "Mr. 
 Gregory quoted you largely last night. Could I per- 
 suade you to come to breakfast on Friday ? I have 
 asked Mr. Gregory and Mr. Forster." 
 
 As the elections approached, Holyoake flung himself 
 into the more practical work. Prof. H. Fawcett thanks 
 him in a letter for his " kind interest;" though it appears 
 that one of Fawcett's supporters " scrupulously took care 
 to suppress " a telegram from Holyoake, and '* entirely 
 destroyed the influence which he [the suppressor] once 
 possessed with his fellow working-men." Mr. P. A. 
 Taylor, a constant correspondent, has his assistance in 
 framing an election address. " You unconscionable and 
 altogether ungrateful and depraved party!" he exclaims, 
 at some new demand of Holyoake's ; " such conduct from 
 you almost persuadeth me to be a Christian." More 
 important was the service he gave to his old opponent, 
 Mr. Thomas Hughes. He recommended Hughes to 
 the Lambeth electors, drew up his election address and 
 several posters for him, and did much to further his 
 candidature. He knew that Hughes would oppose in 
 Parliament several measures which he himself wished 
 to see passed, but he recommended him on general 
 grounds. A letter of Hughes to him in May suggests 
 the extent of the assistance he gave him : 
 
 " Dear Mr. Holyoake, 
 
 " I am writing in some anxiety for news from 
 you. When shall I go on the stump? or shall I meet
 
 NEARING WESTMINSTER 19 
 
 any persons, whom, and where? ... I am game for 
 anything except going in for the public-house and cab 
 line. I shall tell the electors this plainly from the first, 
 and then they can take me, or let me alone, as they 
 like. . . . If the whole thing has collapsed, never mind. 
 I shall find the right place some day, and if not the 
 world will slide all the same. 
 
 " Yours ever, 
 
 "Thomas Hughes." 
 
 The letter seems to show appreciation and indebted- 
 ness, but Holyoake complains that, when Hughes was 
 returned, he treated his " infidel " auxiliary with coldness, 
 and did not invite him to the festive commemoration of 
 his success.^ 
 
 Just before the fray opened Holyoake left London for 
 Newcastle, where he was to work for Cowen's election. 
 Since the previous autumn there had been some ques- 
 tion of Holyoake being appointed secretary to Mr. 
 Cowen, senior, and he clearly welcomed the prospect. 
 He had long been at home amongst the sturdy 
 Northumbrians, and was proud of his association with 
 their typical spokesmen, the Cowens. Here again, 
 however, his heterodoxy proved costly. Before the 
 end of 1864 the younger Cowen wrote that he did not 
 think his father would want a private secretary, if he 
 were returned at the general election. He added in 
 a postscript: "Your letter to the London papers has 
 been made the text of some unpleasant comments by 
 our opponents." At the beginning of July, nevertheless, 
 Holyoake was invited to Blaydon, and he took a very 
 active part in the work. Mr. Cowen was returned, but 
 
 ^ Bygones, II, no. He generously attributes the defect to Hughes's 
 "ecclesiastical, not his real, self." Holyoake's daughter, Mrs. Praill, 
 who had helped in the Lambeth contest, repeated the service for Hughes 
 afterwards at Marylebone. One or two notes from F. D. Maurice to 
 Holyoake at this period display only a cold politeness.
 
 NEARING WESTMINSTER 
 
 Holyoake wrote in his diary a few days afterwards : 
 " I judge J. C. is alarmed at the attacks on me in the 
 newspapers," and a letter of J. S. Mill's says : " I con- 
 gratulate you on the triumphant return of Mr. Cowen 
 for Newcastle, and I regret that the attacks on you 
 should have prevented the realisation of your hopes in 
 regard to the secretaryship." 
 
 The nature of the attacks will be seen in the following 
 extract from one of the opposing journals at a later date: 
 
 " Newcastle, it appears, was represented at the great 
 Hyde Park riot on Monday evening, and by no less a 
 personage than the secularist editor, and lecturer-on- 
 things-in-general, Mr. George Jacob Holyoake. From 
 Radical Mr. Joseph Cowen, M.P., to secularist Mr. 
 George Jacob Holyoake may not be a very great descent, 
 but to the intelligence and good sense of Newcastle the 
 spectacle is a painful one. When Newcastle selected 
 Mr. Cowen, as a silent member, people cognisant of 
 the means adopted, and of the amiable weakness of the 
 aspiring representative, might have experienced some 
 little regret, but no disappointment. Few, however, con- 
 ceived that Mr. George Jacob Holyoake, who has for 
 years been conspicuous for his attacks upon Christianity 
 and the Bible, should be knit to the coat-tails of Mr. 
 Joseph Cowen. Who appointed Mr. Holyoake to make 
 Newcastle the equivalent of law-breaking democracy? 
 Mr. Holyoake, it has been hinted, contributes the 
 thunder to a Radical contemporary distinguished for 
 sensationalism and horseflesh proclivities. . . . What 
 next? Did we not know our fellow townsmen, we should 
 answer ' The Deluge.' " 
 
 Dickens had no need to make laborious research when 
 the chief organs of large towns were publishing leading 
 articles of this type. The extract shows, however, that 
 Cowen had mastered his scruples and appointed Holy- 
 oake his secretary. The diaries indicate, indeed, that
 
 NEARING WESTMINSTER 21 
 
 he spent a large proportion of his time in the House, 
 when the new Parhament started work in February 1866. 
 It was an inspiring period in the life of Westminster. 
 Palmerston was dead, and Gladstone was opening his 
 historic career as leader of the Commons, with the 
 brilliant opposition of Disraeli. Cobden and W. J. 
 Fox were dead, but Bright was still voicing, in his 
 majestic oratory, the stimulating protests of the " Man- 
 chester School." Sir John Trelawny was there no 
 longer; but John Stuart Mill was one of the 128 new 
 members that sat on the benches. The Queen's Speech 
 had put the question of electoral reform in the forefront 
 of legislation, and one needed little discernment to see 
 behind it the rising Liberal ideals of school-reform. 
 Church-reform, and workshop-reform. Once get the 
 intelligent mass of the workers fairly represented in 
 that House, and legislation would march triumphantly 
 along the path of serious social reform. Here was a 
 sphere of usefulness of far greater moment than those 
 in which he had hitherto moved. 
 
 With that feeling Holyoake looked down on the 
 grave, thoughtful face of the Queen, as she faced the 
 brilliant House. It seemed not without significance 
 that she had discarded the heavy old gilded coach of 
 the Georges and driven to Westminster in a light 
 modern carriage. The Georgean atmosphere was gone 
 from the House, and the breezes of the new Liberalism 
 seemed to give it increasing vigour. But it did not 
 take Holyoake many weeks to discover that his new 
 sphere very closely resembled the old ones in its recep- 
 tion of his peculiar temper. He soon found himself, 
 as he had often done, standing in the ranks of the 
 more advanced, where his convictions placed him, yet 
 somehow having more sympathetic relations with their 
 opponents.
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE IDEALIST IN POLITICS 
 
 HoLYOAKE has said somewhere that Robert Owen's 
 friends must have regarded him, in the days when he 
 sought poHtical influence without the least regard to 
 party-divisions, as "a political lunatic." He had hoped 
 to secure the co-operation of Tories and Radicals in his 
 socio-political scheme: to have Lord Liverpool fraternal 
 with Francis Place. It is curious that almost at the time 
 when Holyoake, " the most practical man in England," 
 was lightly condemning this frailty of his great master, 
 he was betraying it himself in no slight degree. It was 
 the creditable frailty of importing idealism into politics, 
 and ignoring laws or conventions of the party-system 
 that seemed to lay restriction on generous feeling. 
 Whether the frailty be really in the idealism or in the 
 political system I need not stop to consider, but the 
 attempt to unite the two brought many an unflattering 
 epithet on Holyoake in the sixties and seventies. His 
 very sense of justice, exceptionally detached from con- 
 siderations of expediency, was dragging him into the 
 same difficulties that it had done in the Chartist, 
 vSecularist, and Co-operative movements, and that had 
 been encountered by Robert Owen before him. 
 
 His own position was one of unwavering Liberalism, 
 but he maintained that this was consistent with express- 
 ing a warm approval of his party's enemies whenever 
 they did something that was clearly creditable and 
 
 22
 
 THE IDEALIST IN POLITICS 23 
 
 advantageous. He insisted on thinking that even bishops 
 and peers were capable of generous movements. The 
 difficulty was that his far-reaching ideas of social reform 
 put him inevitably in the extreme left wing of the Liberal 
 party, where such sentiments were rare and incurred 
 suspicion. His place was in the Reform League, of 
 which he was made a Vice-president in 1865. But 
 the bulk of the Leaguers demanded manhood-suffrage, 
 and heartily disliked his scheme of an intelligence- 
 franchise, especially when they saw it adopted by men 
 like Lord Stanley and Lord Elcho; nor is it idle to 
 note that Mr. C. Bradlaugh was an active member of 
 the executive of the League. On the other hand, 
 Holyoake felt that there was much hollow rhetoric in 
 their resonant claims that all the workers were entitled 
 to the vote, and he resented their virtual exclusion of 
 women from the franchise. His was the flexibility 
 of principle: theirs the inflexibility of phrase. They, 
 very naturally, used different qualifications. 
 
 The trouble began in April 1866. Gladstone, repre- 
 senting Earl Russell in the House, had brought forward 
 an elaborate measure of reform which would have the 
 effect of adding some 400,000 to the list of voters. He 
 was at once subjected to a cross-fire. Radicals attacked 
 him for the insufficiency of his Bill : Tories for its excess. 
 Then there occurred the political movement that Bright 
 has made famous with a phrase — the withdrawal of a 
 number of Gladstone's supporters into their " Cave of 
 Adullam." The group of old Palmerstonian Whigs 
 joined in the Tory protests against the Bill, and their 
 secession weakened the ministry to such an extent that 
 the Tories were able to defeat it. Faced with the 
 prospect of a Tory administration and the loss of even 
 Gladstone's measure of reform, the Radicals now assailed 
 the Adullamites with all the force of that political
 
 24 THE IDEALIST IN POLITICS 
 
 vocabulary which experience of such situations has 
 created. Yet Holyoake's idiosyncratic view of the issue 
 led him to support the Adullamites, to some extent. 
 Their leader was the Right Hon. Robert Lowe (Lord 
 Sherbrooke), who justified his attack on the Bill with 
 strong and fairly obvious reflections on the political 
 incompetence of so many of the workers. Holyoake's 
 Radical friends had retorted with that indiscriminate 
 defence of the workers which he felt to be untrue, and 
 so we cannot be surprised when w^e find him writing 
 to Mr. Lowe : 
 
 "Sir, 
 
 "The friends of the working classes are com- 
 porting themselves as women, who claim equal rights 
 and resent equal criticism. It is rather our part to hear 
 dispassionately whatever may be said of us and answer 
 it — not abusing the sayer thereof. The Daily News has 
 joined in censuring you. I think it only fair to call your 
 attention to what it has said — much more serious as 
 regards working-class character, as I remarked publicly 
 at the time, than anything you have said." 
 
 Holyoake's attitude is clear and consistent enough ; 
 but it is just as easy to see that his friends would resent 
 it, and during the whole of these years of reform- 
 agitation the difficulty was bound to continue. It 
 recurred in a more serious form in the following month, 
 when he again made a public defence of Lord Elcho. 
 He had spoken some time before at an Exeter Hall 
 meeting, with the Duke of Argyll in the chair, and Lord 
 Lyttleton on the platform, and had written to Lord Elcho 
 that 
 
 " the time he gave, the patient attention he paid, the 
 unaffected interest which he took, in an inquiry into the 
 industrial claims of working men, and the manly respect
 
 THE IDEALIST IN POLITICS 25 
 
 which the men felt and expressed towards his Grace and 
 to Lord Lyttleton, were proofs that there is at the bottom 
 but one class and one feeHng in the country." 
 
 Lord Elcho had begged to make his acquaintance, 
 and friendly relations were maintained between them for 
 some years. The charge of "toadying" came glibly 
 enough ; though I find that, in one of his earliest letters 
 to Lord Elcho, Holyoake says he is for the measure 
 " that carries the people of this country soonest and 
 farthest on the road of self-government — for which I 
 believe and know them to be as well fitted as the Middle 
 Class who now govern." There was no concealment of 
 difterences on either side. However, in 1866 Holyoake's 
 feeling was made public in a way that greatly irritated 
 his colleagues. 
 
 On April nth the Reform League held a meeting in 
 St. Martin's Hall, the president, Mr. Beales, taking the 
 chair. The object of the meeting was to support 
 Gladstone's Bill, and so large a crowd came that a 
 number of overflow-meetings had to be held. Before 
 this dense and fiery gathering of workers Lord Elcho 
 once more came to justify or extenuate his criticism of 
 them. The chairman announced that Lord Elcho desired 
 to say a few words, but, the reporters say, he was 
 " greeted with a storm of indignation " and long refused 
 a hearing. On the appeal of Mr. T. Hughes the 
 audience at length became silent, and Lord Elcho 
 addressed them. He entirely denied the more offensive 
 phrases attributed to him, and claimed that he was as 
 desirous as any for justice to every class. Before the 
 end of his short speech the murmurs had almost wholly 
 ceased, and he was very generally applauded at the close. 
 Holyoake had not a difiicult task in following and making 
 some defence of Lord Elcho, and he afterwards wrote 
 letters to the Times and other dailies to the same effect.
 
 26 THE IDEALIST IN POLITICS 
 
 Both in his speech and the letters he said that he differed 
 from Lord Elcho politically, but could testify to his 
 sincere desire for social reform. 
 
 When Lord Elcho opened his Times on April 13th 
 he at once wrote to express to Holyoake his " surprise " 
 and "gratitude for this uncalled-for act of friendliness." 
 Mr. James Clay, who was pressing a Franchise Bill in 
 the House, wrote that he was " greatly gratified " to see 
 the letter. But it may be imagined that others read it 
 with different feelings. "God bless my soul!" Mr. 
 P. A. Taylor wrote : " so G. J. H. stands sponsor for 
 Lord Elcho's honest desire to do political justice to the 
 people — the man who said in the House of Commons 
 with a sneer that there seemed ' a large dilution of beer 
 in the cream of the working classes.'" Lord Elcho's 
 letters, which are very cordial to Holyoake, show no 
 disposition to sneer, but merely a matter-of-fact con- 
 viction that the bulk of the workers could not profitably 
 exercise the suffrage. 
 
 At last Holyoake brought to a head the annoyance of 
 the Leaguers, A Tory ministry had in July succeeded 
 that of Earl Russell and Mr. Gladstone, and there was 
 every prospect of the popular demand being cheated 
 with some intricate and unsubstantial measure of reform. 
 The League went to work more vigorously than ever, 
 and before long London was stirred with a rare political 
 excitement. It was announced that a demonstration 
 would be held in Hyde Park on Monday, July 23rd, and 
 every one expected a violent eruption of the spirit of the 
 metropolis. For some time the workers had gathered 
 in dark mood to rail at the driving gentry in Rotten 
 Row. Not, of course, that there was any approach to 
 the revolutionary spirit of 1832. The pace at which 
 England had travelled during Holyoake's life may be 
 judged from the difference in the weapons used in the
 
 THE IDEALIST IN POLITICS 
 
 earlier and the later reform-agitations. In 1866 a hand- 
 bill was distributed through the east end of London with 
 the text : 
 
 " Wanted, 10,000 costermongers on their donkeys to 
 parade Rotten Row, to test the question as to whether 
 this or any other portion of Hyde Park belongs to a class 
 or to the entire people." 
 
 Pikes were as obsolete, and seemed as remote, as 
 cross-bows. But the Home Secretary had unwisely 
 forbidden the meeting, and directed the police to close 
 the Park at five o'clock. 
 
 There was some anxiety when, an hour later, the 
 contingents of the League began to pour down Edgware 
 Road and Oxford Street with their bands and banners. 
 A strong force of police was drawn up before the gates 
 at the Marble Arch, and they found themselves facing a 
 vast and menacing crowd, with the customary leaven of 
 ruffians. The executive of the League, however, acted 
 with judgment. The little band of officers, which in- 
 cluded Holyoake, marched up to the gate, were refused 
 admission, and at once gave the order for a peaceful 
 march to Trafalgar Square. The crowd was dis- 
 appointed, and began to close on the police. Holyoake 
 had to fight his way through a thick mass. At one 
 moment a man thrust a watch into his hand, and hurried 
 away. He recognised his own watch, restored by a 
 detective. 
 
 How the crowd bore down the railings after the 
 League had gone, and rushed through the Park in 
 riotous and destructive tumult, and went on to storm 
 Belgravian windows, is well known. For our purpose 
 the chief interest lies in an episode that began a few 
 days before the struggle. When the police posted their 
 prohibition of the meeting, Mr. Beales, Holyoake, and
 
 THE IDEALIST IN POLITICS 
 
 a few other officers of the League called upon the Home 
 Secretary. Walpole, a sensitive and cultured gentleman 
 rather than a firm administrator, could give no decided 
 answer to these representatives of the tumultuous energies 
 of the metropolis. He spoke so waveringly that he gave 
 Mr. Beales the impression that they might hold the 
 meeting. Rumour even had it that he shed tears of 
 perplexity at the interview, and the London hawkers 
 sold thousands of bottles of " Walpole's tears " in the 
 days that followed. A bottle was preserved in Holyoake's 
 museum of social antiquities, with the Chartist pike, and 
 the Garibaldi flag, and many another reminder of his 
 stirring career. But Holyoake distinctly understood 
 that Mr. Walpole reserved his decision, and he was 
 surprised to hear Mr. Beales announce afterwards that 
 the meeting was authorised. By a curious mischance — 
 though it was represented by his enemies in the League 
 as a deliberate act — his view of the matter came to 
 Walpole's ears, and was warmly welcomed. He had 
 received a notice to attend a second deputation to the 
 Home Office, and went there. The deputation had in 
 the meantime been cancelled, but the notice had not 
 reached him, and he found himself alone at the Home 
 Office. His inquiries led to a conversation with Walpole's 
 secretary, and this turned on the question of the Home 
 Secretary's words. 
 
 The whole thing was accidental. Unfortunately, 
 ministers represented in the House that Holyoake had 
 gone expressly to the Home Office to repudiate Mr. 
 Beales's construction. Again Holyoake found himself 
 regarded with anger by many of his natural associates : 
 an anger that was not mitigated when the Tory Stattdard 
 described him as "a man of high honour and probity, 
 whose opinions, however offensive to the general feeling 
 of society, had not prevented him from commanding the
 
 THE IDEALIST IN POLITICS 29 
 
 respect of all who knew his reverence for truth and his 
 thorough loyalty in all dealings with friend or foe " ! It 
 was something to have elicited this covert estimate of 
 him from his opponents, but the price was heavy on the 
 Radical side. Holyoake felt that his action was morally 
 correct, and he ignored the anger of the Leaguers. In 
 a letter to the Times he made a plain statement of his 
 impression of Walpole's words, and was warmly thanked 
 by the Home Secretary, who wrote him : 
 
 "Sir, 
 
 " 1 beg to thank you very sincerely for your kind 
 and generous letter, as well as for your kind and generous 
 conduct with reference to what passed at the Reform 
 League deputation. 
 
 " These are severe trials which public men must bear 
 with patience, but the testimony of yourself, and of others 
 like yourself, is the best alleviation of them. 
 
 " I have the honour to be. Sir, with renewed thanks, 
 " Your obedient and humble servant, 
 
 " S. H. Walpole." 
 
 The Home Secretary was being violently assailed from 
 all quarters of the House, and would almost certainly 
 have been compelled to resign if it had not been for 
 Holyoake's firm support. There were those who said 
 openly that he kept the Tory Government in office. For 
 himself it was a matter of simple truth and justice, and 
 if the requirements of a party demanded any deviation 
 from these he could not be a party-man.^ 
 
 The verdict of the Leaguers on his conduct might be 
 expected at the great meeting that was to be held at the 
 
 1 Lord Elcho sent his warm approval, it need not be said. But it is 
 
 amusing to read in his letter : 
 
 " I attribute my broken windows and all the broken heads, not to 
 Bright and the Reform League, but to the tone, conduct, and flesh and 
 blood arguments and appeals of the late Leader of the House [Gladstone] ! 
 His silence during these disgraceful riots was disgraceful to him."
 
 THE IDEALIST IN POLITICS 
 
 Agricultural Hall in a few days. Holyoake decided to 
 attend it as an officer of the League. By this time the 
 country was quickened with an enthusiasm similar to 
 that of the early thirties, and far greater than any that it 
 has since displayed. Again the provincial towns held 
 those vast meetings of 100,000 and 200,000 workers, of 
 which we read with envy to-day, and even lethargic 
 London was deeply stirred. Some 20,000 people 
 crushed into the Agricultural Hall, and many thousands 
 more hung about the entrance. When Holyoake forced 
 his way through the crowd on the platform, and sat 
 down in the front row, he gazed on a rare spectacle for 
 the metropolis. Thick masses of heated workers covered 
 the galleries, and flooded the body of the Hall. Men 
 even climbed the pillars, and sat astride the beams and 
 girders in the roof. It was a solid and demonstrative 
 mass of Radicalism, and hardly one in the 20,000 was 
 ignorant that the quiet, refined-looking man sitting in 
 the front row on the platform had come between them 
 and the detested Home Secretary. 
 
 But Holyoake had well-remembered claims to respect, 
 and he was in good company. Beside him sat John 
 Stuart Mill, who had walked with him from Westminster 
 to Islington, and pushed with him to the front of the 
 platform. Few voices reached far into the crowded 
 Hall that night, and Mill's had little chance of carrying 
 far. But when the stentorian voice of G. J. Mantle 
 announced that Mill was to speak, a comparative stillness 
 was secured, and all watched with subdued respect the 
 frail but commanding figure of the great social teacher. 
 Under his tutelage Holyoake was safe from hostile 
 demonstration ; though I doubt if it was necessary — so 
 transparently honest, to the unprejudiced, must Holy- 
 oake's action have seemed, and so great were his services. 
 It was at all events clear — I gather from a letter from the
 
 THE IDEALIST IN POLITICS 31 
 
 Co-operator, Jaggers — that there were those or\ the 
 platform who showed disappointment when he walked 
 away unassailed with Mill. 
 
 That the bulk of the workers would follow his actions 
 without prejudice is clear from a number of incidents of 
 the time. I find a letter to him, toward the close of 
 1866, from the workers of the " Perseverance Boiler- 
 making Company," of Deptford, asking him to act as 
 arbitrator for them, in conjunction with Mr. Thomas 
 Hughes, At the beginning of 1867 he asked Lord 
 Elcho and Mr. Mill to get him a seat on the Royal 
 Commission that Lord Derby had appointed to examine 
 into the conduct of the Trades Unions. A number of 
 serious attacks had been made upon non-Unionist 
 workers in the north, and they were imputed to the 
 Unions. A worker at Sheffield was shot with an air- 
 gun, and the murderer declared that he had received 
 ;^20 from the secretary of the Union for doing it. At 
 Manchester thousands of needles were put into the clay 
 of non-Unionist brick-makers. Outrages on watchmen 
 and property were reported daily. Though the Union 
 officials denied that any of these outrages had their 
 sanction, and themselves demanded an inquiry, there 
 was a very strong feeling against them in Westminster, 
 and Unionism seemed to have encountered a new peril. 
 Holyoake pressed for a seat on the Commission in order 
 to watch the play of prejudice and guard the interest of 
 justice, but the list of members was finally drawn up 
 before his friends spoke. Walpole assured Mill that if 
 he had not already had occasion to tear up one list after 
 it had been signed by the Queen, he would have taken 
 that step to find a place for Holyoake. 
 
 About the same time he had a short correspondence 
 with Lord Brougham, who still kept a vigilant eye on 
 the progress of the people and seems to have noted
 
 THE IDEALIST IN POLITICS 
 
 Holyoake's position with great satisfaction. Towards 
 the close of 1866 Holyoake sent Lord Brougham copies 
 of his Se/f Help and Life of Robert Oiven, and asked 
 permission to dedicate a fresh edition to him. Brougham 
 rephed that he " had read with interest all Mr. Holyoake's 
 statements which had been printed," and only hesitated 
 about the dedication because, " great as he esteems that 
 honour to be, he has refused leave to so many to dedi- 
 cate that he was afraid they might take objections." 
 " However," he concluded, " it is for Mr. Holyoake to 
 take what course he pleases, and he may be assured of 
 Lord Brougham considering the dedication an honour." 
 The aged statesman, who had been a warm supporter of 
 Owen, and had shown life-long regard for the welfare of 
 the workers, evidently felt that Owen's spirit had largely 
 passed on to Holyoake. 
 
 Another experience of the same year shows that he 
 was regarded as having much influence with London 
 workers. In January Mr. Teignmouth Shore (of Messrs. 
 Cassell's) wrote him that they were anxious to find a 
 " very graphic writer and one personally acquainted with 
 the working classes." The correspondence ended shortly 
 in Holyoake being invited to edit their Working Man, a 
 twopenny weekly that aimed at conveying an impression 
 of the life of the workers. Holyoake was to contribute 
 six columns a week, and to "avoid writing on industrial 
 and social topics elsewhere." The engagement began 
 in February 1866 (with the seventh issue of the paper), 
 and I gather that he was a general writer for the firm 
 during the year. But it will readily be understood that 
 the '* Belle vSauvage" was a somewhat curious home for 
 a Vice-president of the Reform League and leader of 
 English Secularism. He did indeed assume his 
 innocent pen-name of " Landor Praed," but by the 
 autumn his connection with the Working Man was over.
 
 THE IDEALIST IN POLITICS 33 
 
 He continued to write a column of "Town Talk" in 
 various papers of Messrs. Cassell's, until (in February 
 1867) the general editor reported that the firm's agents 
 complained of *' an evident leaning on the liberal side 
 of politics" in his contributions. He was requested 
 to "leave out politics altogether." "You could," 
 Mr. Hayley wrote, "dwell more upon improvements 
 in and about the City, domestic matters, etc., more 
 especially taking up anecdotes of great men, when they 
 die, marry, or do anything which brings them into 
 prominent notice." That was hardly Holyoake's con- 
 ception of his function, and the connection did not last 
 much longer.^ 
 
 It is, perhaps, more curious to find him writing in the 
 Peoples Magazine — a Church of England journal ! At 
 the request of the Rev. Stopford Brooke he wrote an 
 article on temperance, with more than usual discretion, 
 for it. His relations to Stopford Brooke were interesting, 
 as the following letter (July 30th, 1869) indicates : 
 
 " My Dear Mr. Holyoake, 
 
 "Thank you very much for your letter and for 
 the opportunity you have afforded me of 'giving some 
 pleasure to another. I have sent the book to Miss A. 
 White. 
 
 " I have as much chance of the Deanery of Durham 
 as I have of finding myself Prime Minister. I do not 
 say I should not like it. I should. But, after all, it is 
 
 ^ He was at the same time (1865 to 1870, I believe) writing for the 
 Glasgow Morning Journal y and sending weekly letters to the Saturday Post 
 (under the same Radical editor, Robert Somers). I find leaders by him 
 in the Darlington Mercury, and he contributed much to the New York 
 Tribune, with the London editor of which, Mr. George Smalley, he was 
 intimate for many years. Mr. Milnes Edge sought his aid in the 
 establishment of the Democrat, in which Huxley and Frederic Harrison 
 were to write. In 1869 he began to write in the Echo. There are also 
 many letters from Captain Frederic A. Maxse, who seems to have 
 procured space for him on the Examiner. Later he wrote on the London 
 Figaro. 
 
 VOL. IL D
 
 34 THE IDEALIST IN POLITICS 
 
 better, at least when one is still growing, to be freed from 
 the trammels of a ' position,' and to be one of the 
 * unattached ' clergymen. If I were made a Dean now — 
 who knows ? — human nature is weak — I might harden 
 into a Conservative in twenty years, and I should like to 
 die a Radical in politics as well as in theology. When 
 I say Radical, I mean that ' they ' call me Radical — a 
 lover of Democracy. 
 
 "I am, 
 
 " Yours very sincerely, 
 
 " Stopford a. Brooke." 
 
 In the meantime the discussion of electoral reform 
 continued to seethe in the metropolis, and our idealist 
 found himself repeatedly in positions that could fall to 
 few others. The Tory ministry were forced to take 
 up the subject, if they were to remain in office, and the 
 years 1867 and 1868 were occupied with a masterly duel 
 between Disraeli and Gladstone, who had now attained 
 the leadership of the two great parties. Disraeli saw 
 that the impulse from the country was irresistible, and 
 he trimmed the sails of his party with " consummate 
 ability," to use the words of a Liberal historian. He 
 first drew up a series of imposing resolutions ; but the 
 House declined to proceed by resolutions, and the Reform 
 Leaguers retorted with a demand for manhood suffrage, 
 which was carried clamorously at its crowded meetings. 
 Then, after a feint with a moderate measure, Disraeli 
 introduced a Bill of such a range that three of the more 
 distinguished ministers — the Earl of Carnarvon, Viscount 
 Cranborne (Lord Salisbury), and General Peel — left the 
 Cabinet. The Bill was introduced on March i8th (1867), 
 and passed the House of Lords early in August. As 
 Disraeli originally framed it, nearly a quarter of a million 
 voters would be added to the register. It was based on 
 a calculation that, by its provisions, the voting power
 
 THE IDEALIST IN POLITICS 35 
 
 would be in the hands of the middle class to the extent 
 of one half, while the aristocracy and the workers would 
 equally divide the remaining half. Household franchise 
 was granted in boroughs, and a £,\o franchise in 
 counties. But the Bill underwent the most remarkable 
 modifications in its progress through committee. Most 
 extensive enlargements were adopted by Disraeli, and 
 his " balance of power " amongst the three social classes 
 completely disappeared. Almost every change pro- 
 posed by Gladstone was incorporated in the Bill. The 
 county franchise was lowered, a lodger franchise was 
 admitted, and great concessions were made in the 
 redistribution of seats. 
 
 There is no doubt that the concessions, though they 
 fell far short of manhood suffrage, were much greater 
 than the Leaguers had expected to see. The new 
 Toryism baffled them almost as much as it did the 
 Liberals. Every party in the House was rent by differ- 
 ences of opinion, and differences of sentiment in 
 regard to Disraeli's position. Roebuck and some other 
 stalwart Radicals openly supported Disraeli. The 
 League sent a deputation to interview him, and his 
 genial reception gave many of them a new idea of a 
 Tory statesman. Further, the League had in May 
 gained a victory over the Home Secretary as to the use 
 of the Park. Mr. Bradlaugh was strongly of opinion 
 that the Government had no power to close the Park 
 against them, and it was largely through his influence 
 that the question was tested. The Government had to 
 yield, and the demonstration was successfully held. 
 Holyoake writes in his diary : 
 
 " May 6th. End of the British Constitution. Hyde 
 Park Meeting. 
 " May 7th, Constitution survived. Found alive this
 
 36 THE IDEALIST IN POLITICS 
 
 morning lying among the flowers of the Park. Both 
 quite fresh." 
 
 Under the eyes of large bodies of police and military 
 the workers had held their meeting, while Government 
 posters still lingered pitifully on the walls forbidding the 
 demonstration. Seeing the happy progress of events, 
 Holyoake was moved once more to write one of those 
 amiable letters to an enemy of his party that we find so 
 frequently at this part of his career. This time it was 
 to Disraeli himself that he sent his support. His letter 
 runs : 
 
 ** Sir, 
 
 " As one of those Radicals who have opposed 
 you, permit me to personally thank you for the thought 
 of the People shown in the progress of the Reform Bill. 
 Should there be an ' ugly rush,' as some have predicted, 
 the party whose Bill is the occasion of it will not be 
 likely to suffer in it — a flood, if it occurred, would be 
 sure to float him — even a storm could be commanded 
 by the intrepid minister who, like Prospero, raised it. 
 But there will be no rush, nor flood, nor storm, whatever 
 the figure of the foreboding may be. The English 
 people have the sense both of order and of gratitude. 
 They know that the Whigs would have kept the door 
 of the Constitution but just ajar for ever : and they will 
 honour the minister who has opened it wide to them. 
 My reasons for seeking the great enfranchisement you 
 and Lord Derby have accorded were expressed in the 
 petition Mr. Mill lately presented for me, and which is 
 enclosed. It is for these reasons I offer my acknowledg- 
 ments. 
 
 " I have. Sir, the honour to be 
 
 " Yours faithfully, 
 
 "G. J. Holyoake." 
 
 Neither Whigs nor Radicals could admire Holyoake's 
 action in writing such letters as this to Conservative
 
 THE IDEALIST IN POLITICS 37 
 
 ministers — we shall see that he wrote also to Lord 
 Derby — and so his progress in the political world was 
 not rapid. On the other hand, he continued to press for 
 Radical measures which only the more advanced gener- 
 ally sought. As large a measure of enfranchisement 
 as was possible at that time had been secured, but voting 
 was still open, and Holyoake now began to agitate for 
 the adoption of the ballot. 
 
 The question of voting by ballot had been discussed 
 in political circles for half a century. Indeed, it was 
 under discussion in the House itself as early as 1708, but 
 it was not until the great electoral struggle of 1832 that 
 it became a prominent question. Mr. Grote, the his- 
 torian, proposed a Bill for its adoption in 1833, and, 
 when he left the House, the reform was continuously 
 pressed by Mr. H. F. Berkeley. Holyoake had adopted 
 it years before, as it was one of the six points of the 
 Charter, and with the larger franchise of 1868 he began 
 to press for it once more. Simple as the reform seems 
 in our eyes to-day, there were many democratic politicians 
 at that time who opposed it. Mr. J. S. Mill was a 
 notable instance, and Mr. Gladstone was opposed to it 
 until 1869. Quite apart from the corrupt fears of those 
 who felt that the ballot would destroy their influence 
 over tenants, employees, or other dependents, who had 
 a vote, there were many who felt, with Mr. Thomas 
 Hughes, that to cast one's vote openly was more 
 manly and bracing for the electors. Mill's feeling was 
 akin to this when he depreciated the ballot as " secret 
 voting," and urged reformers to erase it from their pro- 
 grammes. Those who wished to cast a discreditable 
 vote could, Mill said, "escape shame or responsibility" 
 by means of the ballot. 
 
 It seems that by 1868 these authoritative condemnations 
 were checking the demand that had been growing for a
 
 38 THE IDEALIST IN POLITICS 
 
 generation amongst reformers. Holyoake addressed a 
 meeting of the Reform League on the subject at St. 
 James's Hall in January 1868, and combated Mill's 
 objections. His plea for the ballot was thought so 
 fresh and forcible that the League printed his address 
 in an enlarged form.^ Bright described it as " the 
 only original argument he had yet seen," and Mr. 
 Berkeley wrote: ** A greater than I has arisen." The 
 argument was certainly stronger than Mill's, and it 
 cannot be doubted that the pamphlet, followed up by 
 letters in the press from Holyoake, had great influence ; 
 though, with characteristic candour, Holyoake declared 
 that the first result of the adoption of the ballot would 
 be a short span of Tory rule. 
 
 He sent a copy to Mr. Gladstone, and received the 
 following acknowledgment : 
 
 " Dear Sir, 
 
 " I thank you very much for your pamphlet. I 
 will not say that you efface from my mind the arguments 
 of Sydney Smith and John Mill, but the Ballot, or its 
 friends, have to thank you for an able and manful 
 defence. 
 
 " I remain 
 
 " Your very faithful and obedient 
 
 " W. E. Gladstone." 
 
 Gladstone's writing is, unfortunately, not clear, and the 
 word ** manful " reads like "successful." The point 
 was important, as Gladstone's conversion to the ballot 
 was earnestly desired by the Radicals. Holyoake sub- 
 mitted the letter to a notary, who pronounced in favour 
 of " successful," and he then repeated it in semi-con- 
 fidence to parliamentary acquaintances. One of these, 
 Mr. Holden, publicly referred to it, and the press soon 
 
 ^ A New Defence of the Ballot, 8 pp., price 3d.
 
 THE IDEALIST IN POLITICS 39 
 
 announced that Gladstone was prepared to reconsider 
 the question of the ballot. There was some excitement, 
 and Gladstone was naturally annoyed, but Holyoake got 
 a correction inserted in the papers, and wrote to explain 
 the accident to Gladstone. However, the evidence as 
 to corruption at the 1868 elections, which was elicited 
 by a Committee of the House, had great weight with 
 Gladstone and other previous opponents of the ballot. 
 In 187 1 he introduced a Bill for its adoption, and this 
 was passed in the following year. 
 
 The general election of 1868 to which I have just 
 alluded interests us, as it was the occasion of Holyoake's 
 second appeal for a place in Parliament. We saw that 
 he withdrew from the candidature he had meditated in the 
 Tower Hamlets in 1857. In 1868 the Tory Government, 
 which had held office for some time in face of a Liberal 
 majority, fell before Gladstone's strategy. Disraeli had 
 astutely avoided the introduction of any measure 
 which the various Liberal sections would unite in op- 
 posing, and so retained power. When Lord Derby 
 resigned (February 1868) he succeeded to the Premier- 
 ship. But his triumph was brief. Apropos of Disraeli's 
 Irish Reform Bill, Gladstone moved a resolution in 
 favour of the disestablishment of the Irish Church, and 
 secured a majority against the Government. Disraeli 
 clung to office for a time, but yielded in the summer, and 
 the elections were fixed for November. Intense curiosity 
 was felt as to the result of the recent extension of the 
 franchise, which would now take effect for the first time. 
 It was naturally expected that the newly enfranchised 
 working men would swell the Radical representation, 
 and a number of their own spokesmen presented them- 
 selves for election. Holyoake decided to appeal to the 
 electors of Birmingham. Bradlaugh was nominated for 
 Northampton, and Odger, E. O. Greening, ^Ernest
 
 40 THE IDEALIST IN POLITICS 
 
 Jones, and others, sought election. Holyoake (and Odger) 
 did not proceed to an actual contest, and there can be 
 little doubt of their wisdom. All the workinor-men 
 representatives, as well as prominent Radicals like Mill 
 and Roebuck, were defeated. The Liberals were re- 
 turned with so unmistakable a majority that Disraeli 
 hastily made place for Gladstone, and one of the most 
 brilliant periods of Liberal administration began. But 
 all calculations that there would be a specifically demo- 
 cratic outcome of the extension of the franchise were 
 completely upset. The new House was the wealthiest 
 that had ever been returned to Westminster. 
 
 Holyoake's candidature was another of those idealist 
 moves that give an apparently eccentric complexion to 
 his political progress in the sixties. In reality, it was 
 only eccentric in the sense that each step was taken in 
 simple truth to the feeling of the moment, and without 
 regard to conventional political considerations. We 
 saw that he stood out from the Chartists with an ex- 
 plicit trust in the middle class as representatives of 
 the workers. His friends were mainly of the middle 
 class, and their real sympathy with the workers im- 
 pressed him. In the course of the sixties he went on 
 to include wealthy Tories like Lord Elcho in the group, 
 and declared there was only " one class " in the country 
 at the bottom. He seemed to be drifting farther away 
 from the Radical side of Liberalism. Suddenly, in 
 1868, we find him posing as an "independent labour 
 candidate," in the literal meaning of the term. At 
 Birmingham he sets out to oppose Liberals as well 
 as Tories, and makes a powerful plea for the repre- 
 sentation of the workers by men of their own class. 
 In his address he gives prominence to familiar Liberal 
 issues like Irish Disestablishment and national educa- 
 tion, but he distinctly dissociates himself from the
 
 THE IDEALIST IN POLITICS 41 
 
 Liberal party. The Liberals are the " master class," 
 and cannot legislate from the worker's point of view. 
 " A Democracy," he says, " is a great trouble. The 
 Conservative is enraged to have this necessity put upon 
 him ; the Whigs never meant it to come to this ; and 
 I am not sure that many of the Radicals like it." 
 
 A pioneer in so many things, he is fairly entitled to 
 that name in regard to Labour Representation. On 
 that express ground he had opened a candidature in 
 the Tower Hamlets in 1857. That was, I believe, the 
 first case on record. Now, though other workers pre- 
 sented themselves, his was the most explicit plea for 
 the representation of the workers by workers. For 
 many reasons he did not go beyond issuing an address. 
 He could not have taken the oath if he had been re- 
 turned, but there was no chance of his being returned. 
 He retired so early that one hardly finds a reference to 
 him in the Birmingham press, but from his letters of 
 the following years I gather that those workers of Bir- 
 mingham who wanted a "labour" candidate wanted a 
 man fresh from the workshop. Holyoake's real hold 
 in Birmingham was, as we shall see, amongst thought- 
 ful Liberal manufacturers like J. Collings, J. Chamber- 
 Iain, and S. Timmins. In those circumstances it was 
 futile to think of engaging in a contest against Bright 
 and his Liberal colleagues, who were eventually elected. 
 However, his action gave a great impulse to the demand 
 for a Labour Party. His manifesto was circulated as a 
 pamphlet ( Working-class Representation)^ and was widely 
 discussed. He urged the workers to organise and create 
 an election-fund : to cease looking about, as they did, 
 for "a rich Radical," and not to allow their candidates 
 to be pushed to the bottom of the poll by " inane people 
 with money bags about them." The scheme seemed 
 very quixotic forty years ago, like many other sketchy
 
 42 THE IDEALIST IN POLITICS 
 
 projects of his, but we have seen it realised. Indeed, 
 a Labour Representation League was formed at once, 
 and Holyoake was an active member of its Council for 
 a number of years ; until it fell into some of those 
 injudicious ways that are inevitable in an adolescent 
 political body. 
 
 I do not think that this apparent volta face needs any 
 lengthy justification. He had always held that the first 
 duty of the enfranchised middle class was to secure the 
 judicious enfranchisement of the workers. During the 
 struggles of 1866-68 large numbers of them showed 
 that they were far from admitting such a duty ; and 
 since Disraeli's Bill had enfranchised as large a pro- 
 portion of the workers as Holyoake's pet scheme would 
 have done, it was time to test their powers. He desired 
 perfect amity with the Liberals — the *' Liberal-Labour " 
 member was his ideal for the rest of his life — but the 
 agitation over the alleged misdeeds of the Trades 
 Unions had shown that on certain issues the Liberal 
 had a bias for capital and property against labour. 
 Many Liberals and some Conservatives honestly agreed 
 with him. Mr. Somerset Beaumont sent him fifty 
 pounds to help to pay his election-expenses. " If you 
 succeed," he said, " it will give me genuine pleasure 
 to have contributed, however humbly, towards the work- 
 ing classes being represented by a man of so much 
 talent, integrity, and independence as you possess." 
 Stopford Brooke (Beaumont's brother-in-law) wrote that 
 he had read Holyoake's address " with great admiration 
 and interest," and some Liberal members were equally 
 complimentary. T\\q. Westminster Reviezv {^dLn\xz.xy 1869) 
 took his address as the text of its reflections on the 
 elections, and spoke of it and its author in the highest 
 terms. ^ 
 
 ' See quotation in Vol. I, p. 356.
 
 THE IDEALIST IN POLITICS 43 
 
 The failure of 1868 puts a term to his political activity 
 in the sixties, and throws him back upon the broader 
 social work for which he was unquestionably better 
 equipped, with his obtrusive conscience and his simple 
 sympathies. We shall find him making another attempt 
 sixteen years afterwards, but he was fated to watch the 
 great play in the House of Commons only from the 
 Press Gallery, the Speaker's Gallery, or the Strangers' 
 Gallery. He, of course, continued his work as a politi- 
 cal journalist and on the executive of several organisa- 
 tions. In 1869 we find him on the Council of the 
 Reform League, the Labour Representation League, 
 the Education League, the Financial Reform Union, 
 and the Land Tenure Reform Association. But, on 
 the whole, interest returns to his social and educational 
 work. The wide development and organisation of the 
 Co-operative Movement at this period threw a great deal 
 of work on him, the course of events in the Secularist 
 world brought him into prominence again, and he was 
 an active member of the Sunday League, the British 
 Association, the Dialectical Society, and other bodies. 
 Reserving for more connected study his work in the 
 Co-operative Movement, we may indulge, for a chapter, 
 in the pleasanter task of following his varied and 
 interesting activity year by year during the next 
 decade.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 FROM THE strangers' GALLERY 
 
 HoLYOAKE had left his villa at Regent's Park in 1867, 
 the year in which his mother died at Birmingham. The 
 house was large, and his children were dispersing. 
 When, at the end of 1866, the painter Merritt ceased 
 to live with them — I find Holyoake and him dining 
 together later at Woolner's — he took a smaller house 
 at Sudbury for his wife and chambers for himself in 
 Cockspur Street. Mrs. Holyoake loved flowers, and it 
 was a bright relief for her husband to fly to the hills 
 occasionally from the dust and din of his London work. 
 To his journalistic and literary work, his lecturing, 
 and his active assistance of half a dozen committees, 
 was now added the parliamentary secretaryship for 
 Cowen. The secret of longevity which he used to im- 
 part to younger men in the nineties, when they found 
 him surviving so vigorously in a stricken field, was 
 "moderation in all things, work included." That may 
 have been his rule for preserving longevity, but it had 
 little to do with his attaining it. A journalist who knew 
 him in the seventies tells me that after a good morning's 
 work at journalism or research for Cowen, he would go 
 to the House, to help Cowen through the ever-changing 
 debates or continue his work in the rooms of Hale 
 White. In the early morning Cowen and he would 
 return to Cowen's house (where Holyoake had a bed- 
 room for a time), and fling themselves on the cold 
 
 44
 
 FROM THE STRANGERS' GALLERY 45 
 
 turkey that awaited them. Holyoake, who was careless 
 of meals during the day, would make a formidable attack 
 on the bird, and then retire to his room ; and he would 
 be up at eight in the morning for his journalistic work. 
 
 An interesting outcome of his attendance at the House 
 was the placing of the limelight (now electric light) in 
 the clock-tower. He probably had much trouble in 
 keeping Cowen informed as to whether the House was 
 sitting or no at a particular hour, and he noticed that 
 other members and reporters had the same incon- 
 venience. One had to go as far as the gates of the 
 House and see whether certain of the gas-jets in the 
 yard were still burning. The oxy-hydrogen light was 
 then coming into use, and it occurred to him that if 
 one were put in the top of the tower, and lit while 
 the House was sitting, it would prove a great ad- 
 vantage. He suggested this to Lord John Manners, 
 then President of the Board of Works, but his letter 
 was merely acknowledged and filed. When Mr. 
 Ayrton came to the office he found the letter, and 
 carried out the suggestion. 
 
 A more valuable idea occurred to him at the House 
 in 1869, and was accepted by the Government. The 
 Foreign Office was in the habit of receiving " Reports 
 on the state of manufactures and commerce abroad " 
 from the embassies and legations, and it seemed to 
 Holyoake that, while capital enjoyed this advantage, 
 labour should have the corresponding service of re- 
 ports on the labour-market and industrial conditions 
 abroad. He asked Bright to speak to Lord Clarendon, 
 then Foreign Minister, on the subject, and was invited 
 to send in an explicit document. Bright reported that 
 Lord Clarendon found the suggestion "admirable," and 
 had sent instructions to the legations to comply with it. 
 Some of the questions that Holyoake proposed — such
 
 46 FROM THE STRANGERS' GALLERY 
 
 as : " What is the standard of skill among native artisans 
 with whom the EngHshman would have to compete? 
 Do they put their character into their work, or are they 
 without artisan pride?" — were too characteristic for the 
 ordinary official, but the " People's Blue Books " that 
 were produced after 1869 were very useful and inform- 
 ing. Large numbers of Holyoake's impetuous friends 
 of the forties had spread over the globe, when the 
 reaction came, and he knew their struggles. 
 
 When the practice was welcomed by the press, another 
 journalist claimed credit for the scheme, but Lord 
 Clarendon, at least, made it clear that he was acting 
 on Holyoake's letter. His instruction to the legations 
 began : " Mr. Holyoake has made a valuable suggestion 
 as to the steps to be taken to ascertain the facts as regards 
 the position of the artisan and industrial classes in foreign 
 States," and he submitted his instruction to Holyoake 
 before he sent it. He added that he " would be happy 
 to consider any suggestions that Mr. Holyoake might 
 have to offer as to any other matters connected with 
 foreign countries in which the industrial classes in this 
 country take an interest." Some years later Holyoake 
 received a grant from Government to conduct inquiries 
 himself in America. 
 
 In the same year, 1869, Holyoake saw a Bill brought 
 into the House in which he took a peculiar interest. 
 This was the " Evidence Amendment Bill," proposing 
 to substitute an affirmation for an oath in the case of 
 conscientious objectors. I have already indicated the 
 serious injustice that non-Christians incurred when their 
 consciences forbade them to repeat the Christian formula. 
 Many a criminal escaped conviction/ and many a sensitive 
 
 ^ It is related in Francis's History of the Bank of England that a man 
 who robbed it of £_ao,oqo escaped because the essential witness 
 against him could not take the oath.
 
 FROM THE STRANGERS' GALLERY 47 
 
 man remained a virtual outlaw, through the retention 
 of the oath long after large numbers of men had ceased 
 to believe in it. Freethinkers were divided on the sub- 
 ject of taking it, as we saw. Holyoakc had throughout 
 his whole life set his face sternly against any insincere 
 repetition of the formula. It has been said by one of 
 his critics that his strict opposition to it only began when 
 Mr. Bradlaugh was found to take the oath in court with- 
 out hesitation. This statement is wholly wrong. His 
 public career opened with a vehement protest against 
 the making of a Christian declaration by Owenite 
 colleagues, and the grave sacrifices he then accepted, 
 by rebelling against the direction of his chiefs, were 
 repeated many times. When he came to London after 
 his imprisonment he wished to work his way into the 
 legal profession through a clerkship. Mr. Ashurst was 
 more than willing to find room for him, but he had to 
 point out that Holyoake's refusal to take an oath closed 
 that career against him. Several times he forfeited 
 money for the same cause. On one occasion, when he 
 was called up for jury-service, he offered to repeat the 
 formula if the court would take note that he was not 
 affirming a belief in God. There would assuredly be 
 no insincerity in that, but it was a virtual refusal to take 
 the oath and serve, and he had to pay a fine of ten 
 pounds. Once — and once only — his brother Austin 
 took the oath in the interest of their business ; but 
 Austin was a man of obscure and very independent (if 
 not theistic) views at that time, and the circumstances 
 were extremely irritating, as we saw. Usually Holyoake 
 had some Christian man in his employment who could 
 give legal testimony with perfect sincerity.^ 
 
 1 Some of his more determined critics have actually censured this ! 
 It need hardly be said that he did not regard the taking of an oath 
 as an evil in itself, but only when taken by an atheist.
 
 48 FROM THE STRANGERS' GALLERY 
 
 Partly from his knowledge of the injustice suffered — 
 he collected an astounding bundle of cases from the 
 press — and partly from a sense of shame at seeing Free- 
 thinkers take the oath, he worked assiduously for the 
 amendment of the law. We have seen him drawing 
 up petitions and collecting subscriptions, securing the 
 support of men like Colenso, and working with men like 
 Sir John Trelawny. Sir John told him that his pamph- 
 lets on the subject {The Outlaws of Freethought^ etc.) 
 had made a great impression in the House. He induced 
 the Radical leader, Mr. Roebuck, to work for it ; and 
 the other chief worker in Parliament, Mr. Conyngham, 
 was a friend of his. When, in August 1869, an 
 *' Evidence Amendment Bill " was quietly introduced, 
 it passed both Houses in a comparatively short time. 
 " You may justly take to yourself a good share of the 
 credit of having brought things up to that pass," J. S. 
 Mill wrote to Holyoake. It was easy for Mr. Bradlaugh 
 in the following year to secure a " Further Evidence 
 Amendment Act," making the earlier one clearer and 
 extending it to other cases. 
 
 That Holyoake was moved by an honest feeling for 
 sincerity, not by that mysterious " hatred " of Christian 
 forms with which a critic is so often charged, is clear 
 from many instances we have seen. An experience of 
 this period is not without interest in many ways. One 
 of his friendly correspondents was the young Lord 
 Amberley, who had asked Mr. Clay to introduce him 
 to Holyoake at the House. Mill had spoken with 
 great praise of Lord Amberley, and he was one of the 
 men on whom Holyoake relied. Early in 1870 Holy- 
 oake invited him, at the request of the Cowens, to 
 contest Newcastle in the Liberal interest at the next 
 election. Lord Amberley seems to have consented, 
 but he expressed scruples to Holyoake when Cowen
 
 FROM THE STRANGERS' GALLERY 49 
 
 invited him to lay the foundation of a Nonconformist 
 school at Newcastle. Holyoake's reply was lightly 
 phrased, but illustrates his attitude on such matters : 
 
 " My Dkar Lord Amberley, 
 
 " I can well understand that a gentleman may 
 entertain an esoteric objection to the peculiar ceremony 
 proposed for your performance in the north ; but it 
 never occurred to me that an exoteric one might exist. 
 It has seemed to me that, as genius is without sex, 
 nobility is without creed. It recognises without sharing 
 the convictions of the importunate. I have understood 
 that, in order to equalise human destiny, one conspicuous 
 penalty was imposed upon patrician dignity — that of 
 being subject to Church and Chapel Sunday-School 
 Committees ; and that, while we humbler sinners atoned 
 for our faults in sack-cloth and ashes, loftier offenders 
 expiated theirs in laying foundation stones. ..." 
 
 So far from entertaining an unreasonable prejudice, 
 Holyoake very frequently attended a church or chapel, 
 when he was in a fresh town or near the home of some 
 distinguished preacher. In one respect, indeed, he was 
 probably unique amongst militant Freethinkers — in the 
 number of cordial friendships he had with clergymen 
 and the terms in which they spoke of him. The 
 education-controversy, which became acute in 1869 
 and 1870, brought him into frequent contact with the 
 clergy. Holyoake, it need hardly be said, was for 
 universal, free, and secular education, but his positive 
 and social concern for education was as earnest as his 
 wish to see it secularised. He was himself essentially 
 a teacher, and his addresses at educational congresses 
 were always heard with respect. After he had spoken 
 at Birmingham in 1869, the Rev. Septimus Hansard 
 publicly thanked him for his " religious speech," and 
 a Unitarian clergyman supported the phrase. In the 
 
 VOL. II. E
 
 50 FROM THE STRANGERS' GALLERY 
 
 same town, in the previous year, Archdeacon Sandford 
 — the newspaper-report says — " candidly admitted that 
 he had learnt political science from Mr. Holyoake, 
 and only w'ished that, in return, Mr. Holyoake would 
 allow him to give him some lessons in theology."^ 
 
 Of the education-struggle itself it is not necessary to 
 say much here. We have, in fact, now reached a point 
 where the more stirring scenes in which Holyoake 
 moved are within the memory of our generation, and we 
 may refrain from giving the ampler account that earlier 
 movements demanded. The year 1870 is sometimes 
 described as the date of the third great wave of pro- 
 gressive feeling in Europe. It was certainly a year in 
 whose calendar many events were written in letters of 
 gold by men like Holyoake. The Empire of Napoleon 
 HI fell with a crash, and France set up its third and 
 final Republic. The withdrawal of the French troops 
 from Rome left the papacy defenceless, and the Italian 
 troops marched exultantly into the city. Thus two of 
 Holyoake's causes were brought to a successful close. 
 But England had made such advance since 1848 that the 
 echo of continental revolution failed to stir it in 1870. 
 Republicans were active, it is true. A handbill of the 
 year calls on working men to attend "the Republican 
 Demonstration in Trafalgar Square" in their thousands 
 (on Sept. 19th) and "raise the Cry of Long Live the 
 Republic." They met on the Monday evening, after 
 work, in dramatic panoply. The " Men of Finsbury " 
 joined the "Friends from the East-End" on Clerkenwell 
 Green, "with Military Bands and Banners." They 
 picked up the " Italian Republicans" at Hatton Garden, 
 and marched with the " French Republicans " and 
 
 ^ About this time Holyoake was approached by the "Society for the 
 Liberation of Religion from State Patronage," and asked to write for 
 them a pamphlet on the question : "What good does the Church do to 
 the State ? "
 
 FROM THE STRANGERS' GALLERY 51 
 
 "South London Friends" into the Square, and made 
 nervous folks' blood run cold with GalHc phrases. But 
 there was no Wellington to take them seriously. The 
 Georges had long disappeared, and Queen Victoria had 
 gently disarmed Republicanism. Holyoake still — and 
 always — considered a republic the just form of govern- 
 ment, but there was no longer an acute need of the 
 reform. 
 
 Two great ideals now seemed to him to call for the 
 devotion of thoughtful men. Political power had been 
 won. With the last extension of the franchise the 
 people had obtained the means of making their will 
 effective. The broad reforms that were now needed 
 were, firstly, such alleviation of industrial conditions 
 that something like real cultivation of the general mind 
 and character would be possible ; and, secondly, the 
 efficient imparting of this cultivation. For the first 
 change he looked to Co-operation, for the second to the 
 framing of a national system of elementary schools and 
 such diffusion of knowledge amongst adult workers as 
 could be achieved. New groups of men who, from one 
 cause or other, promised great aid in the work, had 
 now come into public life. The Christian Socialists 
 had had a very salutary influence on the clergy. The 
 new statesmen, of the type of Gladstone and Bright, 
 were more or less sensitive to the stigma of there being 
 so large a proportion of ignorance and debasement in 
 the land. Scientific men — the newest group of all — 
 were eager to kindle thought in the mass of the workers. 
 The situation is reflected in a handbill of a meeting that 
 took place in January 1869, to promote a Workmen's 
 International Exhibition in 1870. On that bill Holy- 
 oake's name is found in association with those of 
 Gladstone, Bright, Mundella, Huxley, Norman Lockyer, 
 Tyndall, the Duke of Rutland, the Duke of Argyll, and
 
 52 FROM THE STRANGERS' GALLERY 
 
 many others. There seemed to be a golden prospect 
 of the mental improvement of the masses, and with that 
 much would be gained. 
 
 But the pressing reform was the construction of a 
 national system of education, and all social students 
 were looking anxiously to Mr. Forster and the Liberal 
 Government. Holyoake still belonged to the Birming- 
 ham Education League, and throughout 1870 he 
 addressed large audiences in the interest of free, com- 
 pulsory, and secular education.^ At Norwich, in January, 
 he had 1,200 hearers. Sixty-five years after the first 
 great agitation for elementary schools there were still 
 vast numbers of children without teachers. At Liverpool 
 only 30,000 children out of 90,000 attended school : at 
 Manchester only 25,000 out of 60,000. Two-fifths of 
 the nation's children, between the ages of six and ten, 
 had no education whatever. Thoughtful people were 
 now agreed that a complete scheme of schools was 
 needed, but the eternal religious difficulty confronted 
 statesmen. The situation was so closely parallel to that 
 of 1906, and is still so well remembered, that I need not 
 enlarge on it. Holyoake confirms the view that the 
 Nonconformists were more ready to accept secular 
 education in 1870 than in 1906. He relates that a 
 deputation of 300 Nonconformist clergymen waited upon 
 Mr. Forster at Downing Street. Forster seemed to his 
 friends to be favouring the Church unduly against the 
 
 ^ Mr. Jesse Collings was secretary of the League, and wrote him late 
 in 1869: "We regard your advocacy as of so much importance that 
 your proposition is assented to with much pleasure." The chief difficulty 
 was that, though the Birmingham League was for "unsectarian educa- 
 tion," it could not agree to oppose Bible-lessons. "There are many 
 here," Mr. Collings wrote, "who would prefer a sweeping secular 
 measure, but, knowing that such is not the scheme of the League, they 
 recognise in our movement a great advance." Mr. Chamberlain was, 
 we shall see, for the "sweeping secular measure" — for, as he put it, 
 " wresting education out of the hands of priests of all shades."
 
 FROM THE STRANGERS' GALLERY 53 
 
 Dissenters, and, when they pressed their claims, he 
 asked the clergymen — confidently expecting a denial — 
 if they were prepared to have education without the 
 Bible. Holyoake says there was "an immediate and 
 general response 'without.'" 
 
 How Forster ignored the indication, and adopted the 
 compromise of Bible-lessons in the Board Schools, is 
 well known. Holyoake knew Forster — had been enter- 
 tained by him several times — and his opinion of Forster's 
 much-discussed attitude at that time is of interest. 
 Forster had gravely offended him in 1864, but they were 
 afterwards reconciled, and Forster made noble amends 
 in connection with Holyoake's annuity. Holyoake 
 maintains that ambition is the chief key to his actions. 
 
 "Ambition was stronger in him than any other 
 sentiment. Humanity and liberal principles were, to the 
 end of his days, characteristic of him, and he preferred 
 advancing his personal ascendancy by these means ; but 
 they had not the personal dominion over him that 
 ambition had." ^ 
 
 His " ambition to serve the ends of the Church " was 
 increased, Holyoake thought, by his marriage with Dr. 
 Arnold's daughter. But he adds a further consideration 
 that is, perhaps, more instructive. Forster sometimes 
 attended the meetings at which Holyoake spoke, and was 
 impressed with the number of people in sympathy with 
 Secularism. " He was then quite resolved, should he 
 attain power, that the authority of the State Church 
 should be the agent of national religious instruction," 
 He expressed his feeling to Holyoake before 1864, but 
 Holyoake hints that he was less frank with the Radicals 
 of Bradford, and the secular educationists generally, and 
 so brought trouble upon himself. Recommending that 
 
 ^ Sixty Years, II, 126.
 
 54 FROM THE'STRANGERS' GALLERY 
 
 no reporters should be present, he spoke to a small group 
 of his chief supporters on education before he entered the 
 Cabinet. They all believed that he intended to work for 
 secular education, and, when they afterwards found him 
 doing the reverse, they put an unpleasant interpretation 
 on his objection to there being a written record of his 
 words. Holyoake merely observes that Forster was *' a 
 man of truth," but strongly censures his methods. One 
 seems to discern that Holyoake's interesting chapter on 
 him is affected by the affront of 1864 on the one hand and 
 the generous action of 1875 on the other. Equilibrium 
 has not been quite attained. 
 
 The education-question, on its religious side, was 
 settled by a compromise that — for all its newness of name 
 — had been tried and had failed many times previously. 
 But it was something that a national system of element- 
 ary education had at last been decreed, and Holyoake 
 counted it a great step in social progress. Few other 
 political episodes appear in his calendar in the seventies. 
 Toward the close of 1871 he obtained a knighthood for 
 the elder Mr. Cowen. Through Stansfeld and Bright 
 he had representations made to Gladstone, and the Prime 
 Minister consented. Stansfeld asked in astonishment 
 whether the Republican Cowen would accept the dis- 
 tinction. It was a confusion between the younger and 
 older Cowen. The son was a strong Republican at 
 that time, and refused a title that was afterwards offered 
 to him ; but the father was a royalist, and appreciated 
 the honour. On account of the state of his health he 
 asked Holyoake to have the knighthood gazetted, without 
 his appearing at Court, and again Holyoake succeeded. 
 I find many applications to him at the time that assume 
 he has influence. One curious letter — from a solicitor — 
 begs him to see the Attorney General, and ask if a 
 remorseful client, who has cheated the Revenue, will be
 
 FROM THE STRANGERS' GALLERY 55 
 
 undisturbed if he pays the money. Holyoake got the 
 desired assurance. 
 
 A more interesting event of 1871 was the exposure of 
 what he calls "the Scott-Russell Plot." Mr. Scott- 
 Russell, the constructor of the Great Eastern, put out 
 a remarkable social scheme — almost Socialistic in its 
 generosity — and invited a number of working-men 
 representatives to take it up. Social schemes were 
 common enough, but Mr. Scott-Russell told them that 
 his programme had the effective support of Lord Derby, 
 Lord Salisbury, Mr. Disraeli, and a number of peers and 
 Conservative politicians. Those he invited met for 
 discussion in a comfortable tavern, over comfortable 
 dinners, and planned the new homes, schools, markets, 
 etc., that were to be provided by the State, the reduction 
 of hours, the nationalisation of the railways, and so on. 
 The millennium was coming in too quickly for Holyoake 
 and his friend Mr. R. Applegarth (one of the invited 
 workers), and the injunction to keep the list of peers 
 secret was disquieting. They confided the new scheme 
 to the press, and it quickly vanished. All the peers and 
 politicians whose names had been given repudiated Mr. 
 Scott-Russell, and he passed into obscurity as a social 
 reformer — except for the fame that Holyoake's amusing 
 chapter gives to the occurrence. 
 
 But after 1870 interest in Holyoake's career passes 
 once more from politics to Co-operative and Secularist 
 affairs, and we may glance first at the latter. We left 
 the subject at a point when Mr. Bradlaugh was dividing 
 the leadership of the organisation that Holyoake had 
 created. Whatever may be thought of Mr. Bradlaugh's 
 ambition, it must be said that his rise to power in the 
 Secularist body was inevitable. His great gifts — his 
 commanding voice, impassioned oratory, and powerful 
 frame — destined him for leadership in any small field of
 
 56 FROM THE STRANGERS' GALLERY 
 
 popular agitation that he entered. Holyoake had greater 
 qualities of character and intelligence, but his influence 
 and attraction lay rather with a more cultivated class. 
 Further, as I have said previously, Bradlaugh's concep- 
 tion of their work was more convincing to the majority of 
 the Secularists. In point of fact, attack upon theological 
 beliefs was their chief and distinctive concern ; and they 
 felt that Holyoake's idea of Secularism, as a broad and 
 positive concern for the things of this world, was too 
 broad to take practicable shape and too common to be 
 distinctive. Whether Mr. Bradlaugh was right in 
 clinging to the name Secularist is another matter. 
 
 By 1870 the movement was prosperous, and attracted 
 much attention. A hostile article on " The New Secu- 
 lar Crusade " in the Liverpool Porcupine takes Holyoake 
 as its chief representative, and calls him " one of the 
 ablest, most uncompromising, least personally offensive, 
 and most sincere of Secularist lecturers and writers." 
 About the same date the New York World had a very 
 lengthy article on Secularism, entirely identifying it 
 with Holyoake. " Never have I met," says its London 
 correspondent, " a more interesting man, or one more 
 full of varied knowledge, or with a more pleasant way of 
 communicating it. Although I difter from him widely 
 as the poles on some of the questions which he has 
 devoted a lifetime to solve, I listened to his lucid, candid, 
 and logical explanations and arguments with ever- 
 increasing delight, and parted from him each day with 
 a higher opinion of the sweetness of his character and 
 the strength of his mind." This estimate of Holyoake, 
 and the identification of vSecularism with him, were now 
 common in the press. Yet there can be little doubt that 
 Bradlaugh's influence was far greater than his in the 
 Secularist body. Bradlaugh had founded the National 
 Secular Society, and was its President (with the exception
 
 FROM THE STRANGERS' GALLERY 57 
 
 of one year) to the end. Some writers have represented 
 that this was the first organisation of Freethinkers, but 
 we saw how erroneous this is. Ten years before 
 Bradlaugh founded it there were twenty or thirty Secular 
 Societies in the country, meeting in annual Conferences, 
 and contributing to the maintenance of a common 
 Institute at London. 
 
 In 1870 several efforts were made to bring about more 
 satisfactory relations between the two leaders. In view 
 of the complete diversity of their gifts and characters and 
 associations, and their honest difference of opinion as 
 to work and procedure, these attempts were bound to 
 miscarry. The first effort seems to have been peculiarly 
 unwise. They were induced to hold a public debate in 
 the London Hall of Science (in Old Street) in March. On 
 the first night Holyoake was to defend the thesis that 
 '* The principles of Secularism do not include Atheism," 
 and on the second night that " Secular criticism does not 
 involve Scepticism." A debate on definitions was bound 
 to be inconclusive, and the thin nervous voice and finer 
 argumentation of Holyoake must have seemed, to such 
 an audience, at a disadvantage beside the masterful 
 rhetoric of Bradlaugh. The debate has been published, 
 with the title Secularism, Sceptkism, and Atheism. It is 
 not of good quality, nor, on the whole, is it pleasant 
 reading. Both disputants are enfeebled by an inevitable 
 nervousness. They are polite to each other, however : 
 though in the end Holyoake reminds Bradlaugh that 
 he came into the vineyard at the eleventh hour, and 
 Bradlaugh makes much of the work done since his 
 arrival. 
 
 The experience must have made clear to Holyoake 
 the fundamental nature of their difference, so that when 
 Mr. Charles Watts, who had now joined the body, wrote 
 a little later to offer him a Vice-Presidentship of the
 
 58 FROM THE STRANGERS' GALLERY 
 
 National Secular Society he curtly declined. In itself 
 the proposal that he should play second fiddle so 
 palpably in the movement he had created was not 
 alluring. "Since," Holyoake replied, "the Secular 
 Society upon whose behalf you write inculcates that 
 Atheism is identical with Secularism, I could not take 
 the office of Vice-President in it without confusing the 
 public mind (so far as it may notice the matter) as to the 
 essential difference between Secularism and Atheism 
 which I deem it so important to keep clear." Some 
 years later he accepted the offer, under pressure from 
 his friends ; though he had quickly to resign it again. 
 The wiser course for him in the circumstances was to 
 remain outside the National Secular Society. 
 
 In the course of the year, however, he learned that there 
 was a great deal of discontent in the Secular Society, 
 and the question of having a second organisation was 
 forced on him. In the winter he visited Scotland, where 
 he had made so many pleasant tours. To his great 
 mortification he now found many halls closed against 
 him. The City Hall was withheld at Perth, although 
 250 reputable townsmen, including several clergymen, 
 petitioned the Lord Provost to let him have it. At 
 Dundee the Unitarians refused the usual hire of their 
 school-room. At Glasgow the City Hall was closed 
 against him. ^ The Scotch Secularists told him that this 
 was the result of Mr. Bradlaugh's lectures, and they 
 wrote him again later to complain that Mr. Bradlaugh 
 
 ' While he was at Glasgow Holyoake received a challenge to a 
 debate from an obscure champion, who promised "satisfactory testi- 
 monials" as to his "ability and respectability, " and thought it absurd 
 for a Republican to ask more. Holyoake answered : 
 
 "Sir, 
 
 " Your letter must be addressed to me in mistake. It is a 
 challenge, and I am neither a prize-fighter nor a gladiator. I was told in 
 Glasgow that if you sent your letter to Mr. Kelly, secretary of a branch 
 of the National Secular Society, and furnish him with your size and 
 weight, you would hear something to your advantage."
 
 FROM THE [STRANGERS' GALLERY 59 
 
 refused to insert in the National Reformer their account 
 of Holyoake's visit. From Leicester, where there was 
 a strong and admirable group under the lead of Mr. 
 Josiah Gimson and Mr. Michael Wright, he heard fresh 
 complaints and further promises of support to himself. 
 Finally a group of Secularists in Lancashire and 
 Yorkshire wrote to him to suggest the resuscitation of 
 the Reasoner, as the organ of those who preferred his 
 broader conception of the Secularist ideal. After some 
 correspondence they formed a financial committee to 
 protect him against any possible loss in connection 
 with it. 
 
 It is these events that led to the revival of the 
 Reasoner in January 1871, as the monthly organ of his 
 followers. It was printed by the Manchester Co- 
 operative Printing Society, and half the paper was 
 devoted to Co-operation. Naturally, it fell between the 
 two stools ; especially as the Co-operators had their new 
 and able organ, the Co-operative NewSy by September 
 187 1. Captain (later Admiral) Maxse wrote of it as an 
 " excellent publication." " I hope you will allow me," he 
 said, " as a very small and inadequate expression of my 
 sympathy with the movement as well as of my admira- 
 tion for the untiring energy, industry, and talent you 
 devote to the cause of Freethought and Progress to 
 make good by the enclosed cheque " some deficit that 
 was announced. Mr. Allsop, Mr. Coningham, and 
 others, were not less complimentary ; but the circula- 
 tion was small, and it ceased with the July number 
 (1872). The chief effect of the venture was to foster the 
 ill-repressed irritation in the movement, which we shall 
 find coming to a head in a few years. Before that time, 
 however, a number of incidents occurred that illustrate 
 Holyoake's position in one way or other. 
 
 One of the contrasts between Bradlaughand Ilolyoake
 
 6o FROM THE STRANGERS' GALLERY 
 
 is curiously illustrated in their relations with the clergy. 
 We have already seen many instances of Holyoake's 
 friendly relations with them, and many more occur 
 during the seventies. On one occasion (in 1874) he 
 dined with Archbishop Manning at the invitation of 
 Mr. Knowles, editor (at that time) of the Contemporary. 
 On another occasion he cheerfully accepted an invitation 
 to meet " General Booth " at dinner, though the 
 " General " failed to come. In 1874 he sent a memorial 
 to Dean Stanley with a request for his signature. " I 
 do not often sign petitions," the Dean answered, " but 
 this seems to be so worthy that — even although solicited 
 — I gladly sign it ; and not the less gladly because it 
 comes to me from yourself." 
 
 Occasionally he had correspondence with bishops of 
 the Established Church, and, though one can look for no 
 cordiality in this, one often finds respect. The Bishop 
 of Gloucester was very amiable in acknowledging a 
 paper that Holyoake sent him in 1870. In 1872 he 
 heard the Bishop of Peterborough (Dr. Magee) attack 
 Secularism in Norwich Cathedral, and wrote to ask the 
 bishop to use his influence in the letting of a hall at 
 Norwich for a reply. Dr. Magee's chivalry did not ^o 
 so far as that, and Holyoake was disappointed at his 
 courteous evasions. A Dissenter of the town had 
 offered to let him have a hall " if he knew it would not 
 displease the Bishop." I find, however, a pleasanter 
 letter to him from Dr. Magee at an earlier date (April 
 1870), which he seems to have overlooked. " I desire," 
 the bishop says, " to do the fullest justice to the motives 
 of opponents like yourself, and am glad to think that 
 you can do the like justice to mine." In 1872, also, he 
 had some correspondence with the Bishop of Oxford. 
 Dr. Wilberforce had attacked the Oddfellows in the 
 House of Lords in 1852 for having lectures written by
 
 FROM THE STRANGERS' GALLERY 6i 
 
 an atheist. The Grand Master of the Order asked him 
 to read them (which he confessed he had not done), and, 
 when he found their perfect neutrality as to theology 
 and their excellent quality, he withdrew his charges. In 
 1872 Holyoake brought to the notice of the Bishop a 
 grievance of the poor villagers against their Vicar in 
 some part of his diocese (Gawcott). He wrote with 
 little confidence, but Dr. Wilberforce had the matter 
 investigated and justly arranged. 
 
 In the same year Holyoake had an adventure at 
 Brighton of which he has given an amusing account in 
 his Sixty Years (ch. xcvii — reprinted from the Newcastle 
 Chronicle of the time). Holyoake was, as usual, attending 
 the meeting of the British Association. Amongst the 
 scientific men who came over from France to attend it 
 was Holyoake's friend, W. de Fonvielle, whose brother 
 Ulric had been shot by Prince Pierre Napoleon. As 
 they stood on the platform the ex-Emperor entered, and 
 was received with great deference, much to the disgust 
 of the French. Napoleon knew De Fonvielle's feeling 
 towards him, and watched his movements anxiously. 
 In the middle of the President's address there was some 
 whispering between De Fonvielle and a neighbour, and 
 the Frenchman hurried from the room. He returned 
 presently, in great agitation, with a small oval parcel — 
 "about the size of an Orsini bomb" — which he showed 
 to his neighbour, and then stuck in his own pocket. 
 The dumb-show probably had a suspicion of tragedy for 
 the ex-Emperor, but it was really a small comedy. The 
 clergyman who sat near De Fonvielle took him to be 
 an attendant, and asked him to ^o to the address of a 
 " Mr. Glaisher " with a note. Glaisher happened to be 
 the name of a former colleague whom De Fonvielle had 
 long sought, and he went with alacrity. To his great 
 indignation he found that he had been sent to a chemist's
 
 62 FROM THE STRANGERS' GALLERY 
 
 shop for a box of throat-lozenges, in the very middle of 
 the presidential speech ! The explanation never reached 
 Napoleon, who may have dwelt on the strange passage 
 when the ex-Empress pressed him to leave at once and he 
 did so. In any case Holyoake's friend had hastened his 
 departure. He found Napoleon described in the list of 
 foreign visitors as '' Emperor of the French " (two years 
 after Sedan), and he and others made stormy protests. 
 The aged Allsop wrote gaily to ask Holyoake why he 
 had missed shooting Napoleon. What he really did was 
 to protect Napoleon from offence, urging on De Fonvielle 
 and others that he was " the guest of the nation." He 
 wrote also to Stanley the explorer, who spoke at the 
 meeting, to thank him for avoiding some obvious 
 opportunity to give offence to Napoleon. He seems 
 to have been acquainted with Stanley, as Hallett of 
 Brighton, and S. Timmins of Birmingham, write to ask 
 him to induce Stanley to lecture for them. 
 
 The following year (1873) was marked chiefly by the 
 death of John Stuart Mill. The reader has learned 
 enough from the letters I have quoted about the relations 
 of Mill and Holyoake, nor is this an occasion for dilating 
 on Mill's character and powers. There is, however, an 
 episode that occurred after Mill's death that calls for 
 some notice. Mr. A. Hay ward, Q.C., wrote in the 
 Times an article on Mill that contained unpleasant 
 reflections on his character in earlier years. The Rev. 
 vStopford Brooke commented severely on the article in 
 the course of his sermon on the following Sunday, 
 and received a letter from Hayward that purported to 
 support his reflections. The letter was also sent to 
 the Times, but that journal refused to insert it, and 
 Hayward then had it printed, and copies sent to a 
 large number of people. Amongst others Gladstone 
 received a copy, and he was so moved by it that he
 
 FROM THE STRANGERS' GALLERY 63 
 
 refused to subscribe to the fund for raising a memorial 
 to Mill. 
 
 Most of Mill's friends decided to treat the matter with 
 silent contempt. Holyoake, however, was one of those 
 who felt that reticence in the presence of imputations 
 is generally unwise. The problem is a delicate one, 
 especially where there is a large amount of fact in the 
 imputation, and one has to weigh the chances of recom- 
 mending a favourable or mitigating aspect of them 
 against the certainty of giving a much wider publicity 
 to the facts themselves. Holyoake wrote a pamphlet 
 in Mill's defence {John Sticart Ulill, as the Working 
 Classes Kyiew Hint) — chiefly, he says somewhere, in the 
 hope of altering Gladstone's feeling. But the pamphlet 
 does not embody all the material he had ; and as he 
 has noticed the subject at some length in his last work 
 {Bygones Worth Reinenibering), and other recent writers 
 have dealt with it, with less discrimination, it is advisable 
 to reopen it here. 
 
 Hay ward's charges were, in substance, that Mill was, 
 in his youth, an ardent advocate of free love and of the 
 use of preventives of conception. Mill, he said, had 
 got into trouble with the police for distributing copies 
 of a free-love pamphlet, and for casting directions on 
 the use of restrictives into servants' areas. Mr. Christie, 
 in the pamphlet he wrote at the time, strongly denies that 
 Mill himself came into collision with the police. Mill was, 
 he says, one of a group of youths some of whom were 
 distributing this literature when the police interfered. On 
 the other hand, Stopford Brooke wrote to Holyoake : 
 
 "The letters in the 'Examiner' [quoted by Hayward] 
 do not exist at all, but I believe Mill was, when a boy 
 of 18 [in 1824], taken up by the police — at Wimbledon, 
 I think — for being one of a few young men who were 
 dispensing some instructions for cohabitation without
 
 64 FROM THE STRANGERS' GALLERY 
 
 results. From what I hear, this is true. It is one of 
 the fooHsh things enthusiastic boys do. . . ." 
 
 It seems to me quite immaterial to settle whether Mill 
 was aiding- in the distribution of the pamphlet or no.^ 
 Indeed, the whole question of the opinions he held in 
 his immature days seems hardly worth discussing, and 
 Gladstone, who from his own knowledge of him in 
 mature years called him "the saint of Rationalism," 
 pushed moral delicacy to strange lengths in allowing 
 these stories to influence him. The more interesting 
 question is, whether Mill retained these ideas to any 
 extent in his later years. 
 
 When the trouble arose in 1873 Holyoake wrote that 
 he had, at a much earlier date, received a letter from 
 Mill emphatically repudiating the opinions of his youth. 
 Mr. Christie at once begged him for a copy of this all- 
 important letter, and Holyoake replied that he had 
 returned it at the time. He must certainly have received 
 some kind of retractation from Mill. 
 
 The curious point is that, though I know he returned 
 a number of letters to Mill, these letters v/ere regarded 
 by him as compromising, rather than exculpating, Mill. 
 In a manuscript note, dated Nov. 22nd, 1848, he writes : 
 
 " Returned several letters to Mill, being liable to 
 apprehension they might fall into the hands of the 
 authorities, thinking Mr. Mill would not like his corre- 
 spondence to be read by them. Of course, I could have 
 destroyed the letters, but I returned them to him that he 
 might be sure they were not liable to get into alien hands." 
 
 ' As the story grew, it came to be stated that Mill was the author 
 of a book on the subject entitled What is Love? That is a patent 
 absurdity. Mr. Christie and Professor Bain attribute it to Richard 
 Carlile, and Bain adds that he heard on good authority that Francis 
 Place "assisted in its composition." Bain admired his pamphlet, but 
 held that Mill was actually taking part in the distribution of the Malthu- 
 sian literature when he was apprehended by the police, and that he 
 never abandoned his inner conviction on that point.
 
 FROM THE STRANGERS' GALLERY 65 
 
 He refers to these letters in his pamphlet on Mill (p. 26). 
 Letters that needed to be kept away from the " author- 
 ities" were in some way very heterodox; though I can 
 imagine that Holyoake was hypersensitive at the time. 
 Their character seems to be shown in a letter of 1848, 
 and half a letter of 1847, that Holyoake preserved. The 
 1848 letter I have already quoted (Vol. I, p. 339). The 
 torn half of the 1847 letter runs : 
 
 " Of practical conclusions there are also several 
 from which I should decidedly differ, particularly 
 Communism. 
 
 " The use made of the word * morality ' is likely to 
 give an idea of much greater agreement with the ordinary 
 moral notions, emanating from and grounded on religion, 
 than I should suppose you intend. Most people do not 
 understand by morality a subject as open to discussion 
 as any other, and on which persons have different 
 opinions, but think it a name for the set of opinions 
 they have been accustomed to." 
 
 In the letter of 1S48, the reader will remember. Mill 
 speaks of " the present constitution of the family and 
 the whole of the priestly morality founded on it" as 
 "intolerant, slavish, and selfish." He is not speaking 
 of its economic aspect, because he assumes that he 
 "differs fundamentally" from Holyoake. And at the 
 close of the letter he adds : " It was quite unnecessary 
 to return my notes, as it is a matter of complete 
 indifference to me whom they are seen by." 
 
 These interesting fragments suggest that Mill was 
 still ethically heterodox in his forty-second year. It is 
 true that in his Autobiography (p. 167) he speaks again 
 of the institution of the family as needing " more funda- 
 mental alterations than remain to be made in any other 
 great social institution," but here it may well be held 
 that he refers to its social or economic aspects. He 
 
 VOL. II. F
 
 66 FROM THE STRANGERS' GALLERY 
 
 is praising the St. Simonians and their declaration of 
 "the perfect equality of man and woman." They were 
 agreed as to the economic change, but differed radically 
 as to moral relaxation. However, that is a subject 
 for students of Mill. I am concerned only with those 
 letters of his to Holyoake which throw some light on 
 his ethical development. I give them without hesita- 
 tion, as Mill's character was by that time, if not always, 
 one of recognised solidity. How long he retained those 
 opinions on theoretic morality I have not to determine. 
 He certainly always retained his view of the morality of 
 restricting families, in which Holyoake fully concurred. 
 But in his later years, at least. Mill did no more than 
 advise that the date of marriage should be postponed. 
 In his pamphlet on Mill Holyoake says (p. 15) : "Mr. 
 Mill always confined himself to advising deferred mar- 
 riages, and so strongly did he hold this view that he 
 fiercely assailed any who by accident or ignorance 
 imputed to him complicity with any other suggestion." 
 Mr. Stopford Brooke and Professor Bain are likely to 
 have been better informed, and they hold that in his early 
 years Mill advocated the deliberate restriction of families 
 by artificial means. But he only wrote one short and 
 not very clear paragraph on the subject. To this para- 
 graph Holyoake adduced a parallel from the Rev. Dr. 
 Jowett's introduction to the Republic : and the paragraph 
 was supplied to Holyoake (I gather from his letter) by 
 the Rev. Stopford Brooke! It must, in face of Mill's 
 explicit and insistent assurance, be admitted that he 
 never wished to advocate the use of artificial restrictions 
 in any passage of his works. The letters I have quoted 
 are mainly of interest on the broader question of conjugal 
 relations. On this question he clearly retained unpopular 
 views. 
 
 In concluding I give a letter or two on Holyoake's
 
 FROM THE STRANGERS' GALLERY 67 
 
 pamphlet. There is no acknowledgment from Glad- 
 stone, for whom it was chiefly intended, but Lord Derby 
 and Lord Salisbury acknowledged it with great friendli- 
 ness, and Salisbury entered the list of subscriptions for 
 the Mill memorial with a cheque for ^50. Mr. Arthur 
 Arnold found it " most interesting," but not quite 
 accurate and not convincing on the chief and most 
 delicate point. He thought Mr. Christie's pamphlet 
 "most deplorable." Dean Stanley wrote a fine letter: 
 
 " Dear Sir, 
 
 " On my return from a few weeks on the 
 continent on Monday I got your tract on Mr. Mill, 
 with its kind superscription. You must allow me to 
 express my sense of the courtesy which directed your 
 words, and also the great interest with which I have 
 read the tract itself. It is needless to speak of the 
 differences which, I presume, exist between us, but I 
 cannot help entertaining the hope, inspired by such 
 expressions as both now and on other occasions I have 
 heard or read in relation to yourself, that the day may 
 come, perhaps is now come, when the different classes 
 or institutions of the country will be brought into closer 
 understanding with each other, and when party spirit 
 will cease to express the estranging and destructive in- 
 fluence that has so often embittered both our sympathies 
 and antipathies. 
 
 " Believe me to be 
 
 " Yours very faithfully, 
 
 "A. P. Stanley." 
 
 Lastly, I quote Mr. J. Morley, who was then editing 
 the Fortnightly. The manuscript of the pamphlet was 
 first sent to him for insertion, and he replied : 
 
 "July 14, 1873. 
 " Dear Mr. Holyoake, 
 
 " I have read your paper with the most genuine 
 interest and admiration. But on the whole I think it
 
 68 FROM THE STRANGERS' GALLERY 
 
 comes too late for the ' Fortnightly ' — because the readers 
 of that have already had a funeral oration on our illus- 
 trious friend. Yours is admirable for its precision of 
 phrase — and it is interesting for the new side of Mill 
 which it presents to us younger friends of his. But, 
 once more, it is too late for ns. Wherever it appears, 
 it must rank among the three or four eloges of Mill 
 which are truly worthy of the theme. . . . 
 
 " I wish you could be induced to write for me an 
 autobiographical chapter or two in the history of British 
 bigotry. Why should you not? 
 
 " Yours very truly, 
 
 "John Morley." 
 
 Mr. Morley's estimate of the pamphlet will probably 
 be accepted, but so, probably, will that of Mr. Arthur 
 Arnold. On the point that especially inspired the 
 writing of it, it is not wholly convincing. One wonders 
 to-day whether it would not have been better to have 
 taken a bolder line. Mr. Gladstone did not think less 
 of St. Augustine for the deeds of his adolescence. It 
 is remarkable that so balanced a judge should allow the 
 discovery of early laxity on Mill's part — a laxity purely 
 theoretical in its nature, and repudiated in mature years 
 : — to weigh against the sterling character he knew. Cer- 
 tainly, the essential difference between wilful rebellion 
 against a recognised law and honest challenge of the 
 ground or utility of that law was not sufficiently pressed 
 by Mill's friends. Ethical intolerance of opinions is 
 not much less regrettable than theological.
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL WORK 
 
 To understand much of Holyoake's work in the Co- 
 operative and Secularist and other movements in the 
 seventies it is imperative to bear in mind the social 
 position he had reached. By his sixtieth birthday he 
 found himself moving in a circle that lay far beyond the 
 most soaring dreams of the young worker of forty years 
 before. Little more than thirty years had passed since 
 he left his native town, penniless and almost unknown, 
 and wrote in his diary that " if he starved in a London 
 garret he would not be without illustrious precedents." 
 Now, in spite of his sturdy persistence in outspoken 
 heresy and his insistence on the cause of the workers, 
 he was welcomed in some of the most brilliant groups 
 in London. He breakfasted occasionally with Glad- 
 stone, dined often with Chamberlain, Morley, Dilke, 
 Woolner, Knowles, and Tennyson, and corresponded 
 with everybody. I reserve the more interesting letters 
 he has preserved for a future chapter, and will merely 
 give a general idea of his position and work. 
 
 A ceremonious card, bearing a date close to his sixtieth 
 birthday, has the inscription : " The Mayor of Birming- 
 ham [Mr. Chamberlain] requests the honour of the 
 company of Mr. G. J. Holyoake at dinner at the 
 Oueen's Hotel to meet the Right Honorable W. E. 
 Gladstone, M.P." It is a comprehensive indication of 
 
 the recognition he had won, prophet as he was, in his 
 
 69
 
 7o SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL WORK 
 
 own country. Mr. Jesse Collings was a warm friend 
 of his ; Mr. Chamberlain a frequent and flattering 
 correspondent. Prominent Birminghamians sought his 
 influence at London, and archdeacons proclaimed them- 
 selves his pupils. Mr. S. Timmins, for instance, a 
 well-known Birmingham merchant, sought through him 
 of Sir W. Gregory the position — the imaginary position, 
 as it proved — of consul for Ceylon. Mr. Timmins was 
 a friend, and when Holyoake again talked of contesting 
 Birmingham (in 1873), he wrote him a confidential letter 
 that has interest to-day : 
 
 "... As to our politics here, I think you are mis- 
 informed. There is no chance of the return of any 
 working man. The '400' are evidently well united, 
 and will go for the three members as they are. There 
 has been some talk of a W. M. member, and some 
 meetings have been held. The movers (if they pro- 
 ceed at all) are determined to have a genuine W. M. 
 of their own order. ... In all the frankness of real 
 friendship, you would not have any better nor perhaps 
 so good a chance. . . . With the present constituency 
 aud the ballot you have no chance here. In fact we 
 are in a devil of a state. If there should be any split 
 among the Liberals, one, and I am almost certain, two 
 Tories would be returned. The W.M. element, big 
 strikes, etc., etc., have made very many of the less hearty 
 Liberals pause, and many will, under cover of the ballot, 
 vote against some of their own candidates. ... In a 
 
 single election there is nothing to fear ; but this d d 
 
 three-cornered business and the ballot (which I never 
 did approve), combined with the inertia of the masses 
 of voters (at least one third won't vote), seriously peril 
 our prospects." 
 
 How the Liberals were, in fact, routed is historical. 
 All the malcontents (Timmins specifies "the Contagious 
 Diseased people and the Alliance people" as chiefly
 
 SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL IVORK 7! 
 
 responsible) joined against Gladstone. Even Stopford 
 Brooke called it " an alliance of Beer and Bible." But 
 Holyoake must have smiled when he read that the 
 adoption of the Ballot was fatal to his prospects. He 
 had predicted as much. 
 
 A small selection of correspondence — reserving the 
 letters of Gladstone and Chamberlain — will convey a 
 sufficient idea of his movements in London. Mr. A. 
 R. Cluer (the living London magistrate) writes, after 
 looking over a few of his articles ; 
 
 " My Dear Mr. Holyoake, 
 
 *' I have only just had time to peruse the 
 papers which you so kindly sent me, and which I return 
 at once lest mishap should befall them in sunnier lands 
 even than Italy. To praise them would be assumption 
 and presumption ; but let me say this, that it has given 
 me very keen pleasure to read and enjoy them. You 
 touch nothing that you do not adorn and beautify. ..." 
 
 Lady Trelawny in one of her many letters, says : 
 
 "... It is very good of you to say you enjoyed our 
 little party. For myself I can truly say that I feel it a 
 great gain to have made the personal acquaintance of 
 one for whom I have long entertained a very real respect 
 and regard — even as an abstraction. ..." 
 
 '&' 
 
 And again : 
 
 " Sir John begs me to thank you very much indeed 
 for giving him the great pleasure afforded by the know- 
 ledge of your appreciation of his work. The sympathy 
 of a judgment which he respects as he does yours is 
 very precious." 
 
 Mr. Samuel Butler fell into correspondence with him in 
 1872 about ErewJion. " I trust my friends will not expect 
 too much," he said, " for I have a strong suspicion that
 
 72 SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL WORK 
 
 Erewhon is about as good as anything I am capable of." 
 In 1873 Holyoake, with other critics, fell into the error 
 of attributing Colymbria to him, and Butler wrote : 
 
 " Will you allow me, in confidence, to say that I have 
 had nothing whatever to do with it, and never so much 
 as heard of the existence of the book till it had been 
 published. I quite agree with you, however, in cordially 
 liking the book, and am well pleased that you should 
 have given me the credit of it. I don't wish to disclaim 
 it publicly. The author and I understand one another 
 on that point. He is a friend of mine, but I had no 
 idea of what he was doing, and, between you and me and 
 the post ^ the rivalry is too close for me not to be a trifle 
 jealous, and not to wish that the form of the book had 
 been different. However, it does not matter a straw, and 
 I am not going to contradict the authorship of it as 
 assigned to me, partly because the author wishes to lie 
 hid, and is only too glad if the public is thrown on a 
 wrong scent, and partly because it will throw the scent 
 off my real book, * The Fair Haven.' ..." 
 
 Mrs. Lynn Linton, the novelist, ranged herself against 
 his critics in 1872, and saw much of him. She had 
 somewhat hastily married his earlier colleague (W. J. 
 Linton) in 1858, but, though she was an Agnostic and 
 Republican, his careless ways proved unbearable, and 
 she separated from him. In the later sixties she began 
 to modify her opinions on woman's work, and to use her 
 journalistic skill against the *' advanced women." Her 
 criticisms provoked considerable excitement and many 
 attacks, and she sought Holyoake's aid and advice in 
 her defence. His conviction lay rather with her lady 
 opponents, but his sense of justice and chivalry was 
 with her. They had, moreover, much in common in 
 regard to religion, politics, and co-operation. " What 
 you have written to my knowledge has been grand and 
 beautiful," she wrote in 1873. " When I return to
 
 SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL WORK 73 
 
 London," she wrote later, " I want to know more of the 
 working men and their political life. Will you help 
 me? And what I can do to help on your Co-operative 
 Societies I will." 
 
 He dined often with Sir Charles and Lady Dilke, Sir 
 J. Stansfeld, and at other houses where the talk sparkled. 
 A note from the sculptor, Woolner, whom he met at 
 Tennyson's, runs : 
 
 "Dear Mr. Holyoake, 
 
 " Next Tuesday at seven o'clock. Grouse ! — 
 Will you come ? 
 
 " Yours truly, 
 
 "T. Woolner." 
 
 He was much at Tennyson's, but as the chief object 
 was to discuss Co-operative matters with Mrs. Tennyson, 
 I reserve her letters to the next chapter. Mr. James 
 Knowles counted him as a contributor to the Contem- 
 porary and as a personal friend. " An editor never pays 
 compliments — they are too costly," he wrote to Holy- 
 oake ; but it was only to give weight to his many 
 compliments. In 1877 the Contemporary "passed into 
 the hands of Samuel Morley and a few more strong 
 Evangelicals" (Mr. Knowles wrote), and he designed 
 the Nineteenth Century, which was christened by Mr. 
 Tennyson. 
 
 "I earnestly wish," he said, "to be allowed to add 
 your name to the list of my supporters. Will you do 
 me the favour to permit this? . . . My object is to keep 
 at least one absolutely free and open, unprejudiced and 
 impartial, organ in the Press. I propose to keep the 
 Nineteenth Cetitury in my own hands so as to prevent 
 any such interference with it as the Contemporary has 
 now been subjected to. I can assure my friends the 
 'fair field and no favour' which it is the purpose of my 
 life, almost, to secure for honest debate and discussion."
 
 7< SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL WORK 
 
 Trouble arose with Mr. A. Strahan, and Mr. Knowles 
 submitted the matter to Holyoake, as well as to Huxley 
 and Tyndall. Holyoake's letter " about Strahan and 
 his libels" moved him. 
 
 " It is," he said, " one of the wisest and kindest I ever 
 received in my life. If all my friends feel and think as 
 you do, I can indeed afford to let Mr. Strahan write [I 
 adopt Holyoake's shocked modification of the letter] till 
 he is weary of it." 
 
 " I not only read all your letters," another note runs, 
 " but pretty well anything else of yours — as and when 
 I find it — and always with pleasure and advantage." 
 Strahan had written in the meantime to secure Holy- 
 oake for the Contemporary ! Holyoake pleasantly de- 
 clined. He was by this time so familiar in the brilliant 
 circle that supported Mr. Knowles and Mr. Morley that 
 when the " Association of Liberal Thinkers " was started 
 (in 1878), with Huxley as President, Holyoake was 
 nominated Vice-President, together with Tyndall, 
 Clifi"ord, and Kalisch. 
 
 Older friends like F. Newman, Stansfeld, Allsop, 
 etc., were still in constant correspondence. Newman's 
 letters in 1875 have some interest in connection with 
 the well-known champion of the agricultural labourer, 
 Joseph Arch. In the spring of 1874 Holyoake had 
 received a curious letter from a Mr. Sandwith, pro- 
 posing that he should save Arch's life by kidnapping 
 him and handing him over to the care of Mr. Sandwith ! 
 Holyoake showed the letter to Arch, who replied : " So 
 long as I can stand on my feet, I must labour on." 
 Francis Newman wrote in a different vein. He was 
 working ardently himself in the labourer's cause, and 
 was greatly incensed at Arch for silently looking on 
 while "murderous attacks" were made on Gibson Ward.
 
 SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL WORK 75 
 
 He tells Holyoake it is " Henry Taylor who has twisted 
 Joseph Arch away," and complains strongly of the 
 attacks on himself by Lloyd Jones and Alexander Mac- 
 donald. Holyoake was still working in the Labour 
 Representation League, and attended the dinner given 
 in 1874 to the first Labour Members, T. Burt (a friend 
 of his) and A. Macdonald. 
 
 His work during these years, after the second collapse 
 of the Reasoner, consisted chiefly in lecturing for Co- 
 operative, Secular, and other societies, and journalism. 
 His American work was increased by a correspondence 
 for the Boston Globe, and in 1875 he wrote a short article 
 on the Anti-Corn Law League for a cyclopaedia {John- 
 son's American Cydopccdid) that was being edited by the 
 President of Columbia College. Bright revised the 
 manuscript of the historical sketch for him, so that 
 American readers may trust it. The pay was quite 
 American. He asked, hesitatingly, four pounds, when 
 Mr. Leland "produced a handful of sovereigns, and 
 said: 'You had better take seven.'" The sketch is 
 reproduced in his Sixty Years (chs. xcix and c). The 
 many invitations I have quoted will show that he had 
 now a high journalistic and literary repute. In addition 
 to his four or five connections with the press, and 
 his frequent articles in the magazines, he had two 
 large works in preparation that promised success. The 
 first volume of his History of Co-operation in England 
 was published in 1875, and, in view of the great public 
 interest in the growing movement, was welcomed. 
 Taking the hints given him by Mr. Knowles, Mr. 
 Morley, and others, he was also arranging material for 
 his autobiography. 
 
 But his more prosperous course was overshadowed by 
 illness from time to time through the seventies, and at 
 last was gravely threatened. His general health was
 
 76 SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL WORK 
 
 poor, and his eyes suffered so much that he came at 
 length to entertain the terrible prospect of blindness. 
 Mr. Brudenell Carter — who speaks of his "pupils tied 
 down by multiple adhesions " — very generously operated 
 on him, and several physician-friends helped him, but 
 he was long unable to do any work. No one at that 
 time can have dreamed that three further decades of life 
 and work lay before him. His friends thought merely 
 of securing an annuity that would relieve his remaining 
 years of financial anxiety. Mr. J. S. Storr, who only 
 knew Holyoake by public repute, seems to have started 
 the idea of a public subscription, and Major Bell, Mr. 
 Morrison, Mr. George Anderson, Mr. Josiah Gimson, 
 and other friends, at once undertook the collection. It 
 realised a sum of ^2,254. With the bulk of this an 
 annuity of ;^ioo was purchased, and some ;^5oo was 
 given to, or invested for, Holyoake. 
 
 Apart from the generosity of many of the givers (Mr. 
 George Anderson gave ;^20o), the breadth and character 
 of the list of subscribers afforded Holyoake the deepest 
 gratification. Mr. Bradlaugh collected £2^^ los. through 
 the National Reformer, a large sum in itself for so poor a 
 body, and a pleasant augury.^ Thirty or forty Co-oper- 
 ative Societies contributed, as did all the leading Co- 
 operative workers (T. Hughes, W. Morrison, E. V. 
 Neale, etc.). Their letters enhanced the value of their 
 gifts. Huxley, Tyndall, and all his literary acquaint- 
 ances and older friends appeared in the list, and a 
 number of clergymen courageously put their names to 
 
 ' In the previous year, 1874, Bradlaug-h had raised ^550 by collection 
 for the widow of Austin Holyoake. Until his death in that year Austin 
 had remained a close associate of Bradlaugh's. The printing and 
 publishing business which had passed to him at the failure of the 
 Fleet Street House was bought of the widow for ;C650, and entrusted 
 (for the Secular body) to Mr. Charles Watts. It is curious to note 
 that Mrs. Besant entered the Secular Society in the year of Austin 
 Holyoake's death.
 
 SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL WORK TJ 
 
 it. Mr. Forster, he found afterwards, was an anony- 
 mous giver of £,20. In replying to his printed letter 
 of thanks W. Morrison assured him that he had ** felt 
 very great satisfaction in having been connected with 
 such a movement." A clergyman (Mr. C. Voysey) 
 wrote, after reading it : " If it were not that you show 
 yourself in your true colours, my pity for your mis- 
 fortune might have overlaid my reverence for your 
 character and your life." 
 
 I have referred to Mr. Bradlaugh's generous share in 
 the testimonial, and spoken of it as a pleasant augury, 
 but the events that quickly followed extinguished all 
 hope of a reconciliation between the two men for a 
 time. The collection for Holyoake was made in 1S75, 
 and Bradlaugh's prompt participation in it led to an 
 interchange of courtesies. In the following year mutual 
 friends brought the two men together, and (to use 
 Bradlaugh's words) an entente cordiale was formed. In 
 1877, however, further trouble arose, and sent them 
 wider apart than ever. Though I have ample material 
 for writing a minute account of all these differences, it 
 will be proper to treat them with due historical per- 
 spective. They are comparatively small episodes in 
 such a career as Holyoake's. But as they do to some 
 extent involve the question of character, and as inac- 
 curate versions of them have been published, it v/ould 
 be unjust to him to omit them. 
 
 It must not be imagined that the two leaders of the 
 Secularist body waged an incessant war. Only on a 
 few occasions throughout their careers did they come in 
 conflict. Habitually, each went his way with reticence 
 and restraint, but the circumstance of their working in 
 a common field led to occasional collisions (and occa- 
 sional periods of co-operation), in a way that is familiar 
 in all propagandist bodies. If in their earlier relations
 
 78 SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL WORK 
 
 Mr. Bradlaugh appears at a disadvantage, the reader must 
 bear in mind the great difference in age and education 
 between the two. Holyoake had hved with his parents 
 until his twenty-first year, when he entered into life- 
 companionship with a helpful and admirable woman. He 
 had had in his youth Unitarian teachers of great com- 
 petence, and for twenty years he had to cut an almost 
 solitary and laborious path for himself — a sobering experi- 
 ence. Bradlaugh, on the contrary, was " driven from 
 home " and " alone in the world " (to use his daughter's 
 words) at the age of sixteen : he had had the slenderest 
 and crudest of educations, at a Sunday School and a 
 National School: he was driven by distress into the 
 barracks, and he contracted a marriage which is described 
 in his biography as ending unhappily. It would be 
 ludicrous to expect a parity of character when this young 
 man of twenty-four, with such antecedents, first encounters 
 the mature and experienced man of forty. And these 
 differences — especially the difference in social position — 
 must be borne in mind throughout by those who would 
 intelligently follow the relations of the two men. 
 
 I have narrated how they had a public discussion in 
 1870 that brought them no nearer agreement. In 1871 
 the Scotsman expressed its surprise that Holyoake had 
 been found at certain revolutionary meetings in London, 
 and Holyoake explained, without reflecting on him, that 
 it was his brother Austin (now a close colleague of 
 Bradlaugh's) who had attended the meetings. Brad- 
 laugh wrote him impetuously in regard to this letter, 
 but Holyoake replied politely, and shortly after- 
 wards was invited by Bradlaugh to contribute to the 
 National Reformer. In 1874, when Northampton was 
 contested for Bradlaugh during his absence in America, 
 Holyoake offered his services to Mr. Gurney and the 
 committee, but they replied, in a grateful letter, that
 
 SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL WORK 79 
 
 they were "well fortified." Then came the testimonial 
 of 1875, and a friendly correspondence. In the meantime 
 two young men who were destined to hold a position in 
 the movement — Mr. C. Watts and Mr. G. W. Foote — 
 had come into some prominence. Mr. Foote at first 
 dissented from Bradlaugh's identification of Secularism 
 with Atheism. " My objections to Mr. Bradlaugh," he 
 wrote to Holyoake in 1873, "will be much the same 
 as your own." In January 1876 he started the Secularist. 
 For a few weeks Holyoake co-operated with him in this 
 undertaking, but before the end of January he received 
 one of Mr. Bradlaugh's stiff legal notes — generally the 
 shadows of coming lawsuits — asking for a meeting with 
 " the editors of the Secularist^'' so that he could fix their 
 "joint responsibility" for something Mr. Foote was 
 reported to have said. He pleasantly parried the series 
 of dry notes that followed, and no action was taken. 
 However, he found editorial co-operation with Mr. Foote 
 a source of constant irritation, and in February, after 
 consulting Mr. J. Gimson and Mr. Wright (of Leicester), 
 he severed his connection with the Secularist. 
 
 The immediate sequel to this seems to have been a 
 reconciliation with Bradlaugh at Leicester. Holyoake 
 gave the chief address at the National Secular Society's 
 Conference at Leeds in June (which he arranged jointly 
 with Bradlaugh), and appeared at other places in asso- 
 ciation with Bradlaugh and Mrs. Besant. There are 
 cordial letters from both to him toward the close of the 
 year. Mr. Bradlaugh writes : " I desire you to accept 
 at the same time my earnest and sincere thanks for the 
 loyal fashion in which you have this year carried out 
 our Leicester entente cordiale.'" Holyoake had started a 
 Secular Review in August, but this was not regarded as 
 antagonistic. The Leicester Secularists, who had built 
 a fine Institute in 1873 and were led by men of the high
 
 8o SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL WORK 
 
 character of Josiah Gimson (an old Owenite, head of 
 the engineering- firm of that name) and Michael Wright, 
 seem to have been responsible for the healthier state of 
 things in the movement. But it was of short duration. 
 The Christmas compliments exchanged by Holyoake, 
 Bradlaugh, and Mrs. Besant were hardly over when a 
 storm burst that scattered the reunited Secularists in all 
 directions. 
 
 Amongst the books which Holyoake had taken over 
 from Watson in 1853, and sold in the Fleet Street House, 
 was a pamphlet by Dr. Knowlton on the restriction of 
 families, entitled The Fruits of Philosophy. Holyoake 
 agreed with its principle, but thought it coarse and 
 offensive in parts; as Mr. Bradlaugh and Mrs. Besant 
 always admitted it to be. But it was the least offensive 
 work available on the subject in 1853, and, as Watson 
 thought highly of it, Holyoake stocked it, and sold it 
 when it was asked for, but discouraged the circulation. 
 In 1861 it passed to Austin Holyoake, and from him to 
 Mr. Watts. In 1874 an unpleasant accident brought it 
 into notice once more. A purveyor of indecent literature 
 at Bristol was convicted for selling it. As Mr. Watts 
 was issuing it for the Secular party, the police sum- 
 moned him, and the grave question arose whether it 
 should be defended or no. Mr. Bradlaugh and Mrs. 
 Besant decided that it should be defended, on the broad 
 principle of the liberty of the press; Mr. and Mrs. Watts, 
 and (independently) Holyoake, decided that the defence 
 of such a work would compromise its defenders. Mr. 
 Watts therefore arranged that he would make a technical 
 plea of '* guilty," and, on hearing this, Bradlaugh at once 
 severed all business connections with him. In fact, Mr. 
 Watts was within a short time so pursued with lawsuits 
 that to escape them he accepted an invitation to a 
 Freethought " pastorate " in Canada.
 
 GEORGI-; JACOll IKJLVOAKE 
 (1888)
 
 SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL WORK 8i 
 
 The situation — " this most unfortunate affair," Mrs. 
 Besant calls it in a letter to Holyoake — was certainly 
 embarrassing, and difference of judgment is quite intel- 
 ligible. A plea of "guilty" made it possible for critics 
 to say (though all serious people knew the book was 
 only technically indecent) that Freethinkers had been 
 selling an obscene book for thirty years; a plea of " not 
 guilty " would pledge them to defend a work that Mr. 
 Bradlaugh called "a nasty thing," and that a purveyor 
 of indecent literature had been convicted of selling 
 shortly before. Holyoake thought the wiser course was 
 to sacrifice it, and have another written without its 
 coarseness. Mr. Bradlaugh and Mrs. Besant took the 
 other side of the dilemma. They wrote to tell Holyoake 
 that Watts was dismissed, and that they had undertaken 
 the publishing business in partnership ; and they hinted 
 that they would re-issue the pamphlet. Holyoake at 
 once begged them to keep his name and that of his 
 dead brother out of the matter, and he would take no 
 action in opposition to them. He wrote to Mrs. Besant: 
 
 " Dear Mrs. Besant, 
 
 " If you intend to publish the work, it means 
 ruin to you as a lady. At that I am concerned. If 
 the Partnership does not intend to reprint it, what Mr. 
 Bradlaugh says has no meaning. My brother Austin 
 being dead, I wish Mr. Bradlaugh not to introduce his 
 name. Neither his name nor mine was ever on Knowl- 
 ton's book as publisher in chief. He concurred with me 
 during all the Fleet Street time in suppressing the sale 
 as far as we could. I only published for Mr. Watson, 
 as a general agent, and never allowed my name to 
 appear as publisher in chief. Mr. Watson always knew 
 I held that these books (he had only two) were no 
 proper part of Freethought literature, and the large sum 
 I paid him gave me discretionary power. I respected 
 his action for reasons you cannot know. But he never 
 
 VOL. 11. G
 
 82 SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL WORK 
 
 represented — he was the last man to do it — that I was 
 under the same obligation. If Mr. Bradlaugh knew the 
 traditions of the Freethought party, he would write 
 differently. Do not misunderstand me. I, as always, 
 intend no personal opposition to him. I refused to 
 express any opinion on the policy of the party until I 
 knew that Mr. Watts had made his decision. I bore 
 'the flag' into prison in worse days than these; and 
 would carry it on to the treadmill, if necessary, now. 
 But I cannot think of vesting the defence of the liberty 
 of publication upon a quack like Knowlton — imposed 
 upon us by an artifice in days of struggle. Let me add 
 that the use of Mr. Mill's name is utterly indefensible. 
 
 " Yours very sincerely, 
 
 "G. J. HOLYOAKE." 
 
 Mrs. Besant thanked him for his " most kindly meant " 
 letter, and said they must be content to differ. He wrote 
 again to say that, as she did not speak of an intention 
 to publish the pamphlet, there was no ground for differ- 
 ing, and " in any case " he would be neutral. She 
 replied : 
 
 " Dear Mr. Holyoake, 
 
 " Thank you much for your nice little note. . . . 
 I think it probable that we shall follow the line of Mr. 
 Bradlaugh (in N. R. Jan. 21) — objection to style of 
 pamphlet as unduly coarse, but maintenance of right of 
 discussion of sexual problems : i. e. revise carefully, 
 publish matter, but refine style. . . ." 
 
 Unfortunately, the revision did not go beyond 
 grammar ; and the names of Austin and George Jacob 
 Holyoake were deliberately brought before the court by 
 Mrs. Besant as publishers of the book. 
 
 At the end of March Mrs. Besant sent Holyoake a 
 copy of their issue of Knowlton's pamphlet, admitting 
 that they had made only " grammatical amendments" in 
 it, and saying : "You may like to see it from curiosity,
 
 SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL WORK 83 
 
 though you disapprove of our action." Mr. Tou/ceau 
 Parris requested Holyoaketo join the defence-committee, 
 but he peremptorily declined. "In this question that 
 concerns neither Free Thought nor a Free Press I have 
 elected to stand aside," he said. 
 
 His feelings can well be imagined when, after this 
 correspondence with Mrs. Besant and Mr. Parris, Mr. 
 Bradlaugh subpoenaed him to give evidence as to his 
 publication of the book, and Mrs. Besant, on the first 
 day of the trial, reminding the court that it had been 
 published by Holyoake & Co., said : " One of the firm is 
 Mr. George Jacob Holyoake, whose name is probably 
 well known to you. The other is Austin Holyoake." 
 They thus made quite impossible the neutrality he had 
 promised, and forced him to explain the real nature of 
 his connection with the book. In a letter to the Daily 
 News and the Times he explained that he had never 
 selected the book for publication, nor published it in the 
 ordinary sense of the word ; and that he always disliked 
 it, and, after the Bristol case had shown the use that was 
 being made of it, he had advised its withdrawal. He 
 ended : " But I desire to say this without reflection on 
 others, who are as much entitled to their opinion as I to 
 mine, and, differing from me, have a right to challenge 
 a verdict upon their contention." 
 
 To say — as was said — that this letter secured, or 
 helped to secure, an adverse verdict is ludicrous ; the 
 Lord Chief Justice utterly ignored Mr. Bradlaugh's 
 remarks on it. On the other hand, few will question, 
 after reading the correspondence I have given, that both 
 the writing and the form of the letter were wholly 
 justified. Holyoake had wished to " stand aside," and 
 was not allowed to do so. He was even represented 
 as the deliberate publisher of a book that he had un- 
 willingly handled, and often condemned. But his letter
 
 84 SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL WORK 
 
 to the papers laid open once more the wide breach 
 between himself and the chiefs of the National Secular 
 Society.^ 
 
 It is advisable to glance only at two other points in 
 connection with the controversy, on which Holyoake's 
 position has not always been accurately stated. It was 
 suggested at the time that Holyoake had made a con- 
 siderable profit on the sale of the Knowlton pamphlet 
 during the years that he sold it in Fleet Street, and that 
 it was ingenuous on his part to turn against it when his 
 bookselling career was over. The truth is that he made 
 no profit on the stock of books that he took over from 
 Watson, but lost a considerable sum on them. Of 
 several of them he disapproved, but he had undertaken 
 Watson's business, and he felt compelled to retain them, 
 and sell them when they were demanded. I need not 
 add that he sold no book with the principles of which he 
 did not agree. But the fact of his selling the book led 
 not merely to fixing on him the responsibility of publish- 
 ing it, but even to the charge that he reprinted it when 
 he had sold all Watson's stock of this particular work. 
 Mr. Bradlaugh stated in the National Reformer that he 
 had seen the work being printed in Holyoake's establish- 
 ment. This was, in the circumstances, a very damaging 
 charge, and Holyoake's printer, Mr. William Smith, at 
 once wrote a letter entirely denying it, and giving the 
 name of the actual printer after Watson retired from busi- 
 ness. Unfortunately, the correcting letter (which I have 
 seen) was refused insertion in the National Reformer, and 
 there must be many who still imagine that Holyoake 
 did so questionable an act. 
 
 This brief account of the events that rent the Secular 
 
 ^ The further course of the trial does not concern us. They were 
 sentenced to fines and imprisonment ; but the indictment was quashed 
 on a technical ground by the Court of Appeal. The work was then 
 abandoned, and a fresh one written.
 
 SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL WORK 85 
 
 party in the seventies, and had so much influence on its 
 subsequent development, will suffice for our purpose of 
 following Holyoake's action intelligently. The further 
 course of events concerns us little. It will be enough, for 
 those who wish to understand the later position in the 
 Secularist world, to say that a large number of the 
 leading Secularists (J. Gimson, M. Wright, Larner 
 Sugden, Foote, Trevelyan, Cattell, Mrs. Law, J. P. 
 Adams, F. Neale, and others) seceded with Holyoake 
 from the National Secular Society. In the preceding 
 year Holyoake had started the Secular Revieiv, as an 
 organ of the broader Secularism which he was eager to 
 keep alive. " The policy of this review," he wrote on 
 the title-page, "is Secular in the sense of seeking to 
 promote the highest discernible good of mankind, from 
 considerations which pertain to this life as the most 
 intelligent preparation that can be made for another." 
 It appeared weekly from August 1876 to February 1877 
 and maintained the broad and high ideal that Holyoake 
 advocated, while it bore the excellent impression of his 
 journalistic skill. Indeed, there is a singular remark in 
 the preface to the first volume which seems to suggest 
 that he thought his broadest conception of Secularism 
 was on the way to be realised. In introducing a poem 
 by Mr. Percy Greg of a decidedly theistic character, he 
 observes : " As the great majority of Secularists are 
 Theists, the following tender and manly invocation will 
 be read with pleasure." On those lines, however, no 
 journal could thrive that had the title of "Secular." It 
 was the perennial difficulty of the popular associations 
 of the name. 
 
 The paper was now turned into the organ of the new 
 party (February 1877). When Mr. Watts was compelled 
 to break his association with Bradlaugh, Holyoake 
 handed over to him the editorship of his journal. He
 
 S6 SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL WORK 
 
 had already intimated that his heaUh would not allow 
 him to retain it much longer. After the complete dis- 
 ruption of the National Secular Society, Mr. Foote was 
 associated with Mr. Watts in the editorial control, and 
 Holyoake was one of the chief contributors to the paper. 
 As a new and independent organisation was also needed, 
 they founded a British Secular Union, in which Holy- 
 oake, Foote, Watts, I\Irs. Law, Cattell, the Leicester 
 Secularists, and many northern followers combined. 
 There we may leave the story of Secular development, 
 except that we may touch one further — and the last and 
 least — collision between Holyoake and Bradlaugh before 
 we return to our normal narrative. 
 
 In 1880 Bradlaugh's long struggle for the representa- 
 tion of Northampton came to a successful close, and he 
 was elected together with IMr. Labouchere. As all 
 know, the return of Mr. Bradlaugh led to a remarkable 
 and protracted controversy with regard to his taking the 
 oath of allegiance, which was still exacted of every man 
 who entered Parliament. The defence of Mr. Bradlaugh's 
 conduct has been written with such thoroughness that 
 we need not consider it here. Unfortunately, Holy- 
 oake's name was again drawn into the controversy, 
 and a few words must be given in explanation. There 
 was no serious quarrel between the two men, and 
 the episode has already received more attention than 
 it merited. What Holyoake really did was a very 
 simple matter. A Secularist correspondent wrote to ask 
 his opinion upon Mr. Bradlaugh's attitude toward the 
 Parliamentary oath. He replied that, as Mr. Bradlaugh 
 had not hitherto hesitated to take an oath, he would 
 hardly be likely to hesitate now. His opinion was quoted, 
 and, in fact, when Mr. Bradlaugh went on to take — or, 
 rather, offer to take — the oath, Holyoake expressed his 
 disapproval in the terms he had done for forty years.
 
 SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL WORK 87 
 
 The real force of the charge against Holyoake rests, 
 once more, on loose and ill-informed exaggerations. 
 Bradlaugh himself wrote to Holyoake that he would 
 make no complaint of " fair criticism of public action " 
 (which was all that had been offered), but he did complain 
 that printed copies of Holyoake's words had been " sent 
 to every M.P.," and that Holyoake had been guilty 
 of "absolute misrepresentation" and "insinuation of 
 unworthy motives." Holyoake replied that he not only 
 knew nothing of any leaflet being sent to Members, but 
 when he asked a number of them for a copy of it they told 
 him they had not seen any such leaflet. On the second 
 point he assured Bradlaugh that the interpretations 
 he complained of were not made by him at all ; nor 
 can I find any trace of such things. He had merely 
 made a " fair comment on a public action," and the 
 numbers of Freethinkers who joined in the discussion in 
 the London press, and argued against what they regarded 
 as Holyoake's quixotic aversion to the oath formula, 
 recog-nised this. To us who look back on the whole 
 story of his career his position is clearer than it could 
 have been to them. As I have before stated, he 
 began his public career with a protest against the 
 insincere repetition of Christian formulas (by Lloyd 
 Jones), suffered fines and losses for his conviction, 
 publicly rebuked Bradlaugh twenty years before for 
 taking the oath, and always claimed that especial 
 strictness was required of Secularist leaders. He merely 
 repeated in 18S0 what he had said for nearly forty 
 years. 
 
 A year or two later Mr. Josiah Gimson brought the 
 two men together at Leicester. Holyoake went with him 
 to Bradlaugh's hotel, and once more an entente cordiale 
 was established, which lasted until Bradlaugh's death. 
 " In the course of a pleasant, unrestrained conversation,"
 
 88 SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL WORK 
 
 says Holyoake, '' Mr. Bradlaugh said to me ' that, had 
 he known what he had come to know, he had never said 
 of me what he had.' " ^ 
 
 ^ Warpath of Opinion, p. 59. The meeting must have been in 1882 or 
 1883, as Hol)oake wrote his Plea for Affir?iiaiion\n 1882, and Mr. Gimson 
 died in 1883.
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 THE ORGANISATION OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 If any reader, insensible of the intrinsic interest of the 
 matter, feel that I have led him into a somewhat 
 narrower gully of research in the last chapter than the 
 broad plan of this biography suggested, I can only say 
 that this was a crisis in the affairs of a prominent social 
 movement in which Holyoake was engaged, and that I 
 have made no more use of the innumerable documents 
 he has left on it than was necessary to remove some of 
 the gravest misconceptions of his conduct. We return 
 to the wide plain of social endeavour. What Holyoake 
 was doing on the political side during these years I have 
 before described. It remains to see what share he had 
 in the great organisation of the Co-operative Movement 
 that took place in the seventies. 
 
 We turned aside from the movement at the interesting 
 period, in the later sixties, when its prodigious growth 
 was beginning to inspire the more thoughtful workers in 
 it with ideas of fresh and larger enterprise. Holyoake's 
 services to it up to that time were very great indeed, 
 though they suffer from falling, so to say, in the pre- 
 historic phase of the movement. It had begun with the 
 Rochdale Store, and Holyoake had chanced to address 
 the openers of that Store, and urge them to act, just 
 before they took their historic step. In many other 
 places his readers and followers were prominent in the 
 
 founding of stores. He kept a vigilant eye on the map 
 
 89
 
 90 THE ORGANISATION OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 of England, eagerly noted the rise of new stores, and 
 pressed the principle in every journal that was opened to 
 him. For many years he was the only journalist of 
 influence that recorded and applauded the growth of the 
 movement in its precarious youth ; he induced many 
 distinguished social students to examine and encourage 
 it ; and his works, especially his History of the Rochdale 
 Pioneers, gave a wonderful impetus to the founding of 
 stores, and carried the idea throughout Europe. 
 
 By the year 1864 there were twenty or thirty (more or 
 less) Co-operative societies in the metropolis, and some 
 505 in the entire country. The need of intercom- 
 munication was clear to Holyoake, as to many others, 
 and he entered with them on the great work of organ- 
 isation. At a little coffee-house kept by a Co-operator in 
 Theobald's Road, Edger and he met to frame plans for 
 the connection of the scattered London societies, and a 
 fair measure of success attended their efforts. They 
 made the unconscious preparations for the first Congress 
 of the modern movement. At the same time the more 
 businesslike Co-operators of the north were creating the 
 first slender filaments of interconnection on the ground 
 of material advantage. It was in 1863 that the famous 
 farthing levy was made on the northern societies for the 
 founding of a wholesale department, and the work 
 proceeded vigorously under the care, chiefly, of 
 Holyoake's Rochdale friend, Abraham Greenwood. 
 Co-operative journalism, too, was beginning to appear 
 once more. The northern societies had their Co-operator 
 and, later, Mr. Greening's Industrial Partnerships Record. 
 The London societies had a section of Holyoake's Secular 
 Review y with the separate title of the " Social Economist." 
 In 1867 Holyoake wrote his History of Co-operation in 
 Halifax, which gave another great impulse to the opening 
 of stores.
 
 THE ORGANISATION OF CO-OPERATION 91 
 
 The next step was the linking of north and south, the 
 wedding-, in the service of the movement, of the practical 
 qualities of the northerners with the idealism of the 
 south. Holyoake met in Manchester a man who seemed 
 well fitted to accomplish this, Mr. E. O. Greening, and 
 entered upon a cordial and life-long association with 
 him. We saw how, with the assistance of W. Morrison 
 and E. R. Edger, they launched the Social Ecojioniist in 
 1868, and for the first time reflected the views and 
 recorded the proceedings of Lancashire and London in 
 one organ. Mr. Greening came to London, and threw 
 himself with Holyoake into the task of building up the 
 unified structure of the modern Co-operative movement. 
 How formidable a task it was, and how constant and 
 serious were the obstacles to unification, will appear in 
 the course of the chapter. 
 
 The immediate outcome of their exertions was the 
 holding of the first Congress of the Co-operative Move- 
 ment. Critics have represented the annual Congresses 
 of the body as pleasant festivals to which the latest 
 converts are sent for the purpose of vociferously 
 applauding fine resolutions which will never be carried 
 out. One must, of course, distinguish between the 
 administrative and the demonstrative machinery of the 
 movement, but the educational effect of the annual 
 Congresses within the body, and their propagandist 
 value for the world at large, must be appraised in very 
 high terms. It is hardly too much to say that the first 
 Congress (of the modern series) was the real inauguration 
 of the final and established phase of the movement. 
 Few northern societies were represented at it, but its 
 unification of Co-operative forces in the metropolis and 
 its striking demonstration of the growth of the movement 
 were of great value. Mr. Thomas Hughes was chairman, 
 Mr. A. J. Mundclla vice-chairman, and a number of
 
 92 THE ORGANISATION OF CO OPERATION 
 
 distinguished outsiders attended, including the Comte de 
 Paris, Prof. Fawcett, the Hon. E. Lyulph Stanley, Mrs. 
 Jacob Bright, the Earl of Lichfield, Mr. Shaen,and others.^ 
 The educational effect of the holding of the Congress 
 was very considerable. It was not the first time that 
 well-known men had attended Co-operative meetings — 
 Mr. Brassey and Earl Rosebery had spoken at the 
 Co-operative Institute earlier — but it was an impressive 
 demonstration of the growth of the movement. Many 
 Londoners had a misty recollection of Co-operative 
 societies as embodiments of eccentric Owenite notions, 
 perilously familiar with Radicals and Secularists. 
 They were astonished to learn that these societies had 
 now become a national movement, and promised to 
 become a world-movement. The 505 societies of 1864 
 had increased to 1,300 in 1869, with a share capital of two 
 millions sterling, and a trade of eight millions. The 
 Wholesale Society, which began with a farthing levy in 
 1863, had now 87,854 members, and its net annual profit 
 had arisen from ^i^'] to ;^34,8o8. Nor was the demon- 
 stration of the power of the movement the only issue of 
 value. London workers had been more or less united in 
 1863 by Holyoake's "Association for the Promotion of 
 Co-operation," of which E. V. Neale was an honorary 
 member, and in the institutions set up by Mr, Greening. 
 But it was in the Congress of 1869 that the Secular and 
 Christian-Socialist and other elements were first effec- 
 tively joined. The Congress set up the first Central 
 Board of the movement, and on the London Board, then 
 
 1 The word "Congress" was suggfested by the secretary, W. Pare, 
 who had American experience. The idea of an annual conference was, 
 of course, fainihar to everybody — especially Holyoake — and has nothing' 
 to do with the much earlier Christian Socialist conferences. Holyoake 
 had started London Co-operative conferences in 1864. Some historians 
 have much exaggerated the share of the Christian Socialists in initialing 
 the Congresses. It was Greening, Holyoake, Pare, and Edger who did 
 this, with the ready assistance of Neale and Hughes.
 
 THE ORGANISATION OF CO-OPERATION 93 
 
 appointed, we find a paradisaic mingling of names like 
 Holyoake, Lloyd Jones, Ludlow, Ncale, Hodgson Pratt, 
 Greening, Applcgarth, Aiiberon Herbert, T. Hughes, 
 W. Morrison, A. Mundella, etc. The south was united : 
 it remained to join forces with the mighty north. 
 
 The London Congress decided that its successor should 
 be held at Manchester, and, as the time approached, 
 northerners warmly discussed the question of amalga- 
 mation. They had themselves a North of England 
 Conference Association, that arranged their annual 
 meetings. At this meeting in 1870 they considered 
 the question of fusion. Nothing was decided, but large 
 numbers of northerners attended the Congress, which 
 was held in the Manchester Memorial Hall, with W. 
 Morrison in the chair. The next Congress was fixed 
 for Birmingham, where the process of fusion continued, 
 and the Congress of 1872 was held at Bolton. Here, in 
 the heart of a great Co-operative district, the juncture of 
 forces was greatly advanced. It was known for many 
 years as "the wet Congress," on account of the inces- 
 sant rain — which Holyoake always expected when he 
 visited Bolton. " Even the Scotch delegates," he says, 
 " who understand a climate where it always rains except 
 when it snows, came into the Hall in Indian file," to 
 shelter behind each other. The breadth of the move- 
 ment and the need for unity were now very apparent. 
 Not only Scotland and the north and south of England 
 were there, but glowing reports of the spread of the 
 movement in France, Italy, Denmark, and America 
 were received.^ 
 
 - A graceful act of Ilolyoake's pleased his earlier opponents. Prof. 
 F. D. Maurice died during the Congress. Holyoake suggested to Neale 
 that an expression of indebtedness to him should be asked of the 
 Congress, and, when Neale hesitated, he drew one up, and had it passed 
 unanimously. His correspondence with Neale from this time is always 
 cordial.
 
 94 THE ORGANISATION OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 In the meantime a step had been taken that greatly 
 aided the unification. The northerners had, as I said, a 
 small weekly journal, but the editor, Mr. Pitman, used 
 it for many enterprises (the Co-operator and Anti- 
 l^accinator was its full title), and a fresh organ was 
 needed. A newspaper society (of Co-operators) was 
 formed for the purpose of buying out Mr. Pitman, and 
 Greening and Holyoake sacrificed their Social Economist, 
 so as to leave the field entirely free. In September (187 1) 
 appeared the first number of the Co-operative News. 
 Holyoake had written its prospectus, and given full-page 
 announcements of it in his Reasoner \^q.€^ by week. He 
 wrote many of its early leaders, and he appears in the 
 second issue (and many subsequent ones) as " Our 
 Special Commissioner." He did much for the success 
 of the early numbers, under the editorship of Mr. Farn, 
 his earlier Owenite friend.^ 
 
 Thus by the time of the Congress of 1873 the work of 
 fusion was completed, and the Central Co-operative Board, 
 now known as the Co-operative Union, was set up. 
 Holyoake was peculiarly active in connection with this 
 Congress. It was held in what we may call his northern 
 home, Newcastle : its president was Mr. J. Cowen : and it 
 was given a publicity in the Newcastle Chronicle that rarely 
 fell to a Congress in those days. More than 100,000 
 copies were sold of the issue of the Chronicle that 
 described the first day's proceedings ; and the description 
 was largely Holyoake's. Cowen always entertained 
 democratic bodies or persons on a scale of great splen- 
 dour, and the union of the movement was fitly celebrated. 
 The new Central Board was completely representative. 
 It met in the cabin of the pleasure-steamer that Cowen 
 
 * It is interesting to notice in the early issues a prominent advertise- 
 ment of a scheme for the Co-operative purchase of the Alexandra Palace 
 at London.
 
 THE ORGANISATION OF CO-OPERATION 95 
 
 had provided for a trip on the Tyne. " If Co-operators 
 held a Congress in Paradise," says Holyoake, ** they 
 would take no time to look at the fittings, but move 
 somebody into the chair within ten minutes after their 
 arrival." When the nomination was completed, its 
 forty-two members were astounded to receive a salute 
 of forty-two guns. 
 
 The amalgamation was achieved, but it must be 
 admitted at once that the union of forces meant no 
 complete unison of ideals. It will be impossible to 
 understand Holyoake's further experiences in the Co- 
 operative movement unless we clearly realise the 
 antithesis of ideals that was now made so explicit by 
 the founding of the Central Co-operative Board. Co- 
 operators are familiar enough with the difference of 
 opinion in regard to the distribution of profits that has 
 divided Co-operative leaders for forty years. Other 
 readers are rarely clear on it ; and, as even the more 
 assiduous social student is apt to be misled by some of 
 the literature of the subject, I will endeavour to put it 
 succinctly. Fortunately, I have to do no more here than 
 indicate the divergence of views. 
 
 The point may be well introduced by a letter that Mr. 
 Farn, editor of the Co-operative News, wrote to Holyoake 
 shortly after the Newcastle Congress and the apparent 
 unification of the Co-operative body : 
 
 "Dear Sir, 
 
 " What am I to understand by the reference in 
 your letter to Greening, as per enclosed, that there is 
 someone in London willing to buy up the * News ' for 
 the sake of removing it there? If there are, they must 
 come down stiffly in price, as the profit this week is ;^io ; 
 but mind this is not to be mentioned to any but intending 
 purchasers. 
 
 " I don't want to go to London, but it would be better
 
 96 THE ORGANISATION OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 there, and indeed anywhere, out of the hands of the 
 Manchester Section of the Central Board, who are to 
 all intents and purposes mere joint-stock mongering 
 Co-operators, and would grind everything down to that 
 level if they could, as witness. ..." 
 
 The strength of the phrasing will have no unfamiliar 
 harshness to the Co-operator, but to other readers the 
 situation may seem strange, within so short a time of the 
 amalgamation. For our present purpose it will be 
 enough to say that leading Co-operators were divided in 
 opinion as to the distribution of the net profit made by a 
 society. One school held (and holds) that the profit 
 should be shared between a dividend on capital and a 
 dividend on purchases made — divided, that is to say, 
 between members (share-holders) and customers (of a 
 store). The other school held (and holds) that the em- 
 ployees of a society ought to have a proportionate share 
 in the profit. There is an analogous dispute in regard 
 to the share of control of the affairs of the society, but 
 that can be treated best when we come to the rise of the 
 Co-Partnership movement. The former school regarded 
 the latter, to which Holyoake belonged, as genial 
 "idealists," and thought their idea impracticable: the 
 idealists thought their " practical " colleagues were not 
 wholly faithful to the Co-operative gospel, and privately 
 whispered of " mere joint-stock mongerers." 
 
 Holyoake took so active a part in the dispute that a 
 few further words on it are requisite, especially as his 
 position has been misrepresented. Mrs. Webb, for 
 instance, in her study of the movement,^ gives a 
 proper prominence to the divergence, but describes the 
 schools as "Individualists" and "Federalists." Since 
 Holyoake, whom she takes as a spokesman of the 
 
 ^ The Co-operative Movement in Great Britain, by B. Potter (Mrs. S. 
 Webb).
 
 THE ORGANISATION OF CO-OPERATION 97 
 
 inconsistencies and futilities of the former school (with 
 Greening and the Christian Socialist group), actually — 
 and very rightly — used the word " federation " for his 
 ideal of organisation, and strongly dissented from the 
 competitive individualism of Mill, the names are very 
 inept. However, Mrs. Webb did not invent the names. 
 The more serious error is that she represents the 
 " Individualists," and Holyoake in particular, as claim- 
 ing that profits should be shared with employees in 
 productive, but not in distributive, societies. That is a 
 very singular exposition of Holyoake's position (and 
 that of his colleagues). Readers of his History of 
 Co-operation will remember how he divides the stores, 
 or distributive societies, into " Dark," " Twilight," and 
 " Sunrise " stores (p. 616). The Dark Stores are " those 
 which give no share of the profits to those they employ." 
 The Sunrise Stores are those which, with other features, 
 " give the same dividend on the wages of all their 
 employees as they give to the consumer who purchases 
 at the counter." Of the Leeds store, which does not 
 share profits with employees, he says : " Had it done so, 
 Leeds would then be a proud name in Co-operation. It 
 is now merely a great one." But quotation would be 
 endless. Insistence, in season and out of season, on 
 sharing profits with employees, in the stores as well as 
 the mills, is one of the distinctive features of Holyoake's 
 Co-operative writings and addresses. On the one 
 occasion when he had a store (147 Fleet Street) he 
 made all his employees partners in the profit, to his 
 own serious danger.^ 
 
 ^ Mrs. Webb merely points out that in his Self-Help Holyoake does not 
 blame the Rochdale Society for not sharing- profits with its employees. 
 A brief historical sketch, written with the Society's aid, and to recom- 
 mend their enterprise, is hardly the work in which to expect criticism. 
 As a fact, however, Greenwood and most of the older Co-operators 
 were in favour of profit-sharing ; and there were no paid employees a 
 VOL. U. H
 
 98 THE ORGANISATION OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 For my present purpose of making clear the allusions 
 in some of Holyoake's letters this brief account of 
 the difference between the leaders will suffice. The 
 "idealists" conceived Co-operation rather as a gospel, 
 which must be religiously consistent : the " practical 
 men " took it as an economic system, a scheme by which 
 groups of purchasers funded their small capital in the 
 interest of economy to themselves. Further develop- 
 ments will be considered when we come to the initiation 
 of the Labour Co-Partnership system. 
 
 Meantime the movement advanced with giant strides. 
 From 1869 to 1873 it doubled its membership and share- 
 capital once more, and more than doubled its annual 
 profits. Gladstone said somewhere that he " looked to 
 Co-operation as the new influence which should reconcile 
 the mighty powers of capital and labour," the Times 
 wrote leaders on it, not without respect, and bishops 
 came to address its Congresses. It would be tiresome 
 to follow Holyoake's co-operative work minutely at this 
 time, and I will be content to run through that part of 
 his correspondence in the seventies which refers to it. 
 We have already seen how his chambers became a 
 bureau of co-operative information in the sixties, and 
 how he spoke for the movement at the annual Social 
 Science Congresses. To all this we have to add in the 
 seventies his work on the Southern Section of the 
 Central Board (and as lecturer for the Board), his 
 journalistic work on the News, his editing of the pro- 
 ceedings of the third, fourth, and fifth Congresses, and a 
 good deal of special service that I may briefly illustrate. 
 In 1870 I find a letter to him from Baron Mackay 
 
 first at Rochdale. It is a mistake to represent the struggle as one of 
 north and south. The great Manchester store shared profits with 
 employees for many years after 1872, and most of the older northerners 
 were with Holyoake.
 
 THE ORGANISATION OF CO-OPERATION 99 
 
 (afterwards Lord Rcay), then ambassador at the Hague, 
 saying : " Whatever England got at the Amsterdam 
 Exhibition in class vii — Co-operative societies, etc. — 
 it owed to you." Twelve awards had been given to 
 English societies, including the Rochdale and Man- 
 chester branches and the Wholesale. Holyoake had 
 been sent out to the Exhibition by Somerset Beaumont 
 in the summer of 1869, and he found Baron Mackay 
 much interested in Co-operative matters. He asked 
 Holyoake to assist in writing the report of the 
 Exhibition, and transmitting further information to 
 Holland. England cannot have had many personal 
 representatives at the Exhibition, if one may judge by 
 the violent effort to be polite to him that one finds in the 
 following written note from the Comite d' installation : 
 
 *' The Commission of the Exhibition has the honour 
 to invite Mr. Holyoake, Son, to joint her on a excursion 
 to Velsen the loth of August, and to the island of 
 Marken the 12 of August, and to participate at a 
 dinner to be given at Harlem the loth. A steamer will 
 leave the Neue Stads-Herberg near the harbour, the 
 loth, at a quarter past eight in the morning, and the 12th 
 at 10 o'clock in the morning." 
 
 Mr. Somerset Beaumont was an ardent and generous 
 advocate of working-class movements. He several 
 times gave Holyoake cheques to be spent in ensur- 
 ing large attendances at Co-operative meetings, and 
 frequently had him to meet foreign social students at 
 dinner. 
 
 I have previously spoken of Mrs. Tennyson's interest 
 in Co-operation. One of her earliest letters to him (1873), 
 after he had dined with them, runs : 
 
 "Dear Mr. Holyoake, 
 
 " I thank you for your kind words. Taken in 
 its highest sense, this is, there can be no doubt, the great
 
 lOo THE ORGANISATION OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 work of the world, and we and our sons are honoured in 
 proportion as we can help it. ..." 
 
 He sent her a good deal of Co-operative literature, 
 and the idea must have been much discussed in her 
 husband's circle. *' I shall ever value highly your 
 book," she wrote in 1879, when he sent her his History , 
 " both for itself and for your sake. You have done a 
 great work in the world." When he sent the earlier 
 volume in 1875 she was too ill to write, and Tennyson 
 acknowledged it. " I hope that some day or other I 
 shall have the pleasure of seeing you at this place," he 
 said, referring to his new home in Surrey. 
 
 A number of useful steps that were taken at the time 
 are foreshadowed in Holyoake's letters. In 1873 E. V. 
 Neale began his long and valuable career as secretary. 
 It seems from his letter to Holyoake (Sept. 3rd, 1873) 
 that it was Holyoake who suggested the step, through 
 Mr. Greening. Neale undertook the work without 
 payment, so that he " might continue a member of the 
 Central Board without having my position compromised 
 by becoming their paid servant." Even in his first 
 letter he anticipates a vast amount of work and travel- 
 ling between London and Manchester. Another 
 interesting letter shows the great regard that some of 
 the northerners had for Holyoake's counsels. It is 
 written by the chairman of the Macclesfield Society to 
 one of the leading Manchester Co-operators (who, 
 however, later joined the " practical " school). It runs : 
 
 " Dear Mr. Nuttall, 
 
 ** What a glorious reply to your question put 
 to the Cent. Board London Mr. G. J. H. has supplied ! 
 This week-end must be one of your happiest. I have 
 read it, and re-read it, and read it again. It makes all 
 thinking men see their way, and those that do not think
 
 THE ORGANISATION OF CO-OPERATION loi 
 
 can decide which is which. . . . What a blending 
 down we must see ! I own a mental mist which pre- 
 vented me from seeing clearly, because the company I 
 found myself in were more clouded than myself; but the 
 light has long been dawning. Holyoake speaks, and 
 we have the clear light of perfect day ! ! 
 
 '' W. Barnett." 
 
 I have spoken of the Alexandra Palace scheme. In 
 1874, at the Halifax Congress, Holyoake mooted a 
 scheme for commissioning a great artist to paint a 
 picture of — in some way — a Co-operative character. 
 The speech brought him a letter from A, J. Dufifield, 
 who advises that the Co-operators will do better to raise 
 ;^5,ooo for Woolner to produce a statue of Shakespeare, 
 of whom ** there is not in all the world a worthy statue." 
 Much of his correspondence is occupied with the 
 framing or considering of schemes for the furtherance 
 of Co-operation. One of the best known of these 
 schemes is the writing of his Histojy of Co-operation. 
 From his acquaintance with the Owenite experiments, 
 his close journalistic attention to the societies founded 
 after 1844, and his success in writing small local 
 histories and as a publicist generally, the function of 
 historian of the movement fell very naturally to him. 
 But a peculiar accident gave the actual impulse to write 
 the work in 1873. In narrating the burial of Robert 
 Owen I referred to an old Owenite named Baume, 
 against whose imaginary designs on the head of Owen 
 Rigby had guarded the grave. In 1873 he became a 
 subscriber to the Co-operative News, and the editor, Farn, 
 being in the Isle of Man, called to see him. Both Farn 
 and Holyoake had known him in the Owenite days. 
 
 " I found him sitting," Farn writes, " in a narrow 
 small crib of his own construction. In that crib he has 
 lived night and day since last November : it is alike his
 
 I02 THE ORGANISATION OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 chair and his bed. His bed is composed of a few- 
 shavings resting on a thin sheet of iron, which is 
 warmed by paraffin lamps from underneath when 
 necessary. He had no shirt on, but a coarse heavy 
 blanket thrown across his shoulders and tied in front. 
 In front of him is a rude writing-desk, writing materials, 
 a paraffin lamp, and a jar of water. At the side a small 
 cupboard containing bread, milk, and sugar, which are 
 almost the only things he touches in the shape of 
 sustaining food and drink. At the top was a canopy of 
 thin white deal covered with a sheet of brown paper, and 
 the canopy is sufficiently low for him to move it back- 
 wards or forwards, and thus shut out what little light and 
 air got into the room, which was in a wretched plight." 
 
 This was the man who advertised a gift of jQ'S^o to 
 Co-operative societies (under eccentric conditions) in 
 the News of July 1873. He had great wealth, and gave 
 Farn an impression of great mental power, darkened 
 by constant suspicion. Amongst the dust and rubbish 
 of his room, the wall-paper and plaster tumbling over 
 them, were numbers of valuable books and documents 
 bearing on early Co-operation. Farn spoke of writing 
 a history of the movement, and Baume offered to lend 
 him his unique collection of material. But in August 
 1873 Farn wrote that he had given up all idea of writing 
 the history, and promised to borrow the documents for 
 Holyoake. Almost immediately one finds Holyoake 
 announcing in the Reasoner that he is going to write 
 the history of Co-operation, and asking for documents 
 bearing on it. 
 
 W. Morrison, with whom Holyoake was in constant 
 communication, advised him to have it printed himself 
 and "employ a publisher to sell it." Mr. Morrison had 
 *' an opinion that nine-tenths of the advertising is useless, 
 and the abominable system of publishers making you 
 advertise in their own worthless magazines ought to be
 
 THE ORGANISATION OF CO-OPERATION 103 
 
 Stopped." Holyoake was persuaded to bring out the 
 first volume at his own risk. It was issued by the 
 Manchester Co-operative Printing Society in 1875. 
 But Morrison's advice proved unfortunate. When it 
 came to the printing of the second volume (and I gather 
 that there was to be a third), which was ready in 1877, 
 Holyoake received a stiffly-worded resolution from the 
 last meeting of the Society, demanding a settlement of 
 accounts and the giving of securities before the second 
 and third volumes be proceeded with. He consulted 
 E. V. Neale, and was assured that they had too strong 
 a case for him to take action. The publication of the 
 second volume was delayed until 1879. 
 
 The work — the most important that Holyoake has 
 written — will generally be acknowledged to be good 
 reading but indifferent history. The later edition, which 
 is now in general use, and is much enlarged, has the 
 disadvantage of the extreme age of the writer. He 
 could to the last pen bright journalistic articles, but the 
 exacting research and the sustained treatment that such 
 a work needed were beyond his strength. Even the 
 earlier edition suffers from falling in a period of very 
 poor health and much anxiety. The second volume 
 was written during the years when he was threatened 
 with blindness. The work contains an enormous 
 amount of historical information, and most of it is 
 presented in detail with great brightness, clearness, and 
 humour ; but the arrangement is poor, and the treat- 
 ment rather fragmentary. The serious student has to 
 make history out of the work. 
 
 At the time, it was warmly welcomed as the first large 
 account of a movement that was forcing itself on public 
 notice. Judge Hughes wrote that he had read it " with 
 very great interest." W. Morrison thought the final 
 chapter " very eloquent," and failed to find any error in
 
 I04 THE ORGANISATION OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 the book ; but he thought Holyoake " would be criticised 
 for slurring over the subject of Co-operative failures." 
 Mr. Whitelaw Reid wrote him from New York that it 
 was "an invaluable contribution to the story of the 
 most significant labour movement of recent times." 
 Professor Fawcett was grateful for it, and constantly 
 sought information of Holyoake.^ Lord Derby (Lord 
 Stanley had succeeded to this title in 1869), with whom 
 Holyoake had long been in communication, and who 
 subscribed to the Co-operative News from its start, assured 
 him that it was "a valuable addition to the records of 
 social movement in our day." He said further: *' No 
 one is entitled to speak on that question with more 
 authority. ... I have always believed in the principle, 
 and am glad to see it so well explained." Lord Derby 
 presided at the Congress in 1881. On the literary side 
 the book was not without appreciation. Mr. Arthur 
 Arnold wrote : " As one who has been a literary trades- 
 man I may, perhaps, without impertinence, express my 
 opinion that your writing grows in force and in the 
 most forcible employment of your original powers as 
 you grow older." George H. Lewes expressed high 
 appreciation of it on behalf of himself and George 
 Eliot. Professor Tyndall offered a complete set of 
 his works for the library of any Co-operative Society 
 that Holyoake should choose. He discreetly selected 
 Blaydon-on-Tyne. 
 
 The great service that Holyoake rendered to the 
 movement by his historical works has always been 
 
 1 Fawcett's opinion of Mr. Briggs's prospectus will probably interest 
 Co-operative students. "If it is successful," he wrote, "it seems to 
 me that the great question of the present day between labour and 
 capital will be solved. I will most gladly write to Mr. Briggs. A 
 scheme so nobly devised and conceived with so much intelligence well 
 deserves encouragement from anyone who takes an interest in the 
 future of the working man."
 
 THE ORGANISATION OF CO-OPERATION 105 
 
 generously recognised. My purpose in this chapter 
 is rather to suggest the extent of his direct influence in 
 the guidance and spread of the movement during this 
 important period. As a member of the southern section 
 of the Central Board he was always in the graver 
 counsels in regard to its fortunes ; though the slower 
 growth of the movement in the south make the work of 
 its representatives seem small in comparison with the 
 vast work of the northern administrators. I have 
 indicated the dozen different ways in which he employed 
 his gifts and influence on behalf of the movement, and 
 may conclude his work for this decade with a striking 
 letter from Mr. W. H. James (Lord Northbourne) in 
 regard to the evidence he gave before the Select 
 Committee of the House of Commons in 1879. 
 
 There had been throughout the seventies a growing 
 alarm amongst private shopkeepers at the rapid growth 
 of the Co-operative Movement. The feeling is so 
 intelligible, and so familiar even in our own time, that 
 it needs little discussion. When the local efforts of 
 grocers against the stores proved of no avail, there was 
 some disposition to press for legislative measures in the 
 interest of the private shopkeepers. W. Morrison fore- 
 saw this in 1872, and wrote to Holyoake to suggest that 
 Oldham, for instance, ought to be urged by him to 
 return a Co-operative member — he indicated A. Green- 
 wood — to Parliament. By 1879 the shopkeepers made 
 their plaints audible in the House, and a Select Com- 
 mittee was directed to inquire into the situation. Holy- 
 oake pressed, through Mr. James, for a summons to give 
 evidence before the Committee. His evidence seems to 
 have been dreaded by some of the members, but his 
 credentials were too clear to be ignored. The Com- 
 mittee decided to take evidence with regard to London 
 first, then with regard to the provinces, and thought
 
 io6 THE ORGANISATION OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 Holyoake's evidence might "come in at the end." No 
 doubt there was never any serious danger to the Co- 
 operative cause. By that time it had more than half a 
 milHon members, and was doing an annual trade of 
 more than twenty millions sterling. But Mr. James's 
 letter will be read with no little interest : 
 
 " Dear Mr. Holyoake, 
 
 " I am so sorry I was unable to stay for the 
 remainder of your evidence to-day, but I had to leave in 
 connection with a committee. ... I was much pleased 
 with all you told us, and I have not the smallest doubt 
 that the conclusions you have come to are those at 
 which not only the Committee but the public outside 
 must eventually arrive. I think the Chairman was 
 pleased, and I am only sorry that he would not assent 
 to my suggestion, made at the time your name was 
 mentioned first of all, that you should have come before 
 us much earlier, for it would have saved a great deal of 
 useless 'jaw' and twaddle from Debac's tradesmen. I 
 don't think the promoters of the inquiry are anxious for 
 any report. They believe that they can keep their 
 friends in order by staving off the ordeal to the latest 
 possible date ; I daresay it will not be till next session. 
 The chances of a dissolution I feel to be too uncertain 
 to allow me to accompany you westwards [to America]. 
 I wish I could most truly. I have not relinquished my 
 passage, but think I am almost sure . . ." [end missing]. 
 
 It may not be superfluous to add a word about the 
 relations of Holyoake with the Christian Socialists who 
 had now so much share in the work of the movement. 
 Neale, Hughes, and Ludlow brought not only their 
 legal skill to the movement at a critical stage, but 
 they (and Lloyd Jones) strove earnestly for precisely 
 that ideal of Co-operative life that Holyoake advocated. 
 They were indeed so prominent in the southern section 
 that some historians (as, Mrs. Webb) seem to regard
 
 THE ORGANISATION OF CO-OPERATION 107 
 
 it as a Christian-Socialist work. We have seen that 
 the work of Holyoake, Greening, and Edger cannot 
 be ignored in this way. In particular, Greening's 
 "Agricultural and Horticultural Association" was 
 presenting one of the most impressive examples of 
 profit-sharing with employees. By 1880 it was doing 
 business to the extent of ;^ 100,000 a year. And Holy- 
 oake's work was only second to that of E. V. Neale, the 
 very generous honorary secretary of the Central Board. 
 But such comparison is futile and distasteful. The 
 interesting point is to see how Holyoake worked with 
 his old opponents. 
 
 With Lloyd Jones he never became cordial. Their 
 recollections, going back to the Owenite schism, always 
 held them more or less apart. In 1876, after the 
 Glasgow Congress, Jones rather sharply attacked Holy- 
 oake, on a curious ground. Professor Hodgson had 
 presided at the Congress, and Holyoake expressed the 
 thanks of the Congress to him for his address. Jones 
 held that the practice of inviting eminent men from 
 without the movement to take the chair was mere 
 snobbishness, and not in the interest of the movement. 
 He even regarded Dr. Hodgson as hostile to their aims 
 and principles, and opposed the circulation of his 
 address. His references to Holyoake are bitter and 
 satirical, but the general feeling of the body was with 
 Holyoake. The only other case of some open friction 
 with the followers of Maurice was in 1881, and is more 
 instructive. They were so wholly with Holyoake in 
 the controversy about profit-sharing that only a recrudes- 
 cence of the religious difficulty was likely to cause serious 
 dissidence. Unfortunately, Holyoake felt that they 
 raised this thorny question in the Manual for Co- 
 operators which had been written by Hughes and Neale. 
 It was Holyoake's sincere wish to keep his views on
 
 io8 THE ORGANISATION OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 religion quite apart from his Co-operative work, and he 
 was jealous for the purely secular character of the move- 
 ment. When it prospered, its Congresses naturally 
 began to be the occasion of ecclesiastical functions as 
 well as of civic receptions, and Holyoake must have 
 watched this with some interest. In the previous year 
 (1880) the Bishop of Durham had taken the chair. 
 When therefore the Manual seemed to Holyoake to 
 make undue claims for religion and the Church, he 
 spoke with some warmth on the matter at the 1881 
 Congress. He afterwards apologised to Hughes ; and 
 Neale, ever tactful and conciliatory, erased the matter 
 from the proceedings, after some friendly correspond- 
 ence. In his last ten years Hughes was one of 
 Holyoake's most cordial colleagues. 
 
 These are small incidents in a decade of joint social 
 endeavour. Neither side could wholly forget its tradi- 
 tions ; and it must be remembered that while Maurice's 
 followers had expressly called themselves Christian 
 Socialists, Holyoake had not taken the name, or acted 
 in the spirit, of Secularist Socialist. A particular sensi- 
 tiveness on his side was not unnatural. Apart from 
 these slight differences they worked harmoniously for 
 the movement, and its network of societies ran rapidly 
 over the map.
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 VISITS TO AMERICA 
 
 In his sixty-second year Holyoake attained that 
 comfortable assurance of success in English pubHc Hfe, 
 a triumphant tour through the United States. His 
 health was still far from being entirely restored, and it 
 was thought that the voyage would help his recovery ; 
 and no country in the world so much appealed to his 
 curiosity as that reputed home of democratic experiment. 
 He had, however, a special reason for making the 
 journey. For some years he had been interested in 
 emigration. Co-operation in industrial life at home 
 needed a complementary ideal of co-operation in the 
 exchange of workers between one country and another. 
 Large numbers of his friends and supporters of earlier 
 days had emigrated to the States or to Australia. 
 They had usually found success, as the difficulties of 
 emigration in those early days formed a kind of natural 
 selection of the enterprising men. The great Pinkerton 
 detective-firm was founded by an English Chartist, and 
 old Owenites or Chartists turned up frequently during 
 Holyoake's visit. But he saw that a vast amount of 
 energy might be saved by the collection and publication 
 of instructions to ordinary emigrants. 
 
 Lord Clarendon, we saw, partly adopted his idea at the 
 Foreign Office in 1869, when he directed consuls to re- 
 port on the conditions of industry abroad. The most 
 
 practical thing to do, however, was for a Government 
 
 109
 
 no VISITS TO AMERICA 
 
 that received many emigrants, like that of the United 
 States or Canada, to issue a handy " emigrant's guide- 
 book," and it was chiefly in the interest of this plan that 
 Holyoake visited America and Canada in 1879 and 1882. 
 As early as 1870 I find him in correspondence with the 
 American Social Science Association with regard to the 
 issue of such a book. The secretary, Henry Villard 
 (son-in-law of Lloyd Garrison), was actually preparing a 
 work of the kind, and Holyoake got estimates of cost 
 from a London printer, but the design was abandoned. 
 In 1879 he decided to go to the States himself, at his own 
 expense, in the interest of the emigrant. The Co-operative 
 Guild (which had been' founded, largely through his 
 inspiration, a few years before) also prompted him to 
 make inquiries. Shortly before he went he received a 
 letter from Mr. Mason, of the Chicago Tribune, saying : 
 " If Joseph Arch really expects to play Moses, and lead 
 English agricultural labourers over here en masse, he 
 will make a gigantic mistake. We are overstocked 
 with labour. ... It seems as if a protest from some 
 Englishman known as a friend of the working classes 
 might do some good in checking this emigration. If the 
 men come, they are coming to starvation." 
 
 Holyoake was aware that the American press had 
 often referred to his exertions, but it is clear that he 
 went with no expectation of finding distinction there. 
 He had done service for the North during the slavery- 
 fight, but those who knew it best were dead, and even 
 they had had to challenge some of his writing on the 
 subject. Wendell Phillips was almost the only man in 
 whom he expected to find friendship. Ingersoll must 
 have known him, but they had had no correspondence. 
 He went out, to use his later title, as " a stranger in 
 America," with a prospect of doing some useful work 
 unnoticed. Even the journey out was less pleasant than
 
 VISITS TO AMERICA in 
 
 he had anticipated. He expected to sail in the " Scythia " 
 with Mr. W. H. James, Mr. and Mrs. T. B. Potter, and 
 Mr. Childers, but a threatening election altered their 
 plans, and he went alone to Liverpool to sail in the 
 " Bothnia " on August i6th. Liverpool journalists, led 
 by Mr. (Sir E.) Russell, gave him a public dinner as he 
 passed through their city. 
 
 He found the Atlantic " a genuine American concern 
 — never still," and had interesting experiences with the 
 clergy on board. He was put in a cabin with a 
 Philadelphia minister, the Rev. J. J, Good, and he had 
 not long been aboard when Dr. Prime, of New York, 
 sought his cabin, and introduced him to other clergymen. 
 They gave him his first impression of American energy 
 and effectiveness, as well as American cordiality, 
 which was soon to be confirmed on all sides. Though 
 there were able American preachers on board, the ship's 
 rule demanded an Anglican service, and a dull, nervous 
 English minister gave them a sermon on England's 
 commercial inferiority, and attributed it to the sins of 
 Englishmen. The congregation of American business- 
 men smiled. Holyoake's instinct was against the con- 
 clusion. When he came back from America he gave 
 a different account of John Bull's inferiority. " Like 
 the oxen of Cuyp," he said, '* he stands meditating 
 over the edge of his verdant little island, looking as 
 though he was going to think, but he is so long about 
 it that the spectator never feels sure that he does it." 
 
 Of his general impression of America it may be said 
 that even he failed for once in originality, though his 
 detailed observations are extremely original, acute, and 
 entertaining. As a good Free-trader he finds proofs of 
 the evil of Protection everywhere, and he frowns on the 
 political system ; and the two qualities of the American 
 character he finds himself always commenting on arc
 
 112 VISITS TO AMERICA 
 
 its impetuosity and its big way of doing things. This 
 he expected in theory, yet he says that one's sensation 
 on entering New York must be Hke that of a Tangier 
 oyster when it is put in water to expand. With playful 
 exaefg:eration he used to tell afterwards that he some- 
 times went to see business-men lunch in New York, but, 
 though he saw plenty of them enter and pay their bills, 
 he never caught the actual dispatch of the food. There 
 was little need of theological considerations to explain 
 America's progress. In time he realised one cause of 
 American quickness. He was in Boston, and received 
 an attractive invitation to attend and speak at a Liberal 
 Convention at Chautauqua Lake, where he was to meet 
 "all the most able and best known Liberals in the 
 United States." When he asked the booking-clerk at 
 the station for a ticket, he learned that it was 700 miles 
 away. He made the double journey in time to lecture 
 at Boston on the Sunday. 
 
 The one quite unexpected sensation he experienced 
 in America was a pleasant one. He was welcomed 
 everywhere with a warmth and distinction that surprised 
 him. One or two friends had been informed that he 
 was coming, but, as he changed his ship at the last 
 moment, there was not a soul to meet him when he 
 landed at New York. His clerical companion was 
 suddenly called away to a sick relative, and he had 
 to make his way alone to the city. He put up quietly 
 at No. I Broadway Hotel (now the Washington), but it 
 did not remove his feeling of isolation to wander about 
 its endless corridors, or dine amidst groups of sea- 
 captains talking every language in the world but that 
 of London. By and by he made his way to the one 
 friend he thought he had in New York, his old comrade 
 Hollick, who now had a surgery in Broadway and 
 cordially welcomed him. At Hollick's he found a letter
 
 VISITS TO AMERICA 113 
 
 (written before he left England) asking him to call at 
 the offices of the Worker^ and his fortunes rapidly- 
 changed. Mr. Barnum, the manager, had the news of 
 his arrival telegraphed to 123 journals, and a gentle 
 shower of invitations began to fall. He was accorded 
 receptions at the Press Club, the Brooklyn Philosophical 
 Society, and the Manhattan Liberal Club ; and the 
 Union, Century, and Lotos Clubs put their rooms at his 
 disposal. He " spent enchanted days amidst the pictures, 
 books, and stately chambers." Pressmen and social 
 students met him with great distinction, especially Mr. 
 Barnum, Mr. Whitelaw Reid, and Dr. Felix Adler. 
 But he left New York before it had time to exhibit 
 much of its known hospitality, and his friends had to 
 await his return. 
 
 From New York he sailed up the Hudson to Saratoga 
 with Mr. Barnum, to see the holding of the Republican 
 Convention and nomination of a candidate for the 
 presidency. His account of the function, like most of 
 his other sketches, is written in a mood of playful and 
 superficial observation. Ingersoll actually compares it to 
 some of Dickens's best work. He was only ten weeks in 
 the States and Canada, and did not pretend to see more 
 than the surface of American life. There were, however, 
 peculiarities of the American political machine that dis- 
 tressed him, when he reflected that he was in a Republic 
 that had passed the experimental stage. When he asked 
 a friend what was the real difference between Republicans 
 and Democrats, he was told : "The Republicans profess 
 to be honest : the Democrats don't." He was, of course, 
 well acquainted with the real difference, but the 
 pleasantry had a point. The struggle for office and 
 emolument detracted from the dignity of the republican 
 ideal. There were, he calculated, 100,000 place-men 
 belonging to the party that was in power, and each 
 
 VOL. II. I
 
 114 VISITS TO AMERICA 
 
 place-man had nine supporters. Then there were 
 100,000 would-be place-men of the opposite party, with 
 900,000 supporters struggling to get them into office. 
 In a way he exaggerated their faults as much as Dickens 
 did, but his remarks were void of malice, and he so con- 
 stantly kept the balance by reference to English defects 
 that the whole American press spoke pleasantly of him. 
 Their big way of doing things extorted his admiration 
 everywhere. The Tribune offices at New York caused 
 him to think of Fleet Street with humility. The boat in 
 which he sailed up the Hudson seemed to him capable 
 of carrying a town. The Saratoga hotel (United States) 
 had already 2,000 guests when he arrived, yet the staff 
 received with placidity the arrival of a further thousand, 
 and he found himself lodged in a room of princely 
 spaciousness. England, he felt, was midway between 
 Holland and the States ; his sensations might be 
 compared to those of Gulliver in Lilliput and 
 Brobdingnadia respectively. 
 
 At the Liberal Convention at Chautauqua Lake he 
 saw a different side of American life. This was a con- 
 gress of its idealists or " advanced thinkers," and he felt 
 that there were corresponding defects. They pushed 
 the principle of independence too far. Nearly every 
 member, it seemed to him, had " an armful or reticule- 
 ful of first principles." He arrived early at the Lake 
 with a few friends who prepared him to witness a scene 
 of some confusion. After listening to their accounts of 
 former Conventions, he drew up a series of resolutions, 
 and had them signed by his small group of friends and 
 inserted in the chief local paper. When the reformers 
 began to assemble the next day they read the following 
 manifesto : 
 
 We, the undersigned, having arrived at Chautauqua 
 Lake a day before everybody else, do resolve ourselves
 
 VISITS TO AMERICA 115 
 
 into a Primary Convention, setting forth the following 
 objects : 
 
 1. That the President of the Convention be required 
 
 to define its objects, and state them as briefly as 
 possible. 
 
 2. That as many of the speakers be requested to speak 
 
 as possible to those points. 
 
 3. IMiat each speaker be allowed reasonable time for 
 
 denouncing- everybody and everything, and after- 
 wards it is hoped that everybody will proceed to 
 business. 
 
 4. That, if more imputation be desired by any speakers, 
 
 the proprietor of the hotel shall be requested to 
 set apart a Howling Room, to which all such 
 persons shall retire, attended by as many reporters 
 as can be induced to accompany them. 
 
 5. That it is not intended here to disparage 
 
 imputations or irrelevancies, which are always 
 entertaining if well done, but to prevent the time 
 of the Convention being consumed upon persons 
 instead of principles. 
 
 6. That clear notice be given to speakers that this is 
 
 not a Convention for the discussion of every 
 subject under the sun, but of those only proposed 
 from the chair. 
 
 Holyoake and four others signed the paper, but some 
 of his friends thought it too frivolous for the solemn 
 summer atmosphere of Chautauqua Lake. Holyoake 
 admired American speakers, but thought American 
 audiences too long-suffering. 
 
 A few days after he left New York he was in Boston. 
 The one man whom he looked forward to seeing in 
 America was Wendell Phillips, and he was not dis- 
 appointed. During the abolitionist-struggle Phillips 
 had paid him the compliment of replying at length to 
 one of his articles, and had explained that it was the 
 only article on the subject by a foreigner that he had
 
 Il6 VISITS TO AMERICA 
 
 thought worthy of examination. They had corre- 
 sponded afterwards, and exchanged productions. In 
 1874 Phillips wrote, acknowledging some pamphlets : 
 
 "That on Mill was due certainly to a just estimate of 
 him, but how sad that human jackals should make it 
 necessary ! Those on Co-operation I read and read 
 again, welcoming the light you throw on it — for it is 
 one of my most hopeful stepping-stones to a higher 
 future. Thank you for the lesson — it cleared one or two 
 dark places — not the first I owe you by any means, for 
 I've read everything of yours I could lay my hands on. 
 There was one small volume on rhetoric, methods of 
 address, hints towards effective speech, etc., which I 
 studied faithfully, until someone to whom I had praised 
 and lent it, acting probably on something like 
 Coleridge's rule that books belong to those who most 
 need them, never returned me my well-thumbed 
 essay. . . . 
 
 " I wish I could have an hour's talk with you on this 
 Labour and Capital question — our imminent question — 
 one perhaps to have as angry an agitation as slavery 
 caused. Wealth with you governs, but its power is, I 
 suppose, somewhat masked — sometimes countervailed 
 or checked by other forces. With us it rules bare, 
 naked, shameless, undisguised — one incorporated wealth, 
 often wielded by a single hand, is fearful in its direct, 
 and still more in its indirect, power. . . . Vanderbilt is 
 reported to say : ' It is cheaper and surer to buy legis- 
 latures than voters.' This is the peril of universal 
 suffrage. The sadness of the whole thing is one hardly 
 sees whence the cure is to come. I believe, I don't see. 
 
 " Truly our movements demand a most patient faith. I 
 never expected to see any success of our anti-slavery 
 struggle. Fortified in Church, State, and Capital, the 
 system would have outlived this generation and perhaps 
 the next, with ordinary shrewdness on the part of its 
 friends — the gods made them mad in their way to 
 destruction and so hastened it.
 
 VISITS TO AMERICA 117 
 
 " Neither shall I live to see any marked result of our 
 Labour Movement here, though it is true that our 
 masses ripen marvellously quick. But, as you've said, 
 the cliques, jealousies, distrust, and ignorance of working 
 men are our chief obstacles. Indeed, we sometimes get 
 better help from open-hearted capitalists. Your ranks 
 are infinitely better trained than ours to stand together. 
 I beg and pray our men, with little success, to stand 
 together on some o)ie demand just long enough to be 
 counted, and so ensure that respect which numbers 
 always command in politics, where universal suffrage 
 obtains. Then we have all the brains of the land our 
 servants, and soon gain that attention which is here half 
 of success." 
 
 The letter may be regarded as a safe indication of 
 the temper in which American public men welcomed 
 Holyoake. They regarded him as a man who had 
 spent a long life in earnest endeavour to help the mass 
 of the people : many, like Phillips, would say successful 
 endeavour and wise guidance. It was on Co-operation, 
 or some aspect of the social question, that he always 
 lectured, and more than one clergyman invited him to 
 his pulpit. 
 
 Phillips had written that, though his wife was ill, he 
 hoped to show Holyoake " little Boston." One day he 
 took him to Bunker's Hill, and from there to Long- 
 fellow's home. He had the aspect of a "Jupiter of 
 poetry," Holyoake says. Lowell also had a house in 
 the neighbourhood, but he was away in England at the 
 time. They happened to meet John Bright's son in one 
 of the streets, and Holyoake introduced him to Phillips. 
 He was much impressed to see the great orator stand 
 with his hat in his hand to say a few words to the son of 
 Bright. The Sunday in Boston he spent with Colonel 
 T. W. Higginson. Mrs. Theodore Parker showed him 
 the rooms of her dead husband, with whom he had
 
 ii8 VISITS TO AMERICA 
 
 corresponded in the days of the slavery agitation, and 
 he lectured in the Parker Memorial Hall. With some 
 emotion he found himself speaking one day on the 
 platform from which Lloyd Garrison had been dragged. 
 The Hon. Josiah Ouincy had taken him to attend a 
 meeting in Stacy Hall, and he was begged to address it. 
 For all his activity Phillips professed to find him shy of 
 meeting celebrities, and told him to " put on American 
 brass (for once) and invade Geo. W. Curtis's den," 
 when he expressed a wish to see him. To Curtis he 
 sent a note introducing Holyoake as one of the ablest 
 social reformers in England. The one thing in which 
 he declined to meet Holyoake's wishes was when Holy- 
 oake wanted to hear him speak. He had an engagement 
 in a Catholic Hall fixed for some time after Holyoake's 
 departure, and Holyoake lightly offered to submit to 
 baptism if they would make the engagement earlier. 
 
 " No," Phillips wrote to him, " you'll not compass any 
 success in your plots to hear me. Go away fancying 
 I'm something. Sydney Smith got to such courageous 
 noon of daylight that the only Mission remaining was 
 the Archb. of Cant, you remember. Submit to your 
 fate, and, after waking from all your other American 
 dreams, leave me still a myth and fond illusion. A 
 pleasant voyage to you. May you find old England 
 so stupid that you'll hurry right back to life. 
 " Yours with all my heart, 
 
 " Wendell Phillips." 
 
 At Boston he had a first experience of American 
 interviewing. He had little objection to the ceremony 
 in principle. " The press of America," he said, " may 
 be compared to a vast machine for the production of 
 intellectual electricity," and one of its chief functions 
 was the interview. Unfortunately, when he told the 
 reporter that Beaconsfield had described the queen as
 
 VISITS TO AMERICA 119 
 
 "not either mentally or morally fitted to govern,"^ the 
 note became converted into a statement that the queen 
 told Beaconsfield that Gladstone was " not either mentally 
 or morally fitted to govern." Some shrewd sub-editor 
 had acted on what he thought was the general prob- 
 ability of the matter. Holyoake did not face his 
 interviewers less amiably, but he says that, when he 
 wanted anything reported very accurately, he used to 
 say the contrary of what he meant. He brought away 
 a high regard for Boston : only differing from the usual 
 estimate in thinking that Boston owed its dignity and 
 position, not merely to its intellectual pre-eminence, but 
 to its superiority in the kind of thought that leads to 
 action. Emerson, whom he visited at Concord, gave 
 him the same impression. He was the Carlyle of 
 America ; but " while Carlyle inspires you to do some- 
 thing, not clearly defined, when you have read Emerson 
 you know what you have to do." However, Emerson 
 would not allow him to say a word in disparagement 
 of Carlyle. 
 
 A few hastily-arranged lectures were given by him in 
 various Massachusetts towns. He visited Harvard with 
 Colonel Higginson and Cornell. The acting-president 
 of Cornell, the Rev. Dr. Russell, was the father of his 
 friend Mrs. Sharman, and drove him from the station. 
 He addressed 450 of the students at Dr. Russell's 
 request, and was glad to see that they included 50 ladies. 
 Dr. Russell invited him to Cornell as " the apostle of 
 the most important doctrine that this century will 
 publish to humanity." One town he lectured at bore 
 the name of Holyoke City, and someone suggested that 
 it took its name from an ancestor of his. He rejoined 
 that he was quite prepared to collect the arrears of rent 
 that must be due to him. Chicago seemed forbidding 
 
 ' In an after-dinner speech at Aylesbury in 1S71.
 
 I20 VISITS TO AMERICA 
 
 when he approached it on the rail — he " never saw such 
 a lumbering, ding}% ramshackle, crowded, tumultuous, 
 boisterous outside of a city before " — but when he 
 entered it he changed his estimate. Good Americans, 
 he said, might go to Paris to die — if they had not 
 chanced to visit Chicago first. Chicago was the home 
 of an old Owenite friend from England, Mr. Charlton, 
 general agent of the Chicago and Alton Rail Road. 
 From that moment his long railway journeys were made 
 pleasanter, though they had been far from unpleasant. 
 The effectiveness and organisation of the railways amazed 
 him. He says, contrasting the English baggage- 
 system : " In America a civil, quiet person appears who 
 asks you where you will have your baggage sent to, and 
 he gives you a metal ticket with the name of the place, 
 and you leave the station and proceed unencumbered on 
 your journey. Days, or even weeks after, probably 
 3,000 miles from the place where you last lost sight of 
 your portmanteaus and their precious contents, the train 
 stops at a prairie station, when there issues from an 
 official ranche in a wood, or some unnoticed depot in the 
 rocks, a baggage-master, who has upon his arm the 
 corresponding check to that which you have in your 
 purse, and your luggage is there exactly as when you 
 last saw it." The last phrase, at least, might be con- 
 tested. Mr. Charlton was interested in his emigrant- 
 plans, and obtained free passes for him and other 
 convenience. While he was at Philadelphia the rail- 
 way company put a special train at his disposal to 
 take him to Reading, where he wanted to hear Ingersoll 
 lecture, and bring him back on the following day. 
 
 Early in October he passed over into Canada with 
 Mr. Charlton, visiting Niagara on the way. He aifected 
 to see " the shadow of the crown " upon it, after the 
 States ; but the richness of the country and the energy of
 
 VISITS TO AMERICA 121 
 
 its people much impressed him. ''Canaan was nothing 
 to Canada," he observed. The Premier, Sir John 
 Macdonald, was very cordial, and introduced him to the 
 Minister of Agriculture, the Hon. J. H. Pope, for the 
 purpose of his mission, as "a distinguished member of 
 the public press in England." He easily interested the 
 Canadians in his object, and we shall see that they 
 eventually published an emigrant's guide. At Hamilton 
 Holyoake met the Rev. H. Ward Beecher. He felt 
 slighted by Mr. Beecher afterwards in New York, but a 
 letter he received from him reassured him that it was 
 due only to pressure of work. " You will leave a good 
 impression behind you," Mr. Beecher wrote. " I admire 
 your prudence and your good spirit, and am deeply 
 interested in the cause that you have so much at heart. 
 The Qgg once hatched can never get back to Qgg again. 
 The working men of the world can never get back to 
 what are called ' the good old days.' " 
 
 A few days later he was in Washington. New York 
 (seen from Broadway) had seemed " a Paris taken to 
 business." Washington he thought "the lotus-land of 
 business." Its restfulness relieved him after the rapids 
 of New York, and he thought it " superb in its brilliant 
 flashes of space." Whether he would not have preferred 
 a touch of New York energy in its officials, when he 
 came to discuss the business of his mission, he does not 
 relate in his book. Washington was the city of chief 
 importance in view of the object of his trip, and his 
 experience there was less encouraging than at Ottawa. 
 Everybody was much more than polite, but the emigrant's 
 guide-book was not published. He had a talk with 
 President Hayes at the White House, with General 
 Mussey and General Sharman, and with the Secretary 
 of State, Mr. Evarts. His idea was regarded as useful, 
 but not adopted ; though the Secretary of State sent him
 
 122 VISITS TO AMERICA 
 
 300 maps and a good deal of other material that would 
 be of use in compiling a guide. They doubted if the 
 Federal Government had the power to compile a work 
 that concerned each State. At the request of the District 
 Council he gave a public lecture on Co-operation during 
 his stay at Washington. 
 
 His pleasant impressions of Washington, in spite of 
 his virtual failure, were due largely to the fact that he 
 was entertained there by Colonel Ingersoll, and formed 
 a very cordial friendship with him. Early in October 
 Ingersoll had written that he was disappointed in not 
 seeing him at Chautauqua. " My principal reason for 
 attending the Convention," he said, " was to see you. 
 You must visit Washington, and while here must make 
 my house your home. It will give me great pleasure to 
 assist in making you real happy." It need hardly be 
 said that he succeeded. His own impression of Holy- 
 oake may be gathered from the farewell letter he wrote 
 to him. He had driven to Reading to see him pass 
 through in November, but had missed him, and wrote to 
 explain. 
 
 " I can hardly tell you," he continued, " how glad I 
 am to have made your acquaintance. I now have 
 another reason for visiting England. Mrs. Ingersoll and 
 all the rest send their very best regards, and all wish that 
 you could have stayed for years. Well, good-bye. 
 You have lived a brave and useful life. You have 
 Droken many chains. You have lightened the burdens 
 of the poor, and in a thousand ways added to the bless- 
 ings of mankind. Let me hear from you now and then. 
 Hoping that the sea will cast you on your native shore, 
 and that all you love may welcome you home again, 
 " I am, as ever, your fond admirer, 
 
 *' R. G. Ingersoll." 
 
 Like most of the others, Ingersoll seems to have thought 
 that the frail old man of sixty-two was near taking his
 
 VISITS TO AMERICA 123 
 
 farewell of earth. It is well that they penned their 
 estimates of him while he yet lived. It was he that wrote 
 or read most of t/icir obituary notices. 
 
 Several of Holyoake's lectures in the brief tour were 
 given in churches, as I said. At Providence he spoke 
 in Mr. Haynes's church ; at Chicago in that of his 
 earlier friend, Brooke Herford. At Cincinnati he gave 
 one of his most successful addresses. It was given in 
 Pike's Opera House, under the auspices of the Unity 
 Club. A Unitarian minister, Mr, C. W. Windte, took 
 the chair, and afterwards sent him a draft for seventy- 
 five dollars {jQi^) as "a slight return for your excellent 
 lecture." "We may," Mr. Windte added on his own 
 account, "differ in the speculative part of our religion, 
 but we are one in its practical requirements, and conduct, 
 as Matthew Arnold says, is two-thirds of life." The 
 other principal address that he delivered was also 
 presided over by a clerical chairman. Dr. Robert 
 CoUyer. It was arranged by the Cooper Union, and 
 was given in their great hall at New York on November 
 ist. The vast audience, which included many men of 
 distinction, made Holyoake feel as if he were " speaking 
 in a town," Professor Adlcr and other social students 
 addressed the audience after his lecture. " You have 
 given, and will give great strength to us in future," Mr. 
 Barnum wrote him. 
 
 Americans were by this time paying much attention 
 to Holyoake's movements, and interviewers assailed him 
 from all sides. One reporter, vaguely acquainted with 
 his interest in the Garibaldi Legion, described his inter- 
 view as occurring with "General Holyoake," His last 
 and most touching distinction was paid by New York 
 on November i8th, the day before he sailed for Liver- 
 pool. Mr. Barnum, Dr. Adler, and a few others, arranged 
 a public breakfast in his honour at the St. James Hotel
 
 124 VISITS TO AMERICA 
 
 in Broadway, and he was greeted by a very honouring 
 company. The President of the Republic regretted that 
 he could not "join in the entertainment to Mr. Holyoake, 
 and thereby show my appreciation of the work in which 
 he is engaged." G. W. Curtis, who also was away from 
 New York, had to decline, but wrote : " I regret it the 
 more as no man deserves more honour than Mr. Holy- 
 oake from all who are interested in the humane work to 
 which he has devoted himself." The Hon. John Hitz 
 sent his "cordial sympathy w^ith the life-long and earnest 
 efforts of your esteemed guest, whose hand has been so 
 ceaselessly extended to the great mass of toilers." Some 
 eighty guests came to honour him, several clergymen 
 being amongst the number. Peter Cooper, Whitelaw 
 Reid, E. L. Godkin (editor of the Nation), R. Heber 
 Newton, Dr. Adier, E. V. Smalley, Mrs. E. Thompson, 
 and other w^ll-known New Yorkers, gave a warm and 
 long-remembered termination to his first brief visit to 
 the States. 
 
 His observation of American life was so consciously 
 and necessarily superficial that he had no idea of" writing 
 a book about it," even in those days of restricted output. 
 He felt, however, that his superficial impressions would 
 not be unjust, and he wrote a series of articles on his 
 tour in the Co-operative News. They were collected in a 
 little volume, Among the Americans, which is not the 
 least entertaining of Holyoake's works. Mr. Knowles 
 also asked him for an article for the Nineteenth Century, 
 which he called " A Stranger in America." Mr. White- 
 law Reid took some of his sketches for the Tribune, 
 but election-news flooded his columns, and he used 
 few of them. His cheque was so very American that 
 Holyoake sent him an ornate receipt in this form : 
 
 " Received from Whitelaw Reid, Esq., for the oppor- 
 tunity (which proved to be of very little good to him) of
 
 VISITS TO AMERICA 125 
 
 publishing ' advance proofs ' of certain chapters entitled 
 ' Among the Americans,' thirteen pounds sterling, which 
 the author accepts with grateful misgivings as to whether 
 he is entitled to it." 
 
 A Chicago firm issued all his articles in book-form, and 
 the American press was kind to it. " An excellent 
 sample of a traveller at his best," the Nation pronounced 
 him ; and the Spectator S2i\& that " to read his book is like 
 enjoying the sea-breeze on a sultry day." Papers with 
 some friendly bias, like the Sun, reviewed it at length. 
 His character — genial, just, and generous — was visible 
 in the little book. 
 
 The correspondence entailed in the publication of his 
 impressions and the invitations to return that he constantly 
 received kept America fresh in Holyoake's mind. He 
 found himself, in fact, invested with an embarrassing 
 authority on America before very long. One day he 
 received a letter from the manager of the " Camden 
 Turkish Baths" asking him to secure a place for him in 
 the States. It seemed that Mr. J. G. Crawford, while 
 bathing there, told the man that " a movement of Holy- 
 oake's finger" was all he needed to get a good place. 
 Mr. Cyril Herbert (son of the artist) wrote him — " know- 
 ing the weight of your influence" — to ask if there were 
 hope of selling to some " artistic counterpart of the 
 Peers' Robing Room " in the States a large picture by 
 his father. Henry George asked his mediation for 
 placing his Irish Land Question on the English market. 
 " Progress and Poverty^'' it is interesting to read in the 
 letter, " has done extremely well here, for a book of its 
 kind. ... A wealthy gentleman of this city [New 
 York] has recently purchased a thousand copies, which 
 he is sending out to academical libraries." Mr. George 
 went to see Holyoake on his second visit to America. 
 " Why, you look quite human," Holyoake said to him.
 
 126 VISITS TO AMERICA 
 
 More interesting was a correspondence with Froude 
 that grew out of his American visit. Readers of Sixty 
 Years will remember that, when in Canada in 1882, he 
 visited Carlyle's sister (Janet), Mrs. Hanning, at Hamil- 
 ton. It seems that during his earlier visit he got some 
 document from Mrs. Hanning, through Mr. Charlton, 
 and sent it to Froude, who was then in the heat of the 
 controversy over the Carlyle letters. Froude answered : 
 
 *' Dear Mr. Holyoake, 
 
 " I am sincerely grateful to you for sending me 
 Mr. Charlton's letter and its enclosure. There is nothing 
 in the letter with which I was not acquainted. It shows 
 only that Mrs. Hanning's memory is a good one. My 
 own difficulties have arisen rather from the excess of 
 material than the absence of it. I am glad to have 
 succeeded in interesting you in Mrs. Carlyle. She is 
 my special legacy from Carlyle. His chief desire was 
 that her portrait should be accurately drawn. Both 
 characters were essentially magnificent. But she had a 
 bitter tongue, and he was irritable, and in fact men and 
 women of genius find or make an uneasy time of it in 
 this world. 
 
 " I am glad to have been brought thus accidentally into 
 correspondence with you. You have fought a brave 
 battle for many years ; and if others now find the road 
 more easy to travel, you were one of the pioneers when 
 it lay through thorns and brambles. I never saw you or 
 heard your voice, but I have not watched your action 
 with the less interest. 
 
 " Yours faithfully, 
 
 "J. A. Froude." 
 
 In thanking him Holyoake observed : 
 
 " A single sentence in your letter enables me to better 
 understand Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle than what else I have 
 read from their friends. I was among those who thought 
 you should have omitted parts of the Reminiscences, but
 
 VISITS TO AMERICA 127 
 
 the portions of his hfe you have published satisfied me 
 that you were right. I regarded him as the greatest 
 ruffian in hterature since Dr. Johnson, but since he 
 wished to be described as he was, I recognised in that 
 the daring and sense of self-justice which redeemed John- 
 son and restore respect for Carlyle. The passages in 
 the Reminiscences relating to his wife I knew to be a wail 
 of remorse rather than of love. All great thinkers, 
 being mostly unconscious of the claims of others, 
 act as though their absorption was selfishness, which 
 it is not, though it so appears to others." 
 
 When Holyoake returned from Canada in 1882, he 
 wrote to tell Froude that he had visited Mrs. Hanning. 
 She told him : 
 
 " A paper was sent to me by the family to sign against 
 Mr. Froude. I said I did not wish to sign it. Mr. 
 Froude was my brother's friend. He always spoke of 
 Mr. Froude with great regard. My brother trusted him, 
 and I think the family ought. I said I wanted nothing 
 artificial said about him. My brother was always for 
 the truth, and so am I." 
 
 Froude wrote in reply to his report of this : 
 
 '* You are most kind in writing to me. I do not 
 wonder that some members of Carlyle's family and that 
 the world generally are perplexed and angry. It is so 
 unusual in these days that a man who is conscious that he 
 has fallen short in an important part of his duty should 
 wish to make a public reparation that such an interpreta- 
 tion is the last which would occur to him. Yet this is 
 what Carlyle felt, and he trusted to me as a friend on 
 whom he could rely to execute his desire. I considered 
 his retention of these letters and preparation of them for 
 publication to be the finest act of his very noble life. I 
 could not dissuade him from it — for it was really needed — 
 and hereafter men will understand and honour him for 
 his courage and truthfulness. I can do nothing at 
 present but let the storm rage on."
 
 128 VISITS TO AMERICA 
 
 To return, however, to the interval between the two 
 visits to America, one finds him constantly assailed with 
 invitations to return. Ingersoll was especially pressing. 
 Thanking Holyoake for his History of Co-operation — " the 
 worthy crown of a long and useful life" — he said : "You 
 have shown such admirable temper, such keenness of 
 mind, and such kindness of heart, that I am charmed 
 with you, and count it one of the happiest events of my 
 life to have made your acquaintance. We talk of you 
 every day." A few months later he wrote : " It seems 
 a thousand years since we met. . . . Do you expect to 
 visit America again ? You would meet with a splendid 
 reception now — we knowyou." In another letter : "You 
 are doing great good, and the great regret I have when 
 thinking of you is that there are no others like you. I 
 read your last article on Bradlaugh. You expressed my 
 feelings to a hair."^ At last, in June 1882, Ingersoll 
 heard that he was coming, with his daughter, and invited 
 them to spend a week with him at Long Beach. " I 
 anticipate one of the best visits of my life from you and 
 yours," he said. 
 
 Holyoake had not ceased to hope for the publication of 
 the emigrant's guide. During the year after his first 
 visit to the States he heard that 180,000 poor emigrants 
 sailed there from Liverpool, and he pictured their struggles 
 with some concern. He continued to assail his friends, 
 and at length Sir C. Forster and Professor Thorold 
 Rogers put the matter before Gladstone, who was again 
 
 ^ IngersoU's opinion of Pres. Hayes may interest. " Well," he wrote 
 in March 1881, "at last Mr. Hayes has gone back to the oblivion from 
 whence by accident he emerged. He left Washington utterly hated by 
 all who knew him." When Garfield was shot, Ingersoll found consola- 
 tion in the fact that the assassin had delivered lectures against himself 
 Holyoake won much American regard by his action in evoking English 
 sympathy. 
 
 The reference to Bradlaugh is to Holyoake's opinion of Bradlaugh's 
 willingness to take the oath.
 
 VISITS rO AMERICA 129 
 
 Prime Minister. Gladstone had, as we shall see, had 
 recent reason to think highly of Holyoake's sincerity, and 
 he granted him a hundred pounds from the Public Service 
 Fund that he might return to the States and Canada in 
 furtherance of his aim. He sailed on the " Scythia" in 
 June, with his daughter Emilie (Mrs. Holyoake-Marsh). 
 
 The visit is so largely a repetition of the earlier one 
 that I need not enlarge on it. The same festive journalistic 
 dinner (now at Manchester) graced his departure from 
 the north. "Mr. Holyoake's life," the public invitation 
 ran, "has been one of unselfish duty, which has won him 
 the respect of persons of all shades of opinion ; and it is 
 believed that there are many in this district who will re- 
 joice at the opportunity of showing their esteem for one 
 who adds to literary brilliance and power of humorous 
 delineation the grace of candour and fair dealing, and 
 whose life has shown, in an unusual degree, a sense of 
 devotion to the public good." The same clerical group 
 made entrance for him on the boat ; and on this occasion 
 he induced the captain to allow an American, Dr. 
 Lorimer, to deliver the Sunday sermon. 
 
 But his arrival at New York had brighter features than 
 in 1879. A deputation (General Crooks, Dr. Winterburn, 
 and Dr. Broughton) came out to the boat to welcome 
 him, and conducted him and Miss Holyoake to the 
 Manhattan Hotel, where they were entertained for a few 
 days by Mrs. Elizabeth Thompson (proprietor of the 
 Worker). Mrs. Thompson, a generous supporter of 
 social work, brought Senator Blair to assist him in his 
 mission and give his inquiries a judicious direction. 
 She also gave him a further hundred pounds. From 
 Manhattan he went to spend ten days with Ingersoll 
 and his family (and Mr. and Mrs. C. P. Farrell) at Long 
 Beach. His health was much better than in 1879, and 
 the brilliant weather and cheering hospitality were very 
 
 VOL. II. K
 
 I30 VISITS TO AMERICA 
 
 helpful to him. Mr. Charlton, too, had written that he 
 insisted on smoothing the long rail-journeys for him 
 more than he had done in 1879. Charlton severely 
 forbade him to mention his service or make a return of 
 any kind, but he yielded at the offer of a fine and 
 exceptionally large portrait of Bright. It proved a fresh 
 stimulus to Holyoake's complaints of the American tariff- 
 system. The officials demanded a duty of thirty dollars 
 on it, and only relented, when he represented it as a gift 
 to a friend, to the extent of reducing the payment to six 
 dollars. Alderman Hallett (of Brighton) had asked him 
 to take a hundred copies of a work on sanitation for free 
 distribution in America. On these they demanded a 
 duty of a hundred dollars, and only a most persistent and 
 prolonged and learned correspondence at Washington 
 procured free admission for the gifts. 
 
 With the social aspect of his trip, which lasted four 
 months, I may deal briefly. He lectured little, but 
 travelled as far as Quebec in the north and Kansas and 
 Santa Fe in the west — some 8,000 miles. For the trip to 
 New Mexico the Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad 
 Company put a special train at his disposal, and gave 
 him a week's journey through the country they traversed, 
 which they recommended for emigration. A cutting 
 from a Las Vegas paper records the arrival of " the 
 Honorable George J. Holyoake " and party. He seems 
 to have left some consolation in Las Vegas. People 
 were in great alarm about the menaces of a comet that 
 was visible at the time, and a leader in the Daily Optic 
 calmed their fears with learned assurances from Holy- 
 oake that there would be no cosmic disaster. Smaller 
 disasters overtook him in his long and varied journey. 
 At Kansas (in 1879) a large building collapsed at the 
 hour when he was engaged to visit it. The accident led 
 someone to tell him that the mayor of Kansas once said
 
 VISITS TO AMERICA 131 
 
 he " wished the people would let someone die a natural 
 death, so that a stranger might know how healthy the 
 city was." When they left the train at vSanta Fe, and 
 went further south in three carriages, one pair of horses 
 bolted, and another pair broke the spring of their carriage. 
 There were no roads, and obstacles had to be negotiated 
 with spirit. Later, when they were travelling in Canada, 
 the train parted in the middle, and Holyoake and his 
 friends were left in the abandoned part ; but the next 
 oncoming train was stopped in time to prevent a 
 collision. A few days later they were " distributed over 
 the Dominion at a minute's notice" by the bolting of 
 their horses. 
 
 Early in September they visited Niagara, and were 
 escorted by a party of Canadians from there to Hamilton. 
 He lectured there and at Toronto, where he was enter- 
 tained by Goldwin Smith. At Ottawa he was very 
 cordially received by the members of the Government. 
 Sir John Macdonald asked a number of them to meet him 
 at dinner, and all showed real interest in his work. 
 When he had first passed over from his republican 
 friends, he had spoken of seeing the shadow of the 
 crown on Canada. Now he wrote to Sir John Macdonald : 
 " The ideal Republic of Washington has wheels of 
 administration which drag more heavily than those of 
 the monarchy of Ottawa." In point of fact, the Canadian 
 Minister of Agriculture had an excellent manual for 
 emigrants in the press three months after Holyoake's 
 visit, and submitted the sheets to him in January. It 
 was published in the course of 1883. Holyoake had a 
 letter of introduction to the Marquis of Lome (from 
 Lord Kimberley), but had no opportunity of seeing 
 him. 
 
 At Washington he met with little less cordiality, but 
 much less success. Sir Charles Dilke gave him a letter
 
 132 VISITS TO AMERICA 
 
 of introduction to the British Minister, the Hon. L. 
 Sackville West, who put the matter to the Secretary of 
 State for him. He heard that the assistant-secretary 
 (Mr. John Davis) was meditating a work of the kind, 
 and that the President (Arthur) had a favourable opinion 
 of his design. But he failed to induce the Federal 
 Government to act in the matter. There seems to have 
 been a less spontaneous interest in it than at Ottawa, 
 though there can be little doubt it was a good suggestion. 
 Thousands of poor emigrants were pouring yearly into 
 the over-stocked eastern towns, while millions of acres 
 of good land lay idle in the further States. Holyoake 
 took extreme trouble to furnish the officials with esti- 
 mates of cost of producing, plans of distribution, etc., 
 but he could only report " favourable consideration " at 
 Washington. However, Ingersoll was again his host 
 at Washington, and the time passed pleasantly. 
 
 After leaving Ingersoll at Long Beach he had had little 
 time for social amenities before his return at the end of 
 November. He again visited Wendell Phillips, who 
 wrote when he was leaving : " I watch your course and 
 utterances with more interest than those of any other 
 Englishman, and when I learn your judgment on any 
 matter feel I have safe ground to go on." General Mussey 
 wrote with equal warmth. A presentation was made to 
 him by a group of Boston ladies " with the highest 
 appreciation of his distinguished services in the cause of 
 humanity and freethought." At New York, just before 
 he sailed, he was greeted with a reception in the rooms 
 of the Co-operative Dress Association. The " Com- 
 mittee of Arrangements" seems itself to have included 
 half the active workers of New York (Mrs. Thompson, 
 Dr. Adler, Dr. Collyer, Dr. O. B. Frothingham, Heber 
 Newton, Ingersoll, and some twenty other speakers and 
 social students, including six clergymen). It will be
 
 VISITS TO AMERICA 133 
 
 enough to quote the letter sent him by this Commi'Ltee 
 on his departure : 
 
 " Dear Sir, 
 
 " Before you leave America for your home in 
 England we desire to thank you for your admirable 
 discourse on ' Co-operation as a moral force/ your wise 
 counsel in organising an ' Advisory Co-operative Board,' 
 and the opportunity you have afforded many friends to 
 greet you personally. 
 
 " Your unselfish devotion to human interests, your wise 
 moral and economic counsels, and the beneficial practical 
 results you have achieved, endear you greatly to us ; and 
 while we may not offer you all that our hearts prompt, 
 we will at least wish you a pleasant and speedy voyage 
 and many years of health and strength to advance the 
 noble work you have begun, and to continue a friendly 
 link between the old world and the new. 
 
 " It would afford us heartfelt pleasure to greet you here 
 again, and we trust the remembrances of America may 
 find such a place in your heart as to draw you hither 
 again should occasion offer." 
 
 He could not but see that the whole feeling which 
 made his visits to America so pleasant was a tribute to 
 character and to solid service done. He had not the 
 power or the eloquence to draw people to him in an 
 artistic appreciation that need not look below the surface. 
 American people were won by the charm and worth of 
 his personality. A snow-storm whitened the great city 
 when he left it in the " Catalonia," and the ocean was in 
 a threatening mood ; but he brought away with him an 
 impression of America that helped much to warm the 
 twenty years of old age that lay before him. 
 
 For some months he worked hard at the preparation 
 of his report to Mr. Gladstone. He sent it in through 
 Professor Thorold Rogers, and was pleased to be told by 
 Sir Charles Forster that Gladstone "thought very highly"
 
 134 VISITS TO AMERICA 
 
 of his work. By that time he had the proofs of the 
 manual that the Canadian Government was preparing, 
 and he helped to distribute it in England. The 
 Canadians gave him a " right of proprietorship " in the 
 book, but he found it inadvisable to sell it. Gladstone, 
 however, awarded him a further hundred pounds to cover 
 his exertions. The Charity Organisation Society now 
 took up the interest of the emigrant, and he was invited 
 to join its deputation to the President of the Local 
 Government Board. ^ 
 
 ^ His Travels in Search of a Settlers' Guide-book gives an account of his 
 second tour in America. Parts of this are reproduced in Bygones, and 
 this gives the solution of a small mj^stery that may have puzzled 
 attentive readers of the work. On p. 173 (vol. ii) he says : " As we were 
 leaving the sleepy Falls of Montmorency in the carriage, we looked out 
 to see whether the Frenchman had got sight of us." There is no 
 previous reference to a Frenchman in Bygones, but in the book from 
 which the passage is taken there is, before this sentence, a long account 
 of an importunate French-Canadian beggar.
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 THE PRESENT DAY 
 
 During the three years that separated his two visits 
 to America Holyoake proceeded with quiet industry in 
 the advocacy of the causes he cherished. There were 
 few episodes of very great interest, but the life he led 
 was by no means that of a superannuated man. He was 
 chairman of the Travelling Tax Committee, member of 
 and lecturer for the southern section of the Co-operative 
 Central Board, one of the active leaders of the British 
 Secular Union, a useful worker in the Sunday League 
 and in the Liberal party, and a busy journalist and 
 author ; and he was always pressing for small pieces of 
 reform — such as the opening of the Lambeth Palace 
 grounds — that were suggested to him. The chief 
 occurrences of the next few years were a fresh outbreak 
 in the Secularist movement and some political activity in 
 connection with the famous Irish agitation of the eighties. 
 These occurrences led him to take up once more the 
 adventurous position of editor, and issue thQ Present Day ; 
 but a few smaller events must be chronicled before we 
 reach them. 
 
 The work in which he described his impressions of 
 America was followed by an ample biography of Joseph 
 Rayner Stephens. After his sixtieth year the remainder 
 of those who had acted with him in the stirring scenes 
 of his early manhood passed rapidly from the stage, and 
 in the course of the eighties even his companions of a 
 
 135
 
 136 THE PRESENT DAY 
 
 later date disappeared for the most part. Stephens was 
 a Lancashire clergyman who, though a Tory and 
 Royalist in politics, was so deeply stirred by the con- 
 dition of the factory children that he advocated armed 
 resistance with the most violent of the Chartists. 
 He was " one of the most eloquent orators on the 
 Chartist side," and served a long term of imprisonment 
 for his speeches. Holyoake had often visited him, and 
 greatly admired him. His biographical sketch is 
 coloured with personal recollection of the vivid life of the 
 forties, that seemed so remote and romantic even twenty 
 years ago. They were, in truth, so remote — England 
 had made such advance during Holyoake's time — that 
 Mr. Storr, a nephew of Stephens, who induced Holy- 
 oake to write the book, actually begged Sir William 
 Harcourt to present a copy of it to the Queen. 
 
 The annual congresses of the Co-operative body con- 
 tinued to form important events in his calendar. In 
 1879 his friend Professor Stewart presided over the 
 Congress at Gloucester, and Gloucester Jail was visited 
 by Co-operative pilgrims, as I have said. In 1880 the 
 Congress was held at Newcastle, and the Bishop of 
 Durham presided. Holyoake was the guest of the 
 Spence Watsons during the Congress, and he made 
 friendly acquaintance with the bishop. A pencil note 
 he has preserved runs : 
 
 " G. J. Holyoake, Esq., is respectfully invited to 
 lunch with the Lord Bishop at the Douglas Hotel at 
 the close of the morning sitting." 
 
 He lent the bishop books dealing with early co- 
 operation some time afterwards. One or two other 
 letters of the period show the ease with which he 
 contracted friendship with clergymen. The Rev. W. 
 Sharman of Plymouth (afterwards Preston) was one of
 
 THE PRESENT DAY 137 
 
 his liveliest correspondents and friends. He writes at 
 this period : 
 
 " Concerning your desire to enter St. George's Guild, 
 I see two lions in the way. Lion No. i is the vow. 
 This vow must be copied and subscribed to by every 
 applicant for admission. The opening words are : ' I 
 trust in the living God, Father Almighty, Maker of 
 heaven and earth, and of all things and creatures, 
 visible and invisible.' 
 
 " Lion No. 2 is the rule requiring the gift of a tithe of 
 capital or income. Further the ideal of the Guild is quite 
 of what you would call the ' paternal type,' which you 
 abhor. If I can give you further help or information, 
 inquire within. 
 
 " I shall spend the summer in a cottage on Dartmoor. 
 Cannot you visit us there? Cream ad lib. and absolute 
 idleness ! Heaven — without the damp clouds and the 
 noise of harps." 
 
 Mr. Haweis writes to him : 
 
 " I am vastly indebted to you for the loan of your most 
 interesting Garibaldi relics, and as I see you are now in 
 London may I hope to have the pleasure of your com- 
 pany here at lunch next Wednesday at li. I have 
 known of your liberal and philanthropic views so long 
 that I seem already to know you." 
 
 Holyoake answered : 
 
 •* As I have long included yourself among the clergy- 
 men I honour for generous mindfulness of things of this 
 world as well as those which are vocational, I shall 
 gladly join you at lunch on Wednesday — providing fog, 
 or snow, or rain, does not viciously intervene." 
 
 In 1881 Lord Derby presided at the Congress, and in 
 1882 Lord Reay. The reader will recognise them as 
 his earlier friends, Lord Stanley and Baron Mackay. 
 The elder Earl of Derby (also a correspondent of
 
 tsS THE PRESENT DAY 
 
 Holyoake's) died in 1869, and his son might have led 
 the Tory party in the House of Lords if he had had 
 ambition. He was, however, not only retiring, but had 
 Liberal leanings, and in 1880 he formally seceded to 
 the Liberals. I find him writing to Holyoake at the 
 time : 
 
 " I thank you for your letter of the 17th, and for help- 
 ing to fight my battle at Brighton. I do not think 
 Mr. Ashbury ever fully appreciated or understood the 
 gravity of the charge which he had made, but I do not 
 regret its having been made, as such imputations may 
 circulate a long while in society without the person 
 affected even knowing of their existence ; and it is 
 only by public discussion that they can be finally 
 cleared off. 
 
 " I take the opportunity of saying that I have read with 
 much interest your history of the Co-operative move- 
 ment." 
 
 Holyoake had taken journalistic part in the defence of 
 Lord Derby, when he left the Conservative party. Six 
 years later, when the Liberals split over the Irish ques- 
 tion, he joined the Unionists, and led them in the House 
 of Lords until 1891. 
 
 In 1882 the Co-operative Congress was held at Oxford, 
 with Lord Reay in the chair. The vote of thanks to 
 Lord Reay was seconded by Goldwin Smith, who was 
 visiting England at the time. In the course of his brief 
 speech in the Sheldonian Theatre he said : 
 
 '* England has escaped, as Lord Reay said in his 
 address, from the severe friction, and worse than friction, 
 of the industrial movement in other countries. She 
 owes that exemption, no doubt, to very various causes, 
 to the good sense and sterling character of her working 
 men, and to the generally liberal character of her institu- 
 tions— (hear, hear) — but she owes it among other causes
 
 THE PRESENT DAY 139 
 
 to this, that the movement has had far better leaders here 
 than it has had elsewhere. (Hear, hear.) It has been 
 led by men like Mr. Holyoake — (applause) — who were 
 not self-seekers, who were not demagogues, who had 
 nothing at heart but the real interest of the working 
 class, and who, when conflicts arose between employers 
 and employees, were not for interminable war, to their 
 own profit, but for peace with justice." 
 
 Holyoake's diary records that he "dined with the 
 President of Trinity, the Rev. Dr. Percival," and a 
 couple of days later " spoke in Trinity Hall at the 
 request of the President." 
 
 About the same date Sir Charles Dilke writes that he 
 hears Holyoake is going to Paris " to give information 
 to the French associated industries as to the working of 
 such bodies in England." He adds: "I am very glad 
 to hear it, as your book and your past life show how 
 admirably well fitted you are for the task." The journey 
 does not seem to have taken place at that time, but a 
 letter to Holyoake from M. Barberet, of the French 
 Home Office, shows that he was already rendering 
 service in connection with Co-operation abroad. 
 Co-operators may care to see a translation of it : 
 
 *' I have received the letter and the documents you 
 have been pleased to send me, at the request of our 
 common friend, W. de Fonvielle. I thank you very 
 much for your extreme kindness. I am greatly inter- 
 ested in Co-operative Societies here, especially pro- 
 ductive societies. There are already a dozen of them 
 at Paris, and many of them are making satisfactory 
 progress. We have, in addition, a score of distributive 
 societies. I shall endeavour to make myself closely 
 acquainted with your achievements so as to derive 
 instruction for our industrial societies. I am also going 
 to see W. de Fonvielle again and have a longer talk 
 with him, in regard to his correspondence with you — a
 
 I40 THE PRESENT DAY 
 
 correspondence that is bound to be of service to English 
 and French workers." 
 
 The death of George Eliot (December 1880) has 
 echoes in his correspondence during these years. Lewes 
 had died in 1878, and George Eliot had not long been 
 Mrs. Cross, when she caught a chill at a concert and 
 succumbed to the effects of it. Her married life at once 
 became a subject of discussion. Atkinson wrote to 
 Holyoake with some severity about it. " Miss Martineau 
 and I," he said, "disapproved of Miss Evans living with 
 Lewes, his wife living with Thornton Hunt, and his wife 
 also alive ; her great cleverness was no condonation." 
 He quotes the Stoic Antoninus : " That which is not 
 good for the swarm, neither is it good for the bee." 
 Mr. W. M. W. Call (author of the article on George 
 Eliot in the Westminster Review) wrote to Holyoake in 
 her defence ajjainst some of Atkinson's strictures. 
 
 *&' 
 
 "As long ago as 1871," he says, "George Eliot was 
 not only an unbeliever in Christianity, but an anti- 
 theist and an anti-pantheist. She spoke herself of her 
 oscillation, but I did not ask her how long the oscillation 
 had continued. I stated exactly what I knew when I 
 wrote: 'In 1871, perhaps much earlier, the oscillation 
 had ceased.' I first saw Lewes in 1851, and George 
 Eliot in 1857. My wife (whose bridesmaid she was in 
 1843) knew more of her than I did at the time of her 
 second marriage to myself in 1857. . . . Some of the 
 statements in the article come from the Brays, who have 
 read and approve of it." 
 
 The second half of 1882 and the early part of 1883 
 were occupied with the mission to America and the 
 work that issued from it. In the meantime events had 
 once more brought Secular interests to the foreground 
 in his mind. I have already spoken of the renewed 
 friction with Bradlaugh, apropos of the Parliamentary
 
 THE PRESENT DAY 141 
 
 oath, and need not recur to it. It will be of interest 
 only to see how Holyoake's attitude was judged by his 
 great American colleague, Col. Ingersoll. A biographer 
 needs some moral courage to reproduce Ingersoll's 
 extraordinary compliments to Holyoake, but the great 
 ability and legal experience of the writer, and the 
 attempts that have been made to represent Holyoake's 
 position as an isolated one amongst heretics, justify 
 one in reproducing the following passages from letters 
 that Ingersoll wrote him immediately after the last 
 difference with Bradlaugh : 
 
 [Jan. ist, 1883.] "We have missed you every day, 
 and every day we talk about you and yours. You are 
 the model man. You are so kind, candid, just, forgiving, 
 and generous, and withal so uncompromising, so per- 
 fectly true to conviction, so ready to do and to suffer for 
 the right, so severe with yourself and so easy with 
 others, that we cannot help admiring and loving you. 
 Besides, you have such a vein of genuine humour, such 
 a keen sense of the ridiculous and absurd, that you are 
 certainly the prince of companions. I am writing just 
 what I feel, and it makes no difference whether you 
 agree with me or not. I know what you are, and how 
 infinitely true — how unspeakably honest and brave you 
 have been, are, and always will be. There is no living 
 man for whom I have greater respect and admiration." 
 
 Holyoake's reply shows no trace of an attitude to provoke 
 such phrases. He says simply : 
 
 " My days have all been brighter since I received 
 your letter. It is not necessary to take unto myself all 
 the terms which your bountiful friendship employs — to 
 feel proud of the generous partiality from which they 
 proceed. As though I were still w^ith you I watch all 
 you do, and read all that Mr. Farrell in his kindness 
 sends me that you say. If you fight X (some controver- 
 sial opponent), do it with a sword, when you can cleave
 
 142 THE PRESENT DAY 
 
 him in twain with one blow, as from the arm of Gog or 
 Magog. If pistols must be used, I crave to enter the 
 lists for you. You are too palpable a mark, while I, 
 attenuated and only semi-visible, could ill be seen by the 
 mangy eyes of the adversary, and would be ill to hit if 
 observed. Give my card to the Canine Cuss." 
 
 In August Ingersoll writes that Holyoake's English 
 critics are discussing him in American freethought papers. 
 
 "A couple of poor little articles appeared in the 
 Investigator. . . . The articles, of course, could do you 
 no possible harm. But they gave me an opportunity to 
 tell (partly) what I think of you." 
 
 A month later he writes : 
 
 "Yours of the loth received to-day. To see your 
 writing on an envelope sends a thrill through my blood. 
 I feel the grasp of your hand, and for an instant look 
 into your eyes. You need not thank me for any words 
 of mine. I was paid when I wrote them. It was a 
 positive pleasure to say a sentence or two in favour of 
 one of the best of men. I feel under personal obligation 
 to you. You have shown me such a great and generous 
 heart — such a clear head — such serenity — such candour 
 — such trust, after all, in the blundering world and in 
 even the accidents of this wondrous succession of stum- 
 bles towards the right. I see that Bradlaugh has taken 
 the trouble to say a word in the 'Investigator' about 
 you. It is of no consequence. Let it go." 
 
 The trouble with Mr. Bradlaugh at this time was not 
 in itself very serious, as I have said, but a fresh storm 
 was preparing in the movement. Mr. G. W. Foote, the 
 living President of the National Secular Society, had 
 now a large following in the Secularist world, and we 
 saw that Holyoake was in 1880 co-operating with him in 
 the British Secular Union and its organ, the Secular 
 Review. A writer in that journal adopted a kind of
 
 THE PRESENT DAY 143 
 
 phraseology that was strongly resented by Holyoake, 
 who indignantly severed his connection with it. The 
 plea of the writer was that obstinate prejudices were 
 beyond the appeal of reason, and could be shaken only 
 by violent caricature and ridicule. Holyoake had seen 
 the method tried forty years before, and his own success- 
 ful experience of gentlemanly procedure had made him 
 more hostile than ever to the coarser style. Not long 
 after there appeared the Freethinker, which was at first 
 published by Bradlaugh and Mrs. Besant ; but the in- 
 creasing vulgarity of its contents caused them to abandon 
 it to Mr. Foote and Mr. Ramsey. At length the 
 blasphemy law was invoked, and legal proceedings were 
 initiated. After some abortive attempts to involve Mr. 
 Bradlaugh, the editor, publisher, and printer of the Free- 
 tJiinker were arraigned for issuing blasphemous libels, 
 and, after a trial in which Mr. Justice North betrayed the 
 most violent partisanship, Mr. Foote was condemned to 
 a year's imprisonment. 
 
 There were few Rationalists of any distinction in 
 England who did not condemn the coarse caricatures of 
 Biblical passages that had occasioned the trial. Some, 
 like Mr. Morley, thought the prosecution justified. But 
 the revival of the blasphemy law, on which the prose- 
 cution proceeded, and the severity of the sentence, were 
 widely condemned, and even resented by some clergy- 
 men. A petition for the reduction of the sentence was 
 drawn up, and Holyoake, amongst others, was asked to 
 sign it. His refusal to do so is still cherished in some 
 parts of the Secularist world as one of his acts of 
 "treachery." Many others hesitated to sign a petition 
 that seemed to associate them, in some way, with pro- 
 ceedings that were repellent to them. Professor 
 Tyndall, for instance, attached the following note to his 
 signature on the petition :
 
 144 THE PRESENT DAY 
 
 " Believing the ' punishment' to be ' excessive,' I sign 
 this memorial. I would, however, remark that the 
 ribaldry in which certain professed freethinkers of our 
 day do not scruple to indulge renders them, in my 
 opinion, the enemies of true freedom." 
 
 Holyoake's difficulty was a peculiar and characteristic 
 one. It is plain enough to those who know his whole 
 career. The memorial described itself as ** humbly 
 praying mercy" for Mr. Foote. This was one of the 
 very last phrases that Mr. Foote would have used, and 
 one that very ineptly expressed a demand for justice. 
 No doubt, it was a mere technicality, a concession to the 
 conventional forms of such memorials ; but no heretic or 
 Chartist of the older days would have put his name to it, 
 and it is difficult to see how any can feel surprise that 
 Holyoake would not. When, further, we find that he 
 wrote a letter to the Home Secretary, pleading that the 
 sentences were unjustly excessive — a letter that was cal- 
 culated to have far more effect than his signing the 
 petition — we may dismiss at once the charge that he 
 betrayed any frailty of character or sacrifice of convic- 
 tion. It will be enough to put on record his letter to Sir 
 \V. Vernon Harcourt, which he has often reproduced : 
 
 "Sir, — Two prisoners, Mr. Foote and Mr. Ramsey, 
 are undergoing excessive sentences. Permit me to give 
 reasons why they should be released. A Freethinker 
 who believes what he is doing to be right, never ceases 
 to do it, equally as his adversaries do. I therefore ask 
 for justice, not 'mercy.' I take Mr. Foote and Mr. 
 Ramsey's method of advocacy to be a principle with 
 them, and therefore I think that their sentences should 
 be terminated as a matter of justice. Blasphemy is the 
 sin of all sects, but only punished in the weakest. There 
 is, however, one thing more repulsive than blasphemy, 
 and that is outrage. I do not pretend that outrage is
 
 THE PRESENT DAY 145 
 
 either undefinable or unpunishable under impartial law. 
 Outrage, as they who commit it know full well, is when 
 one imputes to others a conscious infamy of belief which 
 they do not hold, and intends to shock, or irritate, or 
 offend them, regardless whether it pains them or not. 
 This is outrage, and, in the interests of society and good 
 feeling, should be discouraged. Yet this outrage is 
 constantly committed by Christian preachers and writers 
 against Freethinkers, and the law never steps in to pro- 
 tect them. Since, therefore, the law does not deem it its 
 duty to defend the few against the many, it is not need- 
 ful or seemly that it should be employed to defend the 
 many against the few. Outrage may be committed in 
 excitement or under provocation, and is then an error 
 rather than a crime ; while outrage, as a method of 
 argument, whether employed by the few or the many, is 
 a pole-cat policy, which induces every self-regarding 
 person to keep clear of the cause which adopts it, whether 
 it be Freethought or Christianity. Therefore, in a civi- 
 lised community, intellectual outrage may be left to its 
 own consequences, and needs not that the law should 
 decrease them by sentences which, by exciting public 
 sympathy, obscure the intrinsic hatefulness of the offence. 
 Since the country regards you as a Home Secretary who 
 would not do wrong under intimidation, nor be deterred 
 from doing right by unreflecting prejudice, I venture to 
 submit these considerations to you." 
 
 A few months earlier he had had a memorial presented 
 to the House, praying that members (/. t'., Bradlaugh) 
 might be permitted to affirm instead of taking the oath. 
 Prof. Thorold Rogers, who presented it, described it as 
 "the quintessence of good sense and morality." We 
 may repeat the phrase of his appeal for Mr. Foote. 
 Holyoake continued to work for the repeal of the blas- 
 phemy laws. In 1886 we find him advocating it on the 
 platform (at South Place Chapel) with the Revs. Stewart 
 Headlam, W. E. Moll, Philip Wicksteed, and W. 
 
 VOL. n. L
 
 146 THE PRESENT DAY 
 
 Sharman, Messrs. W. Morris, H. Burrows, F. Verinder, 
 G. W. Foote, and Mrs. Besant. 
 
 The trial of Mr. Bradlaugh (and a second trial of 
 Foote and Ramsey) came on before the Lord Chief 
 Justice a little later. Lord Coleridge won the respect of 
 Freethinkers by his clear ruling and his effort to admin- 
 ister the law with rigid justice, while his own religious 
 convictions were so much against the accused. Holy- 
 oake had censured him somewhat severely for his conduct 
 of the case against Pooley in 1857, though not so severely 
 as Buckle had done. He now wrote to Lord Coleridge 
 to express admiration. 
 
 •' Your great predecessor, Lord Cockburn," he said, 
 " made all Englishmen his debtors because he increased 
 the opportunities of liberty to just men, and restricted 
 those of aggressors. I am one of those who think that 
 your Lordship has shown a like quality of mind where 
 we least expected it." 
 
 Lord Coleridge answered immediately, in a curious 
 letter : 
 
 " I have the honour to acknowledge your letter of the 
 26th and the extracts from newspapers which accom- 
 panied it. I am not conscious of having altered my 
 opinion or changed the expression of it since I was 
 counsel in the case of Pooley. I believe I used sub- 
 stantially the same language as counsel in that case and 
 as judge in the cases of Mr. Bradlaugh, Mr. Ramsey, 
 and Mr. Foote. There was, I remember, a controversy 
 over that case, discreditable to no one but Mr. Buckle ; 
 but the controversy was provoked by certain ignorant 
 falsehoods of Mr. Buckle, and had nothing to do with 
 the law ; while both judge and counsel laid the law down 
 precisely as I laid it down a few weeks ago. 
 
 " It somewhat astonished me that in your present kindly 
 letter you should say that you did not expect me to
 
 THE PRESENT DAY 147 
 
 favour liberty of thought. But I cannot expect my 
 countrymen to be at the pains to study the character of 
 so very unimportant a person as myself." 
 
 Holyoake wrote again to assure him that, though he 
 had supplied Buckle with facts, he did not concur in his 
 expressions, and had since modified in print his own 
 comments on the case. He urged that Lord Coleridge's 
 recent judgment *' will always be as memorable as it was 
 generous," and reminded him that they had met at a 
 friend's house since the Cornish trial, so that he was 
 better acquainted with him. 
 
 *' I thank you very much," Lord Coleridge replied, " for 
 the courtesy of your last letter. I suppose the good 
 opinion of his countrymen is a thing of value to any 
 man ; certainly it is to me." 
 
 Other friendly letters came, under the heavy seal of the 
 Lord Chief Justice, but I will quote only from the last, 
 which was addressed from Heath's Court in 1886 : 
 
 " I am much gratified by your letter and the paper 
 which you have sent me. It is consistent with all I 
 have ever known of you as a controversial writer. The 
 world would be a better place if all men were as fair and 
 honourable as you. Of Mr. Buckle I know nothing but 
 what that pamphlet reveals. The assumption of research, 
 the ignorance, the presumption, the vulgar swagger (I 
 am sorry to use such an expression, but I can find no 
 one better) which that article revealed satisfied me of the 
 worthlessness of such a man as an authority on any sub- 
 ject whatever that requires both learning, modesty, and 
 candour for its handling ; and his reply to my reply 
 (which you do not appear to have seen) was one of the 
 very shabbiest papers I ever read . . . merely backing 
 out (by way of suggestion, not manly assertion) of the 
 meaning which every man of sense, of common honesty, 
 must have seen he intended to convey.
 
 148 THE PRESENT DAY 
 
 " If ever I reprint some of my papers, I shall certainly 
 reprint this amongst them, with all the more pleasure 
 that it will give me an occasion for saying with how 
 much respect and good feeling I encounter a contro- 
 versialist like yourself." 
 
 Although he was now approaching the "three score 
 years and ten " that are understood to mark the limit of 
 activity, Holyoake made a fresh effort to restore Secular- 
 ism to the lines on which he had first placed it. The 
 neutral observer must be puzzled at times to discover in 
 Secularist writings broad hints that Holyoake was a man 
 of compromise, moving uneasily amidst the group of 
 their less flexible protagonists. Now, if there were one 
 agitation which it would have been to Holyoake's interest 
 to abandon, it would surely be this ; and if there were one 
 agitation which he could in any decade have found a 
 score of decent pretexts to abandon, it would again be 
 this. Yet we find him returning time after time to this 
 work, which he knew to be distasteful to the vast majority 
 of his friends, in spite of all the thorns that were scattered 
 in his way. Only a profound truth to conviction — what- 
 ever one may think of the conviction — can explain it. 
 But no writers of his time, not even the most extreme 
 Conservatives or Churchmen, have said a tithe of the 
 unpleasant things that have been said of him by Secu- 
 larists. Well might Ingersoll essay to make some 
 reparation. 
 
 Shortly after he severed his connection with Mr. Foote 
 in 1882 his friends began to discuss with him the advis- 
 ability of founding a new journal. Joseph Ellis (author 
 of CcEsarin Egypt) suggested the name of The Philosopher^ 
 and begged his *' dear master" and " dear Plato" to edit it. 
 The Freethinker^ on the one hand, had reduced his proud 
 ideal of Secularism to the drawing of " Comic Bible 
 Sketches " — a revival of the crudest device of Ryall
 
 THE PRESENT DAY 149 
 
 and Paterson and some French writers — and the Brad- 
 laugh group, on the other, were again attacking him. 
 He decided to restore the broad Secular Review he 
 had founded in 1876, under a different name, so in 
 June 1883 he began to issue the Present Day. He had 
 planned it, he says, during his sail up the St. Lawrence 
 in 1882, though he had then intended to call it the Secular 
 Citi::en. It appeared monthly for more than three years, 
 Hoiyoake editing the first 36 numbers of it. The 
 object of the journal was to restore Secularism to its 
 original broad base. In the first issue he criticised 
 severely the " new Freethinkers" who made a point of 
 committing the very outrages that Freethinkers had been 
 accustomed to deplore in their opponents. Co-operation 
 and other social and political matters were dealt with in 
 the same proportion as theological. 
 
 One cannot help noting that Hoiyoake was really 
 guilty of much the same fault of perception as he had 
 discovered in the Owenites. The time had come for his 
 ideal to break up into its constituent aims. Co-operation 
 was now embodied in a powerful specific movement : 
 education had passed into the hands of national adminis- 
 trators : political work of any shade had vast organisa- 
 tions to promote it. It was useless now to attempt to 
 hold these things together. The real reform open to 
 him (as he realised later) was to initiate a cultural move- 
 ment that should make theological criticism a part of its 
 positive educational work. No doubt, it is easy to under- 
 stand his lingering regard for the older ideal. So long 
 as he had commanded the field, his Secularist ideal had 
 had remarkable success. But with three able rivals now 
 dividing the movement, each with his personal following, 
 each opposed to the other, but all united in the more 
 popular position of making atheism or agnosticism the 
 dominant note (Bradlaugh, Foote, and Ross), the Present
 
 150 THE PRESENT DAY 
 
 Day could not attcain the prestige of the old Reasoner. 
 The age of specialism had set in. The paper won re- 
 spect, but not a large circulation. " I know that nothing 
 unworthy of the pen of a gentleman will be published in 
 your paper," Tyndall said in subscribing to it. 
 
 Francis Newman admired the journal, and his letters 
 at the time have passages of interest. 
 
 " In my old age," he writes in 1884, " I seem to under- 
 go a transformation very rare. I say, I seem ; but I do 
 not believe there is any real change. I have become 
 decidedly Democratic. But it is through utter despair of 
 our now ruling classes. Those called Liberal disgust 
 and shock me in 9 cases out of 10 as much as Tories." 
 
 He had started the Christian Commonwealth, and was 
 trying to found a '* League of Justice." Able as he was, 
 Francis Newman's failure was as constant as his brilliant 
 brother's success. His political ideas grew darker and 
 darker. In 1885 he wrote of Gladstone's " blank treason " 
 and the "fatal demoralisation of both parties;" while 
 he regarded the Queen and the ex-Empress as " the 
 source of the demoralisation." In 1886, when Holyoake 
 abandoned the paper, Newman wrote : 
 
 " I have not been able to feel practical interest in your 
 publication ; but I have all along esteemed your upright- 
 ness, and believed you in your sphere to be a valuable 
 worker and an aid towards truth. As a ' Secularist ' I 
 have always thought you two-thirds right — i. e., that 
 Christians largely fail of good results by wasting their 
 efforts unduly about a better world. But I have now to 
 tell you, as a matter not yet to be published, what I fear 
 must give much pain to my valued friends such as Dr. 
 James Martineau and Miss Cobbe, from whom I have 
 always differed in their wonderful blindness as to defects 
 of moral character in Jesus of Nazareth. . . . I hope and 
 intend ere long to publish a tract or treatise called Life
 
 THE PRESENT DAY 151 
 
 after Death ^\n which, on moral and spiritual grounds (as 
 well as physical), I decisively argue down the dogma of 
 human immortality. . . . James Martineau writes to me 
 that if he believed the three gospels as much as I do (! !), 
 he would probably be forced to nearly my results 
 concerning the character of Jesus." 
 
 In the course of 1884 the Present Day had to chronicle 
 two events of importance, in very different ways, to 
 Holyoake. The first was the death of Mrs. Holyoake. 
 Her health failing, he had taken her from Harrow to 
 Brighton, and there she contracted a fatal attack of 
 bronchitis. She died in January 1884, in the sixty-fifth 
 year of her age and the forty-fifth year of her married 
 life. It was some comfort that she who had shared with 
 honour and courage the hardships of his early manhood 
 should have lived to share his harvest of distinction. 
 But " loss is loss — let men say what they will," Stopford 
 Brooke wrote to him. Though she had fully sympathised 
 in all his work, and so greatly helped it by her happy 
 control of the home, she never wholly abandoned her 
 early religious views ; he had scrupulously refrained 
 from touching them. Stopford Brooke was unable to 
 officiate at her funeral, and Holyoake would not have 
 the usual service. She had, in fact, wished that a few 
 living words should be said over her grave, such as 
 she knew her husband often spoke at Secular burials. 
 Holyoake himself conducted the service. He read the 
 conversation between the angel Uriel and the prophet 
 Esdras from the Bible, and Stopford Brooke's letter to 
 himself. Then he said a few words of appreciation of 
 her fine character and her life-long service, and Mr. 
 C. D. Collet sang Miss Martineau's hymn, *' Beneath 
 the starry arch," as he had done over the grave of 
 their boy Max many years before. 
 
 The other important event — apart from his being made
 
 152 THE PRESENT DAY 
 
 an honorary member of the Cobden Club — chronicled in 
 the Present Day in 1884 was the abolition of the tax on 
 the fares of third-class passengers. Few, probably, of 
 the working men who profited by this change knew how 
 much they were indebted to Holyoake, and his old 
 colleague, C. D. Collet, in regard to this relief. The 
 story of the Travelling Tax Abolition Committee has 
 none of the romance of their earlier fight for the aboli- 
 tion of the " taxes on knowledge." On that account, and 
 because so much now presses for notice, I make the 
 story a short one ; but the life of the committee was 
 long and laborious. Holyoake was chairman of it for 
 twenty-four years, and during that period he presided 
 at most of its Monday meetings, agitated amongst in- 
 fluential parliamentary friends, and brought the subject 
 to public notice in the press. When Mr. Childers 
 abolished the tax (on third-class fares) in 1884, the 
 workers of the country owed one more debt to G. J. 
 Holyoake. 
 
 The tax dated from 1832, when the early railway- 
 coaches were put on a level with the stage-coaches. 
 Ten years later Sir R. Peel reduced it, but — "with a 
 sense of humiliation," he said — he retained a tax of 
 five per cent, on the fare of every passenger. In 1844 
 the Cheap Trains Act brought some relief from this 
 odious tax. Every railway company was directed to 
 run one train the full length of its line each way every 
 day, stopping at all the intermediate stations, and not 
 charging more than one penny per mile for the third-class 
 coaches. The fares collected on these trains were exempt 
 from duty. Poor workers were thus enabled to travel, 
 slowly and with great discomfort, from one town to another 
 at a moderate expense. As the trunk lines extended to 
 greater length, the law lost much of its utility, and 
 further relief was sought. The Board of Trade then
 
 THE PRESENT DAY 153 
 
 directed that the cheap trains need not go the full length 
 of the line, and need not stop at every station, and 
 third-class traffic enormously increased. But the direc- 
 tion was illegal, and the Revenue officials won the 
 case that they brought against the Board of Trade 
 in 1874. 
 
 In 1876 the Travelling Tax Abolition Committee 
 began its systematic exertions for the repeal of the tax, 
 in the interest of the passenger. Collet was secretary, 
 and Holyoake chairman. The romantic methods of 
 their earlier campaign were no longer of use, and the 
 work attracted little notice ; but Holyoake's letters and 
 diaries show that a great deal of work was done. One 
 device only need be mentioned. They attempted to 
 show that the tramways were just as liable to the tax as 
 the trains. The increased burden would, of course, 
 prove too much for the people, and a public agitation 
 would have followed. Yet Mr. Childers naively ex- 
 pressed to Holyoake his astonishment that he, of all 
 men, should urge the taxing of tramways ! Mr. 
 Childers had succeeded Gladstone as Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer in 1882, and he found himself with a pro- 
 spective surplus of 2\ millions on his first budget. 
 The Committee at once increased its exertions, and Mr. 
 Childers announced that he would abolish the tax on all 
 fares of one penny per mile, or less. There are letters 
 from Holyoake to Mr. Chamberlain and other influential 
 speakers in the interest of the Bill, and a letter in 
 which he thanks Mr. Childers for removing "the 
 humiliation — that a commercial nation should fine the 
 industrious for moving about, and tax the workman on 
 his way in search of employment." Childers replied : 
 " I am very glad that you approve of the Budget and 
 of my statements. One or two of the Irish members 
 called it a rich man's Budget, but I think that this could
 
 154 THE PRESENT DAY 
 
 hardly be said of the exemption of the poor man's 
 railway fares from all taxation." 
 
 The tax was thus abolished on penny fares in 1884, 
 and the popular grievance removed. But it was felt by 
 the Committee that the whole tax on travelling by rail 
 ought to be abolished, and it continued its work. Until 
 his last years Holyoake remained chairman, and took a 
 great interest in its operations. The only recognition 
 he received, as far as I can gather, was that the Midland 
 Company gave him a free pass on its lines. He was 
 restless in his search for opportunities of usefulness to 
 the community. In the same year, 1884, he noticed that 
 the foot-passengers to the South Kensington Exhibition 
 ran great risk in crossing the wide and busy street from 
 the station. His letters in the press led to the making 
 of a " refuge " in the middle of the street. About the 
 same time he was agitating for the opening of the 
 grounds of Lambeth Palace to the children of the poor, 
 as we shall see. 
 
 In the same year, 1884, he made his third and last 
 effort to enter Parliament. A few words will suffice to 
 recall the political development up to that year. The 
 Liberals had returned to power in 1880, and Holyoake, 
 now on friendly terms with half the members of the 
 Administration (Gladstone, Forster, Childers, Mundella, 
 Chamberlain, Dilke, and James), looked forward to 
 another span of progressive legislation. Then there 
 came the storm of Irish discontent that convulsed British 
 politics for the better half of the decade. There had 
 been great distress in Ireland in 1879, and the return of 
 Gladstone to power had been hailed with exaggerated 
 expectations. When it was discovered that the Queen's 
 vSpeech contained no reference to Irish reform, the Irish 
 members, now led with consummate cleverness by 
 Parnell, entered upon the scriptural policy of importunacy
 
 THE PRESENT DAY 155 
 
 with unrestrained energy. During the summer vacation 
 of that year Sir H. James wrote to Holyoake, from the 
 deck of the " Grantully Castle," on which he accompanied 
 the Premier. Speaking of the rough weather, he says : 
 "The shore of Ireland by now affords some protection, 
 and for once one may be glad that the whole of that 
 island is not under the Channel." In a previous letter 
 he had spoken of Cowen and his prospects with enthusi- 
 asm. " There are men in the Ministry who might well 
 be envious of his talents," he says. Now (early in 1881) 
 he writes : " What a pity that Cowen has thrown away 
 such a splendid political reputation on behalf of two 
 such miserable causes as that of the Jingoes and of 
 these men. He is rushing downwards at full tilt. 
 Facilis descensus ! " 
 
 It was to be a decade of storms and sundering, and, 
 amidst all his occupation, Holyoake watched the tossing 
 of the Liberal ship with great concern. Gladstone 
 endeavoured to meet the agitation with a Land Bill, 
 but it failed to satisfy, and the whole of the United 
 Kingdom rang with the struggle. Ireland was aflame 
 with scarlet rhetoric and shaken with outrage, and 
 its jails filled with political prisoners ; the House of 
 Commons was paralysed with obstruction ; and the 
 press recorded week by week the appalling advocacy 
 of the Irish cause by dynamite. Holyoake's friends 
 were hopelessly divided. Walter Morrison (who had 
 vainly endeavoured to find a constituency) wrote in 
 the same letter of "these Irish assassins" and the 
 " miserable muddle " of the Government. Goldwin 
 Smith wrote : " My Radical friends have no doubt their 
 philanthropic reasons for fomenting and encouraging 
 Irish revolution, but I think they will do humanity a 
 wrong if they allow a great civilisation to be torn to 
 pieces by Dynamite and Connaught."
 
 156 THE PRESENT DAY 
 
 Holyoake's own feeling is little expressed. He never 
 hesitated in his support of Gladstone, but the question 
 of coercion apparently puzzled him. The question of 
 the parliamentary oath was a clearer issue to him, and 
 it was in that interest that he wished to enter the House. 
 A vacancy occurred at Leicester in 1884, owing to the 
 retirement of P. A. Taylor. Holyoake was at the 
 time working in connection with the representation of 
 Brighton, but he felt that Leicester was one of the few 
 towns where he had a chance of succeeding, and he 
 immediately went there. His chief object was, he told 
 them, "to aid in the settlement of the Parliamentary 
 oath question," and Leicester had shown strong support 
 of Mr. Bradlaugh. A cutting from the New York 
 Tribune describes him as saying that he '* would take 
 no oath, either by speech or pantomime," and that in 
 politics he was " neither Tory, Radical, Social Demo- 
 crat, nor Reformer by confiscation, but a thick-and-thin, 
 up-and-down, now-and-all-the-time follower of Mr. Glad- 
 stone." He at once wrote and printed an address to the 
 Liberal Council, explaining his aims. " If," he said, 
 " you think it worth while to assist in opening a door 
 in Parliament through which a gentleman and an honest 
 man can enter without shame or humiliation, I offer you 
 my services." 
 
 The determination to refuse the oath (which meant 
 exclusion from the House), his known heresies, and 
 his Co-operative apostleship (which generally alarmed 
 Liberal shopkeepers) were not overpowering recom- 
 mendations to a Council that had before it, beside his 
 own, the names of R. Chamberlain, J. A. Picton, 
 Fred. Harrison, Joseph Arch, J. Passmore Edwards, 
 and Herbert Spencer. Once more he did not get 
 beyond the stage of issuing an election-address. There 
 was, however, consolation in the number of votes cast
 
 . THE PRESENT DAY 157 
 
 for him on the Council, in spite of his obvious inability 
 to enter the House if he were returned. The highest 
 number of votes cast for any nominee did not reach 
 three figures; and Holyoake obtained fifty votes. 
 
 From Leicester he returned to Brighton, where there 
 was a pecuhar difficulty to deal with. As in earlier 
 years, he was still often consulted, and his aid sought, 
 by either candidates or constituencies. In 1880 Mr. W. 
 Morrison wrote repeatedly to ask him to find a plausible 
 county for him. In 1883 he pressed Mr. Morley to 
 contest Newcastle, which Mr. Morley successfully did. 
 During the general election of 1885 he was in corre- 
 spondence with many candidates — Mr. A. Henriquez, 
 who acknowledges help at Walworth, Lord Lome (in 
 South Kensington), and others. He even corresponded 
 with friends at Birmingham (S. Timmins and Edmund 
 Tonks) with a view to contesting one of its seats again. 
 But his most interesting experience was at Brighton, 
 where the Liberal representative, Mr. Marriott, had 
 seceded to the Conservatives and retained his seat. 
 
 Holyoake's connection with Brighton began at a 
 much earlier date. As early as 1877 I find Mr. Mayall 
 proposing to make him the chief writer of a paper he 
 is trying to purchase in that town. Two years later 
 we find him active in Brighton affairs. A Quaker had 
 given the town ;^5oo for the purchase of books, and 
 Holyoake wrote an address, that was largely signed 
 in the town, praying him to add a stipulation that the 
 library be opened on Sundays. In 1882 he seems to 
 have coveted the aldermanic gown. " I am very much 
 afraid," Mr. G. Mainwaring writes to him, " that you 
 are not eligible for an aldermanship in our august body, 
 as we only appoint those who know how not to do 
 anything, and faithfully carry out that precept, and 
 assist others in preventing any general good being
 
 158 THE PRESENT DAY 
 
 done, unless it's done in your own street." He had 
 many friends living at Brighton, and spent a good 
 deal of time with them. When the election of 1880 
 approached, he was requested by the Liberal Council, 
 not a very energetic body at that time, to report on 
 the several qualifications, as parliamentary candidates, 
 of Mr. Hollond and Mr. Marriott. He says that his 
 report ran: "Mr. Hollond is a gentleman: Mr. Marriott 
 a lawyer." But I fear that was written in the light 
 of later developments. In point of fact, he had the 
 following letter on Mr. Marriott from Mr. Morley (in 
 1879): 
 
 *' I see that you have got, or are going to have, my 
 friend Mr. Marriott as candidate for Brighton. He is 
 one of my oldest and most intimate friends, and I hope 
 he will get in. He is not quite so Radical as you or I, 
 but then Brighton would not stand our Radicalism. 
 He will conciliate the moderates and perhaps a section 
 of the Tories, and as the great object is to win a seat 
 for a man who will vote for turning out Ld. B. & Co., 
 that is a consideration." 
 
 Marriott was accepted and returned, and a few years 
 later Holyoake was asked to help in dealing with the 
 " parliamentary prestidigitator, who was performing at 
 Brighton in a patent reversible overcoat," as he puts it 
 in the Present Day. Admiral Maxse wrote to him on 
 the matter: 
 
 " I enclose you a mem. of my letter to F. Harrison 
 which caused him to be so vicious. It would have 
 served him right if I had published his replies. The 
 Brighton affair is bad ; it reveals a low morality in the 
 constituency and want of intelligence. I know as a 
 fact that Marriott did apply for a vacancy on the Indian 
 Council (Sir H. Maine could say something if he chose
 
 THE PRESENT DAY 159 
 
 to), and some days after his refusal commenced his attack 
 on Liberals." 
 
 Holyoake seems to have been requested to find a fresh 
 candidate. Sir Charles Dilkc writes to say that he does 
 not know of a candidate. Lord Grosvenor suggests to 
 Holyoake the Lord Mayor of London. 
 
 "If," he says, "we could put some pepper into him, 
 he might be a useful candidate, as he knows that it 
 would be a losing game, and others will find that out 
 and leave you at the last moment. Meantime I am 
 sorry to say that I have not the article that you want 
 ready to hand. It is a combination of qualities that you 
 don't often get, unless there is a fondness for drink also 
 combined, and two of your types have (or had) that." 
 
 A few weeks later he wrote that he was urging the 
 Lord Mayor to accept. " We must try and get him 
 to do so, and smooth his injured feelings, though I 
 must confess that if I was in his position I would see 
 Brighton further first." Holyoake in turn wrote to 
 the Lord Mayor, and the offer was accepted. The 
 general election took place in June, and the Liberals 
 of Brighton suffered with their colleagues over the 
 country. " Probyn made a splendid candidate," Holy- 
 oake wrote to Lord Grosvenor, " but both [he and 
 Hollond] were too decorous to confront the mugwump 
 Marriott. They wanted gentlemanly devilry." 
 
 There was a reorganisation of the Liberal forces in 
 Brighton after the election, in which Holyoake took 
 an active part,^ and before long he entered his watch- 
 tower over its civic affairs at Eastern Lodge. But a 
 few busy years intervene before he leaves London, and 
 political events continued to engage him. After a very 
 
 ^ He also published rit that time his Patriotism by Charity — a pamphlet 
 on electoral organisation.
 
 i6o THE PRESENT DAY 
 
 brief Tory rule under Lord Salisbury during 1885, the 
 general elections, in December, sent Mr. Gladstone back 
 to power with a majority of 84 over the Conservatives, 
 but with a balancing vote of 86 Irish Nationalists to 
 face. Before long the rumour began to circulate that 
 Gladstone had adopted the idea of Home Rule, and 
 in April 1886 he evoked a fresh storm with his 
 Home Rule Bill. Then came the secession of Mr. 
 Chamberlain, the formation of the Liberal Unionist 
 party, and the crushing defeat, in July, of the Liberals 
 and Irish by the combined Unionists and Conservatives. 
 The opportunity is a good one for inserting the 
 correspondence that Holyoake had with some of the 
 chief actors in the political drama.
 
 GEORGE JACOH IIOLYOAKE 
 (1901)
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH GLADSTONE AND CHAMBERLAIN 
 
 A COMPLETE list of Holyoakc's correspondents, even 
 when we have excluded casual letters that indicate no 
 personal relation, would not be the least interesting 
 feature of his remarkable career. Few men in the course 
 of the nineteenth century can have had a wider epistolary 
 range. Chartists and peers, atheists and divines, artists 
 and scientists, merchants and statesmen, lawyers and 
 prisoners, revolutionaries and gentle ladies, scholars 
 and workers — hardly a type of man or woman is missing 
 from the list. I have read many thousand letters in the 
 preparation of this work, and they have conjured up 
 three generations with remarkable completeness. From 
 the few I have been able to include the reader will have 
 some impression of their infinite variety. They are 
 monotonous only in their tributes to his character and his 
 services. 
 
 It will be interesting to glance at the full corre- 
 spondence with one or two men of greater importance. 
 We have seen that Holyoake was always thwarted in 
 his efforts to gain the central stage of the political 
 world. His service even in this world was very great 
 indeed : his political pamphlets, his fifty years of political 
 journalism, his incessant lectures on the broad principles 
 and moral aspects of politics, and his active share in the 
 conduct of some scores of Liberal candidatures. In a 
 sense, however, he did always remain on the fringe of 
 
 VOL. II. i6i M
 
 i62 CORRESPONDENCE 
 
 the political party for which he worked during more than 
 half a century. It is therefore the more remarkable to find 
 him holding the relations he does with the chiefs of that 
 — and, to some extent, of the opposing — party. We have 
 seen his association with Cobden, Bright, and Lord Derby, 
 and with almost all the earlier leaders of the Radical 
 group ; and I have quoted as I proceeded a few of his 
 letters from Forster, Morley, Dilke, Stansfeld, Lord 
 Northbourne, Jesse Collings, and other prominent 
 politicians. 
 
 More interesting in many respects are his relations 
 with Gladstone. There could hardly be a more 
 impressive testimony to his character and the usefulness 
 of his life than in the cordial relations he had with that 
 statesman for twenty years. Deeply abhorring unbelief 
 as Gladstone did, disposed, as he was, to discover a weak 
 or inferior character always associated with it, he 
 nevertheless shows a regard for Holyoake that is not a 
 mere recognition of political services or a respect for 
 culture. They met for the first time in 1875 or 1876,^ 
 when Gladstone invited him to breakfast. His interest 
 in Holyoake was largely grounded on his social and 
 Co-operative work, but even attractive writers were not 
 invited lightly to that famous breakfast-table at 73 Harley 
 Street. Holyoake had seen Gladstone in the House, the 
 hope of the Tories, in 1842, and was arrested by the sight 
 of the "tall, pallid-faced young man with dark hair," to 
 whom everybody paid attention. Twenty years later 
 Holyoake helped to prepare the princely reception that 
 Gladstone had at Newcastle, telling the readers of the 
 Chronicle that they were to see a rare thing, " a Chancellor 
 of the Exchequer with a conscience," the man who had 
 removed "the taxes on knowledge." In 1868 he sent 
 
 ^ In Bygones Holyoake says 1877. But his diary gives the date June 
 22nd, 1876, for what he calls his " second breakfast" with Gladstone.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE 163 
 
 Gladstone a copy of his Defence of the Ballot^ and was 
 congratulated on his "able and manful defence." He 
 had no answer when, in 1873, he sent Gladstone his 
 defence of Mill ; but two years later, when he had sent 
 some publications of his, he received the following 
 acknowledgment : ^ 
 
 " Dear Sir, 
 
 ** I am very sensible of your kindness in sending 
 me the works I have just received, and I shall examine 
 them with great interest. 
 
 " Differing from you, I do not believe that secular 
 motives are adequate either to propel or to restrain the 
 children of our race, but I earnestly desire to hear the other 
 side, and I appreciate the advantage of having it stated by 
 sincere and highminded men. I hope that some day we 
 may have an opportunity of touching on the subject in 
 personal conference. In Co-operation I feel a lively and 
 a friendly interest. 
 
 " Yours faithfully, 
 
 " W. E. Gladstone." 
 
 Shortly afterwards he was proud to receive his first 
 invitation to breakfast. There were seven or eight 
 guests (including the editor of tho, feivish IVor/d), and in 
 the course of conversation Gladstone turned to Holyoake, 
 who sat next to him, to ask with some diffidence if he 
 had read Newman's Dream of Gerontms. Gladstone was 
 surprised to learn that he had read and admired it, as he 
 had put the question previously to several breakfast- 
 companies, and no one had read it. As they walked 
 downstairs afterwards he congratulated Gladstone on the 
 accuracy and fairness of some descriptions of heretical 
 schools that he had recently given. Gladstone stopped 
 him, and observed that he was pleased with the com- 
 pliment. " For that is the quality in which you yourself 
 
 ' Quoted in l\Iorle}''s Life of Gladstone, though Holyoake's name is 
 omitted.
 
 i64 CORRESPONDENCE 
 
 excel," he said. Holyoake breakfasted again at Harley 
 Street in 1876, the other guests being Morley, Knowles, 
 Herbert (the artist), Bright, and the Rev. W. N. Moles- 
 worth, when Gladstone asked him " how the public could 
 be interested in a measure devised for their benefit." 
 Holyoake wrote to him afterwards : 
 
 "The conditions of association among the people are 
 only in a humbler degree the same as among gentlemen. 
 In a club gentlemen have refreshments according to 
 their taste : read what books they please : discuss what 
 topics they choose. The working people want to do the 
 same. Being crowded in their daily lives, they have no 
 sense of distinctness and deference to each other as 
 gentlemen have. To allure them into association and 
 compass its pleasant perpetuity, it is only needed to con- 
 cede them the liberties of gentlemen, in their humbler 
 way, and to exact agreement from each to be unimputa- 
 tive and void of offence towards the conviction of others." 
 
 Thanking Holyoake for his History of Co-operation in 
 1879, Gladstone wrote : 
 
 " Dear Mr. Holyoake, 
 
 " I thank you much for your work, and I am glad 
 you point out the difference between different kinds of 
 co-operation. I do not feel sure,i however, that all 
 co-operative stores might noti fairly be made to pay 
 income tax. 
 
 " As to the upper Co-operation, in which I have never 
 taken any part, I look upon it as a remedial effort to blow 
 up and destroy that artificial and most injurious system 
 of credit upon which the London tradesmen conduct 
 their business — or a very large part of them. If they 
 consult me, I shall earnestly advise them in this sense. 
 The only cash tradesman I ever consulted told me he 
 had derived benefit from the Stores, as his customers 
 were now more accustomed to pay cash, which 
 formerly he had a difficulty in making them do.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE 165 
 
 " Pray breakfast with me again on some Thursday at 
 ten, after Easter, when we may, I hope, talk on your 
 book." 
 
 Later they exchanged letters on the Bradlaugh episode 
 and the railway tax, and in 1881 there was some interest- 
 ing correspondence that needs a word of introduction. 
 Mr. W. H. Duignan, a Walsall friend with influence 
 in the party, was endeavouring to have Holyoake's name 
 put on the Civil List, and had induced Sir C. Foster to 
 secure it. During the negotiations Holyoake visited 
 his old Chartist colleague, Thomas Cooper, and, finding 
 him in much poverty, determined to have the pension 
 transferred to him. He wrote to Mr. Duignan : 
 
 ''What will you say to me? I have done a thing 
 which disqualifies me from availing myself of the nego- 
 tiation you so kindly asked Sir C. Foster to undertake 
 on my behalf, and he should be told of it. It must 
 stand over : indeed, be abandoned now. I have been 
 visiting my old friend Thomas Cooper at Lincoln. 
 With bronchitis upon him he was going out, and has 
 gone out, lecturing and preaching in the inclement 
 weather at 76. He consulted me as to the prospect of a 
 memorial being presented to Mr. Gladstone to place him 
 on the Pension List for such addition to his limited 
 income as may save him from labour beyond his years. 
 To-day I have seen Mr. Mundella, who and Mr. 
 Forster are attached friends of his, and I am to draw up 
 the memorial and promote it for him. This will not 
 disqualify me a future day, but I cannot be a candidate 
 myself and do this. Had not my wife been near unto 
 death when I entered into this, I would have come to 
 you to consult you before taking this step. But my 
 friend is more needy than L Pray forgive me. My 
 wife seems recovering, but is uncertain still." 
 
 Duignan tried to be angry, but he and the few others 
 who knew of this generous act — performed, I may note.
 
 1 66 CORRESPONDENCE 
 
 at the time when Mrs. Besant and others were attacking 
 Holyoake's character — were much impressed. Cooper 
 received a grant of ^300. " Your spontaneous good- 
 ness," he wrote to Holyoake, " almost startled me, 
 although I had always believed in you^ though fiot in 
 your unbelief." Indirectly, the act led to a reconciliation 
 with W. E. Forster, who behaved nobly to Cooper. " I 
 wish you would let Mr. Holyoake know," he wrote to 
 Cooper, " that it was with real pleasure I read his note 
 and extracts. I have known for some time how kindly 
 he was trying to get me fair play, and I have been 
 grateful to him on both public and private grounds." 
 Four years later he wrote direct to Holyoake : 
 
 " I am much obliged to you both for your kind letter 
 and for your public support, and, I may add, for the 
 friendship with which you have helped me through my 
 Irish difficulties. These difficulties are no longer only, 
 or even mainly, Irish. They concern the future of 
 England and of Great Britain, and I am very uneasy 
 about their present position. . . . My wife joins me in 
 kindest regards." 
 
 To return to Mr. Gladstone and 1881. Holyoake 
 wrote to him : 
 
 " My Dear Mr. Gladstone, 
 
 " A friendly accident has made me aware that 
 someone, from generous regard for me, has asked you 
 whether some gift or appointment could be accorded 
 to me. 
 
 " I . After thinking of it I cannot reconcile myself to the 
 idea that you, amid the unusual cares of State which 
 concern the nation so much, and tax your strength which 
 we could ill spare, should give heed to this thing. 
 Should you deem the idea meet on any ground, please 
 defer it to a distant, less onerous, and more fitting time. 
 
 " 2. By an unprecedented act of regard for the working
 
 CORRESPONDENCE 167 
 
 class an appointment has been given to Mr. Prior. It 
 would be ungenerous, and betray a want of self-respect, 
 if a crowd of applicants should immediately appear from 
 the working class, embarrassing ministers who have 
 taken a friendly step towards them. 
 
 "3. There is Mr. Thomas Cooper, much older than 
 myself, who from the days of his political imprisonment 
 forty years ago until now has been an honest and brave 
 teacher of working people. I found him lately in 
 Lincoln, going out in his 76th year to preach Christi- 
 anity, to which he is devoted, in inclement weather, 
 because his slender income is too small for his needs. I 
 have drawn up a memorial on his behalf, which Mr. 
 Mundella will in due course place in your hands. Any 
 claim made on my account would limit your means of 
 considering his ; and that would give me pain. 
 
 "4. No minister can well help me. Anything I have 
 done for the instruction or service of the working people, 
 by Co-operative or other writings, do not stand apart in 
 the public mind. I am equally known otherwise for the 
 publicity of other convictions, and you would be made 
 responsible for them. This would be an ill requital of 
 the noble toleration which you have personally shown 
 me notwithstanding what you must think seriously 
 erroneous views of mine, and upon which I do not keep 
 silence. This more than courtesy on your part has been 
 to me a matter of greater pride and reward than any I 
 expected in this life. 
 
 " 5. I have always taught self-help and self-reliance 
 with the force of a passion. I always lived within my 
 means. When I had none, I never had a debt. I have 
 never appeared among those who sought anything for 
 themselves, and unless blindness comes again, or decay 
 finds me helpless, I should invalidate what I have taught 
 by accepting public aid ; and I have perfect happiness in 
 not doing it. I maintain always and everywhere that the 
 people should keep the State, not the State the people. 
 
 " Always yours sincerely, 
 
 " G. J. HOLYOAKE."
 
 1 68 CORRESPONDENCE 
 
 At the next Cabinet meeting Gladstone read Holy- 
 oake's letter. He had " never received a like one before," 
 he said. His reply runs : 
 
 " Dear Mr. Holyoake, 
 
 " I thank you for your note of yesterday ; and 
 I need not, perhaps, say more than that it heightens the 
 respect and regard which I have felt for you ever since I 
 have had the advantage of knowing you. I shall 
 examine carefully Mr. Cooper's case. Though your 
 letter of the nth has last and specially impressed me, 
 I must also thank you for your very kind letter of the 
 28th ult." 
 
 The correspondence continued at intervals until Glad- 
 stone's death. The Home Rule policy had Holyoake's 
 warm support, and he wrote both to Morley and Glad- 
 stone to that effect. In 1888 he wrote to say that he 
 agreed with Gladstone (against the Unitarians) in his 
 statement, while reviewing Robert Elsmerey that '* a Christ 
 not divine is one other than the Christ on whom the 
 souls of Christians have habitually fed." *' Many thanks 
 for your note," Gladstone answered. " I am sorry not 
 to have seen you for a rather long time ; especially as 
 my years are slipping fast away." Another letter from 
 Gladstone in the same year seems to have reference to 
 the Parnell Commission that was being appointed : 
 
 ** I thank you for your letter. The matter was a 
 delicate one, and I am sincerely glad to be acquitted by 
 a spontaneous and dispassionate judgment such as 
 yours." 
 
 The death of Bright led to some further correspond- 
 ence in 1889. Of 1890 there is an interesting letter to 
 him from Gladstone, of which the reference is not very 
 clear :
 
 CORRESPONDENCE 169 
 
 " I thank you very much for your interesting note, 
 but your letters are always interesting. I certainly 
 adhere to the sentiment expressed 45 years ago, but it 
 should have been more developed. That method may 
 account for very simple forms of human character for 
 those who are more like little children. And I ought to 
 have been a little more reverent towards so great a man 
 as John Wesley." 
 
 Later, sending Gladstone a copy of his Co-operative 
 Movement To-day^ Holyoake said : 
 
 " When you were in Brighton some heretic sent you 
 a question which you took the trouble to answer. I 
 remonstrated with all the tribe for their want of discern- 
 ment. In the days of Professor F. D. Maurice and 
 Canon Kingsley I never disputed with them, and do 
 not do so with good priests. There is no need to make 
 demands on the good, seeing that there are always 
 enough of the other sort extant." 
 
 A letter from Gladstone in the same year (1891) must 
 have been occasioned by Holyoake's reminiscences, which 
 were then appearing in the Newcastle Chronicle. While 
 Gladstone was at Newcastle in 1862, he spoke on the 
 American war, then raging, in a way that caused great 
 surprise over the country. Holyoake, who reported him 
 for one paper, condensed his words into the phrase : 
 " Jefferson Davis had not only made a navy : he had 
 made a nation." The feeling in Gladstone's mind at the 
 time was that it was better that the Northern and 
 Southern States should be separated, but his public 
 explanation on the following night (that he "was no 
 advocate either of slavery or the Southern States ") was 
 little heeded. It is to this incident that the following 
 passage alludes : 
 
 "The mistake I made at Newcastle in 1862 was the 
 greatest ever made by me in a speech. The opinion
 
 I70 CORRESPONDENCE 
 
 was one entertained at the time by many persons friendly 
 to the North ; but I, as a Minister, had no right to give 
 utterance to it, and I marvel at my own stupidity in 
 not seeing this explanation, I had quite forgotten the 
 attempt at Middlesborough next day to retrieve the 
 error, and I thank you for reminding me. But years 
 after I gave a full public explanation in America, and 
 received from Mr. Fish a letter which, as far as I was 
 concerned, was very handsome, and all I could desire. 
 " It's long since we have conversed together ; and how 
 much there is to converse about ! My life has been 
 very long and very busy. I am thankful for the nature 
 of the work that has been consigned to me. It has been 
 not entirely, but almost entirely, emancipating work. I 
 do not feel sure that the work of the next generation 
 will be equally free from awkward adventures." 
 
 During 1893 they met several times at Brighton. 
 Gladstone told him he had been solicited by the Spanish 
 Government " to join in a federation against Anarchists." 
 He was disinclined to do it, and Holyoake's remark that 
 "you cannot legislate against insanity" confirmed him. 
 Some talk about Bishop Stanley led Gladstone to write 
 Holyoake afterwards : 
 
 " I think Bishop Bathurst left him the worst-conditioned 
 diocese in England, and, unless I am much mistaken, 
 he had not strength to administer the smallest or the 
 best. ... It will take a very long time to bring round 
 the Church of England in that diocese. It is so much 
 easier in this mysterious world to do evil effectively than 
 good." 
 
 " Your distinction is just," Holyoake replied. " Bishops 
 in some respects resemble men of whom Guizot spoke, 
 who desire good strongly, but will feebly." They had 
 spoken also of the Newmans, and Gladstone, who had 
 for some time been out of touch with Francis, asked 
 Holyoake to send him " an assurance of respect." " His
 
 CORRESPONDENCE 171 
 
 powers of mind may be said to amount to genius," he 
 said. Holyoake discovered that each had assumed the 
 other to be offended, and he restored good feeHng 
 between them.^ To Gladstone he gave a copy of New- 
 man's Select Hymns, and presently heard from him : 
 
 " Lord Acton came down here on Monday evening, 
 and would have been very glad to meet you, but was 
 unfortunately obliged to return to London on business 
 yesterday at too early an hour to allow of my making an 
 appointment. 
 
 *' 1 have been reading Mr. F. Newman's hymns with 
 great interest and sympathy. I have never known or 
 heard of an instance in which that spirit of devotion, 
 and that . . . closeness of relation between God and the 
 human soul, which we are accustomed to regard as the 
 first fruit of the Christian system is [placed] upon a basis 
 of pure theism, with a [rejection] of every Christian 
 topic. Whatever is the cause or the process, I rejoice 
 unfeignedly in the fact. As I grow older and older the 
 problems and [difficulties] of life thicken around me, but 
 I anticipate [satisfactory] solutions for them all. I hope 
 that in this writing I am not presumptuous or offensive 
 toward you ; it would give me, if I knew it, the greatest 
 pain. 
 
 " Believe me, with much respect, 
 
 " Faithfully yours " 2 
 
 Holyoake replied that, "so far from regarding the 
 earnest statement of another's convictions as a reflection 
 upon his own, he valued it both as information and 
 service." " Of public affairs," he added, " I will only 
 say that I never expected to see in England such a 
 splendid government of progress as we have under your 
 
 ^ Holyoake gives Newman's letter on the matter in Bys^otics (I, 199)- 
 It is dated 1890, but this seems to be an error. Gladstone's letters are 
 dated 1893. 
 
 - I copy from an imperfect cop}'. The words in brackets I suggest 
 as filling the puzzled copyist's blanks
 
 1 7 2 CORRESPONDENCE 
 
 initiative." In the following year, when Gladstone 
 reviewed Mrs. Besant's TJirougli Storm to Peace in the 
 Nineteenth Century^ Holyoake wrote that nothing had yet 
 been said of her "so comprehensive, so clear, so true." 
 He suggested that the title should have been " From 
 Peace to Storm " ; though his explanation indicates that 
 he meant " From Storm to Storm." 
 
 The last letters (in 1897) refer to a work, The Origin 
 a)id Nature of Secuiarisin,i\\sil Holyoake published in 1896. 
 He had long been accustomed to send his works to 
 Gladstone, but hesitated to send this popular restatement 
 of his views on religion. Then it occurred to him that 
 even Gladstone might misinterpret the liberal references 
 he had made to religious persons and ideas in their 
 correspondence, and he determined to show that his 
 Agnostic position was wholly unchanged. 
 
 " It was alike considerate in you," Gladstone replied, 
 " to withhold your book for a time, and kind eventually 
 to send it. 
 
 " I read it agreeing with many things, reserving others, 
 and hardly jarred until I got through nearly 100 pages. 
 Of course, I do not attempt comment in detail over so 
 wide a field. It seems to me unjust to say that Christ 
 had a slave-spirit. To me the apostolic injunctions of 
 non-resistance appear most wise, addressed as they are 
 to individuals. The submission of communities or 
 nations soon becomes degradation. I have no claim to 
 the credit you give me. Much aid comes to me (i) 
 from considering the real difficulties of belief, (2) from 
 observing the superiority to myself — and sometimes to 
 others besides myself — in moral tone in persons holding 
 (what I think) inferior beliefs. 
 
 *' To me the entire Christian scheme is inflexibly and 
 intensely ethical. As a note of this belief I enclose a 
 paper on the Atonement^ which you may or may not 
 
 ' Article in the Nineteenth Century for September 1894.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE 173 
 
 find time some day or year to look at. It seems to me 
 that Secularism owes all its materials to Christianity, 
 which it represents by amputation, and never would 
 have existed without the Gospel. Why did not the 
 Greeks, the most wonderfully intellectual people that 
 ever existed, discover it? I see in this world of human 
 beings, which has for result the creation of beautiful and 
 noble characters, the jewels of creation. Secularism 
 seems to me to require that at a given moment I should 
 surrender them to the cold embrace of extinction — and 
 this I am not willing to do — or, at the least, that I should 
 forbear to make use of the [beautiful] scheme which, 
 without solving, yet mitigates all difficulties, and no 
 small part of the evidence which I find in the experience 
 of my long life and of God's dealings with me in every 
 part of it. Indulge me in these stray remarks with your 
 usual charity. If I get at any time to Brighton, I shall 
 hope to hear from you. I thank you much for your 
 kindness." 
 
 In some respects this is one of the most remarkable 
 letters that Gladstone ever wrote. The large recognition 
 of non-Christian character, the pained perception of the 
 difficulties that the advance of culture is bringing, and 
 that his strength is no longer able to confront, the 
 pleading tone of the letter, are unfamiliar to the reader 
 of Gladstone. It sounds like the faint dying of the most 
 resonant voice that was raised in behalf of theology in 
 the nineteenth century. It was not a letter to modify 
 Holyoake's views, and he replied : 
 
 " My Dear Mr. Gladstone, 
 
 " I should have withheld my book altogether 
 had I not finally thought it might come in your way 
 and seem uncandid on my part not to have sent it to you. 
 Always so fair yet firm towards dissentient opinion, I 
 am influenced by your letters, which give me a higher 
 sense of that art of statement which inspires the mind 
 with respect when it may not concede.
 
 174 CORRESPONDENCE 
 
 " Never more could I say Christ had a slave-spirit, if 
 with the injunction of non-resistance he had made known 
 the limitation you indicate. When the Bible had ceased 
 to be in my eyes what it once was, I continued to read 
 it to my mother, and sent her one of large type that she 
 might read it herself when her eyes grew dim. I 
 respected the consolation congenial to her conscience. 
 A poor old woman, a neighbour at Harrow, was advised 
 by a missionary to read her Bible. But she had no 
 means of buying spectacles. I bought her a pair. I 
 am for every one being faithful to his faith. 
 
 " Secularism was primarily designed for ethical inspira- 
 tion where theology is inoperative. I hope there is a 
 future life, and if so my not being sure of it will not 
 prevent it coming to me. I know of no better way of 
 deserving it than by conscious service of humanity. 
 Belief in a Personal Providence is a great advantage. 
 All conviction is strength. But one can give no offence 
 to a God of Truth by not saying he knows what he does 
 not know. The universe never impressed me with so 
 much awe and wonder as when I found I could not account 
 for it. I admit ignorance is a privation. But to submit 
 not to know, where knowledge is withheld, seems but 
 one of the sacrifices that reverence for truth imposes 
 upon us. 
 
 " I write in explanation, not in controversy, and beg 
 you to forgive so many words." 
 
 Towards the close of the year Holyoake sent him 
 Sixty Years. " My means of reading are now much 
 narrowed from a variety of causes," Gladstone said, in 
 acknowledging it, " but I could not resist opening your 
 volumes." He proposed to visit Holyoake at Brighton, 
 when next he was that way. Curiously, the one point 
 on which he joined issue with Holyoake was in regard 
 to his "eulogium on the series of bishops in Norwich." 
 We saw what Gladstone thought of Bishop Bathurst. 
 " I expect much from the new bishop — a Home Ruler,"
 
 CORRESPONDENCE 1 7 5 
 
 he concluded. In April, when his last illness was on, 
 Holyoake sent a brief message. Miss Gladstone replied 
 that her father " was much touched and pleased," and 
 she gave him some account of his hopeless condition. 
 In less than two months the fire had died down. A 
 Congress of the Labour Association was held shortly 
 afterwards, and Holyoake induced it to send a message 
 of condolence to Mrs. Gladstone — the only message of 
 the kind, he says, that was sent by any public meeting. 
 
 Holyoake's correspondence with the second great 
 actor on the political stage, Mr. Chamberlain, has not 
 the same intrinsic interest. Gladstone's letters show 
 some approach to intimacy in his later years : from 
 Chamberlain, with whom he was very friendly in the 
 seventies, Holyoake was separated by a deep political 
 antipathy after 1886. Perplexed as Holyoake was on 
 Irish affairs between 1880 and 1886, he at once and 
 cordially embraced Gladstone's theory of the remedy. 
 It must be admitted that in this case his political 
 partisanship led him into injustice. In later years, 
 when Chamberlain had added the heresy of Protection — 
 a heresy of still more grievous a character, as Holyoake 
 conceived it — his dislike of his early friend was extreme. 
 Forgetting that Chamberlain had never held and deserted 
 any scheme of separate Parliament, and that he advocated 
 the same measure of self-government for Ireland after 
 the schism as he seems to have been prepared to 
 advocate before it, Holyoake spoke of him as " the 
 quick-change variety artist of the political stage." In 
 this case he has failed to give us in his volumes of 
 reminiscences the shrewd and just analysis of the 
 characters he knew, which so generally delights his 
 reader. However, the earlier correspondence with 
 Chamberlain is not without interest. 
 
 In 1874 Holyoake wrote an article in the Contonporary
 
 176 CORRESPONDENCE 
 
 (" Gambling in Politics ") on the fall of Gladstone's 
 Government. In it he vehemently attacked the Radicals 
 for pressing their grievances so far as to ruin a 
 progressive Ministry. Chamberlain wrote to him : 
 
 " I have only just found time to read your article in 
 the Conteiiipor-ary of March. On the whole I agree 
 with its conclusions, while I very much admire the force 
 and skill with which they are put. 
 
 *' It seems to me, however, that you hardly do justice 
 to the discontented Radicals. For myself I admire 
 immensely Mr. Gladstone's personal sincerity and 
 earnestness ; yet I hold that the last few years of his 
 Ministry were almost unmixed loss to Radicalism. The 
 opposition, or unwillingness to help, of one who pro- 
 fesses so much sympathy is more dangerous to a cause 
 than the antagonism of an open and armed foe. Had 
 
 Lord brought in Forster's Bill, he would probably 
 
 have failed to carry it, or, if carried, it would speedily 
 have been repealed. When Disraeli scorns the Non- 
 conformists he does no harm to the Liberal cause ; 
 while Gladstone's reply to Miall threw us back ten 
 years. 
 
 "As a mere question of policy, too, I hold that Glad- 
 stone's qualified adhesion to Radicalism had the evil 
 result of combining and stimulating against us every 
 hostile prejudice and feeling, while it gave us no active 
 assistance in compensation. Thus the ' flesh and blood ' 
 argument lashed the Whigs and many employers of 
 labour into fury, while the neglect to legislate against 
 the Law of Conspiracy and Criminal Law Amendment 
 Act left the working classes without the practical results 
 which should have followed from the expression of 
 sympathy. 
 
 " You have correctly expressed the views of Non- 
 conformists on the subject of Forster's Bill, but you 
 have taken no note of the objections of Radical 
 Educationists, like myself, who care nothing about the 
 sectarian quarrel, except so far as its continued agitation
 
 CORRESPONDENCE 177 
 
 renders all progress, in the shape of a national system, 
 impossible. I mention this though I feel, of course, that 
 your space did not permit a full examination of the 
 causes of our discontent." 
 
 The attitude towards Gladstone is clear and interest- 
 ing. The education-question continued to agitate 
 Birmingham, and Holyoake was, we saw, a lecturer for 
 the Birmingham League. In 1876 Chamberlain wrote 
 him that they thought of dissolving the League. 
 
 " The Bill of the Government," he said, " if properly 
 carried out, will really do a great deal for education^ but 
 it is a tremendous blow to the Dissenters and the Secular 
 party. But this is an issue which the League was not 
 formed to try, and it is questionable whether it must not 
 leave the battle to others. We shall have a kind of 
 universal compulsion and universal education, and there 
 remain only two things — (i) Free schools, for which the 
 country is certainly not yet prepared ; (2) To wrest this 
 education out of the hands of priests of all shades. The 
 last is really a branch of the Disestablishment move- 
 ment, to which I am more and more convinced the efforts 
 of all Radicals should now be directed." 
 
 Later in the same year he writes : 
 
 "You seem to have admirably succeeded in your new 
 rules [of Secularism], although I doubt whether the 
 interpretation put upon the word Secular by ordinary 
 people will ever be changed. I think something may 
 be done with my suggestion for licensing reform. The 
 great difficulty in connection with the matter is the 
 question of cost and compensation." 
 
 In 1880 Chamberlain, to the dismay of Whigs, took a 
 place in the Ministry (as President of the Board of 
 Trade), and Holyoake bespoke his interest for the 
 abolition of the travelling tax. There can be little 
 doubt that Holyoake's friendly relations with so many 
 
 VOL. II, N
 
 178 CORRESPONDENCE 
 
 members of the 1880 Government won particular 
 attention to the Committee's claim. Holyoake wrote 
 also to deprecate some attack that Lloyd Jones had made 
 on Chamberlain, and he replied : 
 
 " Many thanks for your note. I have not seen Mr. 
 Lloyd Jones's article, but, whatever he may say, I am 
 glad at least to be assured of your kind remembrance 
 and continued good will. I think the northern Co- 
 operators make a mistake in attempting to identify 
 themselves in any way with joint-stock companies, 
 which are not co-operative at all in the true sense, but 
 simply great trading speculations." 
 
 Holyoake dined with him at Highbury shortly after- 
 wards, with Mr. Morley and Thomas Martineau. He 
 seems to have startled them (especially Morley) by 
 saying that " Cobden had introduced more immorality 
 into politics than any other man of the time." He 
 meant that Cobden introduced, or gave to it the at- 
 tractiveness of success, the policy of pressing a single 
 political purpose to the extent of over-riding other just 
 reforms. It is a delicate problem in political morality, 
 if there is such a science. Holyoake at times felt in- 
 clined to think himself the only cultivator of it. He 
 wrote to Chamberlain a week or two later (apropos of 
 Irish violence) : 
 
 *' A government which will not concede anything 
 unjust to threats, nor hesitate to grant what is right 
 notwithstanding hostility and menace, has the perfection 
 of courage and justice. Your brilliant speech on 
 Tuesday indicated all this, and the country is your 
 debtor for it, and no less admired the next day's oration. 
 I have never known so young a member of the Govern- 
 ment discern so perfectly what to say and what not to 
 say, and say it so well."
 
 CORRESPONDENCE 179 
 
 Chamberlain may have perused the letter with some 
 comfort after 1886. When Holyoake presented himself 
 at Leicester in 1884, he wrote : 
 
 *' Whatever happens at Leicester, I shall always feel 
 the greatest respect for your consistency, courage, and 
 integrity." 
 
 They met in the London demonstrations against the 
 House of Lords in the summer, and Chamberlain wrote 
 (in October) : 
 
 " The times, as you say, are lively, and, I hope, good. 
 The next few months will decide whether we make the 
 greatest advance which has yet been effected towards 
 self-government, or whether we fall back into the 
 condition of a Peer-ridden people." 
 
 A year later he sent a comment on the Brighton 
 situation : 
 
 " The Liberals of Brighton seem to be rather timid, 
 and allow Mr. Marriott's brazen impudence to frighten 
 them. I should hope that Mr. Brett's telegram will 
 finally dispel any doubt as to Mr. Marriott's mendacity." 
 
 A few months later the Liberal vessel struck the rock 
 of Home Rule, and only a few formal notes passed 
 between them after the separation. Mr. Chamberlain 
 subscribed liberally to the purchase of an annuity for 
 Holyoake in 1889, observing that he had "a great 
 respect" for him. But Holyoake had a tincture of 
 bitterness at seeing the brilliant Radical transfer his 
 ability and energy to the other side of the House, and 
 when he committed the further offence of opening the 
 campaign on tariff reform his dislike intensified. 
 
 In the same proportion his admiration of Mr. Morley 
 increased after 1886. He wrote to him in 18S7 :
 
 i8o CORRESPONDENCE 
 
 " An observer of the actors who pass over the stage is 
 permitted to applaud, though he himself could not per- 
 form there. There is no presumption in being delighted, 
 as one cannot help being, at the ascendency which your 
 generous inspiration of Irish policy has given you. 
 Yours will be the most memorable of Irish secretary- 
 ships. . . . For 700 years we have had Union without 
 Unity with Ireland. Gladstone will give us Unity and 
 Union. Let the Irish members go and build up a 
 nation, and then they will re-enter our Parliament as 
 our equals. There can be no unity save among equals." 
 
 Holyoake tried to defend his old friend Cowen, whom 
 Liberals now depicted darkly, but Morley wrote of him : 
 
 " I don't at all agree with what you say about Cowen. 
 He does his best every day in his paper to make Home 
 Rule difficult, and those who are promoting it odious. 
 I cannot imagine a more contemptible exhibition." 
 
 Two other letters of a later date (1898) may be quoted : 
 
 " Dear Mr. Morley, 
 
 " Once suggestions might be made to you — 
 now the nation receives suggestions from you, and 
 admiration is its thanks. In your speech at the Edwards 
 Settlement (which, had not fate kept me in Manchester, 
 I had heard) you spoke of 'soulless secularism.' I 
 have been asked whether you applied it to that form of 
 secularism for which I am responsible. If you did, it 
 would make no difference in our friendship — for con- 
 trariety of opinion is the right of Free Thought. I send 
 you the American edition of my book that you may the 
 better judge." 
 
 The reply came at once : 
 
 '* Dear Mr. Holyoake, 
 
 " I am the very last man in all the world to 
 suppose that Secularism must be soulless. What I 
 meant was a soulless species of Secularity. As for im- 
 puting that to yoii^ whose courage and elevation and
 
 CORRESPONDENCE i8i 
 
 singleness of mind I have admired all my life — nothing 
 could be further from my thought. Many thanks for 
 the book all the same. 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 "John Morley." 
 
 I may bring this chapter of epistles to a close with 
 one or two from friends who belonged more fully to the 
 world of culture. Of literary men and women I have 
 quoted many letters as we proceeded, and will turn now 
 to the scientific world. Professor Bain was a warm 
 friend of Holyoake's, and had much correspondence 
 with him ; though the letters are rarely more than 
 allusions to past or pending conversations. He knew 
 Huxley well, but I find few letters from him. Herbert 
 Spencer was one of his earliest friends, and often dined 
 with him at the Whittington Club in the fifties, or 
 shared the unceremonious tea at the Leader offices. In 
 later years, when both lived at Brighton, they were 
 frequent companions. Readers of Bygones will recall a 
 strange passage in which Holyoake relates that, dis- 
 covering that Spencer was going to America in 1882, he 
 proposed to travel with him, and Spencer declined. 
 Spencer's letter will be read with interest : 
 
 " Dear Mr. Holyoake, 
 
 " The letter you named, though addressed to 
 34, Queen's Gardens [instead of 38], reached me. I 
 postponed replying because of a difficulty I felt about 
 the question you put. 
 
 ** Many experiences show me how, with the utter un- 
 scrupulousness shown by people in the reports they set 
 going, it is desirable, whenever possible, to avoid giving 
 them handles. As a recent experience I may name that 
 three or four versions have appeared within the last six 
 months of a rumour that I am about to be married. . . . 
 More recently have come various statements as to my 
 American tour, one of them that I am going to lecture
 
 i82 CORRESPONDENCE 
 
 there, another that I am going to lecture because I am 
 in financial difficulties. . . . My reason for giving you 
 these illustrations is that you will understand better why 
 I hesitated to respond to your request to arrange so that 
 our voyage to the United States should be in the same 
 vessel. Inevitably, if we were fellow-passengers, and 
 had the daily intercourse that would naturally occur, 
 the fact would be remarked and commented upon by 
 American fellow-passengers, and reporters and inter- 
 viewers would inevitably be informed of our intimacy, 
 and some such statement as that we had come over 
 together, possibly with some purpose, would become 
 current. The religious world is especially unscrupulous 
 in its endeavours to injure antagonists, and as it would 
 be their policy to damage me as much as possible — and 
 as there either survives over there, or will be easily 
 revived, the idea formed of you in early days, so that 
 you would be called by them ' the notorious atheist 
 Holyoake,' or some such name, I think it very probable 
 that the fact of our association would be used as a weapon 
 against me. . . ." 
 
 Spencer must have been not a little astonished when 
 he saw how Holyoake ivas received, especially by the 
 clergy, who proved less timid than he. Holyoake knew 
 vSpencer well enough to understand that this meant no 
 diminution of the personal regard Spencer always had 
 for him, but his reply was gently corrective : 
 
 "Your solicitude to keep the views for which you are 
 responsible distinct from any for which you are not 
 responsible I consider just and useful to the public. 
 Principles of lesser range and moment than those you 
 have advocated I have seen the necessity of keeping 
 apart in the public mind. In maintaining myself that 
 human affairs can best be regulated by considerations 
 purely human, I have had to make clear that the secular 
 principle is quite distinct from the theological. ... I 
 do not remember that the term 'notorious atheist' was
 
 CORRESPONDENCE 183 
 
 ever applied to me. Certainly for 20 years I have not 
 heard it. You may remember that so far back as the 
 days of the Leader Mr. G. H. Lewes invented the term 
 * vSuspensive Atheist' by which he described me. . . . 
 Americans excel all men in drawing staid conclusions 
 from eccentric premises, but they have never yet inferred 
 complicity of opinion among passengers of a steam 
 vessel or a railway train. . . ." 
 
 A few months later he found Spencer wooing sleep 
 in a hotel near Niagara. We shall see their friendly 
 relations at Brighton later. 
 
 I have several times referred to TyndalTs regard for 
 him, and will close with one or two of his letters. 
 Writing to him during the first meeting of the British 
 Association, Tyndall says : 
 
 "Other men laboured, and we have entered into their 
 labours. Men like yourself have borne the brunt of the 
 battle, and, when intrepidity was a risk, did not shrink 
 from the exhibition of it. I was right glad to be able to 
 oblige you." 
 
 When Major Bell sent to Tyndall the circular asking 
 subscriptions for the annuity in 1875, he replied : 
 
 " Permit me to say that I have received with genuine 
 sorrow the intelligence it conveyed of Mr. Holyoake's 
 failing health. And allow me also to thank you for 
 giving me the opportunity of showing, even in the 
 small way here open to me, my appreciation of the 
 character of one upon whose life is stamped, with 
 singular distinctness, the image and superscription of 
 an honest man." 
 
 Acknowledging the receipt of Holyoake's History of 
 Co-operation in 1879, he wrote again : 
 
 " I am very much obliged to you for your book. It is 
 not so much with Wilful Thinkers that I sympathise as 
 with those who conduct grave discussions, not only in 
 an able, but in a high-minded, gentlemanly way."
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 AMONGST THE CO-OPERATORS ABROAD 
 
 There are few respects in which England has 
 stimulated intellectual and social advance on the 
 Continent, but it may distinctly lay claim to have done 
 so in regard to education and Co-operation. In spite 
 of the fact that Rousseau, Froebel, and Pestalozzi framed 
 their ideals at a time when education was sliefht and 
 crude in England — in spite of the fact that the early 
 Manchester educationists did but act on their inspiration 
 — English elementary schools had a great influence on 
 the development of elementary schools abroad. In 
 particular, the schools of Prussia and of Piedmont, which 
 have had so large a share in the making of Germany 
 and Italy, acknowledged a great indebtedness to the 
 remarkable model set up by Robert Owen at New 
 Lanark. On the industrial side the debt is even more 
 readily acknowledged. Co-operative enterprise on the 
 Continent was chiefly due to English inspiration. The 
 theories of Fourier and other coUectivists led to many 
 co-operative experiments, but the broad modern move- 
 ment is due to a deliberate adoption of the English 
 scheme. 
 
 For the majority of the continental Co-operators 
 Holyoake was the central and most venerable figure 
 of the Co-operative world, and in the course of the 
 eighties he had much intercourse with them. Dutch, 
 
 French, Italian, and German Co-operators and social 
 
 184
 
 AMONGST THE CO OPERATORS ABROAD 185 
 
 Students applied to him incessantly for information, and 
 asked articles from him for their journals. His name 
 was a tradition in the advanced circles of France and 
 Italy, where the idea of Co-operation was welcomed until 
 the later German Socialism began to rival it. Mazzini 
 and Saffi, Nadaud and Louis Blanc, and so many others, 
 had discussed Rochdale and its significance with him at 
 London in the forties, and had taken home with them, 
 when the time came, the idea of '' self-help by the 
 people." Then a number of French translations — 
 followed shortly by Dutch, German, Hungarian, and 
 Italian translations — of his history of the Pioneers began 
 to circulate on the Continent, and little stores sprang up 
 in their path, as they had done in England. For news 
 of the later and more mature development of the move- 
 ment they naturally turned to its historian. 
 
 In 1885 Holyoake attended the first Congress of the 
 Co-operative movement in France, and in 1886 he 
 visited Congresses at Milan and Bologna. Though he 
 was now in his seventieth year, he still travelled thousands 
 of miles annually, giving lectures or attending Co-opera- 
 tive functions. Until near the end of his life he 
 remained a member of the Board of the Co-operative 
 journal, and attended its meetings in Manchester nearly 
 every month ; he retained also his seat on the Central 
 Board, and used to run to London several times a week 
 to attend committees of which he was member or chair- 
 man (Travelling Tax Committee, Rationalist Press, 
 Democratic League, Labour Co-Partnership Association, 
 etc.). His older colleagues, carefully nursing the pre- 
 carious vitality that remained to them, and passing 
 annually into the final rest, were concerned at his 
 activity. Probably for one who, like Holyoake, 
 remembered travelling in days when one had not the 
 money even to pay for a ride in the open trucks of the
 
 i86 AMONGST THE CO-OPERATORS ABROAD 
 
 third-class carriage, with the rain and snow beating 
 mercilessly upon one during a ten hours' journey to the 
 north, there was no hardship in travelling in the eighties 
 and nineties. And after his last visit to America his 
 younger daughter (Mrs. Holyoake-Marsh) usually 
 accompanied him until the date of her marriage (1894). 
 His elder daughter (Mrs. Praill) became a chronic 
 invalid, and so is less prominent. 
 
 Unfortunately, Holyoake had not the gift of tongues, 
 and his life had been too full of action to permit 
 a laborious acquirement of them. French he knew 
 slightly, and we saw his labours with Greek and Latin ; 
 but his knowledge never reached a pitch of practical use. 
 The Central Board had intended to send Mr. Neale and 
 Mr. Acland to the Congress at Paris in 1885, but Mr. 
 Acland had to enter upon a political campaign at the 
 time, and Holyoake was invited to take his place. " De 
 Boyve is anxious," Neale wrote to him, " that English 
 Co-operation should have at least two noted represen- 
 tatives." They and Mr. Johnson (of Manchester) set out 
 on July 23rd for Paris. All his travels on the Continent 
 arc described by Holyoake in the Co-operative News at the 
 time, and they are not the least bright and entertaining 
 of his descriptive articles. The trip to France in 1885 
 was interesting to him, because Mr. Neale arranged for 
 them to visit Godin's industrial community at Guise. 
 English social students were much occupied with this 
 establishment at the time, and Holyoake was eager to 
 see it. It seemed to be a reproduction of his old master's 
 famous establishment at New Lanark, a partial realisation 
 of the Socialist dreams of a " Home Colony." Bourne- 
 ville or Port Sunlight will give the modern reader his 
 nearest — though still a very remote — impression of the 
 establishment. 
 
 Godin, the proprietor of a large ironworks at Guise,
 
 AMONGST THE CO-OPERATORS ABROAD 187 
 
 had fallen under the influence of Fourier's ideas some 
 thirty years before. Endeavouring to strike a just 
 balance of the claims of the different economic agencies, 
 he decided that 75 per cent, of the net profits should be 
 divided between the wage of labour and of capital, and 
 25 per cent, should go in special rewards and incentives 
 to ability. He himself took five per cent, on his capital, 
 and drew a salary as the manager of the large foundry. 
 Like Robert Owen, he proceeded to erect model homes 
 for his workers out of the profit that, in his view, morally 
 belonged to the workers. The Fourierist standard that 
 he adopted coincided very much with that of the later 
 Owenites. One vast pile of buildings was to lodge his 
 1500 workers and their dependents. A common kitchen 
 and restaurant, a great central hall for entertainments, a 
 common school for the children, and a common nursery 
 for the babies of the working mothers, recalled the best 
 features of the Queenwood community that Holyoake 
 had visited forty years before.^ 
 
 To those leaders of the Co-operative movement in 
 England who were insisting upon the more generous 
 treatment of the employees the Guise " Familistere " 
 had a natural attraction. Godin himself met Holyoake 
 and his companions at the station with a carriage and 
 pair, and drove them to the works. His wife had trans- 
 lated Holyoake's Rochdale history into French, so that 
 his name was familiar at Guise. The foundries excited 
 Holyoake's admiration, as he recollected the Eagle 
 Foundry of his youth, in the earlier days of mechanical 
 invention ; but the domestic arrangements raised him to 
 enthusiasm. The practical sagacity shown in the realisa- 
 tion of a scheme that had so often proved a failure greatly 
 impressed him. Palatial buildings, as he calls them, 
 
 1 But, although M. Godin died in 18S7, the Guise establishment still 
 flourishes, and retains its ideal features.
 
 i88 AMONGST THE CO-OPERATORS ABROAD 
 
 had been erected on the estate of 65 acres in a bend of the 
 Loire. He knew well the houses of the iron-workers of 
 Lancashire and Staffordshire : the rows of ugly brick 
 boxes, with slate roofs, in a world of perpetual grayness, 
 if not squalor, lit only with the flash of a heavy-odoured 
 inn here and there. At Guise each worker had his two 
 or three or four fine rooms in the " social palace," looking 
 out in front over the spacious park and the fresh country, 
 and looking within upon the great hall with its glass 
 dome — a " crystal palace " — where ever-fresh entertain- 
 ment was provided. " Emulation, Progress, Liberty," was 
 the ubiquitous motto. There was no attempt to enforce 
 teetotalism in the restaurant, no compulsion to deal at 
 the co-operative store, no religious instruction in the 
 fine school. Babies spent their days in ideal surround- 
 ings, under good nurses ; as they grew older, every 
 effort was made to render life healthy and happy for 
 them. There seemed to be an appreciation of the saying 
 of Owen, which Holyoake had always admired, that little 
 children are our guests when they come upon our planet. 
 Strolling into Guise one day, Holyoake noticed a shop 
 that bore the motto : " Pour les Pauvres Diables." He 
 was not surprised to find it empty, he said. 
 
 From the fascination of Guise he passed to Paris for 
 the opening of the Congress. De Boyve was president, 
 but Holyoake and Neale were designated " presidents of 
 honour," and sat by his side. As this was the first 
 Congress of French Co-operators, the oratory had fire in 
 it. Holyoake pleasantly explained that his notice to 
 come had been so brief that he had only half-an-hour in 
 which to study their language, and so his command of 
 it was imperfect. It is interesting to read his description 
 of meetings at which he can have understood extremely 
 little of what was said. French speakers, and even 
 French audiences, speak so much by gesture that his
 
 AMONGST THE CO-OPERATORS ABROAD 189 
 
 description is fairly ample. He found, also, many- 
 friends who spoke English. Nadaud, whom he had 
 known as a refugee at London, was there ; and his 
 friend Wilfrid de Fonvielle assisted him. Neale was, in 
 all his voyages, a most useful and generous companion. 
 De Fonvielle took him to the French Home Office to 
 see M. Barbaret (Minister of the Interior), who was 
 encouraging Co-operation and afterwards corresponded 
 with Holyoake. He thought it better that M. Barbaret 
 should see Neale, who, of course, spoke French fluently, 
 and telephoned for him. Neale did not come, and when 
 Holyoake returned to his hotel he found his telephonic 
 message on his own table. It had been converted into 
 an instruction to "M. Pogniot" to "tell M. Neale" to 
 come to the Home Office. How he parted from Neale 
 in the dark at Dieppe, and spent a night in a curious 
 hotel, and a day or two with Ulric de Fonvielle, before 
 he recrossed, is pleasantly told in the Co-operative News. 
 The letters in which he described his visit to France 
 led incidentally to an atterript to reconcile his friend W. 
 Morrison to the Co-operative Movement. Morrison had 
 been deeply offended that the Congress in 1880 had 
 attempted to clear the character of a man whom he knew, 
 and all subsequently recognised, to be worthless. He had 
 done so much — he speaks of having spent ^^"50,000 — for 
 Co-operation in its earlier stages that the apparent 
 slight of himself made him morose and hostile. " I still 
 think," he says, ''that Co-operation is by far the best 
 lever for raising the social position of the masses ever 
 yet devised, so I hope it will prosper, though I shall no 
 longer be in its ranks." Holyoake sent the long letter, 
 which a copy of his Paris articles had elicited, to Crab- 
 tree and Greenwood, but little came of it. Mr. Crabtree 
 wrote an admirable letter, referring to Morrison as " one 
 of the best and most disinterested advocates we ever
 
 iQo AMONGST THE CO-OPERATORS ABROAD 
 
 had," but Greenwood's letter made matters worse. 
 Morrison remained outside the movement. Of Holy- 
 oake he said : " It is by no means the first time in your 
 Hfe that you have stood nearly alone in maintaining your 
 opinion on a matter of principle," and he maintained a 
 very cordial correspondence with him to the end. But 
 his letters reflect an embittered mind, and are not 
 pleasant reading. 
 
 In 1886 Holyoake and Neale crossed the Channel once 
 more on a Co-operative mission. Early in September 
 Holyoake received a pleasant invitation to Milan : 
 
 *' Honourable Signor Holyoake, 
 
 "In Milan assembles for the first time a Con- 
 gress of the Italian Co-operators, to communicate to each 
 other their ideas, to instruct themselves by mutual ex- 
 perience, and to take counsel together as to the best way 
 to follow in order to attain the end. In this labour of 
 concord among social interests you are a master having 
 authority; and, moreover, a master in the country where 
 you were born, which boasts of the initiation of the 
 Rochdale Pioneers. 
 
 " The Italian Co-operators desire ardently your pre- 
 sence, because you will be for them an affectionate and 
 fraternal guide ; and because it is useful and good that 
 all who believe in the future of justice for the great human 
 family should bind themselves in a pact of concord and 
 reciprocal aid. We trust that you will not disregard the 
 appeal of the Italian Co-operators, and in this hope, full 
 of gratitude, we await your arrival." 
 
 Holyoake turned eagerly to the prospect of visiting 
 the land in which he had taken so deep an interest for 
 thirty years. But the long journey, the uncertain weather 
 of October, and his entire ignorance of the language 
 were serious obstacles, and he regretfully declined. A 
 second and more pressing invitation came. " We want
 
 AMONGST THE CO-OPERATORS ABROAD 19I 
 
 your presence at any price," the Milanese Co-operators 
 said ; and about the middle of October Neale and he set 
 out as delegates from the Co-operative Union. The 
 long journey through six nations — '* English rain, 
 French mist, Belgian fog, German haze, Swiss moon- 
 light, and Italian sunshine" — passed pleasantly until 
 they reached Italy. Neale amused him by his endless 
 resources and usefulness, and after a time Holyoake 
 wrote out, and stuck on the window, the announcement: 
 " Dismembered Bradshaws taken in : Pocket books neatly 
 repaired: Purses attended to." They slept at Basle, and 
 set off the next day for Monza, where they were to visit 
 Professor Vigano. At Monza Neale left the train, and 
 Holyoake was slowly following, when the guard told him 
 to go to the other side, and before he could do so the 
 train was off. Presently the guard came to collect 
 tickets, and demand a subsidy on Holyoake's ticket to 
 Monza. Unfortunately, Neale had borrowed his "Italian 
 phrase-book " just before he left the train, and Holyoake 
 could do nothing but mutter "Neale, Vigano, Monza." 
 The other passengers entered into the difference, and 
 Holyoake's language was so intelligibly emphatic that 
 the guard soon retired. When the train next stopped, 
 at some large station, the Babel was renewed. At last 
 Holyoake got a copy of the Secolo, and exhibited to the 
 crowd the announcement of the Co-operative Congress. 
 Many then knew him as the " delegato Inglese," and one 
 man — it proved to be one of those who had signed the 
 invitation to him — underlined the name of Holyoake in 
 the paper. They at length found a soldier who spoke 
 English, and who was arranging to send Holyoake back 
 to Monza, when it occurred to him to ask where he was. 
 He was in Milan, and decided to stay there. They had 
 some time to wait for a 'bus, and the crowd gathered 
 about in admiration while the phlegmatic Englishman
 
 192 AMONGST THE CO-OPERATORS ABROAD 
 
 produced a copy of the Daily News and a cigar, and sat 
 on the piazza-steps to read, until the 'bus came. 
 
 Co-operation had made much progress in Italy during 
 the sev^enties. Apart from the impulse from England 
 and the " Pionieri di Rochdale," the German idea of 
 People's Banks had been adopted in 1865, and had 
 greatly spread the co-operative idea. As the refugees 
 from England returned in the wake of the conquering 
 Piedmontese, and a more alert attention to social 
 questions grew in the country, stores and productive 
 societies multiplied. At the first Congress in 1886 there 
 were delegates from 248 societies, which had a total 
 membership of 74,000. They met in the hall of the 
 Co-operative Builders at Milan, and Holyoake was much 
 mo\'ed to find himself gazing on so pleasant a symptom 
 of a regenerated and united Italy. His speech was 
 translated for the audience, and when he told them of 
 his relations with Mazzini, Safii, and Garibaldi, and 
 recalled the long struggle for unity, he was greeted with 
 great enthusiasm. He wrote another short and spirited 
 speech for the banquet that closed the Congress. " Now 
 you have a united Italy — strive to have a united industry," 
 he happily observed. The delegates belonged much 
 more largely to the professional class than one found 
 at English Congresses. He spent some hours with 
 Manzoni's grandson, and was afterwards taken to his 
 home, on the hills above Milan, by Professor Vigano. 
 The fresh scenery — the vineyards and olive-groves 
 leading down to the Lombard plains below and to the 
 snow-covered peaks of the lower Alps above — and the 
 deep joy of feeling himself in the most enlightened 
 centre of Garibaldi's country, made his journey a happy 
 and memorable one. He returned by Genoa, the Riviera, 
 and Marseilles, so that he might visit Nimes, where he was 
 entertained by De Boyve, the great French Co-operator.
 
 AMONGST THE CO-OPERATORS ABROAD 193 
 
 A few months after his return from the honours of 
 Italy and France, in the spring of 1887, he received the 
 following letter from Neale : 
 
 " My Dear Mr. Holyoake, 
 
 " I have the pleasure of communicating to you 
 an announcement which, I think, will give you gratifica- 
 tion — namely, that the Northern Section, in the exercise 
 of a power given to it by the United Board to select the 
 gentleman who should be invited to deliver the inaugural 
 address at the Carlisle Congress, in the place of Lord 
 Rosebery and the Archbishop of York, whom our 
 Carlisle friends were anxious to get as President if 
 possible, declining, have unanimously selected you, and 
 invite you by me to preside on the first day, and deliver 
 the address accordingly." 
 
 The honour was a rare one for a working Co-operator. 
 An eminent and sympathetic outsider — a peer, a bishop, 
 or a professor — was usually invited to inaugurate the 
 Congress. So far Mr. Hughes was the only active 
 Co-operator who had presided, and, in view of the recent 
 emphatic development of the difference in regard to 
 profit-sharing, Holyoake appreciated the compliment.^ 
 The exertion would be severe for a man of seventy years, 
 but he had his speech printed and delivered in advance 
 to the delegates. It transpired that this was unnecessary, 
 as his excellent elocution enabled him to be heard 
 distinctly in all parts of the theatre. 
 
 His speech was admitted to be both judicious and 
 eloquent, a combination of features that was not very 
 easy in the circumstances. The controversy between the 
 
 ^ Neale presided in the following: 5'ear. But I gather that he had been 
 pressed to do so earlier, as he writes : " For myself, I want to hold back 
 till the time comes when I propose to retire, and can sing- the song of 
 the dying swan ; if I may venture to assume a likeness to that more 
 dignified web-foot, rather than to our domestic water-fowl." His letters 
 to Holyoake after 1880 are always pleasant, and agreeably reflect his 
 gentle, tactful, and upright personality. 
 
 VOL. II. O
 
 194 AMONGST THE CO-OPERATORS ABROAD 
 
 two schools of Co-operators was then at its height, as we 
 shall see, and the opportunity to make a fervent appeal 
 to so large a gathering in the interest of the idealist 
 group was tempting. He did not indeed neglect to 
 plead for his ideal of co-partnership of employees, but he 
 did not dwell on it unduly, or in the phrases that his 
 colleagues used in the later sectional meetings. His 
 chief object was to mark the contrast, as he so well 
 could, between the condition of labour earlier in the 
 century and later. From the grim and pitiful struggles 
 of the workers during his youth he turned to the new 
 power they possessed in Co-operation — to their huge 
 warehouses, their banks with transactions of ;^i6,ooo,ooo 
 a year, their great factories, their 1,200 stores and 800,000 
 members, their vast organisation spreading over the 
 whole kingdom. In an eloquent peroration he recalled 
 the early workers. Christian Socialist, Owenite, and 
 Pioneers, whose labours and sacrifices had laid the 
 foundations of their imposing structure. 
 
 He was followed with the deepest attention, and when 
 the proposer of the vote of thanks (B. Jones, a strong 
 opponent of his views) had said that they " could not 
 have a better President for their Jubilee Year," and the 
 seconder had contended that it was "the best speech ever 
 delivered to Congress," the audience rose to their feet 
 and with great enthusiasm sang " He's a jolly good 
 fellow." Sir Wilfrid Lawson, who was on the platform, 
 and took the chair on the second day, made reference to 
 the " incisive, brilliant, epigrammatic utterance of my 
 friend Mr. Holyoake"; and when Neale succeeded to the 
 chair in the following year he made frequent allusion to 
 his predecessor's "brilliant address." One enthusiast 
 wrote in the Co-operative News that the motto of Co- 
 operators henceforward ought to be " God bless the 
 Queen and Mr. Holyoake." It was assuredly a fine
 
 AMONGST THE CO-OPERATORS ABROAD 195 
 
 achievement for a man in his eighth decade of life, and 
 it evoked an expression of regard from the Co-operative 
 body that had hardly a parallel. The printed address 
 was equally applauded. " It is," Mr. Sam Timmins, a 
 good judge, wrote to him, " worthy of the highest praise 
 as a literary work. Why doesn't our press make more 
 of such subjects and addresses? Any prattling fool who 
 has M.P. after his name gets more newspaper notice, 
 and a thousand times more readers, than the real leaders 
 of the people and prophets of the future." 
 
 At all these Congresses of the Co-operative body the 
 acute difference of feeling in regard to the treatment of 
 employees was being discussed with some warmth, and 
 Holyoake's correspondence turns largely on it. It will 
 be better, however, to reserve these episodes until we 
 come to deal with the Co-Partnership Association, in 
 which Neale and Holyoake and the " idealists " at length 
 embodied their scheme. 
 
 Later in the year 1887 Holyoake found himself once 
 more amidst the enthusiasm of foreign Co-operators. 
 Neale accompanied him as British representative, and 
 his daughter Emilie represented the Women's Co- 
 operative Guild. The Congress was held in a large 
 circus at Tours. With his usual habit of characterising 
 towns in a phrase, Holyoake said that Tours '* must be 
 the place to which Frenchmen go to acquire the sense of 
 repose." At the final banquet he handed a little speech 
 to Professor Gide, but the essential word in it overtaxed 
 the Professor's resources. Holyoake — he appeared in 
 the various papers as M. Allioth, M. Ollick, M. Holysake, 
 etc. — had noticed that the republican motto was gener- 
 ously posted over the circus, and he suggested that it 
 should be enlarged into " Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, 
 and Competence." The Frenchman knew of no equiv- 
 alent in his tongue that would express the sentiment
 
 196 AMONGST THE CO-OPERATORS ABROAD 
 
 with the same neatness as in EngHsh. After leaving 
 Tours, they paid a second visit to M. Godin at Guise. 
 Holyoake had been writing for some time in the 
 Emancipation (edited by De Boyve), and was much 
 respected by French Co-operators. Later he wrote for 
 the Unione Co-operativa of Milan, and advised them in 
 the launching of their periodical. He also wrote for the 
 Dutch Co-operators, and in the American Lend a Hand. 
 Neale often played the friendly part of interpreter for 
 him in his foreign correspondence, as he did always on 
 their travels. At the beginning of 1888 he wrote : 
 
 " I enclose a letter in the German speech and hand- 
 writing, addressed to ' Herr G. J. Holyoake, High- 
 well-born,' which the writer has sent to me with a 
 request that I would forward it to you : accompanying it, 
 of my own act, by a translation into the English speech 
 and writing. For, though the prejudice against French, 
 as a revolutionary language, which you once told me 
 prevailed in the High Tory circles where you were 
 brought up, and prevented your learning that language, 
 probably did not extend to German ; yet I incline to 
 think that Mr. Hantschke's request will have a better 
 chance of getting answered if it comes to you in English 
 than it would have in its native dress." 
 
 The year 1888 was an industrious one in Co-operative 
 affairs. Glancing through the diary of the active 
 septuagenarian, I find that in January he was much 
 occupied with the Brighton Equitable Society, of which 
 he accepted the presidency, gave an address to the New 
 Cross Society, and attended three meetings of the 
 Travelling Tax Committee and one of the Central Board. 
 In February he had the meeting of the Newspaper 
 Board at Manchester and a lecture at Bolton, in addition 
 to the current committees. In March he had a Central 
 Board meeting at Manchester, and lectures at Leicester
 
 AMONGST THE CO-OPERATORS ABROAD 197 
 
 and Kentish town : in April, lectures at Bedford and 
 Yarmouth, and a meeting of the executive of the 
 National Association for the Promotion of Technical 
 Education : in May, lectures at Gorleston, Yarmouth, 
 Beccles,and Brighton, and much speakingatthe Dewsbury 
 Congress. In a word, he deiiveredi some forty lectures 
 and addresses in the course of the year, attended nearly 
 all the meetings of the Brighton Society, the Central 
 Board, the Newspaper Board, the Travelling Tax 
 Committee, the Technical Education Association, and 
 the Co-Partnership Association, took an active part in 
 the annual Congress at Dewsbury, and went once more 
 as a delegate to Italy. When we add to this a large 
 amount of journalistic work and attendance at some 
 scores of meetings, dinners, and other functions, we have 
 a fair picture of his movements during his later years. 
 His diaries tell much the same story until 1903, with the 
 exception of 1894, when he had a grave illness. 
 
 The visit to Bologna in October was his last association 
 with foreign Co-operators. In the early part of the year 
 Holyoake received a somewhat mystic communication 
 from the headquarters of the Unione Co-operativa at 
 Milan : 
 
 " Venerated Master, 
 
 " I dare not ask you to come to our grand 
 Congress on the 19th of October at Bologna, but in 
 invoking your good wishes we shall combat academic 
 Co-operation and the Socialists. But a line from you 
 pointing out the way, and with your signature, would 
 bring us luck. We venerate you as a master." 
 
 Neale, who was puzzled to translate " Co-operation 
 confessionelle," received a letter inviting the two of 
 them to the Congress, as " the godfathers of our Feder- 
 ation." Neale was then in his 78th year, and Holyoake
 
 198 AMONGST THE CO-OPERATORS ABROAD 
 
 in his 71st ; but they again faced the long journey, with 
 Miss Holyoake as companion. They called at Paris on 
 the way, to make arrangements for the pavilion of the 
 English Co-operators at the impending Exhibition, and 
 then passed through the Mont Cenis to Bologna. 
 Professor Vigano presided at the Congress, and Count 
 Saffi translated Holyoake's speech for the audience. 
 One of the papers described it as " a brilliant speech 
 that endowed political economy with poetry." 
 
 But the details of the third Italian Congress differ little 
 from the earlier one at Milan. The visit was chiefly 
 memorable from the number of old friends that Holyoake 
 met. Count Aurelio Saffi — though, being still a repub- 
 lican, he preferred the simpler title of Professor Saffi — 
 will be remembered as one of the Triumvirs of Mazzini's 
 short-lived republic. He fled to England when it 
 collapsed, and was initiated to Co-operative ideas there 
 by Holyoake in the early fifties. He had married the 
 sister of Mr. E. H. J. Craufurd (chairman of the Garibaldi 
 Committee), and his wife and he invited the English 
 visitors to their villa at Forli. From Forli they passed 
 to Florence, and spent a day or two with Signer Nathan 
 at Antella, a few miles out. Mrs. Nathan, the mother, 
 was the lady he had taken to see Garibaldi at Mr. Seeley's 
 house. Then he turned his steps towards the south, 
 where nearly every town had for him some vivid memory 
 of Mazzini or Garibaldi. He saw with quickened pulse 
 the new Rome that was spreading out, under Victor 
 Emmanuel, beyond the seven hills and the ruins of that 
 older Rome which now gleamed through the soil of the 
 Middle Ages. From Rome he passed to Lendinara, to 
 visit another old friend of the days of struggle, Mme. 
 Mario (Jessie Meriton White), whom he had not seen for 
 thirty years. She had been one of the first to spread the 
 English gospel of " self-help " in Italy, and he says that
 
 AMONGST THE CO-OPERATORS ABROAD \c)C) 
 
 he found her as bright as when she used to fan the flame 
 of enthusiasm for Italy in the Fleet Street House. At 
 Venice he visited Browning, and had coffee with Ruskin. 
 At Milan he was met by Professor Vigano, and borne off 
 once more to his home on Monte Vecchio. He concluded 
 his rapid and pleasant journey with a slow ride through 
 the St. Gothard and Switzerland, and reached Brighton 
 within three weeks of his departure. 
 
 During the remaining years of his life he remained in 
 very friendly touch with the Italian Co-operators. Each 
 Christmas the Milanese Co-operators sent him 3.paneitone 
 for remembrance, and they corresponded frequently with 
 him. And when, years after, his remains stood for the 
 last time before his friends, they were wrapped in the 
 flags that recalled the struggles of Italy, and that he had 
 treasured in his library for several decades. 
 
 The accounts that he and others published in the 
 Co-operative News of the spread of the movement abroad 
 were not without influence on its fortunes in England. 
 An abortive movement may, in peculiar national circum- 
 stances, have a remarkable growth for a time in a 
 particular country. In proportion as an idea or an 
 institution overleaps national frontiers, and adapts itself 
 to life in very different social and economic conditions, it 
 claims a more serious consideration. Holyoake's articles 
 and writings attracted or increased the interest of many 
 people of eminence in the movement. Lady Tennyson 
 wrote him : 
 
 " I have read with great pleasure your very interesting 
 account of your visit to Milan, and I thank you heartily 
 for your kindness in thinking of me and sending it to 
 me. He who sows is so often not the one who reaps on 
 this earth of ours that I cannot but feel you are exceed- 
 ingly happy in this rich harvest of your labours, and in 
 the still richer promise of harvests to come. Co-operation
 
 200 AMONGST THE CO-OPERATORS ABROAD 
 
 seems to me one of those grand simple applications of 
 eternal truths to the every-day work of the world that, 
 having been made, must extend indefinitely." 
 
 He asked the Poet Laureate to write the ode for the 
 first Co-operative Festival at the Crystal Palace, and 
 Lady Tennyson intimates that he would have done so 
 but for serious illness. 
 
 " I hope," she says, " that we may not seem double- 
 faced with regard to Co-operation, our names not ap- 
 pearing on the list of any store. It is not that we are 
 not warm advocates for it, providing always that the 
 corporate conscience is kept as truly after the divine 
 image as any individual conscience, but that we feel our 
 first thought must be for our near neighbours." 
 
 The Prince of Wales (the present King) also followed 
 the movement with friendly attention, and Holyoake 
 sent several of his works to Sandringham and Marl- 
 borough House. Sir Francis Knollys wrote him, in 
 acknowledging his Self-Help a Hundred Years Ago: 
 
 " Dear Mr. Holyoake, 
 
 " I have had much pleasure in laying before 
 the Prince of Wales your letter of yesterday's date and 
 the book which arrived with it. I am desired by His 
 Royal Highness to express to you in reply his cordial 
 thanks for having been so good as to send him a copy 
 of your work." 
 
 About the same time the editor of Chambers' Encyclo- 
 p(2dia begged him, " as the foremost living exponent 
 of the principle of Co-operation," to revise the article 
 he had received on the subject. And — to close with 
 Co-operative matters for the time — Mr. Hodgson Pratt 
 wrote him from Paris : 
 
 " A few days ago I was at Nimes, and after an address 
 on the Co-operative Club movement I went off to the 
 workmen's club having the good name of * Solidarity.'
 
 AMONGST THE CO-OPERATORS ABROAD 201 
 
 There we had a famous and fraternal confab, until a 
 late hour of the night. During my visit to this pleasant 
 city I was constantly asked for news of * Holyoake,' and 
 at the gathering in question proceedings terminated 
 with a toast — * Holyoake and Neale,' all standing and 
 clinking glasses of good red wine. . . . Last night I 
 sat with the Central Board at Paris, and there also were 
 numerous inquiries after ' Holyoake.' " 
 
 I have repeatedly suggested that the Co-operative 
 cause in England was not running a smooth course 
 during these years, but we may discuss that aspect of it 
 in a later chapter. For the moment it will be well to turn 
 to a bundle of correspondence that will bring our story 
 up to the last decade of the nineteenth century. How 
 many the permanent interests of Holyoake still were 
 I have indicated above. Beyond these were a number 
 of other interests — the sorrows of India and of Ireland, 
 for instance — that often occupied his mind and his pen. 
 His chief correspondent in India was the professor of 
 law at the Calcutta University, Mr. K. M. Chatterjee, 
 whom he had often met at London. The letters of 
 Chatterjee contain only the familiar charges against 
 British rule. He shows extreme resentment against 
 Lord Dufferin. "His Excellency," he says, "actually 
 taunted some foolish men, who had gone to make their 
 homage to him, for having assumed the English dress, 
 little knowing — and his ignorance was sinful — that those 
 very men owed their success under British rule to their 
 complete self-effacement." His long and bitter letters 
 only saddened, without informing, his " dear grand old 
 man," as he called Holyoake. Indian problems came 
 too late in life to be mastered by him ; and he was not 
 one of those progressive Englishmen who seem instinc- 
 tively to welcome the impeachment of their country. 
 
 More decisive was his attitude on Irish questions,
 
 202 AMONGST THE CO-OPERATORS ABROAD 
 
 though here again he listened reluctantly to the heavy- 
 invectives of his friends against England. Mr. W. H. 
 James and Mr. Morley were the correspondents whose 
 letters were the most acceptable to him. "Yes," Mr. 
 James wrote him in 1888, "a real ' Hibernia Pacificata' 
 would be the zenith of triumphant statesmanship. . . . 
 There is, unfortunately, always the House of Lords ! It 
 has been for centuries the fatal cause of half Ireland's 
 troubles ; and vulgarity and love of wealth and posi- 
 tion have very deep roots in every stratum of English 
 society. ... I think the G.O.M. much aged : his 
 attitude is the most pathetic that history records." Karl 
 Blind wrote bitterly of the Irish as " the sworn enemies 
 of intellectual and political progress." Mme. Venturi, 
 on the other hand, whose zeal for Mazzini and Italy had 
 simply changed into a zeal for Dillon (whom she calls 
 " the most like Mazzini of any I ever met") and Ireland, 
 urged him to act for Ireland. She gladly repeats to 
 Holyoake a mayor of Dublin's description of the Liberal 
 Unionists as " the mules of politics : with neither pride 
 of ancestry nor hope of posterity " — really, a quotation 
 from Lloyd Garrison — and insists: "You and Mr. 
 Neale must not be powers without doing something 
 for Ireland." Beyond attending a few meetings at 
 Brighton in favour of Home Rule, Holyoake could 
 do little. Later he saw much of Davitt (to whose Labour 
 World he contributed) and Justin McCarthy, and his 
 letters to them sufficiently indicate his feeling. To 
 Davitt he wrote (December, 1890) : 
 
 "Events show you knew more of Mr. Parnell than 
 any one else. Nothing is more admirable in the real 
 Nationalist party than your clear, decisive, angerless 
 judgment. All the friends of Ireland have pride, more 
 than hope — they have confidence in the issues. Regards 
 to the invincible * Tim. 
 
 J »>
 
 AMONGST THE CO-OPERATORS ABROAD 203 
 
 To Justin McCarthy, a few days later, he wrote : 
 
 " Had fate arranged that we should have spoken at 
 Rochdale together, I should have been the colleague of 
 a real Irish Chief. It was a great triumph to be chosen, 
 as you have been, with the consenting acclaim of three 
 nations besides America. I congratulate you. Parnell 
 does no more than Chamberlain did, and his revolt 
 will do no more harm to Nationalism than Unionism 
 has done to Liberalism. We trust Gladstone in England, 
 and shall trust you in Ireland." 
 
 Holyoake was probably held apart from Irish agitation 
 as much by his Secularism as by his age. Curiously 
 enough, a rumour found its way into print in 1890 
 that he had become a Catholic. A Dewsbury paper 
 announced : " From a statement made and published by 
 Mr. Holyoake, it appears that he has embraced the 
 Roman Catholic faith." The origin of the rumour 
 seems to 'have been a paragraph that he wrote in the 
 Present Day \n 1886. He had then discovered amongst 
 the old papers that he was arranging for autobiographical 
 purposes a document that showed he was an Orange- 
 man ! The facts he could not recall, but there was the 
 ticket telling of his admission to an Orange Lodge in 
 1866. The discovery led him to tell another story. 
 Once, when he was visiting his friend Thomas Scott 
 at Ramsgate, he was taken to see Mrs. Pugin and the 
 Catholic chapel and institutions connected with Mr. 
 Pugin's house. To the industrial school, as such, he 
 gave a small donation. Major Bicknell seems to have 
 regarded him as in a by no means desperate condition, 
 and asked him if he would mind prayers being said for 
 him in the Catholic Church. In the sequel some Catholic 
 admirers subscribed ;^i5, and he was told that for this 
 sum 10,000 masses would be said for his conversion.^ 
 
 ^ He must have been told that he would have a share in 10,000 masses. 
 The fee for a mass is half-a-crown.
 
 -04 AMONGST THE CO-OPERATORS ABROAD 
 
 The story must have gathered substance as it went, until 
 his friends were startled by the categorical announcement 
 of his conversion. 
 
 In 1887 his picturesque friend " De Rohan " made his 
 last melodramatic appearance. Holyoake had met "him 
 in America in 1879, carrying out some adventurous work 
 in connection with emigration. Now he wrote from 
 Havre that he was bedridden with paralysis and '' dying 
 absolutely of want." He proposed an appeal for himself 
 in the Twies, but Holyoake thought it more profitable to 
 send his letter to a few old friends, like Mr. Craufurd, and 
 gather a few guineas for him. To these he added five 
 pounds himself, and sent the sum to Havre. A few 
 weeks later he received a final letter : 
 
 " My Dear Friend, 
 
 "Just able to scrawl Good-bye, God bless you 
 and yours. Defend my memory — ' Inveni portum ; spes 
 et fortuna, valete : sat me lusistis, ludite nunc alios.' 
 My answer to all who may judge me hastily is that 
 I have done the best I could with the faculties given 
 me in the circumstances wherein I have found myself 
 placed during an eventful and hard-working life of sixty- 
 seven years. Who could do more? Many thanks to 
 you, dear Holyoake, for practical friendship shown. 
 May we meet in death." 
 
 He prudently added in postscript : " Answer by a line 
 to say if it reaches you." " Poor fellow," said Craufurd, 
 " melodramatic to the end . . . but his writing is surely 
 not that of a moribund." A chapter might be written 
 on the characters Holyoake knew who ended in too 
 close an acquaintance with the revolver. We have seen 
 several cases of suicides bequeathing their slender 
 property to him. Twice he was entreated by murderers, 
 who had known him, to help them. One of them, 
 Stephen Forward, coolly wrote him from jail : *' With
 
 AMONGST THE CO-OPERATORS ABROAD 205 
 
 help I may be enabled to assist in obtaining respect for 
 that class of opinion we mutually hold." Him Holyoake 
 quickly repudiated ; but a few years later he did appeal, 
 with advantage, for a young Irish journalist, Gerald 
 Supple, who had only escaped the crime of murder by 
 shooting the wrong man. At another time he was often 
 visited at his shop, and pressed to visit at her house, by 
 a " handsome, voluptuous woman, with great dramatic 
 talent," who turned out to be the mistress of Wainwright, 
 brother and accomplice of the Whitechapcl murderer 
 of 1875.
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 EASTERN LODGE 
 
 In 1886 Holyoake settled in the comfortable little house 
 at Brighton (Eastern Lodge) where his surviving friends 
 used to visit him amidst the curious relics of his eventful 
 career. The house at Sudbury was given up after his 
 wife's death in 1884, and, after a period in chambers at 
 Essex Street, he moved to South Kensington. In 1886 
 he married again, and took the house at Brighton. He 
 had, we saw, been familiar with Brighton for many years, 
 and was well known to Liberal workers there. From the 
 beginning of 1887 he took a very active part in its affairs. 
 His pleasant features, ennobled rather than scarred by 
 the honourable frays of five decades of agitation, were 
 usually to be seen on the platform, or in the council- 
 room, or at the festive table, of its various progressive 
 associations. He was assiduous in the councils of the 
 new Co-operative Society and the reorganised Liberal 
 and Radical Society, presided occasionally at friendly 
 gatherings of workers, and was interested in the Monday 
 Lecture Society. In a few years he came to found a " Civic 
 Centre," at which the different — and often antagonistic — 
 groups he met might mingle in social brotherhood. 
 
 A letter to him from Sir Robert Peel, who contested 
 Brighton in 1889, will suffice to show that his political 
 work was appreciated : 
 
 " I really feel most grateful for your ever-present 
 countenance and support, and for the warm-hearted 
 
 206
 
 EASTERN LODGE 207 
 
 sympathy you have shown to me during this arduous 
 contest. To increase the Liberal vote by just 2,000 is 
 very satisfactory and encouraging with a view to future 
 elections. I believe there is no doubt whatever that 
 monetary considerations influenced a large section of the 
 electorate, and cases have been submitted indicating 
 bribery and corruption. However, under very difficult 
 circumstances I have done my best, and I warmly ap- 
 preciate the kindness I have met with at your hands." 
 
 It was a point of pride with Holyoake to attempt to 
 unseat Sir W. Marriott, whom he had unluckily passed 
 as a Liberal candidate, but both at that and the 1892 
 election Marriott was returned. With his Conservative 
 colleague, Mr. Gerald Loder, Holyoake seems to have 
 been on more friendly terms. 
 
 Though the far greater amount of the work that 
 Holyoake was then doing was entirely unpaid, his friends 
 knew that he had to add much lecturing and journalism 
 to increase his very scanty income, and the proposal was 
 made to buy a fresh annuity for him. Some ;^7oo was 
 subscribed ; half the sum was vested in a forty-pound 
 annuity, and the rest given to him. The sum, his friends 
 candidly admitted, was disappointing ; but the great 
 majority of those who had worked by his side, and fully 
 realised his services, had by that time passed from the 
 stage. To the generation about him he was a picturesque 
 survival of an age to which they only faintly grasped 
 their indebtedness. For him there was cheering- warmth 
 in the way the subscription was taken up. Dr. Parker, 
 T. Allsop (the son), W. Morrison, T. Burt, E. V. Neale, 
 M. E. Marsden, and R. Applegarth (who worked labori- 
 ously for its success) formed the committee. Many 
 Co-operative Societies joined the list, the Manchester 
 Branch of the Wholesale sending a cheque for fifty 
 pounds, The Victoria Dramatic Club (consisting of
 
 2o8 EASTERN LODGE 
 
 employees of the Civil Service Supply Association) 
 raised ^150 by a performance of " Caste " at St. George's 
 Hall. The Co-operative News stimulated its readers by 
 publishing a poem, that deserves quotation for its 
 feeling : 
 
 "TO GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE. 
 
 " When from this selfish, peddling, petty world, 
 
 The ruffled soul turns, faint and sick, away ; 
 Hope beaten down, the flag- of faith refurled, 
 
 Worn out with waiting for the brighter day — 
 Then, grandly struggling through the murky air. 
 
 Too dense and thick for feebler light to shine. 
 To drive away the deadness of despair. 
 
 Comes, full of help, a beacon flame like thine ! 
 
 "Bold pioneer! True spiritual king, 
 
 Before whose holy and far-reaching aim 
 The pomp of courts sinks to a common thing, 
 
 And war-won honours veil themselves in shame ! 
 The good of man — the truth for its own sake — 
 
 The cause of labour — thou hast made thine own ! 
 Warm friend of all thy race ! this tribute take 
 
 From one to hero-worship little prone." 
 
 *' To those whose names I here record," Holyoake 
 wrote in his letter of thanks, " I shall owe the pleasure 
 of lingering still in the field of combat, and often finding 
 my way again to the front ; or, in days of peace, be able 
 to cruise about the coast of life without any immediate 
 necessity of putting into port. After seventy-two years 
 of life a man becomes interested in it, and is pardonably 
 curious to see how some of the speculations will turn 
 out." In conversation he used to put it that he should 
 feel ashamed of dying within a reasonable number of 
 years after this purchase of an annuity by his friends. 
 
 The prominent action of Dr. Joseph Parker in connec- 
 tion with the subscription was much commented on. 
 He wrote a letter to the press in eulogy of Holyoake — 
 coupled with a characteristic assurance how little he 
 feared the spread of his opinions.
 
 EASTERN LODGE 2og 
 
 " From my boyhood," he said, *' I have been an admirer 
 of Mr. Holyoakc's style of writing and a thorough 
 believer in Mr. Holyoake's personal sincerity — a sincerity 
 which he has formed by many sacrifices of a kind which 
 most severely try both the temper and the conscience of 
 men. When I was twenty-three years of age I had the 
 temerity to encounter Mr. Holyoake in public debate for 
 three nights, and I gladly testify that not one unkind 
 or bitter word was spoken by my gifted and eloquent 
 opponent. . . ." 
 
 " Ministers have thanked me for my letter about the 
 testimonial," he wrote to Holyoake, " the feeling being 
 that in debate and conflict Holyoake is a gentleman. 
 You would be pleased if you could know all I have 
 heard." They corresponded frequently until Dr. Parker's 
 death. When Holyoake dedicated a new edition of his 
 Ptiblic Speaking and Debate to Parker, the great preacher 
 pronounced it " an honour of the most acceptable sort" ; 
 a little later he insisted on sending Holyoake three 
 pounds to be spent in assisting the circulation of it. 
 
 Dr. Parker had one point of contact with Holyoake, 
 besides mutual respect, that few other eminent preachers 
 shared. ** My motto is," he wrote, " let the Secular 
 vState teach secular matters, and the Christian Church 
 teach religion." But many other clergymen are found, 
 as always, in the circle of Holyoake's correspondents. 
 The American preachers, Dr. G. Lorimer and Dr. R. 
 Collyer, wrote frequently and cordially. *'The sight of 
 ye is good for sair e'en," Dr. Collyer wrote after a visit 
 to England. Of English clergymen, Mr. Hugh Price 
 Hughes became a warm friend in 1890, and the connec- 
 tion had a sequel in 1894 that we must notice later. 
 Mr. Sharman was still writing gay, unprofessional letters 
 to him every few months from Preston. 
 
 " It was very kind of you," he writes in 1889, "to 
 
 VOL. II. p
 
 2IO EASTERN LODGE 
 
 send your Universal Republic ^ but O ! why did you print 
 the awful name on the outside of the wrapper? The 
 postman fainted, and the police of all nations have taken 
 alarm. For months I had led a quiet life, and now, 
 thanks to your criminal folly, I am beset by spies. A 
 blind beggar — an Irishman — keeps an eye on the front 
 gate, an Italian grinds an organ while his monkey 
 watches the back door, an agent of the Czar lodges 
 next me on the left, and an Austrian lodges on the 
 right."! 
 
 Mr. Frome Wilkinson began to correspond with him 
 after reading his Sixty Years. "Your experience," he 
 said, " has impressed upon me more terribly than ever 
 how immeasurably greater are the sufferings Jesus 
 Christ has borne at the hands of his adherents to those 
 he has suffered from his enemies and non-adherents." 
 An Anerley clergyman, Mr. Halsey, had Holyoake to 
 speak from his pulpit. With Mr. R. J. Campbell, of 
 Brighton, and Canon Barnett, he had a good deal 
 of friendly intercourse. " It will always be a source 
 of gladness to me to remember," Mr. Campbell wrote, 
 "that it was you who nominated me for the National 
 Liberal Club." And there is a friendly note from the 
 late Bishop of London. 
 
 1 The Universal Keptiblk -was "an occasional magazine advocating the 
 amity of nations," to quote its sub-title, that Holyoake edited (and 
 apparently wrote) in 1889. While it advocated the republican form, its 
 main object was to promote social progress and international peace. 
 Only one number seems to have been issued. 
 
 I find that I have, in an earlier chapter, overlooked an interesting 
 correspondence with the Archbishop of Canterbury, and may notice it 
 here. Mr. George Anderson called Holyoake's attention to the fact 
 that several acres of open ground attached to Lambeth Palace were 
 little used, and begged him to agitate that they be opened to the poor 
 of the district. With the co-operation of the South Place congregation, 
 he addressed a memorial to the Archbishop. " Attentive consideration" 
 was promised, in a polite reply, but nothing was done for some years. 
 Then Holyoake wrote to the press, and there was a renewed agitation 
 (in 1883). Eventually (a few years ago) the London County Council 
 acquired the fields.
 
 EASTERN LODGE 21 1 
 
 In none of these letters from divines is there ever the 
 least approach to an argumentative mood, nor is there 
 any other than the frankest recognition of their funda- 
 mental divergence in regard to religion. No clerical 
 correspondent ever assumes or suggests that Holyoake 
 had a latent or a slowly-forming and as yet implicit, 
 belief in the simplest creed. His qualities of character, 
 his social services, and his gentlemanly conduct of such 
 controversy as he waged, were the sole points of contact. 
 I lay stress on the circumstance because less able and 
 high-minded Freethinkers have at times misconstrued 
 these friendly relations with so many clergymen. They 
 reflect no little honour on all concerned. The National 
 Reformer called them "significant"; they were signifi- 
 cant in a sense that lay beyond the writer's range. 
 
 During the earlier years of his residence at Brighton 
 he wrote the series of sketches which were afterwards 
 reunited in the most entertaining of his works, Sixty 
 Years of an Agitators Life. Many friends, especially 
 Mr. Knowles and Mr. Morley, were pressing him to 
 publish his recollections. There was scarcely another 
 writer living in England whose memory could light up 
 so long and so stirring a period of English history, and 
 his methodical and industrious habits had led him to 
 preserve a vast quantity of documents. From house 
 to house he had taken with him boxes of letters and 
 papers that bore on the story of his life from his eighteenth 
 year. He had in his successive journals often reproduced 
 the more interesting documents, but when he came again 
 to arrange his papers in 1886 he found himself surveying 
 his career with new emotion. There was the thin bundle 
 of yellow documents that recalled life in the foundry 
 and the framing of young ambitions in the Mechanics' 
 Institute and his father's attic fifty years before. There 
 were the relics of the Owenite movement — the easy
 
 212 EASTERN LODGE 
 
 flowing script of the great idealist, the precise business- 
 like hand of Place, the sonorous periods of Southwell : 
 all dead, the last of his colleagues, Lloyd Jones, passing 
 away in 1886. Then there were the Chartist letters, the 
 foreign-refugee letters, the minutes of the Garibaldi 
 Legion Committee, the stormy records of early Secular- 
 ism, Radicalism, Trade Unionism, and the dozen other 
 movements he had worked in. Even of these conflicts 
 of his middle age he was almost the sole survivor. As 
 he wrote, the black-edged cards came in every month. 
 Julian Harney still survived of the Chartist group, but 
 he led a quiet and wholly tamed life at Richmond. 
 Bright, the last of the great early Liberal group, died in 
 1889 ; and in the same year were announced the deaths 
 of his brother Walter, of his early Secularist colleague, 
 Percy Greg, of Tennyson, Browning, and others belong- 
 ing to a generation later than his own. As he went on 
 writing Bradlaugh and Craufurd passed away. It was 
 a new world and a new generation that he contemplated 
 from his windows at Eastern Lodge. 
 
 It was well that he was urged to write the story of his 
 career, or, more correctly, an account of the men and 
 movements he had known, while his mind was still 
 strong and his pen firmly held. No biographer could 
 have made those boxes of dusty documents tell the vivid 
 story that his excellent memory and his racy pen could 
 construct with their assistance. Of his share in the 
 movements it has remained for the biographer to tell, as 
 his own works are rather reminiscent of past scenes and 
 fellow-actors than autobiographic ; but his chapters are 
 like coloured lantern-views of the past beside the pale 
 sketches the historian can laboriously delineate. 
 
 As is so often the case in his work, the chapters lack 
 continuity and broad construction, but in this instance 
 such features were distinctly advisable. His first thought
 
 EASTERN LODGE 213 
 
 was merely to write a long series of journalistic articles, 
 which he could do with the hand of a master. Cowen 
 accepted them for the Newcastle Chronicle, and they began 
 to appear in January 1890. The title, Sixty Years of an 
 Agitator's Life, was suggested by Cowen. " Sixty years 
 amid social and insurgent movements," was Holyoake's 
 choice, but he saw at once that — probably for the only 
 time in his journalistic career — his choice was improved 
 upon. Cowen and his staff were assiduous, also, in 
 watching his manuscript. The opportunities for libel 
 were innumerable, and other matters fell under the 
 censor. The interesting letters of W. S. Landor to 
 Holyoake have been lost, and a chapter entitled " A 
 Suspicious Priest," that one would like to read, has 
 entirely disappeared since it was politely declined by 
 Cowen. A chapter on a prize-fight, that would have 
 delighted J. Cowen, senior, was rejected by the son, and 
 the chapter (published afterwards) on " Murder as a 
 Mode of Progress," was returned by the editor of the 
 Chronicle. ^ 
 
 The publication of the work in two volumes had, of 
 course, a large sequel of correspondence. Here and 
 there it fell under the eyes of some old man, in whom it 
 awoke deep recollections. From Birmingham one wrote 
 to him who had watched the shooting-stars with him in 
 his youth. Julian Harney resumed a pleasant corre- 
 spondence from his retirement at Richmond. The 
 manager of the Eagle Foundry at Birmingham sent him 
 a selection of articles from his old works ; one man, it 
 seems, survived there from the time when Holyoake 
 
 ^ The acting- editor was the Mr. Adams who had asked Holyoake to 
 publish a pamphlet on tyrannicide in 1858. It is amusinjj to read, even 
 in recent works, some implication that Holyoake rejected this pamphlet 
 out of timidity, when we know that in 1890 Adams was rejecting Holy- 
 oake's own essay on tyrannicide ! He pleasantly explained that 
 Holyoake " put the case for tyrannicide too well."
 
 214 EASTERN LODGE 
 
 worked in it. Another letter that came to him in 1889 
 has the passage : " When you and I used to meet, poor 
 boys, in the streets of Birmingham, who would have 
 thought I should be the chief actor in bringing into the 
 community of nations young Australia ! " The writer 
 was Sir Henry Parkes, another of the pupils of the 
 Birmingham Mechanics' Institute who had won distinc- 
 tion. Holyoake met him in London in 1885, and they 
 corresponded for some years. A letter to him from Sir 
 Henry in 1886 runs : 
 
 " My life has been a rather changeful one since I last 
 saw you, and things in this colony have not gone so 
 well. Soon after my return to Sydney I resigned my 
 seat in Parliament from sheer disgust at the reckless 
 expenditure of public money and a strong desire for 
 rest. Then came the mild freak of your Government 
 in sending a military expedition to Egypt, which your 
 journals and public men so much applauded, though, if 
 anything like it had occurred in England [?], it would 
 have been very loudly condemned. This military con- 
 tingent was sent away without the authority of Parliament, 
 and the colony was plunged into debt to meet the ex- 
 pense. At the present time we have a deficit of fully 
 ;^ 1, 500,000, though when I resigned office at the begin- 
 ning of 1883 I left a surplus of ;^2,25o,ooo. When the 
 Soudan expedition was sent off, I felt so indignant at the 
 conduct of the Government that I offered myself for a 
 vacancy which occurred in our Assembly, and, notwith- 
 standing that I was opposed by every desperate means 
 that the Government could devise, I was elected. Since 
 then a General Election and three changes of Govern- 
 ment have taken place. In the General Election I 
 defeated the Premier in his own constituency by a 
 majority of 3 to 2 ; and in two of the new Governments 
 I was invited to join, with a choice of office, but I felt 
 bound, from a sense of want of agreement on matters of 
 principle, to decline."
 
 EASTERN LODGE 215 
 
 From America came many letters of appreciation. A 
 "Trinity Historical Society" (Texas) wrote to ask him 
 for his autograph and portrait for its collection, and Mr. 
 Carron Wright, of the Washington Department of 
 Labour, wrote him that Sixty Years (like many other 
 works of his) had a place in the archives of his depart- 
 ment. " I often think of you," he said, " as a man who 
 enjoys his life in an entirely different way from what 
 most men seek enjoyment ; you study your kind, and I 
 know of nothing higher or nobler to attract one's whole 
 thought." 
 
 From Canada Goldwin Smith wrote : 
 
 "There is nobody in England now besides yourself 
 that has had your experience. Both you and I, I am 
 afraid, have fallen a little behind our age. We have both 
 of us desired peace with justice, and there are people now 
 coming on the scene who, to put it in the mildest form, 
 love justice a good deal better than peace. The indus- 
 trial world in England is evidently getting into a very 
 disturbed condition, and, as the revolutionary movement 
 in industry coincides with the revolutionary movement in 
 politics, the outcome is likely to be serious. . . . May 
 your remaining days be happy, as they well may be in 
 the consciousness of a life dedicated to promoting the 
 welfare of your fellow men." 
 
 In January 1893 Holyoake was elected an honorary 
 member of the National Liberal Club. The distinction 
 was the more appreciated, as he knew it had been with- 
 held for some time on account of his heretical views. As 
 early as 1884 Mr. Morley wrote to him : 
 
 " I did not know what course the Committee had taken, 
 and it vexes me much that they should not have shown 
 more courage than — as I presume from your note — they 
 were able to pluck up. It is too bad. The Club is now 
 very strong — quite strong enough to do what it pleases.
 
 2i6 EASTERN LODGE 
 
 To you it must be personally a mere trifle, or even less 
 than a trifle. Many thanks for the paper. I am wholly 
 indifferent what that gentleman says of me, but your good 
 opinion is another matter. I value it, and always shall." 
 
 Mr. Morley and W. S. Caine had nominated him for 
 honorary membership, but a hint was conveyed to him 
 that the officers would rather not decide on their applica- 
 tion at that time. Later, when it was deemed safe to 
 admit him, the papers were produced, but the word 
 *' honorary " was overlooked, and he was made an ordi- 
 nary member. The Club was financially weakened by 
 Unionist secessions, and Holyoake thought it better to 
 pay a subscription until its position was again secure. 
 He then pointed out to the officers of the Club the over- 
 sight in regard to Mr. Morley's application. Unfortu- 
 nately, the only reply was a reference to a rule of the Club 
 that an honorary member must be nominated by ten 
 members of the Committee before the election could be 
 considered. Holyoake could not help thinking that if the 
 matter had been mentioned to the Committee ten names 
 would soon be forthcoming, but he declined to canvass. 
 The letters, however, were published, and in a few months 
 the secretary informed him that he had been unanimously 
 elected.! From that date he was often seen at the Club. 
 In the following winter he was entertained to dinner by 
 the Press Circle of the Club " in recognition of his life- 
 long services to Liberalism and Liberal journalism." 
 Mr. Allanson Picton took the chair. 
 
 The year seems to have been passing pleasantly and 
 
 ' The nominators are : M. P. Manfield, Arnold Morley, F, Schnadhorst, 
 Herbert Gladstone, T. Fisher Unwin, Rhys Davids, J. F. Green, P. W. 
 Bunting, J. G. Shipman, W. C. Anderson, R. Spence Watson, A. G. 
 Synionds, Dadabhai Naoroji, and others. Twenty-three names were 
 put to his nomination-paper. A letter to him about this time indicates 
 the existence of a " Holyoake Cycling- Club " somewhere in South 
 London.
 
 EASTERN LODGE 217 
 
 industriously, when an accident befel him that gave his 
 friends concern. At the beginning- of the year Ingersoll 
 had gently urged him, as many others did, to curtail his 
 activity. " You have borne the heat and burden : enjoy 
 the twilight," he wrote in his fine and affectionate way. 
 *' It is a wonderfully encouraging thing," Mr. Acland 
 writes to him in reply to a compliment, " to have such 
 words from a veteran who has seen so many Governments 
 rise and fall." But Holyoake had no idea of retiring. His 
 diary for 1893 is full of movement. The Co-operative, 
 Travelling Tax, and Liberty of Bequest Committees arc 
 attended regularly. He attends a meeting at Leman 
 Street on January 13th, and speaks at Prince's Hall (at a 
 meeting of the Marquis of Queensberry's) in the evening. 
 In February he lectured at Stockport (when " the Rev. 
 Mr. Constable moved a vote of thanks, and called on 
 the audience to stand up, which they did "), at Leicester, 
 and other places. He went to Manchester monthly, to 
 London weekly. He attended innumerable dinners, 
 meetings, and other functions ; and he was meantime 
 writing his Origin and Nature of Secularism. In May he 
 took part in the Co-operative Congress at Bristol with his 
 usual vigour, visited F. Newman at Weston-super-mare, 
 and took his wife and daughter to see Gloucester jail. In 
 August he spent six days at the Co-operative meetings 
 at the Crystal Palace. At length, in September, his 
 activity was brought to an end for a time, and his health 
 much affected, by an accident. As he was leaving the 
 Board meeting at Leman Street he was knocked down 
 by a lorry. The police and several passengers took him 
 to the London Hospital, where his head was bandaged 
 and plastered. He hastened back to Brighton and bed, 
 to which he was confined for some weeks. The accident 
 occurred on September 20th. On November 5th he 
 delivered two lectures in Liverpool.
 
 2i8 EASTERN LODGE 
 
 Suffering from weak eyes as he did, he was peculiarly 
 liable to meet with accidents in his constant travels. He 
 has given a long list of them, treated in his lightest vein, 
 in Bygones. He had half-a-dozen cab-accidents within 
 as many years, which leads him to expend much amusing 
 philosophy on cabs and cabmen. At Ashton one night 
 a drunken cabman was driving him furiously down a 
 street that ended in the river, and had open cellars like 
 graves on either side, when a friend stopped the horse. 
 Holyoake, on returning to London, chose his cab with 
 care, and even asked the advice of the inspector at 
 Euston, but the horse shied and he again ran some risk. 
 Not long afterwards, having occasion to hire a London 
 cab, he chose a heavy man whose weight alone promised 
 to keep his vehicle balanced. They were, moreover, 
 going west, where cabmen are more careful. 
 
 " There is," says Holyoake, " a gradation of killing in 
 the streets of London, well known to west-end cabmen. 
 As they enter Trafalgar Square, they run over the pas- 
 senger without ceremony. At Waterloo Place, where 
 gentlemen wander about, they merely knock you down ; 
 but as they enter Club-land, which begins at Pall Mall 
 West, where Judges and Cabinet Ministers and members 
 of Parliament abound, they merely run at you." 
 
 It was in Pall Mall that his driver overturned the cab, 
 and so Holyoake concluded quickly that it was not to 
 be a fatal mischance. He explains that, in view of his 
 constant accidents, he was wrapped in a heavy rug to 
 serve *'as a sort of buffer." However, he grasped the 
 strap at one side of the cab, dodged the breaking glass, 
 and was extricated — by *' two Micawbers who were look- 
 ing out for anything which turned up or turned over " 
 — with no more than a bruised head and crushed hat. 
 Once he was thrown down by an omnibus, and had a
 
 EASTERN LODGE 219 
 
 narrow escape from serious injury. The great danger 
 was from kicks by the horses. When he reflected on 
 their unconscious mercy, in sparing him, he " sent two 
 bags of the fattest feeding cake the Co-operative Agricul- 
 tural Association could buy, as a present to those two 
 horses." After a time the insurance company declined 
 to keep him on their books for accidents. 
 
 The accident he met with in Leman Street in 1893 was 
 the most serious of his adventures, and, though he was 
 lecturing within a few weeks, his health suffered for the 
 next two years. In 1894, moreover, a year of illness and 
 unpleasant controversy, he parted with his youngest 
 daughter (Mrs. Holyoake-Marsh), who had long been 
 of very substantial assistance to him. "Heredity," Mr. 
 Henry Slack wrote to him, " often wants the guidance of 
 discretion, and transmits the wrong qualities, sometimes 
 going far back to find bad ones. In the case of your 
 daughter Emilie we may congratulate heredity on its 
 behaviour." After his daughter's marriage his wife had 
 the whole charge of his health, and an amanuensis wrote 
 letters and journalistic copy at his dictation. His Origui 
 and Nature of Secularism was published in 1895, as well 
 as a revised edition of Public Speakitig^ and a controversial 
 booklet, The Warpath of Opinion, which we will notice 
 presently. Later chapters will show, too, that he was 
 still busy with Co-operative matters and Rationalist 
 propaganda. But nature was hinting in her many ways 
 that he was breaking the rules with so much activity at 
 that age. He saw the final weakness coming on without 
 any loss of cheerfulness. " Goose for dinner," he notes 
 in his diary about Christmas-time in 1895. " Pain for 
 breakfast," is the next day's entry. It was irksome to 
 have to alter his irresponsible ways in such matters. 
 Moderation in all things was his motto, but he had his 
 own way of interpreting it. Until his last years he would
 
 220 EASTERN LODGE 
 
 treat the appointed lunch-hour with contemptuous in- 
 difference if work pressed. Even when he was in his 
 seventies he would work on with his daughter for an 
 hour or two after the appointed time, and often have to 
 be dragged to lunch. He would even bribe her with the 
 offer of some exceptional luxury to allow him to finish 
 first the task in hand, if it meant a delay of two hours ; 
 though he had a healthy palate, and would say that coffee 
 and cream, with a good cigar, must be one of the joys of 
 heaven. He startled many a waitress in a tea-shop with 
 an order for " tea for two — water for one." In his last 
 decade of life he was persuaded to submit more to 
 discipline. 
 
 The more solid work he did in the nineties will 
 occupy the next two chapters. Here we may conclude 
 his eighth decade of life with a selection from the letters 
 that suggest his circle of friends and interests, and 
 reflect his cheerful temper. His successive accidents 
 and publications provoked ceaseless correspondence, and 
 hardly a service was done him, or to any friend of his, 
 that did not call forth a bright note. In thanking Mrs. 
 Mentor Gimson for hospitality, he wrote : 
 
 *' I send this book for the Xmas amusement of that 
 robust little fellow who put to me more questions than I 
 can answer. . . . The pepper I took in my coffee did 
 at once what I wanted — it restored my voice ; but it 
 inflamed my cough. I never thought of that till I was 
 on the platform. Next day I had no cough. If a paper 
 comes out to make you think of everything, I will take 
 It in. 
 
 Sir E. Russell and Sir J. Robinson received their 
 knighthood while he was in bed after the Leman Street 
 accident. He at once wrote to congratulate both. 
 " You have allured honour to journalism as well as
 
 EASTERN LODGE 221 
 
 earned it," he wrote to Russell ; and " life would be worth 
 living if cabmen would let us try it." To Sir John 
 Rojbinson he wrote from his bed : 
 
 " I have taken in every number of the Daily Neius 
 issued. I have known all its editors, and feel a personal 
 pride that public distinction has been accorded to you." 
 
 Of another journalist he wrote to Sir John in 1896 : 
 
 ** Mr. has good points and has done generous 
 
 public things, but steadfastness is not characteristic of 
 
 him. When editor of the he was Liberal two days 
 
 a week, Tory two days a week, and mad the remainder. 
 Do not let him impart these qualities to the Daily News. 
 True, I read him in his mad days, from congeniality of 
 temperament. But lunacy is not general amongst your 
 readers." 
 
 To an American friend, George lies, he wrote : 
 
 "You must have been born in the lies of the Blest. 
 Why else should you be so generous to me ? I do not 
 deny that your kindness places some unfamiliar pleasure 
 in my way in the eve of my days, when pleasure has the 
 sweetness of unexpectedness." 
 
 Dr. Moncure Conway, who is often quoted as a severe 
 critic of Holyoake's, writes him in 189 
 
 3- 
 
 " I was sorry to find in it [Sixty Years] a sentence of 
 irritation at something I seem to have said, years ago, 
 about your not having signed the Foote petition. What- 
 ever was said was certainly the statement of some fact 
 meant to prove the unanimity of the petition, and not 
 to reflect on you. But that does not in the least affect 
 my appreciation of your book, or of your brave services 
 to so many human causes." 
 
 When the Rev. Dr. Robert CoUyer received Sixty 
 Years he wrote :
 
 222 EASTERN LODGE 
 
 " You have lived a life replete with life and life's 
 worth to vast numbers, and stood well in the vanguard 
 of ' the life that man is.' May your days be still long in 
 the land, and pleasant days all of them." 
 
 Hearing, a little later, of Holyoake's accident, he wrote : 
 
 " Our Dear Holy Oak, 
 
 " I hope it was only the bark that got bruised 
 a mite the other day, and that the timbers were not 
 shiv^ered. I know it would be all right with the heart 
 of the oak. . . . Take care of yourself, my man. Don't 
 gad round. There was only one impression when you 
 were struck off. Sir Henry Holland says : ' When I 
 began to skirt the sides of a square instead of taking 
 the diagonal line I knew I was touching old age.' Skirt 
 the sides of the square, my laddie. You may still be 
 limber, but the good book says : ' The Lord regardeth 
 not the legs of a horse or a man.' I hope that is letter- 
 perfect, but my Concordance is a big folio which takes a 
 sight of lifting, so I give you the substance." 
 
 Sir Wilfrid Lawson, who corresponded occasionally 
 with Holyoake, wrote him in 1894: 
 
 " I did not think that any one could put the Drink 
 Question in a new light, but you have done so in your 
 capital newspaper-letter. I have long thought that you 
 are one of our few original thinkers and writers, and 
 here is another proof thereof. Likewise the Anti-Drink 
 Crusade in Bechuanaland, on which you touch, does 
 certainly put John Bull in a ludicrous position. But 
 John never can see what a fool he is. He hates any one 
 who tells him so, and also any who tries to do him any 
 good. He has managed now to get such a government 
 as he deserves. May you and I live long enough to 
 see how he likes it." 
 
 From Jacob Bright : 
 
 " What a kind note you have sent me ! I value highly 
 your judgment, and am pleased to get a note from you.
 
 EASTERN LODGE 
 
 A man speaks best when he feels most, and just now I 
 feel strongly, especially on the subject of the Lords." 
 
 From Sir Joseph Ewart : 
 
 " I noted the left-handed reference to me at the time, 
 but did not regard it as sufficiently important to reply 
 to it. I am now glad that I heeded it not, as in that 
 case I would probably have been deprived of a sight of 
 your very appropriate letter, for which and many other 
 kindnesses on your part I am indebted and very 
 grateful." 
 
 From Sir Philip Manfield : 
 
 " I have come to myself, like the Prodigal Son, and 
 in almost as forlorn a state ! My Buxton experience 
 nearly did for me, for some time, and it was a question 
 whether the man or the medicine should conquer. 
 Ultimately genus homo triumphed, but he came out 
 goutless, strengthless, and feeble in mind and body. 
 And to come to this place [House of Commons] as a 
 sanatorium ! Isn't this a proof of weakness, if any were 
 wanting? " 
 
 From Mr. J. C. Francis, proprietor of the Athenceiiin: 
 
 " It was worth while for my letter to appear in the 
 Daily News to secure a kind letter from you. I am 
 glad you like what I said. ... I have plenty of evidence 
 of the work you bestowed on the repeal of the Paper 
 Duty, and also of how hard you worked over the Gibson 
 testimonial. I also know well what a deep regard my 
 father had for you, and I am glad to feel that you have 
 extended your friendship to his son." 
 
 To Mr. Henry Salt, who asked him to join the General 
 Committee of the Humanitarian League : 
 
 "■ I willingly authorise you to add my name. Ever 
 since I was a prisoner myself I have held the views of 
 your manifesto."
 
 224 EASTERN LODGE 
 
 From the Marquis of Ripon : 
 
 " I was glad to see your handwriting again. I hope 
 you are well. I have been obliged to tell Mr. Leslie 
 that I cannot comply with his request, as it does not 
 fall within the rules I have been obliged to lay down for 
 myself in such matters." 
 
 From Mr. Isaac Roberts (the astronomer), after reading 
 Sixty Years: 
 
 " How many men living could, for themselves, show 
 such a record as yours of work done and progress 
 achieved in spite of great obstruction and danger caused 
 by the ignorance, bigotry, and slander of the classes 
 whose interest it was to defeat them ! How many would 
 toil by day and by night, without much encouragement 
 or expectation of reward, in attempting the removal of 
 the ancient chains and fetters which bound the people 
 in mental slavery when you began your work? But 
 you have triumphed over many of the difficulties, and 
 left the fields of thought and of freedom of speech open 
 to all who choose to cultivate and extend them. Well 
 have you earned the repose towards the end of a laborious 
 life to enjoy the results of your unselfish and untiring 
 exertions. Long may you yet be spared to enjoy the 
 fruits." 
 
 Mr. Roberts wrote later, in offering to help G. Julian 
 Harney : 
 
 " The old warriors who have so nobly fought the 
 battles of freedom for the people have been too much 
 neglected, and alas! they are now few in number and 
 far advanced in years." 
 
 From Colonel Ingersoll (1897): 
 
 '* Thanks for your good letter. Messrs. Foote and 
 Watts spoke to me in the highest terms about you. 
 They knew that I was your friend. And I say to you
 
 EASTERN LODGE 225 
 
 that nothing that any human being could say would 
 decrease or increase my respect, admiration, and love for 
 you. I know you. I know how sincere, candid, and 
 courageous you are. I know that your head is full of 
 wisdom and your heart of kindness. You are the ideal 
 reformer. You see all sides and pierce the centre. There 
 is no better intellectual marksman. Your arrows, like 
 those of Ulysses, fly through all the rings, and cleave 
 the question's heart." 
 
 In conversation about Holyoake Mr. Foote had said 
 to IngersoU : " He will bury us all." " I told him that 
 I hoped so," IngersoU grimly observes. 
 
 To Mr. Hugh Price Hughes, on his Origin of 
 Secularism : 
 
 " It must have been my publisher who sent you my 
 book. I wished, but hesitated, to do it, lest I might 
 give you pain by obtruding alien views on you. I read 
 with astonishment and pleasure the conspicuous notice 
 of the book in the MetJiodist Times. It justifies the high 
 opinion I had formed of your fearlessness of contrariety 
 of opinion and your generosity to adversaries in faith. 
 I shall consider what you say yourself, and read Dr. 
 Martineau's book, which you regard as an answer to my 
 main errors." 
 
 In replying Mr. Price Hughes said : 
 
 " I was very glad to see your well-known handwriting 
 again. Your book came to us in the usual way from 
 the publisher, and I was glad to have the opportunity 
 of noticing it myself. I tried to give due expression to 
 your distinctive views, and to show how heartily we 
 agreed with them, so far as they were positive and not 
 controversial. All that you have done and are trying 
 to do is an essential part of the Christian faith ; but, 
 while it seems to me to be very desirable as far as it 
 goes, it does not go far enough, for there are certain 
 other and deeper aspects of human need which the 
 practical work of Secularism does not meet." 
 
 VOL. II. Q
 
 226 EASTERN LODGE 
 
 Professor Masson wrote, after reading Sixty Years: 
 
 " Your kind gift of the two volumes duly reached me, 
 and should have been acknowledged before now had I 
 not wanted to do something more than merely ac- 
 knowledge receipt. The volumes have been my most 
 substantial piece of reading, and also the fullest of 
 interest to me, since my return home. I have read 
 them completely from beginning to end, and have to 
 thank you, not only for the kind remembrance implied 
 in your presenting me with a copy of so important and 
 characteristic a book of yours, but also for the quite 
 unusual amount and variety of instruction and pleasure 
 I have derived from its pages." 
 
 From Mr. A. R. Cluer : 
 
 *' The joy of the magistrate is to provide copy for a 
 friendly evening paper. The reporter, not knowing the 
 difference between 'knock over' and 'trip over by a 
 kick,' sadly misunderstands me. At Clifton I admit we 
 did both, and no one complained if any two football 
 opponents, with no ball between them, settled a private 
 quarrel by kicking each other outside a scrimmage. 
 But then we were boys, and no money was on the game, 
 and none of the brutes who have made football disreput- 
 able did then exist. The Westminster is very good to 
 me, and I trust it will always pull me up when I go 
 wrong. Your portrait hangs in our dining-room, and 
 I heartily congratulate you on your noble age. If I 
 ever reach it, may I be as clear-headed and wise of tongue 
 as you are." 
 
 So wide and enviable a circle of correspondents did 
 much to heal the last wounds of his controversies, and 
 lighten the burden of advancing age. He must have 
 felt some pride for his own success when he saw those 
 who had once been by his side — like Cooper, Harney, 
 and Truelove — dragging out their last years amid the 
 privations that too often darken the close of a self- 
 sacrilicing life. He sought aid for them, and cheered
 
 EASTERN LODGE 227 
 
 them as well as he could. His own genial autumn 
 promised to last, with no winter, until the end came. 
 Tokens of distinction and pleasant invitations continued 
 to reach him throughout the nineties. In 1896 he was 
 made an honorary member of the Institute of Journalists 
 and of the Societe de I'etude pratique de la Participation 
 at Paris. A letter from the London Chamber of Com- 
 merce invites him in the name of the Committee to a 
 monthly dinner, and to make a speech at it ; menus and 
 tickets indicate that gastronomic functions fell to him 
 with due and happy frequency. He was, moreover, 
 approaching his eightieth birthday, and his political 
 friends decided to make it an occasion of especial honour. 
 On April 12th he was entertained to a dinner at the 
 National Liberal Club that he noted with peculiar 
 satisfaction in his diary. Most of the Liberal members 
 of Parliament were forced to remain at the House for 
 an important debate, but the rest of the party gave 
 him a generous recognition of his services. Mr. W. 
 Morrison took the chair, in the absence of Mr. Morley, 
 and he embraced the occasion eagerly to repeat to the 
 world the honouring phrases that occur in his constant 
 letters to Holyoake. Mr. Fletcher, Dr. Conway, Mr. 
 Hodgson Pratt, Mr. Thompson, and Mr. Spenser 
 Hughes were the other speakers. Holyoake's speech 
 was a remarkable performance for an octogenarian. A 
 few sentences will give an idea of its power and effect : 
 
 *' When I look round these tables, and see many to 
 whom it would be more fitting that I should do honour 
 than that they should do honour to me, I conclude that 
 it will take me the remainder of my days to reconcile 
 any merit of mine with the distinction of this night. 
 My only apology for living so long — when, in deference 
 to advocates of greater service, I ought to have dis- 
 appeared before — is that, having invested my best years,
 
 228 EASTERN LODGE 
 
 and what energ}^ I had, in the diffusion of liberal ideas, 
 I have lingered on the stage to see how my investments 
 would turn out. . . . This world is not fit for a gentleman 
 to live in while undeserved misery exists in the neigh- 
 bourhood of his mansion. I am no Socialist, but I can 
 see that honest industry is defrauded somewhere while it 
 needs charity or State aid. ... I was never more mad 
 than was necessary, and never put myself forward until 
 men of more prudence fell back in the face of risk. I 
 cared for the freedom of journalism, because I was by 
 nature a journalist. It is the journalist who causes to 
 descend upon society the refreshing showers of ideas, 
 which fertilise the arid land of ignorance and indifference, 
 until at last there springs up the fruitful verdure of public 
 opinion." 
 
 This night of enthusiasm, with the comments of the 
 Liberal press and the subsequent shower of letters, 
 rounds off Holyoake's political career. The Daily News 
 observed : " The National Liberal Club did honour to 
 itself as well as its guest ... he has lived to be 
 honoured of all men, and he had a convincing proof of 
 it in the variety of opinion and station represented by 
 the gathering of last night." The Birmingham Liberal 
 Club added its congratulations to those of the London 
 Club. Sir Charles Dilke wrote : " I should have wished 
 to have been counted as one who, any way within my 
 power, would have helped in doing honour to one who 
 so well deserves it." " May there still be many happy 
 returns for the Grand Old Agitator," the Rev. Frome 
 Wilkinson wrote. " I read with delight the account of 
 the banquet," said the proprietor of the AtheiicEuin. But 
 quotation would be endless. It was a fitting termination 
 to his political career. It remains for us to follow to its 
 culmination his work in the Co-operative Movement and 
 in Secularist agitation before we contemplate the years of 
 comparative rest, and the last greeting of his fellows.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 LABOUR CO-PARTNERSHIP 
 
 In a previous chapter I have explained the important 
 difference of conviction that existed within the Co-opera- 
 tive body in regard to the sharing of profits. The last 
 phase of Holyoake's Co-operative activity is so largely 
 related to this difference that the general reader must 
 once more conceive it as precisely as possible. Most of 
 the older men — the prophets, so to say — claimed that 
 Co-operation essentially implied that the employees of a 
 store or factory should share in its profits and manage- 
 ment, and not merely take a fixed wage : most of the 
 younger men, who were engaged in the work of active 
 control and management, held that this was impracticable, 
 and that the ideal of Co-operation was little diminished 
 by omitting it. The Christian Socialist leaders, Neale, 
 Hughes, and Ludlow, as well as Greening, Holyoake, 
 Morrison, and outsiders like F. Newman or Earl Grey, 
 endeavoured for years to bind the whole movement to 
 the practice of labour co-partnership. We saw some- 
 thing of the struggle of the two parties. In this last part 
 of Holyoake's work we have to see how the "idealists" 
 found a separate — largely an educative — association, 
 acting in amity with the general Co-operative body, 
 inspiring the erection of co-partnership workshops, 
 and urging the adoption of the practice in existing 
 industries. 
 
 The first traces of the new movement are found at the 
 
 229
 
 230 LABOUR CO-PARTNERSHIP 
 
 time of the Co-operative Congress at Derby in 1884. 
 The Congresses of 1881 and 1882 had accepted in principle 
 the idea of appointing a special authority to supervise 
 the growing productive societies from this point of view, 
 but it was clear that there was a strong current of feeling 
 in the general body against profit-sharing, and Congress 
 had not power to do anything in the nature of enforce- 
 ment. Many, moreover, felt that the annual conflict 
 in the Congress meetings impaired their prestige and 
 effectiveness. The idea arose, therefore, of concentrating 
 the proj^agandist fervour of the adherents of co-partner- 
 ship in a distinct association, within the limits of the 
 general Co-operative body. Holyoake, I gather, entered 
 with some hesitation upon the creation of this distinct 
 body. Although he was prominent at the Derby Con- 
 gress, his name does not occur in the scanty records 
 of the new movement until 1886, when he joined its 
 executive and became one of its foremost spokesmen. 
 The tone of the Derby Congress may have given him 
 renewed hope of carrying his ideal within the general 
 movement. The president, Professor Taylor (of Trinity 
 College), had made a strong plea for profit-sharing, and 
 Holyoake, in moving a vote of thanks, had noticed with 
 warmth that this was the first time the presidential 
 address had been devoted to the subject. 
 
 That evening some 250 delegates met to discuss the 
 situation, and decided to form a propagandist committee 
 and fund in the interest of co-partnership. It was at 
 first named the Labour Association for the Promotion of 
 Co-operative Production, a name which was changed in 
 1902 into the Labour Co-Partnership Association. Its 
 aims were to be: (i) to persuade Co-operative stores 
 and mills to adopt the practice of co-partnership, (2) to 
 persuade employers generally to share profits with their 
 employees, (3) to found workshops in which labour should
 
 LABOUR CO-PARTNERSHIP 231 
 
 share the profits and control witli capital.^ Ow January 
 13th, 1885, they held their first annual Conference, at 
 Hebden Bridge. Neale, who was the leader of the f^roup, 
 read a paper that forms the charter of the Association. 
 
 " I, and those who agree with me," he said, " hold that 
 there has in fact grown up in the development of co- 
 operative action a mode of regarding work and the 
 workers which, if it be allowed to become dominant, 
 must end by depriving Co-operation of its noblest 
 character, till it dwindles from the herald of a higher 
 form of social order into a phase of competitive rivalry. 
 ... It subordinates production to exchange, and con- 
 verts the whole function of Co-operation, so far as con- 
 cerns the profits of productive work, to that of reducing, 
 either directly or indirectly, through a return of dividends 
 on purchases, the price of the things purchased." 
 
 He complained, in a word, that there was a tendency 
 in the movement to think more of things than of men. 
 So long as Co-operative stores bought their goods in the 
 general market, and had no control of the producers, the 
 matter was less urgent. In view of the growth of pro- 
 ductive Co-operation, it was necessary, he said, to insist 
 on the moral quality of the Co-operative ideal, and they 
 have therefore created an educative association which 
 shall be subsidiary to the Co-operative Union. Of the 
 Union Neale remained general secretary, and the organ 
 of the movement gave friendly prominence, without 
 comment, to the new body. 
 
 The second Conference of the new body was held at 
 
 ^ This statement of their aims disposes at once of some of the mis- 
 representations of the body. They never dreamed of confining the 
 practice to productive societies (as distinct from stores) ; though, as we 
 shall presently find Neale observing, there was more demand for it 
 in the shops where the producers were employed by Co-operators. 
 Further, they never wished the conduct of an industrial concern to be 
 handed over to a body of inexperienced workers, but merely claimed 
 that these should be represented on the board.
 
 232 LABOUR CO-PARTNERSHIP 
 
 Keighley in August, and a resolution was passed " to 
 point out in a fraternal spirit to the Wholesale Society 
 the grave injury they are doing to the cause of Co- 
 operation by their failure to carry out Co-operative 
 principles in their productive works, and to offer their 
 services in discussing practical means of placing the 
 Wholesale workshops upon a true Co-operative basis." 
 The sequel gives us an interesting insight into the 
 condition of the general body on the question. The 
 Wholesale met them in a courteous spirit, and invited 
 them to a discussion. When it was found that the 
 division of opinion on the Wholesale Committee pre- 
 vented any action from being taken, it was decided to 
 refer the matter to the quarterly meetings of the body. 
 It was submitted at three of these important meetings, 
 but again with no result. At London the majority were 
 in favour of the idea ; at Newcastle the majority were 
 hostile to it ; and at Manchester the long debate of the 
 subject had to end in the closure. 
 
 By this time Holyoake seems to have been wholly 
 convinced of the expediency of the new association, 
 and he was added to the list of its executive. From 
 1886 onward his chief activity in the Co-operative world 
 is the strenuous and incessant propaganda of the idea of 
 co-partnership. In all that he wrote after that time it is 
 the dominant note, and he watched the fortunes of the 
 Labour Association, and any industries that adopted its 
 idea, with the keenest interest. It must not, of course, 
 be supposed that he therefore ceased to work in the 
 general Co-operative movement. He wrote frequently, 
 until his last years, in the Co-operative News, and attended 
 nearly all the meetings of the Newspaper Board at Man- 
 chester. He remained an active member of the Central 
 Board until 1894. ^^ attended, with two exceptions, 
 every Congress down to the close of his life ; and he
 
 LABOUR CO-PARTNERSHIP 233 
 
 lectured, wrote, and attended other important functions 
 for the general body, to the end. Our chief interest, 
 however, will be to follow his specific work of advocating 
 co-partnership, at the annual Congresses, by lecture, and 
 by correspondence. Co-operative enterprise even with- 
 out co-partnership was, he felt, not only a great economic 
 reform, but it created a feeling of solidarity and gave a 
 measure of education that the ordinary commercial system 
 could not. He pleaded only that it should add the 
 Owenite feeling of moral responsibility for the worker. 
 
 In 1886 Holyoake was prominent in many ways 
 amongst Co-operative workers. In the News he pub- 
 lished the series of articles on eighteenth-century co- 
 operation which he afterwards gathered into his work 
 Self-Help a Hundred Years Ago. It is an extremely 
 interesting research into the first faint dawn of co- 
 operative practice. At the 1886 Congress (at Plymouth) 
 he seconded the vote of thanks to Earl Morley, and 
 supported the commemorative notice of Lloyd Jones, 
 who died in that year. He was active, too, in a slight 
 matter that may meet the eye of some industrious reader, 
 and so must be briefly explained. One finds him press- 
 ing for a settlement of an old claim against the move- 
 ment in connection with his (and Greening's) Social 
 Economist. It must be remembered that, while the Co- 
 operative News bought up the Lancashire Co-operator^ 
 Holyoake and Greening had merely abandoned their 
 journal, and so left the field clear for the AVwj- in the south. 
 There was a vague understanding that, when the new 
 paper prospered, some compensation would be offered. 
 This it was that Holyoake pressed for in 1886 (and earlier), 
 and a small sum was paid. In October, we saw, he went 
 as Co-operative delegate to Italy; and he spoke at the 
 opening of the stately new stores at Newcastle. 
 
 In 1887 he was president at the Congress on its
 
 234 LABOUR CO-PARTNERSHIP 
 
 opening day. He used the opportunity to plead for 
 " true principles," but with a moderation that pleased 
 his opponents. In the later stages of the Congress, 
 however, the question was heatedly discussed. Some 
 discontented operatives had in 1886 left the Wholesale 
 boot works at Leicester, and set up a small factory. 
 This was an obvious incentive to raise the question of 
 co-partnership, and Judge Hughes proposed a strong 
 resolution to direct the Wholesale to " put their house 
 in order." Holyoake supported him in a less irritating 
 speech, but an amendment was passed — by 186 votes 
 to 107 — deferring the matter to the next Congress. 
 Hughes's letters to Holyoake on the subject of co- 
 partnership are so characteristically pugnacious that one 
 must quote them with discretion, I may give the note 
 he sent just after the Congress of 1887 as an indication 
 of his strong feeling, and to show how the earlier reserve 
 in regard to Holyoake had entirely disappeared in the 
 new coalition of interests : — 
 
 " As to our resolutions," he says, *' I had to leave for 
 the train, as you know, before the hands were counted, 
 and certainly went away in the mind to sing ' Nunc 
 dimittis' — or, I should rather say (as the original singer 
 of that hymn was inspired by the salvation about to 
 come, not quite the other thing, as was our case) to 
 shake the dust off my feet — if we were beaten. On 
 thinking the matter over, however, it occurred to me 
 that I was stale-mated, for what action could I take, not 
 being a member of the Central Board? I had nothing 
 to resign, and the enemy would only chuckle. So I had 
 about concluded to hold my tongue when your note 
 came, and dear old Neale's distress would certainly con- 
 firm me, as well as your continuance (as I assume) in 
 office. (What could have possessed Neale? I never 
 was more dumbfoundered than when he got up to second 
 the amendment !) Now I shall just leave them to stew
 
 LABOUR CO-PARTNERSHIP 235 
 
 in their juice, hoping that you will take care to make it 
 pretty pungent for them. Have you seen the Spectator? 
 Hutton, I fancy. The writer understands the position, 
 and his parallel of a Church Congress voting the 
 previous question on a motion that the ten command- 
 ments are of universal application is delicious ..." 
 
 The last part of the letter is cut away — not for the 
 sake of the signature, which remains. Co-operators, 
 who know the vigour of Hughes's language, will admire 
 Holyoake's discretion. The two men worked cordially 
 together until the death of Hughes in 1896. He seems 
 to have relied very largely on Holyoake to keep up 
 the old standard. 
 
 In 1888 Holyoake became president of the Brighton 
 stores, laid the foundation-stone of the Colne stores, 
 and again went as representative to Italy. Neale was 
 president of the Congress that year at Dewsbury, and a 
 fresh pronouncement on profit-sharing was inevitable. 
 He concluded his address with a hope that " some 
 Holyoake of the future would record of co-operators : 
 ' They had moralised distribution and exchange ; and 
 they went on to moralise production.' " The adjourned 
 debate came on in the afternoon, and Holyoake pro- 
 posed a resolution demanding co-partnership through 
 the United Board and the English and Scottish Whole- 
 sales. Mr. Swallow, an accountant of Leeds, moved 
 an amendment to the effect that Congress should send 
 a recommendation to all producing societies to share the 
 risk and the profit between the worker, the capitalist, and 
 the consumer. Swallow writes to Holyoake that this 
 resolution was regarded as " a compromise with a lean- 
 ing towards the resolutions of the north." It was 
 thought that Swallow's amendment was more practical, 
 and Holyoake supported it. To the gratification of the 
 Labour Association it was passed by 213 votes to 160.
 
 236 LABOUR CO-PARTNERSHIP 
 
 It would be somewhat tiresome to follow the conflict 
 through the succeeding Congresses, and I will only 
 recur to it as it becomes more interesting. The resolu- 
 tion passed at Dewsbury was an endorsement of the 
 profit-sharing ideal by the Congress, and it will be 
 understood that Hughes and his colleagues returned 
 to the fray with renewed vigour. For some years the 
 situation was perplexing to those unacquainted with the 
 practical work of the movement. The advocates of 
 co-partnership could carry their principle in Congress 
 whenever it was put to the vote ; but the movement 
 meantime continued to unfold its vast proportions, and 
 make little application of their principle. The Congress 
 had no more than a polite advisory status; the business- 
 men who had the practical control of the producing 
 societies and the stores shrank from the complication of 
 their task by attempting to enforce the scheme recom- 
 mended to them by Congress ; while the shareholders 
 generally resented a reduction of their dividend. It took 
 many years for the disputants on both sides to realise 
 that the annual discussion could have no more than an 
 educative value. At the Ipswich Congress in 1889 the 
 practical northerners tried to defeat the " idealists," but 
 they were themselves defeated, and the Dewsbury reso- 
 lution re-affirmed. At the Glasgow Congress in 1890 
 Hughes and Holyoake and their friends went a step 
 further, and carried by a large majority a resolution 
 that 
 
 " The United Board be requested to communicate 
 with the 180 societies which have already intimated their 
 willingness to adopt the principles reaffirmed at Ipswich, 
 with a view to their embodiment, where necessary, in 
 their rules : and, secondly, that it be an instruction to 
 the United Board to communicate with the 274 societies 
 which have expressed their willingness to use their
 
 LABOUR CO-PARTNERSHIP 237 
 
 influence in support of the Congress resolutions with 
 federal societies in which they are members, to prepare 
 a plan for giving effect to the above resolutions." 
 
 The practice of the Scottish Wholesale, which gave a 
 bonus to employees, gave a favourable atmosphere for 
 renewing the claim, and a Scottish Association for the 
 Propagation of the Principles of the Labour Association 
 was founded during the Congress. 
 
 It will be seen from these episodes that the advocates 
 
 of profit-sharing were not the small group of elderly 
 
 enthusiasts out of touch with the practical work that 
 
 they have at times been represented to be. They had 
 
 the support of a very strong body of feeling in the 
 
 movement at large, and were able to dominate Congress 
 
 for ten years. Meantime the Labour Association was 
 
 furnishing evidence of the practicability of their scheme. 
 
 From 1889 onwards they held an exhibition of goods 
 
 manufactured in co-partnership workshops in connection 
 
 with the annual festival at the Crystal Palace, and they 
 
 were able to publish encouraging results from works 
 
 that proceeded on their lines. The Hebden Bridge 
 
 Fustian Society, registered in 1870, nearly trebled its 
 
 profit between 1885 and 1895. The Airedale Worsted 
 
 Society, also founded about 1870, doubled its profit in 
 
 the same decade. The Leicester Hosiery Works, which 
 
 began in 1876 with a capital of ^30, had in 1890 a 
 
 capital of ^9,807. The Norwich Leather and Grindery 
 
 Society, which began with a capital of eleven shillings 
 
 in 1885, had a capital of ^224 in 1890. The South 
 
 Metropolitan Gas Company began to share profits with 
 
 its employees in 1889, and reported a continuous success 
 
 of the procedure. With the smaller concerns the number 
 
 of workmen's Labour Co-Partnership societies increased 
 
 from 15 in 1883 to 77 in 1893 (and 124 in 1905); their
 
 238 LABOUR CO-PARTNERSHIP 
 
 joint capital rose from ^103,436 in 1883 to ;^6i9,i53 
 in 1893 (and ^1,819,390 in 1905). 
 
 Holyoake was assiduous in giving- publicity to these 
 favourable facts, and in 1891 he issued his Co-operative 
 Movement To-day. It was included in Gibbins's series 
 of " Social Questions of To-day," and inevitably took 
 the form of a tract in propagation of profit-sharing, as 
 well as of a bright historical sketch of the general move- 
 ment. The copy that is kept in the British Museum 
 Library has ample and vigorous marginal notes that 
 reflect the feeling of some London Co-operator of the 
 practical school, or some admirer of Mrs. Sidney Webb, 
 whose work appeared about the same time. I have 
 indicated in an earlier chapter the several ways in which 
 Mrs. Webb does grave injustice to Holyoake's position 
 and that of his school. Probably she was misled, not 
 only by her chief informant (an opponent of the school), 
 but by Neale's stronger emphasis on the need for profit- 
 sharing in productive societies.^ 
 
 The Congress of 1891 passed with little conflict ; 
 possibly because its president, Mr. Acland, had depre- 
 cated the "wordy warfare," and suggested in his address 
 that the Wholesale might have advanced a little more 
 if it had been less warmly assailed. " We must agree 
 to differ," the Neivs said, commenting on his words. 
 But the 1892 Congress saw a revival of the struggle, 
 though no vote was taken. Holyoake found an indirect 
 opportunity to recommend his ideal. The Congress 
 was held in "the Mecca of Co-operators," Rochdale, and 
 after the service in the parish church on the Sunday 
 
 ^ The Co-operative News reviews the two books together, and finds 
 several other fallacies, from the general Co-operative point of view, in 
 Mrs. Webb's work. It was an unfortunate mischance for her that the 
 issue of her work, containing a strange perversion of Holyoake's position, 
 should coincide with that of a work by Holyoake in which his real 
 position is strongly affirmed.
 
 LABOUR CO-PARTNERSHIP 239 
 
 afternoon a crowd of delegates gathered about Holyoake 
 at the graves of the two pioneers, Cooper and Smithies. 
 Standing over the remains of the dead Owenites, and 
 glancing from his faded memory of the little store they 
 set up to the imposing modern structure — from the 
 dejected group of weavers in the tiny lecture-room fifty 
 years before to the crowd of delegates about him that 
 told of a great national movement — Holyoake pleaded 
 eloquently for the realisation of the old ideal. The 
 publication of his speeches in the Nezvs brought him 
 warm letters of thanks from old Co-operators. 
 
 Hughes, indeed, thought the persuasive methods of 
 Holyoake and Neale too feeble for the occasion. " I am 
 not sure," he wrote, '* that the time has not come for 
 taking off the gloves with Mitchell and his tail." Co- 
 operators will observe with surprise that Judge Hughes 
 fancied he was fighting with gloves on. There is all 
 the unrestrained pugnacity of his "Tom Brown " in his 
 deliverances down to his last year, and he acknowledges 
 that only Neale and Holyoake kept him within certain 
 bounds. Neale resigned the secretaryship in 1892, and 
 died in September of that year. For twenty years 
 Holyoake had had a warm and undisturbed friendship 
 for the great Christian Socialist, and his tribute to him 
 is as sincere as it is eloquent. " His monument is the 
 Co-operative Movement," he exclaimed. Hughes now 
 drew closer to Holyoake in the endeavour to enforce the 
 adoption of profit-sharing. Ludlow still survived of this 
 old school — and maintained always something of its old 
 reserve in regard to Holyoake — but his name rarely 
 appears in the chronicles of the movement. In 1893 I 
 find him writing to express gratitude to Holyoake for 
 some reference to himself, but disapproving his action 
 at Congress. Greening was in the front rank of the 
 combatants. In 1893 he writes to thank Holyoake for
 
 240 LABOUR CO-PARTNERSHIP 
 
 clearing him of the charge of having said that "if the 
 Wholesale did not do what he wanted he could sap its 
 foundations." 
 
 But Hughes was, so to say, the dynamo of the co- 
 partnership group during these years. As the Congress 
 for 1893 drew near he concerted a plan of action with 
 Holyoake ; even going so far as to ascertain the hotel 
 at which the new secretary, Mr. Gray, would reside, and 
 proposing that Holyoake and he should choose it. He 
 would like, he said, to propose that the Wholesale be 
 expelled from the Union, but " that course would probably 
 be thought too hostile ! " Instead of this, he would pro- 
 pose that the Union's shares in the Wholesale be realised, 
 and thus they would withdraw from that " stronghold of 
 the devil." Holyoake again seems to have tempered his 
 zeal, and proposed an alternative. The Congress was 
 held at Bristol, and during its course Maxwell read a 
 paper on " The treatment of Co-operative employees," 
 in which he spoke of the success of the Scottish system 
 (of giving bonuses). At once Holyoake rose to move a 
 resolution that Congress re-affirm the principle of co- 
 partnership, congratulate the Scottish Wholesale on its 
 adoption (to some extent) of that principle, and urge the 
 English Wholesale to follow its example. Hughes and 
 Greening gave their warm support, and Mrs. Webb 
 seems to have led the opposition, declaring that " co- 
 partnership was a meaningless term " and insisting that 
 what the " individualists " wanted was " a self-governing 
 workshop."^ An amendment was then proposed, that 
 
 ^ I have earlier pointed out the fallacy of the terms she employs, but 
 may recur to the point, as many social students must have been misled 
 by Mrs. Webb's very able book. The chief aim of the Labour Associa- 
 tion, which always discouraged enterprises with too small a capital, 
 was not to create a number of isolated "self-governing' workshops," 
 but to induce the largest concerns to admit their employees to a share 
 of the profits. The larger the concern, and the more closely federated
 
 EASTERN LODGE, BRIGHTON' 
 (.Mr. Holyoake's residence from 1886 to 1906)
 
 LABOUR CO-PARTNERSHIP 241 
 
 substituted the words " urge all federal bodies to adopt 
 it" for the explicit reference to the Wholesales, and, 
 with this change, Holyoake's resolution was almost 
 unanimously adopted.^ 
 
 A few further words will bring this historic struggle 
 in the annual Congress to a close. At Sunderland in 
 1894, in a hostile district and with a hostile president, 
 the usual attempt was made to " re-affirm the principle." 
 The chairman declared, on a show of hands, that the 
 voting " seemed to be about equal," and, in the confusion 
 that followed Mr. Greening's demand for a vote, carried 
 the meeting on to the next item. As the 1895 Congress 
 drew near, Judge Hughes resumed his pyrotechnic cor- 
 respondence. " It will," he said, " probably be our last 
 chance of getting the Union back on to the original and 
 only safe lines." Mitchell, their most powerful opponent, 
 had recently died. The Congress was to be held at 
 Huddersfield, and once more the president would be 
 favourable. Hughes suggested, therefore, that he should 
 move the old resolution, and Holyoake second it, in the 
 form in which it had been passed twenty years before. 
 After some correspondence with Mr. Gray and others, 
 he modified its terms, and promised to " keep clear of all 
 names, and try to be as conciliatory as possible." They 
 were to concert action at the hotel with Greenwood, 
 Thomson (the president), and Blandford. 
 
 But a change was coming over the situation. The 
 
 the various concerns were, the better. It then urged, as a subsidiary 
 ideal, that, as is profitably done by the South Metropolitan Gasworks, 
 the workers as well as the capitalists should have representatives on the 
 Board. Establishments set up by groups of workmen, provided they 
 can command the requisite capital and skill in management, naturally 
 ofTer the readiest application of the principle. 
 
 ^ The main part of it was : "That we re-affirm the principle of the 
 co-partnership of labour as an essential of industrial co-operation, and 
 as the best mode to adopt to create a greater interest by the employees 
 of the movement in its work and advancement." 
 
 VOL. II. R
 
 242 LABOUR CO-PARTNERSHIP 
 
 younger workers in the profit-sharing camp regretted 
 the friction that had continued so long, and thought 
 the time had come, not to put off the gloves, in the 
 ardent veteran's phrase, but to concentrate their energy 
 on peaceful educative work outside the Union. 
 
 " Both Mr. and Mr. and myself," one of 
 
 Holyoake's colleagues wrote to him, " feel that very little 
 is to be gained by urging the Stores to urge the Whole- 
 sale at present to take up profit-sharing. If they did it 
 at all, they would probably do it in a half-hearted way. 
 . . . We all think therefore that what we have to do 
 is to perfect and strengthen our own co-partnership 
 societies, and when these have multiplied and grown 
 strong, and federated together more perfectly, they will 
 be able to exercise an influence on the movement which 
 may one day bring about a really genuine co-partnership 
 organisation in the Wholesale also. . . . We cannot 
 approve any organised action to influence the Stores, or 
 their chief officers, or the employees of the Wholesale, 
 in the direction of co-partnership in the Wholesale 
 itself." 
 
 Under this pressure the veterans withheld their resolu- 
 tion, and came to an informal agreement with their 
 opponents before the Congress met at Huddersfield. 
 Delegates who came in expectation of another tense 
 discussion of the eternal question were surprised to find 
 a resolution quietly passed that authorised the Central 
 Board to bring together representatives of the two wings 
 of the movement in a conference. The rest of the story 
 is brief, for the round-table discussion served to establish 
 definitely an irreconcilable difference. The majority of 
 the representatives passed a resolution in favour of 
 some undefined degree of participation in profits. The 
 minority (mainly consisting of members of the English 
 Wholesale) drew up a report in the opposite sense.
 
 LABOUR CO-PARTNERSHIP 243 
 
 When the Congress met in 1896 at Woolwich there 
 was a long discussion of the report, and it was finally 
 referred to the sectional meetings and a subsequent 
 Congress. Neither Hughes nor Holyoake appeared 
 at the next Congress (at Perth). The virile spirit of 
 the Christian Socialist had succumbed at last, and 
 Holyoake was, he explained, too busy with his history 
 of the Leeds Society to make the long journey. Save 
 for a moving appeal for the old ideal by the Bishop of 
 Durham in 1900, the annual Congress has not since 
 been made the arena of this remarkable stru£f2"le. 
 
 We may retrace our steps a little, therefore, and con- 
 sider Holyoake's activity on behalf of his Co-operative 
 ideal in other fields. The Labour Association had not 
 an unprosperous record of work done by the time when 
 Judge Hughes was preparing his final attack. In 1893 
 the original 15 societies, with a trade of ;i^ 160,751, had 
 increased to 109 societies, with an annual trade of a 
 million and a quarter ; and so effectively was the principle 
 spreading in the Union that by the end of the century 
 228 of the Distributive Stores (including large ones 
 like Derby, Manchester Equitable, Woolwich, Bolton, 
 and Plymouth), or 24 per cent, of the whole membership 
 of the movement, were acting on its principle. In this 
 work Holyoake was respected as an active leader. " To 
 him our thanks are especially due, for he has helped us 
 at every point," the new organ of the Association observed 
 in its first issue. At its annual meeting in 1894 he was 
 appointed president of the Association, and he marked 
 out its programme with his usual felicity. It was to be 
 — on the analogy of the University Extension move- 
 ment — the " Co-operative Extension " body, acting '* not 
 in antagonism, for we are against disunity or disruption, 
 and vvre all of us belong to the movement." He wrote 
 regularly in its organ, Labour Co-Partnership^ from its
 
 244 LABOUR CO-PARTNERSHIP 
 
 Start in 1S94 until six months before his death, and 
 helped to give it the brightness and solidity that dis- 
 tinguished it. In the second issue, in fact, the editor 
 (Aneurin Williams) had to correct a very general mis- 
 apprehension that Holyoake was its editor. He figured 
 also on the lecturing staff of the Association, attended 
 all its conferences and annual exhibitions, and has left 
 behind him a small collection of silver keys and trowels 
 that tell of his prominence at other important functions. 
 In 1895 commenced the series of International Con- 
 gresses of the Co-operative body, and Holyoake took a 
 deeply interested part in this fresh and significant exten- 
 sion of the movement. Letters still reached him from 
 all parts of Europe, seeking his guidance or conveying 
 warm expressions of regard for him as — to borrow the 
 phrase that Earl Grey applied to him at the first Inter- 
 national Congress — " the Father of Co-operation." " The 
 ideas promoted by you are spreading in Hungary," Dr. 
 Bernat writes him ; but " the liicri bonus odor is very 
 often pushing away the higher ideals," and he wants to 
 translate some of Holyoake's works, which are " the text- 
 book of Co-operative morale.'''' "Toute la Co-operation 
 Frangaise va apprendre cette nouvelle avec une emotion 
 naturelle," writes M. Robert to his daughter, after the 
 accident of 1893. " Your health was most enthusiastically 
 drunk," Mr. Gray writes him after returning from Milan ; 
 and the Milanese Co-operators still sent him the Christmas 
 panettone each year. He had, in fact, left a peculiarly 
 deep and pleasant impression on the Milanese Co- 
 operators. In 1894 they telegraphed to him: "The 
 Co-operative Congress of Milan approves your advice 
 and proposals, sending you a hearty greeting as their 
 teacher." In 1895 they sent Holyoake a bronze replica 
 of the silver medal they had had specially made to 
 express their gratitude to the Rochdale Pioneers on
 
 LABOUR CO-PARTNERSHIP 245 
 
 the occasion of the Rochdale Society's jubilee ; he 
 could not help contrasting this with the fact that the 
 Rochdale Society itself had omitted to invite him to 
 the festive celebration of its jubilee. Buffoli, Maffi, 
 Concini, and other leading Italian Co-operators wrote 
 frequently and affectionately to " II gentilissimo Signor 
 Ilolyoake." The Co-operators of Holland still pressed 
 him for literary contributions. *' People are generally 
 in Holland not very interested in Co-operative literature," 
 writes the secretary of the Nedcrlandsche Co-operative 
 Bond, " but what comes from Mr. Holyoake is always 
 read." A little Dutch girl to whom he sent his portrait 
 wrote him in English : *' Father says I cannot yet con- 
 ceive the great value of this present, but that I will do 
 so when I am greater." The Musee Social at Paris 
 awarded him a bronze medal in 1897 for some essay 
 he had sent them on co-partnership. It did not, M. 
 Robert wrote him, come within the limits of the com- 
 petition they had announced, but its " intrinsic merit " 
 forced the jury to assign him a medal. Mr. Horace 
 Plunkett wrote gratefully to him on behalf of Irish 
 Co-operators ; and even from far Japan (from an official 
 in the Home Department) he received consultations on 
 the movement. 
 
 The framing of an international organisation therefore 
 appealed to him with especial interest, and when the 
 International Alliance convened the first International 
 Congress in 1895 he gladly attended it. Greening and 
 others had been working for some time in this cause, 
 and had brought the threads to a common centre at 
 London. Unhappily, it seemed as if the perpetual 
 conflict was to be withdrawn from the arena of the 
 national Congress only to be renewed in that of the 
 international. Earl Grey, the president of the Alliance, 
 was an ardent advocate of profit-sharing, and the names of
 
 246 LABOUR CO-PARTNERSHIP 
 
 Greening, Holyoake, Hodgson Pratt, and Wolff excited 
 some suspicion in the north. Some strong letters from 
 Greening and Wolff to Holyoake occur during the 
 arrangement of the Congress. It met in London in 
 August, at the time of the Crystal Palace Festival in 
 1895, and brought delegates from France, Italy, Belgium, 
 Germany, Austria, Holland, Roumania, Russia, and the 
 United States. Impressive as the gathering was as an 
 indication of world-growth, its elements were not a little 
 menacing from the point of view of the " practical " men. 
 From the nature of the case it was mainly a gathering 
 of "idealists." Earl Grey pleaded strongly for profit- 
 sharing, and when he called upon Holyoake, as the 
 '* Father of Co-operation," to move a resolution, the 
 northerners were on the alert. They soon learned that it 
 was sought to make profit-sharing an essential feature of 
 the Alliance, and the conflict began once more. As before, 
 it ended in a compromise, and the Labour Association 
 had to continue its " Co-operative Extension " labours. 
 
 In 1894 Holyoake sent in his resignation to the 
 Southern Section of the Central Board, as he was no 
 longer able to travel regularly in the winter. 
 
 "In terminating my connection with the Board," he 
 said, " which has extended over a quarter of a century, I 
 have cherished memories of eminent colleagues with 
 whom I have had the pleasure of acting, and I shall 
 always look back not without satisfaction on the work 
 done, though less than I had hoped to see, and less than 
 was possible. My interest in the work you will continue 
 can never cease except with my life, and I hope to meet 
 again and again each member of the Board in other 
 departments of Co-operative activity in which I hope 
 further to work." 
 
 The secretary begged that they might still have him 
 as an honorary member — *' the members of the Board are
 
 LABOUR CO-PARTNERSHIP 247 
 
 particularly desirous . . . that there shall be no break 
 in your connection with the movement you have loved 
 and served so well " — and he assented. He assured 
 them that there was no shade of hostility in his resigna- 
 tion. It must have seemed to many of his friends like 
 the casting off of the first great hawser when some 
 stately ship is preparing to leave its moorings. But 
 there was still much work for him in the Co-operative 
 world. With the exception of 1897 he attended Congress 
 with unfailing regularity to the end, and wrote his bright 
 sketches of it annually in the Neivs. *' To think of a 
 Congress without you is indeed Hamlet without the 
 Prince," Maxwell wrote him in 1897, when he had 
 declared his inability to go to Perth. The Scottish 
 Co-operators wired him a warm greeting, and a friend 
 wrote him that he chanced to fall into conversation with 
 a bishop-visitor about him. "The bishop holds you 
 in the highest esteem — so there may be a chance for you 
 yet," he said. 
 
 It was no disinclination, or fear of the journey, that 
 kept him away from Perth, but the stress of writing the 
 Jubilee-history of the Leeds Society in time for the event. 
 It was finished in August, and he not only took an 
 important part in the jubilee-festivities at Leeds in 
 September, but w^ent to Delft for the International 
 Congress. The members of the Leeds Society were not 
 a little gratified when he was able, a little later, to send 
 them the following message from the present King: 
 
 " It affords His Royal Highness great satisfaction to 
 learn that the Society has attained such a pre-eminent 
 position, and he would be glad if you would assure them 
 that they are right in supposing he will read their story 
 with much interest." 
 
 The Peterborough Congress in 1S9S saw him moving
 
 24S LABOUR CO-PARTNERSHIP 
 
 amongst its leaders as genially as ever. Ludlow rarely 
 appeared, or is rarely mentioned, at Co-operative 
 meetings, and Holyoake was the one representative left 
 of the apostolic days. Hughes had died early in 1896. 
 " You were brothers in arms, and have fought nobly for 
 the recognition of the true interests of labour," wrote Mr. 
 J. Greenwood, in asking him to lay a wreath on Hughes's 
 grave on behalf of the Hebden Bridge Society. He 
 took his wife and a few friends, and laid the wreath with 
 dignity and tenderness over the remains of his colleague. 
 All the old reserve between them had long since broken 
 down. Hughes had been energetic to the end. In 1894 
 the Co-operators had erected a bust to Neale in St. 
 Paul's and deputed Mitchell, the chief opponent of co- 
 partnership, to unveil it. Hughes was very angry, and 
 even made the dire British threat of writing to the Times 
 to expose Mitchell's misdeeds. Holyoake attended the 
 unveiling, but protested privately against the choice. It 
 was proper, he wrote to Mr. Gray, that Mitchell should 
 hand over the monument on behalf of the Union, but 
 the eulogy should have come from the lips of Hughes 
 or Ludlow or the Marquis of Ripon. "An adversary 
 may pay a tribute, but in death it is sympathy which is 
 honour, and it is a sacred duty to consider the senti- 
 ments of the family. But I am French in my ideas, and 
 you must forgive me." 
 
 He was gratified, as the older men disappeared, to find 
 so powerful an advocate as Earl Grey pleading earnestly 
 for their ideal of Co-operation, They spoke together at 
 the Crystal Palace in 1898. After Earl Grey's address 
 Holyoake sent to him a pencilled note of comment, and 
 Earl Grey returned it with the message : " I should be 
 very proud if you would put your signature and the date 
 to this paper — I should like to keep it as an autograph." 
 Later he wrote to Holyoake : " I think there are signs
 
 LABOUR CO-PARTNERSHIP 249 
 
 in the air of a coming change in the attitude of both 
 employees and employed towards co-partnership. I 
 have received one or two most encouraging letters." 
 The letter that Holyoake wrote in the Times on August 
 25th, in reply to Jones, was written at Earl Grey's 
 suggestion. "You are," he said, "the best living 
 witness as to what was the faith of the founders of Co- 
 operation, and a ' slip of Owenism ' into the bargain." 
 When the letter appeared Earl Grey wrote : 
 
 " My Dear Mr. Holyoake, 
 
 " I read with much pleasure and grateful ap- 
 preciation your admirable letter in reply to Jones. The 
 press, with the exception of the Daily CJironide, is warmly 
 on our side, and if we keep pegging away we shall beat 
 the Wholesale. I have a party of about 450 Co-operators 
 coming here [Howick] next Saturday. They represent 
 the committees of the Northern Societies. The object of 
 the gathering is to impress them with their duties, 
 especially that of sending profit-sharers to Manchester. 
 Thanking you again for your most timely and valuable 
 letter in yesterday's Times.'''' 
 
 With such able protagonists furthering the efforts of 
 younger men like Mr. Vivian and still vigorous apostles 
 like Greening and Aneurin Williams, and in view of the 
 continuous progress of the Labour Association, Holy- 
 oake was not indisposed to sing a resigned Nunc 
 Dimittis ; though we shall still find industrious years to 
 chronicle. By his eightieth birthday the number of 
 Co-operative Societies had increased to 1,730, with a 
 million and a half members, and an annual trade of 
 sixty-one millions, in the United Kingdom alone. 
 Rarely was the parable of the mustard-seed so illus- 
 trated. Even if there were no hope of the co-partnership 
 of labour being accepted as an essential and general 
 feature, the movement was in itself a vast economic
 
 250 LABOUR CO-PARTNERSHIP 
 
 advantage to the workers of the country. But when he 
 saw that one fourth of these Co-operators had embodied 
 the idea in their Societies, and a large further proportion 
 were in favour of its adoption, and so many able and 
 devoted men worked for that adoption, he looked with 
 kindling eyes over the issue of his early exertions.
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION 
 
 During the years when Holyoake was bringing to its 
 
 culmination his work in the Co-operative world he was 
 
 engaged in a somewhat similar task with regard to his 
 
 Secularist activity. Full as his life had been of absorbing 
 
 ideals and vivid struggles, it will generally be admitted 
 
 that these two were to him the most permanent and 
 
 most treasured. So many, indeed, of his earlier tasks 
 
 had been quite accomplished. He saw a united and 
 
 prosperous Italy, a great Republic in France, and 
 
 comparative freedom in Hungary and Germany. He 
 
 moved amidst a transformed proletariate in his own 
 
 country, with a free and cheap press, cheap trains, free 
 
 education, a free Sunday, and vast political power. But 
 
 his Co-operative and Secularist ideals were only partly 
 
 realised, and must be preached to the end ; though 
 
 the enormous progress they had made lent cheering 
 
 confidence to the struggle. 
 
 I say that even his Secularist ideal had made enormous 
 
 progress, although, on the surface of the matter, here 
 
 seems to have been his most distinct failure. The 
 
 present chapter will show how, under the apparent 
 
 failure, he saw a real and stupendous success. He did 
 
 not measure that success by the small size or the spirit 
 
 of the National Secular Society. He realised in time 
 
 that, while he was looking anxiously for the return of that 
 
 251
 
 252 THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION 
 
 body to the lines on which he had first placed it, the 
 work he cherished had been proceeding in quite other 
 quarters, over the whole broad land, with rapid pace ; 
 and he came in the end to lead a fresh educative and 
 critical body that never gave him a moment's concern 
 as to the quality of its work, and that in a few 
 years numbered more members than the National 
 Secular Society had numbered in half a century. 
 This is the story of his last relations with those who 
 retained the name he had coined. Secularist, and of 
 his final and happy refuge in the Rationalist Press 
 Association. 
 
 Charles Bradlaugh died on January 30th, 1891. The 
 second truce that had been arranged between him and 
 Holyoake in 1882 or 1883 was unbroken until the time 
 of his death ; indeed, there had been only one brief 
 interruption of their attitude of mutual politeness since 
 1878. It is not idle to notice that, as Bradlaugh's 
 character matured, the friction between them lessened to 
 a vanishing point. So far did that maturing go that the 
 Pall Mall Gazette^ in an obituary leader on him, spoke 
 of his later "deferential and conciliatory attitude." On 
 the other hand, there were prominent freethinkers who 
 complained of his growing lukewarmness in their cause ; 
 even some of the closest friends of his early years, like 
 the poet Thomson, now assailed him with unparalleled 
 invective. Holyoake remained silent, and when the 
 lips of his former colleague were sealed for ever he 
 wrote only honouring notices of him (in the Bradford 
 Observer, the Argus, and other papers). He stood by the 
 grave-side at Brookwood, amongst the immense crowd 
 of mourners, and, as he believed and intended, gently 
 laid every trace of resentment in the grave. That they 
 were indeed more friendly towards the end is seen from 
 the fact that he was engaged to speak as substitute for
 
 THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION 253 
 
 Bradlauo-h at the Hall of Science on the following 
 Sunday. The intervention of death turned his address 
 into a funeral oration. 
 
 "He was," Holyoake said, to a crowded gathering, 
 " the most illustrious fighting propagandist they had ever 
 seen. They knew how much they had lost, the country 
 knew how much it had lost, and India knew how much 
 it had lost. Freedom could not be obtained by any 
 party if they shrank from the price to be paid for it. 
 Bradlaugh knew this, and he paid the price. He was a 
 great man because he had genius — the genius of liberty, 
 the genius of discovering how to advance the cause of 
 the people in ways that nobody else saw. He under- 
 stood the difference between wishing and willing. His 
 creed was to take the world as he found it, and try to 
 make it better." ^ 
 
 His law-suits and many other demands upon his 
 resources left little money at his death, and a subscrip- 
 tion was raised for his daughter. Later on funds were 
 collected for the erection of a monument. In both these 
 enterprises Holyoake took an active part. A letter from 
 his friend Thomas Burt shows that he was pressing the 
 collection within the House of Commons, and it is well 
 known that he induced " Edna Lyall " to make an appeal, 
 and so brought great increase to the funds. Miss Bayly 
 had, on hearing the situation, sent a gift of fifty pounds 
 to Mrs. Bonner (Bradlaugh's daughter), and Holyoake 
 then pressed her to write a letter to the papers on behalf 
 
 1 Ingersoll wrote him : " I have just read with great pleasure your 
 article on the career and character of Bradlaugh, and I think that you 
 have stated with admirable clearness the important things in his life. 
 Of course, I know that he lacked the subtlety and tenderness that excite 
 j-our admiration, but he certainly had force and strength, and moved in 
 straight lines towards a definite end." IngersoU's own letter on Brad- 
 laugh was so qualified that the National Reformer declined to insert it, 
 when Holyoake suggested this.
 
 2 54 THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION 
 
 of the fund. She at once wrote a generous letter that 
 greatly helped the subscription. In a note to Holyoake 
 she says that even her publishers have sent her a cheque 
 for ;;^25 for the fund.^ 
 
 In the following year Holyoake took part In a com- 
 memoration of Bradlaugh's birth at the South Place 
 Chapel, and, when there was (in 1893) an announcement 
 of the cessation of the National Reformer ^ he wrote to Mr. 
 J. M. Robertson, the editor : 
 
 " Dear Robertson, 
 
 " Count me among those who regret the cessa- 
 tion of the National Reformer, which has never had 
 stronger claims on intellectual Freethinkers than in your 
 hands." 
 
 But from the beginning of 1893 the clouds began to 
 settle on the horizon once more. Mrs. Bradlaugh- 
 Bonner was then writing the life of her father in serial 
 issues of the National Reformer, and each reference to 
 Holyoake was watched eagerly. Holyoake disliked the 
 character of most of them, and began to take exception to 
 them. A number of notes were exchanged with Mrs. 
 Bonner, who insisted that she thought Holyoake's atti- 
 tude had been *' one of profound personal antagonism 
 to my father." The biography was published in two 
 volumes in 1894, with the observations unmodified. 
 These remarks were naturally based upon statements 
 made in the Natio7ial Reformer by Mrs. Besant and Mr. 
 Bradlaugh in the heat of controversy, and it would 
 
 ^ Miss Bayly had some friendly correspondence with Holyoake, whom 
 she much admired, and this has given rise to the notion that she took 
 him as the model for Luke Raeburn in We Two. Others declared 
 that Bradlaugh was the model. I understand from a relative of 
 hers that Luke Raeburn is not intended to represent either of the 
 leading Secularists, though, no doubt, they would both be much in her 
 mind.
 
 THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION 255 
 
 be unknown to the later writers that Holyoake had 
 refuted most of them at the time ; but Mr. Bradlaugh had 
 failed to insert his corrections on the more material 
 issues. Holyoake's character was unpleasantly pre- 
 sented in many of these references, and the wide circu- 
 lation of the book, especially when it passed to a 
 cheaper edition in 1895, could not but cause him great 
 pain. He turned reluctantly to the bundles of dusty 
 letters and pamphlets which he had preserved in relation 
 to the various episodes, and of which I have made a 
 sparing use in this work. 
 
 Few men would, probably, have done the work of 
 exculpation in such circumstances with unruffled temper, 
 and Holyoake had in 1896 the nerves of an aged, ailing, 
 and injured man. In a little pamphlet which he entitled 
 The Warpath of Opinioji^ he challenged all the strictures 
 laid on him by his young critics, and resuscitated im- 
 pressions of Bradlaugh that he thought he had laid in 
 the open grave at Brookwood. The booklet had two 
 faults that one is not surprised to find in the work of an 
 octogenarian. It betrays irritation in tone, and it fails to 
 take all the advantage that his stores of material should 
 have enabled him to do. But the rumour of his work 
 spread amongst friends of both Holyoake and Bradlaugh, 
 and they induced him to suspend the publication of the 
 pamphlet. A few copies were given in confidence to 
 friends, but when he heard that the contents were being 
 discussed he promptly demanded that they should be 
 returned. " Vindication of myself is of small importance," 
 he wrote to ]V|r. Forder, " while dissensions, however 
 ill founded, would be an evil by diverting many from 
 useful work." He could not, however, avoid a feeling 
 of pain that friends who had not, as far as he knew, 
 attempted to have the imputations suppressed, were 
 now so insistent that he should not answer them. A
 
 2S6 THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION 
 
 letter that he wrote \.o the Sun will best exhibit his 
 feeling and intention, when the first irritation was 
 allayed : 
 
 " You rightly represent the paragraph that appeared 
 in the Literaiy Guide which says I have decided not to 
 publish the Warpath of Opmion. At present, the editor 
 might have said, for I have not relinquished my right to 
 publish what I please and when I please, in defence of 
 myself. The statements I controvert I thought were 
 dead and buried many years ago. But in these days of 
 spiritualism and mediums you never know when a dead 
 error may revisit the earth. I should not have troubled 
 about these things had they not been revived in volumes 
 described as ' historic,' and which in many respects 
 deserved to be long read. I never had that ' endemic 
 perennial fidget' (for which Cardinal Newman had just 
 contempt) about the effect of publishing personal truth 
 lest some persons should be shocked at discovering that 
 they had been misled. It has been in deference to one 
 person alone that I have deferred the publication of the 
 Warpath. Unity by suppression is a hollow thing in 
 any party : in a Rationalistic party it should be 
 impossible."^ 
 
 The pamphlet, I have said, suffers by comparison with 
 Holyoake's other works; but it must not be imagined 
 that it contained anything more than the common charges 
 against Bradlaugh. Colonel Ingersoll wrote of it (1898) : 
 
 " My Dear, Dear Friend, 
 
 " I read your book about Bradlaugh and a few 
 others, and I think I appreciate what they intended, and 
 realise what your feelings must be. Organisation always 
 
 ^ It was clearly his intention to have the pamphlet reserved among-st 
 his biographical material. Some years later, however (in 1901), he felt 
 again that his right to answer his critics was being unduly challenged, 
 and he allowed a few copies of the work to be sold. Mrs. Bonner then 
 wrote a pamphlet in reply.
 
 THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION 257 
 
 brings envy and all sorts of littleness to the front. It is 
 easy to work for a cause, but it is generally hard to work 
 with others. They become jealous and hostile. I want 
 just as little as possible to do with folks. I do not care 
 to lead, but I hate to follow the egotistic and idiotic. You 
 have always been for the right — for the cause without 
 regard to yourself. It was enough for you to be useful 
 ■ — useful in the highest sense. There are many Free- 
 thinkers who have but little humour, but little real heart. 
 . . . But no matter. You have done well. You have 
 earned the right to be serene and satisfied." 
 
 Indeed, the final summary of Holyoake's opinion of 
 Bradlaugh may well be reproduced here, lest the reader 
 take too unflattering a view of the contents of the 
 pamphlet. He wrote (p. 62) : 
 
 " When writers arise who know Mr. Bradlaugh's 
 whole career, a more discriminating and higher estimate 
 will be given of him than we have yet seen. Devotion 
 to pursuits of public usefulness did not, in his opinion, 
 absolve him from keeping a financial promise, as I knew, 
 and have heard friends who aided him testify — a virtue 
 not universal in this day. No wonder the environment 
 of his early life lent imperiousness to his manners. 
 In later years, when he was in the society of equals, 
 where masterfulness was less possible and necessary, he 
 acquired courtesy and a certain dignity — the attributes of 
 conscious power. He was the greatest agitator, within 
 the limits of the law, who appeared in my time among 
 the working people. He was a daring defender of public 
 right, and not without genius in discovering methods 
 for its attainment. Had he lived in the first French 
 Revolution, he had ranked with Mirabeau and Danton." 
 
 From this unpleasant episode we have, unhappily, to 
 turn to another before we conclude Holyoake's relations 
 with the Secularist body. It was imagined for a moment 
 
 VOL. |I, s
 
 258 THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION 
 
 that all its adherents could unite in action for the 
 Secularist cause after the solemn peace that fell over 
 Bradlaugh's grave. Mr. G. W. Foote was now presi- 
 dent of the National Secular Society, and Holyoake 
 again accepted a vice-presidentship, and resumed friendly 
 relations with Mr. Foote and Mr. Watts. With Mr. 
 Watts he remained friendly to the end, but what we 
 have previously seen will prepare the reader to expect a 
 speedy dissolution of the association with Mr. Foote. 
 On hearing that he had accepted the vice-presidentship, 
 Mr. Foote expressed a wish that Holyoake would be able 
 to join in active work with him for the reconstruction of 
 the National Secular Society. He complained that, of 
 late years, the work of the Society had been so much 
 neglected that a severe task was laid on him ; and he 
 desired that co-operation of the founder of Secularism 
 for the lack of which the cause had suffered so severely. 
 He proposed that the monument to Bradlaugh should 
 take the form of a " Bradlaugh Memorial Hall," and he 
 had Holyoake's support in meeting the violent quarrels 
 that arose out of the difference of opinion in the Secular 
 party as to the form of this memorial. 
 
 But by 1894 the new alliance was very rudely broken. 
 The incident that led to the rupture will have for most 
 readers an element of melodrama, if not of comedy, 
 especially when they hear that Holyoake incurred great 
 odium in the Secularist body on account of it. Some 
 years earlier the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes had written 
 a very rhetorical account of the conversion of an " atheist 
 shoemaker," but declined to give the real name of the 
 convert or any specific details by which to verify it. 
 After several years of vain attempt to draw him Mr. 
 Foote wrote a pamphlet on the matter. His criticism may 
 be summed up in his own heavy phrases, " palming off 
 lies as truth "and ** the deliberate dissemination of lies."
 
 THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION 259 
 
 He professed to be astonished when Mr. Hughes was not 
 induced by this kind of language to notice his demand 
 for details, and in a second edition of his pamphlet 
 (which bore the title A Lie in Five Chapters P) he said : 
 
 ''I unhesitatingly call Mr. Hughes's story « /ie from 
 beginning to end. It does not contain even a mixture 
 of truth ; it is pure, unadulterated falsehood." 
 
 Mr. Hughes had certainly been guilty of an artistic 
 treatment, without serious alteration, of the information 
 supplied to him ; but this reckless language gave him 
 his opportunity. He asked Holyoake, whom he knew 
 slightly, to investigate the story. Giving him the names 
 of his informants (two sisters of the Wesleyan Mission 
 and the convert's widow), he himself quitted London, 
 and held no further communication with Holyoake until 
 his opinion was given. 
 
 Holyoake at once found that every material word in 
 the story had actually been laid before Mr. Hughes by 
 these three witnesses, and they insisted that it was 
 correct. He reported, therefore, that the imputation of 
 " lying from beginning to end " was totally unjustified. 
 Indeed, there was not a single detail of consequence in 
 the narrative that was not repeated by the witnesses, and 
 so there was no ground whatever for a charge of men- 
 dacity. Whether Mr. Hughes ought to have made 
 a more laborious research was another matter, but on 
 the charge of fabricating Mr. Foote was hopelessly 
 discredited, and. Mr. Hugh Price Hughes fully vindi- 
 cated. Mr. Foote, however, adroitly shifted the whole 
 issue. He was forced to admit that the Wesleyan 
 Mission had taken under their care a young shoemaker, 
 who represented himself (and was still more strongly 
 represented by his wife) as an atheist. He came now to 
 the conclusion that "Julia [the widow] deceived Mr.
 
 26o THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION 
 
 Hughes and the sisters, and kept up the deception when 
 introduced to Mr. Holyoake." Instead, however, of ex- 
 pressing the least regret at having branded Mr. Hughes 
 as a dehberate har and fabricator "from beginning to 
 end," he wrote a fresh pamphlet, with the sub-title, A 
 Study in Lyings and repeated in it the most offensive of 
 his epithets, with a few more. He insisted that witnesses 
 were "invented" by Mr. Hughes; triumphantly dis- 
 proved the statement that the convert was a lecturer — a 
 statement only made by himself, and explicitly disclaimed 
 by Mr. Hughes ;^ and on the slenderest evidence denied 
 the young man's own statement that he had been an 
 atheist. 
 
 The episode was so trivial in itself, and Holyoake's 
 verdict was so just and inevitable, that the reader will 
 learn with amazement that even educated Freethinkers 
 wrote him letters that gave him great pain. Usually, 
 the burden of them was a complaint of " injury to the 
 party." But the action of the executive of the National 
 Secular Society relieved Holyoake of any concern on 
 that account. They passed a resolution, a copy of 
 which was sent to Holyoake, expressing " warm ap- 
 proval of the President's action " and "a hope that Mr. 
 Holyoake would see his way to send a communication 
 to the President that will satisfy the expectations of the 
 Secular party." When Holyoake made a few natural 
 observations on this notion that he should apologise to 
 Mr. Foote for having pricked the balloon of his rhetoric, 
 the executive wrote again. They were surprised at " Mr. 
 
 ^ Mr. Hughes had said — quite fairly on the Information before him — 
 that the man had often spoken, and felt "the glow of oratory," in the 
 parks and Secularist halls. Mr. Foote, of all men, should have recol- 
 lected how much of the talking is done by unknown men in the audience 
 in such places, at the close of the lecture. But the reader who wishes 
 to understand Holyoake's feeling at the time will probably find it 
 suPTicient to read Mr. Foote's two pamphlets — noting, especially, the 
 addition in the second edition of the first pamphlet.
 
 THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION 261 
 
 Holyoake's fantastic misconception of the Executive's 
 plain and civil message," assured him that only Mr. 
 Foote's generous entreaties had ensured moderation in 
 their language, and expressed their " profound regret 
 that Mr. Holyoake's tender regard for the susceptibilities 
 of the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes has led him to act so 
 ungenerously and unjustly to the President of the 
 National Secular Society " ! 
 
 To this extraordinary missive the only possible answer 
 was silence. When, in the following year, the National 
 Secular Hall Company, of which Holyoake was still a 
 director, fell into serious difficulties, he retired from that 
 enterprise also. His great crime, however, seems to 
 have been condoned, as he wrote frequently in the Free- 
 thinker after 1896, and there are some genial letters to 
 him from Mr. Foote down to igoi. But his critical 
 interest in theology was now finding embodiment in a 
 new institution that promised better results and more 
 cultivated methods. A few detached Societies — such as 
 the admirable Secular Society at Leicester and the Secu- 
 lar School at Failsworth — still worked in the spirit of his 
 old ideal of Secularism, but the work of the movement 
 generally interested him less and less, and he looked 
 without concern on the gradual decay of its branches 
 and depopulation of its halls. 
 
 The reader will recollect that these attacks upon Holy- 
 oake from two different quarters of the freethinking camp 
 coincide with a period of protracted illness, and must 
 have caused him some sadness. He knew well how 
 much he had sacrificed in fidelity to his Secularist 
 opinions, yet there was no field he had ever worked in 
 where those who profited by his early labours assailed 
 him so bitterly, and on such trivial grounds, as in this 
 field. Fortunately, as the last decade of the century 
 wore on, a new organisation appeared to which he could
 
 262 THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION 
 
 with confidence entrust the essential features of his early- 
 ideal. This was the publishing committee that in time 
 became the well-known Rationalist Press Association. 
 In speaking- of the success of his work in this field, I am 
 not merely referring to the advance of this Association. 
 Even had it not appeared, Holyoake might still have 
 contemplated the decay of Secularism without concern. 
 The theology of 1900 was a very different theology from 
 that he had heard in his youth : the clergy of 1900 were 
 a very different body from the clergy of 1830. The 
 marvellous broadening of the Churches themselves was 
 far more significant than the founding of any society 
 with a few hundred advanced members. 
 
 Yet he had interest in the formation of a society that 
 should provide a common centre for liberal thinkers, and 
 convey the more advanced truths of science, history, and 
 philosophy to the mass of the people. As early as 1887 
 I find Mr. H. L. Braskstad, an old friend of his, writing 
 to him : 
 
 " Your idea of the Central Bureau for Freethinkers 
 has grown upon me since I saw you last Saturday. I 
 see more and more the importance of it, especially if it 
 were possible to open it in some nice and pleasant rooms 
 in a central thoroughfare. During my walks last week 
 I kept my eyes open, especially in Fleet Street, Strand, 
 Charing Cross, and the lower part of Regent Street." 
 
 Three years afterwards we discover the first germ of 
 the later Association. Holyoake had found at last the 
 necessary auxiliary in the publisher, Mr. C. A. Watts, 
 and in the little office of his printing and publishing 
 establishment in Johnson's Court the new organisation, 
 called at first the Propagandist Press Committee, was 
 inaugurated in 1890. Holyoake was president of the 
 Committee, and he remained president, through its
 
 THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION 263 
 
 successive changes into Rationalist Press Committee 
 and Rationalist Press Association, until the day of his 
 death. Its object was from the start defined as " to assist 
 in the production and circulation of liberal publications." 
 For many years scholarly works of an advanced character 
 could not find publication in the ordinary way, on account 
 of the smallness of the circulation, and the task of the 
 Committee was to collect funds from its few score members 
 to defray the expense of issuing two or three such works 
 every year. 
 
 The Committee made steady progress under Holy- 
 oake's presidency, and before his death he saw its 
 membership rise beyond the membership of the National 
 Secular Society in Mr. Bradlaugh's most active years 
 (Bradlaugh gave the number as 1190), and enter upon a 
 phase of activity that left all earlier organisations of that 
 character far behind. In 1899 the Committee was dis- 
 solved, or merged in the legally incorporated Rationalist 
 Press Association, of which Holyoake became president. 
 Its growth was now more rapid, and in 1902 it began to 
 issue the sixpenny reprints of large and important pub- 
 lications with which its name is generally associated. 
 In two years, with its slender publishing resources and 
 in spite of the reserve with which such publications were 
 still largely regarded, it sold 600,000 copies of these 
 books. The number was more than doubled during the 
 following three years, despite the fact that the Association 
 had loosed an avalanche of cheap literature in which its 
 more serious works had little prominence. In this new 
 atmosphere, and with such strong indications of perma- 
 nence about him, Holyoake felt that the critical work to 
 which he had always attached such importance would, 
 when the pen fell from his own nerveless hand, be still 
 maintained in the spirit he desired. Secularism in the 
 old sense was no longer practicable. The hundred
 
 264 THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION 
 
 interests in secular causes that he had once thought 
 to bind up in one organisation were now entrusted to a 
 hundred intent and specialised bodies. The one thing 
 that remained was the criticism of what he believed to be 
 erroneous religious traditions, in a broad, cultured, refined 
 way, and with a care to impart positive education while 
 older views were being modified or removed. He was 
 satisfied that this was, and would continue to be, the 
 work of the Rationalist Press Association. And, al- 
 though he gradually resigned nearly every other official 
 position before the end came, he died president of the 
 new Association. This work is its tribute to his genial 
 and inspiring personality. 
 
 In the course of the nineties he undertook other pieces 
 of subsidiary work in connection with his Rationalist 
 propaganda. The most important of these was the 
 founding of a Liberty of Bequest Committee, of which 
 he was president from its inception, early in the nineties, 
 until near the close of his life. The freedom of bodies 
 of heretics was still restricted by several laws, in spite of 
 the enormous progress made in his time. One of these 
 laws was the Sunday Act, which prevented them, where 
 it was rigorously enforced, from charging for admission 
 to their lectures on Sundays, and so put them at an 
 unfair disadvantage. Another injustice arose from the 
 state of the law in regard to bequests. Time after time 
 legacies to freethinking bodies were confiscated by persons 
 to whom the testator did not destine them, on the ground 
 that the purpose of the legacy was illegal. Holyoake 
 stood for a fair combat of truth and error, on whichever 
 side they stood, and resented all such denial of resources 
 to propagandist associations. 
 
 In 1893, therefore, he framed a Bill to meet the in- 
 justice, and entitled it the " Civil and Religious Liberty 
 Bill." Mr. Manfield introduced it for him in November.
 
 THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION 265 
 
 The Times relates that there was " Opposition laughter" 
 when Mr. (Sir Philip) Manfield gave notice of his inten- 
 tion, and he wrote to Holyoake : 
 
 *' The deed is done ! I was horribly nervous, but got 
 through it very well. The friends of Civil and Religious 
 Liberty (or, I ought perhaps to say, my friends) cheered 
 — the enemy laughed. I am afraid all this was ironical, 
 but it is over until Tuesday, when it is down for second 
 reading. Will you be up on Monday ? I feel I want a 
 mentor ! Should I not say coach? " 
 
 Manfield had succeeded Bradlaugh at Northampton — 
 much (he says) to the irritation of Mr. Gurney — and had 
 had little experience of speaking in the House. Even a 
 much stronger man would hardly have been able to carry 
 such a Bill, and it was dropped. It was, moreover, looked 
 upon with coldness by the president of the National 
 Secular Society, who wanted a more specifically Secu- 
 larist measure. Holyoake continued to preside over the 
 meetings of the Committee, but it seems to have dis- 
 solved, without any definite attainment, a few years 
 before his death. 
 
 In 1896 he published his last Secularist work. The 
 Origin and Nature of Secidarisvi. The book is interesting 
 as a presentment of his final conception of one of the 
 chief works of his life. Two points especially are note- 
 worthy. In the first place the reader is warned from 
 the first page that " secular " is a very different matter 
 from "Secularist." There seems to be some tardy 
 recognition that his earlier ideal was too broad and vague. 
 While " the secular neither ignores, assails, nor denies 
 theology," he holds that " Secularism does conflict with 
 theology." His philosophy is no longer merely a zeal 
 for secular interests, in which the Christian may unite 
 with the Agnostic. " What nobody seems to discern,"
 
 266 THE RATIONALTST PRESS ASSOCIATION 
 
 he says, " is that things secular are in themselves quite 
 distinct from Secularism." But while he has thus given 
 a needed precision to his system, he has by no means 
 adopted the current idea of Secularism. The purpose 
 of his work is, he says in a sub-title of it, to show " that 
 where Freethought commonly ends Secularism begins." 
 His meaning, fully elucidated in the later chapters, is 
 that Secularism is " the extension of Freethought to 
 Ethics " : not the extension of the critical method to 
 moral conceptions, though this is necessary, but the 
 expansion of Freethought so as to include a strong 
 positive moral culture. 
 
 In this way his philosophy has become clearly defined 
 and distinctly practicable. I need not enter into a dis- 
 cussion of the negative features of it. Suffice it to say 
 that he accepted no Christian dogma, and not even the 
 most attenuated shade of theism. On all these points 
 he was a pure Agnostic, and thanked Huxley for the 
 term. He resented the term Atheist, because most of 
 those who would apply it to him understood it to involve 
 a more or less dogmatic denial of the existence of a 
 Supreme Being. Even in the forties, when he bore 
 the name for a short time (during the editorship of the 
 Oracle)^ he merely took it to express the fact that he was 
 without such belief, not that he considered it could be 
 disproved ; and he almost immediately began to coin 
 substitutes for it, such as Netheist, Limitationist, and 
 so on. 
 
 On its positive side the last statement of his philo- 
 sophy, from which he never wavered, is more interesting 
 in that it shows advance in a practical direction. He 
 still makes his system rest on three broad principles : 
 
 " I. The improvement of this life by material means. 
 
 2. That science is the available Providence of man. 
 
 3. That it is good to do good."
 
 THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION 267 
 
 But he now realises that this work is mainly done by 
 "secular," as distinct from "Secularist," agencies. In 
 the sense of those propositions, if they are not taken as 
 exclusive, we are all Secularists to-day. Something 
 more distinctive — something that would mark his system 
 off from negativism on the one hand and from secular 
 issues in general on the other — was needed, and this he 
 finds in the cultivation of character. His position was 
 not only a strictly logical development from the views 
 he had expounded in Owenite halls sixty years before, 
 but it had a place in the life about him. He saw on 
 many sides the growth of Ethical Societies, which were 
 understood to ignore theology and concentrate on the 
 human cultivation of character. With these he always 
 had cordial relations. But his Secularism, in his final 
 conception, must "conflict with theology." On the 
 other hand, he had seen for sixty years what might be 
 the effect of making such conflict the whole of one's 
 task. It involved no test of taste, or character, or 
 culture, and unworthy types of men might be very 
 successful at it. This defect of purely negative Secular- 
 ism would be met by a positive concern for rational 
 culture in art, science, and morality. You do not help 
 a weak or diseased man much by simply burning his 
 crutches. You must strengthen his limbs. 
 
 I have quoted a few interesting comments on this 
 last Secularist volume of Holyoake's in earlier chapters. 
 We saw that Gladstone read a hundred pages of it (out 
 of 130) without any jarring sensation, as he put it. The 
 comment of Dr. J. Parker also will interest many : 
 
 "My Dear Mr. Holyoake, 
 
 " I am glad to have your ' Secularism,' though 
 I knew it all in substance long ago. Your Secularism 
 confirms my Christianity. I have thought it not unwise 
 or irreverent to form some conception of the beginning
 
 268 THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION 
 
 and progress of things so far as I could get at them, 
 and the result of all my inquiry and consideration is 
 that I have adopted the doctrine of Jesus Christ of 
 Nazareth as by far the best I have yet seen. Like your- 
 self, I want to get at the truth, whatever may become of 
 prejudice, superstition, or the glamour of old associations. 
 I account every man orthodox who is honestly endeavour- 
 ing to get at the truth, however much his conclusions 
 may differ from mine. After carefully studying the 
 ministry and purpose of Jesus Christ, I have no hesitation 
 in saying that Christianity, as it is presented in the 
 New Testament, covers more ground, answers more 
 questions, supplies better reasons, and inspires nobler 
 motives, than any other conception known to me. It is 
 quite possible that the Christian case requires new 
 definition and re-statement (I am quite sure that ecclesi- 
 astical Christianity has often done more harm than 
 good), though I am profoundly assured that Jesus Christ 
 himself only requires to be known to be accepted, adored, 
 and obeyed. He will have no lazy followers, no selfish 
 followers, no unreasoning followers ; if any of his nominal 
 followers are lazy, selfish, or unreasoning, he disowns 
 and denounces them. This is how I read his argument 
 and appeal. I wish we could have a long day's talk. 
 No effort would be made on my part to make you a 
 sectarian, but I should supremely like to show you the 
 Christ of God as he appeals to my understanding, my 
 heart, and my reverent imagination. You have proved 
 your sincerity by life-long penalty nobly borne, for 
 which reason, kindly permit me to say so, I hold your 
 character, not in admiration only, but in grateful 
 reverence. 
 
 " Ever sincerely yours, 
 
 "Joseph Parker." 
 
 Every letter spelt progress. This was not, in the 
 dogmatic sense, the Joseph Parker he had encountered 
 at Banbury fifty years before. His letter is strangely 
 like that of Gladstone, commenting on the same book.
 
 THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION 269 
 
 in its subdued note and its furtive vision of coming 
 change. One other letter may be quoted as an indication 
 of that wide change in religious feeling that Holyoake 
 marked so keenly in his last decade. Amongst the 
 men of science and letters whom he asked to lend their 
 names to the Rationalist Press Association, in 1899, was 
 Lord Hobhouse, who sent him the following reply : 
 
 " I have just received an appeal on behalf of a Ration- 
 alist Press Association, of which I infer that you are 
 the prime mover. I speak of my advanced age with 
 diffidence, because I am addressing a man whom I 
 believe to be older than myself, and yet who is con- 
 spicuously active in promoting what he believes to be 
 truth and justice. But my energies are fast dying out, 
 and I feel extremely averse from joining any fresh 
 societies or combinations. At the same time, increased 
 length of life has continually brought to me increase of 
 conviction that, important as is authority, tradition, or 
 custom, for the support of our weak human nature, 
 the free play of the most divine faculty in man, his 
 reason, is far more essential ; and that it is very difficult 
 to exercise, while acquiescence in use and wont is easy 
 enough. I see, or think I see, in this generation a lazy 
 relapse to ruder and less noble ideals of life — the military, 
 the priestly, the autocratic ; with the consequent habit of 
 praying to Hercules instead of putting a shoulder to the 
 wheel, and of looking to be guided and protected by 
 somebody else through the hard places of life instead 
 of overcoming them by self-exertion. Those who are 
 called Rationalists appear to me to be doing, as they 
 have long done, very valuable work under great dis- 
 couragement, by continually calling on their fellow-men 
 to bring assertions to the test of reason and to rely on 
 themselves." 
 
 Lord Hobhouse felt that his age prevented him from 
 taking any active part, but he enclosed a cheque for 
 £2<i. Others — notably Sir Leslie Stephen — gave their
 
 270 THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION 
 
 names to the Association, and followed its work with 
 interest. It gradually attracted so many men of ability 
 that all danger was precluded of its ever falling into the 
 precarious position of the earlier movements — of becom- 
 ing a one-man movement — and Holyoake passed into 
 his ninth decade of life with the feeling that, on this side 
 also, his life-work was falling into hands that could be 
 trusted.
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 HOLYOAKE AS A WRITER 
 
 In the earlier chapters of this work I gave a brief 
 analysis of, or, at least, a reference to each volume or 
 pamphlet that Holyoake issued. It soon became clear 
 that, if the practice were maintained throughout, the 
 work would attain proportions that had not been con- 
 templated. Indeed, so large a number of his smaller 
 publications were ephemeral in their nature, and would 
 require explanations out of proportion to their import- 
 ance, that on this ground alone the practice had to be 
 discarded. But a feeling will have grown upon the 
 reader that, in spite of the thousands of lectures that he 
 delivered, with all the exhausting travel that they imply, 
 and the incessant preoccupation with committees of 
 reform-movements, Holyoake contrived to maintain, 
 not only a large, but an admirable literary output, and 
 a few pages may well be devoted to this part of his 
 activity. 
 
 A list of his publications will be found at the end of 
 the present volume, but, although it has had the great 
 advantage of being prepared by a special student of the 
 matter, Mr. Goss, it would be unsafe to describe it as 
 complete. Holyoake's literary activity covers a period 
 of sixty-four years — almost a record in literary output — 
 and many of his small pamphlets may very well have 
 escaped the very careful search that has been made. 
 
 Many, certainly, have quite disappeared, though some 
 
 271
 
 272 HOLYOAKE AS A WRITER 
 
 chance reference or advertisement tells of their having 
 been published. These are included in the list, though 
 I have not seen them. As it is, I have read more than a 
 hundred separate publications of his, from two-page 
 leaflets (very few in number) to two-volume works, 
 besides many thousands of journalistic and magazine 
 articles. The total number of his separate publications, 
 besides the few that may have escaped notice, is i66, 
 three of which have two large volumes each. That is, 
 of course, not a very large output, absolutely speaking, 
 but when one fits it in the frame of so industrious and 
 distracted a life it is remarkable. 
 
 Much more remarkable, however, is the range of 
 subjects on which he wrote with effect. Religion, 
 politics, and co-operation are the chief themes that 
 occupied his pen, but he took journalistic licence to 
 roam ; and as a lecturer — " a pedlar in opinions," as he 
 put it, or a purveyor of all kinds of truth from the 
 academic workshops to the mass of the people — he was 
 forced to cultivate variety. An enormous number of his 
 pamphlets are reprinted journalistic articles or printed 
 lectures. A hostile writer in a Lincoln paper a few 
 years ago gave, in spiteful terms, some idea of the 
 procedure : 
 
 " Mr. G. J. Holyoake is a curious survival of a past 
 school of pre-Agnosticism. Between 1845 and 1855 he 
 figured as a kind of diluted philosopher, who moralised 
 on progress, as he attached himself to the fringe of 
 advanced movements, after the manner of a fly on a 
 wheel buzzing its satisfaction : ' How we ^o round.' 
 Last year Mr. Holyoake published a book of reminis- 
 cences, entitled Sixty Years of an Agitator s Life, which 
 contains some pleasant reading, if we overlook the 
 predominance of the first personal pronoun [in an auto- 
 biography !]. In his time he has written some striking 
 books, which to those ignorant of his personality would
 
 HOLYOAKE AS A WRITER 273 
 
 lead one to suppose the author to be a much abler man 
 than he is, although he is by no means destitute of 
 ability. He is a born rhetorician, whose business it is to 
 elaborate pretty sentences. For years he would lecture 
 upon a subject until every metaphor was polished like an 
 electro-plated proverb ; then he would publish it as a 
 booklet. The booklet was far cleverer than the man." 
 
 The conception of Holyoake as a fly on the wheels of 
 the democratic chariot is hardly less absurd than the 
 theory that a writer's books can be abler than himself. 
 But the writer — if, as I see good reason to believe, it was 
 Stewart Ross — knew something of books, and of the way 
 in which Holyoake made them. Large numbers of his 
 booklets, and many chapters of his more important 
 works, made their first appearance in the form of 
 lectures. Even in later years, when little of the lecture 
 needed to be written in advance, he would make 
 rough notes in a large hand on nondescript slips of 
 paper, and amongst these one is sure to find an epigram 
 or two. He delighted in choice phrases, rather than 
 moving ones ; and the preference suited his slight 
 physique and quick mind. The number of these 
 " electro-plated proverbs " — a good phrase — would grow, 
 as he continued to give the lecture (sometimes for a year 
 or two), and at length the whole matter w^ould appear as 
 an eight or sixteen-page pamphlet. Many chapters of 
 Sixty Years and Bygones^ especially those that deal with 
 the characteristics of orators or statesmen, first took 
 shape in this way. 
 
 I think it will hardly be disputed that, if his life had 
 not been so crowded with propagandist work, he would 
 have attained a high mark in literature. As it is, his 
 works are generally entertaining and often fascinating. 
 We have the light fluent pen of the ideal journalist, and 
 the unfailing humour and originality that give the reader 
 
 VOL. II T
 
 274 HOLYOAKE AS A WRITER 
 
 security against dulness. I have quoted so many in- 
 stances of this that even those who have not read his 
 Amo7ig the Americans, or Sixty Years, or Bygofies, or 
 History of Co-operatio7i, will need no further comment 
 on it. There were few subjects except religion — and 
 religion is not wholly an exception — that did not 
 sparkle under his treatment. The evolution of his gift 
 of humour is curious. One finds no trace of it in the 
 fragments of his early diary or letters, or in the records 
 of his earliest apostolate. The first flash that I can trace 
 was the impetuous phrase that was rewarded with six 
 months in Gloucester Jail, and it seems to have been in 
 the jail that it fully developed. From that time, at all 
 events, we find his letters and articles exhibiting the 
 playfulness that attracts in most of his later writing. 
 
 Besides humour, he had a considerable measure of 
 originality, generally a happy originality, that gave 
 distinction to his pen. He tells somewhere of a printer 
 who made an altogether ridiculous phrase out of a few 
 words in the manuscript of one of his books. He 
 protested that the reader's common-sense ought not to 
 have passed such a sentence, when the man observed, 
 quite seriously : " Well, I took it that it was one of your 
 quaintnesses of phrase, Mr. Holyoake." He had 
 originality of mind, as our whole story tells, and was 
 happy in having a proportionately flexible diction. 
 There was some truth in Dr. Collyer's saying that 
 " nature only made one impression when he was struck 
 off." His earliest studies were in the anatomy of 
 thought and speech (grammar and logic) — living thought 
 and speech, not the dead subjects of manuals of the time 
 — and he reaped the full advantage of them. They 
 saved him from the habit the busy journalist acquires of 
 writing so much in conventional phrases. He always 
 endeavoured to find time to say things in a fresh way,
 
 HOLYOAKE AS A WRITER 275 
 
 without doing violence to the language, as the writer 
 intent on originality is apt to do. When to these gifts 
 we add a fine taste, wide and varied reading, an excellent 
 memory, and constant intercourse with brilliant talkers, 
 we have the elements of a good writer. But, as I have 
 hinted, he never had the leisure or the education to 
 become a great writer. There are passages in his later 
 works that might be quoted as models by a teacher of 
 letters ; but on the next page one might find a passage 
 that would shock the teacher. 
 
 A passage that he wrote in his eighty-sixth year 
 {Bygones, I, 56) runs : 
 
 " Some of the happiest evenings of [my] younger days 
 were spent in the rooms of university students. It was 
 pleasant to be near persons who dwelt in the kingdom of 
 knowledge, who could wander at will on the mountain 
 tops of science and literature, and have glimpses of 
 unknown lands of light which I might never see. Who 
 has seen London under the reign of the sun, after a 
 sullen, fitful season, knows how wondrous is the trans- 
 formation. Like the sheen of the gods the glittering 
 rays descend, dispelling and absorbing the sombre 
 clouds. A radiance rests on turret and roof. Then 
 hidden creatures that crawl or fly come forth and put on 
 golden tints. The cheerless poor emerge from their 
 fireless chambers with the grateful emotions of sun- 
 worshippers." 
 
 Bygones Worth Remembering was written when the 
 shadow of death was visibly coming over him, yet it has 
 numbers of fine passages like this, and plenty of fresh 
 epigrams. When he recollects the proverb, *' Let by- 
 gones be bygones," he retorts : " Proverbs are like 
 plants : they have a soil and climate in which alone they 
 flourish." Some of the best qualities of his writing are 
 well illustrated here and there in the book. He says of
 
 276 HOLYOAKE AS A WRITER 
 
 his energetic friend Joseph Cowen : " I was struck with 
 the dexterity with which he put a word of fire into a tame 
 sentence, infused colour into a pale-faced expression, and 
 established a pulse in an anaemic one." Cowen's 
 editorial pencil would have respected that sentence. It 
 recalls his comment on Robert Owen's works : " It was 
 said of Montaigne that his sentences were vascular and 
 alive, and, if you pricked them, they bled. If you 
 pricked Mr. Owen's, when he wrote on his system, you 
 lost your needle in the wool." 
 
 Bygones, his last work, has a surprising" vitality, 
 optimism, and dignity in the circumstances of its pro- 
 duction. It is, like Sixty Vea^s, rather a collection of 
 reminiscences of other people than an autobiography, 
 though it naturally contains much autobiographic mat- 
 ter. Apart from the splendid cheerfulness of its close, a 
 rare example of octogenarian optimism which I will 
 quote later, it is chiefly distinguished and valuable for its 
 sketches of the prominent men who had gone before him 
 into the silence. Harriet Martineau's portraits were his 
 admiration, and, no doubt, largely his model. "Statues 
 sculptured from life," he calls them. They are " not like 
 the false eulogies of the dead, which, by pretending 
 perfection, lie to the living, where silence on errors or 
 deficiencies are of the nature of deceit." The ungram- 
 matical "are" reminds us of his limitations; for a 
 grammarian he slumbered too often. But he was as 
 capable as Harriet Martineau of good and true char- 
 acterisation. Of Bradlaugh he finely says : 
 
 " The coarse environments of his early life lent im- 
 periousness to his manners. In later years, when he 
 was in the society of equals, where masterfulness was 
 less possible and less necessary, he acquired courtesy 
 and a certain dignity — the attribute of conscious power. 
 He was the greatest agitator, within the limits of the law,
 
 HOLYOAKE AS A WRITER 277 
 
 who appeared in my time among the working people. 
 . . . That from so low a station he should have risen 
 so high, and, after reaching the very platform of his 
 splendid ambition, should die in the hour of his oppor- 
 tunity of triumph, was one of the tragedies of public life 
 that touched the heart of the nation, in whose eyes Mr. 
 Bradlaugh had become a commanding figure." 
 
 Nothing juster has been written of Bradlaugh ; and 
 this was written immediately after his daughter had 
 made a severe attack on Holyoake. Gladstone, Mazzini, 
 Mill, Newman, Spencer, Cowen, G. Eliot, and Harriet 
 Martineau are drawn just as well, and from personal 
 knowledge. Of Gladstone's conversation he says : " It 
 was like an oration in miniature ; its exactness, its 
 modulation, its force of expression, its foreseeingness of 
 all the issues, came at will." 
 
 His chapter on Disraeli is biassed, but one of the best 
 in the book. He compares him with Lassalle, with the 
 same audacity with which he compares Gladstone with 
 Voltaire. The only contrast he notices is that, while 
 both issued a challenge to a duel, " Disraeli had the 
 prudence to challenge Daniel O'Connell, who, he knew, 
 was under a vow not to fight one." "He was capable 
 of serving any party, but preferred the party that could 
 best serve him." It is tantalising that he includes no 
 chapter on Chamberlain. It must have been one of his 
 disappointments that he died too soon to pen one. 
 
 Bygones was a further instalment of recollections, given 
 in answer to the popular craving engendered by Sixty 
 Years. Its earlier chapters hav^e the weakness of such 
 supplementary works, but the convenient death of so 
 many people he had known gave him fresh opportunities. 
 " You would make an article out of your grandmother," 
 T. B. Potter once wrote him in playful impatience. It 
 would have had the excuse of being interesting. Father
 
 278 HOLYOAKE AS A WRITER 
 
 Bernard Vaughan once defined oratory as "the art of 
 saying most about least." Holyoake's pen was familiar 
 with that art, though there is usually substance in his 
 chapters. He had the eighteenth-century gift of writing 
 an essay on a broom-stick, or something equally arid to 
 the common writer, and making his reader go through 
 every line. " The light, firm touch and quiet epigram 
 would make the dullest subject readable," George H. 
 Lewes said, after reading one of his books. 
 
 Sixty Years was written in the maturity of his power. 
 I need say little of it, partly because I have inserted so 
 many phrases and passages as we proceeded, partly 
 because every reader of this chapter will have read it. 
 The charm of the work is not by any means due solely 
 to the series of romantic episodes and characters it recalls. 
 " This is a book before which criticism finds itself dis- 
 armed," one of its chief reviewers observed. No book 
 of recollections was ever better worth writing, and not 
 many of recent years have been better written. Terse- 
 ness, ease, and humour are remarkably combined in his 
 style. The only chapter we could dispense with is the 
 first, in which he expounds his excuses for writing the 
 book. His defects of training peep out at times — as in 
 the sentence : " George Cruikshank was one whom, when 
 Jerrold saw him enter the committee-room, exclaimed," 
 etc. — but the work abounds in qualities that no training 
 could have given. " I had some instinct of art," he 
 says, quaintly enough. " I admired Robespierre — not 
 on account of principles ascribed to him, but because he 
 used one-sized paper, and wrote out himself all his 
 speeches in a large and careful hand. No one can do 
 that without detecting verbiage, irrelevance, and limp- 
 ness of expression. But, though I knew the plan to be 
 good, I never had time to follow it." The two pages 
 that follow this (in ch. xxvi) are sufficient proof of his
 
 NOLYOAKE AS A WRITER 279 
 
 " instinct for art." But the work has obtained recognition 
 in its class, and is well known. When David Masson 
 read every word of it, less voracious readers will have 
 gone through it more than once. 
 
 These two works are, as I said, largely made up of 
 earlier lectures and articles, and any who cares to turn 
 back to the Reasoner and Chronicle can trace the improve- 
 ment of his qualities. From his earliest articles in the 
 Oi'acle he was clear, terse, epigrammatic, and uncommon ; 
 though he was never oracular. Most of his readers 
 would say that he was saved from this by his sense of 
 modesty ; I should prefer to say, by his sense of taste. 
 Refinement was his first quality ; humour the second. 
 So his dangerous originality never degenerated into 
 eccentricity, but remained usefully fertile in suggesting 
 titles, of which he was prodigal. 
 
 It would involve too much repetition to run over the 
 general classes of his publications. I may recall only 
 that the largest class — his Co-operative works and essays 
 — have two defects, from the literary point of view. 
 The chief one is the inability, or want of time, to fit his 
 material into a symmetrical frame — in chronological or 
 some other natural order. The historian or biographer 
 should build after the manner of the modern American 
 architect. He must first erect the steel frame of his 
 structure, and then fill it in, carefully concealing it, with 
 his material. Holyoake had — he prided himself on this — 
 the keen instinct of the journalist to get at facts, which 
 gives great value to his historical and biographical work ; 
 and he could put art and brightness into what threatened 
 to be the dullest chapter, as he went along. But he had 
 the corresponding defect of a lack of large and compre- 
 hensive arrangement. It must also be borne in mind 
 that the familiar edition of his Histoiy of Co-operation was 
 issued, and partly written, in his extreme old age, with
 
 28o HOLYOAKE AS A WRITER 
 
 failing power and dimness of eye. What I call the 
 other defect is only such from the purely literary point 
 of view : it is the defect of a quality. His propagandist 
 ardour for profit-sharing is too insistent. However, 
 most of these works are propagandist, and the ardour will 
 be accounted a virtue. His six histories of Co-operation 
 (early history, general history, histories of the Rochdale, 
 Leeds, and Derby Societies, and Co-operation To-day) 
 form one of the most solid pieces of work he has left 
 behind ; and his biographies — R. Owen, Hetherington, 
 R. Stephens, R. Carlile, T. Cooper, and Mill, besides 
 articles in the Dictionary — will be used by historians. 
 And, apart from his historical labours, all his literary 
 resources have been generously used for sixty years in 
 presenting the Co-operative principle. That involves 
 repetition, yet there is amazing freshness even in his 
 latest pamphlets, such as Essentials of Co-operative 
 Education. 
 
 Of his early educational works it is not necessary to 
 say much. They must be judged by their age (1840- 
 1852). In that age they were excellent, for he was an 
 able and — what was rarer — an enlightened teacher of the 
 young, and some of them are still of advantage. His 
 Co-operative Movement To-day is read, by official instruc- 
 tion, in the schools of Canada to-day. Wendell Phillips 
 made a manual of his Public Speaking ajtd Debate, and 
 Dr. Parker contributed to circulate it in our time. 
 
 His political writings are slight, but the Liberal 
 historian will find their effect without a microscopic 
 scrutiny of the life of the nineteenth century. Early 
 booklets such as Organisation not of Arfns, but of Ideas, 
 helped considerably to turn the workers from Chartism 
 to Radicalism, and so to build up the force of modern 
 Liberalism from the extremes of Whiggery and Anarchy. 
 Many a later pamphlet hit its mark ; notably, the
 
 HOLYOAKE AS A WRITER 281 
 
 Liberal Situation^ New Defence of the Ballot^ Working-class 
 Representation, and Patriotism by Charity. In many other 
 matters he helped the cause of sober progress — temper- 
 ance, the Sunday opening of museums, public execu- 
 tions, emigration, trades unions, international exhibitions, 
 bribery,^ etc. On all these questions he wrote pamphlets, 
 and his terse, arresting style must have given them 
 influence. I know only one pamphlet of his that wholly 
 missed its mark. This was a curious reprint from the 
 Newcastle Chronicle, with the title A Suppressed Princess, 
 which he issued (under the name of " Landor Praed ") 
 in 1863, It was an appeal on behalf of the " Princess of 
 Cumberland" (Mrs. Ryves),whom he found living in the 
 "stuccoey and prosaic streets of Camden Town." His 
 vindication of her marriage to the Duke of Cumberland 
 was formidable, but it proved almost the only forlorn 
 cause of the many desperate ones his pamphlets 
 advocated. 
 
 The subject of religion naturally classifies a very 
 large number of his books and pamphlets, but, after the 
 preceding chapter, we need not dwell on them. The 
 most serious and ample exposition of his critical opinions 
 is found in his Trial of Theism (1858). The later large 
 work, the Origin a)id Nature of Secularism, is scrappy and 
 unsatisfactory in argument, but will be found the easiest 
 and latest statement of his whole philosophy. A little 
 pamphlet, the Logic of Death, that has been reprinted of 
 late years, will give the best idea of the vigour and 
 ability with which he faced ultimate problems in his 
 maturity. It is a fine piece of writing. In later years 
 his religious pamphlets lack nerve, because he held that 
 ultimate problems did not properly come — one way or 
 the other — within the range of the Secularist. During 
 
 ' It may be noted here that he was the orig-inator of the name 
 "Jingoes." All controversy has ended in the recognition of this.
 
 282 HOLYOAKE AS A WRITER 
 
 the half century between the two larger books he wrote 
 only a few slight pamphlets on theology. Most of these 
 were directed at securing the abolition of the compulsory 
 oath, and here again his work was successful. His 
 anti-theological criticisms are — apart from the Trial of 
 Theism — buried for the most part in anti-theological 
 journals. 
 
 The heterogeneous remainder of his literary output 
 has no importance. It consists of journalistic comments 
 on questions of the hour, and the titles give explanation 
 enough. What I have said will enable any reader to 
 look intelligently over the bibliography at the close. It 
 will be seen that his reading was almost confined to 
 economics, politics, and religion. History he knew 
 well only in so far as it bore on these ; in other words, 
 he was thoroughly familiar with the history of England, 
 if not of Europe, in the nineteenth century, but went 
 little beyond this. A cognate limitation hampered him 
 in his unfamiliarity with foreign tongues. His Latin and 
 Greek studies were stricken prematurely by political 
 blasts, and his French was always elementary. Of 
 science he had little knowledge, in spite of his early 
 bent and his close acquaintance with so many dis- 
 tinguished scientists — Spencer, Huxley, Tyndall, Bain, 
 I. Roberts, Sir M. Foster, etc. Its enormous expansion 
 during his lifetime put it beyond the reach of his slender 
 opportunities. For many years he attended and followed 
 eagerly the early meetings of the British Association, 
 but he had soon to be content to admire its progress 
 at a distance. Of philosophy proper he knew nothing 
 later than Mill, Hamilton, and Mansel. The bloodless 
 abstractions of metaphysics had no power to lure him 
 from the throbbing problems of actual life, and he had 
 little faculty for them. 
 
 With good literature he was very much better
 
 HOLYOAKE AS A WRITER 283 
 
 acquainted. He had read most of the finer eighteenth- 
 century writers — Sterne was the model he recommended 
 to young men — and all that appeared in his own age. 
 His native taste for such reading was reinforced by his 
 wide acquaintance with men of letters : to have known, 
 in greater or less degree, W. S. Landor, S. Butler, George 
 Eliot, G. H. Lewes, Mrs. Lynn Linton, H. Martineau, 
 Browning, Ruskin, Tennyson, Gladstone, and Morley 
 was an education. His own humour and epigrammatic 
 turn gave him a fine selective instinct in reading, and 
 his memory was remarkably good. He was thus able 
 to add a further distinction to his lectures and writings 
 by pleasing quotations and anecdote. He kept, indeed, 
 bundles of the nondescript bits of paper on which he 
 used to scribble notes — I have found lecture notes written 
 on the back of the ornamental leaf of a cigar-box — with 
 striking passages jotted down as he read, to be used 
 when opportunity came. Good as his memory was, he 
 did not trust to it to find again the gem he had noticed 
 in his author. It was dug out at once, and placed in his 
 orderly collection. 
 
 He had in a very large degree the " art to conceal his 
 art." The man who wrote of his much-polished epigrams 
 knew something of his methods. He could say very 
 apt and striking things extempore, but his reader is 
 generally misled in thinking that the book or article has 
 flowed smoothly and swiftly from his pen. Even his 
 letters were often written twice, and were cut down and 
 corrected most laboriously. Most of the pleasant friendly 
 notes I have quoted, or will quote in the next chapter, 
 were tossed off in a breath ; but of the more important 
 letters I have quoted I have had before me a first copy, 
 scored and blackened with alterations. It is curious that 
 it is only in the matter of these letters that he over- 
 elaborated his writing. They tend to become stiff and
 
 >84 HOLYOAKE AS A WRITER 
 
 pedantic. His spontaneous writing (of a letter) was 
 better. But he had so often to write letters on which 
 the tranquillity and progress of a great cause more or 
 less depended that he took time. It was then that he 
 looked up to the placid portrait of Talleyrand hanging 
 in his room, a constant rebuke to zeal and impetuosity. 
 It would have been better for their causes if some of his 
 colleagrues had done the same. 
 
 His journalistic work had often to be done hurriedly, 
 and in the romantic circumstances that reporting entails. 
 He tells somewhere of allowing a small man that stood 
 before him in a crowd to stand on his (Holyoake's) toes, 
 to see better, while Holyoake wrote his copy on the 
 shorter man's hat. His long railway journeys were very 
 often spent in journalistic work. '' If you write like this 
 in the train, what will you do in your study?" a northern 
 editor, who had just offered him an engagement, said to 
 him. Even to enumerate the journals he wrote in, from 
 his early articles in the Leeds Times under Samuel 
 Smiles, would occupy pages. He served more than 
 sixty years in that profession. As a reporter he had few 
 equals, and his complete knowledge of the nineteenth 
 century gave value to his later articles. Still, some of 
 his finest articles are contained in the earliest papers he 
 wrote for.^ As an editor he was admirable, and un- 
 successful. He founded and edited eighteen journals at 
 different times — I have noticed each in its age — and 
 eleven of these did not reach a twelfth issue. The 
 Reasoner was his one success, and this never had value 
 as property. The failure was due, of course, to the 
 circumstance that his journals generally appealed to a 
 small heterodox group, and that even in this small world 
 he generally had rivals who declined to be hampered 
 
 ' It is noteworthy that he wrote a weekly letter to the Birmingham 
 Weekly Post for about twenty years— until it became Unionist.
 
 HOLYOAKE AS A WRITER 285 
 
 by considerations of culture and taste. The English 
 Leader and the Present Day were broader in their aim, 
 but they retained an outspokenness in regard to theology 
 that restricted their circulation. Where Thornton Hunt, 
 with his brilliant staff and slighter heresy, failed. Holy- 
 cake was not likely to succeed ; and the one opening for 
 him in the editorial world was with a free, unattached 
 journal. 
 
 I have said that his writing grew out of his lecturing 
 to a great extent. It would, in one sense, be more 
 correct to say that his literary qualities gave success to 
 his lectures. The forms of public speaking he cultivated 
 in a high degree, because he came of an age when there 
 was a far greater zeal for such cultivation. It was no 
 accident that English public life had ten times as many 
 powerful speakers between 1830 and 1870 as in the 
 next forty years (if we assign Gladstone and Bright 
 to the earlier period). The average standard of speaking 
 was proportionately higher. There was more fire in the 
 themes of the time, more enthusiasm in the mass of 
 hearers, and more training in aspirants to the platform. 
 As an early aspirant Holyoake studied declamation, and 
 acquired ease and dignity of bearing. But he never had 
 the robustness that a great speaker needs. Since this 
 can be very largely acquired, it is curious that he never 
 cured his voice of its thinness. He was at his best 
 in speaking to small audiences of cultivated men and 
 women, and I have often admired the striking aptness 
 of his diction and fluency of his delivery on such oc- 
 casions. For larger audiences his voice had not the 
 resonance that impresses, and his fineness and subtlety 
 were lost on them to a great extent. He had passion 
 and a command of the orator's imagery, but was not an 
 orator. He lacked the power, and he sought to convince 
 rather than to move.
 
 286 HOLYOAKE AS A WRITER 
 
 In later years he would scribble only a few rough 
 notes, with a few terse sentences completed, in prepara- 
 tion for his most important addresses. The notes lie 
 before me of the very fine address he gave at the Hall 
 of Science the Sunday after Bradlaugh's death. Any 
 reader who may have listened to it will be surprised 
 to hear that the notes are a dozen slips of rough waste 
 paper, with two or three lines scribbled on each in a 
 large hand. But his subject was on such occasions well 
 meditated. Much of what he said on Bradlaugh re- 
 appears in his literary appreciations. A deaf man would, 
 I imagine, have concluded that he was a great orator. 
 For those who had ears the voice was too thin and 
 nervous. His voice carried well, however, and he could 
 be heard throughout large buildings. But, apart from 
 Co-operative meetings, where the function attracted the 
 crowd, he rarely had very large audiences to address, in 
 the later years of his life. He chose throughout life to 
 appeal, by voice and pen, to the workers, who needed 
 help, and his fineness was beyond them. The limitation 
 was theirs.
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 A CHEERFUL OCTOGENARIAN 
 
 The last decade of his life found Holyoake only little 
 less active than the preceding one. The illness of 1894 
 and 1895 had indeed reduced his strength, but he nursed 
 it with care, and still employed it in human service. He 
 continued his journalistic work until the year of his 
 death. He presided at the meetings of the Travelling 
 Tax Committee until 1902, and maintained his attend- 
 ance at the Newspaper Board at Manchester, the 
 councils of the Co-Partnership movement, International 
 Alliance, Rationalist Press Committee, Liberty of 
 Bequest Committee, and the Co-operative Congress and 
 Crystal Palace Festival until 1904. 
 
 Indeed, his diary for 1897, his eightieth year, is a 
 remarkable octogenarian document. In that year he 
 wrote, at some pressure, his history of the Leeds Society, 
 edited a little work for a friend {TJie Path I Took), and 
 began to set in order the *' fifty years of confusion " in 
 his book-room for the purpose of writing further re- 
 miniscences. He attended nearly all the meetings of the 
 committees to which he belonged, and spoke at many 
 functions that were now annual events in his calendar — 
 the Gladstone and the postmen's dinner at Brighton, the 
 Rationalist Press dinner at London, the Secular anni- 
 versary at Leicester, and others. He co-operated 
 vigorously with the International Peace Association 
 
 on the Cretan trouble, and spoke at the Bradlaugh 
 
 287
 
 288 A CHEERFUL OCTOGENARIAN 
 
 celebration in the autumn. In September he went to 
 Holland for the International Congress, at which he 
 spoke twice, and made a visit to Paris on his return. He 
 rarely lectured now, but in many other respects his work 
 increased. 
 
 One of the chief reasons for his continued activity was 
 the cheerful optimism with which he surveyed the life of 
 the world about him. He was singularly free from the 
 moroseness and pessimism that so often cloud the last 
 years of active men. Old friends and colleagues wrote 
 him in senescent phrases about the perversity of things, 
 but he himself was irrepressibly buoyant and confiding. 
 A few letters to a Southport friend (Mr. W. Ashton) may 
 be taken as typical of his personal letters at this time : 
 
 *' When a friend asked Douglas Jerrold if he had a 
 mind to lend him a guinea, he answered that he had the 
 mind, but not the guinea. I have the mind to write you 
 a hundred pages, but I have not the time to. The paper 
 is excellent, but * too good,' as Wordsworth said of 
 woman, ' for human nature's daily food ' — of ideas. I 
 pray for blessings for all of you on the mountains." 
 
 Near Christmas-time he writes : 
 
 " What could have put it into your friendly head to 
 send me a succulent, life-giving. Festive Turkey ? It is 
 not only an inducement to, it is a condition of living. . . . 
 Yours in season, and out of season." 
 
 " I congratulate you on having had the influenza," he 
 writes again. " If it has had the same effect upon all 
 your household, Glengariff must be delightful. You 
 never wrote a letter so bright, or so sustained in its 
 humour." 
 
 Old friends like W. Morrison and Goldwin Smith were 
 trying to infect him with querulousness, but they had
 
 A CHEERFUL OCTOGENARIAN 289 
 
 little success. Only in regard to the Boer war does any 
 shade come over his letters. Memorial cards were 
 pouring upon him weekly. Gladstone and Collet died 
 in 1898, Ingersoll in 1899, Hollick in 1900. He could 
 now count on the fingers of one hand the survivors of 
 the heroic forties. For such of them as were dying in 
 straitened circumstances he begged guineas from his 
 friends. He had by strategy to force assistance on 
 Truelove, and he helped G. J. Harney and the widow of 
 Ernest Jones. He even, as we shall see, appealed to Mr. 
 Carnegie to establish a fund to meet such cases. For 
 himself life was still sweet and generous enough. He 
 never had a large income, but the magazines and journals 
 were always open to him, and his pen was still bright and 
 active. His home was as pleasant to him as any mansion 
 could have been. It was crowded with memorials of his 
 career and tokens of regard. The faces of fellow-actors 
 in many a stirring drama looked on him from every wall 
 — Owen, Carlile, Cowen, Orsini, Garibaldi, Gladstone, 
 Wendell Phillips, Ingersoll, Stuart Mill, Spencer, and so 
 many others. One of Colonel Macerone's pikes of 1831 
 stood in a corner ; two Garibaldean flags were reverently 
 folded in a drawer (and hung from the window on gala 
 days). Well might he be optimistic, if not a little proud. 
 Every struggle these trophies bore witness to had suc- 
 ceeded. He had got beyond the slopes of Pisgah, at least. 
 A friend one day sent him a cutting from a daily, relating 
 how Edward VII. had affectionately greeted the President 
 of the French Republic, while the band played the 
 Marseillaise. Few readers would see any philosophy in 
 it, but those two old men did. '' Shade of Rouget de 
 Lisle ! " his friend exclaims. 
 
 The story of his remaining years is one that can be 
 told best by correspondence. His quiet influence on the 
 cause of Co-operation is expressed by the scores of letters 
 
 VOL. II. u
 
 290 A CHEERFUL OCTOGENARIAN 
 
 he still receives from all parts. " I hope that in the near 
 future you will send some Co-operative propagandists to 
 Japan," an official writes him from the Home Office at 
 Tokyo. English journals and magazines asked him 
 incessantly for articles on Co-operation. Commerce sent 
 a representative to interview him. He was now active 
 also in the International Peace Association, and was 
 nominated as a delegate to St. Petersburg. " If I look 
 as well when I am 60 as you do when you are 83," Mr. 
 Stead wrote him, " I shall consider myself lucky. Had 
 you been half your age, you could not have displayed 
 more vigour, more vitality, and more of the qualities 
 which make a Chairman [at their dinner in 1899] the 
 centre and soul of the meeting over which he presides." 
 " I wish we had a thousand Holyoakes," Mr. Hodgson 
 Pratt wrote. But Holyoake wisely refused to tempt the 
 fates by a journey to Russia. " Age has imposed on me," 
 he wrote to Mr. Stead, " not a lessened love of adventure, 
 butalessened power of activity." He must have hesitated, 
 for all his old ardour was aflame in the cause of peace, 
 in which he was deeply interested in his last decade. 
 
 In 1898 he took the chair for a lecture by the Rev. 
 Dr. Lorrimer at the Westbourne Park Institute, and 
 contracted some friendship with Dr. Clifford. His older 
 Free Church friend, Dr. Parker, was drawing near the 
 end. " Always believe," Dr. Parker wrote him in Sep- 
 tember 1899, "in my deep personal interest in everything 
 that concerns you, and my heartiest desire that all good 
 and comfortable things may attend your life. For my- 
 self I am so lonesome and miserable at times as to be 
 no longer a Christian ; but the light will come." It 
 is quaint to read the Secularist consoling the divine : 
 
 " What you say of yourself," Holyoake replied, " I 
 could not read without concern. Depression is desola- 
 tion, as I well know. In my younger days it often came
 
 A CHEERFUL OCTOGENARIAN 291 
 
 to me from physical exhaustion. Sorrow and fatigue 
 have brought it to you. Time, rest, and defiant abandon- 
 ment, tempered by the thought how great the calamity 
 might be, and thankfulness for good that without self- 
 merit had come, are the only mitigations I know." 
 
 They were cordial to the end, and after Parker's death 
 (and that of Hugh Price Hughes) Holyoake wrote his 
 appreciation of both in a small pamphlet with the title 
 Two Great Preachers. 
 A letter to Justin McCarthy in 1899 has some interest : 
 
 " Ever since I read in your fascinating volume of 
 ' Reminiscences ' your description of myself, I have had 
 it in my mind to thank you. It is by far the most 
 discerning I have ever seen, and exactly describes my 
 view of things — limited. My mind is like a commercial 
 company, ' Limited ' in its responsibility for the existence 
 of things unknown. Thank you for the generosity of 
 your useful and defensive thought of me." ^ 
 
 " Your letter gave me the most genuine delight," Mr. 
 McCarthy answered. " I wrote of you exactly as I felt and 
 as I knew, and I am glad to find that my portrait is 
 recognised as a likeness by its subject." 
 
 At this time Holyoake was himself writing his further 
 volumes of reminiscences. He wrote also a history of the 
 Derby Co-operative Society , and a lengthy preface for 
 Collet's History of the Taxes on Knowledge^ for which he had 
 
 ^ In the course of a long reference to Holyoake, Mr. McCarthy had said: 
 "George Jacob Holyoake I have known for much more than a quarter 
 of a century, and have been concerned with him in many a movement 
 for political and social reform. I have not known a man of more un- 
 selfish purpose or more philanthropic aim. He might fairly be described, 
 like Leigh Hunt's Abou Ben Adhem, as 'one who loved his fellow man.' 
 He has suffered all manner of penalties again and again, because he 
 would not pretend to have a certain belief when he had it not. His 
 influence among the working classes, for whom he wrought and sacrificed 
 so much, has always been a wise and moderating influence."
 
 292 A CHEERFUL OCTOGENARIAN 
 
 some work to find a publisher. Several of the London 
 journals subscribed in the end to defray the cost of pub 
 lishing it. The proprietor of the AthencBum wrote him, 
 when the book appeared (in 1899) : 
 
 " I do indeed value much your kind reference to my 
 dear father. What you have written is just like yourself 
 — full of generosity. You are ever ready to praise 
 others, and to recognise their labours. I do hope your 
 own work for the public good will never be forgotten. 
 I know this, that so long as I live I shall do my small 
 part to keep it in remembrance." 
 
 A little later Holyoake wrote to Mr. Francis : 
 
 " The days have been so dark we feared we should not 
 be able to see the shortest day when it came. But on 
 any day your beautiful present would light up the 
 
 room." 
 
 He had reached the twentieth century with no diminu- 
 tion of cheerfulness. His mind darkened only when he 
 looked toward the southern horizon, and thought of 
 South Africa, but otherwise his letters were so bright 
 that correspondents address him as " My dear young 
 friend." On a particularly bad day he wrote : 
 
 "January 23rd, 
 " Zero year. 
 " Dear Ashton, 
 
 " Alas, we meet not now. Weather bad. Pres- 
 sure from Derby for their History. The wedding on 
 hand. My mind is sodden with the rain. I have not a 
 dry idea in my head. My conversation is damp, and 
 would give you influenza. 
 
 "Yours all the same." 
 
 But his life was brightened every few days by some 
 valued greeting. On January 27th a wire came from
 
 A CHEERFUL OCTOGENARIAN 293 
 
 Scotland (as it often did) : " Your health was enthu- 
 siastically drunk to-night by a hundred vScottish Burns 
 Club Co-operators, and they send you greeting and good 
 love." In May, however, he again met with a nasty 
 accident, and friends were concerned. He was sum- 
 moned to London to speak at the cremation of his old 
 friend, Dr. G. Bird, when he was knocked down in 
 avoiding a crowd at London Bridge Station. The most 
 painful part of it to him seems to have been that the 
 crowd was there to do honour to the Naval Brigade on 
 its return from South Africa. His own account of the 
 matter to a friend runs : 
 
 " To avoid being forced by the crowd off the platform, 
 I turned into a fenced-off space, where some impediment 
 I did not notice threw me down. The first thing I saw 
 was the new hat I had been cautioned not to spoil the 
 first day of wearing it, rolling along the ground. I was 
 raised, bruised and bleeding at one hand. I was advised 
 to sit down on a seat kindly vacated for me, but I thought 
 I had been down sufficiently. A police officer was 
 directed to see me into a cab. . . . In my damaged state 
 I resembled one of the wounded from South Africa ; but 
 as yet I have heard nothing of a pension — not even a 
 mention by Lord Roberts." 
 
 He was writing this letter a week after the accident. 
 When he got to the end of his account he went out for a 
 walk, and was immediately knocked down by a cyclist. 
 The man had to choose between running down Holvoake 
 or a lady, and '* as I have always favoured the rights of 
 women," he went on in the second part of his letter, " I 
 did not complain ; though I may complain of the bruises 
 on the right side, arm and hand, before the left side was 
 well." He had long ceased to be indignant with such 
 assailants. Colliding with a man in Fleet Street one 
 day, he turned round and said : "If it was my fault, I
 
 294 A CHEERFUL OCTOGENARIAN 
 
 apologise : if yours, I pardon you." A few weeks after 
 the second accident we find him attending the Inter- 
 national Alliance Congress at Paris. 
 
 " Many happy returns of the day to the Grand Old 
 Man of English Free Thought," Mr. Frederic Harrison 
 wrote, on his eighty-fourth birthday. " May you continue 
 to keep alive the flame of republican honesty in these 
 degenerate days." Holyoake was not so ready to admit 
 that they were degenerate days, with all his memory of 
 the enthusiasm of the thirties and forties. In the summer 
 he sent the appeal to Mr. Carnegie that I mentioned 
 previously. 
 
 " There is," he wrote, " an order of men — * extinct 
 volcanoes,' as Disraeli would call them — who die one by 
 one unregarded and unfriended. I refer to those men 
 who perish through caring for others more than for 
 themselves — a disease of which not many die. It is 
 their nature never to rest while injustice is done, or 
 preventable suffering exist within their ken. These men 
 go out on the forlorn hope of thought on which few 
 will venture. . . . An endowment where such persons 
 might end their days in comfort, free from precarious- 
 ness, would be a noble provision. Such persons are an 
 Insurance Society of Betterment, of which they them- 
 selves pay the premium, and the public reaps the 
 advantage. Such a remnant of Decayed Publicists 
 would teem with interest and instruction." 
 
 In a letter to Mr. Morley, asking his influence, he 
 suggested a small fund, to begin with, that would give 
 ;^20 a year to ten persons. Mr. Carnegie had reminded 
 him of " Bulwer's home for Decayed Authors " and other 
 failures, and preferred the idea of a pension fund. The 
 ** idea was splendid," he said, and he gave hope of seeing 
 it realised. All appreciated the generous action of Holy- 
 oake in so thinking of less successful workers amidst his 
 own wealth of friends and comparative ease. Holyoake
 
 A CHEERFUL OCTOGENARIAN 295 
 
 himself was by no means a " decayed publicist." That 
 year (1901) he edited the Sun for a week at the invitation 
 of Mr. Bottomley (a relative), and well earned the largest 
 journalistic fee he ever received. When his work was 
 over the Sun had a leader on " The late editor's body- 
 guard." 
 
 *' As soon as it became known that Mr. George Jacob 
 Holyoake, the veteran apostle of free speech, a free 
 press, and reform, was to occupy the editorial chair of 
 the Sun, it was found necessary to guard the editorial 
 sanctum, even against his old friends, who were anxious 
 once more to look into his sunny face and grasp his 
 hand. It was felt that the crowding-in of his old 
 admirers, together with the week's editorial labours 
 necessary to the production of a great daily paper with 
 six, and sometimes eight editions a day, would be at the 
 risk of his health. ... I have been amazed at his clear- 
 ness of perception, accurate judgment, discrimination, and 
 prompt decision in deciding upon the suitability or un- 
 suitability of articles for the columns of the Su7i. The 
 leading articles which have appeared from his pen have 
 been decided upon and written within the hour, and the 
 brief seasons during the day which have been assigned to 
 him for rest have been occupied by him in the preparation 
 of articles (30 in all) for other departments of the Sun.'" 
 
 He had been restored to general notice two months 
 before by Mr. Stead, who made him the subject of his 
 " character-sketch " (September, 1901), at the suggestion 
 of Mr. W. Ashton. " My only difficulty," Mr. Stead 
 wrote, " is the impossibility of getting a full-length 
 sketch of you and all that you have done into the 
 narrow compass of the space at my disposal." The 
 sketch was a fine one. " It is probable," it concluded, 
 *' that there is no other man of eighty-four now living in 
 this country who has so honourable a record." Mindful 
 always of old colleagues, he was at that time setting
 
 296 A CHEERFUL OCTOGENARIAN 
 
 afoot a movement for some tribute to E. O. Greening ; 
 and I find a letter from Mr. Gray acknowledging his 
 kindness " in sending me the beautiful birthday gift 
 which was so unexpected and will be so much prized. 
 . . . When I have done with it, I shall hand it down 
 with pride to my son, and tell him to treasure it in 
 remembrance of you and your great work." He was 
 also collecting subscriptions in this country for the 
 American memorial to Colonel Ingersoll. 
 
 The year 1902 found him as buoyant and inspiring as 
 ever. The advertisement of a lecture to be given by him 
 at Lewes g-ives as the title : 
 
 fc>' 
 
 "Of 'Good Old Times' let others prate— 
 I thank my stars that I was born so late." 
 
 But it was no idle optimism that he advocated, and 
 although in this year his attendance at committees began 
 to fail, he lent his name to several fresh enterprises. He 
 became President of the National Democratic League, 
 and Vice-president of the Land Nationalisation Society. 
 "You'll never grow old," Mr. W. Digby wrote him. 
 " You may pass into another form of existence, but such 
 vivacity, such virility, such force, and such biting sarcasm 
 cannot perish." " You certainly are wonderful, and your 
 brain is as vigorous as ever," Mr. W. Morrison exclaims. 
 These were congratulations on his eighty-sixth birthday. 
 The members of the South Place Chapel arranged a 
 reception for him in honour of that event, and I recall 
 the wonder of the great throng of admirers at his geniality, 
 force, and dignity. 
 
 A letter from Lady Florence Dixie — a warm friend of 
 his later years — that reached him on this occasion will 
 be read with interest : 
 
 " Mrs. C. F. Smith kindly asked me to be present at 
 the reception on your birthday. I wish it were possible.
 
 A CHEERFUL OCTOGENARIAN 297 
 
 . . . When I was a little girl I heard your praises sung 
 at a large dinner party at Harleyford by my grand- 
 father, Gen. Sir W. R. Clayton, my mother's father,^ 
 who was a great admirer of yours. ' Ijain ' [Lady Dixie] 
 was then six, and was seated on Disraeli's knee for 
 dessert, eating almonds and raisins, and listening very 
 attentively to the discussion of your merits and demerits. 
 She sympathised with her grandfather's estimate of you, 
 and, when Mr. Disraeli did not, she put up a tiny hand 
 to his cheek and, pulling his face round, said : ' Mr. 
 Disraeli, Ijain likes Mr. Holyoake too.' " 
 
 Lady Dixie presented to the Rationalist Press Library a 
 fine oil-portrait of Holyoake by his nephew. Another 
 interesting letter that was read during the reception at 
 South Place was from Herbert Spencer. Holyoake and 
 he had seen much of each other at Brighton. They 
 often drove or walked together, or discussed the universe 
 together in the interstices of a game of billiards at 
 Spencer's house. The aged philosopher was unable to 
 attend at South Place, and he wrote : 
 
 " I can do nothing more than express my warm feel- 
 ing of concurrence. Not dwelling upon his intellectual 
 capacity, which is high, I would emphasise my apprecia- 
 tion of his courage, sincerity, truthfulness, philanthropy, 
 and unwearied perseverance. Such a combination of 
 these qualities it will, I think, be difficult to find." 
 
 Spencer himself was "slowing down into the station." 
 A little later, when Holyoake sent him quiet birthday 
 congratulations, he answered : " Thanks for your con- 
 gratulations : but I should have liked better your 
 condolences on my longevity." Him, too, Holyoake 
 saw pass before him under the dark arch. 
 
 1 Readers of Ijain may care to know that Lady Dixie observes in a 
 note that " Marleyford " stands for Harleyford, and " Sir R. Railton " 
 for General Clayton, in that story.
 
 298 A CHEERFUL OCTOGENARIAN 
 
 In the summer of 1902 he unveiled the monument that 
 the Co-operators of England had raised over the grave 
 of Robert Owen, and gave a noble address on the great 
 reformer. Owen's grand-daughter (Rosamond Owen- 
 Templeton) wrote him : " A faithful love is a beautiful 
 thing, and you have loved my dear grandfather most 
 faithfully." Later he gave assistance to Mr. Podmore in 
 writing his Life of R. Owen, and, after a keen and pro- 
 tracted search, he unearthed a valuable quantity of Owen 
 letters (3,000 in number) which he handed over to the 
 Owen Memorial Committee, in whose hands they still 
 await publication. When he wrote to approve Sir Leslie 
 Stephen's article on Owen in the Dictionary , Sir Leslie 
 replied : " I am glad that any writings of mine have 
 been approved by so competent a judge, but I also feel 
 ashamed that a man who has done so much active and 
 strenuous work as you should give generous praise to 
 me, who can only claim to be a literary looker-on. I 
 ought to honour the real labourer, not to receive honour 
 from him." I believe, however, that Holyoake resented 
 the masterly phrase in which Stephen describes Owen 
 as " one of those intolerable bores who are the salt of the 
 earth." 
 
 In 1903 he unveiled a portrait of Mr. Hodgson Pratt, 
 by Mr. Moscheles (who also painted Holyoake's portrait), 
 at the Working Men's Club, and dwelt at length and 
 generously on his social services. " I have given you 
 no excuse for your generous pronouncement," Mr. Pratt 
 wrote him, '' but I am glad to think the working men 
 had once more an opportunity of hearing your delightful 
 eloquence." Later in the year he gave an address in the 
 Rochdale Unitarian Church ; and in December a visit of 
 Lord and Lady Brassey inspired him with one of his 
 original ideas. "The Primrose League," he wrote, " is 
 obsolete, unhistoric, waxworky, and inane. Why should
 
 A CHEERFUL OCTOGENARIAN 299 
 
 not Lady Brassey found a Mayflower League? That 
 would be pretty, pertinent, historic, and inspiring. The 
 Mayflower went out in search of Hberty." "It is an 
 inspiring suggestion," Lord Brassey repHed. 
 
 With the beginning of 1904 his fresh chapters of 
 reminiscences began to appear in the Weekly Times and 
 Echo, and were then pubHshed as Bygones. I have already 
 commented on the work, but the last chapter (which 
 appeared in the Fortnightly at the end of 1903) is inter- 
 esting here as an indication of his social optimism. It 
 is one long and valuable appreciation of modern times in 
 contrast to the old days he remembered so well. He 
 never listened with patience to the phrase " good old 
 times." He knew them. "The past had its evils ; the 
 present has fewer," was his sober verdict. His detailed 
 contrast of the two extremes of the age he lived through 
 has great value. Few of his elderly colleagues — Mr. 
 Greening, Mr. Passmore Edwards, and Mr. H. Pratt 
 were fine exceptions — saw such a bright sunset. 
 Hoderson Pratt sent him two anecdotes to confirm his 
 optimism. He had in his youth attended the Bath 
 Grammar School, in the early days of Radicalism. 
 " One morning, before the masters came in, all the desks 
 were flung open as I entered, so that the inner side of 
 the lids could be seen. On each appeared the following 
 words in large letters : ' Down with Radicals — they 
 stink.'" On another occasion his father (a Unitarian) 
 was canvassing for Roebuck, and solicited for him the 
 vote of the family shoemaker. The man exclaimed : 
 "What! Vote for 'im! 'E don't believe in God nor devil." 
 
 "Some millionaire will be offering you a million for 
 the secret of youthfulness," Mr. Greening wrote him, as 
 his eighty-seventh birthday came round. Only three 
 days afterwards Holyoake fell to the ground in a sudden 
 attack of vertigo. But the warning was little heeded.
 
 300 A CHEERFUL OCTOGENARIAN 
 
 In January he had pressed Mr. Chamberlain to remit 
 the tax that still remained on first-class railway fares. 
 In March he appears in the new character of a " Passive 
 Resister." "Cat and roses seized for priest-rates," he 
 gaily notes in his diary. His picture Avas put up at 
 auction, and he took the opportunity to make a speech 
 there against the education-rate (on its religious side), 
 and afterwards lectured on the subject to a small crowd 
 on the open beach. He attended his last Co-operative 
 Congress in May, and was elected a director of the 
 Co-operative Newspaper Society. In June he made a 
 speech at a meeting in honour of Paine, and the summer 
 passed pleasantly, and with promise. In the autumn — 
 ominously enough — the few notes scrawled in his diary 
 are often upside down. His eyes were failing again. 
 And year by year death was thinning the circle of his 
 old friends. In 1904 it was the turn of Dr. Thomasson 
 and Dr. Isaac Roberts. 
 
 Dr. Roberts was an assiduous correspondent of his 
 during the few years before his death, and a few letters 
 from him and others in 1904 are of interest. Dr. Roberts 
 shared Holyoake's feeling in regard to theology. When 
 Holyoake condoled with him on the death of his wife in 
 1901, he replied : 
 
 " We seem to be now as ever the playthings of some 
 Being that permits us to blunder into the maximum of 
 discomfort in life, and at the end has arranged that we 
 must return to the state of unconscious atoms such as 
 we were in before we were born. What is designated 
 Revelation only makes darkness darker." 
 
 A few months before his death he wrote to Holyoake : 
 
 ** My Dear Jacob Holyoake, 
 
 " It is a pleasure to me to hear from and of you. 
 I also know, by long experience and by reading, that
 
 A CHEERFUL OCTOGENARIAN 301 
 
 our aims in life are, and have in the past been, to acquire 
 knowledge of ourselves first and knowledge of mankind 
 in all its varied ramifications concurrently. . . . What 
 would we do if we had the power? (i) Extend our lives 
 in full physical health, strength, and vigour from this 
 day onward to the year 3004. (2) Endow ourselves with 
 vital force that would react, automatically, upon the 
 human race, and cause them, during their respective 
 span of life, to do no evil either to themselves or to any 
 other sentient being. (3) Make laws that would, im- 
 mediately on the commission of an evil act, punish the 
 transgressor in strict proportion to its magnitude, and 
 give compensation to the injured without delay — the 
 laws would be as the laws of nature. Imagine the 
 torrent of invective that would flow upon us from every 
 hole and corner throughout Christendom for daring to 
 suggest such a simple remedy for evil ! ! " 
 
 Lord Hobhouse was another constant correspondent 
 who shared Holyoake's views on religious questions. 
 From 1899 onward he wrote many long and strong expres- 
 sions of his feeling, though he was unwilling to have 
 his name publicly linked with the Rationalist Press 
 Association, which he materially aided. The attitude of 
 the clergy during the war much embittered him. " With 
 exceptions lamentably few," he wrote, " they are tramp- 
 ing along the broad and easy road laid down by the 
 strong, the rich, and the excitable multitude. It would 
 seem that there are few except the despised Rationalists 
 and Agfnostics to maintain that the moral law is the 
 same for nations as for individuals." But his rejection 
 of theology had other than sentimental grounds, as the 
 letter I quoted earlier indicates. He hardly shared 
 Holyoake's optimism, but greatly admired him, and 
 enjoyed his letters. " You infuse," he said, " so beneficial 
 an energy into men's thoughts that I cannot help hoping 
 you may still have before you much time in which to
 
 302 A CHEERFUL OCTOGENARIAN 
 
 work." For his own part he had "sat long enough at 
 the feast of Hfe, and, though not very impatient for the 
 end, was ready for it." He corresponded with Holyoake 
 until his death, in 1904. 
 
 Earl Grey's correspondence with him increased in his 
 later years. The knowledge that so able a statesman 
 was not merely interested in Co-operative matters, but 
 a zealous advocate of co-partnership, gave him great 
 comfort. In 1900 he wrote to Holyoake : 
 
 " Dear Mr. Holyoake, 
 
 " Your inscription, to be pasted into your history 
 of the Derby Society, gives the volume a greatly increased 
 value. There is an originality about your handwriting, 
 and a refreshing even if too flattering courtesy about 
 your phraseology, which give a peculiar charm to your 
 manuscript. 
 
 " Now let me take you into my confidence re a work of 
 art which is being made for me, and which, when finished, 
 will give in a manner worthy of your life's work and of 
 your ho^QS your message to the world. My artist friend 
 is putting his whole energy into the effort to show, in a 
 manner so clear that everyone will understand, the differ- 
 ence between the selfishness, ignorance, and tyranny of 
 the old industrial system and the beauty of the new. At 
 the base of the plaque, modelled in bronze. Capital, 
 which is represented by a powerful autocrat, Michel- 
 Angelesque in power and authority, is driving mercilessly 
 blind slaves, who are harnessed to his chariot by chains. 
 The road is strewed with the corpses of the fallen, and 
 those who are endeavouring to raise themselves and 
 looking towards the light are being thrust down by 
 another incarnation of capital, a masterful and pitiless 
 giant, admirably executed. Above this representation 
 of the mercilessness of capital and the sufferings of 
 labour is a great dragon, symbolical of the ignorance 
 which blinds the eyes of the capitalist and slave. 
 
 " Then the artist endeavours to convey the idea of the
 
 A CHEERFUL OCTOGENARIAN 303 
 
 services performed by those who, one by one, have 
 fastened a fetter on some portion of the huge dragon of 
 ignorance, thereby and to that extent reducing his power 
 for evil. Small figures they are, tugging and striving 
 to chain down under the rock of Truth the pestilent 
 dragon, each working at a separate coil. I want your 
 advice as to who these enchainers of ignorance should 
 be made to represent. Christ and Mazzini must be two 
 of them. Who shall the other two be? I would like to 
 put you as one of them, and perhaps Owen, but I am not 
 sure about him. Please give me your ideas. I want 
 the four men who have opened the eyes of mankind most 
 widely to the truths of human brotherhood. Then on 
 the top of the square rock of Truth, at the foot of which 
 the enchained dragon of ignorance lies writhing in 
 impotence, stand a young man and a young woman, 
 Capital and Labour, the two made one, from whose eyes 
 the figure of Knowledge, standing behind them, is lifting 
 a veil ; and they are gazing into the sky illumined by 
 the glory of the sun, in which they see represented the 
 eternal harmonies, and the peace and the beauties of 
 love. . ." 
 
 Holyoake seems to have deprecated the honour, and 
 Earl Grey then suggests " Christ, Milton, Mazzini, 
 and Darwin ; " but it was finally decided not to connect 
 "the message " with any individuals. When Holyoake 
 wrote some words of appreciation Lord Grey answered : 
 
 *' I cannot thank you sufficiently ^or your letter, or 
 express to you how much I value the kind and appre- 
 ciative expressions towards myself which it contains. 
 It is a great honour and encouragement to me that you 
 should have so written to me. 
 
 " I remain, 
 " Your grateful follower, 
 
 "Grey." 
 
 " To be thus described by you," he wrote in 1904, " is to 
 be knighted in the Co-operative Realm, of which you.
 
 304 A CHEERFUL OCTOGENARIAN 
 
 by merit, soul, enthusiasm, and splendid courage, as well 
 as age, are the rightful Sovereign. May you long live 
 to guide us, your Co-operative subjects, with your 
 counsel and to inspire us with your faith." 
 
 The last letter, written when Earl Grey was about to 
 start for Canada, begins : 
 
 " There are no letters I enjoy more than yours. They 
 are always full of buoyancy and faith and hope and 
 courage. I hope I shall see you before I go to Canada 
 to say ' good-bye,' and to thank you for all the encourage- 
 ment and inspiration which your example has been to me 
 for many years." 
 
 Goldwin Smith's last letters to Holyoake confirm with 
 some reserve the optimistic pages of his Bygones. He 
 admires the sketch of Gladstone — complaining that 
 Morley was " under the spell " when he wrote his final 
 volume — and that of Disraeli. The latter chapter leads 
 him to revive, in an interesting way, the sudden de- 
 parture of Garibaldi. 
 
 ** Garibaldi was coming to my house at Oxford when 
 he was whisked away. I think I can guess the reason. 
 He was odious as an overturner of thrones. A friend of 
 mine heard Disraeli flattering the occupant of a throne 
 by slandering Garibaldi." 
 
 The allusion is clear enough. " This for your private 
 ear," Goldwin Smith says ; but a later letter removes the 
 restriction. On April 26th (1905) he writes : 
 
 "When the calumnious allusion was attested [con- 
 tested?] by Disraeli's late secretary and his literary 
 executor, Lord Rowton, I thought it was right to put the 
 contradiction on record ; especially as an authorised life 
 of Disraeli is proclaimed to be in preparation, and I may 
 probably be gone before it appears."
 
 A CHEERFUL OCTOGENARIAN 305 
 
 The publication of Bygones (January, 1905) brought a 
 last shower of literary letters. Sir Lewis Morris wrote : 
 
 " It is not often nowadays that I receive so appreciative 
 a notice, and it is all the more acceptable in that it comes 
 from one with whose opinions in politics and, to a great 
 extent, in religious matters, I am so greatly in accord. 
 I agree with you that the present Laureate was not in 
 the running for the post when he was appointed, and 
 I lament, in the interests of literature, that our late 
 leader did not add to his many good gifts that of literary 
 achievement, either in prose or verse. It was news to 
 me that the application to write the Co-operative Ode in 
 1888 came as the result of a recommendation by my good 
 friend and master Lord Tennyson, who often expressed 
 his wish, which Gladstone was induced to disregard, that 
 I should be his successor." 
 
 By this time the end was in sight, and the annual 
 engagements were reluctantly declined. Early in 
 February he wrote in his diary : " Felt often of late like 
 one approaching the edge of the world — but see no more 
 than others what lies beyond." The Rationalist Press 
 dinner and the Leicester festival missed him for the first 
 time, and the Co-operators were told that there would be 
 one more breach in the ranks of their veterans. He had 
 told Greening in 1904 that the Congress that year would 
 probably be his last. Scottish Co-operators were 
 amongst his most ardent admirers, and were concerned 
 that they would not have him at Paisley. " I am urged," 
 Greening wrote him, " to use my best persuasive powers 
 to induce you, if at all possible and if your health permits, 
 to come to the Congress this year, as there is a strong 
 desire on the part of the Co-operators in Scotland to 
 mark their appreciation of the lifelong services you have 
 rendered to the cause, by presenting you at the Congress 
 with an address in some form or other showing the high 
 
 VOL. II. X
 
 J 
 
 06 A CHEERFUL OCTOGENARIAN 
 
 esteem in which you and your labours are held." The 
 provost of Paisley was anxious to entertain him. When, 
 eventually, he failed to come, the Congress was deeply 
 moved, and a resolution was passed and telegraphed to 
 him : 
 
 " That this Congress sends hearty message of 
 sympathy to Mr. George Jacob Holyoake on his en- 
 forced absence from Congress owing to advanced age 
 and also congratulates him on the attainment of his 88th 
 birthday, hoping that he may be spared for many years 
 in the enjoyment of his physical and mental powers 
 which in the past have been so earnestly devoted to the 
 cause of the people." 
 
 The concluding words were singularly happy. They 
 must have recalled to his mind the hopeful charge that 
 he made into the ranks of the enemy under that ensign 
 {Cause of the People) sixty years before. In that journal 
 he had pleaded the forlorn cause of "association." Now 
 a Congress representing two million and a quarter 
 members and a capital of more than forty million pounds 
 was greeting him in his last days. Few sowers of the 
 seed of progress ever saw so rich a harvest, when they had 
 sown in such stony soil. In the summer it was the 
 turn of the smaller band of Profit-sharers, with whom he 
 was so closely allied, to miss his venerable figure, and 
 send their greeting : 
 
 " Co-partnership workers miss you, but rejoice at your 
 continued work for our principles, and greet you as their 
 leader in industrial freedom." 
 
 On the political side, too, his last year had consolation, 
 when the Brighton election came round. His last 
 effort was made for Liberalism. He penned an ardent 
 appeal to his fellow townsmen to oust the Conservative 
 member for Brighton, and he had himself driven in a
 
 A CHEERFUL OCTOGENARIAN 307 
 
 carriage to cast his vote. It was a joy to him to find 
 the long contest with his poHtical opponents end 
 triumphantly. The candidate he appealed for, Villiers, 
 was returned with a majority of 800. 
 
 The letters of his last year show a remarkable mental 
 force and balance. He had written in May to complain 
 to his old friend Mr. Hale White of ominous symptoms 
 in the extremities. " Never mind the feet," White 
 answered ; " better that end of the body than the other. 
 You remember poor Swift's horror at the thought that, 
 like a tree, he should die at the top first. Your top 
 seems to me pretty much what it was half a century ago." 
 
 His last notes have all the characteristic ring. In 
 June he wrote to Mr. R. J. Campbell : 
 
 " Could I write with the effortless grace of your review 
 of my book in the Young Man^ I could tell you with 
 what pleasure I read it. Generous terms are not to be 
 taken as the measure of desert, but of endeavour. Thus 
 I recognised its friendliness and wholesomeness, for I 
 am still a young man in my mind, and prize incentives 
 to improvement. Than these qualities I know no higher 
 praise of a sermon or a review." 
 
 To Mr. Passmore Edwards he wrote in November : 
 
 " I wish I had read * Footsteps ' [a work recently 
 published by Mr. Edwards] when writing the passages 
 concerning you in Bygones. The title 'Footsteps' is 
 fresh — there are phrases of mastery in the story, where 
 candour and boldness are charms. Your ' Footsteps ' 
 will reverberate in the corridors of time." 
 
 In the early part of the year he had some thought of 
 having cataract removed by Mr. Brudenell Carter, who 
 expressed friendly willingness, but the medical men 
 dissuaded him, and he was afflicted by comparative 
 failure of both sight and hearing. His bed was removed 
 to the library in April, but his friends were gratified to
 
 3oS A CHEERFUL OCTOGENARIAN 
 
 hear of an improvement in his health in May, and for 
 some time he went out occasionally in a bath-chair. In 
 August, in fact, he notes that he has just " finished 
 'History of Co-operation in Great Britain' " — the enlarged 
 edition of it — though he had to leave it to his daughter 
 to see through the press. *' Read Balzac and Boccaccio " 
 is another interesting entry. He wrote also some articles 
 on longevity in the Daily Chronicle, and even ventured 
 to London. " Mr. George Jacob Holyoake was at the 
 National Liberal Club on Wednesday [August 9th] 
 looking hale and hearty at the age of 88," a London 
 paper announced. 
 
 On the first Monday in September he notes that he is 
 " preparing article on Woman Suffrage for Nineteenth 
 Century,'' but on the following day he writes : " Numb- 
 ness, coldness, pain in feet more than of late." Save for 
 a few letters in the Co-operative News and elsewhere, his 
 work was over. A few domestic entries occur in the 
 diary until the middle of October, and then the long 
 silence sets in, though life was to linger for a few 
 months. What were his thoughts during those last 
 weeks when he saw the gates of eternity slowly opening? 
 Was there any wavering, any dimness, of the convictions 
 he had so long and so courageously preached? His 
 friend and medical attendant. Dr. Ryle, has written an 
 interesting account of him in his last illness, when death 
 was visibly approaching : 
 
 "During the last illness of Mr. Holyoake's life refer- 
 ence was occasionally made to subjects connected with 
 religious belief, but I do not remember any conversation 
 expressly about the question of a future life. The 
 impression which he left upon my mind as to his views 
 was that he held the opinions which are expressed in his 
 article upon Secularism in Chambers' Encyclopcedia, and 
 in his pamphlet entitled The Logic of Death. I never
 
 A CHEERFUL OCTOGENARIAN 309 
 
 heard him express any belief in a future life. He alluded 
 incidentally once or twice to the end of his life as not far 
 distant, but did not dwell upon the topic. He was 
 usually decidedly cheerful, and was always ready and 
 willing to discuss matters in which he took an interest. 
 He always spoke as though he were still an active man, 
 still taking a part in the cause of progress. His 
 criticisms on current politics and political personalities 
 were always shrewd and clear. He was a steady worker 
 almost to the end. I generally found him standing 
 reading with a magnifying glass near the window. 
 The work on which he was generally occupied was that 
 which had been the work of his life. Either the cause 
 of Co-operation or that of intellectual progress and 
 freedom in some form was always uppermost in his 
 mind. . . . 
 
 ''In his personal character the feature which struck me 
 most was his great fund of charity and his kindly good 
 nature. Although he had been all his life an agitator 
 or a fighter, and had always been upon the side of the 
 rebel against mere thoughtless respectability, yet he had 
 no bitterness in his soul. He cherished no spite, and 
 always had a genial word for the most obstructive Tory 
 or the most bigoted obscurantist. The following sen- 
 tence, in which he described his own attitude of mind 
 towards that orthodox world from which he had in early 
 life suffered much, was as true of him at the end of his 
 life as, I believe, it was in his most strenuous days. I 
 quote from his paper entitled The Logic of Death 
 (looth edition); 'I love the world in spite of its 
 frowning moods. For years I have felt neither anger 
 nor hatred of any living being, and I will not advisedly 
 resuscitate those distorting passions through which we 
 see the errors of each other as crimes.'" 
 
 It is, I suppose, natural for those who attach supreme 
 importance to one or other aspect of Christian teaching 
 to be reluctant to admit altitude of character in one who 
 did not share it, and to seek feverishly for some expression
 
 3IO A CHEERFUL OCTOGENARIAN 
 
 of faith in the Agnostic's last days. In the case of George 
 Jacob Holyoake there was not even an ambiguous word 
 to build such a hope upon. I have seen the last words 
 that his enfeebled fingers scrawled, while the night was 
 closing upon him, on the subject of religious beliefs. 
 To the end he held the convictions of his manhood. 
 The last, loosely-pencilled lines in his pocket-book are 
 merely a repetition of his creed in The Origin and Nature 
 of Secularism. If death were the uprolling of a curtain 
 on a new world, as well as the fall of one on this world, 
 he was content — he had to be content — to wait and see. 
 To the last he saw only one world, the world of his 
 bodily eyes and his human affections. It held problems 
 enough, and he felt no regret that he had turned away 
 from the perplexing riddles of the beyond to give his 
 whole soul to humanity's advance. 
 
 He was happy to the end in his faith. Great weakness 
 came to him in the last months, and occasional pain, but 
 he was manful. He must have known that men would 
 say over his ashes, not merely that he had left, but that 
 he had made, the world better than he found it. 
 The greater portion of his early dreams had been 
 realised. In the early winter he would sit for hours at 
 the window of his study looking over the southern sea. 
 His eyes were jealous only that they would never see 
 the noble and beautiful forms that prepared to rise on 
 that far horizon. There was no room for regret. 
 " Honour is the wine of age," he had said long before. 
 He had had much of it, and with it an affection that few 
 commanded. Death came slowly, with long warning. 
 About the end of 1905 he sent for Greening. His old 
 friend had trouble to control himself for the last meeting, 
 but Holyoake met him cheerfully, and, gently dismissing 
 his wife, discussed with him the end and what was to 
 follow. ** I have cared more for Co-operation than for
 
 A CHEERFUL OCTOGENARIAN 311 
 
 any other public movement" was his decision, as they 
 talked over the long struggles they had seen and shared. 
 A little later he took leave of another old and esteemed 
 friend, Robert Applegarth ; 
 
 " I have warmed both hands at the fire of life. 
 It sinks, and I am ready to depart," 
 
 he said to Applegarth, in the words of W. S. Landor. 
 
 Before the end of the month it was clear that his days 
 were numbered. On Christmas-day he had dinner with 
 his daughter (Mrs. Holyoake-Marsh) in his library, 
 where his bed was placed ; for he was minded to die 
 amongst his books, and, if possible, to work to the end. 
 Below were Mrs. Holyoake and Mr. A. Marsh, his son- 
 in-law, who, ever proud of his association with the great 
 reformer, had tendered him the devoted and thoughtful 
 attention of a son in his later years. After that day he 
 slowly sank. Finely enough, his last vitality was spent 
 on the Liberal struggle at the polls in January, 1906. 
 Before the end of December the constitution of the 
 Liberal Cabinet was announced, and he wrote to Mr. 
 Burns and to Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman. To see the 
 country once more entrusted to the men he knew and 
 admired — Grey, Morley, Campbell-Bannerman, etc. — 
 was a welcome sight to his failing eyes ; but that a 
 working man should be associated with them in the 
 Cabinet was a remarkable fulfilment of his hope for the 
 workers. His letter to Mr. Burns runs (December 28th) : 
 
 " Permit one whom age has shorn of nimbleness to 
 bring tardily in the rear of the 3,000 his tribute of 
 congratulation. Was he not one of the first to see that 
 thou had'st a star, now in the ascendant, shining with 
 Cabinet radiance over the land? Now lettest thou thy 
 servant depart in peace, for his eye hath seen industrial^ 
 
 ^ The word *' industrial " was omitted by some papers that published 
 the letter.
 
 312 A CHEERFUL OCTOGENARIAN 
 
 salvation. The great proof of this is that 3,000 of thy 
 compeers, casting aside the envy of despair, the jealousies 
 of ignorance, send thee ungrudging word of their glad- 
 ness and support." 
 
 " Many thanks for your kind letter of congratulation," 
 Mr. Burns replied. " It is indeed a great honour to 
 receive from you such good wishes, and no effort of 
 mine will be spared to deserve them." 
 
 As the elections drew near he fought the increasing 
 weakness with a last effort to aid and to witness 
 progress. From his death-bed he dictated a vigorous 
 and lucid appeal to the workers of England to return 
 the Liberals to power. It was not the appeal of the 
 party politician, for he would never live to share the 
 prestige of his party. He thought that grave national 
 issues were at stake, and for the last time, standing 
 under the very shadow of the solemn arch of death, he 
 turned to address his fellows. His letter filled nearly a 
 column of the Star on the eve of the elections. Shortly 
 after it had been dictated the drowsiness of death began 
 to fall on him. For the fortnight from January 7th to 
 22nd he lay generally in a comatose condition, tended 
 by his wife and daughter. Occasionally the tired eyes 
 opened once more, and the dying fire broke out in faint 
 flashes, as he returned for a moment to the world of 
 men. How were the elections going? Then came the 
 succession of telegrams from all parts of the country 
 putting the Liberal victory in security from the first, and 
 he lay down with serenity. He had come into conscious 
 life amid the resounding struggle of the workers for 
 political power ; he passed slowly out of it amidst the 
 cry of a great democratic victory. He died peacefully, 
 in the presence of his wife and daughter, on January 
 22nd.
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 
 THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 HoLYOAKE was emphatically one of those public men 
 who care what their fellows mutter to each other, or cry 
 from the house-tops, when their own ears are closed for 
 ever. A dozen maxims of charity often lie, like sound- 
 proof walls, between the aged worker and the generation 
 about him ; and when the nerve has ceased to quiver, 
 and pain is no more, the walls gently break, and the 
 truth falls on the dead ears. We say nothing but good 
 of the dead, but we have many ways of saying it, and it 
 is not vanity to trust that the world will utter frank 
 appreciation over your remains, and not merely whisper 
 the chilly maxim of prudence or the faint praise of indul- 
 gence. It is only the biassed lover who speaks sweet 
 things while we live. What will be the sober verdict of 
 our age? 
 
 With those remarkable bundles of letters about him 
 from men who were no idle flatterers or mean judges, 
 Holyoake can have had little serious misgiving. We 
 will hope he had not. He knew well that from certain 
 obscure quarters depreciation, if not calumny, would 
 come ; or, at least, the nicely calculated compliments 
 that are but intended to show the generosity of the 
 giver. For that he cared little. But for the broad 
 judgment of his time he cared. 
 
 Whatever his feeling may have been, the news of his 
 death, flashing along the nerves of England, and then 
 
 313
 
 314 THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 of Europe, on that January morning, evoked a great 
 chorus of sympathy and appreciation. One must indeed 
 make some allowance for the picturesqueness of his 
 character and his career, in estimating the journalistic 
 tribute to him. His story made fine "copy." But the 
 virtual unanimity in respect for his person and appre- 
 ciation of his efforts was very gratifying. One paper — a 
 Socialist organ — maligned him ; one other — a Secularist 
 organ — damned him with faint praise. And it was for 
 the cause of the people he had done most, and for the 
 cause of free-thought he had forfeited most. Otherwise 
 the broad and frank eulogy was a fitting crown to his 
 career. Conservative and clerical journals were little 
 less generous in attributing to him character and ideal 
 than those other journals that were able to rejoice in the 
 effect of his exertions. 
 
 The study of his personality and influence may well 
 be completed by adducing a few of the verdicts that 
 were pronounced on him, as his memory passed the 
 great tribunal of obituary journalism ; nor will his 
 admirers be ungrateful to have a few of the more 
 important gathered for their preservation. Out of the 
 immense number of notices it is possible to quote a few 
 only, and we choose the less partial or those that have 
 more weight. The Conservative journals confined them- 
 selves to long and respectful records of his career, on 
 the whole, though the Standard described him as " a 
 remarkable personality who exercised a powerful in- 
 fluence both on the intellectual thought and on the 
 social and political development of the times in which 
 he lived " ; the Telegraph wrote of him as " one of the 
 foremost of his time ... a kindly, well-intentioned 
 man " ; and the Pall Mall Gazette thought it "impossible 
 not to respect him and the general sum of his achieve- 
 ments." The estimate of the Liberal press is of value
 
 THE MAN AND HIS WORK 315 
 
 in measuring his political service. He took "a full and 
 gallant part in the political and social emancipation of 
 England," said the Tribune; and it gave a fine and 
 enthusiastic record of his career from the pen of his 
 Liberal friend, Mr. A. E. Fletcher. " He helped to 
 build a better society, and was a Secularist who followed 
 the golden rule better than most Christians," wrote the 
 Daily News. *' One of England's Grand Old Men," the 
 Chronicle described him, '' an inspiring figure." 
 
 Non-political journals of all kinds paid tribute to his 
 character and endeavours. " A deeply conscientious 
 man," said the Daily Graphic^ " ready at all periods of 
 his life to suffer in what he held to be the cause of 
 justice." *' Those who have enjoyed his friendship know 
 what a privilege it was," Mr. Francis wrote in the 
 Athe7i(Eiini ; and the Academy generously declared : ** Agi- 
 tator, socialist, free-thinker, fire-brand, he lived through 
 the evil days of a time that happily has passed, the pass- 
 ing of which was due to no one man in so great a measure 
 as to him." " A life-long reformer, notable alike for his 
 high character, courage, consistency, and disinterested- 
 ness," said the Spectator. " His services to free thought 
 and honest thought were immense," said the Sphere. 
 " One of the great workers of the nineteenth century " 
 {Book and News Gazette^, " generally respected by all 
 thinking sections of his countrymen" {Publishers' Circular^, 
 " a long and honourable life " {Black and White), are 
 other expressions in the neutral London papers. Even 
 many religious journals were generous. The Methodist 
 Times spoke of his high character and " his long life of 
 strenuous labour for freedom " ; though that journal was 
 quite wrong in saying that in his later years he " largely 
 modified his position towards Christianity. " The CJiristiaji 
 Life concluded a warm tribute with the words : "He was 
 an untiring servant of the public good. It is not only
 
 3i6 THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 those who know God with our knowledge, but those also 
 whom God knoweth far better than we, of whom we may 
 reverently and confidently say : ' Servant of God, well 
 done.'" 
 
 It is impossible and needless to summarise the echoes 
 of these sentiments in the provincial press and abroad. 
 The Birmitighani Post, on which he had worked until it 
 became Unionist, expressed in a most generous leader the 
 esteem he had won in the city of his precarious youth. It 
 spoke of his "public life of unceasing activity, prompted, 
 as friends and opponents will alike concede, by the most 
 generous and unselfish impulses . . . infused with lofty 
 altruism and kindly humanity." The Brighton Herald 
 was no less generous in recording the feeling of the 
 town in which his later years were spent : " His opinions 
 on many vital matters may be the object of vehement 
 dislike, but not even his detractors can deny admiration 
 for that love of freedom which was the passion of his 
 life, for the sacrifices which he made fearlessly on its 
 behalf, and for his unceasing endeavours on behalf of 
 the social amelioration of his toiling fellow countrymen." 
 Scores of the leading continental journals also spoke at 
 length, and with deep respect, of Holyoake and his life, 
 copying from each other until he thinned into a legend- 
 ary hero in remote Italian towns. ^ To the Secolo (the 
 Vorwdrts also spoke well of him) he was " one of the 
 greatest economists, journalists, and agitators in Eng- 
 land." The Journal de Geneve found his " influence so 
 great and remarkable, and his active life so long, that in 
 speaking of him one seems to be dealing with a legend- 
 ary person." The Schweizer Protestantsblatt (which, 
 
 ^ A small Italian provincial paper has an article headed "The Death 
 of a Famous English Thinker." His name was " Georgio Jacob Aholy- 
 oacke. " He was the founder of " Secularism, a species of mathematical 
 philosophy," and was condemned to a fine of ^600,000 "for editing the 
 Creasoner."
 
 THE MAN AND HIS WORK 317 
 
 however, fancies he was a Unitarian) finely says : " His 
 name means ' holy oak/ and there was something of a 
 venerable oak in his life." Most of the Swiss and French 
 papers, and many in Germany and Holland, wrote of 
 him at length. 
 
 It would be superfluous to speak of tributes to him in 
 the organs of those movements which he still led at the 
 time of his death — the Literary Guide (the Rationalist 
 organ) and the Co-operative News. " The grand Old 
 Man of the Co-operative Movement," the News calls 
 him ; and it adds : " What he was to the cause of Co- 
 operation we can hardly attempt to describe. His 
 patience and fidelity gained universal admiration, and at 
 the same time reflected honour upon the movement and 
 upon his colleagues." Nor was there less deep regard 
 expressed in the organs of continental Co-operation. 
 One of the most beautiful of all the eulogies of the time 
 was the editorial article of // Nostra Giornale (organ of 
 the Milan Co-operators), which devoted its whole issue 
 to Holyoake and his work. " Holyoake, the glorious 
 pupil of Robert Owen, the world-known Co-operator, the 
 formidable propagandist, the historian of the Pioneers, 
 the friend of Garibaldi and Mazzini, the lover of humanity, 
 the venerated master, is no more," was the opening note 
 of a singularly fine appreciation. He has had ample 
 reward for his love and service for Italy. "In George 
 Jacob Holyoake," said the Swiss organ {Schweits Co7i- 
 suvi- Verein), " England loses one of the most interesting 
 and remarkable men that she has produced in the nine- 
 teenth century. . . . The co-operators of Switzerland 
 bend in spirit over his bier with the deepest regard and 
 gratitude." The French organ {L' Union Co-operative) 
 said that " in writing the history of Co-operation, he 
 wrote the history of his life ; " the German organ {Genos- 
 senschaftliches Volks-Blatt) spoke of him as " the Nestor
 
 3i8 THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 of British Co-operation " and " a pioneer in the history 
 of Democracy and Co-operation." 
 
 The other movements for which he had worked were 
 not less appreciative. The poHtical committee of the 
 National Liberal Club passed the resolution : — 
 
 " That this committee record their sense of the irre- 
 parable loss sustained by the club and the cause of liberty 
 and progress by the lamented death of Mr. G. J. Holy- 
 oake, the unswerving champion for nearly seventy years 
 of the people's rights. The committee regard his life's 
 work as a conspicuous example and memorial of the 
 triumph of character and of unselfish devotion to high 
 and noble aims." 
 
 From Rationalists the tributes were innumerable. I 
 will quote only two, a letter that Mr. George Meredith 
 wrote (to be read at the Rationalist Press dinner in 
 April) and an ode by Eden Phillpotts. Mr. Meredith 
 wrote : 
 
 " Dear Sir, 
 
 " The privilege proposed to me of being among 
 you at your annual gathering this year would have been 
 hailed in acceptation the more readily for the opportunity 
 I should have had to offer my tribute to the memory of 
 George Jacob Holyoake, one of the truly great English- 
 men of our time. From his earliest days as a worker he 
 spoke for the poor, who could not speak for themselves ; 
 and for the uninstructed, too timid to think for themselves. 
 Much is owing to him that England is no longer re- 
 garded on the Continent as the backward country in 
 relation to Freethought, and that the term 'Freethinker' 
 ceases to imply a holy reproach, a warning to infants and 
 the craven. Even Churchmen have been known to 
 allude to him with consideration. By sober persistency, 
 the result of a profound conviction as to the truth of his 
 cause, he succeeded at last in conquering hostile opinion ; 
 and, that being English, it will be owned that he did
 
 THE MAN AND HIS WORK 319 
 
 nothing less than disintegrate a granite rock, vSuch 
 men as he are the backbone of our land. They are not 
 eulogised in monuments ; they have a stouter memorial 
 in the hearts of all who venerate a simple devotion to the 
 oppressed, the labours of a clear intelligence, contempt 
 of material rewards, and unflinching courage. 
 
 " Yours truly, 
 
 " George Meredith." 
 
 In the memorial number of the Literary Guide appeared 
 the following tribute from Mr. Eden Phillpotts : 
 
 "HOLYOAKE (1817— 1906). 
 
 "Thou glorious Titan, art thou gone at last? 
 Shall the embattled peal thy name no more ? 
 Must the majestic spirit that of yore 
 Made thy young heart a home be now outcast? 
 Ah, never ! with thy passing hath not passed 
 The truth eternal that thou suffer'dst for. 
 Never again shall clang the iron door 
 Thy bleeding hands thrust open and held fast. 
 Servant of Man, well done ! The great unborn 
 Shall thunder forth thine honour in that light. 
 Whose radiant and unutterable morn 
 Thy life has hastened over Freedom's night, 
 And o'er the upward pathway thou hast worn 
 Thy steadfast name shall blaze, a star of night." 
 
 At the cremation of his remains all these diverse ele- 
 ments were brought together in an accord of sympathy. 
 Never shall I forget the remarkable spectacle that was 
 then witnessed in the little chapel of the Golder's Green 
 crematorium. The white coffin — characteristically, he had 
 forbidden black — was wrapped in the faded Garibaldian 
 flag that recalled the most dramatic stage of his career, 
 and was borne through a dense crowd that bore eloquent 
 witness, in its infinite variety, to his broad philanthropy. 
 Well-known men — such as Mr. John Burns, Dr. Clifford, 
 M. de Boyve, Dr. Eugen Oswald, Mr. Ralph Neville, 
 Mr. Maddison, Mr. Morrell — stood out from the packed
 
 320 THE^^'MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 mass of Co-operators, Profit-sharers, Rationalists, Secu- 
 larists, Positivists, Ethicists, Sunday Leaguers, Trades 
 Unionists, journalists, politicians, etc. The Co-operative 
 Union had sent 80 delegates from Manchester ; the 
 Wholesale, the News, the Italian and French bodies, and 
 170 British Societies and Women's Guilds were repre- 
 sented, or sent letters. The Liberal Club sent its secre- 
 tary, with Mr. Fletcher and Mr. Thompson. The Times 
 observed that the crowd " seemed to represent all classes 
 of the community." The really honouring feature was 
 that it represented every facet of idealism in the com- 
 munity, and bore witness to the dead man's broad sym- 
 pathies. On one side of me stood two fervent delegates 
 from Italy — on the other Mr. Donald Murray and Mr. 
 A. E. Fletcher ; before me was an atheist — behind me a 
 clergyman, and behind him a theosophist and a socialist. 
 And when the brief, representative addresses were over, 
 and Mr. E. O. Greening had murmured the last greet- 
 ing, the dense throng looked on with deepest reverence 
 and emotion while the remains of the son of a Midland 
 ironworker passed, with princely ceremony, through the 
 bronze gates. ^ 
 
 On the following day, Sunday, a larger crowd attended 
 the memorial service at the historic South Place Chapel, 
 where he had long ago listened to the eloquence of W. 
 J. Fox, and had often spoken himself in later years. An 
 impressive service, of an ethical character, was conducted 
 by Mr. J. A. Hobson, and funeral orations were delivered 
 by him and by the present writer. In the evening a 
 memorial service was held in the New Road Church at 
 Brighton. A small group of personal friends saw his 
 ashes committed to the grave in Highgate Cemetery on 
 
 ^ There was no religious service. Mr. Greening-, Mr. Gray, and 
 Mr. Vivian spoke for his Co-operative followers, Mr. A. E. Fletcher for 
 Liberalism, Mr. Gimson for the Leicester Secular Society, and Mr. 
 McCabe for the Rationalist Press Association.
 
 
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 4 
 
 
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 CO-OPERATOR AND SOCIAL REFORAVEK 
 
 
 
 GEORGE 
 
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 THE MEMORIAL ()\ MR. IIOLVOAKK'S ('.RAN i: 
 
 I.N lllc;nr.ATE C'K.MiniCKV
 
 THE MAN AND HIS WORK yi\ 
 
 the Monday by Dr. Charles Read. He had purchased, 
 some years before, a plot of ground close to the graves 
 of his early friends, George Eliot and George H. Lewes. 
 
 More recently (November gth, 1907) the Co-operators 
 of Great Britain have erected an impressive monument 
 over his ashes, with a fine and striking bust by Mr. Toft. 
 On that occasion Dr. Clifford maintained the excellent 
 tradition of liberal feeling towards the great Secularist 
 by delivering an eloquent appreciation of his character 
 and of his Co-operative and social work. Unconsciously 
 repeating a phrase that had occurred to more than one, 
 he spoke of Holyoake as a Moses that had led the 
 workers of England out of the desert. But this was 
 only a small instalment of the honour that the Co- 
 operators of England are preparing to the memory of 
 their leader. A fund of some ^25,000 has been sub- 
 scribed throughout the movement (at the rate of three- 
 pence per member), land has been purchased in 
 Manchester, and within a few years " Holyoake House " 
 will be numbered amongst the monuments of that city. 
 The structure will become the headquarters — socially and 
 educationally — of the Co-operative movement, and thus 
 his name will be enshrined for centuries to come in the 
 lives of Co-operators. There were moments when he 
 looked on many of the branches with sadness, or even 
 made pungent phrases on them ; but the whole body has 
 done, or is in train to do, princely honour to its early 
 apostle and strenuous propagandist. 
 
 ****«♦ 
 
 When W. L. Sargant wrote the biography of Holy- 
 oake's great master, within a year of his death, he felt it 
 needful to apologise for writing at length on so obscure 
 a man. " The good Owen did had been interred before 
 his bones," he observed. We need make no apology for 
 having written the life of the greatest of his disciples. 
 
 VOL. II. Y
 
 322 THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 Though he outhved two generations, he did not outHve 
 his services to his fellows. He died the venerated 
 master of more than one great movement, the remem- 
 bered pioneer in a hundred others, the esteemed friend 
 of many of our most prominent poUticians, social 
 workers, and men of letters. Yet his long career 
 stretched so far back beyond the earliest memory of 
 our generation, and the enterprises of his early manhood 
 fall in a world so different from that about us to-day, 
 that we may well, in conclusion, essay to form a summary 
 estimate of his services to society and the evolution of his 
 character. 
 
 To appreciate, in the first place, the improvement that 
 has, somehow or other, taken place during the nineteenth 
 century, consider the life of a worker in the days when 
 young Holyoake first felt the restlessness of his apostle- 
 ship dragging him from the lathe. I have described it 
 at some length in the early chapters. He found himself 
 an almost helpless wheel in a pitiless industrial machine. 
 From six on the Monday morning until six on the 
 Saturday evening he swung his hammer, or handled his 
 trowel, under the eye of a despotic master. His recrea- 
 tions were few and coarse : his education puerile or 
 none : his children dragged into the machine beside him, 
 with nerve, muscle, and brain undeveloped, at the age of 
 nine. Men spoke to him of the power he might have if 
 he would associate with his brawny fellows the land 
 over ; but every attempt to do it brought a swarm of 
 dragoons from his rulers. He understood there was a 
 bright world of art and culture beyond, but his stunted 
 powers and long, exacting labour shut him out of it. He 
 heard that he was a citizen of a great kingdom, but every 
 claim of citizenship was silenced with troopers' sabres. 
 He could not travel, except on foot ; he could not read, 
 unless he and his children ate less. The economist could
 
 THE MAN AND HIS WORK 323 
 
 only tell him that he was a producer ; the statesman was 
 content to have him a beer-sodden brawler for Church 
 and King ; and the parson urged him to be content in 
 the station to which he was called. 
 
 Who can measure the revolution that has taken place 
 in the life of the worker since 1830? vShorter hours and 
 better conditions of labour : free, palatial schools for his 
 children, with a fair opportunity for secondary education : 
 magnificent collections of art and books and scientific 
 objects wide open to him in his leisure hours : a 
 literature of unbounded prodigality and of whatever 
 quality he cares to demand in it : cheap and comfortable 
 travel : cheaper and better food, with higher wages and 
 better homes : full freedom to discuss his political, re- 
 ligious, or industrial conditions, to enter into trade-com- 
 binations, to say what he pleases of Church and State, to 
 put his hand on the very regulators of the civic and 
 national machinery. The evolution of travel since 1830 
 is typical of the whole life of the worker. We see 
 him at first breaking with difficulty from his industrial 
 centre, and making his way afoot to some far-off town in 
 search of independence, or of congenial spirits. Twenty 
 years later he can use the iron-roads that span the 
 country : but standing in an open truck, like cattle, 
 creeping slowly from station to station, shunted aside to 
 make way for his betters. Then a roof is put over his 
 truck, and seats are put in it : though the rain and snow 
 beat in on him through the open window, and his third- 
 class train is the pariah of the railway. To-day he can 
 run from London to Glasgow and back, of a week end, 
 in luxurious heated carriages, for a little over thirty 
 shillings. Apply that same measure of improvement to 
 his education, his political and civic status, his recreations, 
 and his social conditions generally, and you have an idea 
 of the height he has ascended since 1S30.
 
 324 THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 Those who fancy they have the reason for all this in 
 some elusive law of evolution are playing with scientific 
 terms that they do not understand. Evolution describes 
 the procession : it does not tell the motive force. The 
 working men have reached the higher plane because 
 they have marched to it, under the inspiration of their 
 leaders and their prophets. Deluded prophets they often 
 were, leading them to Utopia ; but the road to Utopia 
 often lies through the better land, and they were brought 
 nearer to it. 
 
 Holyoake's share in leading this march of the workers, 
 in detecting true paths, and clearing away obstacles, was 
 one that, I fancy, the future social historian will appraise 
 higher than any of us do to-day. Before he was out of 
 his teens he was a Chartist, an Owenite, and a Trade 
 Unionist. In other words, he dedicated his life to 
 breaking the shackles that bound the worker in his time, 
 to secure education, better industrial conditions, freedom 
 of speech, deliberateness of conviction, political power, 
 and the right of association. Every one of these has been 
 secured, and in the agitation for each he held a promi- 
 nent place. His service in the formation of the Co- 
 operative Movement has only to be mentioned. A con- 
 vincing journalist and lecturer, he urged the Co-operative 
 idea for sixty years, and the whole of Co-operative 
 Europe called him master ; nor must it be forgotten 
 that he urged incessantly that the profit arising from 
 the practice of association should ^o largely in education 
 and in improving the condition of employees. In educa- 
 tion itself his influence is easily perceived, though not 
 easily measured. When we put together his early 
 teaching, his educational treatises for young men, his 
 unfailing appeals by pen and voice, his association with 
 Ellis, with Fox and the northerners, with Forster and the 
 Yorkshire enthusiasts, with four educational Leagues,
 
 THE MAN AND HIS WORK 325 
 
 and with nearly every single London worker for educa- 
 tion, we must grant him a good share in securing our 
 national scheme of education. In regard to Trade 
 Unionism, it will be recalled that his first pamphlet 
 urged the principle ; that he was the first explicit Labour 
 candidate ; and that his last act was to greet a Labour 
 Minister. The development of his work took him too far 
 afield to claim much influence in this, but the workers' 
 associations in Brighton know his ready sympathy. 
 
 In the political field few modern politicians would 
 seek his influence, but that is merely because they are 
 of a later generation. In any appreciation of the evo- 
 lution of modern Liberalism out of the remnants of 
 Chartism, Radicalism, and moderate Whiggism he will 
 find a distinct place. He had great influence in the 
 transformation of the Chartist into the Radical, and no 
 mean influence in the coalition of Radicals and pro- 
 gressive Whigs. We have seen how his political work 
 was appreciated by such judges as Thornton Hunt, J. S. 
 Mill, W. J. Fox, J. Cowen, and even Bright. Fifty 
 years of consistent lecturing, journalism, pamphleteering, 
 and electoral work in the Liberal cause are no light 
 record ; and to this must be added his vast political 
 correspondence, and his relations with so many ministers. 
 In his time the son of the worker was a parvenu of the 
 political world, an ominous intruder, regarded much as 
 the early manufacturer was amongst the landed gentry. 
 Holyoake's career was one of the most effective in break- 
 ing that tradition. He would probably have failed in the 
 House of Commons,even had there been no oath-barrier to 
 keep him out of it. But the respect he won by his sober 
 judgment, high character, and moderation enabled him 
 to exercise a very great influence outside it. A few 
 instances may be recalled from the course of our nar- 
 rative. He did more than any other single worker to
 
 326 THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 destroy Palmerston's Bill in a few days in 1858: to en- 
 sure the adoption of the ballot in 187 1 : and to secure 
 the abandonment of the tax on third-class fares in 1883. 
 These are instances, out of many, of the real influence he 
 used from without ; but, as I said, his great service was 
 in political education. 
 
 His services to the cause of freethought are of a nature 
 that many readers would rather hope to find insignificant, 
 but they form a part of the serious work he set out to do, 
 and must be briefly noticed. Here, indeed, we are par- 
 ticularly apt to find men making large claims who were 
 little more than flies on the wheel. It was the growth of 
 scientific culture and historical criticism and the spread 
 of education that had so disintegrating an eflect on the 
 earlier religious beliefs. Holyoake's work was to pop- 
 ularise this advanced knowledge, and we saw that, to the 
 constant regret of most of his friends, he never laid aside 
 that work. Rationalists generally will probably claim 
 two outstanding services for him in this department. 
 From 1842 until i860 he was the acknowledged leader of 
 freethinkers in this country, and the vast amount of 
 educative and organising work done in that difficult 
 period was overwhelmingly due to him. He founded 
 the National Secular Society : Mr. Bradlaugh named it, 
 and developed it. In the next thirty years his great 
 service was his stern insistence that there should be no 
 criticism without character, culture, taste, and considera- 
 tion for others. He failed in the specific aim he had 
 before him, but he kept that ideal intact, until a new 
 organisation was ready to embody it. These, and the 
 splendid fight he waged for free speech, the sacrifices he 
 made for honour and truth, the securing of the option to 
 affirm instead of swearing, the vindication in his own 
 fine character of humanist morality, are the great services 
 he rendered to his Agnostic followers.
 
 THE MAN AND HIS WORK 327 
 
 From first to last he held a prominent position on the 
 executive of twenty-two different progressive Leagues or 
 Associations, and even these do not exhaust the list of 
 his voluntary services in the cause of progress. His 
 first public act was the incurring of an ignominious 
 imprisonment, which he could easily have evaded, in 
 support of the right of free speech, and he was one of the 
 most daring and persistent champions in the freeing of 
 journalism from indirect government control. He was 
 incontestably the chief worker in securing cheap and 
 decent travel for the working man, and in obtaining for 
 him such assistance as he had until recently to guide the 
 steps of the emigrant. He was, after Mill, the greatest 
 pioneer of the modern woman-movement, and nearly all 
 the ladies who fought its early battles in this country 
 sought his aid and inspiration. He was a powerful early 
 advocate of the free Sunday. He was ever an enthu- 
 siastic and effective worker in the creation of international 
 amity. From his early appeal for the slaves and the 
 American abolitionists to those late appeals for Ireland 
 that won him the regard of Davitt and Justin McCarthy 
 — through all his efforts on behalf of the liberators of 
 France, Italy, Hungary, and Poland — he sought the 
 frank recognition of the brotherhood of men. He fol- 
 lowed Owen from the first in preaching the substitution 
 of arbitration for war; and even in that more trying 
 warfare of religious controversy in which he was 
 constrained to engage he gave a rare example of 
 chivalry. 
 
 They who write the lives of great statesmen are often 
 puzzled to separate the accomplishment from the feeling 
 of the age that permitted it. Our task is easier. Holy- 
 oake was a man who set out in life with distinguished 
 ability, an inheritance of ideals, and formidable difficulties 
 to surmount in realising them. Nervous, sensitive, of
 
 328 THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 frail physique, he never shrank from the task, or com- 
 pounded with his aim. Twice his hfe was endangered, 
 twice bhndness threatened him ; but he worked until the 
 year of his death for what he beHeved to be the good of 
 humanity. And into that rough world of the pioneer and 
 the settler and the disturber of respectable folk he took, 
 and kept unblunted, the refinement, chivalry, sobriety, 
 and cheerfulness of his temper and the unyielding 
 straightness of his character. He chose his work well, 
 and he did it well ; and the vast stretch of the social scale 
 that lies between the gaunt, livid, pike-armed Chartist of 
 his youth and the artisan-voter of to-day is a measure of 
 his achievement.
 
 A CONTRIBUTION TOWARDS 
 
 A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE WRITINGS OF 
 
 GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE. 
 
 Compiled by C. W. F. Goss. 
 
 The writings of Mr. George Jacob Holyoake have been the 
 subject of study with the compiler for some two years past, 
 and he had hoped, ere this, to have published the long pro- 
 jected bibliography, which, however, is now in preparation, 
 and will be published in the course of a few weeks, with notes 
 upon such books or pamphlets as may call for special atten- 
 tion. The following chronological list does not pretend to 
 include the various editions of his works, nor does it include 
 broadsheets, leaflets, works edited by Mr. Holyoake or those 
 in criticism of him, to the number of i6o items, all of which 
 may be seen at the Bishopsgate Institute. Only such publi- 
 cations have been mentioned as appeared to be principally 
 deserving of attention. For omissions, therefore, the com- 
 piler trusts a kindly view may be taken, and for any informa- 
 tion helping him to make the projected bibliography more 
 complete, he will be deeply grateful, for he is anxious that 
 nothing shall be omitted. 
 
 1841 
 
 The Advantages and disadvantages of Triides' Unions, pp. 12, cr. 8vo. 
 
 Sheffield : Hardcastle. id. 
 
 1842 
 
 A Sketch of the Life and a few of the Beauties of Ponibcrton. pp. 24, 
 
 cr. 8vo. Leeds : J. Hobson. 30:'. 
 
 The Spirit of Bonner in the Disciples of Jesus, pp. 16, cr. Svo. 
 
 London : Hetherington & Cleave. 2</. 
 
 329
 
 330 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 1843 
 
 A Short and easy method with the Saints, pp. 28, cr. 8vo. 
 
 London : Hetherington. ^d. 
 Paley Refuted in his Own Words, pp. 39, cr. 8vo. 
 
 London : Hetherington. dd. 
 
 1844 
 
 Practical Grammar ; or, composition divested of difficulties, pp. 72, i2mo. 
 
 London : J. Watson, is. 6d. 
 A Visit to Harmony Hall. pp. 27, cr. 8vo. London : Hetherington. 2d. 
 
 1845 
 The Value of Biography in the formation of Individual Character, pp. 16, 
 i2mo. London : J. Watson. 2d. 
 
 Rationalism : a treatise for the times, pp. 47, cr. 8vo. 
 
 London : J. Watson. 6d. 
 
 1846 
 
 Lectures used by the Manchester Unity of the Independent Order of 
 Oddfellows: Charity, Truth, Knowledge, and Science, pp. 64, 
 i2mo. London : J. G. Hornblower. 
 
 Purple Lecture used by the Manchester Unity : Progression, pp. 16, 
 i2mo. London : J. G. Hornblower. 
 
 Handbook of Grammar, pp. 60, i2mo. London : J. Watson, is. 
 
 1847 
 
 Mathematics no Mystery ; or, the beauties and uses of Euclid, pp. 121, 
 i2mo. London : J. Watson. 2s. 6d. 
 
 Propagandism (from T/ic A'easoner). pp. 4, dy. 8vo. 
 
 London : T/ie Reasoner Office. 
 
 1848 
 
 A Logic of facts ; or, plain hints on Reasoning, pp. xii + 92, i2mo. 
 
 London : J. Watson. \s. 6d. 
 
 The Polity and resources of Freethinking. pp. 8, dy. Svo. 
 
 London : T/ie Reasoner Office. 
 
 1849 
 
 Life and character of Richard Carlile. pp. 40, cr. Svo. 
 
 London : J. Watson. 6d. 
 
 Rudiments of Public Speaking and Debate, pp. vii + 90, i2mo. 
 
 London : J. Watson, is. 6d. 
 
 Life and character of Henry Hetherington. pp. 16, roy. Svo. 
 
 London : J. Watson. 2d. 
 
 Literary Institutions : their relation to public opinion, pp. 16, cr. Svo. 
 
 London : J. Watson. 2d.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 331 
 
 1850 
 
 The Loj^ic of dcatli ; or, why should the Atheist fear to die ? pp. 15, 
 i2mo. London : J. Watson. \d. 
 
 History of the last trial by Jury for Atheism in England, pp. vi + 100, 
 i2mo. London : J. Watson. \s. 6d. 
 
 Catholicism the religion of fear. pp. ^z, i2mo. 
 
 London : J. Watson. 30'. 
 
 The Appeal of the distressed operative tailors to the higher classes 
 and the public. By G. J. Holyoakc and R. Leblond. pp. 31, 
 dy. 8vo. 
 
 The Report of the four nights' discussion at Bradford between George 
 J. Holyoake . . . and John Bowes ... on "The truth of Chris- 
 tianity and the folly of Infidelity." pp. 154, i2mo. 
 
 London : E. Ward. 
 
 A Report of the public discussion between George J. Holyoake and 
 David King. Questions: "What is the Christian system? what are 
 its legitimate effects ? " pp. 72, cr. 8vo. London : W. Horsell. 
 
 1851 
 
 The Workman and the International P'xhibition. pp. 8, i2mo. 
 
 [London: Holyoake Bros.] id. 
 The Philosophic type of Religion as developed by Professor Newman, 
 stated, examined, and answered, pp. 26, cr. 8vo. 
 
 London : J. Watson. 30?'. 
 
 The Last days of Mrs. Emma Martin, advocate of Freethought. pp. 8, 
 i2mo. London : J. Watson, id. 
 
 1852 
 
 Report of a public discusiiion carried on by Henry Townley, late of 
 
 Bishopsgate Chapel, and George Jacob Holyoake ... on the 
 
 question "Is there sufficient proof of the existence of a God?" 
 
 pp. viii + 82, cr. 8vo. London : Ward & Co. is. 
 
 The Organisation of Freethinkers, pp. 8, i2mo. 
 
 London : J. Watson, id. 
 
 Constitution and objects of Secular Societies from the Manchester Con- 
 ference Report, pp. 4, dy. 8vo. id. 
 
 This was issued as a supplement to 7'hc Reasoner, No. 337, 
 Nov. loth, 1852. 
 Townley and Holyoake, Atheistic controversy: a public discussion on 
 the "Being of a God." pp.64. i2mo. London : Ward & Co. 61/. 
 Why do the Clergy avoid discussion, and the Philosophers discounte- 
 nance it? pp. 43, i2mo. London : J. Watson. 6a'. 
 Forms volume ii of "The Cabinet of Reason." 
 Three Lectures in Heywood in answer to Mr. Grubb's Lectures, entitled 
 " Infidelity unmasked." In three parts, pp. 10+12+ 12, cr. 8vo. 
 
 Heywood : A. Whitworth.
 
 332 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 1852-3 
 Wayside points for New Roads ; or, defences of Freethinking. No. i 
 November 1852, No. 2 December 1852, No. 3 January 1853. 
 pp. 16 + 16 + 16, roy. Svo. London : J. Watson, zd. each. 
 
 1S52-4 
 
 The Child's First letter book [6 leaves without pagination], i2mo. 
 
 London : J. Watson, 1852. \d. 
 
 The Child's Second letter book [8 leaves without pagination], i2mo. 
 
 London : J. Watson, 1852. 2d. 
 
 The Child's First reading book. pp. 32, i2mo. 
 
 London : J. Watson, 1853. ^d. 
 
 The Child's First word book. pp. 20, i2mo. 
 
 London: Holyoake & Co. , 1854. 2>^. 
 
 Note. — The four preceding booklets, sewn together, were 
 published circa 1864, under the title of " The Child's Ladder of 
 knowledge." pp. 64, cr. Svo. London : F. Farrah. %d. 
 
 1853 
 Report of a public discussion between the Rev. Brewin Grant . . . and 
 George Jacob Holyoake, held in the Royal British Institution, 
 Cowper Street, London, pp. viii + 264, cr. Svo. 
 
 London : Ward & Co. is. 
 Organisation : not of Arms — but Ideas. pp. viii + 26, cr. Svo. 
 
 London : J. Watson, dd. 
 Forms volume iii of "The Cabinet of Reason." 
 Libra, or, the balances; being a Review of " Mene Tekel." pp. 12, 
 cr. Svo. Stoke-upon-Trent : George Turner. 
 
 The Government and the working man's press, pp. 12, post Svo. 
 
 Free Press Union. \d. 
 Socialism and its advocates : a letter from Mr. Joseph Barker ; with 
 the reply of the Editor of 71ie Rcasoner. pp. 8, cr. Svo. 
 
 London : J. Watson. \d. 
 
 The India and China tea mart : the history of Indian and Chinese 
 
 teas. pp. 7, cr. Svo. Glasgow : J. & M. Mackenzie. 
 
 Secularism : its sphere and its services. [From The Reasoner.^ pp. 2, 
 
 dy. Svo. 
 
 Correspondence between Mr. George Jacob Holyoake . . . and the 
 Rev. John H. Rutherford, pp. 8, roy. Svo. 
 
 Newcastle : T. P. Barkas. id. 
 
 1854 
 
 Circular from Mr. Holyoake (for friends of Secular progress only), 
 pp. 8, cr. Svo.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 333 
 
 Secularism the affirmative Philosophy of the people, pp. 16, i2mo. 
 
 London ; Ilolyoake & Co. \d. 
 A Secular catechism for children ; adapted from the Rev. H. W. 
 
 Crosskey's Catechism of religion for the use of young children. 
 
 pp. 8, cr. 8vo. London : Ilolyoake & Co. it/. 
 
 Report of a public discussii)n between the Rev. Brewin Grant and 
 
 George Jacob Ilolyoake, held in the City Hall, Glasgow. 
 
 pp. XX + 220, i2mo. Glasgow: Robert Stark. 2s. 
 
 Christianity versus Secularism : a public discussion at Newcastle-upon- 
 Tyne between the Rev. J. U. Rutherford and Mr. G. J. Ilolyoake. 
 
 pp. 170, i2mo. London : Ward & Co. is. 2^- 
 
 Controversial characteristics of the Scottish people, pp. 4, i2mo. id. 
 A Secular prayer by Mr. J. G. Holyoake in Invertiel Church, Kirkcaldy. 
 
 [From T/ie Reasoner. No. 446.] 
 
 1855 
 Ledru Rollin. [From The Reasoner, vol. 18, No. 457.] pp. 2, dy. 8vo. 
 Secularism distinguished from Unitarianism. pp. 16, cr. Svo. 
 
 London : Holyoake & Co. 2d. 
 
 1856 
 
 Public Discussion on Teetotalism and the Maine Law, between George 
 Jacob Holyoake, Esq., and Dr. Frederic R. Lees. pp. 28, 
 dy. Svo. In works of Dr. Lees, vol. iii, pp. 177-202. 
 
 London : W. Tweedie. dd. 
 
 Another edition was published at 8^. by Holyoake & Co. 
 History of Fleet Street House: a Report of Sixteen Years [1840-1856]. 
 
 pp. 20, roy. Svo. London : Holyoake & Co. 6(/. 
 
 Rich Man's Six, and Poor Man's One Day : a letter to Lord Palmerston. 
 
 pp. 8, cr. Svo. London : Holyoake & Co. id. 
 
 1857 
 The Secular preacher (with portrait of the Rev. Thomas Binney). 
 pp. 6, cr. Svo. London : F. Farrah. id. 
 
 British Secular Institute of communication and propagandism : report 
 
 of the Fleet Street House, part ii for 1857. pp. 8, roy. Svo. 
 The Case of Thomas Pooley, the Cornish well sinker, pp. 32, cr. Svo. 
 
 London : Holyoake & Co. 3^/. 
 
 The Trial of Theism, pp. 176, cr. Svo. London : Holyoake & Co. 2s. 
 
 Note. — Originally published in 22 penny parts, and after- 
 wards in three sixpence-halfpenny sections. 
 
 1858 
 
 Self-Help by the people : History of Co-operation in Rochdale, pp. 72, 
 cr. Svo. London : Holyoake & Qo. is.
 
 334 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Report of a discussion on the Maine Law between Mr. G. J. Holyoake 
 . . . and Mr. G. E. Lomax, in the Theatre Royal, Blackburn, 
 November i6th and 17th, 1857. pp. 40 + 40, cr. 8vo. 
 
 Blackburn : F. J. Nichols. 
 
 1859 
 
 The Workman and the suffrage : letters to the Right Hon. Lord John 
 Russell, pp. 16, roy. 8vo. London : Holyoake & Co. zd. 
 
 The Life and last days of Robert Owen, of New Lanark, pp. 28, 
 cr. Svo. London : Holyoake & Co. a^d. 
 
 The skin, baths, bathing and soap. pp. vii + loi, cr. 8vo. 
 
 London : The Author. 
 Principles of Secularism briefly explained, pp. 40, cr. Svo. 
 
 London : Holyoake and Co. 6rt'. 
 
 The Social means of promoting temperance ; with remarks on errors in 
 its advocacy, pp. 31, cr. Svo. London : Holyoake & Co. d^d. 
 
 1S60 
 
 Lectures and Debates : their terms, condition and character, pp. 8, 
 cr. Svo. [Privately printed.] London : Holyoake & Co. 
 
 On Lecturing : its conditions and character, pp. 2, roy. Svo. 
 
 1861 
 
 The Logic of life, deduced from the principle of Freethought. pp. 16, 
 cr. Svo. London : Holyoake & Co. 2d. 
 
 Thomas Cooper delineated as convert and controversialist, pp. 20, 
 C". Svo. London : Holyoake & Co. 30'. 
 
 What may England yet do for Italy? pp. 8, dy. Svo. 
 
 London : Holyoake & Co. 
 
 The Outlaws of Freethought : the policy which may secure an affirma- 
 tion bill. pp. 6, cr. Svo. London : Holyoake & Co. \d. 
 
 The Limits of Atheism ; or, why should sceptics be outlaws? pp. 16, 
 c. Svo. London : Holyoake & Co. zd. 
 
 The Uselessness of prayer. [Two-page secular tracts, No. 5.] pp. 2, 
 cr. Svo. 
 
 The Impossibility of proving the existence of God by the design argu- 
 ment. [Two-page secular tracts, No. 3.] pp. 2, cr. Svo. 
 
 Secularism and the place it occupies. [Two-page secular tracts, No. 2.] 
 pp. 2, cr. Svo. 
 
 Defeat of the Rev. Sidney Gedge of Northampton in the Queen's 
 Bench, pp. 8, cr. Svo. London : Holyoake & Co. 
 
 In the Matter of the affirmation bill. pp. 4, cr. Svo.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 335 
 
 1862 
 Aflumation and appeal case fund. pp. 2, cr. 8vo. 
 
 Freethought Lectureships in connection with 7'he Secular World, pp. 4, 
 cr. 8vo. 
 
 Mr. Ilolyoake's Disconnection witli the National Reformer, and the cor- 
 respondence which accounts for it. pp. 4, cr. 8vo. 
 
 1863 
 
 The Colenso controversy : a reply to Dr. Cumming's " Moses right, 
 Colenso wrong." By a London Zulu. pp. 60, cr. 8vo. 
 
 London : F. Farrah. GJ. 
 A " Working Man's" Objections to Co-operative Societies answered. 
 By One who has seen them before, pp. 14, cr. 8vo. 
 
 Huddersfield : H. Fielding. 
 History of the rise and progress of Middlesbrough. By Landor 
 Praed. pp. 28, dy. Svo. 
 
 Newcastle-upon-Tyne : Chrofiicle Office. ()d. 
 
 Moral Errors which endanger the permanence of Co-operative Societies. 
 
 pp. 16, cr. Svo. Huddersfield : H. Fielding. \d. 
 
 Civil Equality : the p.irliamentary progress of the affirmation bill. 
 
 pp. 8, cr. 8vo. 
 Tracts for the thoughtful, pp. 2, cr. Svo. 
 
 London : Secular World Office. 
 The Suppressed Princess. By Landor Praed. pp. 8, 4to. 
 
 London : F. Farrah. 2d. 
 
 1864 
 
 Imitable features of the Railway Permanent Benefit Building Society, 
 Euston. pp. 8, dy. Svo. London : McCorquodale & Co. 3^. 
 
 Public Lessons of the hangm.in. pp. 8, cr. Svo. 
 
 London : F. Farrah. \d. 
 The Suppressed lecture at Cheltenham, pp. 8. cr. Svo. 
 
 London : F. Farrah. \d. 
 
 Tiie Perils of Co-oper.ilion : the hundred master sj-stein. By -A Student 
 in Co-operation, pp. 8, i2mo. 
 
 Reprinted from tlie Moulting Star. 
 
 1S65 
 
 Excluded Evidence on the ground of speculative opinion, pp. 16, cr. 
 
 Svo. London Book Store. 2d. 
 
 Partnerships of Industry : a statement of the Co-operative case, 
 
 divested of sentimentality, pp. 16, cr. Svo. 
 
 London Book Store. 2d. 
 The Liberal situation : necessity for a qualified franchise, pp. 36, cr. 
 
 Svo. London Book Store, dd.
 
 336 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Public performances of the dead : a review of American spiritualism, 
 pp. 12, cr. 8vo. London Bouk Store, yl. 
 
 f 
 
 iS66 
 
 Eclectic Catalogue. January iS66. pp. i6, dy. Svo. 
 
 London Book Store. 3^/. 
 
 1867 
 
 The History of Co-operation in Halifax, pp. 57, cr. Svo. 
 
 London Book Store, is. 
 
 The Good of going to Paris to see the exhibition. By Landor Praed. 
 
 pp. 8, cr. Svo. London Book Store. i,L 
 
 1868 
 
 Life of the celebrated Lord Brougham. By Landor Praed. pp. 16, 
 cr. Svo. London : F. Farrah. id. 
 
 Working Class representation : its conditions and consequences, pp. 
 16, dy. Svo. London Book Store, id. and 2d. 
 
 A New defence of the ballot, in consequence of Mr. Mill's objections to 
 it. pp. 8, dy. Svo. London Book Store. i(/. and 3^?. 
 
 1870 
 
 Secularism, Scepticism and Atheism : verbatim report of the proceed- 
 ings of a two nights' Public Debate between Messrs. G. J. H0I3'- 
 oake and C. Bradlaugh, held at the New Hall of Science, March 
 loth and nth, 1S70. pp. 77, cr. Svo. London : Austin and Co. 
 
 Common People, pp. 8, dy. Svo. London : Triibner and Co. 2d. 
 
 1871 
 
 Protection of inebriates. Reprinted from T/te Examinei-, No. 3307. 
 pp. 2, 4to. 
 
 1873 
 John Stuart Mill, as some of the working classes knew him. pp. 29, 
 cr. Svo. London : Triibner & Co. (id. 
 
 The Logic of Co-operation, pp. 16, cr. Svo. 
 
 London : Triibner & Co. 2d, 
 Secular Responsibility, pp. 15, cr. Svo. London : Triibner & Co. 2d. 
 
 1874 
 In Memoriam, Austin Holyoake, died April loth, 1S74. pp. S, cr. Svo.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 337 
 
 1875 
 History of Co-operation in England : its literature and its advocates. 
 2 vols., cr. 8vo. 1875-1879. 
 
 Vol. I. — Pioneer period, 1812-1844. pp. xii + 419. 1875. 
 
 London : Triibner & Co. ^s. 
 Vol. 2. — Constructive period, 1845-1878. pp. x + 491. 1879. 
 
 London : Triibner & Co. %s. 
 
 1877 
 
 Alien features of Secularism, pp. 4, cr. 8vo. 
 
 Letter to the Subscribers of the Fund made during my recent illness, 
 pp. 4, folio. 
 
 1878 
 
 The Provincial mind. pp. 6, dy. 8vo. Manchester. 
 
 1881 
 
 Among the Americans, pp. 246, cr. 8vo. 
 
 Chicago : Belford, Clarke & Co. 6^. 
 
 Note. — Includes "A Stranger in America," reprinted from 
 the Nineteenth Century. 
 
 2nd edition, pp. 79. London : T. H. Roberts, is. 
 
 Life of Joseph Rayner Stephens, preacher and poUtical orator, pp. 244, 
 
 cr. 8vo. London : Williams & Norgate. y. 
 
 1882 
 
 Secularism a religion which gives Heaven no trouble, pp. 15, cr. 8vo. 
 
 London : Watts & Co. id. 
 
 Plain words about Secularism, pp. 4, dy. 8vo. n. d. 
 
 A Plea for affirmation in parliament, pp. 20, dy. 8vo. 
 
 London : H. Cattell & Co,. 2d. 
 
 The Revenue of the Central Co-operative Board, pp. 4, i2mo. 
 
 Manchester : Central Co-operative Board. 
 
 1883 
 
 Secular Prospects in death. The late Councillor Josiah Gimson. pp. 
 19, cr. Svo. London : Crown Publishing Co. 
 
 1884 
 
 Jurisprudence and amendment of the law. pp. 4, dy. 8vo. 
 Death of Mrs. G. J. Holyoake, 1819-1884. pp. 4, 410. 
 
 Reprinted from The Present Day. 
 Travels in search of a settler's guide book of America and Canada- 
 
 pp. 148, dy. Svo. London : Triibner & Co. 2x. 6</. 
 
 Employee interest in Co-operation. Broadsheet, pp. 2, roy. Svo. 
 VOL. II. Z
 
 53^ BIBLIOGRAPHV 
 
 t88s 
 
 Patriotism by cliarity. pp. J 2, cr. 8vo. Leicester Book Store, ii/. 
 
 Robbing a thousand Peters to pay one Paul. pp. 2, dy. 8vo. 
 
 London : Cassell & Co. \s. per 100. 
 Reciprocity explained, pp. 2, dy. Svo. 
 
 London : Cassell & Co. \s. per 100. 
 
 1886 
 
 Deliberate Liberalism : four instances of it. pp. 16, cr. Svo. 
 
 London and Leicester : John Heyvvood. \d. 
 
 The Opportunity of Ireland, pp. 8, cr. 8vo. London : N. L. C. id. 
 
 Hostile and generous toleration (a new theory of toleration), pp. 15, 
 
 dy. Svo. London : E. W. Allen, zd. 
 
 1887 
 
 Inaugural Address delivered at the Nineteenth Annual Co-operative 
 Congress, held at Carlisle, May 30th and 31st, and June ist 1887. 
 pp. 15, cr. Svo. Manchester : Central Co-operative Board. 2.d. 
 The Growth of Co-operation in England, pp. 22, cr. Svo. 
 
 Manchester : Central Co-operative Board, zd. 
 New Ideas of the day. pp. 16, cr. Svo. 
 
 London : Freethought Publishing Co. id. 
 
 1888 
 
 The Policy of commercial Co-operation as respects the consumer, pp. 
 16, cr. Svo. London : Trlibner & Co. zd. 
 
 Self-help a hundred years ago. pp. viii + 214, cr. Svo. 
 
 London : Swan Sonnenschein. zs. 6d. 
 Co-operative Dairy-farming in Denmark, pp. 4, dy. Svo. 
 
 London : Cassell & Co. zs. per 100. 
 
 1890 
 
 What would follow on the effacement of Christianity, pp. 15, dy. Svo. 
 Buffalo : Office of Freethinkers' Magazine. 10 cents. 
 
 1891 
 
 Life and career of Charles Bradlaugh. pp. 16, roy. Svo. 
 
 New York : H. L. Green. 15 cents. 
 The Co-operative movement to-day. pp. xiii 4- 19S, cr. Svo. 
 
 London : Methuen & Co. zs. 6d. 
 
 1892 
 
 Sixty Years of an agitator's life. 2 vols. pp. xii + 307 and x + 320, 
 roy. Svo. London : T. Fisher Unwin. zis.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 339 
 
 1894 
 
 Letter from Mr. George Jacob Holyoake to tlie Daily News, April i8th, 
 1894, on the proposed journal Labour Co-partnership, pp. 2, dy. 
 8vo. 
 
 1895 
 Life of Thomas Burt, RI.P., Secretary of the Northumberland Miners' 
 Union, pp. 16, cr. 8vo. London : Walter Scott, Ltd. id. 
 
 1896 
 
 The W;ir path of opinion : strange things seen therein as shown in the 
 " Life of Bradlaugh " and *' Memories " of Linton, pp. 74, cr. 8vo 
 
 Leicester : Co-operative Printing Society. 
 
 Note. — This work was written in 1896, but when the sheets 
 were being passed through the press it was withdrawn, and 
 issued in 1901. 
 
 Three Articles dealing with the treatment of the musicians by the 
 bandmaster of the West Pier, Brighton, pp. 6, dy. 8vo. 
 
 Amalgamated Musicians' Union. 
 
 Dispute with H. S. Gates. Musical blacklegs in Brighton, pp. 2, 
 cr. 8vo. 
 
 The Origin and nature of Secularism, pp. 136, cr, 8vo. 
 
 London : Watts & Co. 2s. 6d. 
 American edition with title changed to " English Secularism : 
 a confession of belief." pp. xii + 146, cr. 8vo. 
 
 Chicago : Open Court Publishing Co. 
 
 1897 
 
 The Jubilee History of the Leeds Industrial Co-operative Society from 
 1847-1897. pp. xii + 260, cr. 8vo. 
 
 Leeds : Central Co-operative Office, is. 6d. 
 
 1898 
 
 Omar Khayyam : strange story of the Macmillans and a Leicester Book- 
 seller. [Cyclostylcd.] pp. 12, cr. 8vo. 
 
 Leicester : Freethought Bookstore, is. 
 The Essentials of Co-operative education, pp. 19, dy. 8vo. 
 
 London : Labour Association Central Office. 2d. 
 
 1899 
 Against Clandestine commissions, mainly in the history of Co-operative 
 Societies, pp. 18, dy. 8vo. London : Gay & Bird. 6d. 
 
 1900 
 
 The Jubilee History of the Derby Co-operative Provident Society, Ltd., 
 1850-1900. By George Jacob Holyoake and Amos Scotton. pp. 
 vi + 198, cr. 8vo. 
 
 Manchester : Co-operative Printing Society, is. 2,'^.
 
 340 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 The two kinds of Co-operation, pp. 2, dy. 8vo. 
 
 Brighton Equitable E. & R. D. Committee. 
 
 1901 
 History of the traveHing tax. pp. 16, dy. 8vo. London : A. Bonner. 
 
 1902 
 
 Robert Owen Co-operative Memorial at Newtown : the unveiling cere- 
 mony on July 12th, 1902 ; address by Mr. G. J. Holyoake. pp. 19, 
 dy. 8vo. Manchester : Co-operative Union. 
 
 Robert Owen : the precursor of social progress. In justification of 
 the Newtown memorial, pp. 22, dy. 8vo. 
 
 Manchester : The Co-operative Union. 
 Anti-Boycott papers [10 pamphlets], pp. 86, dy. 8vo. 
 
 Manchester : Co-operative Newspaper Society. 
 
 1903 
 
 Two Great preachers : the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes, the Rev. Dr. 
 Joseph Parker ; or, appreciation distinct from concurrence, pp. 
 15, cr. 8vo. London : Watts & Co. 30'. 
 
 1904 
 
 New Party of profit scizers. pp. 8, cr. 8vo. 
 
 Glasgow : Scottish Co-operative Wholesale Society. 
 
 1905 
 
 Bygones worth remembering. 2 vols. pp. 295 and 312, roy. 8vo. 
 
 London: T. Fisher Unwin. 215. 
 
 PERIODICALS 
 
 1842 
 
 The Oracle of Reason. 2 vols. pp. 432 and 406, dy. 8vo. 1841-1843- 
 
 (Weekly ul.) 
 Nos. 1-7, Nov. 6th 1841 to Jan. Sth 1842 ; edited by Charles 
 
 Southwell. 
 Nos. 8-36, Feb. 1 2th 1842 to Aug. 27th 1842 ; edited by G. Jacob 
 
 Holyoake. 
 Nos. 37-85, Sept. 3rd 1842 to July 29th 1843 ; edited by Thomas 
 
 Paterson. 
 Nos. 86-103, Aug. 5th 1843 to Dec. 2nd 1843 ; edited by William 
 
 Chilton.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 341 
 
 1843-1845 
 
 The Movement ; edited by G. Jacob Holyoake and M. Q. Ryall. 2 vols, 
 pp. 464 and 116, dy. 8vo. 1843-1845. (Weekly, Nos. 1-C7 lA^/. 
 No. 6820'.) 
 
 1845 
 The Circular of the Anti-Persecution Union ; edited by G. Jacob 
 Holyoake. pp. 16, dy. Svo. 1845. (Monthly, \d.) 
 
 Note. — Only 4 numbers were issued. 
 
 1846-1872 
 
 The Reasoner [series] ; edited by George Jacob Holyoake. 30 vols. 
 V^arious sizes, from dy. Svo. to fcap. folio. 1846-1872 : — 
 
 The Reasoner. June 3rd 1846 to June 30th 1861, Nos. 1-789. 
 The Counsellor. August 1861 to December 1861, Nos. 1-5. 
 Secular World. May loth 1862 to June ist 1864 ; Vol. i, 
 Nos. 1-19 ; V'ol. 2, Nos. 1-13. 
 
 English Leader. June 8th 1864 to October 15th 1864, Nos. 1-20. 
 
 Secular W^orld. December ist 1864, No. 14. 
 
 The Reasoner. January 1st 1865 to December ist 1865, Nos. 
 
 828-839. 
 English Leader. January 6lh 1866 to July 14th 1866, Nos. 
 
 21-48. 
 
 The Reasoner. November ist and December ist 1868, Nos. 
 888-889. 
 
 The Reasoner. April and May 1870, Nos. 890-891. 
 
 The Reasoner. January 1871 to July 1872, Nos. 892-910. 
 
 1846-1848 
 
 Utilitarian Record [edited by George Jacob Holyoake]. pp. i -104 and 
 1-52, dy. Svo. 1 846- 1848. 
 
 Issued weekly as a separate leaflet with The Reasoner. After 
 the 78th week it formed part of that journal. 
 
 1848 
 
 The Cause of the People ; edited by W. J. Linton and G. J. Holyoake. 
 pp. 72, folio. 1848. Weekly, 2d. 
 
 This ran for 9 weeks only, May 20th 1848 to July 15th 1S48. 
 
 1849 
 The Spirit of the Age [edited by George J;u-ob Holyoake]. 184S-1849. 
 
 1850 
 
 People's Review ; edited by George Jacob Holyoake and others, pp. 
 136, cr. Svo. 1850. \s. 
 
 Only 3 numbers were issued — February, March and April, 1850.
 
 342 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 1850-1851 
 
 Reasoner Tracts [edited by Georg-e Jacob Holyoake]. Nos. 1-58 
 [4 pages each]. April loth 1850 to May 14th 1851. dy, 8vo. 
 
 i860 
 
 Reasoner Gazette ; or, Co-operative and Secular News. Cr. 4to. i860. 
 Issued in 52 4-page numbers, forming supplements to The Reasoner 
 vol. 25, i860. 
 
 1861 
 
 The Counsellor, on secular, co-operative and political questions ; 
 edited by George Jacob Holyoake. [Reasoner series.] August to 
 December 1861. Fcap folio. [5 numbers only were issued, i\d. 
 and 2^.] 
 
 1862-1864 
 
 The Secular World and Social Economist ; edited by Georg^e Jacob 
 Holyoake. [Reasojter series.] 2 vols. fcap. folio. 1862-1864. 
 
 From May loth 1862 to July 5th 1862, 9 weekly numbers were 
 issued at 2d. ; August ist 1862 to June ist 1864, 23 monthly 
 numbers at 2d. On June 8th it was succeeded by The English 
 Leader, issued in 20 numbers until October 15th 1864. On 
 December ist 1864 one number of The Secular IVorld was issued 
 at id., and on January ist 1865 it became The Reasoner. There 
 were 33 numbers in all. 
 
 1864-1866 
 
 The English Leader ; edited by George Jacob Holyoake. [Reasoner 
 series.] Folio. 1864-1866. (Weekly 2d.) 
 
 Succeeded the first issue of 77/1? Secular JlWld on the 8th June 
 1864, and continued for 20 weeks until October 19th 1864. It 
 was revived on January 6th 1866, but ceased with the 28th 
 number on July 14th 1866, being then succeeded by The 
 Reasoner. There were 48 numbers in all. 
 
 1866 
 
 The Working Man : a weekly record of social and industrial prog'ress. 
 2 vols, folio. 1866. {2d.) 
 
 There were probably 52 numbers issued, the first appearing on 
 January 6th, and the last on December 22nd 1866. The Bishops- 
 gate Institute set finishes with No. 24 in vol. 2, 15th December, 
 1868. 
 
 1867-1868 
 Industrial Partnerships' Record ; edited by E. O. Greening and George 
 Jacob Holyoake. Folio. 1867-1868. 
 
 This was issued in 12 monthly numbers, March 1867 to February 
 1868. Mr. Holyoake was offered the editorship on the 2nd 
 January, 1S68, and became p;trt proprii'tor on January 19th 1868. 
 In March it was published under the title of The Social Economist,
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 343 
 
 1868-1869 
 
 Social Economist, Industrial Partnerships' Record and Co-operative 
 Review ; edited by E. O. Greening, George Jacob Holyoake, and 
 K. Edger. Folio. (Monthly 2d.) 
 
 Mr. Holyoake was joint editor from March 1868 to and includ- 
 ing the August issue in 1869. This journal afterwards became 
 The Agricultural Economist so far as it dealt with " One and 
 All " matters, while co-operative matter was incorporated in 
 The Co-operative News. 
 
 1869 
 
 The New House Agitator. No. 1000, November 1869. pp. 4, cr. 410. \s. 
 Only the one number was issued, although numbered 1000. 
 
 1871 
 
 Proceedings of the third Co-operative Congress, 1871 ; edited by George 
 Jacob Holyoake. pp. 97, super roy. 8vo. 
 
 1872 
 
 Proceedings of the fourth Co-operative Congress, 1872 ; edited by 
 George Jacob Holyoake. pp. 137, super roy. 8vo. 
 
 1873 
 
 Proceedings of the fifth Co-operative Congress, 1873 ; edited by George 
 Jacob Holyoake. pp. 133, super roy. 8vo. 
 
 1876 
 
 The Secularist : a liberal weekly review ; edited by G. J. Holyoake and 
 G. W. Foote, 1876. {2.d.) 
 
 First issued on January ist 1876, and Mr. Holyoake severed 
 his connection as joint editor with the February issue. 
 
 1876-1S77 
 
 The Secular Review ; edited by George Jacob Holyoake. Cr. 4to. 
 1876-1877. (Weekly \d.) 
 
 Published weekly from the 6th August 1876 to the nth 
 February 1877, on which date it was transferred to Mr. Charles 
 Watts. Under the proprietorship and editorship of Mr. Holy- 
 oake there were issued 2S numbers, 27 forming volume i, and 
 one number in volume 2. 
 
 1878-1880 
 
 The Brighton Guardian ; edited by George Jacob Holyoake. 1878- 
 1880. Weekly.
 
 344 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 1883-1886 
 
 The Present Day : a journal discussing agitated questions without 
 agitation ; edited by George Jacob Holyoake. 3 vols. imp. 8vo. 
 1883-1886. (Monthly zd.) 
 
 Note. — There Avere 36 issues in all, June 1883 to May 1886, 
 in which month it was transferred to Mr. Thomas Barrett, who 
 issued only 4 numbers — June, July, August and September 
 issued as one number, and October. 
 
 1889 
 
 The Universal Republic, pp. 8, roy. 8vo. January 1889. {2d.) 
 Only one number issued. 
 
 1892 
 
 The Liberty of Bequest Intelligencer. No. i, January 1892. pp. 8, sm. 4to. 
 One issue only. 
 
 CONTRIBUTIONS 
 
 The Herald of Progress ; edited by John Cramp. Imp. 8vo. 1845-1846. 
 (Fortnightly id.) 
 
 Note. — Mr. Holyoake contributed to this journal from its 
 beginning on the 25th October 1845 until the end on the 23rd 
 May 1846. There were 16 numbers in all. This periodical was 
 subsequently incorporated in I he Jieasoiier. 
 
 The Leader. 1850-1853. (Weekly 6d.) 
 
 Mr. Holyoake was associated with The Leader from the 
 beginning to the end of the journal. 
 
 National Reformer. 1862. 
 
 Mr. Holyoake contributed from January to April 1862. 
 
 The Index (Boston). 1876. 
 
 Mr. Holyoake was one of six editorial contributors. 
 
 The Voice (New York). 
 
 Mr. Holyoake was a weekly contributor in 1892. 
 
 Agricultural Economist ; edited by E, O. Greening. 
 
 Mr. Holyoake contributed to this journal until 1905.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Abolitionists, the, I 169 
 Accidents to Holyoake, I 8 ; II 
 
 217-9. 293 
 Acland, Mr., II 1S6, 217, 238 
 
 Adams, G., I 69, 74, 81 
 „ , J. P., II 85, 86, 213 
 ,, , ,, pamphlet of, II 6 
 
 Adler, Dr. F., II 113, 123, 124, 132 
 
 Adullamites, the, II 23 
 
 Advertisement-tax, the, I 258, 266 
 
 Affirmation, agitation for, I 337 ; II 
 46-8, 145 
 
 Agnostic, Holyoake an, I 57, 96, 
 201 
 
 Agnosticism and Secularism, II 266 
 
 Agricultural and Horticultural Asso- 
 ciation, I 352 ; II 107 
 
 Agricultural Hall, meeting at the, II 
 
 30 
 Airedale Worsted Society, II 237 
 Albert, Prince, I 102 
 Alcott House, I 90 
 Alexander, Mr., I 76 
 Alexandra Palace, the, II 94 
 "Aliquis," I 202, 275 
 Allen, William, I 12 
 Allsop, Th., I 126, 158, 248, 250, 295 ; 
 
 II 5. 59 
 Allsop, Th., junior, II 207 
 Amberley, V'iscount, II 48-9 
 A mofig the Americans, II 124 
 Amsterdam Exhibition, the, II 99 
 Anarchists, Holyoake on, II 170 
 Anderson, George, II 76, 210 
 Annuity declined by Holyoake, II 
 
 165-7 
 Annuity given to Holyoake, II 207 
 
 Anti-Corn Law League, the, I 47, 
 
 110-12 
 
 Anti-Corn Law League, articles on, 
 
 " 75 
 Anti-Persecution Union, I 92, 93, 106 
 Applegarth, R., II 55, 207, 311 
 Arch, Joseph, II 74, no, 156 
 Argyll, Duke of, II 24 
 Arnold, Sir A., II 67, 104 
 Arthur, President, II 132 
 
 VOL. II. 34 
 
 Ashley, Mt., I 26 
 Ashton, accident at, II 218 
 Ashton, Mr. W., II 288, 292 
 Ashurst, Mr., I 71, 124, 140, 145, 160, 
 165, 172, 203, 2X2, 215, 311, 315, 
 
 319 
 Ashurst, Mr., junior, I 354; II 3 
 Association for promoting the repeal 
 
 of the taxes on knowledge, I 264 
 Association of Liberal Thinkers, the, 
 
 II 74 
 Atheism and Secularism, II 79, 149, 
 
 266 
 Atheist, Holyoake as, I 57, 64-5, 96, 
 
 201 
 Atheist Shoemaker, the, II 258-60 
 Athenatim, the, and the press-stamp, 
 
 I 262, 263 
 Athen(etim,\he, on Brewin Grant, 1 226 
 Atheon, the, I 107 
 Atkinson, Mr., I 2S9, 295; II 140 
 Atlas, the, I 247 
 
 Attwood, Mr., I iS, 19, 21, 41, 42 
 Austria in 1848, I 231 
 Avezzana, General, I 134 
 Ayrton, Mr., I 283 ; II 45 
 
 Baggage-system, Holyoake on the 
 
 American, II 120 
 Bain, Prof., on J. S. Mill, II 64, 181 
 Bakounine, I 244 
 Ballantyne, T., I 163 
 Ballot, agitation for the, II 37 
 Bally, M., I 28, 29, 30 
 Baptists, early relations with, I 9 
 Barbaret, M., II 139 
 Barker, Joseph, I 303, 343 
 Barnett, Canon, II 210 
 
 ,, , Rev. H. N., I 220, 225 
 
 ,, , W., II loo-i 
 Barnum, Mr., II 113, 123 
 Bate, Mr., I 104, 324 
 Bath, Chartist meeting at, I 41 
 Bathurst, Bishop, II 170, 174 
 Baume, I 294 ; II loi 
 Bayly, Miss, II 253-4 
 Beales, Mr., II 2z^, 27, 28 
 ; \ A
 
 346 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Beardsley's Repository, I i8, 42 
 Beaumont, Somerset, I 354 ; II 42, 99 
 Beecher, Rev. H. Ward, II 121 
 Belcher, Mr., I 32 
 Bell, Dr., I 7 
 
 ,, , Maior E., I 215 ; II 16, 76 
 Belloc, Mrs., I 287 
 Benbow, I 79 
 Berkeley, H. F., II 37 
 Bernard, Dr., I 248, 250, 254-6 
 Bernat, Dr., II 244 
 Berwick, bribery at, II 12 
 Besant, Mrs., H 76, 79, 81-3, 143, 
 
 146, 166, 172 
 Bible, the, Bradlaugh writes, I 299 
 Bicknell, Major, II 203 
 Birch, W. J., I 107, 158, 215, 239 
 Birckbeck, Dr. I 11 
 Bird, Dr. G., II 9, 293 
 Birmins^ham and the Reform Bill, 
 
 I 17,^8-22 
 Birminafham candidature, Holy- 
 
 oake's, II 40-2 
 Birmingham Co-operative Herald, I 42 
 Birmingham Education League, II 
 
 52. i'77- 
 Birmingham Liberal Club, II 228 
 
 ,, Political Union, I 18-22, 
 
 39 
 Birmingham Weekly Post, the, II 284 
 Birth of Hohoake, I i, 5 
 Bishops and the Reform Bill, I 20 
 Blanc, Louis, I 131, 229, 230 
 Blasphemy, freethinker prosecuted 
 
 for, II 143-6 
 Blasphemy, Holyoake charged with, 
 
 I 64-76 ' 
 Blind, Karl, I 244 
 
 ,, ,, , on Ireland, II 202 
 Body-snatching, I 16 
 Boer War, the, II 289, 292, 293 
 Bologna, Co-operative Congress at, 
 
 II 197, 198 
 
 Bolton, Co-operative Congress at, 
 
 1193 
 Bombs, story of the, I 248-56 
 Booth, General, II 60 
 Borthwick, Mr., I 263 
 Boston Globe, II 75 
 
 Boston, Holyoake at, II 112, 115, 132 
 Botanical Garden, I t^Ti 
 Boulogne, Holyoake at, I 289 
 Bowes, Rev. J., I 205 
 Boyve, M. de, II 186, 188, 192 
 Bradford, debates at, I 205 
 Bradlaugh, Charles, I 95, 297, 298- 
 
 304. 343. 344-7 ; 11 23, 35, 39, 48, 
 
 5.=?-9. 76, 77-88, 128, 141, 252-7, 
 
 263 
 
 Bradlaugh, Charles, Holyoake on, II 
 
 253. 276-7 
 Bradlaugh Memorial Hall, II 258 
 Bradlaugh-Bonner, Mrs., II 253, 254 
 Braekstad, H. L., II 262 
 Bramwell, Baron, II 12 
 Brassey, Lord, II 92, 299 
 Bright, Jacob, II 117, 222 
 Bright, John, I 263; II 12, 38,45, 
 
 Brighton, Napoleon at, II 61 
 
 ,, work at, II 157, 206 
 
 Brighton Equitable Society, II 196, 
 
 235 
 Brighton Herald, the, on Holyoake, 
 
 I'l 376 
 Brindley, Dr., I 28 
 Bristol, Holyoake at, I 64 
 
 ,, , Co-operative Congress at, 
 
 II 240 
 British and Foreign School Society, 
 
 British Association meetings, II 61 
 British Secular Union, II 86, 142 
 Broad Church, growth of the, I 339 
 Brooke, Stopford, I 254 ; II 33, 42, 
 
 62, 63, 71, 151 
 Brougham, Lord, II 11, 13, 32 
 Broughton, Dr., II 129 
 Browning, R., II 199 
 Bubb, Mr., I 68 
 Buchanan, Robert, I 44, 58, 144, 
 
 276 
 Buckle, Mr., II 146, 147 
 Buffoli, Signor, II 245 
 Builders' Union, the, I 24 
 Bull Ring riots, I 42 
 Burgess, Elizabeth, I 112, 119 
 Burns, J., II 311, 319 
 Burrows, H., II 146 
 Burt, T., II 75, 207, 253 
 Bus-accident, II 218 
 Butler, Samuel, II 71 
 Button-making, I 6, 8 
 Buxton, Sir Ch., II 18 
 Buxton, Lady, I 355 
 Bygones Worth Remembering, II 275, 
 
 277-8, 299 
 
 Cab-accidents, II 218 
 Caine, W. S., II 216 
 Call, W. M. W., II 140 
 Campbell, Rev. R. J., II 210, 307 
 Campkin, H., II r6 
 Canada, Holyoake in, II 120, 131 
 ,, , Holyoake'sworks in schools 
 
 of, II 280 
 Candidatures of Holyoake, I 283 ; II 
 
 40-2, 156
 
 INDEX 
 
 547 
 
 Carbonari, the, I 130 
 
 Carlile, Richard, I 26, 73, 78, 80,81, 
 259; II 64 
 
 Carlisle, Congress at, II 193-4, 234 
 
 Carlyle, Janet, II 126 
 ,, , Mrs., II 126-7 
 ,, , T., I 127 ; II 119, 126-7 
 ,, ,, letter to Holyoake, I 281 
 
 Carnarvon, Earl of, II 34 
 
 Carnegie, A., II 289, 294 
 
 Carr's Lane School, I 9 
 
 Carter, Mr. Brudenell, II 76, 307 
 
 Carteret, Captain de, I 312 
 
 Cassell, Mr., I 264 
 
 Catholicism, Holyoake and, II 203 
 
 Catholicistn the reliqion of fear, I 217 
 
 Cattell, Mr., II 85', 86 
 
 Cause of the People, I 139, 261 
 
 Cave of Adullam, II 23 
 
 Cavour, I 307, 320, 323 
 
 Central Co-operative Board, II 185 
 ,, ,, ,, resig- 
 
 nation from the, II 246 
 
 Chamber of Commerce, II 227 
 
 Chamberlain, J., II 41, 52, 69, 153, 
 160, 175-9, 277 
 
 Chamberlain, R., II 156 
 
 Chambers, Colonel, I 326 
 
 Chambers'' Encyclopcedia, II 200 
 
 Charlton, J., II 120, 129 
 
 Chartism, I 40-1, 42, 72, 113, 117, 
 128, 133, 144, 150, 167 
 
 Chartists and Free Traders, I in 
 
 Chatterjee, K. IM., II 201 
 
 Chautauqua Lake Convention, II 
 112, 1 14-5 
 
 Cheadle, Rev. Mr., I 9 
 
 Cheap Trains Act, II 152 
 
 Cheltenham Chronicle, I 65, 66 
 ,, Free Press, I 66 
 
 Cheltenham, lectures at, I 49, 62, 
 67, 89 ; II 15 
 
 Chicago, II 119, 120 
 
 Child-labour, I 3 
 
 Childers, Mr., II 153 
 
 Chilton, W., I 55, 57, 58, 60, 203 
 
 Cholera in London, the, I 159, 160 
 
 Christian Commonwealth, the, II 150 
 ,, Life, the, on Holyoake, II 
 
 315. 
 Christian Socialists, the, I 186-92, 
 
 348, 352 ; II 92, 106-8 
 Christie, Mr., II 63 
 Chronicle, the, on Holyoake, II 315 
 Church-rate at Birmingham, I 10 
 Cincinnati, Holyoake at, II 123 
 Civic Centre, II 206 
 Civil and Religious Liberty Bill, II 
 
 264 
 
 Civil Service Supply Association 
 
 dramatic club, II 207 
 Clarendon, Lord, II 45, 109 
 Clark, J., I 347 
 Clay, Mr. J., II 26 
 Clergy, the, and Holyoake, II 209- 
 
 II 
 Clifford, Dr., II 290, 319, 321 
 Clinton, Colonel, I 305 
 Clock-tower light, the, II 45 
 Close, Dean, I 62 
 Cluer, A. R., II 71, 226 
 Coates, Dr., I 11 
 Cobbett, W., I 4, 12, 26 
 Cobden, R., I 147, 195, 260, 263 ; 
 
 II 12, 178 
 Cobden Club, II 152 
 Cockburn, Sir A., I 270 
 Cockspur Street, II 44 
 Colenso, agitation, the, I 340-2 
 Colenso, Bishop, correspondence 
 
 with, I 341-2 
 Coleridge, Sir John, I 291 
 
 ,, Lord, I 291 ; II 146 
 
 S., I 250 
 Collet, C. D., I 112, 203; II 151, 
 
 J53. 258, 261, 262, 272, 289, 291 
 Collet, Miss, I 96, no, 112, 119, 203, 
 
 208-9, 217, 225, 277 
 Collet's War Chronicle, I 269 
 CoUings, J., II 41, 52, 70 
 Collins, Anthony, I 298, 301 
 
 ,, John, I 10, 41 
 CoUyer, Dr. R., II 123, 132, 209, 
 
 221 
 Colne stores, foundation of the, II 
 
 235 
 Colymbrta, 11 y 2 
 Combe, George, I 27, 28, 158 
 Commons, enclosure of, I 2 
 Compasses made by Holyoake, I 
 
 13 
 Comte de Paris, the, I 352 
 Congresses, Co-operative, begin- 
 
 ing of, I 352 ; II 90 
 Coningham, W., I 338 ; II 7, 59 
 Conspiracy-to-Murder Bill, the, II 3 
 Constable, Rev. Mr., II 217 
 Constitution of man, I 27 
 Contemporary Review, II 73 
 Conway, Dr. M., I 355 ; II 221, 227 
 Conyngham, Mr., II 48 
 Cooper, Sir A., I 84 
 
 ,, , Peter, II 124 
 
 ,, , Robert, I 213, 297, 298 
 
 ,, , Thomas, I 116, 127, 131, 176, 
 196, 211, 282, 297, 354; II 165-7 
 Cooper, W., I 1S3 
 
 ,, Union, the, II 123
 
 348 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Co-operation, earl}' work for, I 117, 
 
 167, 177-85, 193-6 
 Co-operative Central Board, the, II 
 
 94. 95 
 Co-operative Congresses, I 352 ; II 
 
 93. 91. 93-4. 136. 230-43 
 
 " Co-operative Extension," II 243, 
 
 246 
 Co-operative journals on Holyoake, 
 
 II 317 
 Co-operative Magazine, I 26, 179 
 Co-operative movement, early 
 
 history of the, I 178-96 
 Co-operative movement in Great Britain, 
 
 II 96 
 Co-operative Movement To-day, II 238, 
 
 280 
 Co-operative Ne7vs, II 59, 94, 95 
 Co-operative Societies, early, I 26, 
 
 179 
 Co-operative Union, the, II 94, 231 
 ,, Wholesale Society, I 
 
 351 ; II 90 
 
 Co-operative works of Holyoake, II 
 
 279-80 
 Co-opsrator, the, I 348 ; II 90, 94 
 Co-partnership exhibitions, II 237 
 
 ,, , meaning of, II 229, 
 
 231 
 Co-partnership movement, the, I 
 
 350; II 96, 229-49 
 Corn Laws, the, I iii 
 Cornell, II 119 
 Cossa, Professor, I 348 
 Counsellor, the, I 325, 343-4 
 Courtship, Holyoake's, I 31, 32 
 Cowen, Sir J., I 305, 330 ; II 11, 12, 
 
 14, 20, 44, 54 
 Cowen, Mr. J., I 171 ; II 14, 19, 
 
 94. 155. 180, 213, 276 
 Cowper St. debate, I 224 
 Crabtree, Mr., II 189 
 Cranbourne, Viscount, II 34 
 Craufurd, E. H. J., I 266; II 
 
 204 
 Crawford, J. G., I 305, 312, 314, 344, 
 
 345 ; II 125 
 Cremation of Holyoake, II 319 
 Crimean War, the, I 268, 282 
 Crooks, General, II 129 
 Cross, Mrs. {see George Eliot) 
 Crosskey, Rev. W. H., I 218 
 Crystal Palace, profit-sharing ex- 
 hibitions at the, II 237 
 Culture of Holyoake, II 282 
 Cumberland, Princess of, II 281 
 Cuinming wrong, Colenso right, I 
 
 341 
 Curtis, G. W. , II 118, 124 
 
 Daily News, the, I 291 ; II 11 
 
 ,, ,, , the, and the press 
 
 stamp, I 262 
 Daily News, founding of the, I 
 
 276 
 Daily Review, the, I 277 
 Daly, James, I 182, 193 
 Dames' schools, I 8 
 Dark stores, II 97 
 Darlington Mercury, II 33 
 D'Arusmont, Mme., I 99, 100, 122-3 
 Davis, John, II 132 
 Davitt, M., II 202 
 Death of Holyoake, II 312 
 Debates, I 141, 142, 205, 206, 207, 
 
 224 ; II 57 
 Defence of the Ballot, II 163 
 Delft, Co-operative Congress at, II 
 
 247 
 Democrat, II 33 
 
 Democratic League, the, II 185 
 Derby, Co-operative Congress at, II 
 
 230 
 Derby Society, the, I 184 
 
 ,, )) ) history of the, II 
 
 291 
 Derby, Lord, II 6, 67, 104 
 Derbyshire Insurrection, I 4 
 Dewsbury, Co-operative Congress 
 
 at, II 197, 235 
 Dialectical Society, the, II 43 
 Dickens, C, I 263, 265 
 Dieppe, adventures at, II 189 
 Digby, W., II 296 
 Dilke, Sir Ch., II 73, 131, 139, 159, 
 
 228 
 Dillon, J., II 202 
 Dioceses, Owenite, I 44, 50 
 "Disque," I 275 ; II 11 
 Disraeli, II 13, 34, 36, 39, 277, 297, 
 
 304 
 Disraeli defines " news," I 272 
 
 Dixie, Lady P., II 296-7 
 
 Domestic life, I 36, 126, 154, 280 j 
 
 II 44 
 Domville, Mr., I 340 
 Dornbusch, I 243 
 Dream of Gerontius, II 163 
 Drink question, the, II 222 
 Drunkenness early in nineteenth 
 
 century, I 16 
 Dufferin, Lord, II 201 
 Duffield, A. J., II loi 
 Duignan, W. H., II 165 
 Dunne, Colonel, I 309 
 Durham, Bishop of, II 136, 243 
 Dymoke Lodge, I 353 ; II 44 
 
 Eagle Foundry, the, 18, 14,
 
 INDEX 
 
 349 
 
 Eastern Lodge, II 306 
 
 Echo, II 2>2, 
 
 Economics, early discouragement of, 
 
 I 13. 23 
 Economist, I 179 
 Edge, Milnes, II 33 
 Edger, iMr., I 349 ; II 90, 91 
 Edinburgh, early freethinkers at, I 
 
 94 
 Editor, Holyoake as, II 284 
 
 Education, Holyoake's, I 7, 8, 12, 
 
 13. 29 
 Education, Holyoake's work in, II 
 
 324 
 Education-struggle in 1870, the, II 
 
 50-4 
 Edwards, J. Passmore, I 126, 264 ; 
 
 II 156, 299, 307 
 
 Elcho, Lord, II 11, 23. 25, 29, 31 
 Eliot, G., I 163, 165 ; II 104, 138 
 Elliot, Ebenezer, I 50, 51 
 Ellis, Joseph, II 148 
 
 ,, , R. S., I 164, 
 
 ,, , W. E., I 112, 126, 158 
 Emerson, Holyoake visits, II 119 
 Emigrants, agitation to assist, II 
 
 45-6, 109, 128 
 Emigrants' guide-books, II no 
 Emigration, early thought of, I 31 
 English Leader, the, I 333 ; II 16 
 English Republican, I 169 
 Epigrams, II 175, 283 
 Epps, Dr., I 325 
 Erewhon, II 72 
 Erskine, Mr. Justice, I 74, 77, 78, 
 
 108 
 Essentials of Co-operative Education , 1 1 
 
 280 
 Eugene, I 203 
 Evarts, Mr., II 121 
 Evidence Amendment Bill, the, II 
 
 46 
 Evolution, fallacies about, II 324 
 ,, in the Oracle, I 58, 203 
 
 Ewart, Sir Joseph, II 223 
 Examiner, II 33 
 Exeter, Bishop of, I 44 
 Exhibition at Birmingham, I 2,'S 
 Eyes, ailments of Holyoake's, II 76, 
 
 307 
 
 Failsvvorth Secular Society, II 261 
 Fair Ilai'cn, the, II 72 
 Familistire, the, II 187, 196 
 Farn, Mr., II 94, 9^, loi 
 Farrell, C. P., II J29 
 Father, Holyoake's, I 6, 197 
 " Father of Co-operation," Holyoake 
 as, II 244, 246 
 
 Fawcett, Prof., II 18, 92, 104 
 
 Federalists, Co-operative, II 96 
 
 Finch, Mr., I 118 
 
 F"inlay, I 94 
 
 Fire-grate made by Holyoake, I 10, 
 
 Fleet Street Advertiser, the, I 268, 270 
 Fleet Street House, the, I 212-5 
 ,, ,, ,, , end of the, 1301, 
 
 304 
 Flemmg, Mr., I 53, 58 
 Fletcher, Mr. A. E., II 227, 315, 320 
 Fletcher, Mr., I 213 
 Flint, Dr., I 224 
 Fonvielle, Ulric de, II 189 
 
 , W. de, II 61, 139, 189 
 Food, price of, early in nineteenth 
 
 century, I 6, 103 
 Foote, G. W., II 79, 85, 86, 142, 
 
 143-6, 224, 225, 258-60, 265 
 Forbes, Colonel, I 309 
 Forder, Mr., II 255 
 Forster, Charles, I 355 
 
 „ , W. E., I 163, 166, 328 ; II 
 
 53. 77 
 Fortnightly Review, II 16 
 Forward, Stephen, II 204 
 Foster, Sir C, II 165 
 „ M., I 158 
 Fourier, II 187 
 
 Fox, W. J., 135,82,83, 124, 168 
 Franchise, struggles over the, II 8 
 Francis, Mr. J., I 260, 275 ; II 9, 46 
 „ J. C, II 223, 228, 292, 
 
 315 
 Fraternal Democrats, I 127 
 
 Frederic the Great, I 13 
 
 Free Press, article on woman in the, 
 
 I 286 
 Free-trade and protection, II in 
 
 ,, ,, , fight for, I 1 10-2 
 Freethinker, the, II 143, 148 
 Freethought and Secularism, II 266 
 ,, , early organisation of, 
 
 I 201-8, 297 
 Freethought, services to, II 326 
 French, study of, I 166 
 Friendly Societies Act, I 185 
 Frost, John, I 134 
 Frothingham, Dr., II 132 
 Froude, II 126 
 
 Fruits of Philosophy, the, II 80-6 
 Funeral of Holyoake, II 319, 320 
 
 Gall, I 27 
 
 Galpin, I\Ir., I 52,54, loi, 118 
 Gammage, Dr., I 41, 149 
 Garibaldi, I 231, 307-S, 310, 321-2, 
 
 324
 
 35° 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Garibaldi Fund Committee, the, I 
 
 312-325 
 Garibaldi Italian Unity Committee, 
 
 the, I 325 
 Garibaldi Legion, the, I 309-24 
 Garibaldi on Holyoake, I 327 
 
 ,, ,, the British Legion, I 
 
 319 
 Garibaldi's visit to England, I 326- 
 
 zz ; II 304 
 
 Garibaldian flags, the, II 209 
 
 Garrison, Lloyd, I 169, 2S2 
 
 Garrotting in 1S63, II 15 
 
 George, Henry, II 125 
 
 Georgi, I 255 
 
 Ghent communists, I 127 
 
 Gibson, Milner, I, 262, 264, 266, 274 ; 
 
 II 4 
 Gide, Prof., II 195 
 Gimson, Josiah, I 106, 107 ; II 59, 
 
 76, 79, 80, 85, 87, 88 
 Gimson, Mrs. M., II 220 
 
 „ , Mr. S., II 320 
 Ginger's Hotel, I 250, 255 
 Gladstone, II 13, 21, 23, 34, 35, 39, 
 
 64, 70, 128, 133, 160, 277, 289 
 Gladstone and Garibaldi, I 329-33 
 , , and the press-stamp, I 266, 
 
 267, 269 
 Gladstone and J. S. Mill, II 62, 64 
 ,, at Newcastle, II 13, 169 
 
 ,, , correspondence with, II 
 
 163-75 
 Gladstone on the ballot, II 37, 38, 39 
 Gladstone on Co-operation, II 98, 
 
 164 
 Gladstone on Naples, I 232 
 
 ,, ,, Secularism, II 163, 172 
 
 , Miss H., II 175 
 Glaisher, Mr., II 61 
 Glasgow, Co-operative Congress at, 
 
 II 107, 236 
 Glasgow, Holyoake at, I 109-12 
 Globe^ the, I 276 
 Gloucester, Bishop of, II 60 
 
 ,, , Co-operative Congress 
 
 at, II 136 
 Gloucester Jail, Holyoake in, I 69, 
 
 70, 79-87 
 Godin, M., II 186, 196 
 Godkin, E. L., II 124 
 Good, Rev. J. J., II iii 
 Gooding, Mr., II 16 
 Goss, Mr., II 271 
 Gould Sq. Institute, I 119, 123 
 Gower Street College, I 124, 156 
 Graham, Sir J., I 70, -i\, 80, 98 
 Grammar, Holyoake's works on, I 
 
 97 
 
 Grand Consolidated Trades' Union, 
 
 I 24 
 Grand-parents of Holyoake, I 5 
 Grant, Rev. Brewin, I 224-5, 226 
 
 ,, , Frank, I 265 
 Gray, Mr., II 240, 241, 244, 248, 296, 
 
 320 
 Greek, Holyoake studies, I 125, 143 
 Greely, Horace, I 282 
 Greening, E. O., I 349, 350, 351 ; II 
 
 39. 90. 9I' 107, 233, 239, 240, 245, 
 
 249, 296, 299, 305, 310, 320 
 Greenwood, Abr., I 183 ; II 90, 105, 
 
 189 
 Greenwood, J., II 248 
 Greg, Percy, I 158, 196, 203, 288, 
 
 305 ; II 5. 
 
 Gregory, Sir W. , II 70 
 
 Grenfel'l, Mrs., I 155 
 
 Grey, Earl, II 244, 245, 246, 248, 
 
 302-4 
 Grosvenor, Lord, II 159 
 Grote, Mr., II 37 
 Guardian, the, I 260 
 Guise, foundry at, II 186-7, ^9^ 
 Gurney, Mr., II 78 
 Gwynne, Mr., I 203, 275, 345 
 
 Habeas Corpus Act, I i, 4 
 
 Hall, Robert, I 37 
 
 Hall of Science (City Rd.), I 73, 104, 
 
 106 
 Hallett, Mr., II 62, 130 
 Halls of Science, I 46, 48, 53, 106, 
 
 118, 123 
 Halsey, Rev. Mr., II 210 
 Ham Common Community, I 91 
 Hamilton, Mr., I 276 
 Hampden Clubs, I 4 
 Handbook of Grammar, I 1 20 
 Handbook of Gra?}ttnatical Exercises, I 
 
 97 
 
 Hanning, Mrs., II 126 
 
 Hansard, Rev. Septimus, on Holy- 
 oake, II 49 
 
 Harborne, I 10 
 
 Harcourt, Sir W., II 136, 144 
 
 Harmony Hall, I 101-6, 118 
 
 Harney, G. J., I 41, 42, 50, 72, 132, 
 149 ; II 224 
 
 Harrison, Mr. F., II ^'^>^ 15S. ~9\ 
 
 Harrow, Holyoake at, II 44, 174, 206 
 
 Harvard, II 119 
 
 Haweis, Rev. Mr., II 137 
 
 Hawkes, Mrs., I 287 
 
 Hayes, President, II 121, 124, 128 
 
 Hayley, Mr., II ZZ 
 
 Haynau, I 232 
 
 Haynes, Rev. Mr., II 123
 
 INDEX 
 
 351 
 
 Hay ward, A., II 62 
 Headlam, Rev. Stewart, II 145 
 Heber, General, I 317, 330 
 Hebden Bridge Conference, II 231 
 ,, ,, Fustian Society, II 
 
 237, 248 
 Heinzen, I 244 
 Henriquez, Mr. A., II 157 
 Herald of Froi^ress, I 114, 185 
 Herbert, Auberon, II 93 
 Herbert, Cyril, II 125 
 Herford, Rev. Brooke, I 218, 223 
 Herzen, I 244 
 Hetherington, H., I 134, 136, 150, 
 
 259 
 Hibbert, Julian, I 155, 179, 294 
 
 Hicks, Major Beach, I 316, 320 
 
 Higginson, Col., II 117 
 
 Hinton, Rev. Howard, I 224 
 
 Historian, Holyoake as, II 279, 282 
 
 History 0/ Co-operation, II 75, 101-4, 
 
 128, 184 
 
 History of the Rochdale Pioneers, I 291 
 Histojy of the taxes on knowledge, I 261, 
 
 262, 291 
 Hitz, Hon. John, II 124 
 Hobhouse, Lord, II 269, 301 
 Hodge, Mr., I 248, 254, 256, 315, 323 
 Hodgson, Prof., II 107 
 Holberry, S., I 72 
 Holdreth, Lionel, I 203, 305 
 Holland, Co-operators of, II 245, 247 
 HolHck, F., I 34, 37, 38, 42, 43, 44, 
 
 54, 140 ; II 112, 289 
 Hollond, Mr., II 158 
 Holyoake and Modern Atheism, I 120, 
 
 209 
 Holyoake, Mrs., I 32, 2Z^ 36, 48, 86, 
 
 155, 280, 286; II 44, 151 
 Holyoake, Austin, I 124, 197, 212, 
 
 269, 300 ; II 47, 76, 78, 80, 81 
 Holyoake, Caroline, I 124 
 
 ,, , Emilie (Mrs. Marsh), I 
 
 129, 186, 195, 219, 311 
 Holyoake, Eveline (Mrs. Praill), I 
 
 109, 155, 355; II 19 
 Holyoake, Horatio, I 124 
 
 ,, , Madeline, I 36, 48, 74, 86 
 „ , Manfred, I 109, 155 
 
 ,, , Malthus, I 126 
 
 ,, , Maximilian R., I 126, 
 280 
 Holyoake, Selina, I 124, 197 
 ,, , William, I 124 
 
 ,, , Walter, I 124 
 Holyoake-Marsh, Mrs., II 129, 1S6, 
 
 195' 219, 311 
 Holjoake City, II 119 
 
 ,, Cycling Club, II 216 
 
 Holyoake House, II 321 
 
 Holywell Street shop, the, I 92 
 
 Home colonisation, lecture on, I 62 
 ,, Rule, II 160, 202 
 
 Hooper, George, I 115, 140, 163, 
 203 
 
 Hoppefs War Chronicle, I 269 
 
 Hornblower, Mr., I 124 
 
 Household Education, I 286 
 
 ,, narrative, the, I 263, 265 
 
 Howarth, C, I 183 
 
 Huddersfield, Co-operative Con- 
 gress at, II 241, 242 
 
 Huddersfield, lectures at, I 52 
 
 Hughes. Rev. Hugh P., II 209, 225, 
 258-60, 291 
 
 Hughes, Spenser, II 227 
 
 „ , Thomas, I 187, 192, 352 ; 
 II 16, 18-9, 25, 38, 91, 103, 193, 
 234.239,240,241,248 iV3 
 
 Humanitarian League, II 223 
 
 Hume, Joseph, I 98, 149 
 
 Humour of Holyoake, II 273, 274 
 
 Hunt, Leigh, I 220, 258 
 
 „ , Thornton, I 143, 151, 161, 167, 
 172, 175, 217, 264, 276, 278, 280, 
 303 ; II 5, 12 17, 146 
 
 Hunt after the devil, I 34, 340 
 
 Huxley, Prof., II zh 74 
 
 Hyde Park riots, II 27 
 
 Idealism of Holyoake, II 22 
 lies, George, II 221 
 India, interest in, II 201 
 Individualists, Co-operative, II 96 
 Industrial conditions early in the 
 
 nineteenth century, I 3, 6, 15 
 Industrial Partnerships Record, the, I 
 
 349; II 90 
 Infant-schools, founding of, I 47 
 Ingersoll, R., II 113, 122, 12S, 129, 
 
 132, 141, 217, 224, 253, 289 
 Ingersoll, R., and Bradlaugh, II 253 
 
 256 
 hiquircr, the, I 346 
 Institute of Journalists, II 227 
 Intelligence franchise, Holyoake's, 
 
 II 8-10 
 International Alliance, the, II 245 
 
 ,, Congresses, Co-opera- 
 
 tive, II 244, 246, 247 
 International Peace Association, the, 
 
 II 287, 289 
 Interviews, Holyoake on, II iiS 
 Investigator, the, I 298, 300, 301, 303 
 
 ,, , the American, II 142 
 
 " Ion," I 144, 146, 166, 275, 277 
 Ipswich, Co-operative Congress at, 
 
 II 236
 
 35^ 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Ipswich, lectures at, I 205 
 
 Irish question, the, II 154, 155, 160, 
 
 166, iSo, 202 
 Irish Reform Bill, II 39 
 Ironside, I 123 
 Isle of Man, visit to, I 31 
 Italy, Holyoake in, II 190, 198-9 
 
 Jackson, Hetty, I 196 
 "Jacobs, Mr.," I 48 
 Jaggers, Mr., I 349 ; II 31 
 Jail, Holyoake in, I 69-70, 79-87 
 James, Rev. Angell, I 9, 25 
 
 ,, , Edwin, I 255 
 
 „ , Henry, I 355 
 
 „ , W. H., II 105, III, 155, 202 
 Japan, Co-operation in, II 290 
 Jelf, Dr., I 190 
 Jingoes, authorship of the name, II 
 
 281 
 John St. Institution, I 118, 119, 127, 
 
 134 
 John Stuart Mill as the ivoi-kuig- 
 
 classes knew him, II 63 
 
 Johnson, W. H., I 298, 300, 301 
 
 Johnson, Mr., II 186 
 
 Johnson'' s American Cyclopa:dia, II 75 
 
 Jones, B., II 194 
 
 ,, , Ernest, I 40, 150, 189 
 
 „ , Lloyd, I 16, 44,53> 5^, 105, 1 13, 
 
 134. 138, 144. 191. 297 ; II 75. 107. 
 
 178 
 Journalism, first essays in, I 31 
 Journalist, Holyoake as, II 284 
 Jowett, Dr., II 66 
 
 Kalley, Dr., I 92 
 Kansas, Holyoake at, II 130 
 Keighley Conference, the, II 232 
 Kennington Common, demonstra- 
 tions on, I 134, 136 
 Kenrick, Rev. Mr., I 2x3 
 King, Dr., debate with, I 206 
 Kingsley, Charles, I 133, 163, 187, 
 
 188, 339 
 Knight, Mr. C, I 274 
 Knollys, Sir P., II 200 
 Knowles, Sir J., II 6, 60, 73, 211 
 Knowlton, Dr., pamphlet of, II 80-6 
 Kossuth, I 131, 232, 233-4, 236 
 Krapotkin, I 244 
 Kyllmann, M., I 349, 351 
 
 Labour Association, the, II 230, 232, 
 
 243 
 Labour Co- Partnerships II 243 
 
 Labour Exchanges, I 26, 43, 179 
 
 Labour Representation League, 
 
 origin of the, II 42 
 
 Labour Representation League, the, 
 
 II 75 
 Labour-member, Holyoake as a, \\ 
 
 40 
 Lamartine, I 230 
 Lambeth Palace grounds, II 154, 
 
 210 
 Lancashire League, the, I 195 
 Lancaster, I 7 
 Land Nationalisation Society, the, 
 
 II 296 
 Landor, W. Savage, I 163, 237, 247, 
 
 290 ; II 5 
 Landor's sonnet on Sicily, I 314 
 " Landor Praed," I 275, 313 ; II 32 
 Langley, J. B., I 253, 276, 283 
 Larken, E. R., I 161, 163 
 Las Vegas, II 130 
 Lasalle, P., I 350 ; II 277 
 Last trial by Jury, I 217 
 Latin, Holyoake studies, I 125, 143, 
 
 ''54 
 La viriti sur Orsim, I 254 
 
 Law, Harriet, II 86 
 
 Lawrence Street Chapel, I 45, 71 
 
 Lawson, Sir W., II 194, 222 
 
 Layhe, Mr., I 203 
 
 Leader, founding of the, I 161, 164 
 
 ,, , end of the, I 277-8 
 
 League of Social Progress, I 149 
 
 Le Blond, R., I 176, 212 
 
 Lecount, Lt., I 34 
 
 Lecturer, Holyoake as a, II 285-6 
 
 Leeds Co-operative Store, I 184 ; II 
 
 97 
 Leeds Co-operative Store, jubilee- 
 history of the, II 247 
 Leeds Times, I 51 
 Lees, Dr., I 195 
 Leicester boot-operatives, II 234 
 
 ,, , candidature at, II 156, 179 
 ,, Hosiery Works, II 237 
 ,, Secularists, the, II 79, 86, 
 
 261, 286, 320 
 Leicester Socialists, the, I 90, 106, 
 
 107 
 Leland, Mr., II 75 
 Leman Street accident, II 217, 219 
 Letters of Holyoake, II 283 
 Leverson, Mr., I 312 
 Lewes, G. H., I 161, 163, 165, 264; 
 
 II 16, 104, 140, 183 
 Lewis, Sir G. C., I 271 
 Liberal Situation, \}ae., II 17 
 Liberal-Labour members, II 42 
 Liberalism, services to, I 144, 147, 
 
 149, 152 ; II 161, 216, 227, 280, 
 
 306, 325 
 Liberator, I 169, 173, 175
 
 INDEX 
 
 33J 
 
 Liberty of Bequest Committee, II 
 264 
 
 Lie in five chapters ? \\ 259 
 
 Life of Carlile, I 216 
 
 Lije of Gladstone, II 163 
 
 Life of Het/ierin^on, I 216 
 
 Life of Robert Owen, I 294 ; II 32 
 
 Limitationism, I 97, 208 ; II 260 
 
 Linton, Mrs. Lynn, II 72 
 
 ,, , W. J., I 114, 139, 156, 163, 
 169-72, 175, 237, 345 ; II 72 
 
 Lister, Aid., I 183, 195 
 
 Literary qualities of Holyoake, II 
 272-6 
 
 Loder, Gerald, II 207 
 
 Logic of death, I 217; II 281 
 
 Logic of facts, I 216 
 
 London Association for the promo- 
 tion of Co-operation, I 349; II 90, 
 
 94 
 London Co-operative Congress at, I 
 
 352 ; n 93 
 London Co-operative Store, I 191 
 ,, , early Co-operation in, I 348 ; 
 
 II 90 
 London, early freethoug-ht in, I 297 
 ,, , first visit to, I 71 
 „ in 1848, I 128, 134-7 
 London Bridge, accident at, II 293 
 London Figaro, the, II 33 
 London News, the, I 276 
 London Secular Society, the, I 298, 
 
 301 
 London Tavern, Owen at the, I 63 
 Longfellow, Holyoake visits, II 117 
 Longho, D., I 348 
 Lorimer, Dr., II 129, 209, 290 
 Lome, Marquis of, II 131 
 Louis Philippe, I 102, 130 
 Lovett, I 41, 112, 113, 134 
 Lowe, the Hon. R., II 24 
 Luddites, I 3 
 Ludlow, Mr. J., I 16, 187 ; II 106, 
 
 239, 248 
 Luke Raeburn, II 254 
 Lupton, Mr. Durnton, I 325 
 Lyall, Edna, II 253-4 
 Lyttleton, Lord, II 24 
 Lytton, Sir E. B., I 272 
 
 Macdonald, A., II 75 
 
 , Sir J., II 121, 131 
 Macerone pike, the, I 143 ; II 289 
 Machinery, introduction of, I 2 
 Mackay, Ch., I 157 
 
 ,, , Baron, 11 98, 137 
 Mackintosh, Mr., I 44 
 Madeira, persecution at, I 94 
 
 Madeline Holyoake, I 36, 48, 74, 86 
 Maffi, Signor, II 245 
 Magee, Dr., II 60 
 Mainwaring, G., II 157 
 Malthusianism and J. S. Mill, II 63, 
 
 64 
 Manchester, Co-operative Congress 
 
 at, II 93 
 Manchester Co-operative Societies, 
 
 I 185, 195 
 Manchester, early lectures at, I 99, 
 
 141 
 Manchester Examiner and Times, the, 
 
 I 277 
 Manchester, first visit to, I 30 
 Manchester Secular Society and 
 
 Holyoake, I 302 
 Manfield, Sir Ph., II 223, 264 
 Manhattan Liberal Club, II 113 
 Manners, Lord J., II 45 
 Manning, Cardinal, II 60 
 Man's nature and development, I 289 
 Mantle, G. J., II 30 
 IMamial for Co-operators, II 107 
 March of the Blanketeers, I 4 
 Mario, Alberto, I 244 
 
 ,, , Mme., I 244; II 198 
 Marriage, first, I 2>Z 
 
 ,, , second, II 206 
 ,, , Owen's views on, I 44 
 Marriott, Rev. C, I 192 
 
 „ , Sir W., II 157, 158, 179, 
 
 207 
 Marsh, Mr. A., II 311 
 Martin, Emma, I 99, 121 
 Martineau, Harriet, I 116, 126, 173, 
 
 175. 215, 276, 278; II 140 
 Martineau, Harriet, on Mazzini, I 
 
 289 
 Martineau, Harriet, on the Reasoner, 
 
 I 288 
 Martineau, Dr. J., I 202, 219, 222, 
 
 289 ; II 150 
 Martineau, Thomas, II 178 
 Mar\'ell, Mr., I 325 
 Mason, Mr., II no 
 
 ,, , Capt., I 77 
 Masson, Prof. D., I 327 ; II 226 
 Mathematics, lessons in, I 36 
 
 ,, , study of, I 13 
 
 Mathematics no mystery, I 52, 120 
 Mauefham, Mr., I 300, -547 
 Maurice, Prof. F. D., I 186, 18S ; II 
 
 19. 93 
 Maurice, Gen. F., I 189, 190 
 Maxse, Admiral, II, 33, 59, 158 
 IMaxwell, Mr., II 240, 247 
 Mayall, Mr., II 157 
 Mayflower League, II, 399
 
 354 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Mazzini, I 130, 146, 170, 231, 234-43, 
 
 30S. 320, 2>^2; 116 
 Mazzini and Garibaldi, I 324, 327 
 jNIcCarthy, Justin, II 202, 233, 291 
 Mechanics' Institute, I 11, 13, 34 
 Melazzo, the, I 315, 317, 323 
 Melbourne, Lord, II 5 
 Alelboume Ar^Hs, the, I 276 
 Meredith, George, on Holyoake, II 
 
 318 
 Merritt, Mr., I 354 ; II 44 
 Metropolitan Institute, the, I 347 
 
 ,, Press Committee, I 276 
 
 Metternich, I, 131 
 Micheldever affair, the, I 328 
 Middle-class, Holyoake on the, I 
 
 144, 150 
 Milan, Co-operative Congress at, II 
 
 190-2 
 Milanese Co-operators and Holj'- 
 
 oake, II 244, 317 
 Mill, J. S., I 157, 185, 240 ; II 16, 17, 
 
 20, 30, 31, 48 
 Mill, J. S., assists his candidature, I 
 
 283 
 Mill, J. S., controversy about, II 
 
 62-8 
 Mill, J. S., on the ballot, II 37 
 ,, , on morality, II 65 
 
 ,, , on oath-taking, I 338 
 Mill, Mrs. J. S., I 286 
 Minchin, Captain, I 310, 312 
 Mitchell, Mr., II 239, 241, 248 
 Mitchell Hey Mills, the, I 350 
 Molesworth, W. N., I 136, 141, 209, 
 
 348, 350 ; II 164 
 Moll, I 131 
 
 „ , Rev. W. E., II 145 
 Monads Herald, I 31 
 Montmorency, II 134 
 Monument raised by Co-operators, 
 
 II 321 
 Monza, II 191 
 Moore, R., I 261 
 Moo7-e's War Chronicle, I 269 
 Moral errors which endanger Co-opera^ 
 
 Hon, I 348 
 I\Iorality early in nineteenth centurv, 
 
 I 16 
 Morley, Earl, II 233 
 
 „ , Mr. J., 1329,330, 332; II 67, 
 
 143. 157. 163, 178-81,215 
 Morley, Samuel, I 224 
 Morning and Evening Star, the, I 276 
 Morning Journal, II 33 
 IMorris, Sir L., II 305 
 Morrison, W., I 351 ; II 76, 91, 103, 
 
 157, 189, 207 
 Moscheles, F., II 298 
 
 Mother, Holyoake's, I 6, 197 
 Movement, the, I 96, 98, 100, 104, 106 
 Mundella, A. J., II 91, 93, 165 
 Murderers and Holyoake, II 205 
 Murray, Donald, II 320 
 Mus^e Social Medal, the, II 245 
 Mussey, General, II 121, 132 
 
 Nadaud, M., II 189 
 
 Napoleon III., I 230, 246, 247, 307 ; 
 
 II 61 
 Nathan, Signor, II 198 
 National Democratic League, II 296 
 ,, Hall (Holborn), I 112 
 ,, Liberal Club, dinners at 
 
 the, II 216, 227 
 National Liberal Club, honorary 
 
 member of the, II 215-6 
 National Parliamentary and Reform 
 
 Association, I 169 
 National Reform League, I 149 
 National Refonner, Holyoake writes 
 
 on the, I 344-5 
 National Reformer, origin of the, I 
 
 303, 343 
 National Review, II 15 
 National Secular Hall Company, II 
 
 261 
 National Secular Society, I 297 ; II 
 
 56, 58, 251, 260, 261, 263, 326 
 National School Society, I 7 
 
 ,, Sunday League, I 285 ; II 
 
 43 
 National Workshops at Paris, I 229 
 Neale, E. V., I 164, 187, 192, 349; 
 
 II 76, 92, 93, 100, 107, 186, 189, 
 
 190, 193. 196, 207, 231, 235, 24S 
 Negretti, Mr., I 327, 330 
 Netheism, I, 208; II 260 
 Neville, Ralph, II 319 
 New defence of the ballot. A, II 38 
 New Lanark, I 39 
 New Moral World, I 43, 52, 53, 113 
 New Qtca7-terly Re7)iew, I 1 16 
 New York, Holyoake at, II 113, 
 
 121, t23, 129, 132 
 New York Iribuue, I 283 ; II 33 
 New York World, II 56 
 Newcastle Clu-onicle, the, II 13, 94 
 Newcastle, Co-operative Congress 
 
 at, II, 94, 136 
 Newcastle, debate at, I 207 
 
 ,, , Gladstone at, II 13, 169 
 
 Newhall Hill meetings, I 19, 21, 22 
 Newman, Charles, I 221, 224, 337 
 ,, , Francis, I 156, 158, 164, 
 
 220-3, 233. 349 ; II 6, 16, 74, 150 
 Newman, Francis, and Gladstone, 
 
 II 1 70-1
 
 INDEX 
 
 355 
 
 Newman, Mrs. V., I 223 
 Newspaper Board, Co-operative, II 
 
 185, 196, 232 
 Newton, R. Heber, II 124, 132 
 Nineteenth Century, starting ot the, 
 
 n 73 
 
 Nonconformist, the, on Holyoake, I 
 280 
 
 North, Mr. Justice, II 143 
 
 North of England Conference Asso- 
 ciation, II 93 
 
 Northampton, early lectures at, I 
 121 
 
 Northampton, Holyoake offers aid 
 at, II 78 
 
 Northbourne, Lord, II 105 
 
 Northern Reform Union, II 12 
 
 Northern Star, the, I 117, 142, 167, 
 276; II 15 
 
 Norwich, bishops of, II 174 
 
 ,, Leather Society, II 237 
 
 Novello, Mr., I 267 
 
 Nuttall, Mr., II 100 
 
 Oath, Holyoake and the, I 53, 56, 
 300 ; II 46-9, 88-9 
 
 Oath, Owenites and the, I 53 
 ,, , penalties of the, I 56 
 ,, taken by A. Holyoake, I 300 ; 
 
 II 47 
 Oath, the parliamentary, II 87-8 
 Obituary notices of Holyoake, II 
 
 314-8 
 O'Brien, Bronterre, I 106, 113, 133 
 O'Connor, Feargus, I 40, 41, 113, 
 
 132, 137. 138 
 O'Connor, Miss, II 5 
 Oconnorville, I 138 
 Oddfellows, manuals for the, I 109, 
 
 114; 1 1 60 
 Odger, Mr., II 39 
 
 Oldham Co-operative Societies, I 185 
 On Liberty, I 338 
 Oracle of Reason, the, I 55, 58, 89 
 Orange Lodge, Holyoake a member 
 
 of, II 203 
 Orbiston, I 39 
 Organisation, I 217 
 Origin and Nature of Secularism, II 
 
 172, 217, 219, 265, 281 
 Originality of Holyoake, H 274, 279 
 Orsini, Felice, I 247-8, 252, 255 
 Outlaws of Frcethought, II 48 
 Owen, Robert, I 7, 12, 24, 30, 37-40, 
 
 42-3. 44. 47. 52, 63, loi, 118, 158, 
 
 179; II 184, 187 
 Owen, Robert, death of, I 293-4 '< ^^ 
 
 Id 
 Owen, Rob. Dale, I 294 
 
 Owen, Ros. Dale, I 294 
 
 ,, memorial, the, II 298 
 Owenism, end of, I 105, 117 
 
 ,, , nature of, I 39, 46-7 
 Oxford, Bishop of, I no ; II 60 
 
 ,, , Co-operative Congress at, 
 II 138 
 
 Paddington Equitable Society, I 348 
 
 Paedobaptists, I 10 
 
 Paine dinner, II 300 
 
 Paisley, Co-operative Congress at, 
 
 11305 
 Paley refuted, I 95-6 
 
 Pall Mall Gazette, the, on Holvoake, 
 
 11 314 
 Palmerston, Lord, I 40, 171 ; II 3, 4, 
 
 5, 12, 15 
 Palmerston and Garibaldi, I 311 
 Panettone, the annual, II 199 
 Paper-duty, the, I 258, 263, 272-4 
 Paragon Coffee House, I 117 
 Pare, William, I 12, 2,Zi 104 
 Parents of Holyoake, I 6, 197 
 Paris, Co-operative Congress at, II 
 
 188 
 Parker, Dr. J., II 207, 208-9, 267, 
 
 290 
 Parker, Dr. J., debate with, I 226 
 ,, Memorial Hall, II ii8 
 ,, , Mrs. Theodore, II 117 
 Parkes, Miss B. Rayner, I 287 
 
 ,, , Sir Henry, II 214 
 Parliamentary candidatures, I 283 ; 
 
 II 40-2, 156 
 Parliamentary oath, struggle over 
 
 the, II 87-8 
 Parnell, Mr., II 202, 203 
 
 ,, Commission, the, II 168 
 Parris, Touzeau, II S3 
 Parry, Sergeant, I 71, 77, 82, 112 
 Passive resister, Holyoake as, II 300 
 Paterson, I 52, 92, 94, 98 
 Path I took, the, II 287 
 Peard, Colonel, I 309, 320, 330 
 Peel, Sir R., II 152, 206 
 
 ,, , General, II 34 
 Pemberton, C. R., I 35 
 Penny Magazine, I 13 
 Penrose, Golding, I 280 
 People's Blue Books, the, II 45, 109 
 ,, Charter, the, I 40 
 ,, Charter Union, the, I 138 
 ,, International League, I 236 
 People's Magazine, 1 1 33 
 People's Paper, the, I 276 
 People's Press, I 121, 140 
 People's Review, I 160 
 Percival, Dr., II 139
 
 356 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Perry, Sir E., I 285 
 
 Perth, Co-operative Congress at, II 
 243. 247 
 
 Peterborough, Bishop of, II 60 
 
 ,, , Co-operative Con- 
 
 gress at, II 247 
 
 Peterloo, I 5 
 
 PhiUips, Wendell, I 174, 216, 283 ; 
 II no, 115-8 
 
 Phillpotts, Eden, on Holyoake, II 319 
 
 Philosophic type 0/ Christianity, I 217 
 
 Philosophical Institution, I 28 
 
 Phrenology, I 27, 28 
 
 Picton, J. A., II 156, 216 
 
 Pieri, I 248 
 
 Pierrepont Graves, I 90 
 
 Pigott, E., I 163, 166, 269, 277 
 
 Pinching, Mr., I 69 
 
 Pinkerton, II 109 
 
 Pio7ieer, the, I 24 
 
 Pitman, Mr., II 94 
 
 ,, , Sir Isaac, I 13 
 
 Pius IX, I 130, 231, 232 
 
 Place, Francis, I 15, 22, 39, 112, 116, 
 143, 145, 261, 264 ; II 64 
 
 P/eafor affirviation, II 88 
 
 Plunkett, Horace, II 245 
 
 Plymouth, Co-operative Congress at, 
 
 ii 233 
 
 Podmore, R., I 44, 46, 63 ; II 298 
 Poles, Holyoake and the, I 244 
 Police, the early, I 42 
 Political development of Holyoake, 
 
 I 116, 143, 146 
 Political Exchange, the, I 215, 243, 
 
 310; II 3 
 Political ideal of Holyoake, II 2 
 
 ,, work of Holyoake, II 325-6 
 Pooley case, the, I 290-1 ; II 146 
 Poor A/ait's GuardiaJi, the, I 59 
 Pope, Hon. J. H., II 121 
 Porcupine, the, II 56 
 Portraits of Holyoake, I 280 
 Positivism and Secularism, I 296 
 Postmen's dinner at Brighton, II 287 
 Potter, Miss B., II 96 
 Potteries Free Press, the, I 265 
 Power-drill invented by Holyoake, 
 
 Practical G}-amtnar, I 97 
 PraiU, Mr., I 355 
 
 ,, , Mrs. [Eveline Holyoake], II 
 
 186 
 Prater, Horatio, I 244, 305 
 Pratt, Mr. Hodgson, II 200, 227, 246, 
 
 290, 298, 299 
 Present Day, the, II 135, 149 
 Presentations to Holyoake, I 175, 
 
 211, 302, 304; II 76, 207 
 
 Press-stamp, the, I 257-272 
 
 Prime, Dr., II in 
 
 Primrose League, the, II 298 
 
 Prince of Wales, the, II 200, 247 
 
 Prior, Mr., II 167 
 
 Prize-fight, Holyoake reports a, II 14 
 
 Probyn, Lord Maj-or, II 159 
 
 Profit-sharing, beginning of trouble 
 
 over, I 350 
 Profit-sharing controversy, the, I 
 
 350 ; II 96 
 Profit-sharing societies, II 237, 243 
 Progress and Poverty, II 125 
 Progress of the working class, II 322 
 Progress of the ivo7-king classes, I 16 
 Propagandist Press Committee, II 
 
 262 
 Public lessons of the hangman, II 15 
 Public Opitiioti, I 276 
 Public speaking and debate, II 209 
 Publicola, I 71 
 Pugin, Mrs., II 203 
 Pulzskv, I 232, 234 
 Pyat, Felix, II 6 
 
 Quaker's gift, II 157 
 
 Qua7-te7-ly Review, the, and Holyoake, 
 
 I 292 
 Queenwood community, the, I loi- 
 
 5, "8 
 Quincy, Hon. Josiah, II 118 
 
 Radicalism, influence on, II 280, 325 "f^ 
 
 Radicals, the, I 40, 147, 149, 164 
 ,, , Holyoake on the, II 176 
 
 Ramsey, Mr., II 143-6 
 
 Rational Religionists, I 43, 46, 53, 
 114 
 
 Ratio7iahs7n , I 106 
 
 Rationalist Press Association, II 
 262-70 
 
 Rationalist Press Committee, II 263 
 
 Read, Dr., II 321 
 
 Reaso7ier, the, I 237, 267 
 ,, , end of the, I 304 
 ,, , founding of the, I 114, 185 
 ,, , revival of the, I 346 ; II 59 
 
 Reay, Lord, II 99, 137, 138 
 
 Reclus, £lie, I 244 
 
 Redemption Society, the, I 195 
 
 Reed, Mr., II 12 
 
 Reform Bill, the, I 17, 19-22 
 
 ,, ,, , the second, II 8, 11, 34 
 ,, League, the, II 17, 23, 26, 
 
 34 
 Regent's Park, Holyoake removes 
 
 to, I 353 
 Reid, Whitelaw, II 104, 113, 124
 
 INDEX 
 
 357 
 
 Religion, Holyoake's views on, II 
 
 174. 309. 310 
 Religious development, Holyoake's, 
 
 I 9, 10, II, 14, 25, 37, 57 
 Reporter, Holyoake as a, II 284 
 Republicanism in 1870, II 50 
 Republicans and Democrats, II 113 
 Review of Reviews, sketch in the, II 
 
 295 
 Revolution of 1830, I 18 
 
 „ of 1848, I 127, 129, 133, 
 
 229 
 Reybaud, I 39 
 Reynolds, W. M., I 139, 217 
 Rick-burning, I 3, 16 
 Rigby, Mr., I 44, 294 ; II loi 
 Riots in 1826, I 15 
 
 ,, at Birmingham, I 42 
 Ripon, Marquis of, I 164 ; II 224 
 Roalfe, Matilda, I 94 
 Robert, Ch., II 244, 245 
 Robert Elsmere, II 168 
 Roberts, Isaac, II 224, 300 
 Robertson, James, I 302 
 , J. M., II 254 
 Robespierre, II 278 
 Robinson, Sir J., II 221 
 Rochdale, debate at, I 207 
 
 ,, , Co-operative Congress 
 at, II 239 
 Rochdale, lecture at, I 99, 181 
 
 ,, Pioneers, the, I 180-4, 350 
 
 ,, ,, andprofit- 
 
 sharing, II 97-8 
 
 ,, Society's Jubilee, II 244 
 
 Roebuck, Mr., I 71, 355 ; II 35, 
 
 48 
 Rogers, Prof. T., II 12S, 133, 
 
 145 
 Rohan, de, I 310, 315, 321, 325; 
 
 II 204 
 
 RoUin, Ledru, I 229, 244 
 Roman Republic, the, I 231 
 Rome, Holyoake at, II 198 
 Rosebery, Earl, II 92 
 Ross, Mr., I 215 
 Rotunda, the, I 71, 92, 99 
 Rudiments of Public Speaking, I 216 
 Rudio, Carlo di, I 245, 254 
 Ruge, Dr. A., I 244 
 Ruskin, II 199 
 Russell, Lord, I 12 
 
 ,, , Lord, and Garibaldi, I 309 
 
 ,, , Dr., II 119 
 
 ,, , Sir E., II III, 220 
 Rutherford, Rev. J. H., debate with, 
 
 I 226 
 Ryall, Malthus, I 55, 73, 92, 96 
 Ryder, Mr., I 340 
 
 Ryle, Dr., on Holyoake, II 308-9 
 Ryves, Mrs., II 281 
 
 Saffi, Aurelio, I 244 ; II 198 
 Salisbury', Lord, II 34, 67 
 Salt, Henry, II 223 
 Sandford, Archdeacon, on Holy- 
 oake, II 50 
 Sandwith, Mr., II 74 
 Santa Fe, II 130 
 
 Saratoga Convention, II 113, 114 
 Sargant's Life of Owen, I 295 
 Sarsfield, Captain, I 312, 317 
 Satchwell, I 121 
 Saturday Post, II 33 
 Saturday Review, the, on the Reasonery 
 
 I 298 
 Schoelcher, V., I 244 
 
 Schools of early Birmingham, I 8 
 Scotch Co-operators and Holyoake, 
 
 II 293, 305 
 
 Scotland, early freethought in, I 94 
 
 Scots Greys, the, at Birmingham, I 
 22 
 
 Scotsman, the, II 78 
 
 Scott, Thomas, I 341 ; II 203 
 ,, suicide of Gunner, I 335 
 
 Scott-Russell Plot, the, II 55 
 
 Scottish Burns Club, II 293 
 
 ,, Wholesale, the, and profit- 
 sharing, II 237, 240 
 
 Search, Edward, I 160, 203 
 
 Secret societies, I 24, 40 
 
 Secretaryship to Cowen, II 19 
 
 Secular Citizen, the, II 149 
 
 Secular education, Mr. Chamberlain 
 on, II 177 
 
 Secular education. Dr. Parker on, 
 II 209 
 
 Secular Review, the, II 143 
 
 Secular World, the, I 345 ; II 15 
 
 Secularism, meaning of, II 265, 266 
 
 Secularism, Scepticism, and Atheism, 
 
 ", 57 
 Secularism, Molesworth on, I 209-10 
 
 Secularism, origin of, I 117, 200-4, 
 
 208, 211 
 Secularism, Chamberlain on, II 177 
 ,, , defect of, I 295-6, 346 ; 
 
 II 149 
 Secularism, founding of, I 297 
 
 ,, , Gladstone on, II 163, 
 
 172 
 Secularism, Morley on, II 180 
 Secularist, the, II 79 
 Secularist's Catechism, I 220 
 Securities-system, the, I 271, 272 
 Seely, Mr., I 327, 330 
 Select Hymns, 1 1 1 7 1
 
 358 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Self-help, origin of phrase, I 51 
 Self-help a luindred years ago, II 233 
 Seymour, Lord, I 312, 317, 321 
 Sh'aen, Mr., I 332, 345 ; II 3 
 Sharman, General, II 121 
 
 ,, , Rev, W., II 136, 146, 209 
 Sharpies, Miss, I 95 
 Sheffield, Holyoake at, I 49-54 
 Sheffield Iris, I 52 
 Sherbrooke, Lord, II 24 
 Shooting-stars, reports on, I 28 
 Shore, Air. Teig^nmouth, II 32 
 Short and Easy Method, I 77, 108 
 Shorthouse, Dr., I 305, 354; II 16 
 Sicily, campaign in, I 308 
 Sixty Years of an Agitator s life, II 
 
 211, 278 
 Slack, Henry, II 219 
 Slavery-question, the, I 169, 277, 282 
 Smalley, George, II ^2>i '24 
 Smiles, Samuel, I 51 
 Smith, Goldwin, 11 131, 138, 155, 
 
 215. 304 
 Smith, Hawkes, I 12, 28 
 
 „ .J., II 85 
 
 ,, , Miss Leigh, I, 287 
 
 ,, , Sydney, on education, I 7 
 
 ,, , Toulmin, I 345, 354 
 Smithies, J., I 183 ; II 239 
 Social Economist, I 351 ; II 90, 91, 
 
 233 
 Social Institutions at London, I 106, 
 
 118, 123 
 Social missionary, I 43, 44-60, 113 
 ,, Science, early discourage- 
 ment of, I 13, 23 
 Social Science Congress, Holyoake 
 
 at the, I 348 ; II 98 
 Social Service of Holyoake, II 324 
 Socialism, Holyoake's attitude to- 
 ward, II 2, 228 
 Socialism, Mazzini on, I 237, 260 
 ,, , origin of modern, I 350 
 ,, , sacred, I 43 
 Socialists, the early, I 43 
 Society of Rational Religionists, I 
 
 43. "4 
 Society of Friends of Italy, I 235 
 
 ,, of Useful Knowledge, I 12 
 
 Soldering, Holyoake works at, I 8 
 
 Somers, R., II 2'^ 
 
 Somerville, A., I 193 
 
 Sold, the, I 221 
 
 South Kensington Exhibition, II 
 
 153 
 South Metropolitan Gas Company, II 
 
 237. 241 
 South Place Chapel, I 82, 120, 122 ; 
 
 II 210, 254, 320 
 
 Southwell, Ch., I 49, 54, 55, 58, 60, 
 
 83, 92, 94, 98, 117, 123, 211 
 Spectator, the, on profit-sharing, II 
 
 235 
 Spectator, the, on the Pooley case, I 
 
 291 
 Spectator, the, on Holyoake, II 315 
 Spencer, Herbert, I 163 ; II 156, 
 
 181, 297 
 S perry, I 63 
 Spies in London, I 245 
 Spirit of Bonner, the, I 57 
 Spirit of the Age, I 144, 185 
 Spurzheim, I 27 
 
 St. Andr^, J. L., I 191, 192, 245 
 St. Bride's, vicar of, I 214 
 St. George's Guild, II 137 
 St. Martin's Hall, meeting at, II 11 
 St. Simonians, Mill on the, II 66 
 Stalybridge, debate at, I 141 
 Standard, the, on Holyoake, II 28, 
 
 314 
 Stanley, Bishop, II 170 
 ,, , Dean, II 60, 67 
 
 „ ,H., n62 
 
 „ , Lord, II 9, 23, 104, 137 
 Stansfeld, Sir J., I 158, 235, 330; II 
 
 3. 10. 13. 73 
 Stansfeld, Lady, I 140 
 
 Stead, Mr., II 290, 295 
 
 Stephenson, George, I 15 
 
 Stephen, Sir Leslie, I 39, 42, 190 ; II 
 
 269, 298 
 Stephens, J. R., II 135 
 Stewart, Prof., II 136 
 Storr, Mr. J. S., II 76, 136, 
 Strahan, A., II 74 
 Stj-anger in America, II 124 
 Strathmore, Lady, I 355 
 Stubbs, Dean, I 133 
 Studies, early, of Holyoake, I 29 
 Styles, Captain, I 308, 311, 311, 320-1 
 Sudbury, II 44, 206 
 Sugden, Larnor, II 85 
 Suicides and Holyoake, II 204 
 Sun, Holyoake edits the, II 295 
 Sunday excursions of Secularists, I 
 
 285 
 Sunday question, Holyoake on the, 
 
 I 284-5 
 
 Sunday Schools, early, I 7, 9, 10, 12 
 Sunderland, Co-operative Congress 
 
 at, II 241 
 Sunrise Stores, II 97 
 Supple, Gerard, II 205 
 Suppressed lecture at Cheltenha»i, the, 
 
 II 15 
 
 Suppressed Princess, the, II 2S1 
 Sutherland, Duke of, I 229, 330
 
 INDEX 
 
 359 
 
 Swallow, Mr., II 235 
 Swindon, lecture at, I 122 
 Syme, Rev. Mr., I 224, 225 
 
 Talandier, M., I 347 
 
 Talfourd, Sergeant, I 3:; 
 
 Taylor, P. A., I 332 ; II 18, 26, 156 
 
 „ , Henry, II 75 
 
 ,, , Prof., II 230 
 Taxes on knowledge, I 258 
 Teacher, Holyoake as a, I 50, 52, 92 
 Telegraph, the, on Holyoake, II 314 
 Temperance, views on, I 126 ; II 222 
 Temple, Dr., I 339 
 Tennyson, Lady, I 199, 200 ; II 73, 99 
 
 ,, , Lord, II 305 
 Thomasson, Mr., II 300 
 Thompson, Mrs. E., II 124, 129 
 „ , Mr., II 227, 320 
 
 , J., n 252 
 , W. M., I 71 
 Through storm to peace, II 172 
 Timm, Mr., I 265, 267, 270, 274 
 Timmins, S., II 41, 62, 70, 157, 195 
 Tithes, sued for, I 214 
 Toad Lane Store, I 1S4 
 Toft, Mr., II 321 
 Tolly, Mr., I 35 
 Tonks, Edmund, II 157 
 Torrens, Colonel, I 276 
 Tour, early, on foot, I 30-31 
 Tours, Co-operative Congress at, II 
 
 195 
 Tower Hamlets candidature, I 283- 
 
 4 ; II 41 
 Trade Unionism, earlj', I 15, 16, 23, 
 
 24 . . 
 
 Trade Unionism, services to, 11 32, 
 
 45 
 Trades Unions Commission of 1867, 
 
 II 31 
 Tram, Mr. P., I 354 
 Travel, improvement of, II 323 
 Travelling- Tax Abolition Committee, 
 
 II 152-4 
 Travels tn search of a settler s gia'de- 
 
 book, II 134 
 Trelawny, Sir J., I 337, 338 
 
 ,, , Lady, II 71 
 Trevelyan, A., I 98, 106, 124, 215, 
 
 235. '239. 305. 345 ; n 85 
 
 Trial of Holyoake, I 68-78 
 Trial of Theism, I 304 
 Trial-speech, Holyoake's, I 77-78 
 Tribune, the, on Holyoake, II 315 
 Trinity Historical Society, II 215 
 Truelove, Mr., I 247, 265, 229; '115, 
 
 289 
 Tschorzewski, S., II 6 
 
 Tucker, Ensign, I 318 
 
 Tweedale, J., I 183 
 
 Twilight Stores, II 97 
 
 Two great precu hers, II 291 
 
 Tyndall, Prof., I 105, 215; II 104, 
 
 143. 183 
 Tyrannicide, I 247 ; II 5 
 
 Unione Co-operativa, II 197 
 Unionism, agitation about, II 31 
 Unitarians, early relations with, I 
 
 10, 12 
 Universal Purveyor, I 192 
 Universal Republic, II 210 
 
 Vale, Mr., I 140 
 
 Vecchi, Major, I 322 
 
 \'enturi, Mme., I 140, 287 ; II 202 
 
 Verinder, P., II 146 
 
 \'erney, Sir H., I 127 
 
 Verses, early, of Holyoake, I 11 
 
 X'ictor Emmanuel, I 308, 320 
 
 \'ictoria, Queen, I 102 
 
 Victoria Dramatic Club, II 207 
 
 Vigano, Prof., II 191, 192, 199 
 
 Villard, Henry, II no 
 
 Villiers, Mr., II 307 
 
 Vincent, Henry, I 41, 113 
 
 Vivian, H., II 249, 320 
 
 Voysey, Rev. Ch., II 77 
 
 Wages at beginning of nineteenth 
 
 century, I 2, 3, 17, 103 
 Wainwright, II 205 
 Walmsley, Sir Joshua, I 169 
 Walpole, S. H., I 253 ; II 28-9, 31 
 War Chronicle, the, I 269, 270 
 War Fly Sheet, I 269, 270, 272 
 Ward, Gibson, II 74 
 Warpath of opinion, II 255-6 
 Washington, Holyoake at, II 121-2, 
 
 132 
 Watson, Spence, II 136 
 
 ,, , W., I 112, 122, 176, 179, 
 
 212, 261; II 8s 
 Watts, C, II 57, 76, 79, 80, 85, 86, 
 
 224, 258 
 Watts, C. A., II 262 
 
 „ , John, I 54 
 IVe Two, II 254 
 
 Webb, Mrs. S., II 96, 106, 238, 240 
 Weekly Dispatch, I 71 
 ,, Register, the, I 4 
 ,, Times, II 299 
 Weiiling, I 244 
 Wellington, I 21, 22, 135 
 Wosleyans, early relations with, I 9 
 West, Dr., I 141, 142 
 
 ,, Hon. Sackville, II 132
 
 36o 
 
 INDEX 
 
 West Riding secular Alliance, I 302, 
 
 345 
 Westminster Review on Holyoake, I 
 
 356 ; n 42 
 
 What is love? II 63, 64 
 
 Whigs, the, I 40, 42, 130, 150, 164 
 
 White, George, I 41, 85 
 
 „ , W. Hale, I 355 ; II 307 
 
 Whitehall Review, II 15 
 
 Whittington Club, I 161, 163 
 
 Whitty, Mr., I 278 
 
 Wholesale, the English, II 232, 235, 
 240, 242 
 
 Wholesale, the Scottish, and profit- 
 sharing, II 237 
 
 Why do the clergy avoid discussion ? I 
 217, 224 
 
 Wicksteed, Rev. Ph., II 145 
 
 Wilberforce, Dr., II 60 
 
 Wilderspin, I 47 
 
 Wilkinson, Rev. Frome, II 210, 228 
 ,, , Garth, I 355 
 
 Wilks, Washington, I 328 
 ,, , Thomas, I 300 
 
 Will, first, of Holyoake, I 159 
 
 Williams, Aneurin, II 243, 249 
 „ , Capt., I 71, 75 
 ,, , Eleanor [Mrs. Holyoake], I 
 
 36 
 Windte, Rev. C. W., II 123 
 Winterburn, Dr., II 129 
 Woburn Buildings, Holyoake at, 1 154 
 
 Wolff, Mr., II 246 
 Woman-movement, Holyoake and 
 
 the, I 126, 285-9 
 Woman's Journal suggested by 
 
 Holyoake, I 286 
 Woodworth, I 188 
 Woolff, Major, I 329 
 Woolner, Mr., II 44, 73, 101 
 Woolwich, Co-operative Congress 
 
 at, II 243 
 Worcell, I 244 
 
 Worcester, Holyoake at, I 45-9, 92 
 Workers, progress of the, II 322-3 
 Working Man, the, II 32 
 Worki)ig-class representation, II 41 
 Working Men's College, I 187 
 IVorkman and the stifft-age, II 8 
 Workmen's International Exhibition, 
 
 1151 
 
 Workshop, I 276 
 
 Wortley, Major S., I 323 
 
 Wright, Carron, II 215 
 ,, , Daniel, I 12, 34 
 ,, , Frances, I 99, 100, 122-3 
 ,, , Michael, II 59, 79, 80, 85 
 
 Wyndham, Major, I 309 
 
 Yartnouth Independent on Holyoake, 
 
 I 346 
 Young, Mr., I 50 
 „ , F. R.,1 213
 
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