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THE

NINETEENTH

A MONTHLY REVIEW

EDITED BY JAMES KNOWLES

VOL. viii.
JULY-DECEMBER 1880

LONDON
C. KEGAN PAUL & CO., 1 PATERNOSTER SQUARE

(The ri'jlit* of truntlation antt of reproduction an

CONTENTS OF VOL. VIII.

J THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM. By Matthew Arnold 1

ATHEISM AND REPENTANCE : a Familiar Colloquy. By W. H. Mai-
lock ........ 19'

J THE CLOTURE IN PARLIAMENT. By -E. D. J. Wilson . . 42

MODERN FRENCH ART. By Gerard Baldwin Brown . . . 56

A STRANGER IN AMERICA. By George Jacob Holyoake . . 67

« STORY-TELLING. By James Payn . . . . .88

Q THE COMMERCIAL TREATY BETWEEN FRANCE AND ENGLAND. By E.

Raoul Duval ....... 991

THE HOUSE OP LORDS AND NATIONAL INSURANCE. By the Rev. W.

Lewery Blackley . . . . . .107

THE FRENCH CLERGY AND THE PRESENT REPUBLIC. By the Abbo

Martin . . . . . . . . 119

THE PALAIS-ROYAL THEATRE. By Francisque Sarcey . . 140-

BLEEDING TO DEATH. By H. M. Hyndman . . .157

AN ENGLISHMAN'S PROTEST. By Cardinal Manning . .177

PEASANT PROPRIETORS AT HOME. By /. H. Tuke . . . 182

FICTION — FAIR AND FOUL. By John Ruskin . . 195, 394, 748

THE CREED OF THE EARLY CHRISTIANS. By the Dean of Westmin-
ster ........ 207

ICELAND. By Sir David Wedderburn, Bart. . . . 218

^ REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT IN THE COLONIES. By Arthur Mills 237
OUR NATIONAL ART COLLECTIONS AND PROVINCIAL ART MUSEUMS

(conclusion). By /. C. Robinson .. 249

THE FUTURE OF CHINA. By D. C. Boulyer . . . 266

STATE AID AND CONTROL IN INDUSTRIAL ASSURANCE. By H. Sey-
mour Tremenheere . . . . .275

POLITICAL OPTIMISM : a Dialogue. By H. D. Traill . 294

THE LANDOWNERS' PANIC. By Justin McCarthy . . . 305

RECENT LITERATURE . . . . . 313

IRELAND. By /. A. Froude . . . . . .341

A REAL ' SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY.' By Sedley Taylor . . 370

A FEW MORE WORDS ON NATIONAL INSURANCE. By the Earl of Car-
narvon . . . . . . . . 384

THE THOROUGHBRED HORSE — ENGLISH AND ARABIAN. By W. Scawen

Blunt ........ 411

ENGLISH RATIONAL AND IRRATIONAL. By Fitzedward Hall . . 424

iv co.\n:.\TS OF VOL. viu.

PAOt

A COLORADO SKETCH. By the £ raven . . • 445

THE EGYPTIAN LIQUIDATION. By Edward Diretj . . • 458

HYPNOTISM. By G. J. Romanes. ..... 474

FRANC.OIS VILLON. By n . . . . . 481

THE BURIALS BILL AND DISESTABLISHMENT. By the Rev. Canon

I/ . . . . . . . .501

OBSTRUCTION OR 'CLOTURE'? By Lord Sherbrooke . .513

THE CREEDS — OLD AND NBW. By Frederic Harrison . 526, 787

THE CHASE : ITS HISTORY AND LAWS. By the late Lord Chief Justice

of England ...... 550, 955

UNSTABLE EQUILIBRIUM OF PARTIES. By E. D. J. Wilson . 564
PETTY ROMANY. By Joseph Lucas ..... 578
WAPITI- RUNNING ON THE PLAINS. By the Earl of Dunraven . 593

DIARY OF Liu TA-JEN'S MISSION TO ENGLAND. Translated by F. S. A.

Bourne ........ 612

THE PHILOSOPHY OF CRAYFISHES. By the Bishop of Carlisle . 622
POLITICAL FATALISM. By H. D. Train .... 638

DEMONIACAL POSSESSION IN INDIA. By W. Knighton . . 646

ALEXANDRE DUMAS. By Walter Herries Pollock . . . 6-53

THE ' PORTSMOUTH CUSTOM.' By Lord Lymington . . .672

LEGISLATION FOR IRELAND. By Lord Slierbrooke . . .677

THE SABBATH. By Professor Tyndall .... 690

EVILS OF COMPETITIVE EXAMINATIONS. By the Rev. A. R. Grant . 715
THE PHILOSOPHY OF CONSERVATISM. By W. H. Mallock . . 724

OUR NEW WHEATFIELDS AT HOME. By Major Hallett . . 761

THE GOVERNMENT OF LONDON. By W. M. Torrens . . 766

THE. WORKS OF SIR HENRV TAYLOR. By H. G. Hewlett . . 810

BRIBERY AND CoRRurriON. By Sydney C. Buxton . . . 824

RECENT SCIENCE ....... 844

IRELAND IN '48 AND IRELAND NOW. By Juttin McCarthy . . 861

THE IRISH ' POOR MAN.' By Miss Charlotte G. 0. Brien . . 876

THE IRISH LAND QUESTION. By Lord Li/ord . . . 888

EXPLOSIONS IN COLLIERIES, AND THEIR CORE. By Samuel Plimsott 895
Music AND THE PEOPLE. By Mrs. Marshall . . .921

SOUTH AFRICA. By Earl Grey ..... 933

THE OBLIGATIONS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT TO BUDDHISM. ByPro-

fessor J. Estlin Carpenter . . . . .971

EARL RUSSELL DURING THE EASTERN QUESTION, 1853-1855. By

Hallam Tennyson ...... 995

THE SCULPTURES OF OLYMPIA. By A. S. Murray . . . 1008

THE PROBABLE RESULTS OF THE BURIALS BILL. By the Rev. J.

Guinness Rogers ...... 1018

PARLIAMENTARY OBSTRUCTION AND ITS REMEDIES. By Henry Cecil

Raike* .... 1031

THE

NINETEENTH
CENTUEY.

No. XLL— JULY 1880.

THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM.

A PUBLIC man, whose word was once of great power and is now too
much forgotten by us, William Cobbett, had a humorous way of
expressing his contempt for the two great political parties which
between them govern our country, the Whigs and Tories, or Liberals
and Conservatives, and who, as we all know, are fond of invoking
their principles. Cobbett used to call these principles, contemp-
tuously, the principles of Pratt, the principles of Yorke. Instead of
taking, in the orthodox style, the divinised heroes of each party, and
saying the principles of Mr. Pitt, the principles of Mr. Fox, he took a
Whig and a Tory Chancellor, Lord Camden and Lord Hardwicke, who
were more of lawyers than of politicians, and upon them he fathered
the principles of the two great parties in the State. It is as if a man
were now to talk of Liberals and Conservatives adhering not to
the principles of Mr. Gladstone, the principles of Lord Beaconsfield,
but to the principles of Roundell Palmer, the principles of Cairns.
Eminent as are these personages, the effect of the profession of faith
would be somewhat attenuated ; and this is just what Cobbett intended.
He meant to throw scorn on both of the rival parties in the State, and
on their profession of principles ; and so this great master of effect
took a couple of lawyers, whose names lent themselves happily to his
purpose, and called the principles contending for mastery in Parlia-
ment, the principles of Pratt, the principles of Yorke !

Cobbett's politics were at bottom always governed by one master-
thouglrt — the thought of the bad condition of the English labourer.
VOL. VIIL— No. 41. B

2 THE yiXKTEENTH CENTURY. July

He saw the two great parties in the State inattentive, as he thought,
to that bad condition of the labourer— inattentive to it, or igno-
rantly aggravating it by mismanagement. Hence his contempt for
Whigs and Tories alike. And perhaps I may be allowed to compare
myself with Cobbett so far as this : that whereas his politics were
governed by a master-thought, the thought of the bad condition of
the Kn-li.-h labourer, so mine, too, are governed by a master-thought,
l.v a <litV.-n-nt one from Cobbett's. The master-thought by which
my politics are governed is rather this — the thought of the bad

lisation of the English middle class. But to this object of my
concern I see the two great parties in the State as inattentive as, in
Cobbett's regard, they were to the object of his ; I see them inatten-
tive to it, or ignorantly aggravating its ill state by mismanagement.
And if one were of Cobbett's temper, one might be induced, perhaps,
under the circumstances, to speak of our two great political parties as
scornfully as he did ; and instead of speaking with reverence of the
body of Liberal principles which recommend themselves by Mr. Glad-
stone's name, or of the body of Conservative principles which recom-
mend themselves by Lord Beaconsfield's, to call them gruffly the
principles of Pratt, the. principles of Torke.

Cobbett's talent any one might well desire to have, but Cobbett's
temper is far indeed from being a temper of mildness and sweet reason,
and must be eschewed by whoever makes it his study ' to liberate,' as
Plato bids us, ' the gentler element in himself.' And therefore I will
most willingly consent to call the principles of the Liberal and Con-
servative parties by their regular and handsome title of the principles
of Mr. Gladstone, the principles of Lord Beaconsfield, instead of dispa-
ragingly styling them the principles of Pratt, the principles of Yorke.
Only, while conceding with all imaginable willingness to Liberals
and Conservatives the use of'the handsomest title for their principles,
I have never been able to see that these principles of theirs, at any
rate as they succeeded in exhibiting them, had quite the value or
solidity which they themselves supposed. It is but the other day
that I was remarking, at the very most prosperous hour of Conserva-
tive rule, how, underneath all external appearances, the country was
yet profoundly Liberal. And eight or ten years ago, long before their
disaster came, I kept assuring the Liberals that the mind of the
country was grown a little weary of their stock performances upon
tlie political stage, and exhorting my young Liberal friends not to be
for rushing impetuously upon this stage, but to keep aloof from it
for a while, to cultivate a disinterested play of mind upon the stock
notions and habits of their party, and to endeavour to promote, with
me* an inward working. Without attending to me in the least, they
pushed on towards the arena of politics, not at that time very succes--
fully ; but they have been much more fortunate since, and now they
stand in the arena of politics, not quite so young as in the days when
I exhorted them, but full of vigour still, and in good numbers. Me

1880. THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM. 3

they have left staying outside as of old, unconvinced, even yet, of the
wisdom of their choice, a Liberal of the future rather than of the pre-
sent, disposed to think that by its actual present words and works
the Liberal party, however prosperous it may seem, cannot really
succeed, that its practice wants more of simple and sincere thought
to direct it, and that our young friends are not taking the surest way
to amend this state of things when they cast in their lot with it, but
rather are likely to be carried away by the stream themselves.

However, politicians we all of us here in England are and must
be, and I too cannot help being a politician ; but a politician of that
commonwealth of which the pattern, as the philosopher says, exists
perhaps somewhere in heaven, but certainly is at present found no-
where on earth — a Liberal, as I have said, of the future. Still, from
time to time Liberals of the future cannot but be stirred up to look
and see how their politics relate themselves to the Liberalism which
now is ; and to test by them the semblances and promises and endea-
vours of this, especially at its moments of resurrection and culmina-
tion ; and to forecast what its fortunes are likely to be. And this one
does for one's own sake first and foremost, and for the sake of the veiy
few who happen to be likeminded with oneself, to satisfy a natural
and irresistible bent for seeing things as they really are, for not
being made a dupe of, not being taken in. But partly, also, a Liberal
of the future may do it for the sake of his young Liberal friends, who,
though they have committed themselves to the stream of the Libe-
ralism which now is, are yet aware, many of them, of a great need
for finding the passage from this Liberalism to the Liberalism of the
future ; and, although the passage is not easy to find, yet some of
them perhaps, as they are men of admirable parts and energy, if only
they see clearly the matters with which they have to deal, by a happy
and divine inspiration may find it.

Let us begin by making ourselves as pleasant as -we can to our
Liberal friends, and conceding to them that their recent triumph
over their adversaries was natural and salutary. They reproach me,
sometimes, with having drawn the picture of the Eadical and Dissent-
ing Bottles, but left the Tory Bottles unportrayed. Yet he exists,
they urge, and is very baneful ; and his ignoble Toryism it is, the
shoddy Toryism of the City and of the Stock-Exchange, and not, as
pompous leading-articles say, the intelligence and sober judgment of
the educated classes and of mercantile sagacity, which carried the
elections in the City of London and in the metropolitan counties for
the Conservatives. Profoundly congenial to this shoddy Toryism —
so my Liberal reprovers go on to declare, — were the fashions and policy
of Lord Beaconsfield, a policy flashy, insincere, immoral, worshipping
material success above everything ; profoundly congenial and profoundly
demoralising. I will not say that I adopt all these forcible and pictu-

B 2

4 THE X1XETEEXTH CENTURY. July

lesque expressions of my Literal friends, but I fully concede to them
that, althi.ujjli it is with the Radical and Dissenting Bottles that I
have occupii-d myself— for indeed he interests me far more than the
other— yet the Tory Bottles exists too, exists in great numbers and
great forc.% particularly in London and its neighbourhood ; and that
f. -r him Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Beaconsfield's style of government
were both very attractive and very demoralising. This, however, is
but a detail of a great question. In general, the mind of the country
is, as I have already said, profoundly Liberal ; and by a just instinct.
It feels that the Tories have not the secret of life and of the future
for u», and it is right in so thinking ; it turns to them from time to
time, in dissatisfaction at the shortcomings of Liberal statesmanship,
but its reaction and recoil from them, after it has tried them for a
little, is natural and salutary. For they cannot really profit the
nation, or give it what it needs.

Moreover, we will concede, likewise, that what seems to many
people the most dubious part of the Liberal programme, what is
blamed as revolutionary and a leap in the dark, what is deprecated
even by some of the most intelligent of Liberal statesmen as unne-
cessary and dangerous, — the proposal to give a vote to the agricul-
tural labourer— we will concede that this, too, is a thing not to be
lamented and blamed, but natural and salutary. Not that there is
either any natural right in every man to the possession of a vote, or
any gift of wisdom and virtue conferred by such possession. But
if experience has established any one thing in this world, it has
established this : that it is well for any great class and description of
men in society to be able to say for itself what it wants, and not to have
other classes, the so-called educated and intelligent classes, acting
for it as its proctors, and supposed to understand its wants and to
provide for them. They do not really understand its wants, they do
not really provide for them. A closs of men may often itself not either
fully understand its own wants, or adequately express them ; but it
has a nearer interest and a more sure diligence in the matter than
any of its proctors, and therefore a better chance of success. Let the
agricultural labourer become articulate, let him speak for himself.
In his present case we have the last left of our illusions that one class
is capable of speaking for another, answering for another ; and it is an
illusion like the rest.

All this one is quite prepared to concede to the Liberalism which
now is — the fitness and naturalness of the most disputed article in
its programme, the fitness and naturalness of its adversaries' recent
defeat. And yet, at the same time, what strikes one fully as much
as all this is the insecureness of the Liberals' hold upon office and
upon public favour ; the probability of the return, perhaps even more
than once, of their adversaries to office, before that final and happy
consummation is reached, the permanent establishment of Liberalism
in power.

1880. THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM. 5

Many people will tell us that this is because the multitude, by
whose votes the elections are now decided, is ignorant and capricious
and unstable, and gets tired of those who have been managing its-
affairs for some time, and likes a change to something new, and then
gets tired of this also, and changes back again ; and that so we may
expect to go on changing from a Conservative government to a Liberal,
and from a Liberal government to a Conservative, backwards and for-
wards for ever. But this is not so. Unremittingly, however slowly,
the human spirit struggles towards the light ; and the adoptions and
rejections of its agents by the multitude are never wholly blind and
capricious, but have a meaning. And the Liberals of the future are
those who preserve themselves from distractions and keep their heads
as clear and their tempers as calm as they can, in order that they may
discern this meaning ; and therefore the Liberals of the present, who
are too heated and busy to discern it, cannot do without them alto-
gether, greatly as they are inclined to disregard them, but they have
an interest in their cogitations whether they will or no.

What, then, is the meaning of the veerings of public favour
from one of the two great parties which administer our affairs to the
other, and why is it likely that the gust of favour, by which the
Liberals have recently benefited, will not be a steady and permanent
wind, to bear them for ever prosperously along ? Well, the reason of
it is very simple, but the simple reason of a thing is often the very
last that we will consent to look at. But as the end and aim of all
dialectics is, as by the great master of dialectics we have been most
truly told, to help us to an answer to the question, how to live ; so,
beyond all doubt whatever, have politics too to deal with this same
question and with the discovery of an answer to it. The true and
noble science of politics is even the very chief of the sciences, because
it deals with this question for the benefit of man not as an isolated
creature, but in that state ' without which,' as Burke says, £ man
could not by any possibility arrive at the perfection of which his
nature is capable ' — for the benefit of man in society. Now of man
in society the capital need is that the whole body of society should
come to live with a life worthy to be called human, and correspond-
ing to man's true aspirations and powers. This, the humanisation
of man in society, is civilisation. The aim for all of us is to promote
it ; and to promote it is above all the aim for the true politician.

Of these general propositions we none of us, probably, deny
or question the truth, although we do not much attend to them in
our practice of politics, but are concerned with points of detail.
Neither will any man, probably, be disposed to deny that, the aim for all
of us, and for the politician more especially, being to make civilisation
pervasive and general, the necessary means towards civilisation may
be said to be, first and foremost, expansion ; and then, the power of
expansion being given, these other powers have to follow it and to find

6 77/A' XIXETEE5TH CENTURY. July

tllt ;: t in it— the power of conduct, the power of intellect and

knowledge, the power of beauty, the power of social life and manners.
These are the means towards oar end, which is civilisation ; and the

• politician, who wills the end, cannot but will the means also.
And meanwhile, whether the politician wills them or not, there is an
instinct in society pushing it to desire them and to tend to them,
and making it dissatisfied when nothing is done for them, or impedi-
ment and harm are offered to them ; and this instinct we call the
instinct of self-preservation in humanity. So long as any of the
means to civilisation are neglected, or have impediment and harm
offered to them, men are always, whether consciously or no, in want
of something which they have not ; they can never be really at ease ;
at times they get angrily dissatisfied with themselves, their condition,
and their government, and seek restlessly for a change.

Expansion we were bound to put first among the means towards
civilisation, because it is the basis which man's whole effort to civilise
himself requires and presupposes. The instinct for expansion mani-
fests itself conspicuously in the love of liberty, and every one knows
how signally this love is exhibited in England. The Liberals are
pre-eminently the party appealing to the love of liberty, and there-
fore to the instinct for expansion. The Conservatives may say that
they love liberty as much as the Liberals love it, and that for real
liberty they do as much ; but it is evident that they do not appeal so
principally as the Liberals to the love of liberty, because their prin-
cipal appeal is to the love of order, to the respect for what they call
' our traditional, existing social arrangements.' Order is a most ex-
cellent thing, and true liberty is impossible without it, but order is
not in itself liberty, and an appeal to the love of order is not a direct
appeal to the love of liberty, to the instinct for expansion. The
great body of the community, therefore, in which the instinct for ex-
pansion works powerfully and spreads more and more, this great body
feels that to its primary instinct, its instinct for expansion, the
Liberals rather than the Conservatives make appeal. Consequently
this great body tends, and must tend, to go with the Liberals. And
this is what I meant by saying, even at the time when the late
Government seemed strongest, that the country was profoundly
Liberal. The instinct for expansion was still, I meant to say, the
primary instinct in the great body of our community ; and this
instinct is in alliance with the Liberals, not the Conservatives.

To enlarge and secure our existence by the conveniences of life is
the object of trade ; and the development of trade, like that of liberty,
is due to the working in men of the natural instinct of expansion.
And the turn for trade our nation has shown as signally as the turn
for liberty ; and of its instinct for expansion in this line also, the
Liberals, and not the Conservatives, have been the great favourers.
The mass of the community, pushed by the instinct for expansion, sees
in the Liberals the friends of trade as well as the friends of liberty.

1880. THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM. 7

And Liberal statesmen like the present Lord Derby (who well
deserves, certainly, that among the Liberals, as he himself desires, we
should count him), and Liberal orators like Mr. Bright, are in fact
continually appealing, when they address the public, either to the
love of liberty or to the love of trade, and praising Liberalism for
having favoured and helped the one or the other, and blaming Conser-
vatism for having discouraged and checked them. When they make
these appeals, when they distribute this praise and this blame, they
touch a chord in the public mind which vibrates strongly in answer.
What the Liberals have done for liberty, what the Liberals have
done for trade, and how under this beneficent impulsion the greatness
of England has arisen, the greatness which comes, as the hearer is
told, of l the cities you have built, the railroads you have made, the
manufactures you have produced, the cargoes which freight the ships of
the greatest mercantile navy the world has ever seen,' — this, together
with the virtues of Nonconformity and of Nonconformists, and the de-
merits of the Tories, may be said, as I have often remarked, to be the
never-failing theme of Mr. Bright's speeches, and his treatment of the
theme is a never-failing source of excitement and delight to his
hearers. And how skilfully and effectively did Lord Derby the other
day, in a speech in the north of England, treat after his own fashion
the same kind of theme, pitying the wretched Continent of Europe,
given over to ' emperors, grand dukes, archdukes, field-marshals, and
tremendous personages of that, sort,' and extolling Liberal England,
free from such incubuses, and enabled by that freedom to get l its
manufacturing industries developed,' and to let ' our characteristic
qualities for industrial supremacy have play.' Lord Derby here,
like Mr. Bright, appeals to the instinct for expansion manifesting
itself in our race by the love of liberty and the love of trade ; and
to such a call, so effectively made, a popular audience in this country
always responds.

What a source of strength is this for the Liberals, and how surely
and abundantly do they profit by it ! Still, it is not all-sufficient.
For we have working in us, as elements towards civilisation, besides
the instinct for expansion, the instinct also, as was just now said, for
conduct, the instinct for intellect and knowledge, the instinct for beauty,
the instinct for a fit and pleasing form of social life and manners. And
Lord Derby will allow, I am sure, when he thinks of St. Helens and
of similar places, that even at his own gate, and amongst a population
developing its manufacturing industries most fully, free from emperors
and archdukes, congratulated by him on its freedom, and trade, and
industrial supremacy, and responding joyfully to his congratulations,
there is to be found, indeed, much satisfaction to the instinct in man
for expansion, but little satisfaction to his instinct for beauty, to his
instinct for a fit and pleasing form of social life and manners. I will
not at this moment speak of conduct, or of intellect and knowledge,
because I wish to carry Lord Derby unhesitatingly with me in what

g THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

I say. And certainly \w will allow that the instinct of man for beauty,
his instinct for fit and pleasing forms of social life and manners, is
not well satisfied at St. Helens. Cobbett, whom I have already
quoted, used to call places of this kind Hell-holes. St. Helens is emi-
nently what Cobbett meant by a Hell-hole, but it is only a type,
however eminent, of a whole series of places so designated by him,
such as Blackburn, Bolton, Wigan, and the like, places developing
abundantly their manufacturing industries, but in which man's

inct for beauty, and his instinct for fit and pleasing forms of social
life and manners, — in which these instincts, at any rate, to say nothing
for the present of others, find little or no satisfaction. Such places
certainly must be said to show, in the words of a very different per-
sonage from Cobbett, the words of the accomplished President of the
Royal Academy, Sir Frederick Leighton, * no love of beauty, no sense
of the outward dignity and comeliness of things calling on the part
of the public for expression, and, as a corollary, no dignity, no come-
liness, for the most part, in their outward aspect.'

And not only have the inhabitants of what Cobbett called a Hell-
hole, and what Lord Derby and Mr. Bright would call a centre of
manufacturing industry, no satisfaction of man's instinct for beauty
to make them happy, but even their manufacturing industries they
develope in such a manner, that from the exercise of this their in-
stinct for expansion they do not procure the result which they expected,
but they find uneasiness and stoppage. For in general they develope
their industries in this wise : they produce, not something which it is
very difficult to make, and of which people can never have enough,
and which they themselves can make far better than anybody else, but
they produce what is not hard to make, and of which there may easily
be produced more than is wanted, and which more and more people, in
different quarters, fall to making, as time goes on, for themselves, and
which they soon make quite as well as the others do. But at a given
moment, when there isa demand, or a chance of demand, for their manu-
facture, the capitalists in the Hell-holes as Cobbett would say, the leaders
of industrial enterprise as Lord Derby and Mr. Bright would call them,
set themselves to produce as much as ever they can, without asking
themselves how long the demand may last, so that it lasts long
enough for them to make their own fortunes by it, or thinking, in any
way beyond this, about what they are doing, or concerning themselves
any further with the future. And clusters and fresh clusters of men
and women they collect at places like St. Helens and Blackburn
to manufacture for them, and call them into being there just as much
as if they had begotten them. Then the demand ceases or slackens,
because more has been produced than was wanted, or because people
who used to come to us for the thing we produced take to producing
it for themselves, and think that they can make it (and we have
premised that it is a thing not difficult to make) quite as well as we
can ; or even, since some of our heroes of industrial enterprise have

1880. THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM. 9

been in too great haste to make their fortunes, and unscrupulous in
their processes, better. And perhaps these capitalists have had time to
make their fortunes ; but meanwhile they have not made the fortunes
of the clusters of men and women whom they have called into being to
produce for them, and whom they have, as I said, as good as begotten ;
but these they leave to the chances of the future, and of the further
development, as Lord Derby says, of great manufacturing industries.
So arise periods of depression of trade, complaints of over-production,
uneasiness and distress at our centres of manufacturing industry.
People then begin, even although their instinct for expansion, so far
as liberty is concerned, may have received every satisfaction, they
begin to discover, like those unionist workmen whose words Mr.
John Morley quotes, that ' free political institutions do not guarantee
the well-being of the toiling class.'

But we need not go to visit what Cobbett called Hell-holes, or
travel so far as St. Helens, close by Lord Derby's gate at Knowsley,
or so far as Blackburn ; we Londoners need not go away from the
place where our own daily business lies, and from London itself, in
order to see how insufficient for man is our way of gratifying his
instinct for expansion, and this instinct alone, and what comes of trust-
ing too much to what is thus done for us. "We have only to take
the tramway at King's Cross, and to let ourselves be carried through
Camden Town up the slopes towards Highgate and Hampstead, where
from the upward sloping ground, as we ascend, we have a good view
all about us, and can survey much of human haunt and habitation.
And at this season of the year, and in this humid and verdure-nursing
English climate, we shall see plenty of flowering trees, and grass, and
vegetation of all kinds to delight our eyes ; but they will meet with
nothing else to delight them. All that man has made there for his
habitation and functions is singularly dull and mean, and does indeed,
as we gradually mount the disfigured slopes and see it clearer and
clearer, 'reveal the spectacle,' as Sir Frederick Leighton says, 'of the
whole current of human life setting resolutely in a direction opposed
to artistic production ; no love of beauty, no sense of the outward
dignity of things, and, as a corollary, no dignity, no comeliness, for
the most part, in their outward aspect.' And here, in what we see
from the tramway, we have a type not of life at a centre of manufac-
turing industry, but of the life of the English middle class. We have
the life of a class which has been able to follow freely its instinct of
expansion, so far as to preserve itself from emperors and archdukes
and tremendous personages of that sort, and to enjoy abundance of
political liberty and of trade. But man's instinct for beauty has been
maltreated and starved, in this class, in the manner we see ; and his
instinct for intellect and knowledge has been maltreated and starved,
for the schools of this class, where it should have called forth and trained
this instinct, are the worst of the kind anywhere ; and its provision
for the instinct which desires fit and pleasing forms of social life and

jo THE My/-:n:i-:x'nf CKXTURY. July

is what ini^ht be expected from its provision for the instinct
of beauty, and for th«- in-tinct leading us to intellect and knowledge.
t his class lives, busy and confident; and enjoysthe amplest
political liberty, and takes what Mr. Bright calls < a commendable
interest in politics,' and reads what he says is such admirable reading

ill of us the newspapers. And thus there arises a type of
lite and opinion which that acute and powerful personage, Prince
Bismarck, has described so excellently, that I cannot do better than
use his words. * When great numbers of people of this sort,' says
Prince Bismarck, 'live close together, individualities naturally fade
out and melt into each other. All sorts of opinions grow out of the
air, from hearsays and talk behind people's backs; opinions with
little or no foundation in fact, but which get spread abroad through
newspapers, popular meetings, and talk, and get themselves established
and are ineradicable. People talk themselves into believing the
thing that is not ; consider it a duty and obligation to adhere to
their belief, and excite themselves about prejudices and absurdities.'
Who does not recognise the truth of this account of public opinion,
as it forms itself amongst such a description of people as the people
through whose seats of habitation the tramway northward from King's
Cross takes us, nay amongst the English middle class in general,
amongst the great community which we call that of the Philistines ?
And this great Philistine community it is, with its liberty, and its
publicity, and its trade, and its love of all the three, but with its
narrow range of intellect and knowledge, its stunted sense of beauty
and dignity, its low standard of social life and manners, and its
ignorance of its own deficiencies in respect of all these, to this Phi-
listine middle class it is that a Liberal government has especially to
make appeal, and on which it relies for support. And where such a
government deals with foreign affairs, and addresses foreign nations,
this is the force which it is known to have behind it, and to be forced
to reckon with ; this class trained as we have seen, and with habits
of thought and opinion formed as Prince Bismarck describes. It is
this Englishman of the middle class, this Philistine with his likes
and dislikes, his effusion and confusion, his hot fits and cold fits, his
want of dignity and of the steadfastness which comes from dignity,
iis want of ideas and of the steadfastness which comes from ideas, on
phom a Liberal Foreign Minister must lean for support, and whose
/dispositions he must in great measure follow. Mr. Grant Duff and
others are fond of sketching out a line of foreign policy which they
say is th.- line of Liberal foreign policy, or of insisting on the dignity
and ability of this or that Liberal statesman, such as Lord Granville,
who may happen to hold the post of Foreign Minister. No one
will deny the dignity and ability of Lord Granville ; and no one doubts
that Mr. Grant Duff and his intelligent friends can easily draw out

riking and able line of foreign policy, and may call it the line of
foreign policy if they please. But the real Liberal Foreign

1880. THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM. 11

Minister, and the real Liberal foreign policy, are not to be looked for
in Lord Granville left to himself, or in a programme drawn up in
Mr. Grant Duff's study by himself and his intelligent friends ; they
receive a bias from the temper and thoughts, and the hot fits and
cold fits, of that middle class on which a Liberal government leans for
support. And so we get such mortifications as those which befell us
in the case of Prussia's dealings with Denmark and of Eussia's
dealings with the Black Sea; and foreign statesmen, knowing how
the matter stands with us, say coolly what Dr. Busch reports Prince
Bismarck to have said concerning a firm and dignified declaration by
our Liberal Foreign Secretary : * What does it matter ? Nothing is to
be feared, as nothing is to be hoped, from these people.'

Thus it happens that we suffer ca loss of prestige,' as it is called ;
and we become aware of it, and then we are vexed and dissatisfied. Just
as by following, as we do, our instinct for expansion, and by procuring
the amplest political liberty and free trade, and by preserving ourselves
from such tremendous personages as emperors, grand dukes, and
archdukes, we yet do not preserve ourselves from depression of trade,
so neither do we by all these advantages preserve ourselves from loss
of prestige. And at this from time to time the public mind, as
we all know, gets vexed and dissatisfied.

And other occasions of dissatisfaction there may be, too, and at
one or other of them there may be a veering round to the Tories, to
see if they, perhaps, can do us any good. Now we must remember
in what case the great body of our community is, when it thus turns
to the Tories in the hope of bettering itself. It has so far followed
its instinct for expansion, to which Liberal statesmen make special
appeal, as to obtain full political liberty and free trade. How far it
has followed its instinct for conduct I will not now inquire ; the
inquiry might lead us into a discussion of the whole condition of
morals and religion in this nation. However, we may certainly say, I
think, that in no country has the instinct for conduct been more
followed than in our country, in few countries has it been followed
so much. But the need of man for intellect and knowledge has not
in the great body of our community been much attended to, nor have
Liberal statesmen made much appeal^ to it; for giving the mere ru-
diments of knowledge to the lowest class they have, indeed, sought to
make provision, but for the advancement of intellect and knowledge
among the middle classes they have made little or none. The need
of man for beauty, again, the great body of our community has
scarcely at all heeded, neither have Liberal statesmen sought to
appeal to it. Of the need of man for fit and pleasing forms of social
life and manners we may say the same.

In this position are things when from time to time the great
body of our community turns to the Conservatives, or, as they are
now beginning to be called again, the Tories, in the hope of bettering
itself. Now the need of man for expansion we are all agreed that

TUK MXETEENTH CENTURY. July

statesmen, and not Tory statesmen, make appeal to, and that
the great body of the community feels this need powerfully. But
the other needs which it feels so little, and to which Liberal statesmen
so little make appeal, are yet working obscurely in it all the time,
and craxin^ for some notice and help, and begetting dissatisfaction
with the sort of life which is the lot of man when they are utterly
neglected. To the need in man for conduct we will not say that
Tory statesmen make much appeal, for the upper class, to which
they belong, is now, we know, in great measure materialised ; and
probably Mr. Jowett, who, though he is a man of integrity and a
most honest translator, has yet his strokes of malice, had this in his
head where he brings in his philosopher saying that * the young men
of the governing class are as indifferent as the pauper to the cultiva-
tion of virtue.' Yet so far as dignity is a part of conduct, an
aristocratic class, trained to be sensitive on the point of honour, and
to think much of the grandeur and dignity of their country, do appeal
to the instinct in man for conduct ; but perhaps dignity may more con-
veniently be considered here as a part of beauty than as a part of con-
duct. Therefore to the need for beauty, starved by those who,
following the hot and cold fits of the opinion of a middle class testy,
ignorant, a little ignoble, unapt to perceive when it is making
itself ridiculous, may have brought about for the country a loss of
prestige, as it is called, and of the respect of foreign nations, to this
need Tory statesmen, leaning upon the opinion of an aristocratic
class by nature more firm, reticent, dignified, sensitive on the point
of honour, do, I think, give some satisfaction. And the aristocratic
\ class, of which they are the agents, give some satisfaction, moreover,
(to this baffled and starved instinct by the spectacle of a splendour,
land grace, and elegance of life, due to inherited wealth and to tra-
ditional refinement ; and to the instinct for fit and seemly forms of
social intercourse and manners they give satisfaction too. To the
instinct for intellect and knowledge they give none. To large and
clear ideas of the future and of its requirements, whether at home or
abroad, they are by nature, as a class, inaccessible ; and though the
firmness and dignity of their carriage, in foreign affairs, may inspire
respect and give satisfaction, yet, as they do not see how the world is
really going, they can found nothing. By the possession of what is
beautiful in outward life, and of what is seemly in manners, they do,
as we have seen, attract ; but for the communication and propagation,
all through the community, of what is beautiful in outward life, and of
what is seemly in manners, they do next to nothing. And, finally, to
the instinct in the great body of the community for expansion they
are justly felt to be even adverse, in so far as the very first consideration
with them as a class— a few humane individuals amongst them, lovers
of perfection, being left out of account— is always the maintenance
of « our traditional, existing social arrangements.'

Consequently, however public favour may have veered round to

1880. THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM. 13

them for a time, it soon appears that they cannot satisfy the needs of
the community, and the turn of the Liberal statesmen comes again.
Such a turn has come to them now. And the danger is that the Liberal
statesmen should again do only what it is easy and natural to them to
do, because they have done it so often and so much already — appeal
vigorously to the love of political liberty and to the love of trade, and
lean mainly upon the opinion of the middle class, as this class now is,
and do nothing to make it sounder and better by appealing to the sense,
in the body of the community, for intellect and knowledge, and striving
to call it forth, and by appealing to the sense for beauty and to the
sense for manners ; and by appealing, moreover, to the sense for expan-
sion more wisely and fruitfully than they do now. But if they do no-
thing of this kind, and simply return to their old courses, then there will
inevitably be, after a while, pressure and stoppage and reproaches and
dissatisfaction, and the turn of the Tories will come round again.
Who knows ? some day, perhaps, even the Liberal panacea of sheer politi-
cal liberty may be for a time discredited, and the fears of ' Verax' about
personal government may come true, and the last scene in the wonder-
ful career of Lord Beaconsfield may be that we shall see him, in a field-
marshal's uniform, entering the House of Commons, and pointing to
the mace, and commanding Lord Rowton, in an octogenarian voice, to
' take away that bauble.' But still the rule of the Tories, even after
such a masterstroke as that, will never last in our community ; such
strangers are the Tory statesmen to the secret of its life, the secret of
the future.

Only let Liberal statesmen, at their returns to power, instead of
losing themselves in the petty bustle and schemes of the moment,
bethink themselves what that secret of the community's life really is,
and of the life of the future : that it is civilisation, and civilisation
made pervasive and general. Hitherto they themselves have con-
ceived it very imperfectly, and very imperfectly worked for it, and
this although they are called the leaders of progress. Hence the
instability of their government, and the veerings round of public
favour, now and again, to their adversaries. With one great element
of civilisation, the instinct in the community for expansion, they are
in alliance, and their strength is due to that cause. Of the instinct
for conduct I have said that we will not here speak ; it might lead
us too far, and into the midst of matters of which I have spoken
enough formerly, and of which I wish, as far as possible, to renounce
the discussion. But for the other means of civilisation Liberal
statesmen really do little or nothing ; and this explains their insta-
bility. For the need of intellect and knowledge what do they do ?
They will point to elementary education. But elementary education
goes so little way, that in giving it one hardly does more than satisfy
man's instinct for expansion, one scarcely satisfies his need of intellect
and knowledge at all ; any more than the achievement of primitive
man in providing himself with his simple tools is a satisfying of the

14 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

human need for intellect and knowledge. For the need of beauty
I.ilx-nil .>t:u. -smeii do nothing, for the need of manners nothing. And
they lean especially upon the opinion of one great class — the middle
class — with virtues of its own, indeed, but at the same time full of
narrowness, full of prejudices ; with a defective type of religion, a
narrow range of intellect and knowledge, a stunted sense of beauty, a
low standard of manners ; and averse, moreover, to whatever may
disturb it in its vulgarity. How can such statesmen be said, any more
than the Tories, to grasp that idea of civilisation which is the secret
of the life of our community and of the life of the future — to grasp
the idea fully, and with potent effect to work for it ?

We who now talk of these things shall be in our graves long
before Liberal statesmen can have entirely mended their ways, and
set themselves steadily to bring about the reign of a civilisation
pervasive and general ; but a beginning towards it they may make
even now, and perhaps they are making it. Perhaps Liberal states-
men are beginning to see what they have lost by following too sub-
missively middle-class opinion hitherto, our middle class being such
as it is now ; and they may be resolving to avoid for the future this
cause of mischief to them. Perhaps Lord Granville is bent on planning
and maintaining such a line of foreign policy, such as a man of his
means of information, and of his insight and high feeling, can well
devise, and such as Mr. Grant Duff is always telling us that the real
line of Liberal foreign policy is ; perhaps Lord Granville is even
now ready with a policy of this sort, and resolved to adhere to it
whatever may be in the meanwhile the hot fits and the cold fits, the
effusion and confusion, of the British Philistine of the middle class.
Perhaps Liberal statesmen have made up their minds no longer to
govern Ireland in deference to the narrow prejudices and antipathies
of this class. And perhaps as time goes on they will turn resolutely
round and look their middle-class friends full in the face, and see
their imperfections and try to cure them. And then Lord Derby,
when he speaks at St. Helens, or at some other place like it, will not
extol his hearers as « an intelligent, keen-witted, critical, and well-to-
do population, such as our northern towns in England show,' but he
will point out to them that they have a defective type of religion, a
narrow range of intellect and knowledge, a stunted sense of beauty, a
low standard of manners; and that they prove it by having made St.
Helens, and by the life which they lead there, and that they ought
to do better. And Mr. Bright, instead of telling his Islington
fonconfonnists 'how much of what there is free and good and
great in England, and constantly growing in what is good, is owing

Nonconformist action,' will rather admonish them that the

Puntan type of life exhibits a religion not true, the claims of

intellect and knowledge not satisfied, the claim of beauty not

ed, the claim of manners not satisfied; and that if, as he

says, the lower classes in this country have utterly abandoned the

1880. THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM. 15

dogmas of Christianity, and the upper classes its practice, the cause
lies very much in the impossible and unlovely presentment of
Christian dogmas and practice which is offered by the most important
part of this nation, the serious middle class, and above all by its
Nonconforming portion. And since the failure here in civilisation
comes not from an insufficient care for political liberty and for trade,
nor yet from an insufficient care for conduct, but from an insufficient
care for intellect and knowledge and beauty and a humane life, let
Liberal statesmen neglect for the cure of our present imperfection no
means, whether of public schools, now wanting, or of the theatre, now
left to itself and to chance, or of anything else which may powerfully
conduce to the communication and propagation of real intelligence,
and of real beauty, and of a life really humane.

Objects which Liberal statesmen pursue now, and which are not
in themselves ends of civilisation, they may have to pursue still, but
let them pursue them in a different spirit. For instance, there are
those well-known Liberal objects, of legalising marriage with a de-
ceased wife's sister, of permitting dissenters to use what burial-services
they like in the parish churchyard, and of granting what is termed
Local Option. Every one of these objects may be attained, and it
may even be necessary to attain them, and yet after they are attained
the imperfections of our civilisation will stand just as they did before,
and the real work of Liberal statesmen will have yet to begin. Some
Liberals misconceive these objects strangely. Mr. Bright urges Par-
liament to pass the Bill legalising marriage with a deceased wife's
sister, in order that Parliament may ' affirm by an emphatic vote the
principle of personal liberty for the men and women of this country
in the chief concern of their lives.' But the whole institution and
sacredness of marriage is an abridgment of the principle of personal
liberty in the concern in question. When Herod the tetrarch wanted
to marry Herodias his brother Philip's wife, he was seeking to affirm
emphatically the principle of personal liberty in the concern of his
marriage ; and we all know him to have been in the wrong. Every limi-
tation of choice in marriage is an abridgment of the principle of
personal liberty ; but it takes more delicacy of perception, more civili-
sation, to understand and accept the abridgment in some cases than
in others. Very many in the lower class in this country, and many in
the middle class — the civilisation and the capacity for delicate percep-
tion in these classes being what they are — fail to understand and ac-
cept the prohibition to marry their deceased wife's sister. That they
ought not to marry their brother's wife they can perceive, that they
ought not to marry their wife's sister they cannot. And so they con-
tract these marriages freely, and the evil of their freely committing a
breach of the law may be more than the good of imposing on them a
restriction which in their present state they have not perception enough
to understand and obey. Therefore it may be expedient to legalise
amongst our people marriage with a deceased wife's sister. Still, our

16 THE XISETEESTII CESTUR7. July

civilisation, which it is tiie end of the true and noble science of
politics to perfr.-t . -rains thereby hardly anything ; and of its continued
imperfection, indeed, the very call for the Bill in question is a proof.

So, again, with measures like that for granting Local Option, as
it is called, for doing away the addiction of our lower class to their
porter and their gin. It is necessary to do away their addiction to
these, and for that end to receive at the hands of the friends of tem-
perance some such measure as the BUI for granting Local Option.
Yet the alimentary secret of the life of civilised man is by no means
possessed by the friends of temperance as we now see them either here
or in America ; and whoever has been amongst the population of the
M&loc district, in France, will surely feel, if he is not a fanatic, that
the civilised man of the future is more likely to adopt their beverage
than to eat and drink like Dr. Richardson. And so too, again, with
the Burials Bill. It is a Bill for enabling the Dissenters to use their
own burial services in the parish churchyard. Now we all know what
the services of many of the Protestant Dissenters are ; and that
whereas the burial service of the Church of England may be com-
pared, as I have said somewhere or other, to a reading from Milton,
so a burial service, such as pleases many of the Protestant Dissenters,
may be likened to a reading from Eliza Cook. But fractious clergy-
men could refuse, as is well known, to give their reading from Milton,
or any reading at all, over the children of Baptists ; and the remedy
for this was to abolish the rubric giving them the power of
such refusal. The clergy, however, as if to prove the truth of
Clarendon's sentence on them, a sentence which should be written up
over the portal of the Lower House of Convocation — * Clergymen, who
understand the least, and take the worst measure of human affairs,
of all mankind that can write and read ' — the clergy, it seems, had
rather the world should go to pieces than that this rubric should be
abolished. And so Liberal statesmen must pass the Burials Bill ; for
it is better to have readings from Eliza Cook in the parish church-
yard, than to have fractious clergymen armed with the power of refusing
to bury the children of Baptists. Still, our civilisation is not really
advanced by any such measure as the Burials Bill ; nay, in so far as
readings from Eliza Cook are encouraged to produce themselves in
public, and to pass themselves off as equivalent to readings from
Milton, it is retarded.

Therefore do not let Liberal statesmen estimate the so-called
Liberal measures, many of them, which they may be called upon to
recommend now, at more than they are worth, or suppose that by
recommending them they at all remedy their shortcomings in the
past, which consist in their having taken an incomplete view of the
life of the community and of its needs, and in having done little or
nothing for the need of intellect and knowledge, and for the need of
beauty, and for the need of manners, but having thought it enough to
work for political liberty and free trade, for the need of expansion.

1880. THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM. 17

Nay, but even for the need of expansion they have not worked
adequately. For the need of expansion in men suffers a defeat when
they are over-tutored, over-governed, sat upon, as we say, by
authority military or civil. From such a defeat of our instinct for
expansion, political liberty saves us Englishmen ; and Liberal states-
men have worked for political liberty. But the need of expansion
suffers a defeat, also, wherever there is an immense inequality of con-
ditions and property ; such inequality inevitably depresses and de-
grades the inferior masses. And whenever any great need of human
nature suffers defeat, then the nation, in which the defeat happens,
finds difficulties befalling it that cause ; and the victories of other great
needs do not compensate for the defeat of one. Germany, where the
need for intellect and science is well cared for, where the sense of
conduct is strong, has neither liberty nor equality ; the instinct for ex-
pansion suffers signal defeat. Hence the difficulties of Germany.
France has liberty and equality, the instinct for expansion is victorious
there ; but how greatly does the need for conduct suffer defeat ! and
hence the difficulties of France. We have deep and strong the sense
of conduct, and we have half of the instinct for expansion fully
satisfied, we have admirable political liberty and free trade. But we
have inequality rampant, and hence arise many of our difficulties.

For our present state, as I have elsewhere said, may be summed
up in this : that we have an upper class materialised, a middle class
vulgarised, a lower class brutalised. And this we owe to our in-
equality. For, if Lord Derby would think of it, he is himself at
Knowsley quite as tremendous a personage, over against St. Helens,
as the emperors and grand dukes and archdukes who fill him with
horror. And though he himself may be one of the humane few who
emerge in all classes, and may have escaped being materialised, yet
still, owing to his tremendousness, the middle class of St. Helens is
thrown in upon itself, and not civilised ; and the lower class, again,
is thrown in upon itself, and not civilised. And some who fill the
place which he now fills are certain to be, some of them, materialised :
like his great-grandfather, whose cock-fights, as it is said, are still
remembered with gratitude and love by old men in Preston. And
he himself, being so able and acute as he is, would never, if he were
not in a false position and compelled by it to use unreal language,
he would never talk so much to his hearers in the towns of the north
about their being ' an intelligent, keen-witted, critical, and well-to-
do population,' but he would reproach them, though kindly and
mildly, for having made St. Helens and places like it, and he would
exhort them to civilise themselves.

But of inequality, as a defeat to the instinct in the community

for expansion, and as a sure cause of trouble, Liberal statesmen are

very shy to speak. And in Ireland, where inequality and the system

of great estates produces, owing to differences of religion, and to

VOL. VIII.— No. 41. C

18 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

absenteeism, and to the ways of personages such as the late Lord
Leitrim, even more tremendous, perhaps, than an emperor or an
archduke, and to the whole history of the country and character of
the people— in Ireland, I say, where inequality produces, owing to
all these, more pressing and evident troubles than in England, and is
the second cause of our difficulties with the Irish, as the habit of
governing them in deference to British middle-class prejudices is the
first — in Ireland Liberal statesmen never look the thing fairly in
the face, or apply a real remedy like the reform of the law of bequest,
I "it invent palliatives like the Irish Land Act, which do not go to
the root of the evil, but which unsettle men's notions as to the con-
stitutive characters of property, making these characters something
quite different in one place from what they are in another. And in
England, where inequality and the system of great estates produces
trouble too, though not so glaringly as in Ireland, in England Liberal
statesmen shrink even more from looking the thing in the face, and
apply little palliatives ; and even for these little palliatives they allege
reasons which are extremely questionable, such as that each child has
a natural right to his equal share of his father's property, or that land
in the hands of many owners will certainly produce more than in the
hands of few. And the true and simple reason against inequality they
shut their eyes to, as if it were a Medusa ; the reason, namely, that
inequality, in a society like ours, inevitably materialises the upper
class, vulgarises the middle class, brutalises the lower class.

Not until the need in man for expansion is better understood by
Liberal statesmen —that it includes equality as well as political liberty
and free trade — and is cared for by them, but cared for not singly
and exorbitantly, but in union and proportion with the progress of
man in conduct, and his growth in intellect and knowledge, and his
nearer approach to beauty and manners, will Liberal governments be
secure. But when Liberal statesmen have learned to care for all
these together, and to go on unto civilisation, then at last they will be
professing and practising the true and noble science of politics, and
the true and noble science of economics, instead of, as now, semblances
only of these sciences, or at best fragments of them. And then will
come at last the extinction or the conversion of the Tories, the restitu-
tion of all things, the reign of the Liberal saints. But meanwhile, so
long as the Liberals do only as they have done hitherto, they will not
satisfy the community ; but the Tories will from time to time be tried
—tried and found wanting. And we, who study to be quiet, and to
keep our temper and our tongue under control, shall continue to speak
of the principles of our two great political parties much as we do now ;
while clear-headed, but rough, impatient, and angry men, like Cobbett,
will call them the principles of Pratt, the principles of Yorke.

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

1880. 19

ATHEISM AND REPENTANCE.
A FAMILIAK COLLOQUY.

' I THINK,' said Mrs. Norham to her husband, as she bit meditatively
the nail of her forefinger, ' I think I am right in the important step
I have taken. I wrote yesterday evening, and made my decision
final.'

Mr. Norham closed a Latin lexicon, and looked up from his
writing-desk. ' What decision, my dear ? '

'My decision to resign the sub-editorship of The Agnostic
Moralist. I am of course aware that it was myself who made the
journal, and that it will inevitably suffer by my withdrawing my
support from it. But for many reasons I think this the right course
to pursue. The editor, Dr. Pearson, was getting anxious to have the
chief management — a most incapable man, for ever preferring his own
opinion to mine ; and I really found at last that there was no working
with him. However, I was resolved that the rupture between us
should have no bitterness, so I have done my best to make the next
number a helpful one, and have insisted on contributing nearly the
whole matter myself. There will appear in it, my dear, inter alia,
those two new papers of mine on " Functional Amusement," and " The
Cellular Character of the Individual." But besides my editorial
difficulties, I should at any rate for the next few months have had
little time for editing. This new pupil of yours — if pupil is the right
name for him — will be, to a great extent, on my hands. It is moral
influence he is in want of, more than intellectual, you tell me ; and
when a young man has arrived at two-and-twenty the complete re-
adjustment of his character may be hard work even for me.'

' Well,' said Mr. Norham, ' the young scapegrace comes this even-
ing. I wonder very much what we shall be able to make of him.'

1 That,' said Mrs. Norham with decision, ' depends of course on
what we find him to be at present. We must study the scope of his
possible activities before we can judge in what way they should be
motived. Now, what sort of man is the boy's father ? You said that
you used to know him formerly. And what sort of social life has the
boy led ? I mean, my dear, to put the matter more simply, to what
sort of environment has the young organism had to adapt itself? '

c 2

20 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

Mr. Norham shrugged his shoulders. ' As to his social life,' he

. * there is not much mystery about that. He is a very rich young
fellow, highly connected, and very fond of what he probably calls " life ; "
and of this " life " he has seen, it seems, a great deal more than is good
for him. Mr. Leigh, his father, was at Eton and Oxford with me, but ia
a very different set from mine. He had an immense opinion of his own
importance, and in his choice of companions he was very grand and ex-
clusive. He was always as pleasant and genial as possible when one
had to speak to him ; but I was not nearly a fine enough gentleman
to be one of his intimates. Nothing, however, could be more kindly
than the way in which he has written to me about this poor boy of
his. I may as well read out to you, if you can wait a moment, that
second letter that I told you of. " / want? he says,' Mr. Norham
began reading, * " to explain Robert's case as frankly as I can to
you. First, tften, as to his scholarship, I can promise you that
there you will have but little trouble ivith him. He has singular
powers of application when there is nothing at hand to distract
him ; and if he could only apply himself for three months more, his
tutor at Oxford assures me, he might take a first-class easily. The
boy undoubtedly does know plenty; and under your care, with
but little trespass on your time, he ivill be able to do such work as
he yet needs for his degree. A quiet place at once makes him, a
student, just as a gay place makes him a man of fashion. These
last words bring me to the sad confession I must make to you.
I am not a strait-laced man, but yet my poor boy has indeed con-
trived to sadden me. Fashion — yes, it is a good thing in itself , but
Robert has seen too much of it, and too early. He has been living
a life, during the last two years, of almost ceaseless excitement ;
and of this one result has been that he has lost his self-restraint
in the matter of drinking. That special evil has not gone far ;
all he wants, so far as this goes, is some montlis of careful watch-
ing. But what has really made it advisable that he should leave
Oxford till next October has been an entanglement relating to an

unhappy girl " Mr. Norham here stopped reading abruptly,

and with the air of a man who has overshot his mark. ' Well,' he
said, ' and so on, and so on. I find that this was not the note I was
thinking of. You see, however, what is the gist of it. I don't think
it is fair to the boy to go any further into particulars.'

* Don't stop,' said Mrs. Norham, in a voice of sudden interest
* Pray let me hear the whole of it.'

But her husband was quite obdurate. « It is not fair to the boy,'
he said. * Even his father confesses that he does not know the rights
of the story. It is enough for us that he has had to be sent down
for a term or two, and that we must do our best to sober and steady
him.'

For Mrs. Norham, however, this was by no means enough. This

1880. ATHEISM AND REPENTANCE. 21

suppressed misdemeanour of the expected pupil aroused in her breast
two strong feelings in his favour — her curiosity and her sincere zeal
for souls. ' Perhaps,' she said to her husband, ' you may be right in
refusing to prejudice me. But it will not be very long, I can tell
you, before I hear the whole story from himself.'

Mr. Norham had begun life as a clergyman. He was a man of re-
spectable family, and he had enjoyed, in one of the pleasantest of the
English counties, a charming family living, and the cure of eighty
parishioners. His Christianity was cheerful and muscular ; but not
finding sufficient scope for its exercise, he began to relieve his leisure
by a study of modern science. The result of this was that he presently
felt bound in conscience to resign his living, and soon after bound in
convenience to resign his orders. He was not without a small fortune
of his own, but, anxious to make some modest addition to it, he
readily gained employment as an editor of school classics. Whilst in
London, arranging this with the publishers, he made the acquaintance
of his wife, who was at once the ornament and the oracle of a serious
atheistic coterie. On his marriage he took a small house in Cumber-
land, close to the lake of Derwentwater ; and finding that his wife,
though an Agnostic on all other points that had no proof in experi-
ence, had yet a special faith in her own influence over young men's
characters, he from time to time took charge of a backward or way-
ward pupil. These, hitherto, had caused Mrs. Norham some disap-
pointment. She had been able to make little or nothing out of them ;
and since they could not, she was convinced, be possibly beyond her
influence, she declared with a frown of pity that the poor things were
below it. Kobert Leigh, however, was, she gathered, of a higher
type. He was just the subject she wanted. He would appreciate
and so be swayed by her reasonings ; and the farther he had gone
wrong, the greater and more instructive would be her triumph in
righting him.

The Norhams' cottage was one of the prettiest nests conceivable.
A wooded hill rose close behind it, and in front its little garden
sloped down to the lake. It was now the latter spring ; as Robert
Leigh drove at sunset from the Keswick station, the whole of the
lovely country was seen to its best advantage : and when he saw how
beautiful was his quiet land of banishment, his spirits, unforced, at
once began to revive themselves, and were still in a pleasing flutter
when he arrived at his tutor's door.

The process of dressing somewhat sobered him. He had time to
look about him, and feel the want of several of his accustomed com-
forts. None of these things annoyed him ; but they reminded him
that he was in a strange place, with a new life before him. Descend-
ing, he found the little drawing-room empty ; and as he looked
about him the sense of strangeness grew stronger. The furniture,
which was scanty and uncomfortable, was evidently in the purest

22 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

and severest taste, and seemed to be looking a mute reproof at
anyone who should treat art flippantly. Books, English and foreign,
lay about in numbers— they were Reviews, for the most part, deal-
ing with scientific subjects; and on easels, in one of the corners,
were three crude daubs in oil, of which the most prominent was
labelled * A Fugue in Four Colours.' Leigh was languidly wonder-
ing what the mistress of this apartment would be like, when the door
slowly opened and Mrs. Norham entered.

She was a woman of about five-and-thirty. Her figure was
slightly clumsy, and her features were not regular, but her com-
plexion was soft and rich, her large grey eyes were intelligent, and her
expression would have been pleasing but for its studied gravity. To
be in keeping with this expression, she wore at the back of her head a
comb with a gilt disc attached to it, which made her face look as
though set in a tarnished aureole. She was dressed, in the same
spirit, with the utmost primness of the modern artistic school. There
was not a trace of finery about her ; yet it seemed as if some obscure
but aggressive principle was written in every fold of her drapery.
Leigh, who had a critical eye for whatever pertained to women, could
not help noticing that, prepared as she was for dinner, one of her
nails retained on it some traces of ink ; but, putting this aside, Mrs.
Norham was a pleasant surprise to him. Mrs. Norham's impression
of him was not quite so favourable. Just as her appearance was
a mute polemic of art, so did Leigh's seem to her to be a mute
polemic of fashion. The perfect ease of his address, too, was, she
knew not why, discomposing to her ; and she was annoyed to find
herself, entirely against her will, slipping for self-defence into an
occasional rudeness of manner. When Mr. Norham appeared, and
the three went in to dinner, Leigh was even more unfortunate in
his attempt to make conversation.

* Do you find much, Mrs. Norham,' he said, ' to amuse yourself
with in the country ?' Mrs. Norham gasped, stared at him, and at
length said * Nothing.'

Leigh was surprised, but not in the least abashed. l Surely,' he
said, smiling, * you do your resources an injustice. At any rate you
have your painting.'

'Art,' said Mrs. Norham, * is pursued for other purposes than
amusement. The series I am at present engaged on, I shall present
to a school at Manchester that the children may be trained into a
perception both of form and colour. Mr. Leigh, when people have
occupation they have no time, they have no need, for amusement.
You think, perhaps,' she went on, « that that is a hard saying. Well,
when occupation is properly motived, when action becomes rationally
purposive, we can apply with accuracy a less forbidding name to it.
We can call it functional amusement.'

' That is rather a nice expression,' said Leigh.

1880. ATHEISM AND REPENTANCE. 23

* Do you at all,' said Mrs. Norham,' ' realise the true meaning
of it ? I have written, an entire essay to describe its fitness and its
significance.'

4 1 used often,' said Leigh, 4 to hear about it from my coach at
Oxford.'

6 Your what ? ' exclaimed Mrs. Norham, aghast.

4 My coach — my crammer — my private tutor, I mean.'

4 You weren't under the care of Mr. Biggins, were you ? ' said
Mrs. Norham. 4 Why, he is one of the most remarkable thinkers of
this, or indeed of any, age.'

* That's the man,' said Leigh. * I used to get on very well with
him. He was rather too fond of talking of Herbert Spencer ; and he
was by way of having no religion. But he taught me a great deal,
and he was very kind in giving me books to read. Do you know
him?'

' Intimately,' said Mrs. Norham. ' He is one of my most con-
stant and most appreciative correspondents. If you have been pre-
pared by him, Mr. Leigh, when you and I come to talk together I
have little doubt that you will understand me.'

4 I'm sure I hope so, Mrs. Norham,' said Leigh, bowing slightly.
' And so you got that phrase " functional amusement " from Biggins,
did you ? For it was he who first invented it.'

* Excuse me,' said Mrs. Norham, with a perfectly startling'
emphasis, ( Mr. Biggins did not invent it. He had nothing whatever
to do with the invention of it ; and when he first learnt it, it was an
entirely new light to him.'

4 I have no doubt you are right,' said Leigh. 4 I am merely going
by what he told me.'

* The man must be mad, if he told you so. The phrase — in which,
by the way, a whole philosophy is crystallised — was my invention. It
was I who communicated it to Mr. Biggins. In fact, he has hardly
a thought or a theory which he does not owe to me. And pray
what more of his speculations did he tell you were original with him-
self?'

' Ah,' said Leigh, ' a light at last breaks on me. Biggins often
used to say to me, " You may think that my theories are not practi-
cal ; but the person I first learnt their force from was a true woman
of the world, who understood the ways of it far better than you do,
and who could, if she were here, turn you or me round her little
finger." Little did I think then that I should one day have the plea-
sure of meeting her.'

Mrs. Norham was raised in a moment to the height of serious
happiness.

4 Yes,' she said, ' I am none other than that over-praised woman.
But I may without vanity say that I have been a great assistance
to Mr. Biggins. You see, if I am -nothing else, I am a woman ;

24 THE WETEEXTU CENTURY. July

and my logical faculty, at least, was therefore far superior to his.
I am reminded by this to tell you that Mr. Biggins, when first I
knew him, was a very religious man, and thought of me just as you
0eem to think of him— that I quoted Herbert Spencer too much.
He used to waste, if I recollect rightly, a good hour every day in

praying.'

* Well,' said Leigh, * he has little religion left by this time any-
how. And the way he spoke of religion was the thing I liked least
about him. Of course everyone has a right to his own views ; but I
think it a pity that, in his position, he should have been perpetually
sneering at beliefs which most of the young men about him thought
closely connected with their duties.'

* Ah,' said Mrs. Norham, * you are quite wrong there. The bitter-
ness you speak of is very often most wholesome and most necessary.
Mr. Biggins himself only the other day applied to- me a propos of
one of my own essays these lines, which you of course know, of

Tennyson's :

Clear-headed friend, whose joyful scorn,

Edged with sharp laughter, cuts in twain
The knots that tangle human creeds.'

* Is that,' said Leigh, smiling, * what you mean by functional
amusement?'

Mrs. Norham repressed this flippancy with a frown, and continued.

•* Of course,' she said, i this scorn and bitterness has to be carefully

.adapted to the needs of time and circumstance. My own use of it
consists mainly of two assumptions — that those writing on the opposite
side are either entirely ignorant or else entirely insincere. For in-
stance, nothing has done the cause of Truth greater service than the

.assumption that all Jesuits are liars ; and that all spiritual directors

-are men of profligate purpose.'

* You, then,' said Leigh, ' are not religious yourself, are you ? '
*That entirely depends, Leigh,' Mr. Norham here interposed,

•* on what we mean by religion. If you mean by religion pulpits,
and church vestments, and flowers put about upon altars, Mrs.
Norham certainly is not religious. But if you mean by it an
intention to do her duty, and work hard and well for a good purpose,
-then she very certainly is.'

* Mr. Leigh and I, my dear,' said Mrs. Norham, « shall, I have

00 doubt, soon understand each other. But let me tell you now what

1 have thought of doing with him. The moon is full to-night,
and the air is warm ; and if he has any curiosity to see the lake, I
•could take him out in the boat for an hour or so.'

Leigh had been dreading in silence the probable dulness of the
evening ; and this unexpected proposal was a very welcome surprise
to him.

The night was indeed lovely, and as Leigh and his hostess issued

1880. ATHEISM AND REPENTANCE. 25

out after dinner, they seemed to be breaking into some wild scene
from fairy-land. The lake lay in the moonlight like a vast magical
mirror, whose outlines were lost mysteriously between the shade of
the mountains bounding it, and the second and softer world of its
own reflections. In the air there was a deep stillness, and the only
sound audible was a sound of the distant water that was coming
down from Lodore. All this impressed Leigh vividly ; the more so
because his companion when arrayed in her hat and boating-cloak
looked certainly picturesque, and very nearly pretty, "as the vague
light subdued whatever was commonplace in her, and made her large
striking eyes glance the brighter.

Mrs. Norham was quite conscious of the advantages of the situa-
tion. When they had rowed a little way from the shore, and had ex-
changed a few sentences as to the beauty of the night and of the
scenery, she returned at once to the subject they had dropped at
dinner.

' And so,' she began abruptly, * you disapprove, do you, of Mr.
Biggins, for expressing clearly and honestly his own conviction as to
religion ? I wish you would tell me why.'

' Well,' said Leigh, ' to go no farther, there seems to me to be a
certain bad taste in sneering, for instance, at the practice of prayer —
as I have known Mr. Biggins do — to a young man whom he knew
quite well to be a most devout and sensitive Christian.'

4 And do you say your prayers, Mr. Leigh ? ' said Mrs. Norham ;
* and if you do, have they been, let me ask you, of much practical
use to you ? '

' One may think things good to do,' said Leigh, ' that, to one's
own misfortune, one has failed to do oneself. Indeed, I often think
that the people who have chosen the bad may be in the best of all
positions for understanding the value of the good.'

' And is praying,' said Mrs. Norham sarcastically, ' a chief feature
in your conception of good ? '

4 1 suppose it is not in yours, Mrs. Norham. Do you never say
prayers ? '

'I sincerely hope I do not,' said Mrs. Norham. 'I have no
spare energy that I should let it waste itself in a channel so un-
profitable. Prayer is like a vast and constant leak in the conduit of
human energies, through which the precious waters waste themselves,
when they might be for the healing of the nations. A man's only
rational prayer is right action ; and the only actions that are right,
are those that are social and functional. Man only lives that he
may do his duty ; and his only duty is towards his fellow men.'

' And do we owe, then, no duty to ourselves ? '

i None. In the conception that we can do so is the root of all
selfishness and of all religion. The desire to serve Grod, and to purify
self as self, are one and the same desire ; and are equally a treason
against the claims of our fellow men.'

26 TlIK S1SETEEXTH CENTURY. July

il,.-M ?' said Lrijjh. *So far as our own dispositions go,
and our own private pleasures, have we no need to govern ourselves ?
Is the only question what we do ? Does it matter nothing what we

* Matter nothing I ' said Mrs. Norham; 'it matters everything.
What we do outwardly is the exact outcome of all that we are
inwardly; and what Humanity is, is the exact outcome of what the
individuals do. And thus there can be no thought, or word, or state
of character, which has not for the eyes of science an external effect
on the whole great organism — an effect for good or bad, for happiness
or for misery.'

* But may not the practice of prayer,' said Leigh, * put the soul
in a better condition to make us work for others ? '

* Prayer, if you mean by it a cry for God's aid, inspired by a belief
that such aid will be given us, unfits the soul for work, not fits it.
But in that complex condition of mind that is commonly called
prayerful, there is mixed often a quite different element. There is
in it not a desire only, but a resolve and a meditation — a resolve to
act, and a meditation on the end of action. And this sacred element
we Agnostics cherish and value, not only as well as the Christians
do, but far better. We only change it in one point. We give the
end of action its true name ; we direct the meditation to its true
allegiance.'

4 1 know what you mean,' said Leigh. * You direct it to
Humanity at large — to that great organism which is at present so
sad and suffering, but which our own faithful endeavours shall bring
some day to complete health and happiness. Yes, that is what you
say ; I of course know that. I have heard it a hundred times. But
there is a gap somewhere. Here, you say, is a great process which
every action of ours must either retard or further; but you say
nothing of how our hearts are to be inflamed with the desire to
further it, and how they are to find rest in the thought that it is
being furthered.'

4 And how,' said Mrs. Norham, ' in the Christian world was the
heart of the worldly believer to be turned towards his God ? You
may say by the fear of hell. But is the virtue worth much that is
only a disguised cowardice? If, however, what we want is real
virtue— the only thing that truly deserves the name — the Agnostic
has as good a hope of arousing it as the Christian. As good, did I
say? No— better. For what the Christian appealed to was at best
the higher selfishness. What the Agnostic appeals to is the higher
sympathy. Sympathy— a feeling for others— is as much a part of
that nature as sight is ; and it is on that firm rock that the Agnostic
builds his. creed. Well, this simple love and feeling for those who
are near to us has belonged to man in all ages ; but now at last
there is a new future before it. Science has shown to us as a

1880. ATHEISM AND REPENTANCE. 27

fact the organic unity of our race ; and thus our whole race can
become an object to us of the same solicitude that our family and
our friends have always been ; while the new conceptions of evolu-
tion and progress are like wind to the fire of our affections, and
force it to kindle the vast material that is prepared for it — all the
present, and all the future. But this is not all. You seem to think
that " to prick the sides of our intent " something like fear is needed ;
and you are right there. But the Agnostic has this too. The
Agnostic has conscience, that severe and unfailing monitor, which
is raised by the creed of evolution to a new dignity, and is set on
a firmer foundation than any religion dreamed of. Conscience, for
the Agnostic, is the voice of the whole past of humanity — it is the
voice of the Ancient of Days — it is the voice of Man himself; and its
sound goes farther than the thunders of Arabian Sinai, as it speaks
everywhere with its million million whispers. There, if a Hell is
wanted, the Agnostic has its equivalent, with all the power of the
deepest religious fear, and with none of its degradation. For when
conscience stings you, you are not like a dumb ox in the hands of a
capricious drover. You are your own true self, by an act of your own
will guiding yourself. Love man, and fear your conscience. All
the law is written in these two commandments. And to these by
and by must be added a third sentence, that the perfect love of the
one will cast out the fear of the other.'

' All this,' said Leigh, ' seems to me but a part of the Christian
religion '

Mrs. Norham interrupted him. c It is a part, then,' she said, ' that
is far greater than the whole. But in what you say there is beyond
doubt a truth. To direct our human impulses, we must first under-
stand their meaning ; and Christianity was an attempt at the logic
of human nature. In great measure it was a false logic, and it
thus misled men, instead of leading them. But in great measure it
was a true logic also. It cultivated the right emotions, though it
directed them to a wrong object ; and for this reason so much of its
language can be still retained by us. Think now of -the life of Jesus.
Jesus said that he was one with his father. Let us interpret
that text by the light of true science ; let us say that his life
was one with the life of his father Man : and then indeed his words
and his example appeal to all of us, with a strange pleading force
that I know nowhere else. " Whoso loveth father and mother
more than me, is not worthy of me." Is it not that, that the great
cause is for ever saying to each of us ? And when we have done a
good and a useful deed, or a bad, a hurtful and a selfish one, does not
the whole social organism say this to us, " Inasmuch as ye have done
it unto the least of these, ye have done it unto me " ? '

Mrs. Norham as she had gone on talking had become less and less
self-conscious, and she had become more and more swayed by the

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

feeling of the moment. Leigh was resting on his oars, watching his
companion. He could see her breathing quickly; he saw too, as
she raised her eyes to the stars, that there was a certain moisture in
them. ' If a man,' she said, as though absorbed in her own medita-
tion, * take not up his cross, and follow not after me, he is not worthy
of me.' Then she again was silent.

« Tell me,' said Leigh presently, * why, if for your school the end
of life be happiness, do you so closely connect the pursuit of that end
with sorrow ? '

* Sorrow in itself,' she said, 'is not an end. No— we cannot
maintain that it has any value in itself, as the Christian ascetics do.

: self we are forced to believe it an evil ; for our one great hope
is for the time when man shall have conquered it. Yes, and in days
to come man shall conquer it ; and there shall be no more sorrow,
nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain ; for the former
things are passed away. But,' she went on, changing her position,
and becoming more collected, c at present, sorrow is still with us, and
we must often suffer it now if we desire to conquer it for the future.
But even at present life is not made up of sorrow. If we will but
live it rightly, it becomes a glad and noble thing, and its shadows,
when they cross it, do but add to its brightness. The Christian
Church gave it a fictitious darkness, by casting a pale unearthly light
upon it, which took the colour out of its fairest objects, and blotched
and confused its surface with countless unearthly shadows. But the
day-star of science and reason is what we shall henceforth walk
by ; and under it life's whole aspect will change. We shall none of
us be able to say then that we are obliged to live in vain. Nor
need we, as you will perhaps imagine, be always living at high-pres-
sure, to come up to the true standard. The exact reverse is true.
To make us happy, our nature has two great needs. Instinct
makes us wish to be doing something, whether work or play. Eeason
makes us wish that what we do shall have use and purpose. For
those, then, who realise that all the labour of each of us can be
made to subserve the well-being and the progress of society, there
will be always something to do, and always a satisfying and inspiring
reason for doing it. And thus a life's labour may become a life's
relaxation as well. We shall partake, in their passage, of the benefits
we are conferring on others. Work will come to have all the attrac-
tion of play ; and the whole duty of man will then be rightly named,
not labour, but the came thing metamorphosed — functional amuse-
ment. Try to understand this view. What hinders you ? '

'Do you think,' said Leigh, 'that this vague sense that we are
serving Humanity by right action is enough to rouse us to doing
what is right, and avoiding what is wrong ? Does not the power
that such an end has over us depend very largely on our own powers
of imagination ? and, though it may be strong with those who are

1880. ATHEISM AND REPENTANCE. 29

exceptionally imaginative, will it not be almost imperceptible with
the common run of men ? '

' If,' said Mrs. Norham, ' men were not naturally active animals,
if their nature did not require them to energise somehow, if what
they had to be roused from were a mere state of torpor, what you say
might have force. But the case is quite otherwise. The knowledge
of the right end is desired that it may direct action, not that it may
initiate action ; although by the restful faith that we are working
towards the greatest of all ends our activity will be at once sustained
and stimulated. You, Mr. Leigh, of all people should understand
what I mean here. Your own amusement has probably been your
God hitherto ; and you have doubtless spared no pains in amusing
yourself. Is not that so ? '

' I fear it is,' said Leigh.

' Well,' Mrs. Norham went on, ' and you have done, I suppose,
the usual things — you have danced, flirted, shot, played cards, driven,
and hunted. I conclude, however, you did not shoot because you
were in want of food, or play cards because you were in want of
money, or drive because you wanted to travel, or hunt because you
wanted to possess a fox's body. And yet you could not have cared
to simply pop your gun off in the air, or play cards for no stake
whatever, or go for a drive without an object, or gallop after dogs
who had themselves nothing to run after. Consider, then, what
amusement is — that thing you have so enthusiastically lived for. It
consists in rinding an object for energies which are already existing,
but which without that object would be unable to energise pleasur-
ably. Think then — if the pursuit of a fox can give such zest and
eagerness to hunting, making the early rising, the danger and the
weariness so delightful, may not the sense that you are promoting
the good and the progress of mankind give a far greater zest to the
useful activity of a lifetime ? '

Leigh was silent for some moments. ' Perhaps you are right,' he
said at last. * Yes, it certainly is a man's great want to be doing
something, whether it be work, pleasure, or distraction. But yet
what you say covers but a small part of what we once felt that life
ought to be.'

' Do not brood,' said Mrs. Norham, ' on what you once felt. Do
not be testing the true system by its parallelism with a false one.
I know,' she went on, ' how one is tempted to nurse such regrets. I
have myself felt them, for I was once a Christian myself ; and when
with my powers of intellect I was forced to break away from my
father's faith, and ridicule for his own benefit all that he held most
sacred, the pain caused me was probably far greater than anything
that you, in your young life, have experienced.'

1 And you too,' said Leigh, ' were a Christian once, then ? '

* I was,' said Mrs. Norham ; * and so intense and so earnest were

30 THE XryETEEXTH CENTURY. July

my convictions, that two of my younger sisters, who were committed
,-ntirely to my charge, imbibed from my teachings a faith from which

0 I myself have been unable since to deliver them. Their lives
are still darkened by the hope of heaven, still wasted by the love of
God, and still weakened by a reliance on God's assistance. And now,

Leigh, I will ask you to think of that. There was a deed clone
by me years ago, and the effect of it lives yet, and I cannot undo it.
Is not that an awful thought ? Does not that teach us the import-
ance of our every action ? It is true that the influence of some of us
—such as myself, for instance— is unusually large : but even you, in
your own degree, have had an effect, by your acts, on others, which
you will never, never be able to obliterate.'

1 Good God ! ' exclaimed Leigh, « I know that well enough, for
my sins. If you had as much to reproach yourself with as I have,
you would hardly find it so easy to talk about a life happy in
healthy energy. To be happy in that way one must have one's
mind at ease. One must, before all things, respect and be at peace
with oneself. Mrs. Norham, you talked just now about conscience.
Now listen to me. I have a conscience, and I can treat it in two
ways only. I can either stifle it altogether, or else listen to and be
troubled by it. But if I stifle it, I shall have no wish to act rightly ;
and if I listen to it I fear I shall have no heart to do so.'

Mrs. Norham leaned forward with interest. ' Tell me,' she said,
in a tone of kind severity, ' what on earth do you mean ? You would
have no heart to do so ? '

1 1 mean,' said Leigh, 'supposing your philosophy to be true.
Where can you tell us to look for any remission of sins ? How can the
soul be again reconciled to itself? And if I must always have to
consider myself a sinner, why should I try to become a saint ? '

* My friend,' said Mrs. Norham, whose voice was getting more and
more persuasive, c at last I have you on the hip. You are yourself
at this moment an example of the deadly practical influence of the
Christian teaching. It was this Christian teaching that your great
motive for right action was, not the welfare of others, but your own
sanctification : and despairing of that, see now how your own powers
are paralysed, and your whole prospect blighted. Cast away the
whole of this unhealthy conception. Cease to think about what you
have been altogether. That is a poor, paltry, insignificant question.
What you have done is the only part of your past that is of the
smallest consequence ; and even on this you should dwell only in so
far as it will warn or guide you for the future. Self-reproach is
in this way converted into new social energy ; and the man who
has done wrong becomes by it literally more capable of doing right.
I know this by experience well enough. If I had not once been a
Christian, and taught Christianity to others, I should never have half
the vigour I now have in attacking it. Mr. Leigh, it was simply

1880. ATHEISM AND REPENTANCE. 31

recollecting the wrong I had done to my sisters that enabled me,
when I first came here, to tell the parish clergyman plainly how per-
nicious a thing Christianity had proved to the world.'

'And did you really tell him that ? '

4 1 did indeed,' said Mrs. Norham, pleased by the surprise
manifest in Leigh's tone : ' and I told it him face to face, and in the
presence of a dozen of his parishioners. Trust me,' she went on,
* that that is the true way to repent. The Christian valued repent-
ance because he thought it would make him less guilty : the Agnostic
values it because it will make him more useful. Few sins in the
world's whole history that have ever become general have had half
the wickedness of the repentance enjoined by the Christian Church ;
few things have been so utterly demoralising. It has consumed the
time and broken the spirit of man. That our sins may be remitted,
that our iniquities may be put away from us- — this has been the one
cry of the whole Christian world ; and it is a cry that has sprung from
selfishness, and begged for an impossibility. It is quite true that the
sacrifice of God was a broken spirit ; but the sacrifice of Man is a
vigorous, a healthy, and a resolved one. For us the only true re-
pentance is amendment — to avoid repeating our errors, not to con-
tinue thinking about them.'

' But suppose,' said Leigh, ' that no amendment is possible.
Suppose the ill done is quite beyond your remedy.'

* With respect to the individual, we often may suppose this with
truth ; but with regard to the race we never can. And here we see
the comforting and saving character of the belief of the Agnostic.
For him all Humanity is but one great being, and, as I said before, if
you do good to any one of its component parts, you are doing good to
it. It truly is always present with you ; and you can never be beyond
its claims on your good offices. I, as I tell you, have given to my
sisters a faith, which, alas ! no man taketh away from them : but that
does not hinder me from endeavouring to take away a like faith from
others. Amendment, as conceived of by the healthy mind, refers
to doing good, not to undoing bad. Does what I say bring no com-
fort to you ? It is not often that I fail in my attempts at comfort.
Listen to me, and let me speak openly. It would be a false delicacy
on my part to pretend that I do not know why you have been sent
to us. I know of course that you have done things to be repented
of; and for this reason I have been trying to teach you what repent-
ance means. One of the nearest results of your actions is that you
have pained your father ; and the knowledge of this must have some
effect upon you. Let that effect be not a fruitless regret; but a
fruitful resolve to please him. I know, too, one of the chief causes
of the pain you have given. You have become intemperate, and so
forth — of course we understand each other. Come now, and be honest
with me, will you ? Is there anything more behind ? '

32 THE XiyETEEXTII CENTURY. July

' There is,' said Leigh ; * but nothing fit, I think, for me to con-
fide to you.'

« Do not say that,' said Mrs. Norham. * As Mr. Biggins told you,
I know the world ; and though I may grieve or disapprove, I am not a
woman to be shocked. To be shocked is to run away from an evil in
terror, instead of remaining bravely to see that it spreads no farther.
Come now,' she said, with a tone in her voice that was a mixture of
sharpness and of a subdued encouraging cheerfulness, « you will find
great relief in telling me. When once one has confessed an error, one
loses the morbid horror of it.'

There was a pause of some moments ; and then Leigh began
abruptly. * There came to Oxford about a year ago two orphan girls,
of whom the eldest was just three-and-twenty. They were of no
social position ; their father must have been an artist of some kind,
I think : but they had a small independence, and they took a little
house together on the outskirts of the town, meaning to study, to
paint, and to cultivate themselves generally. They were both ex-
tremely pretty, and full of that semi-refinement that to girls in their
position is so dangerous. A certain young man, who much prided
himself on his conquests, saw in an evil hour these two in a picture-
gallery. He was adroit in his manners, the poor girls were willing,
and an acquaintance was formed readily. It is not many months
ago that she was found in the lock at Godstow, with a small dead
thing — it is the old story — along with her.'

Leigh came to a pause, with his eyes cast downwards. His com-
panion uttered no single word. In a few moments he looked up to
her. Her whole expression was changed. She had drawn herself up
and away from him ; and she was eyeing him with a strange look of
aversion that seemed almost to amount to horror.

' What ! ' she exclaimed at last, with a gasp, ' and have I been
talking all to-night with a — with — with — a murderer ! '

* You mistake me,' said Leigh seriously. ' I was not the hero of
the story I have just told you.'

* You were not 1 ' she exclaimed. l Good heavens, then, why do
you talk to me in these morbid parables ? Come, it is getting late.
Pull quickly in to shore, and we will talk over these things to-morrow.'

Leigh obeyed her.

* Mrs. Norham,' he said, not looking at her, as he again dipped
the sculls in the dark gleaming water, ' what I have told you is no
parable. The man, though not myself, was a friend of mine ; and I
know that at the present moment he is rich, happy, and prosperous.
He is married to a woman who is devoted to him ; he cares nothing,
because he knows nothing, of the tragedy he has caused.'

* And you mean to say,' exclaimed Mrs. Norham, « that this de-
praved, degraded, licentious pleasure-seeker, this unconscienced,
thoroughly unsocialised man was your friend ? '

1880. ATHEISM AND REPENTANCE. 33

'I was so much his friend,' said Leigh, 'that he took me to the
house where the two girls lived ; and as he behaved to the younger,
so I behaved to the elder. It is through no virtue, no self-restraint
on my part that a like tragedy does not lie at my door. If you
judge my acts by the mere outward results of them, I do not know
what judgment you will pass on me. I have driven a woman not
to the grave — but, shocked and changed by her sister's death, to a
religious house. My name became connected with the scandal ; but
the actual truth of the story was never known to the authorities ;
nor did I wish for my friend's sake that it should be known. Now
you know the reason why I am here with you in Cumberland.'

Leigh who had again been resting on his oars, now again bent
himself to his work. Mrs. Norbam was silent and abstracted. ' She
went into a sisterhood, did she ? ' she said at length, but as if talking
to herself, rather than to Leigh. ' One of my own sisters did the
same.' These were the only words uttered, until they regained the
cottage. * Mr. Leigh,' she said gravely, as she went up to bed, * we
will talk more about this to-morrow.'

Poor Mrs. Norham ! She knew little "of the world, and she had
heard things she was not in the least prepared for. She was per-
plexed and bewildered ; and a momentary doubt for the first time arose
in her as to her own complete mastery of the whole of human nature.

With the next morning, however, there came mental illumination.
She rose early ; worked vigorously for an hour before breakfast at the
' Fugue in Four Colours,' and when the little party reassembled,
she once more saw clearly through everything. As for Leigh, he
looked so worn and tired that Mrs. Norham remarked it. ' I was
up late last night,' Leigh said, 'writing and making notes.' In
spite of his look, however, his manner was bright and cheerful, and
the calm easy politeness had come back to him which had so perturbed
Mrs. Norham on his first arrival. Now, however, she was glad of
this, rather than perturbed by it. She had succeeded in reconciling
her severity with her benevolence ; and Leigh's present manner would
not only justify, but even stimulate her severity.

She took him out with her after breakfast for a walk by the lake's
side, and prepared to begin the battle. The new number of The
A gnostic Moralist had arrived that morning, and as she held it un-
opened in her hand, she felt as though she were wielding a sacred
wand of power. She observed, to her surprise, though without taking
much note of it, that Leigh held in his hands a roll of paper also.

' Mr. Leigh,' she began, ' you seem singularly cheerful this
morning for a man who has so much weighing on him.'

' Do you think so, Mrs. Norham ? ' he said carelessly. ' I'm sorry
you grudge me my good spirits.'

This at once gave Mrs. Norham an opening. ' Sir ' she began.

Leigh turned and looked at her. She met his surprised expression

ATOL. VIII.— No. 41. D

34 THE S1SETEESTH CENTURY. July

with a cold frown. 'You seem,' she went on, 'to have forgotten
what you told ine last night. You seem to have forgotten what lies
upon your shoulders. You seem to have forgotten what you are, and
in what house. Never,' she said, ' never before in my life did I hear
of or know a man with a course of life like yours.'

* That,' said Leigh, ' I can believe very readily.'

4 Of course,' said Mrs. Norham, rapidly correcting herself, ' I have
heard of such men. As a matter of study and theory, I am of course
familiar with them. But they are rare — very rare.'

Leigh smiled. Mrs. Norham saw the smile, and she was more
thoroughly exasperated. They were passing by a rude rustic seat ; and
with an imperious gesture she motioned him to sit down beside her.

k Mr. Leigh,' she began, all her pent-up feelings at last finding
vent, 'do you in the least realise what manner of man you are?
Last night, it is true, you looked serious and sentimental enough.
Yes — and much good this morning it seems that all your fine senti-
ments have done you. Is this the right state of mind for a man in
your case to be living in — a state of habitual flippancy, only made
the more piquant to yourself by the luxury of occasional self-
reproaches ? Will you ever mend, will you ever grow better in this
way ? And you — you are the man who try to salve your conscience
with silly regrets for a dead or dying superstition, which I know
well enough you do not for a minute believe in ! It is impossible for
me to express fully the intense contempt I feel for you. You may
imagine that it is no pleasure to me to be obliged to speak like this.
But it is for your own good, and I must do so.'

Mrs. Norham paused. Leigh had meanwhile been unfolding the
roll of paper he held in his hand. He now spread it out on his knee ;
and turning to Mrs. Norham, deliberately and quite gravely : ' I am
entirely in your power,' he said. ' I do not resent your anger, though
on some few points you are unfair to me. My own self-reproaches
are not insincere ; and that is the reason why I am not resentful
towards you. But I am perplexed : you have been good enough to
explain the right and wrong of things to me ; but I am so ignorant,
I have not completely understood you. Will you bear with me, and
answer me a few questions ? '

Leigh's words were well chosen, and the effect of them was in-
stantaneous. They did not, indeed, relax Mrs. Norham's severity, but
they calmed it. She ceased to be the impassioned accuser ; she
became the unbending judge.

Leigh began : ' What you said last night to me I had often heard
before, but never put with so much personal point, or applied to
my individual case. When we parted last night, I thought and
thought over all your words, all your expressions, and all the feelings
which I could see accompanied them ; and I spent a large part of
last ' night in noting all this down, that I might see exactly what

1880. ATHEISM AND REPENTANCE. 35

more I wanted to ask you. And I want first to ask you one or two
quite preliminary questions, which we did not touch upon last night.
I think I know how you will answer them ; but I am not quite sure.
You will not, I trust, be offended if what I say takes the form of a
very humble and respectful catechism.'

4 Gro on,' said Mrs. Norham ; 4 my own wish is to be as clear and
distinct as possible.'

4 To begin, then,' said Leigh, looking down on his manuscript, 4 I
want first to ask you if your moral teaching is not based on scientific
method, and if it does not accept and emphasise all the discoveries of
the great modern physicists ? '

' It does,' said Mrs. Norham.

'Consequently,' said Leigh, 'we have no immortal souls. We
have no entity within us separable from the body and capable of
surviving it. Our inward lives are nothing but a succession of states
of consciousness ; and our outward lives nothing but a succession of
actions.'

4 This is perfectly true,' said Mrs. Norham.

4 Further,' said Leigh, 4 the old conception of a free will is a false
one. The creed of science is the creed of determinism. We always
act in obedience to the strongest motive.'

4 We do,' said Mrs. Norham. ' Action without motive is incon-
ceivable : and it is surely mere tautology to say that it is the strongest
motive that moves us. But don't think,' she went on, 4 that you can
wriggle out of your moral responsibility "

Leigh however stopped her. ' Let me inquire of you,' he said
gently, 4 in my own fashion. What I have just asked you have been
merely a few preliminaries. I now come to what you said last night :
and don't be impatient with me, even if I seem to be beginning at
the wrong end. Well, then, I discerned in you last night two
feelings with regard to myself. One was a wish to turn me into a
good, useful member of society ; and the other, anger and indigna-
tion at myself as you now find me. I saw this last feeling was very
strong in you last night ; but you suppressed it. It has, however,
found its full expression this morning. One of the things that has
puzzled me is your reasons for this. I want you to explain them to me.'

4 My reasons ! ' echoed Mrs. Norham, her indignation again rising.

'Yes,' said Leigh calmly. 'You think me a very low con-
temptible man, and you thoroughly dislike and despise me. I want
to know why you have this feeling, and why you express this feeling
to me.'

4 1 have the feeling,' said Mrs. Norham, 4 because I am a right-
minded woman; and I express it to you that you may learn to
dislike and to despise yourself. I express it that, by my expression
of it, I may arouse your conscience.'

' Last night, Mrs. Norham, you said as follows to me : " For us,

36 THE NL\ETEL\\TH CEXTURY. July

<>i,!>[ (rut repenta)ice id amendment — to avoid repeating our
errvr8,not t<> <,,,tt-nne t/t inking about them;" you said this also :
"Cease to think «'„,"( n-lnit you lim'e been. That is a poor palti-y
insignificant qv . ]\'lat you have done is the only part of

your past tin it /'.s of the smallest consequence ; and even of this
thmild tl>' nk only in so far as it ivill warn or guide you fen'
t he future" Now, how do you reconcile your anger against me, or
your wish to arouse my anger against myself, with this ? '

* As Professor Clifford has well pointed out, conscience in the
individual is developed and directed by the expressed disapproval of
the tribe. The tril>e of course only cares about what you are because
it affects what you do to it : and if you have done it wrong, it would
have you despise yourself, that you may be afraid of repeating the
wrong for the future. I both feel and I express my disapproval of
yourself on the same principle which would make me whip a dog
who had stolen meat from the table. I should not bring back the
meat stolen ; but I should cure the dog of the habit of theft. It is
in this way that the human conscience has been developed.'

4 But I have done you no wrong, Mrs. Norham. Why are you
angry with me ? '

* You have wronged the organism of which both you and I are
parts. You have done wrong to the thing you ought to love. I
have wronged the thing I love — that is the logical context of the
reproaches of conscience ; and surely if a man has a heart, this
reproach is enough to chastise and sting him. " I have wronged
others — not myself;" that is what I want you to say to yourself;
" and let me never again wrong them." '

'But surely, in that case,' said Leigh, 'if our feelings are thus
completely relative to external results, we should each of us have to
repent of our neighbours' sins far more than our own. Now, when
you -thought for a moment that my bad conduct had had for its
almost direct result another creature's death, you were horrified.
When you found out you were mistaken, you were relieved. That
feeling was extremely marked in you ; nor do I think you will be
inclined to deny its existence.'

Certainly,' said Mrs. Norham, « what you say is perfectly true ;
and had the case been otherwise I could hardly have brought myself
to be now talking to you.'

1 But on your own grounds,' said Leigh, « this feeling is perfectly
irrational. If actions are only made wrong by the unhappy outward
results of them, it must be an indifferent matter to you, by whom
the unhappiness was produced. If your house was burnt down, it
would be little relief to you to find that the kitchen fire had been
the cause of the misfortune, and not the dining-room fire.'

' Nonsense,' said Mrs. Xorham angrily, « the case is not to the
point Would my feelings as to either fire have any influence on

1880. ATHEISM AND REPENTANCE. 37

what they burnt or did not burn afterwards ? We laugh at Xerxes
because he whipped the Hellespont : but we laugh at him only because
he whipped a thing that his whippings could have no future effect
upon. Could he have made the chastised waters repent, his conduct
would have been quite rational.'

' Yes,' said Leigh, ' and you want to make me repent. But in
that case, if you have any personal preference at all in the matter,
you should have hoped rather that the greater tragedy, and not the
less, were at my door ; for the more easy would it be then for me to
hate myself for my past, and so amend myself. Or else, supposing
this is not the case, I ought to repent of my friend's ill conduct as
much as of my own ; and not only I, but you too, Mrs. Norham — you
too ought to be repenting of it. We ought each of us, be we never
so virtuous personally, to be in a perpetual state of contrition for
the offences of the rest of the world ; for we can each of us say, even
the worst of us, that the ill effects of our own acts are as nothing
compared with the ill effects of the united ill acts of others.'

'Stuff!' exclaimed Mrs. Norham. 'It is not worth while to
answer this foolish quibbling.'

4 It is not quibbling,' said Leigh ; ' I am asking you to explain to
me a real perplexity.'

' Are you so slow of apprehension, then,' said Mrs. Norham, ' as
not to see that what is wanted is that we should each chastise by our
disapproval that agent over which we have most control — I mean
ourselves ? Let us each of us learn to judge ourselves for our sins,
and then we shall have little need to judge each other. Were you
properly contrite, I should not be obliged to express, although I
might feel, all my present contempt for you ! '

To Mrs. Norham's astonishment Leigh burst out into a loud
forced laugh. She turned and stared at him. ' Give me that stone,'
he said to her, ' which is close by you.'

' This stone ! ' exclaimed Mrs. Norham.

' Yes, I want to throw it at that poor crippled old man, who is
coming towards us, leaning on a girl's arm. Look at the old devil on
two sticks ! Excuse me for a moment, and let me go and kick him.'

Mrs. Norham caught sight of the two figures, and she stared at
Leigh blankly, with a look of horror and astonishment. ' For God's
sake stop,' she said, * or the old man will hear you. Are you a
positive brute ? That is old Crossthvvaite, and his daughter. There,'
she said, ' is a true example of right conduct. That girl you see, is
well educated, and has all sorts of talent. She might have had a
good post as a schoolmistress ; and yet she has given up everything
to support and take care of her father.'

' What a wicked old man ! ' said Leigh. ' How I despise and hate
him ! Do excuse me for a moment, whilst I go and tell him so. It
is entirely his fault that he is old, and that he is a cripple.'

38 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

« His fault ! '

* It is as much his fault that he is a physical cripple as it is mine
that I am a moral cripple ; and morally his is the greater fault of
lh.« two. See, by his wicked infirmities he is ruining the entire life
of his child. He is absorbing all those energies of hers that are due
to the social organism. He is himself as useless to others as the
idlest, the most slothful of voluptuaries. Judge him by the outward
effects of his life, and he bears every mark about him of the most
contemptible vice.'

4 Listen, Mr. Leigh — I have heard all this before: and it may be
well once and for ever to silence it. What I am going to say will
at once show you your folly. Could you by kicking or by laughing at
that old man cure him of his infirmities, it would be right to kick
and laugh at him : and you could only cure him by this expression of
contempt if the cause of them were in his own hands, and he had
himself control over them. This has been the case with your wrong-
doings. You might by an act of your own will have done otherwise.'

* Mrs. Norham,' said Leigh, ' I, too, have heard all this before ;
and it may be well for me, too, once and for ever to silence it. Let me
quote again your own words to you : " Action without motive is in-
conceivable ; and it is surely mere tautology to say that it is the
stronger motive that moves us." All my sins, and all the sins of the
whole world, have been the result of the strongest motives ; and these
motives have been wholly out of the control of those that have been
swayed by them. Will is but the name for the final internal -victory
of the strongest motive ; to suppose any will in any one case altered, we
should have to suppose the whole of the world's history written other-
wise from the beginning. Did I say the world's history ? I mean
the history of the entire universe — the entire constitution of things ;
and in condemning myself, I am arraigning all existence. My
petulant curse is hurled against the " Immensities and the Eternities."
Who am I, then, that I should be angry with infinitude ? No — I will
not say that. I will say, how can I be angry with it ? You may
answer that my anger at past infinitude will be a factor in the for-
mation of future infinitude. Well, so it might be, could I feel the

' O '

anger. But the fact is that, if this view be true, I cannot fee) it.
And now consider this. One of the most powerful deterrents to sin
is the fear of our own future repentance — our own self-condemnation.
I know that as well as you do. But if we know that so soon as the
sin is acted, we shall see in it but a necessary link of the great sequence
of things, which it would be folly to reject and blasphemy to find
fault with, the chief terror of sin will be gone. My sins as my own
sins, what are the}- to me ? Here are your own words, used to me
last night : " Cease to think about what you have been altogether.1"
But what use is there in talking about what 7 have been ? " Our
inward lives " — this is your view of the matter — " are nothing but a

1880. ATHEISM AND REPENTANCE. 39

succession of states of consciousness" These, as they one by one
stream by,

Are taken from us, and become
Portions and parcels of the dreadful past.

To the eye of science like yours they literally cease to have any
personal connection with ourselves. I and you are beings possessing
a present tense only. A little while they are, and again a little
while and they are not ; but we can never say that they have been.
Come, Mrs. Norham, and gainsay, if you can, one single word of what
I have said. Give me any logical reason why I should repent of my
past sins, and why I should fear repeating them.'

Mrs. Norham paused for some minutes, eyeing Leigh meanwhile
with looks of increasing hardness. ' Silly, wretched boy,' she ex-
claimed at last ; ' and is that the form which the great life-question
takes for you ? " W hy should I fear to repeat my sins ? " Is that
what you ask, and what you suppose all mankind are asking ? Is
man, think you, an animal that will only do good by compulsion ?
Is he altogether made up of selfishness, and is not his love of others
far more lasting and mightier ? Learn to love your own kind, learn
to expect and to long for its progress — its progress, and by and by
its perfection ; and then you will know soon enough what sorrow is,
if you have sinned, and then you will know how resolve for the
future is the offspring of such healthy sorrow. Love of man — love
of Humanity, it is on this that all virtue, all the meaning of life,
and all progress depends.'

Leigh rose suddenly from his seat, and stood before Mrs. Norham,
confronting her. ' Mrs. Norham,' he said, ' you told me just now
you despised me thoroughly. Let me now make a personal confession
to you. I most thoroughly respect you ; and think you, in most
ways, a far better person than myself. But I think that of all
human beings that ever talked or thought about man, virtue, and
duty, you and your school are the most utterly vain and visionary.
It is not that you have not got* hold of one part of the truth, but
that you altogether forget another part. You dwell on our unselfish
impulses so persistently that you quite forget the selfish ones. You
speak as though man's one need were to justify his own virtuous
aspirations, and not also to condemn his vicious ones. You forget
that all present experience, all knowledge of history, reveals this one
human truth, that the human heart is a battle-ground for contending
impulses, and that the devil's legions are not annihilated because a
few excellent theories may ignore them. All the meaning of life,
and all progress, you say, depends on love. But how is this love to
be increased ? It exists in the world about us. That is true enough ;
but does it exist militant, or triumphant ? In thousands upon
thousands of generations it has, according to your theory, been
struggling ; and struggling and unvictorious it still remains. What

40 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

one new aid have you and yours to give to it ? You compared the
pursuit of the public good last night to a fox-hunt ; and you spoke
of all the self-denials and activity that hunting entails. Yes, but
life is not like a fox-hunt ; nor is the desire for useful activity like
the hunter's eagerness. The central fact of life for the vast majority
of mankind has not been an eagerness, but a perplexity — the
perplexity of an eagerness vacillating between two counter-attractions.
The most self-indulgent of men will often get up early to hunt ; but
the duty of killing the fox will not coerce him into doing so if he
wishes also to remain at home and make love to his neighbour's wife.
No, no. The creed you fancy you live by has never really guided
anyone, never really strengthened anyone.'

• / live by it,' said Mrs. Norham. ' I and a thousand others are
living examples of it. It is this that sustains and strengthens us,
and makes our life full of such infinite significance and joy to us,
though we neither hope for heaven, nor have the least fear of hell.
Do I paint my pictures because Grod will punish me if I am idle,
or stir the minds of the wavering with my essays because my Church
teaches me to instruct the ignorant ? Not so. What sustains me is
the sense that I am doing the great work of the world. In this
paper, which goes forth through the length and breadth of England,*
she said, tapping The Agnostic Moralist, ' I have the blessed con-
sciousness that my thought and labour are working for good ; and
I know well that during the next few days I shall be receiving glad
and joyful letters from the many that my words will have helped.
In this paper, too, I can show you a list of the pictures already sent
by me to the school I spoke of, which will already with form and
colour be enlarging the taste and the capacities of the youngest
generation of our poor.'

1 Ah,' said Leigh, still standing and looking down at his com-
panion, as she broke the paper wrapper that was still round the
journal, ' you little know what manner of spirit you are of. You
think you know the world ; but every word said, every view expressed
by you, shows me how small, how fragmentary, has been your ex-
perience of it. The little clique you have lived in, and from which
all your thoughts are drawn, is but a pool by the side of the great
river of life ; and it may well be that it is full of reflections ; but that
is because there is no current in it. What you mistake for the love
of humanity and the hope of progress, is a compound of two things —
the religious feeling that you were imbued with in your youth, and
your own pleasure in the fancy that you personally are a great force
in the world. And what you mistake for humanity is the handful of
quiet industrious and intensely self-satisfied people, who only differ
from yourself in being less ingenuous. If you despise me, it must be
so ; I cannot justify myself. But I am not careless, as you think I
am ; I am not altogether selfish, as you think I am. But I am a man

1880. ATHEISM AND REPENTANCE. 41

whose lot has fallen in the common world ; and I am too honest to say
that to be virtuous and to be unselfish would not be a struggle to me ;
and that I should not want to be sustained in it by some strong, vivid
faith in the value of what I struggled for. How this struggle will
end in my case I know not. But this I do know, that your teaching
could be never any help to me. I am like a man who is lame in
both feet ; and what you tell me to do is to run with only one. Do not
think that I do not respect and appreciate you ; and do not be angry
with me for saying thus much to you. Surely, did you only know
it, you, too, have your weaknesses, your self-seekings, and some per-
sonal vanities, which are not quite in harmony with your social creed.'

Leigh would have gone on, as Mrs. Norham, to his surprise, made
no offer to interrupt him. Her eyes were cast down, and she had
been glancing at the journal in her hands. But at this moment she
sank suddenly back on the seat : the journal fell on the ground ; her
face was quite pale, and her eyes were half-closed. Leigh with much
concern asked her if she were ill. 'Nothing — nothing,' she said.
' Only don't speak to me for a moment.'

Thinking she must have heard bad news, Leigh picked up the
paper, and began looking through it. The first paragraph that
caught his eye was thus headed — 'Pictures at the Free-thought
Schools, Manchester, for the Children of Artisans.' Then followed
a list of pictures that had been placed in the school-room ; and
then, 'The Committee have been obliged to decline with thanks
" Four Eondels in Eed and Green," &c., by Sarah Norham.' He
had hardly read this, when his eye was caught by yet another
announcement, at the head of the first column. It ran thus :
' The contemplated changes in the management of " The Agnostic
Moralist " have been now satisfactorily concluded, and the Editor
has much pleasure in announcing that he has secured the services
of an entirely new staff of writers, ivhich comprises none but such
as are qualified to treat their several subjects in an exhaustive
and masterly manner.' There was more in the same strain ; and
at the conclusion were these words : ' The following communications,
which the Editor is unable to make use of, will be returned to the
^vriters upon the pre-payment of the postage.' A considerable list
was appended, at the head of which figured ' Functional Amusement,*
and ' The Cellular Character of the Individual, &c? followed it.

Leigh had many generous impulses, and he had no inclination to
triumph over a wounded foe. Indeed, so little was he removed from
the weakness of human sentiment that, as he looked at the suffering"
face and the closed eyes of his companion, his own eyes insensibly
began to moisten, and a large drop, before he could intercept it,
fell and made a blister on the pages of The Agnostic Moralist.

W. H. MALLOCK.

42 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

THE CLOTURE IN PARLIAMENT.

THE extraordinary ' scene ' in the House of Commons, which occupied
the whole of the sitting of the 14th of June, has recalled public
attention to the change during recent years in the conditions of
Parliamentary business. Those members who since 1877 have made
the country familiar with the name of Obstruction, and the thing,
have lately become cautious and learned in Parliamentary lore.
Nevertheless, it is felt that new inroads are being made upon the
character of the House of Commons, and that ' something must be
done ' to resist a movement which carries with it a more formidable
danger than the mere postponement of Ministerial measures. But,
as experience warns us, the mood in which people murmur that
Something must be done' abounds with perils of its own, which
Parliament can only escape by taking pains to understand what the
nature of the evil is, and what remedies are practicable. We have
had more than enough of hand-to-mouth expedients adopted ' in the
hurry of the moment,' for meeting a system of proceeding against
which any serviceable precautions must be general and permanent,
and entrusted to an indisputable authority.

Mr. O'Donnell's behaviour in assailing the personal character of
M. Challemel Lacour, first through the medium of a question
addressed to the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and afterwards
upon a motion for adjournment, has met with almost unanimous con-
demnation. The Speaker censured the question as irregular, though
when it had been placed upon the notice paper, he deemed it best
that it should be publicly answered ; and he also declared that the
reiteration of the charges against the Ambassador * under cover of a
motion for adjournment ' was a grave abuse of the privileges of the
House. But it is to be remarked that the Speaker, in the exercise
of his discretion, did not call the member for Dungarvan to order.
If he had done so in the usual way, and Mr. O'Donnell had still
persisted in going on with his speech,' the case would have come
under the standing order of the House adopted in February last, and
might have been immediately disposed of without any serious delay,
and without creating any disputable precedent. The standing order
provides that

1880. THE CLOTUEE IN PARLIAMENT. 43

•whenever any member shall have been named by the Speaker, or by the chairman of
a committee of the whole House, as disregarding the authority of the chair, or
abusing the rules of the House by persistently and wilfully obstructing the business
of the House, or otherwise, then the Speaker shall forthwith put the question on a
motion being made, no amendment, adjournment, or debate being allowed, 'that
such member be suspended from the service of the House during the remainder of
that day's sitting.'

The Speaker, however, though of opinion that Mr. O'Donnell was
' abusing the rules of the House,' as the standing order says, did not
feel called upon to exercise his powers in the manner prescribed, He
confined himself to admonition and advice. But the Prime Minister,
the leader of the House, adopted a course which is, in the opinion of
many, incapable of being justified either by general arguments or by
historical examples. While Mr. O'Donnell, after the Speaker's warn-
ing, was going on with his observations, Mr. Gladstone ' rose to
order,' but he did not invoke the Speaker's authority to enforce his
call to order ; he ' felt it his duty to give the House an opportunity
of expressing its opinion on the subject by moving that Mr.
O'Donnell be not heard.' The right of any member of the House to
make such a motion as this was instantly challenged, not only by the
Home Rule members, but by the leader of the Opposition, and we think
it must now be clear to most people that it was rightly challenged.
In the controversy thus raised the original matter of dispute was
merged, and Mr. O'Donnell's conduct may be left without further
criticism. The claim, however, made by the Prime Minister,
though not formally acknowledged, has not been withdrawn. Yet
it is clearly important that it should be settled without delay. If
there is such a right as that asserted by Mr. Gladstone, its limits
ought to be immediately ascertained and defined, and the House of
Commons ought to have an opportunity of determining whether it
is desirable that such a limitation of the freedom of debate should
be retained. The House, manifestly, was ignorant that any such
right existed ; it is not alleged that there is any precedent for Mr.
Gladstone's motion within the past two hundred years, and it seems
very doubtful whether, even in the reign of Charles the Second or
earlier, it has been recognised as a part of the law and practice of
Parliament that any member, except the Speaker, could appeal to
the House to prevent a member from continuing his speech. The
Speaker's right appears to be fully established, not only under the
standing order of February last, but under an order of the 14th of
April, 1604. The fact remains that the Speaker did not choose
formally to ask the House, as he might have done, to decide the
question whether Mr. O'Donnell should be heard further. His absti-
nence from the exercise of an uncontested right cannot be held to
justify any other member, however high his position,. in doing what
the Speaker left undone. .

44 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

The difficulty of admitting Mr. Gladstone's claims was at once
perceived by the leader of the Opposition, who, in accordance with
his plain duty, appealed to the Speaker for his ruling on two points :

(1) whether the raising of a debate on a motion for adjournment, after
a Ministerial answer, was irregular, and justified a call to order ; and

(2) whether it was in order for any member of the House, while
another member who was not out of order was in possession of the
House, to rise in the middle of that member's speech and move that
he be no longer heard. The Speaker's answer was not very direct,
but its meaning is plain. Motions for adjournment after ques-
tions are always inconvenient, and sometimes, as in Mr. O'DonnelPs
case, involve a 'special impropriety,' but are not breaches of order.
With respect to Mr. Gladstone's conduct, the Speaker would only
say that ' there were instances of such a motion in the seventeenth
century,' though neither then nor afterwards were particulars given
of these instances. But in the seventeenth century no such per-
sonage as 'the leader of the House' was recognised; Charles
Montague, if not Sir Kobert? "Walpole, was the first statesman who
combined the Ministerial functions and the Parliamentary authority
of a ' leader.' The instances, therefore, whatever they may be, to
which the Speaker referred, must be sufficient to cover the case of
any member, leader or no leader, who chooses on what he deems
adequate ground to move that a member speaking be no further
heard. The validity of this inference was put to the test by a Con-
servative member, who, when Sir William Harcourt had opened a bitter
attack upon Sir Stafford Northcote, moved, precisely as Mr. Glad-
stone had done in Mr. O'Donnell's case, that the Home Secretary
should not be heard. The Speaker decided that Sir William
Harcourt ' was in possession of the House,' which, however, was
equally true of Mr. O'Donnell. The two decisions cannot easily be
harmonised, and it is evident that they left many members at least
in uncertainty, including the Prime Minister himself, the Secretary
for India, the Home Secretary, and the Chief Secretary to the Lord-
Lieutenant.

Mr. Gladstone asserts that ' the Speaker is the guardian of order,
but not the guardian of propriety in the House ; ' and the latter
function he apparently claims as annexed to his own official position.
His colleagues support the pretension in vigorous language. Lord
Hartington says :

It is the duty of the leader of the House, when he sees that its forms are being
abused, having a due sense of the honour and dignity of the House, to take what-
ever action may be necessary to prevent the degradation of its rules and forms.

Mr. Forster goes even beyond this :

It might be said, Why not leave that duty to the Speaker ? His answer to
that was, that the present case was an altogether exceptional one, the like of which

1 880. THE CLOTURE IN PARLIAMENT. 45

•had not happened for centuries, and which, therefore, fell altogether outside the
ordinary rules which it was the Speaker's duty to enforce. There had never been
occasion for the making of a rule on the subject. This was a case upon which the
House might properly be called upon to give a decision irrespective altogether of
rules, and no motions for adjournment or other technicalities ought to stand in the
way of that decision. Then, if the power of stopping an lion, member's speech was
recognised, iu whose hands could the initiative more properly rest than in those of
the acknowledged leader of the House ?

And Sir William Harcourt talks of ' an inherent power, apart
from any rules, written and unwritten,' which the majority of the
House of Commons, at the instance of its leader, are justified in using
when a case of urgency may arise.1 Although Mr. Gladstone's motion
on the 14th of June was withdrawn, the Ministerial pretensions ad-
vanced during the debate are on record, and it is necessary to in-
quire what course Parliament will take with regard to them. The
doctrine which has been laid down by the leading members of the
Government is novel and dangerous. There is no trace of anything
like it in Parliamentary history or in the works of the most authori-
tative constitutional writers. Nor is there any parallel for it to be
found in the representative systems of other countries. Nevertheless,
some members of the majority are in haste to declare that they will
most gladly give the privileges of Parliament in trust to the Minister
whom they follow. In the debate on Mr. O'Donnell's case, Mr. William
Fowler said :

As for the danger of the precedent, if a future Prime Minister attempted to
abuse it the House would know how to deal with him, for it was not at the mercy
of any Prime Minister : it had its own dignity in its own keeping. . . . He thanked
the Prime Minister for having the courage on the spur of the moment, without con-
sulting old and musty precedents, to do that which common sense dictated.

If these words had been spoken by a member of the Conservative
majority in the late Parliament, they would have been assuredly cited
by Mr. Gladstone as a proof of the degrading subservience to Lord
Beaconsfield into which the House of Commons had fallen, and of the
alarming growth of Personal Government. But we must school
ourselves in the philosophy of Hosea Biglow, and remember that —

A change of demand makes a change of condition,
And everything's nothing except by position.

It must be acknowledged, no doubt, that in cases where a single
member sets at defiance the sense of propriety of the House, and, to

1 The suggestion that the dangers of a precedent, which seems to place a dicta-
torial power over the liberty of speech in Parliament in the hands of a party leader,
should be averted by setting forth that it was to be deemed no precedent, is too
puerile for argument. The most mischievous precedents to freedom are those which
at the time have been justified by ' special circumstances,' and have been accom-
panied with solemn assurances that no such usurpation of authority would ever again
be attempted.

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

borrow Mr. Forster's phrase, ' the decencies of debate,' as well as in
cases of deliberate obstruction to public business, the existing rules
and practice of the House of Commons have proved lamentably weak.
The tacit understanding to which they have applied for generations
is not accepted by a section of the members, and when this fact is
fairly faced, it will be seen that the only available remedy is to
strengthen the rules and to apply them with more unswerving and
courageous vigour. The Speaker of the House * enforces the obser-
vance of all rules for preserving order in its proceedings ; ' the tra-
ditions of his office have placed him above parties, and his impartiality
has rarely been impeached, even during the most passionate contro-
versies. If, therefore, it be necessary to provide the means for
restraining a new form of Parliamentary disorder, the obvious and
unchallengeable course is to enlarge the discretion under which the
Speaker acts at present in questions of order, to do this in the most
general terms, and to trust for the protection of minorities and of the
privileges of debate to the personal character of the eminent person
in the chair. This confidence the House is already compelled to
repose in the Speaker ; the initiative in taking measures to uphold
order is his, though other members may invite his intervention.
Either the House ought to make up its mind not to notice such con-
duct as Mr. O'Donnell's in spite of its ' special impropriety,' or the
Speaker ought to be permitted to pronounce it disorderly and to act
upon that decision. It may be that the Speaker is unwilling to have
his responsibility increased, but this is a personal consideration which
the House may overrule, as the objections of the judges, when they
were disinclined to undertake the trial of election petitions, had to
be overruled. To leave to the leader of the House, the chief of a
party majority, the initiative in correcting breaches of ' propriety '
in members not out of order, would be to give him an authority from
which the Speaker himself shrinks as too weighty and too invidious.
A political leader, with the right to call upon his majority to silence
any one of his opponents in the middle of a speech, would not be
credited with impartiality, and probably would not often be im-
partial.

There is, as has been said, nothing at all resembling the right of
intervention in debate claimed on behalf of the Prime Minister
under any other Parliamentary Constitution. In France, in Germany,
in Italy, in the United States, in the British Colonies, whatever
powers of initiative in matters of order exist, belong exclusively to
the chairman of the assembly, whatever his title may be. Nowhere
would a motion like that of Mr. Gladstone, in which he proposed
that the House of Commons should listen no longer to Mr. O'Donnell,
be legitimate. Nor was Mr. Gladstone's procedure, as has been
supposed, an application of the cloture, in the proper sense of the
word. During the debate on the new standing order in February,

1880. THE CLOTUKE IN PARLIAMENT. 47

Sir Stafford Northcote said that there was one alteration of the rules
of debate, and one only, which would be really effective in preventing
obstruction, and that was the adoption of the cloture, but he added,
' That is a method on which I venture to think that this House will
pause very long before they adopt it. It is wholly at variance with
the traditions of the British House of Commons.' It must not be
supposed that Mr. Gladstone was bold when Sir Stafford Northcote
was timid, any more than the former was revolutionary when the
latter was conservative. The cldture, as adopted in the French and
other continental Assemblies, and, practically, in the Congress of the
United States, could by no possibility be applied to a single person
or in the middle of a speech.

Since these questions are likely to lead to further discussion, a
brief account in a popular form of some of the principal rules for
maintaining order and overcoming obstruction of business, which
mark the divergence of the Parliamentary institutions of foreign
states from the British model, may have a certain interest. The
statements made are derived either from the official rules of the
different legislatures, or from works of authority, such as that of MM. •
Poudra and Pierre for French Parliamentary Practice, and Barclay's
Digest for that of the United States.2

There are three points upon which the practice of foreign legis-
latures may afford useful guidance, should it be deemed advisable to
depart from the existing rules and usages of the House of Commons :
(1) The powers of the President, Chairman, or Speaker ; (2) the
limitations upon the right of free speech in debate, in the case of
individual members ; (3) the cloture, or the provision made, under
certain conditions, for terminating the debate on any question by a
peremptory vote.

The rules governing the proceedings of the Senate and the
Chamber of Deputies in France, being in all essential points the same,
are founded upon those voted by the Legislative Assembly in July,
1849, as modified by the resolutions of the Senate and of the Chamber
of Deputies in June, 1876. The reglement forms a coherent and
systematic code, framed and adopted as a whole. It has, therefore,
some obvious advantages over a body of rules in part unwritten, and
embodied in precedents extending far back in Parliamentary history.
On the other hand, it has the disadvantages attaching to all cut-and-
dried constitutional documents. The President in each Chamber is
the sole authority as to the application and interpretation of the

2 The full titles of these books are : Traite Pratique de Drait Parlcmentaire, par
Jules Poudra et Eugene Pierre ; Ouvrage honor6 de la souscription du Senat et de la
Chambre des Deputes (Paris, Baudry, 1879), and Digest of the Rules of the House of
Representatives, $c., compiled by John M. Barclay, Journal Clerk of the House.
(Washington, Government Printing Office). Parliamentary Government in the British

Colonies, by Alpheus Todd (London, Longmans and Co.,' 1880), though dealing onl7

incidentally with procedure, is also valuable.

48 THE X1SETEEXTH CENTURY. July

rules, though when doubts arise in his own mind on any point he is
permitted, but not enjoined, to submit the question to a vote.
M mbers may request the President to call a speaker to order, but
it is for the President to decide whether he will act upon the
requisition. * II ne peut s'engager aucun debat entre le President et
mi membre de la Chambre au sujet de 1'exercice du pouvoir dis-
c-iplinaire dont le President est investi par le reglement.' The
simple ' call to order ' is the mildest form of punishment ; a second
4 call to order ' during the same sitting carries with it, if the Presi-
dent should so direct, * inscription au proces-verbal ' and ' privation
pendant quinze jours de moitie de Pindemnite allouee aux deputes.'
A member speaking, if he submit to the President's ruling, is allowed
to justify himself at once, confining himself strictly to the limits of
justification ; but one called to order when ' not in possession of the
House,' as we should say, is not heard in explanation or apology
until the end of the sitting. If a speaker has been twice called to
order, or twice reproved for straying from the question, during the
same sitting, the President may propose that he be silenced for the
remainder of the sitting, but to enforce this penalty a vote of the
Chamber, pronounced * par assis et leve, sans debats,' is required.
In more obstinate and serious cases the censure is pronounced, also
* par assis et leve, sans debats, sur la proposition du President,' and
in still worse cases, as when the President has been insulted, or there
has been provocation to civil war, the censure avec exclusion tempo-
raire (for three successive sittings) is pronounced in the same
manner. These involve further pecuniary penalties and the publica-
tion of placards stating the offence and punishment at the charges
of the offender. Should the Chamber become turbulent and refuse
to keep order, the President is justified in putting on his hat (il se
couvre), when, if calm be not restored, the sitting is suspended for
an hour.

In the Belgian and Italian Parliaments the French system is
closely followed, and in many respects the rules of the German
Reichstag, which are almost identical with those of the Prussian
Parliament, follow French rather than English precedents. In the
case of a member called to order twice in the same sitting, the
Italian rule is very nearly the same in effect as the French,3 and the
German rule is not materially different. The latter provides that
the President shall have the power

to recall a speaker to the subject under discussion and to call him to order. Should
this happen twice in the same speech without result, and should the speaker con-
tinue to be out of order, or to wander from the matter in hand, the Assembly may,

1 ' Se il President* ha richiamato due volte alia questione un oratore che seguita
a dilungarsene, puo interdirgli la parola pel resto della seduta in quella discussione ;
se 1' oratore non si accheta al giudizio del Presidente, la Camera, senza discussione,
decide.' See lleport of Select Committee, 1878 (the Speaker's Evidence), p. 153.

1880. THE CLOTURE IN PARLIAMENT. 49

at the request of the President, without debate, decide that he shall not be allowed
to speak again on the question before them, this being first duly notified to him by
the President.

The President of the Reichstag, however, appears not to be, as in
the French Chamber, the sole, though he is the immediate, judge of
4 order.'

If a member is out of order, he is called to order by the President, with the
mention of his name ; the member is entitled to send in a written protest, upon
which the Reichstag, but only at the next sitting, decides, without debate, whether
or not the call to order was justifiable.

In case of a disturbance in the Eeichstag, ' the President can suspend
the sitting till a given time, or adjourn it altogether ; if the President
cannot obtain a hearing, he puts on his hat, whereupon the sitting
is suspended for an hour.' This extreme measure was once used
with sensational effect in the Prussian Abgeordnetenhaus, when Count
von Roon, the Minister of War, disputed the right of the Vice-
President, Herr von Bockum-Dolffs, to silence him. ' If I see fit to
interrupt the Minister of War,' said the Vice-President, ' he must
desist forthwith. Should my command be disregarded I shall order
my hat to be brought.' ' I have nothing in the world to say against
your hat being brought,' replied the Minister, ' but I am entitled to
speak and I will speak.' Obstinate as he was, however, Count von.
Roon had to yield ; for the hat was brought and put on amid loud
Liberal cheers, when the sitting was suspended. For a short time
1 Bockum-Dolffs' hat ' was regarded in Germany as a fine inversion of
the Gressler legend, and a noble defiance of Bismarckism. Whether
there is in existence a presidential hat big enough to extinguish the
Prince-Chancellor himself is a problem that is likely to remain un-
solved.

According to the French practice and to that of the parliaments
which follow the French example, the President alone is allowed to
interrupt a speaker. The President is authorised to do so, as has been
said, not only in cases where the speaker has committed a breach of
order (of which the President is the judge), but in those where he has
wandered from the question. We are told, however, that ' dans la
pratique il use de ce droit avec une large tolerance.' Sometimes the
Chamber makes a protest against an excess of irrelevant speech * d'une
maniere non douteuse ; ' but no member can claim to speak upon the
' rappel a la question.'

In the House of Representatives at Washington, the rule governing
the Speaker's authority in these matters is couched in very general
terms :

lie shall preserve order and decorum ; may speak to points of order in prefer-
ence to other members, rising from his seat for that purpose ; and shall decide
questions of order, subject to an appeal to the House by any two members, en which
appeal no member shall speak more than once unless by leave of the House. ... If
any member, in speaking or otherwise, transgress the rules of the House, the

VOL. VIIL— No. 41. E

50 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

Speaker shall, or any member may, call to order, in which case the member so
called to order shall immediately ait down ; and the House shall, if appealed to,
decide on the case, but without debate. If there be no appeal the decision of the
: : shall be submitted to. If the decision bs in favour of the member called to
order he shall be at liberty to proceed ; if othenrisc he shall not be permitted to
proceed, in case any member objects, without the leave of the House, and if the
case require it he shall be liable to the censure of the House.

It thus appears that the Speaker of the House of Kepresentatives,
though he has a large immediate authority, is ultimately controlled
by the House much more than the President of the French Chamber.
A member, however, who has been called to order, is dependent on
the toleration of the House, and if it is thought that he will continue
his disorderly conduct he will not obtain permission to proceed. Both
Houses of Congress are empowered by the Constitution to punish their
offending members ; but though the right of expulsion is well estab-
lished, there appears to be in the United States as in the mother
country a want of less severe penalties applicable to minor offences.

It will be evident that, upon the whole, the powers of the Presi-
dent or Chairman in foreign legislative assemblies are larger, more
independent, and more readily set in motion, than those which the
Speaker wields. This is true, in spite of the unquestioned superiority
of the Speaker's position, fortified as it is by a vast body of traditional
reverence and by a reputation for dignified impartiality which is on
a level — I speak not of individuals, but of the class — with the judicial
bench of England. Moreover, wherever in foreign countries the
rulings of the president of a legislature are open to appeal, the hazard
of a rough and heated discussion as well as the chance that time will
be designedly wasted are avoided by the provision that there shall be
no debate on the question.4 In these particulars the British Parlia-
ment, notwithstanding its historic greatness and its high repute, may
have something to learn from younger and weaker legislative bodies.

Let us now turn to another group of questions, those connected
with the cl6ture. With respect to these, not a little misapprehension
prevails. In the debates of February last, Sir Stafford Northcote
justly observed that the cloture, should it be deemed right to adopt it,
would at all events secure the defeat of obstruction; and Lord
Hartington expressed a similar opinion. He said—

I quite agree with the Chancellor of the Exchequer that you cannot at all defend
the adoption of the cloture in this House, but when considering this question the
House will do well to remember that this is a proceeding to which in time you will
be forced to eome, and that it is a proceeding which would undoubtedly be efficient
for the purpose for which it would be intended. I think the consciousness that we
have this power in reserve ought to enable us to discuss this question with much
calmness and consideration.

4 This principle, adopted for the first time in the standing order of 1877, which
was abandoned as unworkable, has been revived in the standing order of February
last.

1880. THE CLOTUKE IN PARLIAMENT. 51

But even a ' Parliament man ' so experienced as Mr. Newdegate, in
the course of the same discussion, alleged that ' the cloture whenever
it had been adopted had failed to restrain the excesses of debate.'
The evidence of M. Gruizot was quoted by Mr. Newdegate to the
effect that, in spite of the cloture, there had been an instance of a
debate in the French Legislature which lasted for twenty nights.
Upon this it can only be remarked that no remedy for protracted
debates can be effectual unless the majority of the Assembly are
willing to apply it. When the majority are so willing, it will be seen
that, in France at least, the result is certain. Again, there is a ten-
dency to confuse the 6 putting to silence ' of individual members and
the termination of debates by cloture. In Mr. Parnell's acute and
ingenious examination of the late Chairman of Committees before
the Select Committee on Public Business in 1878, Mr. Eaikes, being
asked whether he knew of any other assembly besides the Italian
Chamber in which a member could be silenced without discussion,
cited the rule of the House of Eepresentatives at Washington by
which the debate on any question may be ordered to be closed at a
fixed hour, thus silencing the minority, and, as Mr. Parnell pointed
out, the majority also. Mr. Parnell himself, however, on the same
occasion spoke of * applying cloture to the minority,' which is a con-
tradiction in terms.

Parliamentary discussions in France proceed according to a list of
members who propose to speak and who * inscribe ' their names before-
hand. In the ordinary course the President, when no one remains to
speak, asks the Chamber whether it wishes that the debate should be
closed. But the Chamber, if it considers that it has been sufficiently
informed to come to a decision, may at any time demand that the
discussion shall be brought to an end, even when the list of speakers
inscribed is not yet exhausted. The general rule, however, that a
speaker shall never be interrupted except by the President, restricts
the demand for the cloture to the pause at the end of a speech. A
further limitation is imposed by the general rules that a Minister
must always be heard, whenever he claims the right to speak, and
that after a Ministerial speech one member of the Chamber may
insist upon replying. Moreover, if it be proposed to adjourn the de-
bate to the next day, this question obtains precedence over the
demand for the cloture^ and a division must be taken upon it first.
Finally the cloture is not put to the vote if called for by a few isolated
members; it must be demanded by une portion notable of the
Chamber before the President will entertain the question. No speech
is allowed to be made in favour of the proposal, and only one against
it. The vote is then taken, but the cloture is not pronounced unless
a majority of the members are present ; if there be any doubt as to
the will of the Chamber, after a second trial, the discussion is con-
tinued When the cloture has been pronounced, members may speak

52 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

upon the manner in which the question should be put ; Ministers
must be heard in virtue of their general right ; and amendments may
be withdrawn. A discussion may be subsequently reopened in whole
or in part upon the subject-matter, by a formal vote of the Chamber.
The restrictions on the cl6ture summarised above are justified on
grounds of public policy. It is said to be ' une mesure grave qui
arrete un debat, qui prive un certain nombre de membres du droit
d'etre entendus, qui peut'exercer une grande influence sur les votes
ulte'rieurs et definitifs.' 3 And M. Eugene Millaud, the * reporter ' of
the Commission sur le reglement, states that the intention of the
provisions now in force is —

prote'ger les minority centre les entrainemente des majorite's, qui peuvent quelque-
foifl se laisser aller a fermer trop brusquement une discussion. Si la cloture est
demandee par la majorite" etque la minority se trouve opprime'e par cette prevention,
il eat loiwble a un membre de cette minority de venir protester centre la demande ;
c:ert son droit, c'est quelquefois son devoir, et c'est pour cela que le reglement donne la
facult<3 de parler centre la cloture, mais a un orateur seulement.8

M. Millaud concludes :

Si dans une aesemble'e parlementaire il tftait permis d'engager une discussion
pour ou contre la cloture, ce serait renouveler la discussion sur le fond, et le regle-
ment ne 1'a pas voulu.

In the United States the same results are attained with somewhat
less formality, although the fundamental law of Congress is the law of
the British Parliament as it stood when ' Jefferson's Manual ' was pub-
lished in the last century. It is provided that the House of Represen-
tatives 'may at any time, on motion seconded by a majority of the
members present, close all debate on a pending amendment or an
amendment thereto, and cause the question to be put thereon ; and
this shall not preclude any further amendment or debate upon the
bill.' With respect to the main question, whether bill or resolution,
the rule that * no member shall occupy more than one hour in debate,
in the House or in Committee,' prevails, with an exception in favour
of the 'member reporting,' who has a right of reply. But 'the
House may at any time, by a vote of the majority of the members
present, provide for the discharge of the Committee of the whole
House from the further consideration of any bill referred to it, after
acting without debate on all amendments pending and that may be
offered.' The form of resolution adopted in such cases prescribes
that the debate in Committee on the question affected shall cease at
a time fixed. When this rule is applied a provisional debate oo
amendments, each member being allowed five minutes for his speech,
is permitted ; but even this may be peremptorily closed, by the vote
of the majority, with reference to each section or paragraph under

• Pondra et Pierre, Droit Parlementaire, p. 609.

• Speech of M. E. Millaud, in the Chamber of Deputies, December 12, 1876.

1380. THE CLUTUEE IN PARLIAMENT. 53

discussion. Besides these means for overcoming obstruction, Congress
possesses a still more powerful instrument in the ' previous question,'
which is not to be confounded with the motion known by that name
in our Parliamentary practice. During any discussion of a bill or
resolution it is competent for any member to move, ' Shall the main
question be now put ? ' It is only admitted, however, when demanded
by a majority of the members present. Its effect is to put an end to
all debate (except that the member in charge of the bill does not
lose his right of reply, subject to the 'hour rule'), and to bring the
House to a direct vote upon the subject before it, which may- be a
motion to commit the bill, or to adopt amendments reported, or to
read it a second or third time. It also terminates debate on dilatory
motions by bringing on a division at once. It may be applied only
to amendments under discussion without affecting the general debate
on the measure. Should a majority fail to support it, 'the subject
is resumed as though no motion for the previous question had been
made.' In order to guard against the indirect defeat of this motion,
the rules of the House of Eepresentatives provide that there shall be
no debate either on the previous question itself or on questions of
order arising out of it ; nor is ' a call of the House/ a favourite
method of delaying business, in order after the previous question has
been moved and seconded, * unless it shall appear upon an actual
count by the Speaker that no quorum is present ' — a quorum, according
to the Constitution, being a majority of the members of each House.
It is tolerably clear that nothing like these provisions could be
adopted in the British Parliament without a change not only in the
practice of the House of Commons, but in the principles upon which
public business has been hitherto carried on. Yet, though Colonial
Legislatures are bound to follow the Imperial example, a measure
amounting to a vigorous exercise of the cloture was carried in the Colony
of Victoria by Sir James MacCulloch's Ministry some four years ago.
The Opposition, led by Mr. Graham Berry, who has since been
Premier, announced their determination to resist the passing of the
Budget by resorting to every dilatory device into which Parliamentary
forms could be twisted. The Ministerial majority in the first place
carried a motion giving precedence to Government business, and
brought forward a new standing order known in the Colony as ' the
iron hand.' The resistance of the Berry party was prolonged in one
notable sitting from half-past four on a Tuesday afternoon till half-
past eleven on the following Friday night, and was finally beaten down
by the employment of the ' previous question ' in the American sense.
The overthrow by these means of the vaunted ' stone wall ' erected by
Mr. Berry and his friends was deemed not incompatible with the Con-
stitution of the Colony, although the Imperial Act establishing the
Constitution expressly recites that ' it shall be lawful for the Legis-
lature by legislation to define the privileges, immunities, and powers of

54 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

the Council and Assembly of that Colony and of the members thereof;
provided that the same shall not exceed those now held and exercised
by the Commons House of Parliament or the members thereof.'7
The Victorian Assembly, though prohibited from exceeding the
power of the Imperial Parliament, has in this instance at least suc-
ceeded in enforcing the cloture. It is probable that, on occasion,
majorities in other representative assemblies have thus peremptorily
dealt with ' obstruction,' even when the formal power does not
appear ; but the vague and untrustworthy nature of such a resource
needs no demonstration. If a power of this sort is to be exercised it
ought to be defined and publicly recognised. To leave it to be
wielded by a party leader, at the bidding or with the tumultuary
support of an angry or panic-stricken majority, would be to insure
its exercise without discretion and its rapid discredit in the popular
view.8

The proposal to surrender the right, without definition or restric-
tion, either of silencing a member or of closing the debate upon a
measure, to the leader of a Parliamentary majority, is open to objec-
tions, which are fairly met by the rules of foreign legislation, and
especially by the carefully elaborated code adopted in France. By
enlarging the authority of the Speaker, and giving him power to
deal as breaches of order with any ' improprieties ' the House may
deem it necessary to check, and by enforcing firmly the principle
adopted by the House in the standing order of February last, it will
be easy to prevent the recurrence of ' scenes ' like that provoked by
Mr. O'Donn ell's motion for adjournment. The Speaker, in his evi-
dence before the Select Committee of 1878, admitted in reply to
Lord Hartington that ' a member may frequently be said to be
abusing the forms of the House when he is not, technically speaking,
out of order ; ' but there is no reason why this illogical distinction
should be maintained. Nor is there any ground for continuing to
tolerate the practice of speeches upon motions for adjournment, like Mr.
O'Donnell's, which the highest authorities on Parliamentary practice
have declared to be most inconvenient. In 1848, a Committee on
Public Business, as the Speaker reminded the Committee of 1878,
carried by the vote of the Chairman, Mr. Denison (the late Speaker,
afterwards Lord Ossington), a resolution declaring that all motions
for adjournment should be decided * without debate.' Sir Eobert
Peel, however, objected, on the ground that minorities would thus be
prevented from discussing questions unpalatable to ruling majorities,

* This is the ordinary limitation in the Colonial Constitution Acts. See Todd's
' Parliamentary Government in the British Colonies,' pp. 466-468. See also the
British North America Act, 1867, section 18.

• It does not appear that either in the German Reichstag or the Prussian Parlia-
ment there is any provision for closing debates by a peremptory vote. See Getchdfts-
Ordnung fur den deuttchen Reiclutay and Geschdfttm-dnung fur dat Haiti de+
Algeordneten.

1880. THE CLOTUEE IN PARLIAMENT. 55

because it would be open to any member, when an obnoxious bill or
resolution was brought forward, to move the adjournment, and, if
supported by the majority, to carry it in silence, and to exclude the
minority from any chance of obtaining a hearing. The American
practice, which is that motions to adjourn are always in order, taking
precedence of all others, and must be decided without debate, seems
open to abuse. But the prohibition of motions for adjournment in
connection with questions to Ministers, especially if the Speaker
were allowed, as has been suggested, to ask the House to give a
hearing on such occasions to matters of urgency, appears to involve
no appreciable hardship. In no assembly is it allowed to disturb the
order of public business by forcing on debates of which previous notice
has not been given. In France the right to make a brief comment
upon a Minister's answer to a question is recognised, but the tendency
to slip from a simple question into an interpellation is guarded
against. It was open to Mr. O'Donnell on the 14th of June to have
given notice of a motion embodying what he had got to say with
reference to M. Challemel Lacour's appointment ; and if he had been
compelled to do this a public scandal and a deplorable waste of time
would have been spared. Few men have the courage to persevere,
after time has been allowed for reflection, in a course condemned by
the prevalent feeling of their fellows. At any rate, if some incon-
venience is likely to follow from the restriction of a privilege which
has grown up in recent years, it must be weighed against the far
greater inconveniences which, it is now plain, will flow from its con-
tinued toleration.

The evils of * obstruction ' proper cannot be altogether eradicated
by the increase of the Speaker's powers, or by their stringent exer-
cise. If there should be at any time in the House of Commons a
number of persons bent upon impeding the course of Parliamentary
business, and careless of all consequences, the punishment of a few
among them will perhaps be unavailing to control the rest. The
country will then look to Parliament to provide another remedy ; and
it can hardly be doubted that the most efficient remedy is the cl6ture,
secured against abuse by the conditions adopted in France. It ia
surely wiser to accept this limited change than to trust to the wis-
dom of a partisan majority exercising the l inherent right' which
Sir William Harcourt declares to be superior to all rules and prece-
dents, and impulsively endowing a Prime Minister, Kadical or Tory,
with « the iron hand.'

EDWARD D. J. WILSON.

56 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

MODERN FRENCH ART.

THERE is an interesting chapter in the ' Memorabilia' of Xenophon,
which records a conversation between Socrates and the painter
Parrhasius. The latter, then a young man, was doubtless already
showing that tendency to occupy himself with ignoble and even
vicious subjects for which he was afterwards notorious, and we find
Socrates endeavouring to persuade him to abide by the traditions of
the olden time, which allowed nothing to be represented but what
was noble and beautiful. He argues that it is the business of the
artist to portray not only the outward form of man, but also, as he
puts it, ' the workings of the mind as they are expressed by the
form.' ' " Surely," he asks, " nobleness and generosity, meanness and
illiberality, self-control and wisdom, insolence and vulgarity, make
themselves seen in the countenance and postures of men as they
stand or move." " It is so," answered Parrhasius. " Cannot, then,
these things be represented ? " " Undoubtedly they can." " Which
do you think then that men look upon with more satisfaction —
pictures in which noble and good and loveable characters are por-
trayed, or those which exhibit what is deformed and evil and detest-
able ? " " By Zeus," he said, " Socrates, there can be no question
about the matter ! "

What Socrates seems to imply in these remarks is that works of
art which represent the actions and feelings of men, produce the
same sort of effect on the beholder as would result from actual inter-
course. As we see men in real life consorting with the good to their
own satisfaction and profit, so a picture which portrays good actions
and pure or noble feelings imparts a moral influence of an elevating
kind. There is therefore an obligation on the artist so to choose his
subjects that those who look on his work shall come in contact only
with what is ennobling.

This view of art is not one, however, which finds universal accept-
ance. In opposition to it it is urged, and urged with considerable
force, that this importation of moral ideas into art opens the door to
sentiments and prej udices which may easily be destructive of sound
criticism. A work of art, it is said, must be judged on artistic
grounds alone ; if it is good as art, this is all we oiight to require of
it. This contention that art stands by itself, and exists, as the phrase

1880. MODERN FRENCH ART. 57

goes, for its own sake, is in English minds especially associated with
the art school of France, where artists as a rule in choosing their sub-
jects seem to care only that the situation shall be striking, and where
critics are content if these situations are represented with force and
technical skill.

It is no part of the intention of the present article to enter on a
discussion of these opposing views. There can be no doubt, on the one
hand, that it may be often advisable to protest strongly against the
intrusion of certain moral and religious prejudices in a militant
attitude into the domain of art criticism ; and nothing which is . here
said about the necessity of adopting to some extent the moral point
of view, must be taken as implying that technical excellence is not
of essential importance in all works of which the critic is to judge
favourably. No matter what may have been the intention of the
painter in his work, no matter how full his mind has been of pure and
elevated ideas which he has sought to convey by it, if the work fails
as art, it fails altogether. Such things as awkward composition, un-
natural posing, bad drawing, slovenly execution, neither gods nor
men nor hanging committees can be asked to tolerate.

Yet, on the other hand, to make his work technically blameless is
only a part of what the artist has to do. We cannot accept this as the
all-in-all of art without finding that we are doing violence to a part
of our nature. It is true that where a work of art is purely orna-
mental, it appeals only to the artistic sense, and can be dealt with
on artistic grounds alone ; but whenever what is represented is some
aspect of human life, the work at once evokes a different set of
feelings. It is a plain fact of experience, as Socrates pointed out,
that we look on certain scenes with delight and profit, and turn from
others in disgust. It is equally certain that these feelings arise
naturally in the mind when we look at representations of those scenes,
and it is only by making an effort that we can avoid taking such
considerations into account.

Whether or not it is worth while to make such an effort is a
matter which may be left for discussion. Common sense would
suggest that we should accept the facts of our nature as they stand,
and give full importance to all the feelings that are natural to us in
each situation. And if any further argument were needed to enforce
this view, it could be found in the practice of the great art schools
of the past. What gives to Greek art and to that of the early Ke-
naissance period their high position, is not only the mastery of the
workman over his materials, and his fine sense of artistic effect, but
his effort in everything to express ideas. The statues of the best
period of Hellenic art are not merely beautiful shapes, not merely
finely-posed and accurate representations of the human form, but are
the embodiment of the moral conceptions of the people — forcible pre-
sentments of that type of human character, strong at once and

58 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

reposeful, which Greek moralists inculcated and the best men of the
nation strove to realise. In the same way those deeper experiences
of human nature, which the mediaeval world owed to Christianity,
were wrought by the great Italian masters into their work ; and if we
find them dwelling at times upon sorrow and pain it was not for the
sake of mere effect, but for the sake of some spiritual expression
associated with them. To come in contact with works of this order
at once raises our ideal of the true function of the artist. He be-
comes, in view of these great achievements of the past, no mere
minister to our sense of the beautiful, no conjuror surprising us by
startb'ng effects, and taking our eyes captive by feats of dexterity ;
but one rather who has the power of calling forth our deeper feelings,
and of giving us a clearer insight into human nature in all its capacity
for tender or noble emotion. It is his to show the spirit of man
victorious over circumstance and trouble and death ; to keep bright
before our minds the ideals which are apt to grow dim to those in-
volved in the business of the world ; and, as Bacon finely observes
about the function of poetry, to feed our aspirations after perfection,
and * to give some shadow of satisfaction to the mind of man in those
points wherein the nature of things doth deny it.'

If there is any truth in these suggestions, it is allowable to look
at modern art, not of course exclusively, but to a certain extent from
the moral point of view ; that is, with reference to the effort in it to
represent what is pure or tender or dignified in human nature. This
does not mean a demand for grand subjects or exalted sentiment ; a
child — a peasant girl — a simple scene of charity — affords ample scope
for that sympathetic treatment which at once gives to a painting the
higher artistic value ; and it is the grievous scarcity of work of this
kind, as well as of the worthy treatment of great themes, which is
the first and most important point to notice about the art of modern
France.

The Fine Arts section of the International Exhibition of 1878 gave
an opportunity for a comparison of the schools of the different Euro-
pean countries. As a result of this it was difficult to resist the con-
clusion, that the work of the most important school, that of France,
though excelling the rest in academic qualities, had really less of
true interest to offer. For example, whatever were the shortcomings
from a technical point of view of English art, there was in it a
feeling for beauty and for nature, a delight in brightness and colour,
and a wholesome freshness, which had a value above all the hard and
unsympathetic cleverness of the French painters. With the notable
exception of the * Cierge a la Madone ' of M. Laugee, with its quaint
and serious presentment of the religious life of the thirteenth-
century peasant — a picture now in the Luxembourg — there was
hardly anything which had the poetic feeling which gives charm to
art. What was most conspicuous upon the walls of the French

1880. MODERN FRENCH ART. 59

section were vast canvasses, executed, it is true, in a very vigorous
and workmanlike manner, which represented for the most part
scenes from which in real life we should have been glad to turn
our eyes.

For instance, it was impossible for the eye to travel far without
lighting upon some scene of death, and death in its least noble
aspects. There was death in battle, death in the waters, death by
pestilence, death by the stroke of the headsman, death by slow
lingering after wounds. There were the seven sons of Saul, bound
and pierced, in every possible attitude of crucifixion, and hanging
dead, dying, or tortured aloft, while Rizpah, a strong virago, fought
with the vultures below. There was St. Sebastian, after his first
martyrdom, with all the apparatus of death about him, appearing
before the Eoman Emperor, and feigning that he had risen from the
tomb. Nor was the grave permitted to keep its secrets ; but in one
picture, and that by one of the most serious of the French painters,
M. Laurens, a dead man was shown dragged from his coffin, and set
up to answer at a mock trial for the acts he had done in life. A
powerful picture by M. Sylvestre, which gained the Prix du Salon in
1876, and now hangs in the Luxembourg, represented Locusta trying
upon the person of a slave, in the presence of Nero,^the poison pre-
pared for Britannicus. On the floor the dying man had flung himself
in horrible convulsions, while the murderers looked quietly down
upon him. In all this class of work, however, M. P. P. L. Grlaize
carried off the palm with his ' Conjuration of Eoman Youths,' in which
the conspirators were ratifying their oath by drinking the blood of a
slain man, whose hideous figure, with all the ghastly detail necessary
to explain the subject, was a prominent object in the composition.

It is pleasant to find that in this year's Salon such work as this
is far less obtrusive than in previous exhibitions,\while pictures and
statues conceived with earnest feeling and carried out in a poetic
manner, it is by no means impossible to find. At the same time the
criticism offered above applies to a very large extent ; the subjects of
many of the most important pictures are dealt with without any
regard for the dignity or pathos which might be given to their
treatment, and this want makes itself all the more felt the higher
the technical qualities displayed. Thus, to take a very conspicuous
instance, the ' Flagellation of our Lord,' by M. Bouguereau, is one of
the great pictures of this year. In composition and drawing, and
especially in finish, the work takes a high place ; but in the case of
the principal figure the artist seems to have had no other aim but
that of portraying the extremity of physical suffering. The form of
the Christ hangs from fastenings round theupstretched arms, and would
but for them sink helplessly upon the floor ; the body is bent inwards
to avoid the blows, and the head hangs back. The representation of
any figure in miserable agony like this would be wholly painful ; but

60 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

when we attempt to realise for a moment what this scene must have
been, and remember the noble and pathetic treatment of it by the
Italian masters, we are amazed that one of the foremost painters in
France should give us such a representation of the sufferer. Nor can
he be justified on the plea of realism. A Roman scourging was
severe, but a brave man could bear it without that agonised con-
tortion of the body which is all that can be seen in M. Bouguereau's
figure ; and even if some such violent gesture were demanded by the
subject, the expression of the head might surely be used to restore
dignity to the whole. Yet it is precisely here that the painter sur-
renders most completely all attempt to represent the character of
Christ. Looking at the subject from the merely human point of
view, how is it possible in that head flung wildly back, and those
eyes turned up under half-closed eyelids with a ghastly expression,
to recognise the man of whom it is written, that not many hours
before, at his simple profession of himself, ' I am he,' armed men had
gone backward and fallen to the ground !

The eame kind of remark applies to another prominent work of
this year's Salon, the ' Job ' of M. Bonnat. If this were merely an
academic study of an old man, nothing could be said about it but
that it is very ugly. But with what sense of congruity can we
connect this nearly naked figure, under a strong studio light, which
brings into relief every tendon and vein and every fold of skin on
the emaciated form, with one of the grandest forms in the literature
of the world ?

And if these powerful and learnedly-handled pictures fail so
utterly in dignity of expression, no less unfortunate is the French
school in its effort to deal with Greek subjects. Paris possesses
some of the masterpieces of ancient art, but it is not easy to find a
trace of true classical feeling at the yearly Salon. The noble example
of Ingres and David seems entirely lost, and classical subjects are at
present chosen for the most part as convenient cloaks for modern
indecency.

For instance, even M. Gerome's masterly picture of 'Phryne
Before her Judges ' misses the true sentiment of the scene. The
moral of it, as it is described to us by Greek writers, is simply the
powerful effect of pure beauty upon the Athenian mind ; an effect
which was produced on other memorable occasions, and which had
nothing in it connected with sensual appetite. Phryne was a
courtesan, but it was not as a courtesan that she appeared on this
occasion. She seemed, we are told, to be some priestess of Aphrodite,
and struck a superstitious awe into the beholders. Her attitude, we
may be sure, was one of conscious power rather than of shamefaced
shrinking, as M. Gerome has represented it. The picture, in other
words, is modern, not Greek, in sentiment.

A most astonishing example of the extent to which it is possible

1880. MODERN FRENCH ART. 61

to travesty a fine classical motive, is to be found in a * Bacchus and
Ariadne,' by M. Ranvier, in this year's Salon. Here, the figure ot
1 Ariadne,' who is making a pretence of being asleep, is only saved
from being seriously offensive because we cannot imagine it to
represent anything but a French soubrette.

Beautiful too in finish and in composition of line and light-and-
shade, as is the ' Birth of Venus,' by M. Bouguereau, the great
ornament of last year's Salon and now in the Luxembourg, we miss
in it the old Greek simplicity. Any look of self-consciousness, any
air of being observed and thinking how one appears, is out of place
in a mythological subject. The Venus and the attendant nymphs of
M. Bouguereau are Frenchwomen, not creatures of the primeval
religion of ancient Greece. It may be said generally on this subject
that in France with the exception of Ingres' pure and graceful figure,
' La Source,' now happily in the Louvre, it would be difficult to find
the naked female form dealt with in that classical simplicity which
in Mr. Poynter's work is so admirable, and which alone renders it a
fit subject for treatment in modern art. M. Bouguereau's group of
water nymphs, which gained a medal in 1878, though on the whole
purely conceived and drawn with exquisite grace, and fortunate
moreover in some simple poses which looked like studies from models
resting, was utterly ruined, so far as feeling goes, by the introduction
of two male figures peeping through a bush, and the detestable ex-
pression of one of the nymphs who had caught sight of them.

In the above remarks the modern French school has been re-
garded mainly with reference to its choice of subjects and its treat-
ment of religious and classical themes. If it has been necessary to
point to a great want on the one hand of dignity, on the other of
simplicity, in such treatment, and to a morbid delight in scenes of
horror which marks some of its ablest painters, it must at once be
added that there are other points of view from which we must regard
work of this kind with the highest respect. English pictures may as
a rule give more pleasure and exercise a more wholesome influence
than those of France ; but we must not forget that they are mostly on
a small scale, and even then are often not altogether free from faults
in the matter of drawing, tone, and perspective, which would be pain-
fully apparent were the size of the work increased. There are not a
few English painters, whose work has beauty and true poetic value,
who would be helpless before those vast canvasses upon which young
French artists can set to work at once with vigour and correctness.
It is easy, for instance, to call such work as M. Dore's ' theatrical.'
It means something, however, to be able to carry out without any
appearance of hesitation or confusion works on such a colossal scale ;
and it is something of which English art students have very often
but little idea.

It means, in the first place, long application to artistic study

62 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

over a wide field ; and next the knowledge of sound methods of work,
and of all the various matters which go to the making up of a picture.
How various and how important these are — what thorough mastery
of perspective, what knowledge of costume and of architecture, what
ingenuity in the mechanical appliances of the studio, are required
for these great works — is hardly realised among art students on this
side of the Channel, but is understood down to the smallest detail in
France.

This is no doubt partly due to the painstaking character and love
of method of the people ; but it is also to a great extent the result
of long tradition. Notwithstanding the social storms that have swept
over France, art has there had a more unbroken history than any-
where else in Europe. Through Nicholas Poussin, who spent much of
his life at Home in ardent study of Kaflfaelle and the ancients, the
French school is linked on to the schools of Italy. It was Le Brun,
however, at one time a pupil of Poussin, who gave to French art its
distinctive character. A man of masculine genius and untiring
industry, Le Brun found no canvas too large, no space of time too
short, for his vigorous compositions and rapid execution ; and the
example he set has been kept before the eyes of French students ever
since. It is true that art in France, like literature, had its period
of pettiness, which succeeded to the days of the * grand style ; ' but
at the close of the eighteenth century we find the same sort of power
displayed in the works of David and his pupils, and of that splendid
but short-lived genius, Grericault. From that time there has been an
unbroken tradition of good, methodical work in the French school,
which has won for it the position it holds in Europe.

The character of French art is best described by the word
* academic.' By this is meant that it stands at the opposite pole to an
art which closely follows Nature like that of England. An academic
school rests on traditions, and educates its students to abide by certain
laws and methods. A school like the English, on the contrary, sends
its pupils directly to Nature, and leaves them to deal with the im-
pressions they receive in a spirit of individuality. There are here,
of course, strong and weak points on each side. There is no intention
in the present article unduly to depreciate academic methods. In
our own country genius, unhampered by tradition, has in a Shake-
speare, a Turner, a Shelley, achieved such splendid results that we
are perhaps inclined to undervalue the aids of rule and system in the
domain of art. But by these aids is secured a result of no small im-
portance— a certain general level of excellence all through a school.
They cannot supply the place of genius ; but they can obviate the
blunders and mishaps to which, as some modern English pictures may
teach us, individuality without true genius is liable.

Now this is the strong point of the French school. It is not too
much to say that of all the part of the artist's work which can be

1880. MODERN FRENCH ART. 63

learned, it has a mastery. For the points of excellence which go to
produce a work of art may be divided roughly into two sets, of which
one is a matter of training, and the other a matter of taste and natural
sensibility. To begin with, there are the academic qualities, which
comprise the power to draw correctly, and in such a way as to exhibit
structure ; to model, or give solidity by light and shade ; to put a
scene in perspective and represent distance by changes in size and
strength of tone ; to group masses together so that each helps the
effect of the others ; to lead the eye of the spectator to the right
point in the composition, and to make the picture tell its story,
while every accessory works in with the idea of the whole. These are
points which training enables the student to master. On the other
side are those qualities which must to a great extent depend upon his
individual genius. Foremost among these is a sense of beauty.
Then comes the power of rendering expression ; and under this head
may be included a fine appreciation of form as distinct from mere
correct drawing, for it is by very subtle changes in line that a figure
is made to look noble or the reverse. Next there is the eye for colour,
which seems of all the artist's stock-in-trade the most distinctly a
gift of nature ; and lastly we have what is perhaps the rarest as well
as the finest of all artistic qualities, the power of fine handling in
painting. Painting is not the mere representation of solid forms by
the use of the brush instead of the chalk. It involves an exquisite
lightness and dexterity of hand, by which solidity is expressed with
crisp touches laid on side by side, leaving the whole texture open.
The true painter avoids mixing up his shades upon his palette, but
breaks pure tints one into the other with rapid, unerring touch.
Looked at closely each passage seems a sort of mist of blending hues,
but a little way off it assumes its proper local colour, while in each of
these patches of local colour the painter's skill has introduced a hint
of all the rest. What painting means, in fact, is all that loving care
in handiwork which makes a fine passage of colour by Titian, Rey-
nolds, or Millais, as full of charm as a song of Shakespeare.

If the first set of these qualities has been mastered by the French,
we may fairly claim for English artists a great natural feeling for
some of the latter. The knowledge and skill of our neighbours,
though often thrown away upon repulsive subjects, give much power
to their treatment of scenes which appeal to their best emotions ;
while the freedom and grace of the English, though often wasted on
frivolous themes, produces in works like Mr. Millais' ' Huguenot ' a
result of high poetic value. The love of the French painters for
scenes of death has been already noticed. In some pictures, where
what is dwelt upon is not the horror but the calm of death, the air of
mastery in the work gives it at once a high position. There was, for
instance, in the Exhibition of 1878 a picture by M. Laurens of the
Austrian, staff-officers before the dead body of Marceau — a very solemn

64 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

and noble representation of the respect of brave men for a brave
enemy. Still finer, perhaps, was « The Body of Caesar ' by M. Rixens
in the Salon of 1876. The corpse was being borne along by three
slaves through empty streets. It was difficult to know which to
admire most— the drawing and composition of the figures, or the air of
impressive stillness over the scene. The striking picture of M.
Moreau de Tours in this year's Salon of the death in battle of La Tour
d'Auvergne well sustains comparison with these.

Such works do not, however, admit of much beauty in the treat-
ment, and beauty is just the quality most difficult to find in French
art. It is not to be seen in their portraits of women and children,
which are, as a rule, hard and unpleasing ; not seldom, as is the case
this year with the work of M. Carolus Duran, pictures rather of a
costume than of a person. It is not to be found in the nude figures
of a pseudo-classical type, which are as plentiful this year as ever.
There is about these a want of any fine feeling for form, and the small
waists of the Parisian modiste appear instead of the more simple
line from shoulder to hip of the Greek statues. In this respect
England possesses in Mr. Poynter a finer draughtsman than France
can boast, notwithstanding all the delicacy and precision of the
pencil of M. Bouguereau. Even the work of M. Meissonier, of which
it is impossible to speak without high admiration for its power
of conveying subtle expression and its inimitable finish, makes
little effort after beauty, and possesses no imaginative or poetic
quality.

It is but fair to say that this year's Salon shows more endeavour after
expression and beauty than has been visible before. In the picture of
Charles VI. and Odette by M. Zier, there is much pathos in the head
of the unfortunate king as it lies helplessly upon the bosom of the
young girl who is supporting him ; though the painter has failed in
the more difficult task of rendering the face of Odette. The two
pictures of M. Cazin, ' Ismael ' and * Tobie,' are full of feeling, though
this effect may be in great part due to the extreme slightness of the
painting. The face of Hagar is hidden ; but the -boy Ishmael looks
up at her with a good deal of wistful longing and at the same time
tenderness for her sorrow, while the loneliness of the wanderers in the
desert is admirably expressed. It is, however, in the pictures of M.
Laugee and M. Laugee/fo that French art shows its most interesting
side — pictures of peasant life, painted in thorough sympathy with
the poor, and without any carelessness for the beauty which is quite
compatible with true realism. With these may be compared the
expressive but rather melancholy pictures of M. Jules Breton, who
appeals perhaps more readily to English sympathies than any other
foreign artist. The fault in these works is the same that may be
observed in the painting of the last-named artists ; they are very low
in tone, with the result that the shadows are too dark to please an

1880. MODERN FRENCH ART. 65

English painter, and the colour is laid on with a somewhat heavy
hand.

This last is a very general defect among the French. Though
they possess in M. Meissonier a painter of matchless precision of
touch, a great part of whose work has a brightness which is beyond
all praise, they seem, both in historical pictures and in landscape and
portraiture, to be content with a dull, monotonous style of painting
which is the thing the English make most effort to avoid. The
reason of this is not far to seek. Owing to their academic training
the French can make up their minds exactly what to do and how to
do it. Every object in their pictures looks solid and in its proper
place. At the first glance the work can be seen to be right. A
second look makes us, however, conscious that it wants just that
character which gives their charm to works like those of our Scotch
landscape painters. It is not, as these are, the expression of delight
in Nature. Our students, only half educated as they may seem when
judged by foreign standards, respond with genuine enthusiasm to the
beauty of the world about them. Their works are like poems ; they
do them because they cannot help it. The colour, the brightness, the
delicacy, the myriad complexities of Nature touch them with true
delight and wonder, and in an artless way they set themselves down
to copy them. The French student knows that he must keep his
picture, as it is said, 'together,' and down go the^high lights, which
in nature sparkle from point to point and fall often where the artist
does not want them. He is anxious to secure solidity, and can do
this in brown and white ; so he sets no store by colour. He has to
cover large spaces of canvas, and has no time to bestow on care in the
mere handling of pigment. The result is that a French composition
looks often better as an engraving than in its original form ; and it is
with a sense of disappointment that we come to see French pictures
which have been familiar to us in reproductions.

There has been no attempt in the present article to survey the
whole field of French and English art, but only to touch upon a few
of the strong and weak points in each. There is more intellect, more
power to grasp a large subject, more command of the technical side
of art in France than in our own country. Our artists possess, on
the other hand, natural gifts which have already won for our school a
high position in Europe. We may assume that to English painting
will always belong those qualities which have here been claimed for
it. A great work of art demands, however, something more than
these ; and it is here, in the conception and working out of subjects,
that our art is weak. At the same time this very weakness springs
in a way from what is best in it. It results mainly from that loving
study of nature which marks our young painters. Their ideal in
work is to follow out all the intricate markings, catch all the subtle
gradations of hue, in some natural object. Such patient, self-forgetful

VOL. VIII.— No. 41. F

66 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

labour as they will bestow on bits of foreground is an end in itself,
and brings its own reward ; those who give themselves up to it are
not unnaturally careless of * ideas ' and * high art,' and the ' traditions
of the ancients.' Upon this subject Mr. Poynter makes some most
valuable remarks in his recently published Lectures on Art, where he
administers a robust rebuke to any sentimental dwelling on leaves
and flowers, and insists upon the view, which all experience confirms,
that nothing great in art can be achieved without imagination and
thought.

We are said, however, to be an unimaginative people. The
generation that has seen the enchanted canvasses of Turner in their
first freshness, whose patriarchs, have stood by the newly-made graves
of Shelley and of Keats, and who still listen, in the voice of John
Ruskin, to the utterance of one of the most ideal and aspiring spirits
that has adorned literature, need not trouble itself much about this
imputation. Nor can there be really wanting to English painters
that capacity for great work which the men of our nation have shown,
and are showing in a hundred different fields. There is imagination
enough in the English to rise to the height of any conception, and
intellect enough to carry it out with perfect mastery. What is needed
is the sort of system that they have in France, and the very want
of it, with the consequent weakness of our technique, might well
inspire some of our leading painters to become the founders of such
a tradition. What modern art requires is an example of work which
shall be as strong as that of the French and beautiful with all the
poetic feeling and delicate handling of the English school of Nature —
work too which shall be the expression of delight in what is pure and
lovely, and of good report, and shall have about it, in the often quoted
words of Plato, ' the effluence from noble deeds, like a breeze that
wafteth health from salubrious places.'

GEBABD BALDWIN BROWN.

1880. 67

A STRANGER IN AMERICA.

No person could be more completely a stranger than I was in
America. After being interested in American history and public
affairs from my youth, I saw the country for the first time in
August last. Being born in Midland England, I had more English
insularity of thought than most of my countrymen ; and having a
certain wilfulness of opinion, which few shared at home, and proba-
bly fewer abroad, I had little to recommend me in the United States.
Years ago I knew some publicists there of mark and character, but
that was before the great war in which many of them perished. My
friend Horace Greeley was dead, Lloyd Garrison was gone, with both
of whom I had spent well-remembered days. Theodore Parker, the
< Jupiter of the pulpit,' as Wendell Phillips calls him, paid me a visit
in England before he went to Florence to die. To me, therefore, it
was contentment enough to walk unknown through some of America's
marvellous cities, and into the not less wondrous space which lies be-
yond them.

For one who has seen but half a great continent, and that but
for a short period, to write a book about the country would be
certainly absurd. At the same time, to have been in a new world for
three months and be unable to give any account whatever of it
would be still more absurd. To pretend to know much is pre-
sumption— to profess to know nothing is idiocy. A voyager who had
seen a strange creature in the Atlantic Ocean as he passed it, might
be able to give only a poor account of it ; but if he had seen it every
day for three months, and even been upon its back, he would be a
very stupid person if he could give no idea whatever of it. I saw
America and Canada from Ottawa to Kansas City for that length
of time, travelling on its lakes and land, and may give some notion,
at least to those who never were there, of what I observed — not
of its trades or manufactures, or statistics, or politics, or churches,
but of the ways, manners, and spirit of the people.

After all I had read or heard, it seemed to me that there were
great features of social life there unregarded or misregarded. New
York itself is a miracle which a large book would not be sufficient
to explain. When I stepped ashore there, I thought I was in a larger

r 2

68 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

Rotterdam ; when I found ray way to the Broadway, it seemed to me
as though I was in Paris, and that Paris had taken to business.
There were quaintness, grace and gaiety, brightness and grimness, all
about. The Broadway I thought a Longway, for my first invitation
in it was to Xo. 1455. My first days in the city were spent at No.
1 Broadway, in the Washington Hotel, allured thither by its English
military and diplomatic associations, going back to the days when
an Indian war-whoop was possible in the Broadway. At that end,
you are dazed by a forest of tall telegraphic poles, and a clatter by
night and day that no pathway of Pandamonium could rival.
Car-bells, omnibus-bells, drayhorse-bells, railway-bells and loco-
motives in the air, were resounding night and day. An engineer
turns off his steam at your bedroom window. When I got up to see
what was the matter, I found engine No. 99 almost within reach of
my arm, and the other ninety-eight had been there that morning
before I awoke. When one day at a railway junction I heard nine
train-bells being rung by machinery, it sounded as though Dis-
establishment had occurred, and all the parish churches of England
were being imported.

Of all the cities of America, Washington is the most superb in its
brilliant flashes of space. The drowsy Potomac flows in sight of
splendid buildings. Washington is the only city I have ever seen
which no wanton architect or builder can spoil. Erect what they
will, they cannot obliterate its glory of space. If a man makes a bad
speech, the audience can retreat ; if he buys a dull book, he need not
read it — while if a dreary house be erected, three generations living
near it may spend their melancholy lives in sight of it. If an ar-
chitect in each city could be hanged now and then, with discrimi-
nation, what a mercy it would be to mankind ! Washington at least
is safe. One Sunday morning I went to the church, which is attended
by the President and Mrs. Hayes, to hear the kind of sermon preached
in their presence. But the walk through the city was itself a
sermon. I never knew all the glory of sunlight in this world until
then. The clear, calm sky seemed hundreds of miles high. Over
dome and mansion, river and park, streets and squares, the sunlight
shed what appeared to my European eyes an unearthly beauty. I
lingered in it until I was late at church. The platform occupied
by preachers in America more resembles an altar than our pulpit,
and the freedom of action and grace in speaking I thought greater
than among us. The sermon before the President was addressed to
young men, and was remarkably wise, practical, definite, and in-
spiring ; but the transition of tone was, at times, more abrupt and less
artistic than in other eminent American preachers whom . I had the
pleasure to hear.

Niagara Falls I saw by sunlight, electric light, and by moonlight,
without thinking much of them — until walking on the American

1880. A STRANGER IN AMERICA. 69

side I came upon the Niagara Eiver, which I had never heard of.
Of course water must come from somewhere to feed the Falls — I
knew that ; but I had never learned from guide-books that its
coming was anything remarkable. When, however, I saw a mighty
mountain of turbulent water as wide as the eye could reach, a
thousand torrents rushing as it were from the clouds, splashing and
roaring down to the great Falls, I thought the idea of the Deluge
must have begun there. No aspect of nature ever gave me such a
sense of power and terror. I feared to remain where I stood. The
frightful waters seemed alive. When I went back to the Canadian
side I thought as much of Niagara as anyone — had I seen the Duke
of Argyll's recent published ' Impressions' of them (he also discovered
the Niagara Rapids) before I went there, I should have approached
Niagara Falls with feelings very different from those with which I
first saw them.

In the Guildhall, London, I have seen City orators point their
merchant audience to the statues of great men there, and appeal to
the historic glories of the country. Such an audience would respond
as though they had some interest in the appeal — feeling, however,
that these things more concerned the ' great families ' who held the
country, whom they make rich by their industry, who looked down
upon them as buttermen or tallow-chandlers. No orator addressing
the common people employs these historic appeals to them. The
working class who are enlisted in the army, flogged and sent out to be
shot, that their fathers may find their way to the poorhouse, under
their hereditary rulers, are not so sensible of the glory of the country.
The working men, as a rule, have no substantial interest in the
national glory : I mean those of them whose lot it is to supplicate
for work, and who have to establish trades' unions to obtain adequate
payment for it. Yet I well know that England has things to be
proud of which America cannot rival.1 At the same time we have,
as Lord Beaconsfield discerned, ' Two Nations ' living side by side in
this land. What is wanted is that they shall be one in equity of means,
knowledge, and pride. Nothing surprised me more than to see the
parks of New York, abutting Broadway, without a fence around the
greensward. A million unresting feet passed by them, and none
trampled on the delicate grass — while, in England, Board Schools
put up a prison wall around them, so that poor children cannot see a
flower girl go by in the streets ; and the back windows of the houses
of mechanics in Lambeth remain blocked up, whereby no inmate can
look on a green tree in the Palace grounds. In Florence, in
Northampton, where the Holyoke mountain2 looks on the ever-

1 Americans are not lacking in generous admissions herein, as any one may see
in William Winter's Trip to England. The reader must go far to find more
graceful pages of appreciation of the historic, civic, and scenic beauties of this
country.

- In an historic churchyard at the bottom of the mmmtain is the grave of Mary

70 '/7//; X1SETEEXTH CENTURY. July

winding Connecticut River, as elsewhere, there are thousands of
mansions to be seen without a rail around their lawns. Acres of
plantations lie unenclosed between the beautiful houses, where a
crowd of wanderers might rest unchallenged, and watch mountain,
river, and sky. In England if an indigent wanderer sat down on
house-ground or wayside, the probability is a policeman .would come
and look at him — the farmer would come and demand what he wanted,
and the relieving officer would suggest to him that he had better
pass on to his own parish. In England the whole duty of man,
as set down in the workman's catechism, is to find out upon how
little he can live. In America the workman sets himself to find
out how much he ought to have to live upon, equitably compared
with what falls to other classes. He does not see exactly how to
get it when he has found out the amount. Co-operative equity alone
can show him that. No doubt workmen are better off in any civi-
lised country than workmen were one hundred or two hundred years
ago. So are the rich. The workmen whom I addressed in America
I counselled not to trouble about comparisons as to their condition,
but to remember that there is but one rule for rich and poor, work-
men and employer — namely, that each should be free to get all he
honestly can. A wholesome distinction of America is that industry
alone is universally honourable there, and has good chances. There are
no common people there, in the English sense. When speaking in
the Cooper Institute, New York, I was reminded that the audience
would resent being so addressed.3 Every man in America feels as
though he owns the country, because the charm of recognised
equality and the golden chances of ownership have entered his mind.
He is proud of the statues and the public buildings. The great
rivers, the trackless prairies, the regal mountains, all seem his. Even
the steep kerb-stones of New York and Boston, which brought me
daily distress, I was asked to admire — for some reason yet unknown to
me. In England nobody says to the visitor or foreigner when he first
meets him, What do you think of England ? The people do not
feel that they own the country, or have responsible control over it.
The country is managed by somebody else. Not even Members of
Parliament know when base treaties are made in the nation's name,
and dishonouring wars are entered into, which the lives and earnings
of their constituents may be confiscated to sustain. All that our repre-
sentatives can tell us is that that is an affair of the Crown. In

Pynchon, the wife of Elizur Holyoke, the early English settler, whose name the
mountain bears. Among the commonly feeble epitaphs of churchyards hers is re-
markable for its grace and vigour. It says :

She who lies here was, while she stood,
A very glory of womanhood.

* The Rev. R. Heber Newton said to me, « Remember, Mr. Holyoake, we have no
" common people " in America. We may have a few uncommon ones.'

1880. A STRANGER IN AMERICA. 71

America there is no Crown, and the people are kings and they know
it. I had not landed on the American shores an hour, before I be-
came aware that I was in a new nation, animated by a new life which
I had never seen. I was three days in the train going from Ottawa
to Chicago. It was my custom to spend a part of every day in the
cosy smoking saloon of the car, with its red velvet seats, and bright
spacious-mouthed braziers for receiving lights or ashes. My object
was to study in detail the strange passengers who joined us. Being
on the railway there practically but one class and one fare,
the gentleman and the workman, the lady and the mechanic's wife,
sit together without hesitation or diffidence. A sturdy unspeaking
man, who seemed to be a mechanic, was generally in the smoking
saloon. He never spoke, except to say ' Would I take his seat ? '
when he thought I was incommoded by a particularly fat passenger
by my side. ' It will suit me quite as well to smoke outside the
car,' he would civilly say, if I objected to putting him to incon-
venience. On the morning of the third day, he and I only were
sitting together. Wishing to find out whether he could or would
talk, I asked him, * How far are we from Chicago ? ' He looked at me
with sudden amazement. Black stubbly hair covered his face (which
had been unshaven for days, an unusual thing with Americans). At
my question every stubble seemed to start up as he laid his
hand on my knee, and said, ' Have you never been to Chicago ? '
' How could I ? ' I replied ; ' I am an Englishman travelling
from London in order to see it.' All at once, looking at me with
pity and commiseration, his little deep black eyes glistening like
glow-worms in the night of his dark face, he exclaimed, laying
his hand now on my shoulder, that his words might be more expres-
sive, ' Sir, Chicago is the boss city of the Universe,' evidently
thinking that I might make some futile attempt to compare it with
some city of this world. Afterwards I learned that this electric
admirer of Chicago was the brakesman of the train. Yet this
man, who had probably driven into the fiery city a thousand times,
had as much delight in it, and as much pride in it, as though he
were the owner of it. I soon found that it would not be a
wise thing for a stranger to be of a different opinion. As I rode into
Chicago three hours later, I thought I had never seen such a lumber-
ing, dingy, ramshackle, crowded, tumultuous, boisterous outside of a
city before. When asked my opinion again, amid the roar of cars
and hurricane of every kind of wagons and vehicles, I framed one
from which I never departed, namely, that considering the short time
in which Chicago had been built and rebuilt, it was the most miracu-
lous city I had ever seen. This opinion was silent on many details,
and the acumen of an American questioner is not easily foiled, but
as I admitted something ' miraculous ' about the place my opinion
was tolerated, as fulfilling essential conditions. And when I came

72 THE A/.YATA'AWT/Y CENTURY. July

to see Chicago's wondrous streets of business, its hotels in which
populations of twenty ordinary English parishes would be lost, its
splendid avenues, its fine, noble, far-spreading parks, and Lake
Michigan stretching out like a sea on the city borders — it did seem
to me a ' miraculous city,' quite apart from the happy days I spent
there, as the guest of Mr. Charlton, of the Chicago and Alton railway,
who travelled with me through Canada and half America, that I
might see, without cost or care, the civic and natural marvels of the
two countries.

The first hour I was in New York, one, in friendly care for my
reputation as a stranger, said to me, ' Mind, if you get run over, do
not complain — if you can articulate — as it will go against you on the
inquest. In America we run over anybody in the way, and if you
are knocked down it will be considered your fault.' In America
self-help (honest and sometimes dishonest) is a characteristic. In
Germany apprentices were required to travel to acquire different
modes of working. If young Englishmen could be sent a couple of
years to take part in American business, they would come back much
improved. An eminent English professor, whom I lately asked
whether it would not do this country good if we could get our peers
to emigrate, answered, 'No doubt, if you could smarten some of
them up a bit first.' Everywhere in America you hear the injunc-
tion ' Hold on ! ' In every vessel and car there are means provided
for doing it : for unless a man falls upon his feet — if he does fall
— he finds people too busy to stop and pick him up. The nation
is in commotion. Life in America is a battle and a march. Free-
dom has set the race on fire — freedom, with the prospect of property.
Americans are a nation of men who have their own way, and do
very well with it. It is the only country where men are men in
this sense, and the unusualness of the liberty bewilders many, who
do wrong things in order to be sure they are free to do something.
This error is mostly made by new-comers, to whom freedom is a
novelty ; and it is only by trying eccentricity that they can test the
unwonted sense of their power of self-disposal. But as liberty grows
into a habit, one by one the experimenters become conscious of the
duty of not betraying the precious possession, by making it repulsive.
Perhaps self-assertion seems a little in excess of international require-
ments. Many « citizens ' give a stranger the impression that they do
think themselves equal to their superiors, and superior to their equals ;
yet all of them are manlier than they would be through the am-
bition of each to be equals of anybody else.

The effect of American inspiration on Englishmen was strikingly
evident. I met workmen in many cities whom I had known in
former years in England. They were no longer the same men.
Here their employers seldom or never spoke to them,5 and the work-

* Long years ago, when I first knew Rochdale, workmen at Mr. Bright's mills

1880. A STRANGER IN AMERICA. 73

men were rather glad, as they feared the communication would relate
to a reduction of wages. They thought it hardly prudent to look a
foreman or overseer in the face. Masters are more genial, as a rule,
in these days ; but in the days when last I visited these workmen at
their homes in Lancashire, it never entered into their heads to intro-
duce me to their employers. But when I met them in America they
instantly proposed to introduce me to the mayor of the city. This
surprised me very much ; for when they were in England they could
not have introduced me to the relieving-officer of their parish, with any
advantage to me, had I needed to know him. These men were still
workmen, and they did introduce me to the mayor as ' a friend of
theirs ; ' and in an easy, confident manner, as one gentleman would
speak to another, they said, ' they should be obliged if he would show
me the civic features of the city.' The mayor would do so, order
his carriage, and with the most pleasant courtesy take me to every
place of interest. To this hour I do not know whom I wondered at
most — the men or the mayor. In some cases the mayor was him-
self a manufacturer, and it was a pleasure to see that the men were
as proud of the mayor as they were of the city.

One day a letter came, inviting me to Chautauqua Lake, saying
that if I would allow it to be said that I would come to a Conven-
tion of Liberals there, many other persons would go there to meet
me, and then I should see everybody at once. I answered that it was
exactly what I wanted — ' to see everybody at once.' In England we
think a good deal of having to go ten miles into the country to hold
a public meeting ; but knowing Americans were more enterprising, I
expected I should have to go seventeen miles there. When the day
arrived and I asked for a ticket for Chautauqua Lake, the clerk,
looking at the money I put down, said, 'Do you know you are seven
hundred miles from that place ? ' Having engaged to speak in the
' Parker Memorial Hall ' to the Twenty-eighth Congregational Church
of Boston the next Sunday, there was no escape from a journey of four-
teen hundred miles in the meantime, and I made it. At Chautauqua
was a sight I had never seen. A hall, looking out on to the great lake,
as full of amateur philosophers and philosopheresses — all with their
heads full of schemes. There were at least a hundred persons, each with
an armful or reticule-full of first principles, ready written out, for the
government of mankind in general. It was clear to me that the
Government at Washington will never be in the difficulty we were
when Lord Hampton had only ten minutes in which to draw up for us
a new Constitution — our Cabinet not having one on hand. If Presi-
dent Hayes is ever in want of a policy, he will find a good choice at

used to tell me with pride, that he was not like other employers. He not only in-
quired about them, but of them ; and to this day they will stop him in the mill yard
and ask his advice in personal difficulties, when they are sure of willing and friendly
counsel from him.

7-1 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

Chautauqua Lake. My ancient friend Louis Masquerier had the
most systematic scheme there of all of them. I knew it well, for the
volume explaining it was dedicated to me. He had mapped out the
whole globe into small Homestead parallelograms. An ingenious
fri.-nd (Dr. Hollick) had kindly completed the scheme for him one
day when it was breaking down. He pointed out to Masquerier that
there was a little hitch at the poles — where the meridian lines con-
verge, which rendered perfect squares difficult to arrange there.
This was quite unforeseen by the Homestead artificer. The system
could not give way, that was clear ; and nature was obstinate at the
poles. So it was suggested that Masquerier should set apart the
spaces at the poles to be planted with myrtle, sweet-briar, roses, and
other aromatic plants, which might serve to diffuse a sweet scent
over the Homesteads otherwise covering the globe. The inventor
adopted the compromise, and thus the difficulty was, as Paley says,
' gotten over ; ' and if Arctic explorers in the future should be sur-
prised at finding a fragrant garden at the North Pole, they will know
how it came there. In Great Britain, where a few gentlemen
consider it their province to make religion, politics, and morality for
the people, it is counted ridiculous presumption that common
persons should attempt to form opinions upon these subjects for
themselves. I know the danger to progress brought about by those
whom Colonel Ingersoll happily calls its 'Fool Friends.' Never-
theless, to me this humble and venturous activity of thought at
Chautauqua was a welcome sight. Eccentricity is better than the
deadness of mind. Out of the crude form of an idea the perfect
idea comes in time. From a boy I have been myself of Butler's
opinion that —

Reforming schemes are none of mine,
To mend the world 's a great design,
Like he who toils in little boat
To tug to him the ship afloat.

Nevertheless, since I am in the ship as much as others, and have to
swim or sink with it, I am at least concerned to know on what
principles, and to what port, it is being steered ; and those are mere
ballast who do not try to find as much out. Dr. Erasmus Darwin's
definition of a fool was ' one who never tried an experiment.' In this
sense there is hardly a fool in America — while the same sort of per-
sons block up the streets in England — newspapers of note are
published to encourage them to persevere in their imbecility, and
they have the largest representation in Parliament of any class in
the kingdom. Everybody knows that no worse misfortune can
happen to a man here than to have a new idea ; while in America a
man is not thought much of if he has not one on hand.

Yet a visitor soon sees that everything is not perfect in America,
and its thinkers and statesmen know it as well as we do. But

1880. A STRANGER 7iY AMERICA. 75

they cannot improve everything ' right away.' We do not do that
in England. In America I heard men praised as ' level-headed,'
without any regard to their being moral-headed. I heard men called
4 smart ' who were simply rascals. Then I remembered that we had
judges who gave a few months' imprisonment to a bank director who
had plundered a thousand families, and five years' penal servitude to
a man who had merely struck a lord. In Chicago you can get a cup
of good coffee without chicory at Eace's served on a marble table, with
cup and saucer not chipped, and a clean serviette, for five cents. Yet
you have to pay anywhere for having your shoes blacked 400 per cent,
more than in London. The Government there will give you 160
acres of land, with trees upon it enough to build a small navy ; and
they charged me three shillings in Chicago for a light walking-stick
which could be had in London for sixpence. All sorts of things cheap
in England are indescribably dear in America. Protection must be
a good thing for somebody : if the people like it, it is no business
of ours. We have, I remembered, something very much like it at
home. We are a nation of shopkeepers, and the shopkeeper's interest
is to have customers ; yet until lately we taxed every purchaser who
came into a town. If he walked in, which meant that he was poor
and not likely to buy anything, the turnpike was free to him ; but, if
he came on horseback, which implied that he had money in his
pocket, we taxed his horse ; and if he came in a carriage, which im-
plied possession of still larger purchasing power, we taxed every wheel
of his carriage to encourage him to keep away. One day I said, that
to this hour, our Chancellor of the Exchequer taxes every person who
travels by railway, every workman going to offer his labour, every
employer seeking hands, every merchant who travels to buy or sell :
in an industrial country we tax every man who moves about in our
trains. Englishmen, who had been out of this country twenty years,
could not believe this. When they found that I was the Chairman of a
Committee who had yet to agitate for free trade in locomotion in
England, they were humiliated and ashamed that England had still
to put up with the incredible impost. Many things I had heard
spoken of as absurd among Uncle Sam's people, seemed to me less so
when I saw the conditions which have begotten their unusualness.
Here we regard America as the eccentric seed-land of Spiritism ; but
when I met the Prairie Schooners,7 travelling into the lone plains of
Kansas, I could understand that a solitary settler there would be very
glad to have a spirit or two in his lone log-house. Where no doctors
can be had, the itinerant medicine-vendor is a welcome visitor, and, pro-
viding his drugs are harmless, imagination effects a cure — imagination
is the angel of the mind there. We are apt to think that youths and
maidens are too self-sufficient in their manners in those parts. They

7 A long, rickety wagon drawn generally by one horse, carrying the emigrant,
his family and furniture, in search of a new settlement.

76 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

could not exist at all in those parts, pave for those qualities. We
regard railways as being recklessly constructed — but a railroad of any
kind is a mercy if it puts remote settlers in communication with a
city somehow. If a bridge gives way, like that on the Tay lately
among us, fewer lives are lost there than would be worn out by walking
and dragging produce over unbridged distances, and often going with-
out needful things for the household, because they could not be got.

In the United States there are newspapers of as great integrity,
judges as pure, and members of Parliament as clean-handed as in Eng-
land; but the public indignation at finding it otherwise is nothing like
so great there as here. John Stuart Mill said that the working classes
of all countries lied — it being the vice of the slave caste — but English
working men alone were ashamed of lying, and I was proud to find
that my countrymen of this class have not lost this latent attribute of
manliness ; and I would rather they were known for the quality of
speaking the truth, though the devil was looking them square in the
face, than see them possess any repute for riches, or smartness, without
it. Far be it from me to suggest that Americans, as a rule, do not
possess the capacity of truth, but in trade they do not strike you as
exercising the talent with the same success that they show in many
other ways. However, there is a certain kind of candour continually
manifested, which has at least a negative merit. If a ' smart '
American does a crooked thing, he does not pretend that it is straight.
When I asked what was understood to be the difference between a
republican and a democrat, I was answered by one of those persons,
too wise and too pure to be of any use in this world, who profess to
be of no party — none being good enough for them ; he said, ; Repub-
licans and democrats profess different things, but they both do the
same.' * Your answer,' I replied, * comes very near the margin of
giving me information. What are the different things,' I asked,
* which they do profess ? ' The answer was, ' The republicans profess to
be honest, but the democrats do not even profess that.' My sympathies,
I intimated, lay therefore with the republicans, since they who admit
they know what they ought to be, probably incline to it. However
impetuous Americans may be, they have one great grace of patience :
they listen like gentlemen. An American audience, anywhere gathered
together, make the most courteous listeners in the world. If a
speaker has only the gift of making a fool of himself, nowhere has he
so complete an opportunity of doing it. If he has the good fortune
to be but moderately interesting, and obviously tries in some humble
way, natural to him, to add to their information, they come to him
afterwards and congratulate him with Parisian courtesy. At Wash-
ington, where I spoke at the request of General Mussey and Major
Ford, and in Cornell University at Ithaca, where, at the request of
the Acting President Professor, W. C. Russell, I addressed the
Students Moralities of Co-operative Commerce, there were gentlemen

1880. A STRANGER IN AMERICA. 77

and ladies present who knew more of everything than I did about
anything ; yet they conveyed to me their impression that I had in
some way added to their information. Some political colleagues of
mine have gone to America. In this country they had a bad time of
it. In the opinion of most official persons of their day, they ought
to have been in prison ; and some narrowly escaped it. In America
they ultimately obtained State employment, which here they never
would have obtained to their latest day. Yet their letters home
were so disparaging of America, as to encourage all defamers of its
people and institutions. This incited me to look for every feature of
discontent. What I saw to the contrary I did not look for — but
could not overlook when it came upon me. John Stuart Mill I knew
was at one time ruined by repudiators in America, but that did not lead
him to condemn that system of freedom which must lead to public
honour coming into permanent ascendency. For myself, I am suffici-
ently a Comtist to think that humanity is greater and sounder than
any special men ; and believe that great conditions of freedom and self-
action can alone render possible general progress. Great evils in
American public life, from which we are free in England, have been
so dwelt upon here, that the majority of working men will be as much
surprised as I was, to find that American life has in it elements of
progress which we in England lack. Still I saw there were spots in
the great sun. The certainty of an earthquake every four years in
England would not more distress us or divert the current of business,
than the American system of having 100,000 office-holders, liable to
displacement every Presidential election. Each placeman has, I
' calculate,' at least nine friends who watch and work to keep him
where he is. Then there are 100,000 more persons, candidates for
the offices to be vacated by those already in place. Each of these
aspirants has on the average as many personal friends who devote
themselves to getting him installed. So there are two millions of the
most active politicians in the country always battling for places —
not perhaps regardless altogether of principle : but subordinating the
assertion of principle to the command of places. The wonder is that
the progress made in America occurs at all. Colonel Eobert Ingersoll,
during the enchanted days when I was his guest in Washington, ex-
plained it all to me, and gave reasons for it with the humour and wit
for which he is unrivalled among public speakers among us : never-
theless I remain of the same opinion still. This system, although a
feature of republican administration, is quite distinct from repub-
lican principle, and has to be changed, though the duration of the
practice renders it as difficult to alter as it would be to change the
diet of a nation.

It would take too long now to recount half the droll instances in
which our cousins of the new world rise above and fall below our-
selves. Their habit of interviewing strangers is the most amusing

78 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

and useful institution conceivable. I have personal knowledge, and
others more than myself, of visitors to England of whom the public
never hear. Many would be glad to call upon them and show them
civility or give them thanks for services they have rendered to public
progress, elsewhere, in one form or other. But the general public
never know of their presence. These sojourners among us possess
( u rious, often valuable knowledge, and no journalists ask them any
questions, or announce, or describe them, or inform the town where
they are to be found. Every newspaper reader in the land might
be the richer in ideas for their visit, but they pass away with their
unknown wealth of experience, of which he might have partaken.
There is no appointment on the press to be more coveted than that
of being an interviewer to a great journal. The Art of Inter-
viewing is not yet developed and systematised as it might be. Were
I asked * What is the beginning of wisdom?'! should answer — 'It
is the art of asking questions.' The world has had but one master
of the art, and Socrates has had no successor. With foolish questioning
most persons are familiar — wise questioning is a neglected study.
The first interviewer who did me the honour to call upon me at the
Hoffman House in New York, represented a democratic paper of ac-
knowledged position : being a stranger to the operation of interview-
ing, I first interviewed the interviewer, and put to him more questions
than he put to me. When I came to read his report all my part in
the proceedings recounted was left out. He no doubt knew best what
would interest the readers of the journal he represented. I told him
that an English gentleman of political repute was interested in an
American enterprise, and had asked me to go to North Alabama with
a view to judge of its fitness for certain emigrants. I put the
question to him whether in the South generally it mattered what an
emigrant's political views were, if he was personally an addition to the
industrial force and property of the place, observing incidentally that
I saw somebody had just shot a doctor through the back, who had
decided views about something. His answer has never passed from
my memory. It was this : — ' Well, if a man will make his opinions
prominent, what can he expect ? ' I answered, that might be rather
hard on me, since though I might not make my opinions ' prominent,'
they might be thought noticeable, and a censor with a Derringer
might not discriminate in my favour.8 This, however, did not deter
me from going South. The yellow fever lay in my way at Memphis,
and I did not feel'as though I wanted the yellow fever. I was content
with going near enough to it to fall in with people who had it, and

* We are not without experience somewhat of this kind in England. At Bolton,
when Sir Charles Dilke, M.P., was lecturing there on the ' Cost of the Crown,' a very
harmless subject, one of the royalists of the town hurled a brick through the win-
dow of the hall, intended for the speaker, which killed one of the audience. Sir
Charles was merely ' making his opinions prominent.'

1880. A STRANGER IN AMERICA. 79

who were fleeing from the infected city. No doubt the rapidity of
my chatter upon strange topics did confuse some interviewers. Now
and then I read a report of an interview, and did not know that it
related to ine until I read the title of it. One day I met a wandering
English gentleman, who had just read an interview with me, when he
exclaimed, ' My dear Holyoake ! how could you say that ? ' when I
answered, ' My dear Verdantson ! how could you suppose I ever did
say it ? ' When in remote cities I fell in with interviewers who were
quite unfamiliar with my ways of thought and speech, I tried the
experiment of saying exactly the opposite of what I meant. To my
delight next day I found it had got turned upside down in the writer's
mind, and came out exactly right. But I had to be careful with
whom I did this, for most interviewers were very shrewd and skilful,
and put me under great obligations for their rendering of what I said.9
If English press writers interviewed visitors from a country unfamiliar
to them, they would make as many misconceptions as are ever met
with in America. I have never known but two men, not Englishmen
— Mazzini and Mr. Gr. W. Smalley, the London correspondent of the
New York Tribune — who understood public affairs in England as we
understand them ourselves. Even Louis Blanc is hardly their equal,
though a rival in that rare art.

When leaving England I was asked by the Co-operative Guild of
London to ascertain in my travels in America what were the condi-
tions and opportunities of organising Co-operative Emigration. As
this was one of the applications of the co-operative principle meditated
by the Co-operators of 1830, and which has slept out of sight of this
generation, I received the request with glad surprise, and undertook
the commission.

Pricked by poverty and despair, great numbers of emigrant
families go out alone. With slender means and slenderer know-
ledge, they are the prey, at every stage, of speculators, agents, and
harpies. Many become penniless by the way, and never reach their
intended place. They hang about the large cities, and increase the
competition among workmen already too many there. Unwelcome,
and unable to obtain work, they become a new burden on reluctant
and overburdened local charity, and their lot is as deplorable as that
from which they have fled. Those who hold out until they reach
the land, ignorant of all local facts of soil, climate, or malaria,
commence ' to fight the wilderness ' — a mighty, tongueless, obdurate,
mysterious adversary, who gives you opulence if you conquer him —

9 The Kansas City Tim es published an ' Interview with Gen. George Holyoake.'
This was discerning courtesy. Down there ' difficulties ' had often occurred, and a
' general ' being supposed to have pistollic acquirements, I was at once put upon a
level with any emergency. It was in Kansas City, where a Judge trying a murder
case said to those present — ' Gentlemen, the court wishes you would let somebody
die a natural death down here, if only to show strangers what an excellent climate
we Lave.'

80 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

hut a grave if he conquers you. What silence and solitude, what
friendlessness and desolation, the first years bring ! What distance
from aid in sickness, what hardship if their stores are scant — what
toil through pathless woods and swollen creeks to carry stock to
market and bring back household goods 1 Loss of civilised inter-
course, familiarity with danger, the determined persistence, the iron
will, the animal struggle of the settler's life, half aniinalises him
also. No wonder we find the victor rich and rugged. The wonder
is that refinement is as common in America as it is. Stout-hearted
emigrants do succeed by themselves, and achieve marvellous prosperity.
Nor would I discourage any from making the attempt. To mitigate
the difficulties by devices of co-operative foresight is a work of mercy
and morality. It is not the object of the London Guild to incite
emigration, nor determine its destination; but to enable any who
want to emigrate to form an intelligent decision, and to aid them to
carry it out with the greatest chances of personal and moral advan-
tage. In New York I found there had lately been formed a
' Co-operative Colony Aid Association ' (represented by the Worker,
published by Mrs. Elizabeth Thompson, and edited by the Rev. K.
Heber Newton), of which Mr. E. E. Barnum, Dr. Felix Adler, Mr.
E. V. Smalley, the Rev. Dr. Rylance, the Rev. Dr. Charles F. Deems,
Mr. Courtland Palmer, Joseph Seligman, the Hon. John Wheeler,
and others were promoters. Frcm inquiries in the city (which I, a
stranger, thought it right to make) I found that these were persons
whose names gave the society prestige. Mrs. Thompson was re-
garded in the States, as the Baroness Burdett-Coutts is in England,
for her many discerning acts of munificence. To them I was
indebted for the opportunity of addressing a remarkable audience
in the Cooper Institute, New York — an audience which included
journalists, authors, and thinkers on social questions, State Social-
ists, and Communists — an audience which only could be assem-
bled in New York. The Rev. Dr. Robert Collyer presided. The
object of the Colony Aid Association is to select and purchase
land, devise the general arrangements of park, co-operative store,
and school-house ; erect simple dwellings, and provide food for the
colonists until crops accrue ; arrange for the conveyance of emigrants,
from whatever land they come, to their intended settlement — pro-
viding them with escort and personal direction until they have
mastered the conditions of their new life. The promoters take only
a moderate interest upon the capital employed, affording these
facilities of colonial life at cost price; acting themselves on the
entirely wholesome rule of keeping their proceedings clear alike of
profit and charity. There is no reason why emigration should not
be as pleasant as an excursion, and competence rendered secure to all
emigrants of industry, honesty, and common sense. It soon appeared
to me that land-selling was a staple trade in America and Canada —

1880. A STRANGER IN AMERICA. 81

that no person knew the whole of either country. From visits and
letters I received from land-holders and agents, I doubted not that
there were many honest among them. But unless you had much spare
time for inquiry, and were fortunate in being near those who knew
them, it would be difficult to make out which the honest were.
Evidently, what was wanted was complete and trustworthy informa-
tion, which everybody must know to be such. There was but one
source whence this information could issue, and it seemed a duty to
solicit it there. If information of general utility was to be obtained,
it was obviously becoming in me, as an Englishman, first to ask it of
the Canadian Government, and for this reason I went over to Canada.
Canaan was nothing to Canada. Milk and honey are very well,
but Canada has cream and peaches, grapes and wine. I went
gathering grapes in Hamilton by moonlight — their flavour was
excellent, and bunches abundant beyond imagination. The mayor of
Hamilton did me the honour of showing me the fruits of Canada,
on exhibition in a great fair then being held. Fruit-painters in
water-colours should go to Canada. Hues so new, various, and
brilliant have never been seen in an English exhibition of painters in
water-colours. Nor was their beauty deceptive, for I was permitted
to taste the fruit, when I found that its delicate hue was but an
' outward sign of its inward ' richness of flavour. It was unexpected
to find the interior of the Town Hall of Hamilton imposing with
grace of design, rich with the wood-carver's art, relieved by opulence
of space and convenience of arrangement far exceeding anything
observed in the Parliament Houses of Ottawa or of Washington.
The Parliamentary buildings of Canada, like those of the capital of
Washington, are worthy of the great countries in which they stand ;
but were I a subject of the Dominion, or a citizen of the United
States, I would go without one dinner a year in order to subscribe to
a fund for paying wood-carvers to impart to the debating chambers a
majestic sense of national durability associated with splendour of art.
The State House of Washington and the Library of the Parliament
of Ottawa, have rooms possessing qualities which are not exceeded in
London by any devoted to similar purposes, f? The dining-room of
the Hotel Brunswick in Madison Square, New York, has a reflected
beauty derived from its bright and verdant surroundings; with
which its interior is coherent. But the Windsor Hotel of Montreal
impressed me more than any other I saw. The entrance-hall, with
its vast and graceful dome, gave a sense of space and dignity which
the hotels of Chicago and Saratoga, enormous as they are, lacked.
The stormy lake of Ontario, its thousand islands, and its furious
rapids, extending four hundred miles, with the American and Canadian
shores on either hand, gave me an idea of the^ scenic glory of
Canada, utterly at variance with the insipid rigour and frost-bound
gloom which I had associated with the country. A visitor from
VOL. VIII.— No. 41. tt

82 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

America does not travel thirty miles into Canada without feeling
that the shadow of the Crown is there. Though there was manifestly
less social liberty among the people, the civic and political indepen-
dence of the Canadian cities seemed to me to equal that of the
United States. The abounding courtesy of the press, and the
cultivated charm of expression by the Spectator of Hamilton and
the Globe of Toronto, were equal to anything I observed anywhere.
And not less were the instances of private and official courtesy of the
country.

At Ottawa I had the honour of an interview with the Premier,
Sir John Macdonald, at his private residence. The Premier of Canada
had the repute, I knew, of bearing a striking likeness to the late
Premier of England ; but I was not prepared to find the resemblance
so remarkable. Excepting that Sir John is less in stature than Lord
Beaconsfield, persons who saw them apart might mistake one for the
other. On presenting a letter from Mr. Witton (of Hamilton, a
former member of the Canadian Parliament), myself and Mr. Charlton
were admitted to an audience with Sir John, whom I found a gentleman
of frank and courtly manners, who permitted me to believe that he
would take into consideration the proposal I made to him, that the
Government of Canada should issue a blue-book upon the emigrant
conditions of the entire Dominion, similar to those formerly given to
us in England by Lord Clarendon ' On the Condition of the Labouring
Classes abroad,' furnishing details of the prospects of employment,
settlement, education, tenure of land, climatic conditions, and the
purchasing power of money. Sir John kindly undertook to receive
from me, as soon as I should be able to draw it up, a scheme of
particulars, similar to that which I prepared some years ago, at the
request of Lord Clarendon. A speech of Lord Beaconsfield's was at
that time much discussed by the American and Canadian press, as
Sir John Macdonald had recently been on a visit to Lord Beaconsfield.
Sir John explained to me in conversation that in the London reports
of Lord Beaconsfield's speech, there appeared the mistake of con-
verting * wages of sixteen dollars per month ' into * wages of sixteen
shillings per day,' and of describing emigration ' west of the State ' as
emigration from the ' Western States.' This enabled me to point out
to Sir John that if these misapprehensions could arise in the mind of
one so acute as Lord Beaconsfield, as to information given by an
authority so eminent and exact as Sir John himself, it showed how
great was the need which the English public must feel of accurate
and official information upon facts, with which they were necessarily
unfamiliar. Afterwards I had the pleasure of dining with the
Minister of Agriculture, the Hon. John Henry Pope. Both myself
and my friend Mr. Charlton, who was also a guest, were struck with
the Cobbett-like vigour of statement which characterised Mr. Pope.
He explained the Canadian theory of protection as dispassionately as

1880. A STRANGER IN AMERICA. 83

Cobden would that of Free Trade. Mr. Pope had himself, I found,
caused to appear very valuable publications of great service to
emigrants. He admitted, however, that there might be advantage in
combining all the information in one book which would be universally
accessible, and known to be responsible. I was struck by one remark
of this minister worth repeating : — ' In Canada,' he said, ' we have
but one enemy — cold, and he is a steady, but manageable adversary,
for whose advent we can prepare and whose time of departure we
know. While in America, malaria, ague, fluctuation of temperature
are intermittent. Science and sanitary prevision will, in time,
exterminate some dangers, while watchfulness will always be needed
in regard to others.'

Subsequently I thought it my duty to make a similar proposal to
the Government of Washington. Colonel Kobert Ingersoll introduced
me to Mr. Evarts, the Secretary of State, who with the courtesy I
had heard ascribed to him, gave immediate attention to the subject.
Looking at me with his wise penetrating eyes, he said, ' You know,
Mr. Holyoake, the difficulty the Federal Government would have in
obtaining the collective information you wish.' Then he stated the
difficulties with precision, showing that he instantly comprehended
the scope of the proposed red-book ; without at all suggesting that
the difficulties were obstacles. So far as I could observe, an American
statesman, of any quality, does not believe in ' obstacles ' to any
measure of public utility. I was aware that the Federal Government
had no power to obtain from the different States reports of the kind
required, but Mr. Evarts admitted that if he were to ask the Gover-
nor of each State to furnish him with the information necessary for
emigrant use, with a view to include it in an official account of the
emigrant features of all the States, he would no doubt receive it. I
undertook, on my return to England, to forward to him, after con-
sulting with the Co-operative Guild, a scheme of the kind of red-book
required. Mr. Evarts permitted me to observe that many persons,
as he must well know, come to America and profess themselves
dissatisfied. They find many things better than they could have
hoped to find them, but since they were not what they expected, they
were never reconciled. The remedy was to provide real information
of the main things they would find. Then they would come intelli-
gently if they came at all, and stay contented. General Mussey did me
the favour of taking me to the White House, and introducing me to
the President and Mrs. Hayes, where I had the opportunity also of
meeting General Sherman, who readily conversed upon the subject of
my visit, and made many observations very instructive to me. Mrs.
Hayes is a very interesting lady, of engaging ways and remarkable
animation of expression, quite free from excitement. She had been
in Kansas with the President a few days before, and kindly remarked
as something I should be glad to hear, that she found on the day tbev

84 THE MXETEEXTII CENTURY. July

left tlii-.t every coloured person who had arrived therefrom the South
was in some place of employment. The President had a bright, frank
manner ; and he listened with such a grace of patience to the nature
and reason of the request I had made to Mr. Evarts, and which I
asked him to sanction, if he approved of it, that I began to think
that my pleasure at seeing him would end with my telling my story.
He had, however, only taken time to hear entirely to what it amounted,
when he explained his view of it with a sagacity and completeness
and a width of illustration which surprised me. He described to me
the different qualities of the various nationalities of emigrants in the
States, expressing — what I had never heard anyone do before — a very
high opinion of the Welsh, whose good sense and success as colonists
had come under his observation. Favourable opinions were expressed
by leading journals in America upon the suggestion above described.
To some it seemed of such obvious utility that wonder was felt that
it had never been made before. If its public usefulness continues
apparent after due consideration, no doubt a book of the nature in
question will be issued.

There is no law in America which permits co-operation to be com-
menced in the humble, unaided way in which it has arisen in
England. When I pointed this out to the gentlemen of the Colony
Aid Association, the remark was made, * Then we will get a law for
the purpose.' In England, working men requiring an improvement
in the law have thought themselves fortunate in living till the day
when a Member of Parliament could be induced to put a question
on the subject ; and the passing of a Bill has been an expectation
inherited by their children, and not always realised in their time.
Emerson has related that when it was found that the pensions
awarded to soldiers disabled in the war, or to the families of those
who were killed, fell into the hands of unscrupulous ' claim agents,1
a private policeman in New York conceived the plan of a new law
which would enable every person entitled to the money to surely
receive it. Obtaining leave of absence he went to Washington, and
obtained, on his own representation, the passing of two Acts which
effected this reform. I found the policeman to be an old friend of
mine, Mr. George S. McWatters, whom I found now to be an officer
of Customs in New York. An instance of this kind is unknown in
this country. Emerson remarks that, ' having freedom in America,
this accessibility to legislators, and promptitude of redressing wrong,
are the means by which it is sustained and extended.'

Before leaving Washington, I thought it my duty to call at the
British Embassy, and communicate to His Excellency Sir Edward
Thornton particulars of the request I had made to the Governments
of Canada and of the United States ; since if His Excellency should
be able to approve of the object thereof, it would be an important
recommendation of it. I pointed out to Sir Edward that ' though

1880. A STRANGER IN AMERICA. 85

public documents were issued by the departments of both Governments,
the classes most needing them knew neither how to collect or col-
late them, and reports of interested agents could not be wholly trusted ;
while a Government will not lie, nor exaggerate, nor, but rarely,
conceal the truth. Since the British Government do not discourage
emigration, and cannot prevent it, itis better that our poor fellow-coun-
trymen should be put in possession of information which will enable
them to go out with their eyes open, instead of going out, as hitherto,
with their eyes mostly shut.' I ought to add here that the Canadian
Minister of Agriculture has sent me several valuable works issued in
the Dominion, and that the American Government have presented me
with many works of a like nature, and upwards of five hundred large
maps of considerable value, all of which I have placed at the disposal
of the Guild of Co-operation in London, for dispersion amid centres of
working men, with whom the founder of the Guild, Mr. Hodgson
Pratt, is in communication.

Because I admired many things in America, I did not learn to
undervalue my own country, but came back thinking more highly of
it on many accounts than I did before. Not a word escaped me
which disparaged it. In Canada, as well as in America, I heard ex-
pressed the oddest ideas imaginable of the decadence of England. I
always answered that John Bull was as sure-footed, if not quite so
nimble, as Brother Jonathan : that England would always hold up
its wilful head ; and should the worse come to be very bad, Uncle
Sam would superannuate England, and apportion it an annuity to
enable it to live comfortably ; doing this out of regard to the services
John Bull did to his ancestors long ago, and for the goodwill the
English people have shown Uncle Sam in their lucid intervals. As
yet, I added, England has inexhaustible energies of its own. But
lately it had Cobden with his passion for international prosperity ;
and John Stuart Mill with his passion for truth ; it has still Bright
with his passion for justice ; Gladstone with his passion for con-
science ; and Lord Beaconsfield with his passion for — himself; and
even that is generating in the people a new passion for democratic
independence. The two worlds with one language will know how to
move with equal greatness side by side. Besides the inexhaustible
individuality and energy of Americans proper, the country is en-
riched by all the unrest and genius of Europe. I was not astonished
that America was ' big ' — I knew that before. What I was astonished
at was the inhabitants. Nature made the country ; it is freedom
which has made the people. I went there without prejudice, belonging
to that class which cannot afford to have prejudices. I went there
not to see something which I expected to see, but to see what there
was to be seen, what manner of people bestrode those mighty terri-
tories, and how they did it, and what they did it for ; in what spirit,
in what hope, and with what prospects. I never saw the human

86 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

mind at large before acting on its own account — unhampered by
prelate or king. Every error and every virtue strive there for mas-
tery, but humanity has the best of the conflict, and progress is upper-
most.

Co-operation, which substitutes evolution for revolution in
securing competence to labour, may have a great career in the New
World. IB America the Germans have intelligence; the French
brightness, the Welsh persistence, the Scotch that success which
comes to all men who know how to lie in wait to serve. The Irish
attract all sympathy to them by their humour of imagination and
boundless capacity of discontent. The English maintain their steady
purpose, and look with meditative, bovine eyes upon the novelties of
life around them, wearing out the map of a new path with looking
at it, before making up their mind to take it ; but the fertile and
adventurous American, when he condescends to give co-operation
attention, will devise new applications of the principle unforeseen
here. In America I received deputations from real State Socialists,
but did not expect to find that some of them were Englishmen.
But I knew them as belonging to that class of politicians at home
who were always expecting something to be done for them, and who
had not acquired the wholesome American instinct of doing some-
thing for themselves. Were State- workshops established in that
country, they would not have a single occupant in three months.
New prospects open so rapidly in America, and so many people go in
pursuit of them, that I met with men who had been in so many
places that they seemed to have forgotten where they were born. If
the bit of Paternal Government could be got into the mouth of an
American, it would drop out in a day — he opens his mouth so often
to give his opinion on things in general. The point which seemed
to be of most interest to American thinkers, was that feature of co-
operation which enables working men to acquire capital without
having any, to save without diminishing any comfort, to grow rich
by the accumulation of savings which they had never put by, through
intercepting profits by economy in distribution. Meditating self-
employment by associative gains, English co-operators do not com-
plain of employers who they think treat them unfairly, nor enter
into defiant negotiations, nor make abject supplications for increase
of wages ; they take steps to supersede unpleasant employers. With
steam transit ready for every man's service, with the boundless and
fruitful fields of Australia, America, and Canada open to them, the
policy of self-protection is to withdraw from those employers and
places with whom or where no profitable business can be done. To
dispute with capital which carries a sword is a needless and disastrous
warfare, even if victory should attend the murderous struggle. Even
the negro of the South has learned the wisdom of withdrawing himself.
He has learned to fight without striking a blow ; he leaves the masters

1880. A STRANGER IX AMERICA. 87

who menace him. If he turned upon them he would be cut down
without hesitation or mercy. By leaving them, their estates become
worthless, and he causes his value to be perceived without the loss of
a single life.

I learned in America two things never before apparent to me,
and to which I never heard a reference at home : First, that the
dispersion of unrequited workmen in Europe should be a primary
principle of popular amelioration, which would compel greater
changes in the quality of freedom and industrial equity than all the
speculations of philosophers, or the measures of contending politicians.
Secondly, that the child of every poor man should be educated for an
emigrant, and trained and imbued with a knowledge of unknown
countries, and inspired with the spirit of adventure therein ; and
that all education is half worthless — is mere mockery of the poor
child's fortune — which does not train him in physical strength, in the
art of ' fighting the wilderness,' and such mechanical knowledge as
shall conduce to success therein. I am for workmen being given
whatever education gentlemen have, and including in it such in-
struction as shall make a youth so much of a carpenter and a farmer
that he shall know how to clear ground, put up a log-house, and
understand land, crops, and the management of live stock. "Without
this knowledge, a mechanic, or clerk, or even an M.A. of Oxford, is
more helpless than a common farm-labourer, who cannot spell the
name of the poor-house which sent him out. We have in Europe
surplus population. Elsewhere lie rich and surplus acres. The new
need of progress is to transfer overcrowding workmen to the unoccu-
pied prairies. Parents shrink from the idea of their sons having to
leave their own country ; but they have to do this when they become
soldiers — the hateful agents of empire lately — carrying desolation and
death among people as honest as themselves, but more unfortunate.
Half the courage which leads young men to perish at Isandula, or on
the rocks of Afghanistan, would turn into a Paradise the wildest
wilderness in the world of which they would become the proprietors.
While honest men are doomed to linger anywhere in poverty and
precariousness, this world is not fit for a gentleman to live in.
Dives may have his purple and fine linen, and fare sumptuously every
day. I, for one, pray that the race of Dives may increase ; but what
I wish also is, that never more shall a Lazarus be found at his gates.

GrEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE.

88 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

STORY-TELLING.

THE most popular of English authors has given us an account of what
within his experience (and it was a large one) was the impression
among the public at large of the manner in which his work was done.
They pictured him, he says,

as a radiant personage whose whole time is devoted to idleness and pastime ;
who keeps a prolific mind in a sort of corn-sieve and lightly shakes a bushel of it
out sometimes in an odd half-hour after breakfast. It would amaze their
incredulity beyond all measure to be told that such elements as patience, study,
punctuality, determination, self-denial, training of mind and body, hours of appli-
cation and seclusion to produce what they read in seconds, enter in such a career
. . . correction and recorrection in the blotted manuscript ; consideration ; new
observations ; the patient massing of many reflections, experiences, and imaginings
for one minute purpose ; and the patient separation from the heap of all the frag-
ments that will unite to serve it — these would be unicorns and griffins to them —
fables altogether.

And as it was, a quarter of a century ago, when those words were
written, so it is now : the phrase of ' light literature ' as applied to
fiction having once been invented, has stuck with a vengeance to
those who profess it.

Yet to ' make the thing that is not as the thing that is ' is not
(though it may seem to be the same thing) so easy as lying.

Among a host of letters received in connection with an article
published in the Nineteenth Century in December last (' The Literary
Calling and its Future '), and which testify in a remarkable manner
to the pressing need (therein alluded to) of some remunerative vocation
among the so-called educated classes, there are many which are
obviously written under the impression that Dogberry's view of
writing coming ' by nature ' is especially true of the writing of fiction.
Because I ventured to hint that the study of Greek was not essen-
tial to the calling of a story-teller, or of a contributor to the perio-
dicals, or even of a journalist, these gentlemen seem to jump to the
conclusion that the less they know of anything the better. Nay, some
of them, discarding all theories (in the fashion that Mr. Carlyle's
heroes are wont to discard all formulas), proceed to the practical with
quite an indecent rapidity ; they treat my modest hints for their in-
struction as so much verbiage, and myself as a mere convenient
channel for the publication of their lucubrations. ' You talk of a

1880. STORY-TELLING. 89

genuine literary talent being always appreciated by editors,' they write
(if not in so many words by implication) ; ' well, here is an admirable
specimen of it (enclosed), and if your remarks are worth a farthing
you will get it published for us, somewhere or another, instanter, and
hand us over the cheque for it.'

Nor are even these the most unreasonable of my correspondents ;
for a few, with many acknowledgments for my kindness in having
provided a lucrative profession for them, announce their intention of
throwing up their present less congenial callings, and coming up to
London (one very literally from the Land's End) to live upon it, or,
that failing (as there is considerable reason to expect it will), upon me.

With some of these correspondents, however, it is impossible (in-
dependent of their needs) not to feel an earnest sympathy ; they have
evidently not only aspirations, but considerable mental gifts, though
these have unhappily been cultivated to such little purpose for the object
they have in view that they might almost as well have been left untilled.
In spite of what I ventured to urge respecting the advantage of know-
ing ' science, history, politics, English literature, and the art of com-
position,' they ' don't see why ' they shouldn't get on without them.
Especially with those who aspire to write fiction (which, by its in-
trinsic attractiveness no less than by the promise it affords of golden
grain, tempts the majority), it is quite pitiful to note how they cling
to that notion of ' the corn-sieve,' and cannot be persuaded that story-
telling requires an apprenticeship like any other calling. They
flatter themselves that they can weave plots as the spider spins his
thread from (what let us delicately term) his inner consciousness, and
fondly hope that intuition will supply the place of experience. Some
of them, with a simplicity that recalls the days of Dick Whittington,
think that coming up to London is the essential step to this line
of business, as though the provinces contained no fellow-creatures
worthy to be depicted by their pen, or as though, in the metropolis,
Society would at once exhibit itself to them without concealment,
as fashionable beauties bare themselves to the photographers.

This is, of course, the laughable side of the affair, but, to me at
least, it has also a serious one ; for, to my considerable embarrass-
ment and distress, I. find that my well-meaning attempt to point out
the advantages of literature as a profession has received a much too
free translation, and implanted in many minds hopes that are not
only sanguine but Utopian.

For what was written in the essay alluded to I have nothing to re-
proach myself with, for I told no more than the truth. Nor does the
unsettlement of certain young gentlemen's futures (since by their own
showing they were to the last degree unstable to begin with) affect
me so much as their parents and guardians appear to expect ; but I
am sorry to have shaken, however undesignedly, the ' pillars of
domestic peace ' in any case, and desirous to make all the repara-

90 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

tion in my power. I regret most heartily that I am unable to place
all literary aspirants in places of emolument and permanency out of
hand ; but really (with the exception perhaps of the Universal Pro-
vider in \Vestbourne Grove) this is hardly to be expected of any man.
The gentleman who raised the devil, and was compelled to furnish
occupation for him, affords in fact the only appropriate parallel to
my unhappy case. * If you can do nothing to provide my son with
another place,' writes one indignant Paterfamilias, ' at least you owe
it to him ' (as if I, and not Nature herself, had made the lad dis-
satisfied with his high stool in a solicitor's office !) * to give him some
practical hints by which he may become a successful writer of fiction.'

One would really think that this individual imagined story-
telling to be a sort of sleight-of-hand trick, and that all that is neces-
sary to the attainment of the art is to learn ' how it's done.' I should
not like to say that I have known any members of my own profession
who are * no conjurors,' but it is certainly not by conjuring that they
have succeeded in it.

4 You talk of the art of composition,' writes, on the other hand,
another angry correspondent, ' as though it were one of the exact
sciences ; you might just as well advise your " clever Jack " to study
the art of playing the violin.' So that one portion of the public
appears to consider the calling of literature mechanical, while another
holds it to be a sort of divine instinct !

Since the interest in this subject proves to be so wide-spread, I
trust it will not be thought presumptuous in me to offer my own
humble experience in this matter for what it is worth. To the
public at large a card of admission to my poor manufactory of fiction
— a * very one-horse affair,' as an American gentleman, with whom I
had a little difficulty concerning copyright, once described it — may
not afford the same satisfaction as a ticket for the private view of the
Royal Academy ; but the stings of conscience urge me to make to
Paterfamilias what amends in the way of 'practical hints' lie
in my power, for the wrong I have done to his offspring ; and I there-
fore venture to address to those whom it may concern, and to those
only, a few words on the Art of Story-telling.

The chief essential for this line of business, yet one that is much
disregarded by many young writers, is the having a story to tell. It
is a common supposition that the story will come if you only sit down
with a pen in your hand and wait long enough — a parallel case to
that which assigns one cow's tail as the measure of distance between
this planet and the moon. It is no use ' throwing off ' a few brilliant
ideas at the commencement, if they are only to be ' passages that
lead to nothing ; ' you must have distinctly in your mind at first
what you intend to say at last. ' Let it be granted,' says a great
writer (though not one distinguished in fiction), * that a straight line
be drawn from any one point to any other point ; ' only you must

1880. STORY-TELLING. 91

have the ' other point ' to begin with, or you can't draw the line. So
far from being ' straight,' it goes wabbling aimlessly about like a wire
fastened at one end and not at the other, which may dazzle, but can-
not sustain ; or rather what it does sustain is so exceedingly minute,
that it reminds one of the minnow which the inexperienced angler
flatters himself he has caught, but which the fisherman has in fact
put on the hook for bait.

This class of writer is not altogether unconscious of the absence of
dramatic interest in his composition. He writes to his editor (I have
read a thousand such letters) : * It has been my aim, in the enclosed
contribution, to steer clear of the faults of the sensational school of
fiction, and I have designedly abstained from stimulating the unwhole-
some taste for excitement.' In which high moral purpose he has un-
doubtedly succeeded ; but, unhappily, in nothing else. It is quite
true that some writers of fiction neglect * story ' almost entirely, but
then they are perhaps the greatest writers of all. Their genius is so
transcendent that they can afford to dispense with ' plot' ; their humour,
their pathos, and their delineation of human nature are amply suffi-
cient, without any such meretricious attraction ; whereas our too ambi-
tious young friend is in the position of the needy knife-grinder, who has
not only no story to tell, but in lieu of it only holds up his coat and
breeches ' torn in the scuffle,' — the evidence of his desperate and in-
effectual struggles with literary composition. I have known such
an aspirant to instance Mrs. Graskell's Cranford as a parallel to the
backboneless, flesh- and bloodless creation of his own immature fancy,
and to recommend the acceptance of the latter upon the ground of
their common rejection of startling plot and dramatic situation.
The two compositions have certainly that in common ; and the flaw-
less diamond has some things, such as mere sharpness and smoothness,
in common with the broken beer-bottle.

Many young authors of the class I have in my mind, while more
modest as respects their own merits, are even still less so as regards
their expectations from others. ' If you will kindly furnish me with
a subject,' so runs a letter now before me, ' I am sure I could do very
well ; my difficulty is that I never can think of anything to write
about. Would you be so good as to oblige me with a plot for a novel ? '
It would have been infinitely more reasonable of course, and much
cheaper, for me to grant it, if the applicant had made a request for my
watch and chain ; l but the marvel is that folks should feel any at-
traction towards a calling for which Nature has denied them even the
raw materials. It is true that there are some great talkers who have
manifestly nothing to say, but they don't ask their hearers to supply
them with a topic of conversation in order to be set agoing.

1 To compare small things with great, I remember Sir Walter Scott being thus
applied to for some philanthropic object. ' Money,' said the applicant, who had some
part proprietorship in a literary miscellany, ' I don't ask for, since I know you have
many claims upon your purse ; but would you write us a little paper gratuitously for
the Keepsake ? '

92 THE K1NETEEXTU CENTURY. July

1 My great difficulty,' the would-be writer of fiction often says,
' is how to begin ; ' whereas in fact the difficulty arises rather from
his not knowing how to end. Before undertaking the management of
a train, however short, it is absolutely necessary to know its des-
tination. Nothing is more common than to hear it said that an
author * does not know where to stop ; ' but how much more deplor-
able is the position of the passengers when there is no terminus
whatsoever ! They feel their carriage ' slowing,' and put their heads
expectantly out of window, but there is no platform — no station.
When they took their tickets, they understood that they were
* booked through ' to the denouement, and certainly had no idea of
having been brought so far merely to admire the scenery, for which
only a few care the least about.

As a rule, any one who can tell a good story can write one, so there
really need be no mistake about his quali6cation ; such a man will be
careful not to be wearisome, and to keep his point, or his catastrophe,
well in hand. Only, in writing, of course, there is greater art. There
expansion is of course absolutely necessary ; but this is not to be done,
like spreading gold leaf, by flattening out good material. That is
' padding,' a device as dangerous as it is unworthy ; it is much better to
make your story a pollard — to cut it down to a mere anecdote — than
to get it lost in a forest of verbiage. No line of it, however seemingly
discursive, should be aimless, but should have some relation to the
matter in hand ; and if you find the story interesting to yourself not-
withstanding that you know the end of it, it will certainly interest
the reader.

The manner in which a good story grows under the hand is so
remarkable, that no tropic vegetation can show the like of it. For,
consider, when you have got your germ — the mere idea, not half a
dozen lines perhaps — which is to form your plot, how small a thing it
is compared with, say, the thousand pages which it has to occupy in
the three-volume novel ! Yet to the story-teller the germ is every-
thing. When I was a very young man — a quarter of a century ago,
alas ! — and had very little experience in these matters, I was reading
on a coachbox (for I read everywhere in those days) an account of
some gigantic trees ; one of them was described as sound outside, but
within, for many feet, a mass of rottenness and decay. If a boy should
climb up birdsnesting into the fork of it, thought I, he might go
down feet first and hands overhead, and never be heard of again. How
inexplicable too, as well as melancholy, such a disappearance would be !
Then, c as when a great thought strikes along the brain and flushes all
the cheek,' it struck me what an appropriate end it would be — with
fear (lest he should turn up again) instead of hope for the fulcrum
to move the reader — for a bad character of a novel. Before I had
left the coachbox I had thought out Lost Sir Massingberd.

The character was drawn from life, but unfortunately from hear-

1880. STORY-TELLING. 93

say ; lie had flourished — to the great terror of his neighbours — two
generations before me, so that I had to \>Q indebted to others for his
portraiture, which was a great disadvantage. It was necessary that
the lost man should be an immense scoundrel to prevent pity being
excited by the catastrophe, and at that time I did not know any very
wicked people. The book was a successful one, but it needs no critic
to point out how much better the story might have been told. The
interest in the gentleman, buried upright in his oak coffin, is in-
artistically weakened by other sources of excitement ; like an extrava-
gant cook, the young author is apt to be too lavish with his materials,
and in after days, when the larder is more difficult to fill, he bitterly
regrets it. The representation of a past time I also found it very
difficult to compass, and I am convinced that for any writer to attempt
such a thing, when he can avoid it, is an error in judgment. The
author who undertakes to resuscitate and clothe with flesh and blood
the dry bones of his ancestors, has indeed this advantage, that, how-
ever unlifelike his characters may be, there is no one in a position to
prove it ; it is not ' a difference of opinion between himself and
twelve of his fellow-countrymen,' or a matter on which he can be
condemned by overwhelming evidence ; but, on the other hand, he
creates for himself unnecessary difficulties. I will add, for the benefit
of those literary aspirants to whom these remarks are especially
addressed — a circumstance which, I hope, will be taken as an excuse
for the writing of my own affairs at all, which would otherwise be an
unpardonable presumption — that these difficulties are not the worst of
it ; for when the novel founded on the Past has been written, it will
not be read by a tenth of those who would read it if it were a novel
of the Present.

Even at the date I speak of, however, I was not so young as to
attempt to create the characters of a story out of my own imagination,
and I believe that the whole of its dramatis personce (except the
chief personage) were taken from the circle of my own acquaintance.
This is a matter, by the by, on which considerable judgment and
good taste have to be exercised ; for if the likeness of the person
depicted is recognisable by his friends (he never recognises it by any
chance himself), or still more by his enemies, it is no longer a sketch
from life, but a lampoon. It will naturally be asked by some : ' But if
you draw the man to the life, how can he fail to be known ? ' For this
there is the simplest remedy. You describe his character, but under
another skin ; if he is tall you make him short, if dark, fair ; or you
make such alterations in his circumstances as shall prevent identifica-
tion, while retaining them to a sufficient extent to influence his beha-
viour. In the framework which most (though not all) skilled workmen
draw of their stories before they begin to furnish them with so much
even as a door-mat, the real name of each individual to be described
should be placed (as a mere aid to memory) by the side of that under

94 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

which he appears in the drama ; and I would strongly recommend
the builder to write his real names in cipher ; for I have known at
least one instance in which the entire list of the dramatis peraonce
of a novel was carried off by a person more curious than conscientious,
and afterwards revealed to those concerned — a circumstance which,
though it increased the circulation of the story, did not add to the
personal popularity of the author.

If a story-teller is prolific, the danger of his characters coin-
ciding with those of people in real life who are unknown to him is
much greater than would be imagined ; the mere similarity of name
may of course be disregarded ; but when in addition to that there is
also a resemblance of circumstance, it is difficult to persuade the
man of flesh and blood that his portrait is an undesigned one. The
author of Vanity Fair fell, in at least one instance, into a most un-
fortunate mistake of this kind ; while a not less popular author even
gave his hero the same name and place in the ministry which were
(subsequently) possessed by a living politician.

It is better, however, for his own reputation that the story-
teller should risk a few actions for libel on account of these unfor-
tunate coincidences than that he should adopt the melancholy device
of using blanks or asterisks. With the minor novelists of a quarter
of a century ago it was quite common to introduce their characters
as Mr. A and Mr. B, and very difficult their readers found it to
interest themselves in the fortunes and misfortunes of an initial —

It was in the summer of the year 18 — , and the sun was setting behind the low
western hills beneath which stands the town of C ; its dying gleams glistened on
the weathercock of the little church, beneath whose tower two figures were stand-
ing, so deep in shadow that little more could be made out concerning them save
that they were young persons of the opposite sex. The elder and taller, however,
was the fascinating Lord B ; the younger (presenting a strong contrast to her com-
panion in social position, but yet belonging to the true nobility of nature) was no
other than the beautiful Patty G, the cobbler's daughter.

This style of narrative should be avoided.

Another difficulty of the story-teller, and one unhappily in which
no advice can be of much service to him, is how to describe the lapse
of time and of locomotion. To the dramatist nothing is easier than
to print in the middle of his playbill, ' Forty years are here supposed
to have elapsed ; ' or ' Scene I. : A drawing-room in Mayfair ; Scene
II. : Greenland.' But the story-teller has to describe how these
little changes are effected, without being able to take his readers
into his confidence.2 He can't say, ' Gentle reader, please to imagine
that the winter is over, and the summer has come round since the

* That last indeed is a thing which, with all deference to some great names in
fiction, should in my judgment never be done. It is hard enough for him as it is
to simulate real life, without the poor showman's reaching out from behind the
curtain to shake hands with his audience.

1880. STORY-TELLING. 95

conclusion of our last chapter.' Curiously enough, however, the
lapse of years is far easier to suggest than that of hours ; and loco-
motion from Islington to India than the act, for instance, of leaving
the room. If passion enters into the scene, and your heroine can be
represented as banging the door behind her, and bringing down the
plaster from the ceiling, the thing is easy enough, and may be even
made a dramatic incident ; but to describe, without baldness, Jones
rising from the tea table and taking his departure in cold blood, is
a much more difficult business than you may imagine. When John
the footman has to enter and interrupt a conversation on the stage,
the audience see him come and go, and think nothing of it ; but to
inform the reader of your novel of a similar incident — and especially
of John's going — without spoiling the whole scene by the introduction
of the common-place, requires (let me tell you) the touch of a
master.

When you have got the outline of your plot, and the characters
that seem appropriate to play in it, you turn to that so-called c com-
mon-place book,' in which, if you know your trade, you will have set
down anything noteworthy and illustrative of human nature that has
come under your notice, and single out such instances as are most
fitting ; and finally you will select your scene (or the opening one) in
which your drama is to be played. And here I may say, that while
it is indispensable that the persons represented should be familiar to
you, it is not necessary that the places should be ; you should have
visited them, of course, in person, but it is my experience that for a
description of the salient features of any locality the less you stay
there the better. The man who has lived in Switzerland all his life
can never describe it (to the outsider) so graphically as the (intelligent)
tourist ; just as the man who has science at his fingers' ends does not
succeed so well as the man with whom science has not yet become
second nature, in making an abstruse subject popular.

Nor is it to be supposed that a story with very accurate local
colouring cannot be written, the scenes of which are placed in a coun-
try which the writer has never beheld. This requires, of course, both
study and judgment, but it can be done so as to deceive, if not the
native, at least the Englishman who has himself resided there. I
never yet knew an Australian who could be persuaded that the author
of Never Too Late to Mend had not visited the underworld, or a sailor
that he who wrote Hard Cash had never been to sea. The fact is,
information, concerning which dull folks make so much fuss, can be
attained by anybody who chooses to spend his time that way ; and
by persons of intelligence (who are not so solicitous to know how
blacking is made) can be turned, in a manner not dreamt of by cram-
coaches, to really good account.

The general impression perhaps conveyed by the above remarks
will be that to those who go to work in the manner described — for

96 rut: :Y/.v/v7/y/-;.\y// UKXTURY.

many writers of course have quite other processes — story-telling must
be a mechanical trade. Yet nothing can be farther from the fact.
These preliminary arrangements have the effect of so steeping the
mind in the subject in hand, that when the author begins his work he
is already in a world apart from his everyday one ; the characters of
his story people it ; and the events that occur to them are as material,
so far as the writer is concerned, as though they happened under his
roof. Indeed it is a question for the metaphysician whether the pro-
fessional story-teller has not a shorter lease of life than his fellow-
creatures, since, in addition to his hours of sleep (of which he ought by
rights to have much more than the usual proportion), he passes a large
part of his sentient being outside the pale of ordinary existence. The
reference to sleep ' by rights ' may possibly suggest to the profane that
the story-teller has a claim to it on the ground of having induced
slumber in his fellow-creatures ; but my meaning is that the mental
wear and tear caused by work of this kind is infinitely greater than
that produced by mere application even to abstruse studies (as any
doctor will witness), and requires a proportionate degree of recupera-
tion.

I do not pretend to quote the experience (any more than the mode
of composition) of other writers— though with that of most of my
brethren and superiors in the craft I am well acquainted — but I am
convinced that to work the brain at night in the way of imagination
is little short of an act of suicide. Dr. Treichler's recent warnings upon
this subject are startling enough, even as addressed to students, but
in their application to poets and novelists they have far greater sig-
nificance. It may be said that journalists (whose writings, it is
whispered, have a close connection with fiction) always write in the
' small hours,' but their mode of life is more or less shaped to meet
their exceptional requirements ; whereas we story-tellers live like
other people (only more purely), and if we consume the midnight oil,
use perforce another system of illumination also — we burn the candle
at both ends. A great novelist who adopted this baneful practice
and indirectly lost his life by it (through insomnia) notes what is
very curious, that notwithstanding his mind was so occupied, when
awake, with the creatures of his imagination, he never dreamt of
them ; which I think is also the general experience. But he does not
tell us for how many hours before he went to sleep, and tossed upon
his sleepless pillow till far into the morning, he was unable to get rid
of those whom his enchanter's wand had summoned.3 What is even
more curious than the story-teller's never dreaming of the shadowy

* Speaking of dreams, the composition of Kubla Kban and of one or two other
literary fragments during sleep has led to the belief that dreams are often useful
to the writer of fiction ; but in my own case at least I can recall but a single instance
of it, nor have I ever heard o" their doing one pennyworth of good to any of my con-
temporaries.

1880. STORY-TELLING. 97

beings who engross so much of bis thoughts, is that (so far as my
own experience goes at least) when a story is once written and done
with, no matter how forcibly it may have interested and excited the
writer during its progress, it fades almost instantly from the mind,
and leaves, by some benevolent arrangement of nature, a tabula rasa
— a blank space for the next one. Every one must recollect that
anecdote of Walter Scott, who, on hearing one of his own poems (' My
hawk is tired of perch and hood ') sung in a London drawing-room,
observed with innocent approbation, ' Byron's, of course ; ' and so it
is with us lesser folks. A very humorous sketch might be given (and
it would not be overdrawn) of some prolific novelist getting hold,
under some strange roof, of the ' library edition ' of his own stories,
and perusing them with great satisfaction and many appreciative
ejaculations, such as ' Now this is good ; ' 'I wonder how it will
end ; ' or ' George Eliot's of course.'

Although a good allowance of sleep is absolutely necessary for
imaginative brain work, long holidays are not so. I have noticed that
those who let their brains ' lie fallow,' as it is termed, for any con-
siderable time, are by no means the better for it ; but, on the other
hand, some daily recreation, by which a genuine interest is excited
and maintained, is almost indispensable. It is no use to ' take up a
book,' and far less to attempt * to refresh the machine,' as poor Sir
Walter did, by trying another kind of composition ; what is needed
is an altogether new object for the intellectual energies, by which,
though they are stimulated, they shall not be strained.

Advice such as I have ventured to offer may seem 'to the
general ' of small importance, but to those I am especially addressing
it is worthy of their attention, if only as the result of a personal
experience unusually prolonged ; and I have nothing unfortunately
but advice to offer. To the question addressed to me with such
naivete by so many correspondents, * How do you make your plots ? '
(as if they were consulting the Cook's Oracle), I can return no answer.
I don't know, myself ; they are sometimes suggested by what I hear
or read, but more commonly they suggest themselves unsought. I
once heard two popular story-tellers, A who writes seldom, but with
much ingenuity of construction, and B who is very prolific in pictures
of everyday life, discoursing on this subject.

' Your fecundity,' said A, ' astounds me ; I can't think where you
get your plots from.'

'Plots ? ' replied B ; < oh ! I don't trouble myself about them. To
tell you gie truth, I generally take a bit of one of yours, which is
amply sufficient for my purpose.'

This was very wrong of B ; and it is needless to say I do not

quote his system for imitation. A man should tell his own story

without plagiarism. As to truth being stranger than fiction, that

is all nonsense ; it is a proverb set about by Nature to conceal her

VOL. VIII.— No. 41. H

98 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

own want of originality. I am not like that pessimist philosopher
who assumed her malignity from the fact of the obliquity of the
ecliptic ; but the truth is Nature is a pirate. She has not hesitated to
plagiarise from even so humble an individual as myself. Years after
I had placed my wicked baronet in his living tomb, she starved to
death a hunter in Mexico under precisely similar circumstances ; and
so late as last month she has done the same in a forest in Styria. Nay,
on ray having found occasion in a certain story (* a small thing, but
my own ') to get rid of the whole wicked population of an' island by.
suddenly submerging it in the sea, what did Nature do ? She waited
for an insultingly short time, in order that the story should be for-
gotten, and then reproduced the same circumstances on her own
account (and without the least acknowledgment) in the Indian seas.
My attention was drawn to both these breaches of copyright by
several correspondents, but I had no redress, the offender being
beyond the jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery.

When the story-teller has finished his task and surmounted
every obstacle to his own satisfaction, he has still a difficulty to
face in the choice of a title. He may invent indeed an eminently
appropriate one, but it is by no means certain he will be allowed to
keep it. Of course he has done his best to steer clear of that borne
by any other novel ; but among the thousands that have been brought
out within the last forty years, and which have been forgotten even
if they were ever known, how can he know whether the same name
has not been hit upon ? He goes to Stationers' Hall to make in-
quiries ; but — mark the usefulness of that institution — he finds that
books are only entered there under their authors' names. His search is
therefore necessarily futile, and he has to publish his story under the
apprehension (only too well founded, as I have good cause to know)
that the High Court of Chancery will prohibit its sale upon the
ground of infringement of title.

JAMES PAYN. '

1880. 99

THE COMMERCIAL TREATY BETWEEN
FRANCE AND ENGLAND.

THE commercial relations of Great Britain and France are at the
present moment in a precarious state.

Intimation has been given that the treaty concluded in 1860,
and by tacit consent continued in force since 1871, is to lapse, and
the tariffs which were mutually agreed on, and which have been in
force for twenty years, will, on the expiration of six months after a
general customs tariff has been voted, cease to have any application
in France.

Now the Chamber of Deputies has finally decided on the main
features of the scheme, and if at the present moment it is being
subjected to ultra-protectionist modifications at the hands of the
reactionary committee of the French Senate, it is rational to sur-
mise that the committee will not fare better in the face of public
discussion than its predecessor of the Lower Chamber. It may
therefore very well happen that within the next few months, if in the
meantime the two Governments do not come to some agreement,
commercial interchange between Great Britain and France may
come to be governed by the provisions of the new tariff.

A sudden economic retrogression such as this would have for its
result the gravest disturbance in the business world.

Most English-manufactured goods would, in fact, find themselves
subjected to increased duties to the extent of 24 per cent., and
there would be nothing to ensure them against the possibility of
further increments still more excessive, if the spirit of reaction
or the temptation to retaliate were to become dominant in the re-
presentative bodies in France. Such a misfortune is not impossible,
for there is on our side of the Channel a noisy and restless party con-
sisting of those who have their own interests to serve in the matter,
and who shamelessly work upon the uneasiness and the discontent
produced by bad harvests, and the commercial troubles of the last
three years.

The Government of Her Britannic Majesty, therefore, has an in-
ducement to make good use of such time as the Chamber of Deputies

H 2

100 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

may yet exist, the inclinations and views of whose members can be
discerned from their recent discussion on the subject of the
customs.

As for the French Ministry, their position is, in a Parliamentary
point of view, most difficult.

The Chamber of Deputies having rejected the inducements offered
by the Protectionist party, the latter has taken a dominant position
in the committee of the Senate, which is a veritable Parliamentary
Penelope, toiling religiously to undo the comparatively liberal, though
somewhat incoherent, work of the Lower Chamber.

This committee is personified in its president, the honourable
M. Feray, a cotton- spinner of Essonnes, and a reactionary of the first
water (di primo cartello). Around him gathers the band of Protec-
tionist leaders, such as MM. Pouyer Quertier, Ancel, and others.

The plan adopted by these gentlemen is unmistakable. As they
no longer hope anything from the existing Chamber of Deputies, and
as its powers are to expire next year, they want to keep alive the dis-
agreement between the two Chambers, and to cause prolonged delay in
the business, so as to reach the period of the general elections. These
gentlemen cherish the hope, more or less justified, of seeing those
elections produce a Chamber with which an understanding would be
easier than it would be with the present deputies.

These tactics cannot be defeated on the discussion of the general
tariff, since its numerous provisions lend themselves too readily to pre-
concerted adjournments.

The French Government, therefore, perceived clearly that they
must change the arena of the contest, and that their constitutional
privilege mu?t be exercised to conclude, if possible, a new Commercial
Treaty with England, and thus compel the two Parliamentary bodies
to express their determination on the clear and simple issue raised
by a Bill affirming the proposal (projet de loi d? approbation).

The bitter outcry raised by the Protectionists and the violent
attacks of their journals on the President of the Senate and on the
Government prove that the latter discerned rightly.

The Government will have succeeded in part if, in the provisions
of the treaty which is to be negotiated, they succeed in arriving at the
means of adequately meeting the wants of those two great interests
which muster a compact mass of representatives in both Chambers
—that is, the vine-growers and the silk manufacturers. They would
make a gross mistake if they should hope to win over the cotton
manufacturers of the north and north-west.

Whatever they may do, the manufacturers who are interested
will vote against every treaty of commerce, whatsoever its terms.

The French Liberals are anxious that an agreement may be come to
bet ween the two Governments as speedily as possible, because the fate
of commercial freedom in France depends on the arrangement that may

1880. THE COMMERCIAL TREATY WITH FRANCE. 101

be made with England, since to her belongs the first place in that
movement which has for its object the commercial interchange
of nations. They hailed with joy the advent to power of the Glad-
stone Ministry — recollecting that the great negotiator of 1860,
Richard Cobden, received the most valuable and effectual aid from the
liberal views of the present First Lord of the Treasury.

Till within the last few days, the Whig Cabinet had done nothing
to justify the good opinion which French Liberals had formed of it.
We are unwilling to believe that the latter can be doomed to suffer a
final disappointment, and that commercial freedom is to receive a
mortal blow at the hands of the very men who were its inaugurators
and apostles.

The French Government has only just published the economic
results of the last fifteen years, and drawn up a balance-sheet showing
the dealings of France with the rest of the world. This document
has appeared at the right moment to demonstrate to the minds of
those who most resist the truth, the benefits of freedom, and at the
same time the value of those guarantees of the stability of trade
which result from international treaties.

As regards England, her special trade with France amounted in
1860 to about 869,000,000fr., and it was increasing at the rate of
scarcely 3,000,000fr. annually. Their commercial transactions with
each other amount to-day to 1 .500,000,000fr. ; there has been there-
fore since the Commercial Treaty an annual increase of more than
30,000,000fr. — that is, ten times greater than the old increase.

If we set these results side by side with those of the foreign trade
of France during the same period with the United States, which did
not come within the operation of the treaties, it is impossible to
resist the conclusion that these results are due above all to that lower-
ing of the tariffs which was mutually agreed to, and to the sense of
security imported into the dealings between the two countries under
the guarantee of the treaty. The means of transport have, indeed,
undergone, so far as America is concerned, improvements at least
equal, if not superior, to those of other countries. Railways springing
into existence every year furrow the tracts of young America quite as
much as the soil of old England, and the multiplicity of lines of
fast-sailing steamers which connect the two continents has, if not
extinguished distance, at least effected wonderful results in bringing
them within reach of one another.

In spite of this enormous progress, the increase of business be-
tween France 'and the United States has diminished by 40 per cent.
From one year to another French imports, stopped by the abrupt
rises in the customs duties, fell off to such an extent that from
490,000,000fr. in 1860 they came down to 196,000,000fr. in 1862,
and 153,000,000fr. in 1864.

It is therefore evident that the interest of the two great nations

102 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

•which border on the Channel, demands that they should agree, and
should induce them to insure the continuance of their agreement by
a new treaty.

We will proceed to investigate what reductions in the tariff
would be calculated to afford a stimulus to production on both
sides of the Channel, capable of operating as a mutual benefit to
both the contracting countries.

This investigation is easy, since the nature of the products on
the one hand, and the demands of the corresponding consumption,
indicate the means of arriving at an agreement.

England produces coal and iron in abundance, while France is
capable of consuming infinitely greater quantities of these products
than she at present consumes. There is not an industrial interest
which does not protest against the duty on coal, and represent it
with more or less reason as affecting disadvantageously the value of
their products on both the home and foreign markets. Excepting
some few exceedingly wealthy coal companies, everyone in France
would approve of the suppression of this inequitable duty, which is
paid by everyone for the exclusive benefit of a few privileged persons.
The diminution in receipts to the French State which would result
from it, being less than the amount received to the good, according
to the budget, in respect of a single month, could not assuredly be
an obstacle in the path of the diplomatists deputed to negotiate.

As regards iron, the duty imposed by the tariff mutually agreed
on in 1860 operates now as a complete prohibition. It has been
possible to maintain it as a general tariff, but it ought to be lowered
by the treaty which is to be concluded. The French treasury could
but gain by a reduction which would assume the form of actual returns
for its benefit, in consequence of the active impulse it would give to
business, an impulse which at the present moment hardly exists at all.

Another article of foreign exchange, capable of being very greatly
developed to the advantage of English producers and French con-
sumers, is cotton yarn, and especially the fine yarn.

Up to 1860 its introduction into France was prohibited. It
has been burdened, in accordance with the tariff agreed to. with a
duty which is quite exorbitant — namely, 3fr. 25c. per kilogramme,
which is maintained in the general tariff, and even made still
heavier, to the extent of 24 per cent. It is really prohibitive, if it be
borne in mind that the product taxed, which in 1860 was worth
at the very least 31fr., has fallen down to 14fr.

For fine-spun yarns France presents a market of consumers of the
first rank. In fact, they are used as an indispensable constituent in
the manufacture of mixed textile fabrics composed of wool or silk,
and in the weaving of muslin tulles, &c.

The high rate of duty restricts consumption at home and dimi-
nishes the possibility of a host of French products competing in

1880. THE COMMERCIAL TREATY WITH FRANCE. 103

foreign markets. A considerable reduction of duty would give an
impulse to the manufacturers of Lyons, of St. Etienne, of Roub ix,
of St. Pierre-les-Calais, which is only paralysed now by injurious
customs legislation.

Notwithstanding this legislation, the production of mixed silk
goods, which more than any other manufacture now responds to the
taste and needs of consumers, is increasing rapidly. In 1876 it only
amounted to 18,000,000fr., in 1878 it reached 62,000,000fr., and last
year 125,000,000fr.

As Germany and Switzerland manufacture, like France, mixed
silk goods, the import duties on twisted silks, which amount in France
to 390fr., only amount in Germany to 48fr., and fall to 4fr. per 100
kilogrammes in the case of Switzerland.

Consequently, French producers, who are seriously tried by German
and Swiss competition, claim vehemently to have the tribute dimi-
nished which they are paying to the cotton-spinners of Lille.

No portion of the people in France has pronounced with the same
persistency and energy in favour of commercial freedom as that
which belongs to the districts of St. Etienne and Lyons. Workmen
and masters have not had the shadow of a difference. They have
acted with that unison which gives strength, and their Parliamentary
representatives, impelled forward by their zeal, moved and upheld an
amendment which, had it succeeded, would have been a great step
forward for the Liberal cause.

They claimed that France should adopt as the base of her general
tariff the Italian duties, the highest of all that are enacted by
European legislatures, and that she should fix the import duty on the
fine-spun yarns at 70fr. per 100 kilogrammes.

This amendment was very near to being accepted. None of the
Liberal propositions attracted so many votes — viz. 172 against 249.
Thirty-five votes shifted from the one side to the other would have suf-
ficed to secure its victory. This vote constitutes a most important
Parliamentary fact. Evidently the result is this, that if the Chamber
of Deputies could hesitate to lower the duty to the level of the general
tariff, the French Government is justified, nay almost invited to agree,
for the purpose of effecting a treaty, to considerable reductions of the
tax on fine-spun yarns.

England, therefore, may lay claim to concessions on the im-
portation of coal and iron. She is certain to obtain such concessions
on the cotton yarn, and thereby to obtain more extended markets
for her principal industries.

In order to be admitted to such concessions, England ought to
offer to France some advantage which the negotiators may regard as
their fair equivalent.

Her Majesty's Government perfectly understand this, since
they asked and obtained from Parliament the power to reduc«

104 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

the duty on light wines, the only commodity of French growth still
taxed, from one shilling to sixpence per gallon. To have obtained
the power is good, to exercise it will be better still.

France produces, on an average, 1,230,000,000 gallons of wine
per annum. Of this produce, which in 1875 rose to 1,848,840,000
gallons (84 millions of hectolitres), and might reach that figure as a
regular result, the greater part is absolutely prohibited to British
consumers. The duty to be paid on arrival is, in fact, higher by
100 per cent, than the average value of French wines ; upon some of
them it is from 1 50 to 200 per cent. Accordingly, the thin and
half-thin wines (vins fins et demi-fins} of the Gironde are almost
the only ones the exportation of which to England has considerably
increased since 1860.

Since we have been led to speak of thin wines, it is well to note
a mistake in which it would seem that the English Government is
inclined to persist — that of maintaining the duty at 2s. per gallon
for bottled wines.

Nothing is less accurate than the notion that the value of wines
should be determined by the mode of consignment employed, and the
supposition that the value of bottled wines is always, or even gener-
ally, greater than that of wines left in the cask.

The system of imposing a higher duty on bottled wines has
been twice in force in France, first from 1808 to 1830, and again
since 1871.

It was introduced into the law of the' 1st of September, 1871, by
a proposal which did not emanate from the Government, the Admin-
istration showing itself able to rightly estimate its value when it
drew a comparison between it and that of unity of taxation. Those
legislators who brought forward the suggestion to impose an extra
tax on bottled wines specially aimed at proportioning the impost
to the selling value of the wine. Our short experience has sufficed
to prove to us that they overshot the mark, to the detriment of
those classes whose means are slender. The quantity of the wines
on which the extra tax was levied was infinitely greater than what
it was expected to be, and besides the effervescing Champagne
wines, the value of which is essentially variable, practice showed
that the bottled wines for the most part corresponded to the small
class of bourgeois consumers whose moderate circumstances cannot
compass the laying in of any but a slender store of provisions.

The Chambers of Commerce of Beaune and Bordeaux raised and
stated such well-founded complaints that the Government was obliged
to do them justice, and to propose on the 24th of June, 1879, a return
to unity of taxation.

The British Government would do wisely to profit by our experi-
ence, and to abandon the idea of a differential and higher duty on
bottled wines.

1880. THE COMMERCIAL TREATY WITH FRANCE. 105

The English duty, if reduced to Qd. per gallon (or 1 3fr. 75c. per
hectolitre) for wines below 21 degrees of strength, that is to say,
wines from 12 degrees (Gay-Lussac), will still present a system of
customs duties rising to 50 per cent, on the average value of the pro-
duce taxed, and almost equal to the entire value which is now assigned
to it in the French departments where wine is produced on a great
scale ; in L'Herault, for instance, and Les Charente, where the ordinary
value of wine does not exceed 15fr. per hectolitre — that is, less than
7d. per gallon.

The lowering of the tax to Qd. would of itself throw open the
British market to a great number of French wines to which it is
at present absolutely closed. French production would, therefore,
gain indisputably by this measure, while English consumers, being
better supplied with this commodity, would find their hygienic con-
ditions improved — a consideration which is not to be despised.

The interest of the two nations and of the two Governments is
therefore plain. It demands that they should come to a common
understanding on this subject.

Is it possible that fiscal necessities, or the fear of diminished
returns, should deter Her Majesty's Government ?

If we base our calculation on the receipts of the last few years,
the diminution which might be caused in these returns ought not to
be as much as 300,000^. What is such a sum as that to the re-
sources of the United Kingdom, when the Budget was able, after
1874, to sustain all at once a diminution of 1,843,000£. by the com-
plete extinction of the duty on sugars ?

We are quite willing to admit that the expenses of the wars in
Zululand and in Afghanistan have inflicted a temporary blow on the
elastic power of the English Budget, but we could not believe that it
has come to this — that it is not able to support the temporary loss of
from 300,000^. to 400,OOOL from its receipts, and we have too much
confidence in the financial resources of the present First Lord of the
Treasury to believe that he will hesitate to exercise the power that,
at his instance, has just been granted him by Parliament.

This diminution in the receipts would be essentially temporary,
because the duty being only reduced and not extinguished, an in-
fallible increase in the consumption would speedily make good the
deficiency, and it would not be long before it was converted into a, plus
value for the benefit of the treasury.

The annual consignment of wines in cask sent from France into
England amounts to hardly 5,502,500 gallons (250,000 hectolitres).
It is not one third of the amount imported to the Swiss Confederation,
whose population represents hardly the tenth part of that of England.

Making a proportional calculation of her wealth, her power, and
her 31,000,000 of inhabitants, England is in a position to increase
tenfold her consumption of wines, and there is no exaggeration in

106 THE XIXETEENTH CENTURY. July

foretelling- that she is capable of reaching the figure of 175,000,000
to 200,000,000 of gallons.

If the statesmen who now govern England should fear, in conse-
quence of the competition of wine, that a diminution of receipts might
result from a diminished consumption of beer, they will have before
them the example of France, Switzerland, and Germany, to calm their
fears.

Their example, indeed, proves that when wine and beer are not
burdened in an excessive manner, the consumption of these two drinks
increases progressively pari passu, the substitution of the one for
the other being essentially partial.

Besides, the beer, when taxed according to the proposals of the
present Ministry at 2d. per gallon, will continue to enjoy, as against
the wine, a virtually protective treatment, which looks like a survival
of the past in England, which prides itself, and so justly, on being
the mother-country of * Free Trade.'

Most English beers show, indeed, an alcoholic strength almost
equal to that of the common wines of France. The latter, therefore,
will pay a tax three times as high as that on the native produce.

As for the notion that an increase in the consumption of wine
would entail a corresponding diminution, more or less proportioned to
it, in the consumption of alcoholic drinks properly so called, we need
not entertain the idea for a moment. The facts that we have wit-
nessed and the fiscal results in France leave no doubt on this point.

Notwithstanding the excessive duties which are imposed on
alcohol, its consumption has never ceased to increase in a constant
progression, parallel, so to speak, with that of wine, which has in-
creased 100 per cent, in ten years.

In fine, there are no considerations of any real moment, whether
political, international, or simply fiscal, such as to prevent the British
Cabinet from exercising the power which has just been granted to
it, of reducing by one half the prohibitive duty which excludes most
of the wines of France from the English market.

By continuing the work commenced in 1860, Mr. Gladstone will
prove that he is indeed the successor of Robert Peel and of Richard
Cobden. He will receive the grateful applause of the Liberals of both
countries.

These latter regret that the grandson of J. B. Say has been able
but to sketch the outlines of this beneficial arrangement; they
trust to the liberal mind of the leader of the English Cabinet to
bring it to a good conclusion. We are firmly convinced that that
eminent statesman will deem it a point of honour to justify the con-
fidence reposed in him by the partisans of progress and freedom.

E. RAOUL DUVAL.

1880. 107

THE HOUSE OF LORDS AND NATIONAL
INSURANCE.

WE live in days of disillusions, and Numicius is not the only
man who needs to learn that the secret of a certain sort of happi-
ness consists in wondering at nothing. It is but a few months
ago since a writer in this Review, discoursing on the proposal of
National Compulsory Insurance (not altogether in a favourable sense),
endeavoured to prove its error by prophesying its failure. ' It is in-
conceivable,' we were assured, ' that a statesman of the first class
could be found to take the scheme in hand.' And yet, in the very
first session after this confident assertion, the Earl of Carnarvon has
introduced the subject by a most lucid and telling address in the
House of Lords, delivered on the 4th of June last ; and, instead of
being received with utter scorn and dismissed with contemptuous
derision, his lordship's views have been endorsed by several peers
well informed on questions of the sort ; and, if disputed by some
others, seem to have been disputed only or chiefly on grounds of
objection which do not apply to the proposal actually made.

I gladly avail myself of the opportunity of examining in the
present paper the treatment which the subject received on the oc-
casion I refer to, and of further considering some points in the con-
troversy which subsequent expressions of opinion have made it
desirable to handle. And, as the originator of the proposal, I
cannot enter on this task without expressing my grateful sense, not
only of the consideration shown to the subject by all who took
part in the discussion brought on by Lord Carnarvon, but of the
kindly and sympathetic interest taken in the question throughout
the nation at large — an interest so unexpectedly warm and growing
as to fill me with very confident hope, not merely in the eventual
triumph of the proposal, of which (as is, I suppose, the nature of all
projectors) I have never allowed myself to entertain the shadow of a
doubt, but even of its proximate success, concerning which I rejoice
to be able to-day to hold, and I believe with just reason, an im-
measurably more favourable opinion than I did a year ago.

To praise a statesman of the eminence and ability of Lord Car-
narvon would be presumption on my part in the first place, and

108 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

superfluous in the second, since I might be supposed ready to praise
anyone who happened to agree with me, and everyone, right or
wrong, who might forward the cause I have at heart by such an
onward impetus as his lordship's discussion has given to National
Insurance. But it is not a matter of course, but of simple justice, to
say that Lord Carnarvon's address, so far as I have seen it reported,
bore the stamp of true statesmanship in its evidence that he only
brought forward a subject so important after fully making up his mind
upon its many aspects, and thoroughly examining the terms of the
proposal ; that it is the first public utterance of any length upon the
question, whether from friend or foe, in which I could find no mis-
conception to correct and no syllable to alter ; and that I regard his
treatment of the subject as of the happiest omen, since it leads me
to believe that a study as fair, as full, and as thoughtful as that
which his lordship has given to the proposal will lead other thinkers
to a conviction of its great social advantages as strong as that which
prompted his lordship's most lucid, forcible, and interesting address.

Had the form of discussion permitted a reply, this article would
have been unnecessary, since the vindication of the measure from
the few objections offered would have been entirely safe in his skil-
ful hands. This not being the case, I will reply to them here
myself.

And, before entering on this task, I may be permitted to call
attention to the progress of this question since I first mooted it in
the number of this Review for November 1878.

I cannot say it was ever uncivilly treated. Its good intention
was never impugned ; and even those who only regarded it at best as
a mere will-o'-the-wisp were ready to acknowledge that its light was
rather a pretty contrast to the darkness of our growing pauperism.
But it was visionary, Utopian, extravagant, fanciful, contrary to the
spirit of English legislation, to the dicta of political economy, to
the freedom of the race, to the logic of facts, to the possibilities of
execution ; nay, some went further, and scouted the scheme entirely,
on the ground that compulsion in such a direction as I proposed was
a suggestion quite as absurd to consider as its infliction would be a
tyranny intolerable to undergo, and so wrong in principle and so
impossible in practice as to make it inconceivable that any leading
statesman could take the thing in hand.

Now I wish, in proof of the progress of the cause, to note that
not one word of all this was echoed in the House of Lords in answer
to Lord Carnarvon ! And the objection supposed to lie at the root
of all others — namely, the tyranny of compulsion (a tyranny so in-
tolerable, we were told, as to be sufficient to create a revolution) — has
so completely fallen out of view that in the most august assembly in
the nation there was not found one single voice to name the vanished
ghost, whose apparition was dissolved once and for ever, as a bugbear

1880. THE LORDS AND NATIONAL INSURANCE. 109

to the study of this question, by showing that the compulsion re-
quired for national independence was far lighter and far fairer than
that now submitted to, by all thrifty men, for the production and
encouragement of national pauperisation.

And indeed the principle was accepted almost from the first, for
which, as it was self-evident when propounded, I no more claim merit
to myself than a lamplighter can claim for the brightness of the gas
to which he puts a match. But, passing from the principle, which I
rightly claimed from the first to be unassailable, objectors naturally
enough fell upon the execution of the plan, and (on a very short ex-
amination in many cases) dismissed it with a verdict of disfavour,
couched in the handy expression of its ' impracticability.'

A further noteworthy evidence of the swift advance of the idea in
this direction is to be found in the fact that another ' leading states-
man,' the Earl of Derby, three months before Lord Carnarvon's ad-
vocacy of the scheme, should have shattered the very foundation of
that confident cry of impracticability by such an utterance as that at
the great Conference on Thrift, convened by the Lord Mayor at the
Mansion House, on the 12th of last March. He said, in regard to the
alleged impracticability of National Insurance, ' I remember that thirty
years ago the idea of compulsory education would have seemed quite
as impracticable as that of compulsory insurance.' I venture to quote
here my comment on these words :

These words, which the meeting received with vociferous cheers, filled me with
a sense of grateful surprise. For the speaker, in his utterance, went further in
support of my proposal than I had ventured to hope any leading statesman would
have felt himself warranted in doing, at least for the next four or five years. They
put the seal more or less to the record of my own experience, which shows that as
at first the principle of the measure I proposed was plain, but its practicability
obscure, now its practicability grows clear in proportion as public opinion becomes
enlightened, and the question of practicability is really changing into a question of
time.1

Such then, advanced still further by Lord Carnarvon's able
advocacy, is the present state of this matter in the mind of the
public ; and neither warm friend nor gallant foe will begrudge me the
satisfaction I must feel in being able to point to progress so striking
of so great a cause in so short a time, and to call on the many who are
zealous for its winning to thank God and take courage in pushing on
the work.

I now turn to the Lords' debate. Earl Granville, as representing
the Ministry, had but one answer to give. He admitted the import-
ance of the subject, but could not state that the Government intended
to bring forward at the present moment any scheme of the kind men-
tioned. It would be as strange that a Government just appointed,
and overwhelmed with the charge of a number of burning questions,

1 From Fraser's Magazine for April 1880, p. 545.

110 . THE S1SETEEXTU CENTURY. ' July

should encumber itself with this new one, as it would lie unreasonably
on the part of the warmest advocate of National Insurance to expect it.
It is not the function of good Government to commit itself to new
measures, and to force them on the people, though it be the duty of
Government to carry new measures when the people show they want
them. We are quite content to wait for such a measure till the
nation understands its scope and learns to clamour for its introduction.
But Lord Granville said more, no doubt from not clearly under-
standing the details of the scheme proposed. He stated that the
Commission on Friendly Societies had fully gone into this matter,
had considered the question of insurance by public guarantee, and
reported against it. And this was true in terms, but entirely inac-
curate as a reply to Lord Carnarvon.

For it is true that the Friendly Societies' Commission (appointed,
be it remembered, with the design to render more secure the self-pro-
vision made by the thrifty, not necessarily to promote provision to be
made by the wasteful) did consider and did reject (and, I think
rightly) a most influential memorial in favour of establishing a
National Friendly Society with a National Guarantee. But that
was to be a Voluntary National Society only. National Compulsoi^y
Insurance, on the other hand, was never before that Commission at
all, which reported in 1874. I thought it out as the only means of
escaping the difficulties plainly in the way of a Voluntary National
Compulsory Insurance. Therefore, though a Commission on Friendly
Societies did, amongst other business, go into a matter in some sort
similar to this, it never went in to the subject of National Compulsory
Insurance at all. I do not wonder in the least that this fundamental
distinction should not have struck Lord Granville ; but I feel certain
that if, by-and-by, a Eoyal Commission on the subject of National
Compulsory Insurance be asked for, he will not again make the same
objection.

The point which I have here laid stress upon was also shrewdly
urged by Lord Cottesloe, who with several other peers spoke so strongly
in favour of the scheme, and suggested the desirability of by-and-by
appointing a Commission on the subject.

Another point, of difficulty only (for, let us remember, not a word
of ' injustice ' or < impossibility ' was uttered in the discussion), was
laid much stress upon by Lords Redesdale and Kimberley. For they
both assumed, what is by no means the case, that the Government
would be responsible for the funds collected, and might incur
dangerous liabilities. As this is really the only strong objection
to the proposal brought out by the discussion, I am glad of the
opportunity of meeting it in a little clear detail. In my first essay 2
I carefully emphasised the statement that such a National Insurance

5 Nineteenth Century, November 1878, p. 842. Prevention of Pauperism, p. 14.
C. Eegan Paul and Co.

1880. THE LORDS AND NATIONAL INSURANCE. Ill

as I propose need not cost one single shilling of public money. And
Lord Carnarvon stated in his speech that ' not one penny of the cost of
carrying out the proposal need be thrown upon the country, while the
subscribing individuals would have as security the national guarantee.'
It is an entire misapprehension of my purpose to suppose the insurance
fund would necessarily be administered by the Government at all.
It should be, let us say, placed in the hands of trustees or com-
missioners appointed on behalf of (and, if so desired, elected by) the
contributors. These trustees should have power (strictly denned by
Act of Parliament) to invest and administer the funds, which
should be actuarially valued, say, from year to year. The actuaries
would have, in case the sum paid in were found deficient, to certify the
amount necessary to be contributed by all future investors ; the new-
comers of all time thus never being liable to make good more than
one year's deficiency, the possibly infinitesimal cost of which being
no unreasonable contribution on their part — if necessary — to the ex-
pense of ascertaining the true secure rate to be charged. Let us sup-
pose that at the end of the thirtieth year, there be found a deficiency
in the estimated funds which would necessitate a rise for the future, in
the general rate, of one shilling (a matter most easily calculable by
the actuaries), the law will simply be asked to sanction, as against all
future contributors, a compulsory insurance of 101. Is. being exacted
instead of 10?. The Government will run no risk of loss; the fund
will recover its deficiency. If, on the other hand, the fund should grow
too large, the commissioners or trustees, on certificate of the actuaries,
could apply the surplus in providing a bonus, either immediate or con-
tingent, for those already assured, while lowering instead of raising the
normal compulsory rate to each new contributor. While, on the one
hand, the prospect of such possible bonus would operate towards making
all men willing to denounce and hinder imposition on the funds, it
is manifest that the payment to be demanded of each contributor as
he enters can never really be more than the actual cost of his provi-
sion, which the principle of the law will require each man to make
for himself. Thus no deficiency in this fund can ever fall upon the
Government, the law making provision for its just and proper inci-
dence on every individual to be assured. In fact the Government is
only asked to guarantee the compulsion of the necessary payment — a
process which involves no risk and can entail no loss.

This is why the giving a national guarantee to a Compulsory
National Insurance can cost nothing, and is perfectly possible, while
to give a national guarantee to any voluntary society is an im-
possibility without committing the economical error of State socialism,
and possibly risking enormous loss ; or, in the case of such a voluntary
National Friendly Society as was proposed, making the uninsured liable
for the insured, and plunging us back into the communism of the Poor
Law and the purgatory of pauperism. Once we establish the just

112 THE N1SETEEXTU CENTURY. July

principle that every man must, for society's sake and his own, be
made to provide for himself, the law which enforces the principle is
the national guarantee which secures the fund for evermore, and gives
without a penny's cost a priceless boon of safety to all thrifty men, a
priceless character of independence to the wasteful and the weak.

Another objection, which I am told seemed a very strong one to some
of their lordships, lay in the Lord Chancellor's conjecture that a com-
pulsory insurance would, in the long run, come out of the employers'
pockets. I have, over and over again, met this objection in various
essays, and need hardly enter on its lengthy discussion again. The
answer to it will be found in my ' Eeply to Mr. Edwards.'3 I there
deny the fact, and give a reason for my denial, and go further to
estimate that, if the insurance premiums really came from employers'
pockets, it would only raise the general rate of wages by one penny
every week. But there is yet an answer to the question, which some
people will find simpler still. If the insurance were to come from
the employers' pockets I should not much care, and neither would
they ; as they might otherwise spend ten times the money in poor
rates, and would not be indisposed to pocket the balance of their in-
jury ; and I, though I should regret to yield the point (even merely for
argument sake) as slightly marring the symmetry of my plan, would
sacrifice it cheerfully for the sake of the cause itself, if my doing so
would tend to bring Lord Selbome to my side.

These, I think, are all the objections urged against National
Insurance in the House of Lords ; for the statement so frequently
reiterated, and with which, in the abstract, I entirely agree, 'that
compulsory thrift is not a virtue,' is really no objection whatever to
National Insurance, which does not need for its advancement to
establish the contrary position.

It will be noted that the objections I have treated are really
founded on misconceptions of my plan ; and it is to be hoped that
their removal may win to its side a number of noblemen who seemed
to have been unanimous in expressing their opinion of the importance
of the subject, and its value if they could see a way to its adoption.
But I cannot leave this portion of my subject without a word of
cordial thanks to noble lords of so much mark as, in addition to the
opener of the discussion, the Bishop of Winchester, Earl Stanhope,
Lord Cottesloe, Lord Forbes, and others, who, having studied the
proposal, were able to speak so forcibly and so clearly as they did on
its behalf.

I pass from the discussion of the Lords to notice some of the
utterances of the Press which it elicited, for the purpose of showing
how far the subject has grown in general opinion since its first
agitation. For surely the following extracts from the Times of the
5th of June would have found no place in any leading journal a year
and a half ago : —

Ettays on the Prerention of Pauperism, pp. 101 tcqq.

1880. THE LORDS AND NATIONAL INSURANCE. 113

The scheme of social improvement propounded yesterday in the House of Lords
by Lord Carnarvon is second to none in interest and importance, &c.

In view of all this complex mass of objections to our present system, Lord
Carnarvon has a simple remedy to propose . . . &c.

It may be claimed on behalf of the scheme that it moves on the right track.
Thrift is the natural remedy for pauperism in all its forms. To encourage thrift
must, therefore, be the method of every social reformer who desires to get rid of
pauperism. Tliere is no objection in theory to going beyond this point and making
thrift compulsory . . . &c.

The article goes on to hint at two difficulties, one of which, and
apparently the gravest, I have already treated — namely, the money
risk to Grovernment, which I have shown will really be not incurred
at all. The second is couched in the expression of a ' doubt whether
a compulsion of this kind would be submitted to without resistance.'
As I must take another occasion of treating this point, I only observe
here that, as far as actual resistance is to be apprehended, the danger
is very small, since the persons to be compelled will all be minors,
the money to be paid will be deducted from their earnings, and their
elders will be too certain of the advantage of the proposed compulsion
to give its objects the slightest sympathy in their ideas of resisting
what the law requires.

And, further, I contend that, so far from resisting it, they, too,
before it becomes law, will see its advantages, and will no more care
to resist it than a child would feel disposed to fight against the offer
of a cake or of a toy.

A more elaborate criticism of the proposal than any I have seen
appears in the Saturday Review for the 12th of June ; and I proceed
to examine it, as affording excellent illustration of the truth I have
frequently advanced — namely, that objections offered, no matter how
confidently, against the scheme, for the most part fail to touch it
at all.

The writer commences with the following : —

Lord Carnarvon lately made a proposal in the Upper House which, as Lord
Kimberley remarked, has a very taking appearance at first, and consequently has
many advocates among philanthropists who have not given themselves the trouble
to think out all the details of the subject.

I begin by differing toto ccelo with the writer, and declaring that
the fact is entirely the other way — namely, that it is, almost without
one single exception, the objectors who have not, and the advocates
who have, given themselves that very proper trouble. I will offer
three proofs of this statement : first, that Lord Carnarvon, who brought
the matter forward, is not exactly the sort of man to commit himself
to an insufficiently considered subject, while the peers who, on the
mere spur of the moment, objected, did not profess to have made any
study of it whatever, and, as I have shown, more or less misappre-
hended it; secondly, that, so far as I know, not one person has
abandoned the subject on further consideration, while many of its
VOL. VIII.— No. 41. I

114 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

most strenuous present supporters scouted the scheme before they
4 thought out the details,' and embraced it afterwards ; and thirdly,
as this second proof may be regarded as resting merely on asser-
tion, I will prove from the very words of the article itself that
its writer has not * studied the details ' of the plan.

The Reviewer's three opening sentences are all inaccurate : the
first I have already corrected ; the second states that Lord Carnarvon
limited his proposal 4 to the agricultural classes — a statement which
no report of the discussion I have seen establishes, and which the
Times version directly contradicts ; the third asserts that the proposal
is * to substitute insurance for the Poor Law? 5 Here are three
tolerably salient misapprehensions, to begin with, in a writer, above
all, who appeals to a study of details. The proposal is not to sub-
stitute insurance for the Poor Law, but to substitute independence
for pauperism,. And this is no word-splitting or quibbling at all.
There is a vast difference between the things; not, perhaps, to a
person first meeting with the subject in the Saturday Review article,
but to one who, if he have not ' studied the details,' has, at least,
like the Reviewer, had the details to study had he chosen, since he
refers further on, as with knowledge, to 'those from whom Lord
Carnarvon evidently borrowed the idea.' For I cannot repeat too
often that I do not propose in my scheme the necessary abrogation
of one single clause in the Poor Law.

This is enough to prove my general allegation against this
Reviewer of an insufficient comprehension of the case to entitle his
judgment at least to absolute unchallengeable authority.

I come next to the difficulties alleged by him against the plan.
Registration is the first. He says : —

The State must be able to lay its hand at the right moment on every person
subject to its jurisdiction. It must know the age, name, sex, status, residence, and
occupation of every one of its subjects ; of such as are employed, it must know by
whom, and must be informed within a reasonable time of every change of address
and employment. In short, it must obtain with regard to the whole community as
full information as it now possesses respecting pensioners and ticket-of-leave men.
. . . And, as the difficulty would be immense, the cost would be enormous,
&c., &c.

The imagined enormity of cost depends on the, also imagined,
immensity of difficulty, which I think a perusal of my essays would
certainly hugely diminish.

For, why should such a register be kept ? If the law required
every employer to make a weekly deduction from the wages of every
person in his employ between the ages of 18 and 21, until the gross

4 It is important to repudiate this misconception. For I am ready to admit that
a compulsion limited to any one class, would be bad enough political economy to make
the scheme impracticable.

5 A misconception also evidenced by the very title of his article, ' A proposed
Substitute for the Poor Law.'

1880. THE LORDS AND NATIONAL INSURANCE. 115

amount of deduction had reached 10£., the process would be perfectly
simple. i Sir, will you employ me ? ' l Yes, at such and such wages.
How old are you ? ' ' Twenty.' * Then show me your insurance
card.' If he have completed his insurance, he has his card to show,
and the employer will have nothing to deduct. If, on the other
hand, it appears that only 7£., instead of 10L, has been paid, the
employer will answer, ' I shall have such and such a weekly deduction
to make.' If the labourer refuse to work under such terms, he will
fare no better elsewhere, since any employer who fails to deduct and
pay in the due proportion to the Post Office, will know that the
labourer himself will be able to sue him for it, and require him to
pay it a second time. Thus there need be no registration, the wage-
earner will be his own inspector of payments, and a very sharp one
too, and the collection of the money will work of itself. The employer,
in his own interest, will be the collector ; the labourer, in his own
interest, the inspector ; the Post Office, in the national interest, the
banker. For the entry of the first payment on the collecting card, it
will certainly be necessary to indicate the age of the insurer. But, must
we have an entire national system of registration for this? The
notion just shows how very little ' details are thought out' by some
people. Every member joining a benefit society now (and I suppose
the Keviewer will join me in saying every working man ought to
belong to one) gives, and without difficulty, evidence of his birth.
And by the time we have National Insurance, we shall have also
another inexpensive means of ascertaining and recording the ages of
all insurers — made to our very hand in the ' child's school-book ' and
the school record of age, which works just such an enormous regis-
tration as has been suggested, practically at no cost at all !

The Eeviewer has next an impressive remark to make ' upon the
departure from all the habits of English life and administration
which the change would imply.'

But I ask, What is any new law but a departure from habit and
a change in administration ? And if our habits be admittedly bad in
this matter of pauperism, and our administration faulty, I see no
good reason why, in the name of common sense, we should not agree
to change them.

Next we come to the difficulty in the way of ' employers not
consenting to make the deductions from the wages of those they
employ.' Again, I say, the Reviewer has not 6 thought out the details/
The thing is done in Germany universally without difficulty, though
the process is enforced on employers through every working week of
all their workmen's lives, instead of only through three years. The
thing has been done for ages by the old East India Company through-
out all her services ; the thing is done without refusal or difficulty by
deduction from the pay of every soldier in the army now ; the thing
is done by many public establishments, by nearly all large private

I 2

116 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

establishments, and done under less popular conditions and under
greater difficulties. Need I say more ? Any one who has < thought
out the details' ought to know that from 1696 to 1851, a period
of 157 years, a deduction from wages of workmen by employers was
enforced by law on a very large and important section of our wage-
earners, though that deduction was made to secure a pension, not for
themselves, but for other men. Sixpence a month (' the Greenwich
sixpence ') was deducted from every merchant seaman's wage during-
all those years to provide pensions for seamen of the Royal Navy ; and
that system was not resisted, not complained of, not rebelled against,
but actually abandoned after more than a century and a half, not
because of its injustice, which no one seemed to notice, but because of
its insufficiency to effect the purpose for which it was established ! 6

The Saturday Reviewer touches next the possible unwillingness
of the working men to allow the deduction to be made ; which I hope
to treat at length elsewhere, and will show to afford very little cause
for anxiety. But he next assumes that the employers would have to
pay the money. This assumption I have combated many times, and
have even touched in this article ; but no one asserts it, so far as I
know, who has read through my essays in this and other Reviews,
and my ' Reply to Mr. Edwards.' 7

But I may say one word more of this, as quoting a specimen of
how the Reviewer ' enters into details.' Figures are fearful things !
He says : —

To render the employer responsible would be a very serious matter. The em-
ployer of 1,000 work-people, for instance, would be bound to pay 501. a week, or
2,600/. a year. It is nonsense to say he would be compensated by the abolition of
poor rates.

So this writer knows so little of the main outlines of the proposal
he falls foul of as not to have noticed at all its chief feature — the
payment of the money only during three early unburdened years of
life, and the freedom of the person insured from all compulsion after-
wards.

I do not like to seem rude, but I must retort that ' it is nonsense
to say' that an employer of a thousand workpeople employs nobody
under eighteen and nobody over twenty-one ! And yet this is what
the writer must be held to mean if he has made his objection after
' thinking out the details ' of the plan.8

8 This history of the ' Greenwich sixpences ' affords a very striking incidental illus-
tration of the sufficiency even of my supposed minimum (4«. per week) in preventing
pauperism. The Greenwich pensions amount to 2s. &d. per week, and are suspended
if recipients come upon the rates as paupers. The total suspensions thus caused are
not more than 3 or 4 per 1,000 !

7 Prevention of Pauperism, pp. 74-109.

8 This amusing mistake may well run in double harness with that made by a
morning paper in criticising the suggestion of Compulsory Insurance made in my
Westminster Abbey Sermon. The article ended : ' A nation of small annuitants would
soon become a nation of hopeless idlers,' the writer failing to see that a nation of
septuagenarians could, if it existed, scarcely be expected to work very hard !

1880. THE LORDS AND NATIONAL INSURANCE. 117

Another point comes next to be noticed. The Keviewer quite
overlooks the fact that it was never proposed to exact a compulsory
insurance from any one above the age of twenty-one years at the
passing of the law ; and also, in his bird's-eye view of present actual
and potential pauperism, he fails to consider — nay, does not seem
even to think of considering — the different condition in which our
nation would be when the generation in which the transition is made
shall have passed away.

We have, lastly, three considerations put before us in the conclud-
ing paragraph, striking, no doubt, and true, after a fashion, but not
by any means such as it can satisfy the heart of a philanthropist to
neglect, or quiet the conscience of a statesman to ignore. We are
told:—

(1) Pauperism is to a large extent inherited, the pauper child seldom emerging
from the state in which he was brought up, and always tending to fall back into it.

I answer this by saying that by making pauperism impossible to
the youth of to-day we are cutting off at the source the supply of
* hereditary ' paupers. If there can be no pauper fathers no children
can inherit pauperism from them.

(2) A sanguine optimism may hope that education will gradually impart a new
character to the population. But legislation is not to be founded on a sanguine
optimism ; and in any event the realisation of the hope is too distant to affect
present legislation. Now, at any rate, we have a multitude of criminals, vagrants,
and paupers, young as well as old, who have not, and never will have, the means of
honestly paying a premium. Thus, when closely examined, this fine-sounding scheme,
with all its pretensions, THKOWS the support of the improvident and the nej er-do-ivett
on the well-to-do and the industrious, just as does the Poor Law.

I pray my readers to examine this assertion. If it be justified, it
is an argument that because bad exists no one must attempt to amend
it ; or it amounts to an assertion that the evil now existing, which
National Insurance cannot touch and does not profess to touch, may
be cast at the door of this as yet unaccomplished reform ! — in other
words, that a present evil can be due to a future measure ! Now I
beg to alter into terms which really apply to National Insurance the
sentence I have italicised, feeling sure that if readers will first peruse
the original, and then the paraphrase, they will see for themselves,
without one word from me, how seriously the Saturday Reviewer,
after a close examination, has misrepresented the proposal. For I
would read it thus : —

'This fine- sounding scheme, cutting off all future supply of
pauperism, leaves a proportion, daily diminishing, of the present
paupers (whom it never undertook to deal with) as a burden still on
the well-to-do and the industrious, but cuts off, at the same time, the
source of all future increase to the vanishing burden.'

And here is the Reviewer's last comfort for a nation to whom
pauperism is a shame, a misery, a horror, and threatens to ruin

118 TUE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

alike the body and the soul of our race. This is his doleful Envoi :
* Meanwhile we must accept pauperism as inevitable.' Or, in other
words, ' because there ist no help for spilt milk, we had better go on
spilling it for ever !

But, is this the end of the whole matter ? I would say to such a
writer, * Leave it alone I This spirit of despair is not the fitting
frame in which to deal with a subject of the sort. Or, if you will not
leave it alone, think it out ; take some little trouble more than has
been done to examine a suggestion and understand it, before con-
demning it and passing.it by. We, at -least, who do "think out
details," who do examine closely, have a hope, and the hope is bright,
and hold a confidence, for which we can give a reason, that in some
such measure as Lord Carnarvon advocated there is a means of
escape from evil, sorrow, degradation, and injustice, such as dishonour
and demoralise no other nation in the universe besides our own. If
this, indeed, be the sum of your counsel, I would say again, Leave us
alone, till we have fought our fight and won our victory. If pau-
perism be inevitable, effort and failure can leave us no worse off than
we are ; if otherwise, what words can utter the measure of our gain ?
At all events it is worth trying for, thinking for, and praying for.
But the man who tells thinking men that pauperism is inevitable in
England, while it exists in no other nation on the globe, is not the
safest guide to follow in a cause so great as this.'

For the rest, I have no sort of doubt or fear that this cause
shall ever drop out from the minds of Englishmen till it have
succeeded and been carried through. The thoughtful men, and they
are many, in our nation have been grieving long over the hurt and
hopelessness of our treatment of the poor. We have been drifting
like a shipwrecked crew upon a tossing raft over a lonely ocean,
fainting, dispirited, and depressed. Now and then one or another
from the half-stupor of a joyous dream has cried, ' A sail I a sail !' and
we have lifted up our languid eyes, only to be disappointed once
again, and have opened our lips only to objurgate the fellow-sufferer's
rashness in deceiving us anew. But now, indeed, at last, there is a
sail in sight ; and these objections we have been studying, as they rise
and fall, are but the waves that hide it now and again from the weary
sufferers upon the raft. Now we lift our • eyes once more, and this
time they are bright with hope ; and now it is no longer one that
cries and many that murmur, but all lift up their cry together. My
countrymen are neither so modest nor so mad as, in a case like this, to
let their chance of safety pass because they feel too shy to shout.

WILLIAM LEWERYOBLACKLEY.

1880 119

THE FRENCH CLERGY AND THE
PRESENT REPUBLIC.

THE Church and the Kepublic in France are passing through a fresh
crisis which must be injurious to both of them, although in very
different degrees. While misunderstandings, perhaps partly involun-
tary, but which are for the most part deliberately provoked, have
placed the Kepublic in a state of warfare with the Church, Europe
stands with crossed arms gazing with fixed eyes on France, awaiting
the issue of the strife. It watches the spectacle with a painful in-
terest, suspecting that there will be many victims ; nor is it mistaken
in this belief.

Placed as we are 'in the heart of the conflict our attention is
divided between the shocks sustained by our unhappy country, and
the notice they attract in other lands, but it appears to us that
many spectators of passing events do not understand or estimate the
importance of the strife. The complaints of the two opposite camps
are misunderstood, and men are inclined to believe that those most
to blame are in reality the most innocent. Eesponsibilities are
ascribed to the Church which she does not accept, and she is sup-
posed to be implicated in acts with which she has nothing to do,
and which she would have prevented if it had been possible.

This is not the first occasion on which the conduct of the Church
has been misunderstood, nor is it likely to be the last. Whether the
errors of her opponents are involuntary or not, it is important that she
should secure the sympathy of those spectators who are either indif-
ferent or well-disposed, and for this reason the clergy are interested
in explaining their attitude with reference to the republican institu-
tions now established in France, and in giving a frank statement of the
principles of their conduct.

They can do this without difficulty and without fear, since they
have done nothing to be ashamed of ; and if all classes of French
society had done their duty as well as the clergy, France would not
have fallen into the condition to which she is now reduced.

We believe that foreigners do not fully understand the present
controversy, and that they ascribe ideas and aspirations to the clergy
which the latter are far from entertaining. They are supposed to be
systematically hostile to the Kepublic, and the present crisis is ascribed

120 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

to their hostility. In all this there are many misconceptions, and we
therefore propose to examine with sincerity and frankness the situa-
tion of the clergy in reference to the Republic.

The first question presented to us is whether the clergy of Frapce
are hostile to the Republic. To this we distinctly reply that the clergy
are not hostile to the Republic either in their tenets, their traditions,
their opinions, or their discipline. We proceed at once to prove the
truth of this assertion.

In the first place, there is no doctrinal difference between the
clergy of France and the Republic as far as the form of government
is concerned. Although this question is theoretical, it is one of
great importance, for if it is certain that there is nothing incompatible
between the doctrines of the French clergy and the republican system,
the present hostility of the French Republic against the clergy must
be ascribed to other causes.

The attention of the Church has long been directed to forms of
government, and she has declared her opinion of so-called modern
institutions, which are in reality as ancient as the world itself.
Catholic theologians have studied and discussed different forms of
government, monarchical, aristocratic, and republican ; they have
pointed out the advantages and disadvantages of each, pronouncing
sometimes in favour of one rather than of another, but without con-
demning any, for with the wisdom which the Church always imparts
to those who listen to her, they have seen that what was best in
theory was not always the best in practice, and that forms of govern-
ment must be judged in accordance with their time and place rather
than in the abstract.

We should have liked to discuss at some length the theoretical
aspect of the question ; but, owing to the limits of our space, we are
obliged to refer the readers to the works of S. Thomas, Bellannin,
and Suarez, where they will find the subject fully examined. For
this reason we pass over this side of the matter, and hasten to show
that there is no traditional opposition between the Republic and the
French clergy.

II.

Two classes of persons are found among the enemies of the
French Republic ; men who are honest, intelligent, noble-minded,
and abounding in virtue and self-devotion. This is deeply to be
regretted, for it is a misfortune for any form of government to
number among its adversaries the most honest, virtuous, and intel-
ligent section of the country ; and it is equally unfortunate that
divisions should exist in a nation where union is so necessary. When
the enemy is at our frontiers ready to take advantage of our mistakes,

1880. THE FRENCH CLERGY AND THE REPUBLIC. 121

the nation should be aware of errors and careful to avoid divisions.
This is precisely the situation of France at this moment.

The first class of men in opposition to the Eepublic includes the
adherents of the old dynasty, men whose names, recollections, and his-
tory are mingled with those of the ancient monarchy. It is indeed
difficult for those who bear an historic name, and look back to the
family tradition of loyalty — and many such Frenchmen may still be
found — to admit that France has no other future before her save that
of a Eepublic. Great force of character is reqiiired in those who are
not swayed by interest, necessity, or some still less creditable motive,
in order, we do not say, to repudiate but to separate themselves from
the past. Keason may tell us that a good Frenchman has nothing
else to do but to accept the Republic ; reason however is of little avail
unless the will goes with it, and such a step exposes the man who
takes it to criticism, to attacks, and to calumnies. It is difficult for
such men as De la Rochefoucauld, De Broglie, De Larcy, and a
hundred others, to ally themselves with the Republic, and abandon
the monarchical traditions of their forefathers.

We can scarcely expect that men whose ancestors made and pre-
served the French Monarchy, whose fathers perished by the guillotine
erected by the Revolution, should hail the Republic as the government
of their choice. The circumstances are too recent for such a con-
version, which would indeed scarcely be creditable to human nature.
A similar debasement of mind would lead us to despair of the future
of France. Moreover, the events of this century show that instability
is the chief characteristic of modern institutions. There is no certainty
that the Republic will last longer than the governments which pre-
ceded it, especially if she pursues her present suicidal course. The
newspapers and the most ardent republicans would hardly declare so
loudly that she is definitively established in France, unless her situa-
tion were somewhat precarious, and it may be said in passing that the
dangers which threaten her come from the warmest adherents of the
republican system.

The instability of our institutions is therefore a sufficient reason
to deter the representatives of the old families from the cause of the
Republic. There is a dignity in this calm and reserved attitude
which commands our respect and admiration. In this case tradition
is in agreement with reason and good sense, and both restrain them
from taking an active part in the establishment of a republican
government. Such persons cannot be expected to do more than
remain passive, and raise no obstacles to the reigning policy.

A second class of opponents of the Republic includes those who
were connected with the monarchies of the present century, with the
two Empires, and the Monarchy of July. When the favours of the
Napoleonic dynasty have fallen upon a man's father or upon himself,
gratitude forbids him to ally himself with the government by which
that dynasty was overthrown, or he can be drawn to it but slowly and

122 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

within certain limits. Such of the republicans as have not understood
the duty imposed upon them by these considerations have been
severely punished for their conduct. They are the object of public con-
tempt, and this is perfectly just, since those whom they basely forsook
despise them, and they are but poorly esteemed by the party they were
so ready to join. It is needless to give instances of what we say ;
everyone knows in what estimation Comte Foucher de Careil is held
in the republican camp — a deserter from and a traitor to every party.

Traditions of gratitude as well as family traditions may therefore
hold men back from the Republic, as is actually the case in France
to-day.

If, instead of a Republic, that is, a government which represents
part of the people only, it were the Republic, representing the whole
nation, these two classes of opponents need give the government no
uneasiness, since their opposition is open, fair, and incapable of un-
worthy intrigues. The government, it is true, could not reckon on
much zeal and devotion, but they might depend upon indifference,
perhaps even on a more active cooperation, since the republican
government could no longer be administered by a caste. This was
the state of things from 1870 to 1877 when monarchists did not
refuse to serve the Republic. They in fact have created that capital

- of good fame both at home and abroad on which she has subsisted
. for the last three years, and which is unfortunately almost exhausted.

But admitting that family tradition and considerations of gratitude
have estranged part of the French nation from the Republic, we
have now to consider how far these motives affect the French clergy.
If we regard the clergy of France en bloc, they may be divided
into two unequal parts. The immense majority are drawn from the
middle and lower classes,, whence the ranks of the republicans are also

- recruited. As far as this portion of the French clergy is concerned
there is plainly no question of family tradition. The middle class,

- the artisans, and labourers were not more than they are now favoured
by the Empire, the Government of July, and the Restoration. Family

; tradition is therefore with them ineffective, and even since the
Republic relies for support on the common people, the clergy is bound,
from a simply human point of view, to regard this government with
favour so long as it is worthy of respect, because their family ties and

i class interests are with the Republic. In this case family tradition
might indeed conciliate the suffrages of the clergy, if the Republic
acted in a reasonable manner.

As for that portion of the clergy which is drawn from the great
families favoured by the Bourbon, the Orleans, and the Bonaparte
dynasties, it is so merged in the mass of the clergy, that their opinions
count for nothing. It is possible that some priests are by tradition
Legitimist, Orleanist, or Bonapartist, but we formally deny that any
priests, as such, and in their official capacity, proclaim their personal

1880. THE FRENCH CLERGY AND THE REPUBLIC. 123

and political opinions. Of course we do not here speak of one or
two eccentric characters which are found in every large body of men,
since the clergy of France form no exception to the rule. But no
inference can be drawn from these isolated cases. Moreover it is
certain that those who by family tradition belong to one or other of
our political parties take good care not to proclaim their opinions,
and avoid all that could reasonably offend public opinion. The
clergy of France are then fettered by no connection with political
parties, and of all classes of the people, they could be the most easily
. won over to the cause of the Eepublic, to whom such an achievement
would be the greatest honour.

Let us now see whether the clergy are bound to the monarchical
form of government by ties of gratitude.

There was one period in this century when the French clergy took
a part in politics, we mean after 1830. Although the Eestoration
was favourable to the clergy, the latter obtained but few favours
from the Bourbons, but they saw that the ill-treatment of the Church
was contrary to the wishes of the reigning dynasty. Charles X. signed
the famous ordinance of 1828, la mort dans Vame, and worsted in
this first struggle was overwhelmed in the second, under the ruins of
his shattered throne. The Eevolution of 1830, made against religion
and the legitimate monarchy, was profoundly disliked by the clergy,
and it was ten years before their opposition died away. After a while,
however, the clergy took a just view of the situation and of their
proper sphere of action, and from that time held aloof from political
ties, desiring to remain wholly independent. The French clergy are
of all classes of society certainly the most indifferent to forms of
government, considering them all good, so far as they are compatible
with order. They only decline to enter into any compact with dis-
order and revolution. They know well that it is their duty to be
superior to republican and monarchical forms, since they are bound
to serve all persons alike. It is their mission to save souls, not to
overthrow a Republic and found a Monarchy.

Nor is there any reason whatever why they should be especially
attached to the monarchical form of government, by which they have
at different times been persecuted, as we will briefly show.

The Second Empire, while professing to honour the Church, secretly
persecuted her, opposing her action and hindering her good works,
suppressing her associations, paralysing her influence, preparing and
completing the ruin of the temporal power of the Pope. And while
doing all this, the Empire contrived to make people suppose that it
was protecting religion, so that since the clergy have been persecuted
out of hatred to the Empire. Nor did they fare better under the
Government of July. From the religious point of view, the dynasty
of Louis Philippe was Voltairean. The persecutions of 1845, the
refusal to allow liberty of teaching, the annoyances to which the

124 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

episcopate was subjected, are recollections which do not inspire much
sympathy for the Orleanist dynasty among the clergy. The survivors
of that epoch still speak sadly of the outrages to which the clergy
and religion were subjected. As for the Restoration, its more favour-
able disposition does not enable us to forget the debauchery of Louis
XV., the saturnalia of the Kegency, the declaration of 1682, the
persecutions of the Rtgale, and many other royal edicts distinctly
directed against the rights of the Church and the welfare of souls.
It is unnecessary to make many researches and to go back further to
show that the clergy cannot absolutely rely on monarchy and mon-
archies, and that they are sufficiently acquainted with history to be
aware of the fact. They would willingly add a clause to the litanies
which it is sometimes their duty to recite : ' From this kind of pro-
"tection, deliver us, 0 Lord ! '

It is true that the conduct of the Eepublic towards the clergy
of France has left an indelible stain. The illusions of 1789, quickly
followed by the crimes of 1791-1797, have left bloody records
in the annals of the clergy as well as in those of the French
nation. A form of government ushered in by such horrors needs
much forgiveness. Before stipulating that it should be treated as a
government worthy of respect, it must prove that it is so, beyond
all possibility of contradiction. It is the height of absurdity to
suppose that a Republic ought not to inspire some uneasiness and to
meet with some suspicion and fear. It is not for the clergy to make
advances, but for the Republic. It is true that in 1848 the Republic
gave two proofs of repentance and conversion; she undertook the
expedition to Rome ajid organised the liberty of secondary instruction.
The Church and the clergy remember this with gratitude, and while
regretting the way in which the Republic has established herself
among us for the third time, the clergy were disposed to accept
another experiment of her system in a loyal spirit. Although the
Church had nothing to do with the establishment of the republican
government, she was equally determined to have nothing to do with
its overthrow.

We repeat that the clergy are no enemies of the Republic by tra-
dition; and we have now to show that the assertion that they are
hostile in inclination and opinions is equally erroneous.

III.

In the first place no one will venture to say that the education of
the clergy is directed in a sense hostile to the Republic, and indeed it
would be impossible to prove such an assertion. There has been much
talk about the Jesuits and their mode of teaching. Jules Ferry, the
Director of Public Instruction, has lately quoted in the Senate twenty-
seven passages extracted from authors of whom at least half were not

1880. THE FRENCH CLERGY AND THE REPUBLIC. 125

Jesuits, and the other passages were taken from the writings of two
of that order. We might probably differ from these authors on some
points, but no sensible man would believe that they are necessarily
anti-republican because they condemn the illusions, crimes, and satur-
nalia of 1789-1797. If it is necessary, in order to be a good repub-
lican, to approve theft, assassination, pillage, disorder, and impiety, it
is evident that the clergy is anti-republican, and no one can be sur-
prised at the fact. But it is possible to be a republican and yet con-
demn the great Revolution en bloc as a piece of useless savagery. Even
good republicans think and speak with us on this subject.

There is no reason for educating the clergy in a systematic oppo-
sition to the Republic, nor would the attempt be successful. In fact,
the subject scarcely enters into the course of secondary instruction.
The teacher's object is to form honest, upright, and steady ecclesiastics,
who may take an intelligent interest in events of the day, and
combine the love of their country with the love of souls. The teacher
seeks to inspire them with respect for authority, a spirit of self-
denial and devotion to duty. It can hardly be desired that the
teaching of theology should be imbued with oaths of hatred to
royalty and of death to tyrants. Neither would any wish to see the
clergy espouse the cause of every Hartmann of our time. Men would
not endure priests affecting the role of tribunes of the people.

All sensible men in France wish that priests should be modest,
gentle, charitable, devoted to their duties, and that they should take
little or no part in politics. Such are the priests we have, and they
have been formed by the education which has been imparted to them.

But it may perhaps be said that social relations have imbued the
clergy with anti-republican opinions, and it is necessary to meet this
argument by stating one or two questions. If it is true that these
relations are the cause of their opinions, it follows that the French
clergy do not associate with republicans, who might inoculate them
with their sentiments, just as they are now inoculated with the
sentiments of the Legitimists, Bonapartists, and Orleanists. If so,
whose fault is this ? Is it not because republicans as a rule hold
aloof from the Church, and are openly at war with religion and
Christianity ? If the clergy are not led by their social relations to
think well of the Republic, those republicans are to blame who assume
to be her representatives. Let them examine their consciences, and
they will find more reason to say that the republicans are hostile to
the clergy than that the clergy are hostile to the republicans.

The following explanation has recently been given by the Saturday
Review of the situation created in France by the breach between the
clergy and the Republic: —

It might have been expected that a Church organised on a highly democratic
"basis (and in some respects, the social standing of the clergy for example, the
Catholic Church is very democratic) would show no rooted hostility to republican

126 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

institutions. The priests might not have felt inclined to bless trees of liberty as in
1848, but there was no very obvious reason why they should part company from
their fathers and brothers and curse the government, which, if they had remained
laymen, they would probably have accepted as decidedly the best within their
reach.

On this point we agree with the Saturday Review. It is per-
fectly true that the Church is made for the people, and adopts all
that is good in democracies, but this only places the errors of the
republicans in France in a clearer light, since they have alienated
and still contrive to alienate the Catholic clergy from them, although
the latter would naturally have worked with them. This abnormal
situation cannot be explained by trivial causes, but this is the attempt
made by the Saturday Review. We proceed to give its singular
solution of a problem which is interesting from more than one point
of view : —

The hostility between the Church and the Republic (says the Rmieii}) is in part
due to the extreme poverty of the clergy. The parish priests, especially in the coun-
try, have scarcely enough to live on. The payment they receive from the State is
very email indeed ; and the peasants, who keenly feel being obliged to pay even this,
are not likely to supplement it by any private liberality of their own. In this re-
spect, however, the Ilepublic is not worse than the governments that have preceded
it. The request of the clergy for an increase in their stipends has been disregarded,
but they receive no less than they did under the Empire. (November 8, 1879.)

It is true that the stipends of the French clergy are insufficient,
especially when we compare them with those of the Anglican clergy,
and for this the Eepublic is perhaps more to blame than the preceding
governments ; first, because the conditions of life have materially
changed since 1870, and secondly, because other stipends, those of
schoolmasters for example, have been raised, while those of the clergy
remain unchanged. On this point the republicans have displayed
neither wisdom nor justice, and the clergy are justified in regarding
the fact as a bad symptom.

But, in spite of the assertion of the Saturday Review to the con-
trary, the clergy have made no complaints, and have asked for no
increase ; their conduct in the whole matter has been full of dignity.
If they had no greater grievance to allege against the Eepublic, peace
would have been quickly made, or at any rate the republicans would
have been very impolitic not to make it. But we must tell the
Saturday Review that the French clergy think worse of the re-
publicans for stinting the incomes of the bishops than for refusing
to augment their own stipends, and this is the strict truth.

The Saturday Review continues : —

Where it is a hard matter for priest to keep body and soul together, it is very
important to him to stand well with his richer parishioners. The great house in the
village can give him a good many dinners in the course of the year, and thus save
his pocket and satisfy his hunger at the same time. The ladies of great houses are
seldom republicans, and the priest who depends on their hospitality for all he knows

1880. THE FRENCH CLERGY AND THE REPUBLIC. 127

of the luxuries of life — meaning thereby all such necessaries as cannot be provided
out of an income of 24*. a year, will be very apt to be, as regards politics, what
they are. He ought no doubt to remember the dignity of the sacerdotal character,
and to have a will and opinions of his own, but as a matter of fact he seldom does.
There is so very little butter to his bread at the best, that he is naturally anxious
above all things to be quite sure on which side the little that there is is to be found.

In this way great effects are explained by trivial causes. Accord-
ing to the Saturday Revieiv the hostility of the French clergy
towards the Kepublic is due to no other cause than the number of
dinners which can be eaten at the neighbouring chateau.

It is surprising that a serious paper should publish such absurdities.
The Saturday Review is in general more ably conducted, and we
cannot congratulate it on this discovery. Besides, it is untrue that
the stipend of the country clergy is not more than 241. ; nor is it true
that every village has its chateau. The chateaux disappeared during
the Revolution, and are only found here and there in some districts
of France. But it is only too true that the republicans are recruited
from the ranks of the poor, the needy, sometimes the disreputable, or
men of extravagant ideas. Well-educated people of good position
respect themselves, and hold back. And this is a misfortune for
the Republic, since it shows a want of confidence in its discretion.
It is also true that the republicans are not generally distinguished
either for their generosity, their education, their respect for religion,
and morality. It is among the monarchists that we find more men
of good education and piety. But we do not precisely see how this
division can turn to the advantage of the Republic and of repub-
licans.

The French clergy find devoted support in the different monarchi-
cal parties, who all respect religion even when they do not practise
it. They cannot therefore be blamed for giving them their sympathies,
but it would be a great mistake to suppose that the clergy are Legi-
timist, Orleanist, or Bonapartist because they associate with men of
those parties. If we had time to go into the question in detail it
would be easy to show that while holding such intercourse with indi-
viduals, the clergy do not attach themselves to the opinions of any
party. While seeking aid for their good works, the clergy do not
engage to vote for the donors at the elections ; still less do they
engage to adopt their illusions, their errors, jealousies, and rancours.
The clergy are on their guard against all these foibles, and, taken
as a whole, they act only from a sense of duty.

IV.

It may finally be said that the clergy are hostile to the Republic
as a matter of discipline, that the bishops are averse to the republican
government, and that the priests are compelled to think with them.

128 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

This has, in fact, been asserted, and those who wish to know how far
men will go in gratuitous assumptions must turn to the Saturday
Review and read the article quoted above.

Supposing this to be true, why, if the bishops are anti-republicans,
have not republican bishops been appointed in the course of the last
ten years ? Surely, out of 60,000 priests, some honest republicans
might have been found to try and convert the rest. There was
nothing to prevent the Republic from undertaking this work of con-
solidation, and she has evinced too great generosity in appointing her
enemies to the episcopate. If no republican priests can be found fit
to become bishops, men of good character must be rare in that party.
In that case the clergy are only doing their duty in holding aloof
from them, and their hostility is dictated by necessity.

But let us ascertain how much truth there is in the assertion that
the episcopate is hostile to the Republic. It is true that as men and
citizens the bishops in France are divided among all the political
parties. They, as well as the clergy, belong, as a rule, to the middle
and working classes, and there are among them Legitimists, Orleanists,
Bonapartists, perhaps even Republicans. But, as bishops, the French
prelates have no political opinions, and express none. They are con-
ciliatory, and do nothing, without good cause, to embarrass the
established authority. No episcopate was ever more moderate in its
complaints, more firm and serious in its language, more reluctant to
protest against arbitrary measures which are as injurious to the country
as to the Church. For the last fifteen months an impious war has been
waged against the clergy, in which the bishops have had to take part,
and yet little cause of reproach has been proved against them. There
was some talk about Monseigneur d'Angers' funeral oration over
General Lamoriciere, but any unprejudiced person will agree that it
provoked much more attention than it deserved. And, even granting
that one bishop is hostile to the Republic, is that a reason for con-
demning them all ? The bishop of Angers is, however, perhaps an
opponent of some republicans rather than of the Republic itself. We
feel sure that Monseigneur Freppel would readily reconcile himself
with an honest Republic nor dream of insisting on a Monarchy.

And further. Even if the episcopate were monarchist, it does
not follow that the clergy would necessarily be hostile to the Republic.
Bishops are not in the habit of ascertaining the political opinions of.
their priests before nominating them to any cure, and it is absolutely
untrue that a priest has ever been constrained to declare on which
side he would vote. We defy anyone to produce a single conclusive
case of the kind. It is possible that some priests have lost promotion
in consequence of their political opinions, but only because they did
not maintain a fitting reserve, and because, by their unseemly
behaviour, they compromised religion and the Church in the eyes of
the faithful. The decisive action of the bishops in such cases cannot
be blamed.

1880. THE FRENCH CLERGY AND THE REPUBLIC. 129

•

The bishops do, in fact, conduct themselves like the clergy. They
fulfil the duties of their pastoral office without meddling with politics.
Our customs and social condition do not allow the clergy to take an
active part, as they do in England and elsewhere, in the elections and
in other things which have no direct concern with religion. Every
one expects the clergy to inquire whether the candidates proposed are
in favour of Article 7, or opposed to it, but not that they should con-
cern themselves about Legitimism, Orleanism, the Empire, or even
the Republic. They would be blamed by men of all parties if they
came forward and made use of their influence to favour one side
more than another. The clergy and the episcopate are aware of this
and do not fail to do their duty ; they do not offer aid which no one
demands and which they ought not to afford. They have never
appeared at political demonstrations, as, for example, at those of
the Legitimists organised for the 29th of September, and those of
the Bonapartists after the death of the Prince Imperial. Their
behaviour has been full of nobility, reserve, and dignity.

It is therefore untrue that the episcopate enjoins hostility to the
Republic. The bishops would be the first to repress any deviation
from social usages either in speech or action. The assertions to the
contrary which are sometimes circulated by the French and foreign
press are devoid of foundation, and the fact is as clear as day to any
impartial observer.

Let us now see how the French clergy really feel towards the
Republic and the republicans. We draw this distinction since there
is a real difference between them.

As far as the Republic is concerned, we will adduce the following
incident, although it may be thought egotistic. Soon after the fall
of the Empire and the Commune, a person connected with a family we
had known for many years remarked with some surprise : ' You must
know, M. 1'Abbs, that one thing puzzles me and many others, and
that is the shade of your political opinions. We have often speculated
to what party you belong, but have never been able to guess.' * We
are not surprised at this,' did we reply, ' since we are in fact of no party.
It may be a misfortune, but the fact is we have no definite opinions.
We are in favour of every government which maintains order, and
opposed to every government which encourages disorder. We do not
go beyond this : it may be a mistake, but it is the simple truth.'

We venture to quote this reply, because it represents the disposi-
tion of the immense majority of the French nation, and especially of
the Catholic clergy. Both in theory and practice the clergy of France
are irrevocably attached to no party. They know how they ought to
act in the revolutions which recur every ten years, and take care
VOL. VIII.— No. 41. K

130 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

not to link their destiny with that of any system of government,
whether it be a Monarchy or a Kepublic.

The clergy of France hold that the Kepublic is like other forms
of Government, theoretically and in itself neither good nor evil. They
believe that everything depends upon the mode in which it is adminis-
tered, and that it may be the source of great good and also of great
evil. They think, with all men of sense and experience, that if the Re-
public is sometimes a good and fair Government, it is from its nature
liable to fall rapidly into anarchy, which is the most terrible
of all forms of despotism. They remember that for ten years the
guillotines rose everywhere in France under the authority of the
Republic, that the prisons were crowded with innocent victims,
that rivers of blood were shed. It is hard to reproach the clergy
because they have not yet forgotten the Great Revolution. They
wait therefore until the Republic is organised and appears to govern
fairly. The clergy give her credit for good intentions in 1848, but
that is all. They will accept or submit to her rule, but without
linking their destiny to hers, nor trying to establish her on the soil
per fas et nefas. This is the mission of politicians, not of the clergy.
The former must do what they think best for the country, the latter
have to think of the salvation of souls, whether they are members of
a Republic or a Monarchy. If they do not encroach on each other's
territory all will go well, and there is assuredly no desire on the part
of the clergy to encroach on the Republic.

Both in theory and practice, therefore, the clergy have been, and
;fitill are, indifferent to the republican form of government as such.
The cardinals of Paris and of Cambrai spoke lately as follows on
this subject :—

Members of the clergy, churchmen, and ministers of Jesus Christ, we are
strangers to political parties.1

Standing aloof from all political agitations, strangers to all civil administra-
tions and secular affairs, we content ourselves with the duties of our office, and only
ask for liberty to fulfil them. As for the laity, we shall continue to serve them, in
spite of their mistrust, antipathy and opposition, recommending all to exercise the
respect for magistrates and obedience to the laws which we practise ourselves, so
long as they do not controvert the law of God, our devotion to our country, and the
Anxious solace of human suffering.2

It cannot be said of republicans, or at least of those who are now in
power, that they act in the same way, and , all intelligent men in
France and elsewhere will agree with us when they know what is
passing.

Take all the men in power at this moment, from the President
Grevy to the lowest provincial sous-prefet ; study their past and
present lives and their projects for the future, and you will see

1 Cardinal Guibert. Pastoral letter of January 8, 1879.
*__ Cardinal Ilegnicr. September 12, 1870.

1880. THE FRENCH CLERGY AND THE REPUBLIC. 131

that they are not such as men of high character would choose for
friends.3

If you examine their past, you will generally find that they are
men who have failed in their career either in intelligence, good-
feelings, morals, or way of life ; men who have done nothing but
make speeches, who have been involved in plots against order, who
have organised or encouraged all our revolutions ; men who have
squandered their money, dishonoured their homes or families, who
have been branded with the disgrace of imprisonment, exile, or the
galleys. We do not say that all republicans of our time are rogues, but
that all rogues and communards are republicans. This is not much to
the credit of the Republic, and does not enlarge our sympathy for her.

If we turn from the past to the present, we have to consider the
acts of the republicans, and whether they have made a single really
useful law since they came into power. We say that, on the contrary,
they have proposed many measures opposed to public order, which
have been discussed and passed with unseemly haste. These may be
counted by tens, not by units ; they have pulled down without attempt-
ing to rebuild ; they have alarmed and offended all interests without
satisfying any, and this is the conduct of a government which, before
its advent to power, promised us a second golden age, peace, liberty,
universal happiness, and a spirit of conciliation which was to
draw towards it all hearts by its moderation and discreet conduct.
As the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris wrote to the President of the
Republic on the 8th of April 1 880 : 'If the Republic wishes to esta-
blish her rule over us, she must adopt other means. When, before
her advent to power, it was sought to make us love her, she was pre-
sented to us in a very different form.'

In fact, it is like a dream to read the former programmes of the
republicans and to compare them with the acts of the very same men
who. are now in power. The army, the magistrature, finance, and
public instruction all bear the traces of violence by republican hands.
We have already reached the era of 1792 in the third Republic, and
men begin to ask if we are not on the eve of another 1793. Revolu-
tion, persecution, every expedient is used by the men now in power.
The catalogue of misdeeds committed by our rulers is already enor-
mous, and of all the interests menaced, religion is the most in danger.
We subjoin a list of the measures proposed or accepted by those who
profess to be the only true representatives of the Republic.

Projets Talandier, Barodet, and Bert on the subject of Public In-
struction. Loi Ferry respecting the Higher Council of Public In-
struction and on Higher Education. The suppression of the military
almonry. Projet Saint Martin to forbid ministers of public worship
to enter the barracks. Projet Naquet on divorce. Projet Saint

3 D'Avesne, Les Deux Frances. An interesting volume on the acts and manners of
men of the day.

132 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

Martin on the marriage of priests. Projet de loi on cemeteries.
Projet Belle as to funeral rites. Projet Labuge on Vestries.
Secularisation of the Bureaux de bienfaisance. Projet Bert and
Labuge, for making the clergy 'liable to military service. Projet
Boysset for the suppression of the budget of Public Worship, and the
abrogation of the concordat. Brisson's amendments in the articles
9 and 10 of the financial Budget of 1881, &c.

Surely this list of measures of persecution is enough. While the
republican members of the Chamber are legislating in this sense the
government officials are equally busy. An examination of the course
pursued by the prefets and the municipal councils shows that they
are offending or alarming every religious interest. The Christian
Brothers, Sisters of Mercy, and the parish clergy are all the objects of
oppression, and illegal acts against them are committed every day.
The clergy cannot be expected to feel esteem, confidence, and respect
for such men, nor can they make common cause with men so dis-
reputable, if we take them all together.

Nor is this all which we have to expect from the republicans ; it
is only an instalment of what they propose to do. They are still held
back by the moderately Conservative majority in the Senate ; but the
republicans look forward to the day when they shall be the absolute
rulers, and they have already told us what they propose to do. Read
the comptes-rendus of the municipal council of Paris, or the report
of speeches made in the Chamber of Deputies by M. Ferry, and even
by M. de Freycinet, and you will judge whether any thoughtful
man can be reassured by the proposed legislation. In fact, a war of
extermination against all old institutions has begun, and especially
against the Church and the clergy, which are the most stable ele-
ments of French society.

Innumerable proofs of this assertion might be alleged, but they
are superfluous, for anyone who deceives himself as to the intentions
of the republicans must read nothing, hear nothing, and see nothing
of what is passing around him. Only those who are wilfully blind
and deaf can ignore the present attack upon the clergy of France by
the republicans. There is a deluge of pamphlets, articles, and
caricatures, one more scurrilous than another. A party which has
recourse to such weapons ought to be eternally disgraced.

While the mass of the republican body acts in this way, the only
honourable men of that party, by whose means the present govern-
ment has come into power, such as Jules Simon, Dufaure, Laboulaye,
Wallon, Berenger, Lamy, are hooted, excommunicated, reviled,
and threatened, because they wish to be just to the Catholics. This is
not likely to convert the clergy to the republican institutions, nor to
allay their fears, since they have nothing to hope and everything to
fear from that party. According to writers in^the Saturday Review
the responsibility for the present situation rests partly on the repub-

1880. THE FRENCH CLERGY AND THE REPUBLIC. 133

licans and partly on the Church ; but although it may be well to say
so from a literary point of view, the assertion is not borne out by
truth, justice, or common fairness.

The republicans must not only have made mistakes, but have
committed crimes before such men as Jules Simon, Dufaure, Labou-
laye, Berenger, and Wallon would have uttered such indignant pro-
tests in the French tribune. M. Berenger, one of the most moderate
members of the republican party, spoke as follows on May 5, 1880 :

You cannot establish the Republic without us ; it cannot be done without the
support of the moderate party. No, you cannot exist without us. When we
joined you, we little thought to what uses we were to be applied. In order to do
so, many of us broke with traditions which were the glory of our lives, and we en-
dured the dissatisfaction and irritation of our friends. Can it be supposed that we
committed this kind of moral perjury against our former convictions for any other
purpose than to advance the liberal cause ? We acted from the conviction that
the Republic was inseparable from liberty, which we had worshipped all our lives,
and declared that if the welfare of our country demanded the sacrifices of our
former opinions, our liberal aspirations would at any rate be gratified. It was this
thought which led us to join your party, but to retain us juster and more noble
measures must be proposed. It has already been declared that we have become
adherers of the Monarchy, but this insinuation is an outrage. No, we remain
feithful to the Republic, but we will not desert liberty. It is said that the Re-
public and universal suffrage are identical, but the fact may be disputed since we
have seen one without the other. But it is, as I think, rigorously true that the
alliance between the Republic and liberty is indissoluble, indispensable, and that
they have never been separated with impunity. The Republic is liberty itself; it
is, as the very word indicates, common to all. If it should become the property of
a few, the stamp of the Republic may remain, but its essence and reality will be no
more. Before leaving the tribune I have one word more to say : be careful lest,
owing to your policy, a party should be formed in the heart of the Republic which
shall unfurl another flag, round which may rally all generous hearts, honest minds,
and enlightened consciences ; the flag of liberty for all alike.

The sentiments of the French clergy towards the Eepublic and
towards republicans are not the same. They hold that the present
majority does not represent a possible but an impossible Republic ;
or, in other words, the Revolution. It is not a system of government,
but the proscription of all government, and thoughtful observers
agree in this opinion. They readily accept tne maxim of M. Thiers :
4 The Republic must be Conservative or she will cease to exist.' She is
no longer Conservative : since she has refused to give up Hartmann,
since she has recalled incendiaries and communards , since she has
finally issued the decree of expulsion against unoffending monks and
nuns, she has alarmed all interests and all consciences, and she must
therefore cease to exist.

While the clergy is justified in distinguishing between the Re-
public and the republicans now in power, they maintain a dignified
attitude under all the attacks of the radical press and of the govern-
ment officials. They show no unseemly agitation, but remain silent,
and allow the torrent to rush by ; they despise insults and carry on

134 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

their good works as far as possible as the only reply to calumny. The
columns of the newspapers are not filled with indignant letters, and
they only protest by their silence, while expecting from time and
from God the justice refused by man. The clergy of France, like the
whole Catholic Church, triumph over their adversaries by patient
endurance of persecution.

VI.

It may secondly be asked what has caused the present breach be-
tween the government and the French clergy, and what has aroused
the angry cry against the latter, if the facts are as we have stated.
The answer is easy. The attack upon the clergy is due to general
causes, always at work, and on which we need not dwell, but it is
also due to special causes which have aroused the latent strife into
activity, and we have to consider there these special causes.

In a book which obtained and deserved some notice, M. Emile
Ollivier has touched on this delicate subject with his well-known
ability, yet not perhaps so as to place it in its true light. The cause of
the present religious crisis is to be found, he says, in the situation in
which the Papacy has been placed during the last thirty years. The
Revolution of 1848, dreaded by Catholics, directed the hatred of
sectarians throughout the world against Rome. The destruction of
the temporal power of the Pope, the object of the revolutionary party
in all countries, having led to the occupation of Rome by French
troops, provoked for ten years a paper war against Catholicism. The
crisis became more acute during the Italian war, and the world was
divided into two camps, containing the Catholics and Conservatives
on the one side, and the irreligious and revolutionists on the other.
During the last decade of the Empire the hatred of Catholicism was
always increasing, and it was not difficult to foresee the grave events
to which it must give rise. The wars in Denmark and in Austria,
the unification of Germany and of Italy, the withdrawal of the French
troops, and the invasions by Garibaldi, raised religious animosities to
their highest point. On the one side the alarm of the Catholics was
displayed, while on the other the revolutionary party loudly expressed
their hopes. Nor did the last party only direct their attacks against
the temporal power ; their views went further, and this was only the
first stage towards the destruction of the Church and of Catholicism.
This is still their object, as some among them are frank enough to
declare.

It will be easily understood that this did not set consciences
at rest. Religious questions were eagerly discussed, minds were
inflamed, and irritation and hatred appeared on every side. Strange
to say, the Empire, which had done more harm to the Church than the
Government of July, contrived to make the Church odious, even while

1880. THE FRENCH CLERGY AND THE REPUBLIC. 135

persecuting her. While despoiling the Holy See, or suffering her to
be despoiled, the Empire was outwardly favourable to religion, and
evinced good-will to the clergy. In this way the Church inherited
some of the unpopularity of the dynasty at its fall. The council of
the Vatican, the war of 1870, the occupation of Eome by the Italians,
were not calculated to diminish the tension of the situation. Yet the
behaviour of the clergy during the war, which drew the following
avowal from Prince Frederic Charles : i Throughout the invasion the
French clergy were the only class distinguished for their dignity, nobi-
lity, and patriotism ; no one could refuse to admire them on the.field
of battle ; ' this behaviour, we say, added to the massacres of the Comr
mune, restored a certain degree of popularity to the Church, and at
that time the revolutionary party, which had contributed as much as
the Germans towards the misfortunes of our country, were over-
whelmed by the weight of their crimes. The National Assembly was
not clerical, as some people have chosen to say, but it was no more
animated by a hostile and persecuting spirit. Its members were
anxious to repair all breaches, and understood that this could only be
done by not checking the current of religious opinions.

About this time the mistakes committed by M. Thiers provoked
those committed by the Assembly itself. While France was thus
agitated by anarchy, Germany fomented the divisions amongst us,
and sustained the hopes of the revolutionary party that the Eepublic
might be established in France. The Germans then inaugurated the
religious persecution which they are now trying to allay, and this
revived among us the anti-religious passions which the disasters of
1870 and the crimes of 1871 had in some degree appeased. France
felt the reaction of what was passing in Germany. Happily for her,
the Government and the National Assembly were opposed to every
idea of persecution, and the revolutionary party were obliged to
restrain their ardour, instead of sharing in M. Bismarck's feast on
the Jesuit and the parish priest.

It must also be confessed that some Catholics, able and virtuous
men, did not set a good example of discretion and moderation, and
thus furnished the enemies of the Church, not with reasons, but with
a pretext for attacking her. Much has been said of the counter-
revolution during the last eight or ten years, but without explaining
exactly what is meant by it. The misunderstandings of many of our
opponents are wilful, but some persons whom we do not suspect of bad
faith are deceived. There is no foundation whatever in the assertion
that the clergy and the Catholics have adopted a general plan of
campaign against the Eepublic ;or the present Government. They have
been held responsible for the 24th and especially for the 16th of May ;
but this is most unjust. As French citizens and as religious men at-
tached to Catholicism they may have taken part in these two events,
but they did not do so because they were Catholics. Indeed, many

136 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

Catholics disapproved of these measures, and it is iniquitous to con-
found the Church with acts for which she has always repudiated any
responsibility. No one can quote a public speech or an episcopal letter
intended for publicity which lends the sanction of any bishop to
either the 24th or the 1 6th of May. On the contrary, the episcopal
charges show that the bishops have always, everywhere and without
exception, advised their clergy to hold aloof from politics, and the
clergy, as well as Catholics in general, have obeyed the injunction.
Abundant proofs could be given, and there is nothing to justify the
imputation that the Catholics were responsible for events which they
did not even approve. Neither the Catholics nor the clergy have
made the slightest attempt to overthrow the Republic.

We admit that many mistakes have been made during the last
eight years by influential persons, and that some Catholic have
thus compromised the Church. The letter of the Bishop of Nevers,
irregularly addressed to all the mayors of the department, was a
folly as well as a fault, since it could only have the effect of dis-
crediting the Catholic cause. Few thoughtful Catholics approved of
the proceeding, and the bishop himself died of repentance. It was,
in fact, the cause of the 16th of May, a premature measure, ill-
conceived and ill-executed, carried out by men who ought never to
have been in power, and consequently calculated to produce the
effects which resulted from it. It is, therefore, a grave mistake to
suppose that the Church and the clergy prepared, executed, and
approved of what occurred on the 16th of May. They had nothing
to do with it, and foresaw that the_attempt would have deplorable
results.

Although the Catholics had nothing to do with the 16th of May,
it does not follow that they did not think some such measure ex-
pedient when the right moment should arrive. The elections of 1876
had shown that the Republic was gliding rapidly down the decline of
radicalism. Proposals adverse to the Church and to religion, which
had hitherto been laid aside as unlikely to be accepted, had begun to be
made, and it was evident that the rising tide of the revolution could
not long be arrested. The advanced radicals, for whom M. de Bis-
marck had shown so much sympathy in France, were eager to imitate
the Chancellor and to introduce the Culturkampf. They were im-
patient to attack the Church and Catholicism, and in the beginning
of the session of 1876 they began to discuss the laws of primary in-
struction, and to propose measures against religious associations. In
this session an inquiry was instituted into the condition of the re-
ligious orders of France, an inquiry made in a hostile spirit, and of
which the practical result is now evident.

It would be false to say that the Catholics have watched the course
of events without profiting by the lessons they afforded. They have
watched these events with uneasiness, and have anxiously asked them-

1880. THE FRENCH CLERGY AND THE REPUBLIC. 137

selves whether France had also to pass through an experience similar
to those of Germany and Switzerland. The weakness of the Govern-
ment, the violence of the radical press, and the language of the
republican leaders were not calculated to reassure them, and it is not
surprising that their indifference has insensibly been transformed
into hostility, not against the Kepublic, but against the men who
represent her. The Kepublic has twice before covered France with
ruins and with blood, and surely it is natural to feel again alarm when
we see her falling into the same excesses for the third time. All
Catholics are held responsible for the imprudent acts and words of M.
de Mun or of the Bishop of Nevers, although they disapprove of them,
and yet they are expected to remain quiet when Gambetta declares,
amid the applause of his party, that clericalism is the great enemy, when
Ferry denounces the Church and the congregations from the tribune,
when Madier de Montjau proposes that Catholics should be outlawed,
when Lepere insults the bishops in his circulars, when Article 7 is
forced upon the Chamber per fas et nefas, when a decree of expulsion
has gone forth against the Christian brothers and nuns of all the schools,
and a hundred measures, one more wicked than another, are deposited
in the offices of the Chamber ! Such blind and headlong folly is
scarcely credible.

We emphatically repeat that the clergy are neither republican nor
monarchical.4 They are merely devoted to their duty and indifferent
to political questions, as long as they are allowed to be busy about
good works, and to fulfil their mission. But their indifference to
politics does not extend to politicians themselves. They are unable
to take the same view of rogues as of honest men. We may blame
the want of tact and the mistakes of the honest men, and we may
commend the cleverness of the rogues, but we can never place upon
the same line MacMahon and Grevy, Dufaure and Clemenceau, Jules
Simon and Gambetta, Wallon and Herold. The clergy and the
Catholics watch the course of events, and learn from experience like
the rest of the world. When an election takes place they are only
anxious to vote for honest and religious men, and since unfortunately
the republicans now in power seem to glory in being irreligious and
of lax morals, they do not obtain the votes of Catholics. It would be
absurd to conclude from this fact that the Catholics and the clergy are
hostile to the Eepublic, unless the Kepublic and irreligion are one and
the same thing. So long as Kepublic is distinct from the Kevolution,
the Catholics do not condemn her, but at the present moment it is

4 ' I confess that although I am a republican by instinct and tradition, I only attach
a secondary importance to forms of government, which are good or bad according to
circumstances, and I have never been able to enroll myself among those who .spend
their lives in warfare for the Monarchy or the Kepublic.'— E. Ollivier, L'Egliste et
I'Etat au Concile du Vatican. M. Ollivier is perfectly just, in what he says, and we
believe that every French ecclesiastic agrees with him, although M. Ollivier asserts
the contrary.

138 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

not a republic or a monarchy which is in question, but order or dis-
order, government or anarchy.

It is, therefore, unjust to ascribe the present crisis to the clergy,
for they did not provoke and are not responsible for it. Their atti-
tude as a body has been irreproachable during the last ten years, and
will continue to be so. They neither court nor defy the Government,
but stand aloof, calm, dignified, and reserved, and busy themselves in
good works as far as they are allowed to do so. This is as true of the
regular as of the secular clergy, the Jesuits included, of whom the
Cardinal Archbishop of Paris lately spoke as follows : —

In the midst of the dissensions which agitate and divide our country, the whole
body of the clergy have strictly confined themselves within the limits of their
spiritual office, nor has the congregation of Jesus been less careful than the rest to
avoid any interference with political questions, and asseriions to the contrary are
unfounded. A bishop who has the principal Jesuit establishments under his juris-
diction is entitled to vindicate them from this reproach.5

The clergy are exposed to insults, attacks, and outrages ; they are
dragged through the mud and are persecuted in all sorts of ways,
and they submit in silence. It would be impossible to find in any
age or in any country a large body of men who have maintained a
more reserved and dignified attitude under such a trial. It is grossly
unjust to assert that the clergy of France have provoked the Eepublic
and the republicans. As the Bishop of Autun observes in bis letter
of the 15th of April, 1880 : ' We did our duty as citizens and as
Frenchmen during the war and in the disastrous epoch of the
Commune. After these disasters we renewed our labours among
you. We only demand the right of alleviating the ills of society,
and the liberty necessary for accomplishing the task. No one can
say that we have taken an undue part in the manufacture of the con-
stitution and of the laws. We are justified in saying to politi-
cians, you do not come across us in your own department, in the
sphere of interests which is your special charge.'

The hatred to religion and the desire to please Bismarck led
to the open war which has long been meditated. An occasion was
found and eagerly seized on the 16th of May. The clergy are the
victims, and it is only by a strange perfidy that the attempt is made
to fix the guilt on them in order to justify their destruction. Men
must be blind or deaf who ignore this truth.

VII.

We have now only to ask what will be the issue of the present
crisis ? The reply would be easy if the republicans were sincere and
really desired peace. The clergy and the Catholics do not ask for

» Letter from the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris to the President of the Republic,
April 12, 1880.

1880. THE FRENCH CLERGY AND THE REPUBLIC. 139

protection and privileges, but for common justice and liberty. The
Government, instead of being hostile and oppressive, has only to be-
come neutral and indifferent, and peace will be made at once. If
the Eepublic should be overthrown, it will certainly not be owing
to the Church and clergy. The republicans themselves will be wholly
responsible.

In fact, it is difficult to see how the present crisis is to end in a
state of relative tranquillity after the orders of the day in the
Chamber, and the decrees of the 29th of March. The majority of
the Chamber consists of men who can pull down, but who cannot
build up, so that there is no hope of a peaceful solution. The arbi-
trary course on which the Government has entered cannot be arrested.
The Freycinet ministry has accepted the part of Pontius Pilate, but
in three months it will have ceased to exist, in order to give way to
still more violent men.

A conservative President might then make his own 1 6th of May,
and make it under favourable conditions. If he were to appeal to
the country with the question : Do you, or do you not, desire a
religious persecution ? we are persuaded that the country would re-
turn a Chamber of more moderate views which would reject the
projets Ferry. Such a measure would not only be good but re-
publican policy. The life of the Eepublic might perhaps not be saved,
but it would be prolonged.

It is unfortunately very doubtful whether President Grevy will
accept the responsibility of dissolving the Chamber, and the imme-
diate prospect — which could in any case only be deferred — includes
persecution, the Commune, and a dictatorship of some kind, pro-
bably Napoleonic.

Prince Napoleon may perhaps make his advent to power possible,
in spite of his numerous faults, among which his recent letter was not
the least ; and he will be accepted, if not welcomed, by a country
which every day becomes more weary of a Eepublic served by such
republicans.

There is nothing seductive in such a prospect. But we can only
accept facts as they are.

ABBE MARTIN.

140 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

THE PALAIS-ROYAL THEATRE.

WHEN the Comedie Franjaise came over last year in a body seeking
to win the approval of a London public, it was my pleasant duty to
introduce the company to the readers of the Nineteenth Century,
and to relate at the same time the history of the great establishment
known throughout the world under the name — now a legendary one
— of the ' House of Moliere.'

I must admit that the Palais-Royal Theatre does not lay claim
to so illustrious a past ; that its origin is not so remote, and the
influence it has exercised over the stage less considerable. Anything
affecting French theatrical art cannot fail to be of interest to the
polished minds of both worlds. The Palais-Koyal is one of those
local celebrities — une de ces reputations de quartier, as we say in
France — which have not yet taken root on your side of the Channel
that 1 know of, much less on the other side of the Atlantic. But to
turn their attention to all subjects alike, great or small, bearing on
the march of civilisation, is the distinctive trait and peculiar merit
of that admirable body — the British public. They will read perhaps,
not without some pleasure, a few correct particulars respecting the
new company which is come to solicit their commendation, and the
circumstances that gave birth to the body.

I need scarcely say I will endeavour in the present sketch to
dwell less on matters of detail, not likely to be of much interest for
foreigners, than on the broad outlines whence the Palais-Royal
Theatre draws its characteristic features.

The generation preceding mine, and the two or three that came
into the world after me, can testify to the important position main-
tained by this theatre in Parisian pleasures from the year 1835 to
within a period of a few years. To those who were not witnesses of
the fact nothing could convey an exact idea of the celebrity it
achieved when other theatres were in question and the public would
scrutinise the playbill before securing a seat : with the Palais-Royal
no hesitation ever occurred. People were sure of being amused :
* You are bound to laugh there ' was a stereotyped phrase having the
force of a prejudice — than which we know nothing is more tenacious

1880. THE PALAIS-ROYAL THEATRE. 141

and will not bear discussion. The thing was accepted; traditions
would have it that one had to laugh at the Palais-Koyal, and laugh
people did. They laughed on their way upstairs to the boxes ; the
footlights were scarcely lit before the laughing began. The actors
opened their mouths ; but without taking the trouble to make out
what they had said the audience broke out into laughter, cracked
their sides and went into fits ; it was ' the thing.'

Every evening at half-past seven Very's, Vefour's, the Trois
Freres Provencaux, and the innumerable two-francs and one-franc-
sixty 'ordinaries' lower down the galleries (ou sont les neiges
d'Antan /), disgorged their thousands of diners, mainly country folk
and foreigners. Some — the select few, alas ! — bent on bracing them-
selves up in the spring of classic play, wended their way to the
Comedie Francaise : the rest would flock to enjoy the broad jokes
at the Palais-Royal. The gardens of that name, then the fashionable
rendez-vous, the centre of Paris, the great Vanity Fair of the time,
added to the animation of the crowd around the doors of the theatre
in no small degree. No one had it in him to find fault with the
theatre for being small, narrow, ill-arranged, uncomfortable, and
dusty. You went there to laugh and cared for nothing else.

A bridegroom would promise his young wife to take her, together
with a select party of friends, for an evening's enjoyment at the
Palais-Eoyal. It seemed that the right of witnessing a play at the
Palais-Koyal Theatre, like that of wearing a cashmere shawl and
diamonds, constituted a natural and indisputable due attaching to
the marriage day. ' I shall go to the Palais-Royal ! ' the young woman
would blushingly say in a whisper to her bosom friend ; as if such
were the ideal of forbidden pleasures !

And we, shut up within the four walls of that prison yclept a
college, we, too, dreamed of the Palais-Royal. We gloated at the
right of the five-francs piece that was to open to our gaze the myste-
rious portals of that Eldorado some holiday evening. And how
proud we were the next day, and in high feather, to be able to tell
an admiring and envious circle of schoolfellows where we had been,
and to imitate the gnouf, gnouf! of Grassot !

The prestige of the theatre lasted fifty years .with us ; and it has
only been on the wane for the last two or three years. So persistent
a vogue cannot be ascribed solely to a caprice of fashion ; fashion is
far more fickle. No ; this success rests on causes which it were
worth while to seek and explain.

II.

The Palais-Royal Theatre dates back to 1783 and was built by
Louis, architect to the Duke of Orleans. I will not retrace its vicis-
situdes between that epoch and 1831, when for the first time the

142 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

house as we knew it, and as it still exists, was inaugurated. The
history would have no interest for an English public ; and I see but
one fact worthy of mention, and that is that Mademoiselle Montansier
took over the lesseeship of the house in 1790 under a licence from
the king. This circumstance explains how, when in 1848 a general
erasing of the word royal from all public buildings was all the rage,
the theatre was styled 'Theatre de la Montansier,' a name it is
sometimes designated by at the present day. Here it was that
Mademoiselle Mars, while still a child, made her debut under the
auspices of Mademoiselle Montansier. But those prehistoric times
have left no trace in our memories.

The Palais-Royal, the real theatre, the one we have to speak
about, dates from the 6th of June, 1831, the day on which the house
reopened under the management of M. Dormeuil, who had taken
M. Poirson, brother of the manager of the Gymnase Theatre, as
sleeping partner.

Expressing myself for an English Review, I feel bound to explain
several peculiar circumstances more familiar to a French mind. The
managers of former times in no respect resembled those we have to
deal with to-day or those you have in London. They were not men
who by reason of their fortune and spirit of enterprise undertook the
lesseeship of a theatre, got up a company, played three or four pieces,
and, the season over, took out a new lease or went somewhere else.

They held, on the contrary, a kind of official position under a
privilege granted by the State, the duration of which extended over
a lengthened period — in virtue of the very deed constituting them
managers bound down to a particular house and even to a particular
style of plays they were prohibited from deviating from. The
Minister who to a certain extent was responsible during the period
of the lessee or lessees' management chose only men celebrated for
their experience and well-known taste for the stage ; and then he
reserved to himself the right of supervision and reprimand.

These managers of the past were neither stupid autocrats who
waited in their sanctum for authors to bring them plays or actors to
proffer their services, nor were they dealers in dramatic literature
eager to prey on the weaknesses of the public. They were, on the
contrary, men of enterprise, cultured mind and refined taste, who
had formed their own ideas as to what a theatre should be, and
strove to realise their ideal. They waited personally on the most
eminent authors of the day, suggested subjects to them, encouraged
them in their labours, and once the play completed, thanks to their
perfect mastery of all details concerning the getting-up, became, so
to say, their kind colleagues. Sometimes they found means to bring
together two playwrights who had never seen each other before, but
who were got to work smoothly in common, and ended by becoming
as one — much to the advantage of the play. They read every

1880. THE PALAIS-ROYAL THEATRE. 143

manuscript left with them ; and when perchance they came across
a happy idea or an original situation in the inchoate work of a
would-be author, they submitted it to an experienced dramatist, and
suggested the best means of putting the play on its legs.

And the same as regards their company. Not content with
engaging an actor on the strength of the fame he had achieved, they
took the trouble of doing a round of the provincial theatres ; and
directly their attention was attracted by any young talent suiting
their taste, they would go to the pains of developing it themselves ;
so solicitous were they ever about the general effect. First in attending
at the theatre, they were the last to leave it. And in this manner,
by dint of constant and watchful care on their part, the theatre
under their management became as a living organism, instinct with
their spirit. Thus a theatre got to be known, not by its own, but
by the name of its manager ; it was a reflection of his, taste, an
extension of his individuality.

Paris has not forgotten that race of able managers who have,
alas ! disappeared, leaving but sparse and weakly heirs behind.
Who among us does not remember the eccentric Harel ; the lordly
Hostein ; that mad brain overflowing with wit named Marc Fournier ;
and above all and before all, the prudent Montigny, king of stage-
managers, whose loss we had to deplore but a few short weeks ago ?
Dormeuil had a right to a special place in that constellation ; for it
is he who, through a gift of exquisite intuition, his consummate
science, and incessant labour, created the Palais-Royal, inaugurated
its peculiar style of play, and laid the foundations of such solid tra-
ditions that they survived him twenty years, and only barely begin
to pale under the influence of time.

His commencement was marked by a stroke of genius. There
existed at the time in Paris two dramatic authors, both well known
and of equal merit, but whose opposite qualities were thought by
everyone unlikely ever to blend — Dumanoir and Bayard.

Dumanoir was a thorough gentleman, as correct in style as he
was in his person, who possessed, and even affected in his speech
and writings for the stage, a refined and delicate turn of mind. It
was said of him in Paris that his plays, like his linen, smelt of
lavender or bergamot. Bayard, on the other hand, who would hew
his plays as with a hatchet, had all the gift of versatility ; but his
style was rough, and his levity often verged on licentiousness.

Dormeuil conceived the idea of bringing them together ; this
was as good as trying to harness an English thoroughbred in the
same shafts with a horse of the huge Percheron breed. The odds
were against the team pulling together; but it turned out that
Dormeuil was not mistaken in his conception. He did not stop to
listen to the objections raised by the two authors, but followed his
bent ; the event proved him to be right. They signed an engage-

144 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

ment to supply him every year with two plays each, one of these to
consist of several acts. He secured by this means a goodly fund of
stock plays. For the rest he trusted to current production — a piece
coaxed here and there out of Scribe, the successful author of the
Vaudeville, brought by the well-known playwrights Brazier, Meles-
ville, De Courcy, Rozier or others, whose names it is unnecessary to
mention. Then came the question of getting a company together.
Nothing is more difficult in these days, for the number of actors
thoroughly up to their business has considerably decreased — they may
almost be said to have disappeared. Then, however, the only diffi-
culty was to choose. M. Dormeuil was, nevertheless, happy in his
choice. In the composition of his first company figure the names
of many actors whom our fathers, by dint of extolling them, taught
us to esteem ; as well as a few more whom we ourselves applauded
later on, while in the zenith of their celebrity. Thus in the in-
auguration play, people could see on the bill Lepeintre, senior, who
excelled in the part of a soldier-farmer ; Sainville, a comedian with
a sympathetic yet incisive and joyous voice ; Boutin, whose natural
acting, discreet and refined, put old playgoers in mind of Tiercelin ;
Paul Mine, a most original comic; and among actresses Madame
Theodore and Madame Lili Bourguoin, who turned our fathers' heads.
This first nucleus was shortly afterwards joined by Alcide Tousez,
destined to make his way very soon to the first place among comics,
and whose mad drollery is simply inimitable ; 1'Heritier, then a
young man, and now at the head of the company, his three-score and
twelve notwithstanding. Then — a circumstance that will astonish
• English people — Samson and Regnier, the two illustrious members
of the Comedie Franyaise, the incomparable comedians, appeared on
the boards of the Palais-Royal. Que voulez-vous !

Souvent la parodie eat tout pres du sublime,
Et le Palais-Royal du TlN$atre-Fran$ais,

as was sung in a piece reviewing the events of the year. Finally,
there came one who was to be the shining light of the young theatre,
the wonderful actress whose name became a household word through-
out Europe — Yirginie Dejazet. The regular engagement of this
charming actress, who had seemed unable to settle down anywhere,
is the master-stroke of M. Dormeuil's management. She had
wandered from theatre to theatre, everywhere exciting the envy and
jealousy of the female portion of the house, who got rid of her either
by slow and underhand means, or drove her out openly. Her strange
destiny had hitherto led her by turns from success to success, and
from disappointment to disappointment. She had been compelled
on two occasions to beat a retreat before the ill-will her wonderful
success could not fail to exasperate. Taking refuge in the provinces,
she had resigned herself to the task of winning the hearts of country
audiences.

1880. THE PALAIS-ROYAL THEATRE. 145

She spent a year at Lyons. It is pleasant to me to dwell on
that remembrance ; for my father, who was born at Lyons, has many
and many a time related to me how she turned everybody's head in
the town. He knew by memory most of her songs ; and when in a
good humour was wont to hum one, dandling me the while on his
knee. That perhaps explains the reason of his passionate love of
things theatrical, a passion he inoculated me with from my very
birth.

From Lyons she had gone to Bordeaux, had made a tour through
our large towns, and finally returned to the Nouveautes, where she
met Potier, already old, and Bouffe, who was making his first ap-
pearance. It was in that house she impersonated Bonaparte at
Brienne. Only picture Dejazet, with her pert nose and roguish
mouth, under the mask of the austere and taciturn young Bonaparte !
Our fathers were not very particular, however, and this travesty
afforded them immense delight. The management of the Nouveautes
was none the less on the high road to Ihe Bankruptcy Court ; and
M. Dormeuil took advantage of her anxiety on that account, and
saved the gifted actress from ruin by offering her an engagement,
which she accepted.

Properly speaking, Dejazet is the actress who inaugurated the
particular style of the Palais-Eoyal theatre, and settled the traditions
of the house. Every one can remember with what charm and
piquancy Mademoiselle Dejazet — or Virginie, as her contemporaries
called her — delivered a spicy sentence or sang a risky song. They
have gone a step further since, and have unhappily degenerated to
filth ; in her time, nothing went beyond a pretty dash of license —
something bright, smart, and bold, stopping at the precise line
where obscenity begins.

This turn of wit became a by-word at the Palais-Eoyal ; the
G-ymnase, on the other hand, remained faithful to the traditions of
the ' Theatre de Madame,' keeping more to light comedy of the
delicate and sentimental kind —

Oil sans danger la mere aurait conduit sa fille.

The Palais-Eoyal became the fixed abode of broad play, thereafter
served up to the public under every possible form. It was tacitly
accepted that ladies of the fashionable world could go there, and
listen behind their fans to all sorts of risky sayings, more or less
witty, which in any other house they would have been expected to
repel, as calling up a blush to the cheek of modesty. Under the
mantle of the charming actress, and in the shade of her name, the
Palais-Hoyal gave itself up entirely to a style of play quite peculiar,
very alluring, which was the delight of men, and exercised over
women that species of attraction which everything that is pro-
hibited them is supposed to exert on their imagination, when, by
VOL. VIII.— No. 41. L

140 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

derogation, the laws of propriety suffer them to cast a furtive and
mysterious glance at it.

Mademoiselle Dejazet made her debut and created quite a, furore
in the Songs of Beranger — songs well fitted for her to give expression
to all that is voluptuous, broad, or chauvin. Then came the Mar-
quise de Pretintaille, a masterpiece of the free style of play, droll
and pungent, Fretillon, La Comtesse du Tonneau, and many more.
Dejazet took the cue in these pieces from Achard, a delightful actor,
full of turbulent good-humour, who sang a song with a true and
merry voice and in exquisite style.

You remember in Frbu-Frou, played before you quite recently
at the Gaiety, the scene wherein Gilberte, who wishes to take a part
in some amateur theatricals, is studying Indiana and Charlemagne.
Her father, an old beau, comes upon her unexpectedly while she is
trying to make out the music of one of the verses. He gives a start
on hearing a music recalling so many pleasant memories to his mind,
and finishes the tune begun by his daughter. ' Ah ! Dejazet I ' he
exclaims enthusiastically ; adding immediately after, as a corrective
of the anacreontic his exclamation may suggest, ' and Achard ! '

The fact is, Dejazet and Achard were the joy of that generation.
How amusing was Achard in Bruno le FUeur, one of the sprightliest
and most respectable pieces of contemporary l^ght comedy; and
what a dashing and provoking swagger he could put on in the
Vicomte de Letorieres, Mademoiselle Dejazet au Serail, and in the
Premieres Armes de Richelieu ! The latter piece marked the cul-
minating point in his success and crowned his reputation. It was
the very best comedy the joint authorship of Dumanoir and Bayard, im^
agined by Dormeuil, had ever turned out. Dejazet was simply astound-
ing in the piece, which monopolised the playbills for the space of five
months — the extreme limit of an extraordinary run in those days.

It is a mistake on the part of managers, if not a danger, to
allow a ' star ' to acquire too much importance and monopolise public
attention. Should people get tired of her the theatre will suffer
because the rest of the company have been thrown into the shade by
the irradiation of one. Indeed, the body of actors moving around
Mademoiselle Dejazet was an admirable one, the variety of talents it
comprised being considered. To the list already given it is necessary
to add the names of Lemenil, with his jovial frankness in military
parts ; Levassor, who, in the Postilion de Mame Ablou, had just
inaugurated the era of comic song ; and finally Grassot, the wonder-
ful Grassot, appearing then for the first time in a vaudeville by a
young and unknown author. This young man — hats off! if you
please — was none other than M. Eugene Labiche, the first of our
vaudeville writers, the very same who has just been admitted into
the Academic Francaise despite all his wit.

But the public had eyes only for Dejazet, just as to-day at the

1880. THE PALAIS-ROYAL THEATRE. 147

Varietes every one swears by Judic, who has the secret of turning all
brains. And, by a strange phenomenon which theatrical annals show
to be of not uncommon occurrence, the very intensity and persistency
of this success, by throwing everything else into the shade, had the
effect of exhausting it. People only wanted to see Dejazet, and yet
were beginning to tire of her. On consideration, she was continually
going through the same part under an apparent diversity in her
travesties. Whether called Eichelieu, Letorieres, or Gentil-Bernard,
it was always the same handsome rascal playing the deuce with the
hearts of the fair sex : shop-girls, tradesmen's wives or duchesses, it
was all one to him as he twirled round on his red-heeled boot. Tou-
jours perdrix !

Dumanoir and Bayard, the two authors, were at their wits' ends
for a fresh embodiment of Lovelace. ' What are we to do ? ' they
said to Dormeuil; * Dejazet is no longer Lisette, the Lisette of
Beranger ; she is past the age — and getting old. We have exhausted
our stock'of travesties ; Eichelieu was our last card.' Dejazet on her
side, seemingly unable to realise the new position of affairs, intoxi-
cated' by recent triumphs, began to increase her pretensions, and
would only consent to renew her engagement on terms simply
ruinous for the managers.

A rupture became unavoidable ; it took place. The fortune of
the house hung in the balance for a moment ; there was a sudden
falling-off in the receipts. It seemed for a time as if the luck of the
Palais-Eoyal, clinging to Dejazet's darling little satin boots, had
accompanied their fair owner in her flight from the Eue de Valois*
Seized with panic, Poirson, Dormeuil's partner, withdrew from the
concern. It was but a false alarm, however. A farce in three acts,
L* Almanack des 25,000 Adresses (anglice, The Post Office Directory],
in which the whole strength of the company, headed by Sainville and
Grrassot, was engaged, broke the spell cast on the house and brought
back its popularity. Soon after Bayard gave UEtourneau, a delight-
ful comedy of intrigue, thereafter taken up by the Gymnase, and
now going the round of provincial houses, and in which Eavel, a
young actor (who still appears before us from time to time), laid the
foundations of his great reputation.

Eavel could change or distort his features with wonderful ease,:
and had any amount of ( go ' and wit in him. He excelled in the
delivery of the long-winded soliloquies and interminable stories
authors of that day delighted in intercalating in their plays, certain
beforehand that they would be spun out with great effect. Arnal —
a thorough artist — had a more masterly and finer diction ; but Eavel
amused by the hilarious look of amazement he could put on ; he is
what we call a bruleur de planches. He nearly always appeared in
the same scene with a witty actress, Mademoiselle Aline Duval, who
took up a cue with much archness.

L 2

148 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

When we remember that the company could muster in the same
play Ravel and his partner, Sainville, Alcide Tousez, Levassor, Lemenil,
Grassot, L'Heritier, and ' Daddy ' Amant, who took the character of ' a
regular old woman ' with incredible ingenuousness, the rage of the
Parisians for the lucky theatre may be understood. And note that I
may be omitting many names. The history is too recent a one for
any one to have thought of writing it; and I am myself compelled to
rely on far- off memories that arise in my mind incomplete, and scrap
by scrap.

The plays given at the Palais-Eoyal belonged mostly to that
category known in theatrical parlance as ' well-finished ' pieces. A
superficial observation of manners and character, little fancy in the
dialogue generally, but a well-sustained plot progressing from incident
to incident to the eternal upshot of all vaudevilles — the marriage of
Caroline and Arthur. The comedy typical of the school is La Rue de
la Lune, a one-act piece, the success of which was immense, though
it is scarcely ever given in our day. Add L'Omelette Fantastique if
you like ; and, in another style, with a dash more of raciness in the
dialogue, La Sosur de Jocrisse of Duvert and Lausanne, wherein
Alcide Tousez gave full vent to his unspeakable tomfoolery.

When to the consummate art of composition all dramatists of
that day could boast of possessing (every one of them knew as much
of his business as could possibly be learned) luck enabled either of
them to add the condiment of an ingenious idea — the result of keen
study of modern manners — and a dialogue more sparkling with witti-
cisms, the result was a marvel. Among these gems are the Misan-
thrope et VAuvergnat, L* Affaire de la Rue de Lourcine, and others,
nearly all from the untiring pen of Labiche.

Unfortunately, these plays — and I speak of the best, proverbially
successful — do not constitute stock plays. They are merely Articles
Paris, with all the allurements attaching to the taste of the day, but
the merit of which dwindles away so soon as they have lost the charm
and freshness of novelty. About two or three years ago, when the
Palais-Royal fell a prey to the transient unpopularity all theatres are
subject to at one time or other, the idea occurred to the managers to
bring out some of the old master-pieces of light comedy our fathers
and we had delighted in between 1830 and 1850. Having requested
me to guide them in their choice, we read over together a great number
of them, and were astonished to find how quickly wrinkles and silvery
hair had grown upon plays formerly so smart, fresh, and sparkling.
Indiana et CJiarlemagne, La Rue de la Lune, and La Sccur de
Jocrisse may still be read with pleasure ; I defy any manager, how-
ever, to place them again on the stage : the rough glare of the foot-
lights would very soon bring out the crows'-feet.

1880. THE PALAIS-ROYAL THEATRE. 149

III.

In 1851 there occurred a change, or rather a revolution, in the
style of the Palais-Eoy al that broke the old pattern of pieces finies :
Lahiche had brought the Chapeau de Faille d'ltalie. With this
play * screaming farce ' may be said to have made the theatre its own
—a style of comedy without rhyme or reason, the extravagant and
grotesque pushed to extremes. Le Chapeau de Faille d'ltalie cannot
be said to contain a plot. A bridegroom on his marriage day goes
out in search of a Leghorn hat he is particularly anxious to secure.
The gist of the situation consists in representing the whole marriage
party madly in pursuit of him, he having them at his heels — like a
tin-kettle tied to a dog's tail — throughout the five acts of the piece.
Each act is a piece in itself — the reverse of a good vaudeville.

It is said that M. Dormeuil got up this extravaganza with the
greatest reluctance, qualifying it as monstrous because it upset the
traditions of the house ; he had, however, to give way to Labiche.
Unable to muster up courage to assist at the first night, he went and
hid his shame in the country. He had declared the day before that
the piece could not possibly be performed to the end, and that the
boards of the Palais-Koyal would be for ever disgraced.

In truth, the audience on the opening night was rather taken
aback at first ; this was a new departure from their habits they were
not prepared for. The rolling fire of capital jokes abounding in the
screaming farce, and the irresistible play of the actors, effectually
allayed all rising ill-humour. The piece attained unheard-of popular-
ity ; such was the success that, after the lapse of thirty years, several
words and sayings are still to be found in Boulevard slang. There is
not a Parisian, desirous of expressing the idea that negotiations
are broken off, or that ' it is all up,' but says, in Grassot's peculiar
tone of voice, ' Tout est rompu, mon gendre ! ' That Grassot ! I
see him now with his myrtle bough — the proverbial myrtle bough —
under his arm, boots too narrow on his feet, throwing about his arms
(of unusual length) either to launch out in imprecation of something
or some one or as an accompaniment to an affecting speech, and crying
out in a hoarse voice, ' Mon gendre, mon gendre ! ' His grotesque
acting was of the most side-splitting kind, yet his wit very keen.
Grassot, who allowed the inexhaustible fund of his comicality to flow
freely when on the boards, was in private life a gentleman of culti-
vated mind and ready wit ; some of his repartees are quoted as being
enough to galvanise a corpse into laughter. I would not dare repeat
any uf them here, however — they belong to the highly-flavoured kind
of talk to be expected of Parisian tongues loosened by wine. Running
about, giving himself any amount of exertion, and gesticulating by
his side, was Kavel, with grimacing figure and monkey agility. Then

150 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

came Amant (in the part of a little dried-up and deaf tradesman,
giving wrong answers to everything said to him : ' You have come
for your bill ? ' he is asked. * Fine weather for green peas,' he would
reply amidst roars of laughter), and L'Heritier, and — I know not who
else besides — but no females. They are few in number in this
theatre ; and when Labiche is questioned as to the reason he seldom
finds room for female characters in his plays, he answers with his in-
telligent smile, ' Females in the Palais-Royal ? Why, they would spoil
the look of the place.'

The Chapeau de Faille d'ltalie was the beginning of a new style.
Instead of the carefully written vaudeville, the screaming farce, a
tomfoolery trenching on the grotesque, unconnected and jumbled,
nearly always in five acts, and held together only by the slender and
loose thread of a common idea. The new style, appearing easy,
popular, and successful, became quite the rage; the Chapeau de
Paille d'ltalie was copied in every sort of way. Lambert Thiboust,
a right pleasant fellow with a witty mind, whose overflowing spirits
had incomparable openness and freshness about them, gave us in
succession La Mariee du Mardi-Gras, Les Memoires de Mimi
Bamboche, and the famous Diables Roses, a piece which won back
public favour in such brilliant style, after having been hissed the first
night, that the Emperor expressed the wish to witness it. He went
again, and even had the piece played before him a third time by
order. The circumstance gave rise to a good deal of comment at the
time. It was maliciously remarked that while the uncle chose
Corneille, with Talma, the nephew preferred the Diables Roses, with
Mile. Schneider. Indeed, it was at this house that Mile. Schneider
sang the celebrated song ' Le Jeune Homme Empoisonne ' that made
her. The year following she went to the Varietes to create the Belle
Hel&ne, and afterwards the Grande Duchesse.

This style, which seems to have tired success at the moment I
write, has left us with three capital plays. First the Chapeau de
Paille d'ltalie you will not see in London this time, because the
piece has since passed into the stock of the Varietes and belongs no
longer to the Palais-Royal ; then Labiche's La Cagnote, and MM.
Henry Meilhac and Ludovic Halevy's Tricoche et Cacolet. It is to
be said of La Cagnote that the groundwork of the plot is the result
of observation; the first act is a life-like and amusing sketch of
French middle-class provincial life. Tricoche et Cacolet imported
into healthy French mirth that species of wit we have been unable
to designate in our language otherwise than by the word humour,
borrowed from you. We consider the above two charming comedies
the brightest gems in the Palais-Royal casket.

1880. THE PALAIS-ROYAL THEATRE. 151

IV.

I 'mentioned just now that the style of plays in question had
almost entirely gone out of fashion: the series is exhausted, and
another has taken its place. But we must leave the Palais-Royal for
awhile and inquire how the latter was gradually created among the
outside public before it obtained admittance to the Palais-Royal.

Those who follow the literary movement in France are aware that
a reaction has been going on for the last thirty years : a reaction, I
believe, against the expiring romantic school; a return to a taste
based on the exact, precise, and minute study of facts and manners.

An apostle and a herald have been finally discovered for the new
school in the person of M. Emile Zola, whose works one may be
permitted not to like ; but whose talents and fairly earned sway over
the public mind it is impossible to question. M. Emile Zola claims
literary relationship with Balzac, and would seem to wilfully ignore
everything that has been written between the time Balzac disappeared
from and he appeared on the scene. But many things have happened
in the interval.

Realism (to use the now familiar expression) has had possession
of the stage for a long time. What are the comedies of Dumas the
younger, beginning with La Dame aux Cornelias, if not powerful
studies from real life ? What are Emile Augier's — the social satires,
or his comedies of manners — if not modern life taken in the quick
and transferred to the stage ? And did not Barriere, the illustrious
author of Les Faux Bons Hommes, also project the light of his bull's-
eye into the recesses of modern middle-class life, and — like Diogenes
seeking a man — discover only M. Prud'homme ? And what of the
airy and delightful sketches signed by Meilhac and Halevy ? Do
they not place under the eyes of the public life-like pictures of con-
temporary society, wrought with truth and minute research ?

M. Emile Zola must surely be jesting when he states that realism
— since realism it be — dates from his school. The taste for reality
transformed the stage nearly thirty years ago (the Dame aux
Camelias of Dumas the younger was written in 1850). True, the
first period of the revolution had had no effect on the Palais-Royal.

The house existed on the strength of two types of plays : the care-
fully written piece, full of humour, with a racy flavour ; and the scream-
ing farce, without head or tail — sometimes homely like La Cagnote,
sometimes highly spiced with scandal like La Sensitive, a terribly
ticklish comedy, which the Lord Chamberlain would certainly never
have licensed, and on which our own censorship has closed its eyes for
the sole reason that the Palais-Royal is allowed peculiar immunities.

How could comedy, drawn from observations of real life, be made
to lit in with such burlesque surroundings ? It seemed as if radical
incompatibility could not but exist between the two styles.

152 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

I have, nevertheless, remarked that, sooner or later, great currents
of opinion invariably end by taking a rebound through all orders of
human thought ; and I feel convinced that the doctrines of the
realistic school would have finally succeeded in penetrating to the
Palais-Royal by the sheer weight of their expression. But a very
insignificant fact hastened the issue. The slightest flaw in a bank,
and the body of waters it held back will rush through and soon
create a breach for itself. In the present case the thin end of the
wedge happened to be Geoffrey, who obtained an engagement at the
Palais-Royal in 1862.

I may be allowed to give a short sketch of this actor's career,
because he is likely to come prominently forward in the series of
representations to be given before you.

Geoffroy was born in 1820, and is, consequently, in his sixtieth
year. He is one of the comedians we love most on account of his
happy natural disposition. There is no affectation about him, either
in his mind or his acting ; he is, every inch of him, the incarnation
of the character he impersonates. It is true he has nearly always
and everywhere played the part of a bourgeois, such as Henri
Monnier, Labiche, Barriere, and Meilhac loved to depict the person-
age— a pompous, well-to-do tradesman, verbose and dull. His genial
and homely face, smiling lips, benevolent-looking eyes, and affable
manners are marvellously adapted to the character — a type universally
accepted in comedy. Not that Geoffroy is incapable of interpreting
any other part. All Paris remembers the masterly way in which he
took the part of Balzac's Mercadet ; and, in another style, the old
maestro in the Demon du Foyer, a pretty piece, by Madame Sand.
But somehow or other the authors and his own individual bent in-
variably brought him back to the typical bourgeois — a character he
played to admiration on the stage, and realised unconsciously in
piivate life.

One of the authors who have written most for Geoffroy said to
me only the other day : ' It is impossible for him to deliver a sen-
tence which is not true. When Geoffroy is perplexed, or gives the
wrong cue, it is a good sign for me to strike out the obnoxious sen-
tence. In all such cases I have found the mistake to have been
mine.'

He remained at the Gymnase until 1862, and during the last
two years of his stay at that house he created two characters that at
once stamped him as unequalled : M. Perrichon, in the Voyage de
M. Pen'ichon, and M. Ratinois, in the Poudre aux Yeux — both
plays from the pen of Labiche. Never was a more solemn, earnest,
and at the same time better-tempered bourgeois seen on the stage.
Nature bestowed on Geoffroy a warm and piercing voice, which gives
singular effect to the least word, and brings out the subtlest of mali-
cious shafts or the most delicately wrapped innuendo he may utter.

About the middle of the year 1860, at the zenith of his fame, he

1880} THE PALAIS-ROYAL THEATRE. 153

fell out with the management about some wretched money affair.
We should have wished that the Comedie Franpaise had seized the
opportunity and made him a fellow of their body. But they con-
sidered it beneath their dignity to make advances to an actor from a
theatre de genre. The Palais-Royal stole a march upon them, and
secured him by the offer of a large salary. We could not help asking
ourselves at the time, what on earth Geoffroy could do at the Palais-
Royal. There is nothing fanciful about him ; he is a comedian of
the good old stock, who can only get along in a truthful part in
harmony with his own nature ; losing his head directly the solid
ground of reality gives way beneath his talent. In spite of his
talent — nay, on that very account — we thought, he will be nowhere
with the badgering and humbugging he is likely to get from the
people who are to take the cue from him — unless, we added, the
Palais -Royal theatre changes its style.

The Palais-Royal did not change, but modified, its style. While
adhering to the traditions of screaming farce and racy jollities, it tem-
pered them by the admixture of a strong dose of realistic comedy. It.
made what we call in France une cote mal taillee. It mixed together
in the same crucible two seemingly non- fusible elements ; and the re-
sult was a new metal, a Corinthian bronze fit for the artist's chisel.

A curious composite style it turned out, too : connected with true
comedy through the plot, drawn from the actualities of modern life,
with some amount of true and comical observation interspersed in
the work ; and taking after the screaming farce by the grotesque side
of certain incidents, the absurd comicality of the dialogue, and pre-
posterous incidents. Nothing is more singular than this essentially
Parisian style, or more difficult of treatment, because it requires a
combination of varied qualities but seldom found in the same author.
It must satisfy at one and the same time that passion for truth which
distinguishes contemporary society, and that love for the fanciful,
slightly tinged with the spirit of bunkum, so familiar to artists and
men about town of the year 1880. The dialogue must be simple as
truth, picturesque, and as sparkling with life and spirit as a Parisian
conversation. It required on the part of the playwright much good
sense, an ever-working and vigorous mind — no, in truth, such a com-
bination was not easily attained.

Labiche resolved the problem at the first attempt. I do not know
whether the censorship will sanction the representation of Celimare
le Bien Aime. Perhaps the officials will deem it rather too broad for
English ears. We consider the play a masterpiece — I had almost
said the masterpiece of the new style, embodying the Gymnase,
the Palais-Royal, Geoffroy and his new colleagues.

By the way, I do not know how the case stands in England ; but
with us, when a comedian is capable of setting the house in a roar of
laughter, especially after having afforded amusement to two genera-
tions, we no longer find it in us to notice his imperfections. We laugh

154 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

when he appears on the scene ; we laugh when he is silent, and cannot
help laughing when he opens his mouth. Whatever he may say, and
however he may say it, a laugh is sure to follow ; it is traditional.
Would you have us go against tradition ? Philosophical as it seems,
our nation holds on to tradition with the force of a prejudice.

The same applies to Hyacinthe, who played in company with
Geoffrey and L'Heritier in Celimare le Bien Aime. Hyacinthe
rejoices in the possession of a nose of huge proportions — a nose that
has effectually blunted all the satirical shafts aimed at it. This
nose of his has had the privilege of affording mirth to the public for
the last forty years. The actor takes it into his house with him,
twists it about, or rests it like a trunk on his comrade's shoulder ;
and each of these novel absurdities provokes an outburst. Add to
this that the artist has an innate consciousness of the grotesque, and
possesses the secret of impossible and unheard-of travesties. The
following typical answer is attributed to him. ' How do you manage,'
some one asked, ' always to have hats of such queer shapes on the
stage ? ' * Oh ! ' he replied, ' I always keep my hats.'

Besides Labiche, who had been lucky enough to make a hit in his
first attempt, two other authors became successful in the new style.
They were Meilhac (in collaboration with Halevy) and Edmond
Gondinet. I would fain add Barriere to the list, but he died
shortly after; and the only piece of the kind we have from his
pen — Les Jocrisses de V Amour — does not figure in the Gaiety pro-
gramme. It is nevertheless one of our best pieces ; but I fear the
plot and details of the farce have shocked the Lord Chamberlain.

The prettiest among the plays of the kind given on the one hand
by M. Gondinet and on the other by Meilhac and Halevy have been
picked out for performance in London. Gavaud, Minard et Cie is a
charming piece ; Le Panache, by the same author, is better in my
opinion ; the managers have, however, probably deemed the foibles
shown up on the stage as too exclusively French to be appreciated by
an English public. On the other hand, the two gems of MM.
Meilhac and Halevy, La Boule and Le Reveillon, will be given. Alas !
you will no longer witness in La Boule poor Gil Perez, who embodied
with a spirit so striking and full of fancy the parts of old beaux and
frisky fathers. How droll he was, to be sure, in Les Muscadins ! He
got a face that every one in Paris came to know, and had added I know
not what amusing hotch-potch of Parisian eccentricities. The unfortu-
nate man is at the present moment in a private asylum. He is paying
dearly for the rage his maddening wit, tact and address, and reputation
have created for him in society — the demi-monde more particularly.

However, Geoffrey, L'Heritier and Mile. Lemercier and, happily,
the piece remain. It will enable you to study the odd admixture of
real-life character and burlesque. The first act especially belongs
entirely to comedy — comedy full of truth, delicacy, and wit. Then the

1880. THE PALAIS-ROYAL THEATRE. 155

piece turns light and takes flight towards the realms of fancy. And
yet a few features borrowed from real life recall you here and there
to the fact that it is not pure farce ; there is an undercurrent of
reality. The same remark applies to Le Reveillon, a gem the first act
of which is of the choicest comique ; the third includes a situation
worthy of Moliere ; while the second belongs to screaming farce.
Such are the most successful pieces of the Palais-Royal repertoire.
For all that, the house has not lost the tradition of those short one-
act pieces that formerly constituted the flower of its stock plays. A
few of those to be given before you belong to the first style I spoke
of, the pieces bienfaites, such as L* Affaire de la Rue de Lourcine
already mentioned. Others, and necessarily the most numerous,
belong to the * screamer ' class. To my taste the two best are Le
Homard by Gondinet, and MM. Meilhac and Halvey's Le Roi Can-
daule. I do not know whether these two short acts will afford you
pleasure ; to fully appreciate their points one must be thoroughly
familiar with Parisian language and manners. These real-life
sketches enchanted us.

I might stop at this rapid review of titles of plays and actors'
names, in which I have mentioned all the illustrations of the Palais-
Eoyal. The only kind of play I have at all omitted is La Revue, a
review of the events of the year. This has not been, properly
speaking, what the Palais-Royal could claim as peculiarly its
own, though it has afforded it two of its greatest hits — Les
Pommes de terre malades, and Le Bane d'Huitres. Neither have I
touched on operetta, because, after it had held possession of the
Palais-Royal boards for a short time with La Vie Parisienne and Le
Chateau a Toto, the managers, seeing they had taken the wrong
road, fell back on their ordinary caterers, and suppressed the band.
A few names of actors and actresses have likewise been passed over
in the nomenclature : the amiable Mme. Thierret is one ; she is the
most amusing of duennas, with lips and chin hirsute as those of a
sapper, and who, to the great delight of the public, used to beat her
breast with her fists — she called this striking the lid of her trunk I
Nor have I spoken of Lasouche, with the intelligent glance from his
great round eyes, mocking mouth, and inclined neck, always amusing
in servants' parts. But as the poet says,

Le secret d'ennuyer est celui de tout dire.

Having reviewed its past career, I prefer hazarding a guess at the
future destinies of the Palais-Royal. The management have, during
the last twenty years, been perpetuating a mistake they begin to rue
at the present moment. Happy in the possession of four inimitable

156 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

artists — Geoffrey, Gil Perez, L'Heritier, and Hyacinthe — they have
used them, and overdone them. These popular actors have been
made to appear every night ; and no new recruits have been formed
to succeed them. It is true they have had for accessories to the
error the authors — who have made it a habit to insist on the appear-
ance in their pieces of the best comedians of the day — and the actors
themselves ; for, jealous of their position, they have drawn closer
together to preclude the possibility of any one entering their circle :
and finally, that great baby the Public, who, careless of the future,
has insisted on eating the goose with the golden eggs. Meanwhile
the four stars were growing old. When Gil Perez was compelled to
retire, the mistake made in not providing these eminent comedians
with worthy successors became at once apparent. The managers of
the Palais-Eoyal sought everywhere. They have discovered two
comics, whose reputation is rising in Paris — Daubray and Montbars.
Daubray possesses the finer sort of wit ; Montbars' acting sparkles
with verve, and mirth ; he puts us much in mind of the Sainville of
our youth. Add to the above Milher, a well-informed comedian,
who is going in for the study of farce with commendable ardour.

They have secured pretty Mile. Legaut, a thorough actress in
comic characters, pleasing, though rather deficient in life. After
her comes a bevy of sprightly ladies, whose best points lie in their
beauty of face and stylishness of dress. Mile. Lemercier and Mile.
Lavigne stand out from the number : the former a pretty Abigail,
very amusing with her devil-may-care airs of the Parisian yamin.

I see the name of Mile. Celine Chaumont has been added in the
play-bill. Mile. Celine Chaumont is one of our witty character-
actresses — a Dejazet on a small scale. If I have not spoken of her,
the reason is that she is not permanently attached to the Palais-
Royal company ; she accompanies them for the nonce by permission
of the Varietes management. She would require a special sketch.

In spite of numerous elements of success, we cannot close our
eyes to the fact that the Palais-Eoyal is passing through a critical
period. Its two managers, Dormeuil, jun., and Plunkett, have retired
— have handed over the deal to some one else, as we say.

The new manager who is ushering the company and stock plays
of the Palais-Royal to your notice, M. Delcroix, is an intelligent
man, quite capable of winning back fortune for his house. He is
about to have the theatre (proverbially uncomfortable) rebuilt. He is
thinking of fresh engagements, and on the look-out for young authors.
He has secured one already — M. Abraham Dreyfus, whose Giffle and
Victime, two agreeable farces, will be performed in London.

And now for the curtain, as we say ; I find no better expression
to illustrate the meaning than your national ' All right.'

FRANCISQUE SARCEY.

1880. 157

BLEEDING TO DEATH.

CIRCUMSTANCES have again drawn public attention to the grave finan-
cial and economical condition of our Indian Empire. This in
itself is unfortunately no very attractive subject. The interest
awakened by the two campaigns in Afghanistan necessarily pushed
aside the more sober question of Indian administration, but the time
is quickly coming when the internal affairs of our great dependency
must be studied more closely than ever before. A miscalculation in
the war expenses, so extraordinary that we may fairly doubt whether
its full magnitude is even yet known, has played the same part on
this occasion that the loss by exchange did last year, and the frightful
famines in Madras, Bombay, and the North-West Provinces the year
before. We need, it seems, a continuous succession of ' sensational '
events to keep the minds of Englishmen fixed upon a subject
where we all incur day by day the heaviest responsibility. For the
good government and improvement of India form the duty and con-
cern not of officials alone, but of every man who can see wherein lies
the true greatness of an empire. To raise the people of India to a
higher level by steady help given to their better native customs, to
increase their wealth by reducing the cost of administration, and a
cautious suggestion of improvements in their agriculture and their
industries — to educate them in the widest sense, so that in due time
they may be able to administer their own country with but little
supervision from us — these are aims and objects which surely claim
from us more than the fitful attention which they at present receive —
ought, rather, to rouse the energies and quicken the imagination of all.
We have no right to look at the bright side of what has been done,
and shut our eyes to the stupendous dangers ahead of us.

An able official ' not long since recounted what has been done by our
efforts — efforts well paid for by the people, it is true, but none the less
honourable on that account — and not the most disaffected native could
deny that in perfect religious liberty, peace and protection, the suppres-
sion of organised gangs of robbers and stranglers, the safety of women,
the freedom of internal trade, the security of lands and goods, and in
some districts the improvement of communication, we have conferred
great benefits upon India. These are results of our rule which we
may well look upon with satisfaction, and may reasonably hope will

1 Dr. W. W. Hunter. His exceedingly flattering statements as to the prosperity
of our Indian Empire conflict so strangely with other official reports and admitted
facts that it would be interesting if in a supplementary lecture he would show us
how he reconciles the discrepancies. The death of 6,000,000 people by famine jn
1877 and 1878 the head of the Statistical Department does not so much as notice.

158 TUB NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

Ion" produce a good effect. But, with the single exception of the
last, they were each and all carried out by the East India Company,
and are due to the men of the last generation. Let them, then, be
credited with these good deeds, not the men of to-day. Our present offi-
cials work with equal zeal and equal earnestness — I do not dispute it for
a moment — but they do so over a great part of India under conditions
where it is impossible that they should succeed. The perfection of
our civil administration, the exquisite beauty of our system of minute-
writing and elaborate checks, even the unquestionable uprightness of
the whole official class, carry but cold comfort to a starving people.

That famines are becoming more frequent and more fatal,
that taxation has reached its limit, that the revenue is inelastic
and the expenditure period for period steadily increasing, that
the production of the soil over large areas is lessening, and the
margin of food above the limit of starvation being greatly reduced,
are hard facts no longer to be put contemptuously aside as the idle
fancies of so-called pessimists — they are the well-weighed conclusions
of a Special Famine Commissioner convinced against his will, the
accepted truths of the English Government which felt but now
assured that India was rejoicing in the fullest prosperity. Happily, in
spite of the Afghan War, the task of retrenchment and reform has
been honourably begun. But it is no light work to right past mis-
takes, or to treat with justice and generosity a people wholly depen-
dent upon us for their welfare and their safety. The mischiefs .of over-
Europeanisation and economical error are far-reaching in their effects
— the remedies can be but gradually applied. Yet now, if ever, is
the opportunity for pushing on the necessary changes. There is reason
to hope for a succession of favourable seasons. During this period
economy will tell. But do not let us deceive ourselves : the next great
famine, unless persistent care is taken, will be something unprecedented
in history, and no mere temporary expedients will ward off the danger.

Under our direct rule in India we have no fewer than two hundred
millions of people, and there are besides fifty millions more in native
states who are indirectly controlled by us. Yet all this vast mass of
human beings is kept in order by an army of 60,000 Europeans and
120,000 natives, exclusive of the native police. It is impossible to
put the naturally peaceful character of the people in a more striking
way. There have probably never been more than 300,000 Europeans
in the country at any one time ; and yet since we have been in
possession the only serious rising has been that of our own troops.
Notwithstanding, too, the death by starvation of millions, there has
been no really dangerous outbreak among the numerous races we
govern. Any other society would have broken up under such a strain
as that to which some districts in India were exposed. But the
fierce fighting men of the North-West have so far been as patient
in trial as the milder populations of Madras and Bengal. This says
much for them, and much also for their belief that in spite of many

1880. BLEEDING TO DEATH. 159

drawbacks we mean to rule honestly and well. The fate of the
Dacoity leader Wassadeo Bulwunt Phadke affords clear evidence that
the population is now as ever ready to side with authority, even where
they think themselves oppressed, otherwise he had everything in his
favour. The Deccan has suffered much from usurers and from famine.
Wassadeo's bold raids appealed to the old Mahratta predatory in-
stinct. He and his followers might at least enable the hopelessly
involved to recover their ancestral lands, of which they consider they
have been unjustly deprived. Nevertheless they showed but little
sympathy with the marauders ; the leader was consequently captured
and his band dispersed. In spite of grievous mismanagement, the
Rumpa disturbances in Madras, brought about likewise by our own
neglect, will die down without any assistance from the outside. Still,
therefore, the often-repeated remark remains true, that so long as the
agricultural classes are well affected we shall have no great difficulty
in keeping our hold upon the country. It is an absolute necessity
therefore, to take the very best view, that any germs of serious discon-
tent should be taken account of and fairly dealt with.

In the Deccan this is, to a certain extent, being done, and none too
soon. After four years of inattention the Keport of the Commission
with reference to the outrages upon the money-lenders at last produced
an effect, and the Bill brought forward by Mr. Hope passed the Legis-
lative Council. This is by far the most remarkable measure intro-
duced for many years past. For it amounts to a distinct confession
that our Civil Courts have proved a complete failure, and have been
seriously harmful to the people. What is the remedy ? More Eu-
ropeanisation ? Further attempts to force on the country a system for
which it is wholly unfit ? Not at all. The new measure recognises
that we must take a step back, must have less of law and more of
justice, must leave the natives to manage their own business, and even
endeavour to build up again that which before we have derided and
pulled down. When native panchayats are to be re-established and
the usurers dealt with on the old native principles, it is clear that we
have taken a new view of our duties in India. To do away with the
money-lender would be ruinous. He is an essential part of the Indian
agricultural community. In many districts the money-lenders have
actually lost heavily during the last few years, and have besides done
much to k,eep the people from dying of starvation as well as found
the means to start them again after the drought was over. The
need, therefore, is to check fraud and wrong, but at the same time to
leave free play to the honest agents.

A short survey of the Deccan Agriculturists Relief Act will show
that in its desire to protect the ryot the Indian Government has gone
very near to hamper the ordinary operations of borrower and lender.
This may be a fault on the right side, and in so far as it is a return
to the native system will probably be worked well by the people them-
selves ; but the entire Act is obviously drawn with the intention of oust-

160 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

ing the soucars altogether. The judge is in fact given powers which
entirely upset the very first principles of freedom of contract, and it
is difficult to see what security is left to the money-lender at all
unless the custom of the country discountenances breach of agreement.
Whilst, therefore, the endeavours to bring cheap justice to the ryot,
to give him power to demand accounts at all times, to put a proper
system of registration at his disposal, to revert to the old Hindoo law
that not more than twice the amount advanced could be demanded of
the borrower, and the relief of the agriculturist from liability to im-
prisonment for debt, are all most salutary reforms and cannot fail to
benefit the district, it is by no means so clear that the other portions
of the Bill will not deprive the ryot of the chance of borrowing at all.
But the important matter is that the Government have entered upon
the path of reform.

There is still much to be done even in the Deccan. In the now
famous Keport on this portion of the Bombay Presidency it was dis-
tinctly stated that one great cause of the poverty of the ryots — a
poverty which has since resulted in their death by thousands — in ad-
dition to a bad soil, a very variable climate, and the oppression of
the money-lenders, was the rigidity with which the revenue was col-
lected, and in some districts the excessive enhancement of the
assessment. To this may now be added the pressure for arrears.
The rigidity of our exaction of the land revenue is in itself a matter
of most serious moment, because it may happen that in a bad year its
prompt demand may ruin the ryot or drive him into the hands of those
very money-lenders from whom we wish to protect him. Not until
this, the very basis of our whole system of rule and taxation, is satis-
factorily dealt with, and the home drain staunched, will there be any
marked change for the better in the condition of the agriculturists.

Elsewhere also our Civil Courts are doing mischief, and over-assess-
ment is crushing the landowners. Similarly reforms are needed in
the North-West Provinces and in Oude, in the Punjab, in the Central
Provinces, and in Madras. For the same unregarded truths which
have been told by some of the district officers for years past are now
confirmed by Mr. Caird from personal observation, and his long-ex-
pected report on the Indian Famine will probably enforce his position.
He said in the pages of this Keview that it is impossible to view the
condition of India without grave apprehension, because owing to vari-
ous causes the landless class is increasing, whilst there is no greater
demand for labour, and — most blighting fact of all — the fertility of
the soil is being steadily injured. Here, then, in the opinion of a
sound unimaginative Scotchman, who went out to India strongly of
the other way of thinking, are all the elements of an appalling
economical catastrophe. Sir Richard Temple pointed out some years
ago how the blackguardism of the population seemed, in some to him
inexplicable way, to increase under the shadow of our rule. That is
to say, both observers, the Englishman fresh from this country, and

1880. BLEEDING TO DEATH. 161

the Anglo-Indian of thirty years' experience, are agreed that those
who do not own land are increasing, whilst there is no occupation to
which they can profitably turn. In the North- West Provinces — I
am quoting from a Bengal civilian in active employment — the jails
are filled with ejected landowners and their dependants. Such is
the feeling against the existing system that they would prefer the
murder and anarchy of the old native rulers to the hopeless ruin to
which they are now exposed. ' A land-tax assessed and collected as
ours too often is is not a tax upon income but a tax upon capital.'
How then can the landowner or small proprietor, how can the mere
labourer who is dependent upon him, keep his head above water ? He
cannot. It is impossible. He is always coming to that deep part of the
stream which the poor ryot spoke of, always finding that to keep him-
self and his family from starvation he must get further and further into
debt, until at last there comes a period of scarcity and he perishes.

To obviate the admitted drawbacks of our system, a plan has been
proposed which already works fairly well in some districts. This is to
spread the payment of the land-tax over a period of twenty years,
allowing interest at a low rate if paid in advance, and charging it if
carried over. But, as the native journals urge, the scheme still makes
no due allowance for total remission in years of famine. Here again
we must return to native methods. Oude, for instance, infamously mis-
governed as it was in one sense under the king prior to annexation,
was richer, the people were better off, the whole province more valuable,
than is the case to-day. Sir William Sleeman foresaw this, and
protested against the way in which annexation was carried out. A
greater blunder, as we can now see, was never made. Politically it
was one of the chief causes of the Mutiny ; financially and economi-
cally, it has been a miserable failure. For here as elsewhere we have
attempted to make a clean sweep of the whole social system, and
tried to a great extent that plan of leaving no class between the
pauper ryot and the collector, which has had such serious results in
other parts of India. Let us understand once for all that apart from
the economical mischief done in India during the last twenty years,
one civilisation, trying to act upon and improve another, ought to
be exceedingly cautious in what it either removes or introduces.
For these simple native customs, these quiet never-ending native
arrangements, which in too many instances have been swept away, are
the growth of thousands of years — what after all is a hundred years
in the history of a people like this ? — and to suppose for a moment
that a handful of foreigners, who do not even live in the country,
can safely introduce their ideas and methods, irrespective of the
opinion? of their subjects, is merely to insure that miserable condition
which all non-official observers deplore. We have tried two distinct
systems of government in India — the one invariably successful, the
other, as I contend, a lamentable failure. Yet both secure us supreme
control, and enable us to keep in our hands the trade of the country.

VOL. VIII.— No. 41. M

162 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

Take the case of Baroda. Baroda had a bad native ruler, who was
deposed under well-known circumstances. Instead of pursuing the
course which was adopted with Oude, or even the principle applied
in Mysore, a man trained by ourselves, who had previously reorganised
Travancore, and was then usefully employed at Indore — Sir Madhava
Rao — was appointed Dewan, and became in effect master of the State,
subject only to the light control of the Resident. The drawbacks to
what has been called Dewanism are manifold, and there is no perfec-
tion certainly in the rule of Sir Madhava Rao. But Baroda is flourish-
ing marvellously, the people are well off, and famine is provided
against. Here is an important passage by the Resident bearing upon the
question of famine. The rainfall in 1878 was from a half to one third
of that of an average year, and the rain did not fall till September —
let any one just think what the effect of this would have been in many
portions of our own territory — the harvest was accordingly deficient,
and the country having been denuded of its old stocks of food grains
by export for the Deccan and Madras, prices rose enormously. But
there was no famine in Baroda : there was only scarcity. When the
rain seemed likely to fail altogether, measures were taken for facing
the worst without trouble or fuss.

But what was the financial position of Baroda when this calamity
threatened ? There was a cash balance to the amount of nearly
670,000£. in the Treasury, and a reserve of over 1,000,OOOZ. in 4 per
cent. British Government promissory notes, or 1,670,000£. in all.
Though, too, the revenue fell off by 130,OOOL owing to the bad
season, and the expenditure increased by nearly 150,000^., making
a difference of 280,OOOZ. on a total income of between 1,300,000^. and
1,400,000£. (and the Dewan for his own ends is far too liberal to the
Palace), the deficit for the year was only 20,000£. Nor is this result
obtained at the cost of any scamping in the administration ; and the
army is kept up on a most costly scale. The Courts of Justice are
good and suited to the people. Public works, where they are likely
to be really valuable, are built out of savings. Even so, some say
there is too much of European methods, successful as the adminis-
tration is. Now all this surely redounds to our credit every bit as
much as if Baroda were an integral part of our own territory. It is
true hardly any Europeans are employed in the State, but the coun-
try is under our control, and Sir Madhava Rao is as much our man
as if he had come out to India a competition wallah. And what is
going on in Baroda is a direct result of our presence in India. Yet
we hear there of no terrible impoverishment, no unjust expulsion of
landlords, no bitter outcry against the money-lenders. Improved
native methods satisfy the people, fill the exchequer, and there is
no constant unendurable drain from the country for European pen-
sions and home charges.

Wherever a similar man has been supported in like manner, a simi-
lar result has been obtained. Of Mysore under Sir Mark Cubbon I spoke
in a former number of this Review ; of Jeypore, much to the same effect

1880. BLEEDING TO DEATH. 163

might be said. The independent Principality of Bhaunagar was for
eight years, 1870-78, under the joint administration of Mr. Percival,
a Bombay civilian, and the old State Minister. During this period
a complete change took place. The government was reformed in
every part, a revenue survey was introduced, and the revenue and
trade greatly increased — buildings of all sorts, public offices, schools,
hospitals, tanks, roads, bridges, lighthouses. So the Bhaunagar
State is now by far the most nourishing in Kattywar, and the cause
of its recent and rapid advance is by common consent allowed to
have been the benign influence of Mr. Percival's presence. He is
the Mark Cubbon of Kattywar. Notwithstanding a lavish outlay on
improvements, there was a large balance, little less than six lakhs,
in the treasury when the young Eaja came of age. The influence
of one European acting with and through natives did all this. My
attention has been called to this case of Bhaunagar by Mr. Chester
Macnaghten, the Principal of the Eajkumar College at Eajkote
Kattywar, an intimate friend of twenty-five years' standing. In a
recent private letter to me, he says : —

The fact is that under existing circumstances a native state administered under
British supervision is almost an ideal of prosperity. This remark is a general one,
applying to Travancore, Mysore, &c., as well a,s to Baroda. While the people are
governed in their own simple way, the revenue is not wasted. The peace and pros-
perity which characterises the rural population of India are maintained, while the
corruption and dishonesty which characterise native courts are checked. The
system is an inexpensive one to the states which enjoy it, and contains all that is best
in British and native methods. I believe it is only true to assert that there is not
a single native state in India which, if so administered, will not show a surplus.

How is it then, I ask, that having tried two methods in India, we
stick to the failure — wholesale Europeanisation — and discard the success
— native administration under light English control ? There is, there
can be, but one answer. The vast bureaucratic machine we have created
in India is too powerful to be brought under restraint. Able upright
men, who have spent their lives on a work which is breaking in their
hands, will not admit — I for one can scarcely blame them — that they
have laboured for naught, that the hardest task of the next twenty-
five years will be to repair the mischief which they have unwittingly
done, which they have done rather with the fullest determination
to benefit the country. But whilst we are arguing the people are
starving,rand the appeal now lies not to Viceroy or Finance Minister,
not to Secretary of State or to Parliament, but to the great mass of
English people from the Queen downwards. Let them hear, let them
determine/ let them judge. Will they stand by and see their great
dependency sink into bankruptcy, starvation, and ruin — will they cry
in rude earnest ' Perish India ! ' rather than override the prejudices of
a most high-minded bureaucracy ?

I have been at some pains to obtain a direct comparison by a
native between British and native rule, and one has been obtained
for me from a source beyond suspicion of favouring the native view.

164 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

The writer was brought up under us in India, and cultivates land in
our territory as well as in native territory. The reasons which he
gives for the superior prosperity of the people in the latter are well
worth the consideration of the Home Government. 1. The tax on
fallow and cultivated land in British territory is the same. In native
States fallow is taxed only one-eighth of cultivated land. The result
in our territory is that the land is getting rapidly exhausted from
want of rest ; that the tax raises the price of fodder to such an extent
as to render it profitless to the farmers to breed cattle — so much so
that the bullocks are deteriorating.2 2. In native States most graz-
ing land is allowed free of charge : we sell it. 3. Native Govern-
ment waste land is used as common for depasturing cattle : nothing,
or a nominal sum, is charged. We let it by auction. 4. Wells sunk
by British ryots on their own lands and at their own expense are
charged twelve rupees a year. This is not only manifestly unjust,
but acts as a check on improvement. 5. There are none of those
local cesses under native rule which work great hardship in British
territory. 6. Considerable remissions are made for total and partial
failure of crops. In Bombay the revenue was allowed to stand over
for only one year when the famine was devastating the Deccan.
7. Arrears are frequently allowed to stand over for two or three years,
or totally remitted. No interest is charged. We charge heavy in-
terest and allow little time. Recently still harsher regulations have
been made. 8. The number of instalments under old native rule was
four : we make it two. 9. The expenses of the civil courts, a proli-
fic source of ruin to many a ryot under our rule, the intricate varieties
of stamps, ' with whose confounding nomenclature I am not conver-
sant,' and imprisonment for debt, to which the ryot is not liable in
native States, make up the chief causes of complaint. There are others,
and these may seem — though to me I confess they do not — individually
trifling ; but the result in the aggregate is really startling. * The pro-
sperity of a rural community is most satisfactorily estimated from the
condition of their farms, the quantity of grain stored up in the house,
and the extent of indebtedness. The last is the surest sign of compari-
son where all other conditions are similar.' Now this question of the
extent of indebtedness is a test which may very well be applied, as it
is practical and easily proved. Yet, according to this observer, the
result is against us. It is found that in villages belonging to a
State under our indirect control the total percentage of indebtedness
is scarcely above that of the most prosperous ryots living side by side
in British territory. The latter consider that a good year in which
they get nearly enough to eat after the taxes are paid. Here then a
distinct comparison is possible. The above statements, I repeat, may
be relied upon as at any rate expressing the deliberate opinion of an
educated cultivator who was induced to record his views with much

* The truth is both men and bullocks are deteriorating in our territory all over
India. Even oar Sikhs are not the men of Chillianwallah. In the native State?,
owing to better feeding, they retain their vigour.

1880. BLEEDING TO DEATH. 165

diffidence and distrust. His statements unfortunately agree with those
from official sources.

Read, for example, Mr. Robertson's paper on 'Agriculture in
Madras ' delivered before the Society of Arts. What do we find, always
bearing in mind that Mr. Robertson speaks with official authority ?
This : that whilst the land is inadequately manured and the breed of
the cattle deteriorating ; whilst a process of desiccation is going on
owing to the removal of forests and jungle ; whilst we make no advance
in agriculture and encourage no beneficial change — whilst all this de-
terioration and stagnation is steadily observed, there is over it a system
of exacting the revenue the most costly known, and one, besides, which
directly discourages improvement in every direction. Yet the propor-
tion of exhausting crops is enormous and increasing. Can we wonder
that, all this being so, the productive powers of the soil are calculated
to have decreased thirty per cent, at least in thirty years ? Here, then,
we see the catastrophe which was laughed at as the alarmism of the
ignorant once more directly foreshadowed by the evidence of an expert.
But I say again that Bombay and Madras are no exceptional cases,
that the same phenomena are to be observed throughout our territory.
In the North-West Provinces likewise the land does not, as of old, give
forth its abundance, and in Oude, the Punjab, and the Central Pro-
vinces we are steadily working up to the same result. And yet we
are still content to discuss.

The present higher administration of India is entirely European.
There are those who vigorously contend that this is in the eternal fit-
ness of things ; that to alter or modify it gravely in any way would be
ruinous, to point out its infinite deficiencies is little short of unpatriotic.
The trifling promise of improvement already made is even objected
to, though for years we have been pledged to employ more natives in
every department. But the drawbacks to the present arrangement
can never be too frequently urged until a distinct and final change is
brought about. Unlike former conquerors of India we do not live in
the country, and, as a consequence, we take out of it each year more
than the people can afford. The total net revenue of India is under
40,000,000^. a year. Not less than 20,000,OOOZ. worth of agricul-
tural produce — more than the entire net income derived by the Govern-
ment from the land revenue — is sent out of India every year without
any direct commercial equivalent. Just think what this (and it is an
underestimate by nearly fifty per cent.) really means. It means that
year after year, in dearth and in plenty, in drought and in flood
20,000,000^. is taken from perhaps the poorest people on the earth to
bring to us here in England (or to invest in unremunerative public
works) ; it means that so many millions more are condemned to
starvation at the next scarcity ; it means that during the twenty years
we have governed India 400,000,000^. have been so applied. Call this
payment for good administration, gloss it over in any way you please,
need we look further for the cause of the growing impoverishment of

India? Not a. sincrlft T^no-lishman wrmlrl sav sr> if last vftar. not to

166 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

speak of years before, 67,000,OOOL, the agricultural rent of the country,
had been sent hence to the Continent for nothing. Yet 67,000,OOOL
to England is literally a fleabite compared with what 20,000,OOOL is
to India.

But the worst is to come. The interest, the pensions, the home
charges which go to make up this amount have hitherto, in great
part, been met by the proceeds of loans contracted here for other
purposes. But further borrowing simply intensifies the drain, and is
at last seen to be ruinous. In future, consequently, there will be
little or no set off. Is it not, then, the business of every man to
attempt to stop this open artery which is draining away the life blood
of our great dependency ? For let us never forget that all this
produce is sent away without any reference whatever to the will of
the people of India themselves. Quite apart, therefore, from any
question of abstract justice to a subject race, it is of the last im-
portance that only so many Englishmen should be employed in India
as are absolutely needed for purposes of security and supervision of
natives, and that we should not pay ourselves, out of Indian penury,
interest which has never been earned, and pensions in excess of what
is needful. For the one great need of India is capital, and that
capital we now drain away.

We absolutely refuse, however, to make use of the highest native
talent even to serve ourselves in a position where it could not fail
to be useful. The ablest Finance Minister India has ever yet seen
was a Hindoo, and he was employed by a Mahommedan emperor
whose grandfather conquered India. If we cannot rise to the mag-
nanimity of an Akbar, we ought at least to use in some way the greatest
financial capacity the country affords. Hindoos understand accounts
just as well as ourselves ; they are naturally saving, and beyond all
question they know where their countrymen feel the pinch of taxation
better than we do. Let us therefore take advantage of their knowledge
for our own sakes. But hitherto it has been useless to urge this.3
For twenty years Europeanisation has been the one great panacea for
all evils, and its effects we have only now begun to see. What English-
men formerly did in India is, as I have said, open to all. None can
forget, or would if they could, the glorious work done by Outram among
the Bheels, by Edwardes on the Indus border, by the Lawrences, by
Mountstuart Elphinstone, by Sleeman, by Meadows Taylor, by Metcalfe
and Malcolm, by Shore, Monro, and Macleod. But these great men
worked through native channels ; they raised the people under their con-
trol by personal intercourse, by endeavouring to understand and enter
into native ideas, native fears, hopes, ambitions, even amusements. The

* We are even averse from examining natives as witnesses on the affairs of their
own country. But three native witnesses were examined before the great Committee
of the House of Commons on Indian Finance. Yet, if the warnings they gave had
been attended to, we should have reformed abuses in time to avert disaster in more
than one district. Of course no one supposes that native evidence in regard to our
rule is to be implicitly relied upon, but we ought at least to have some check upon
the statements cf officials as to their own capacity.

1880. BLEEDING TO DEATH. 167

time for all this in our own territory seems almost to have gone by.
Circumstances have entirely changed. The young men who go out
to India no longer look upon the country as their home, no longer
are able to get so near to the people as their predecessors. They go
out at a later age, theoretically far better acquainted with the people
they have to govern — and it would not be difficult to name individual
competition wallahs who have distinguished themselves by personal
self-sacrifice for the good of those whom they rule 4 — but with their
minds in England rather than in India. With every wish to do their
work thoroughly, to improve those for whom they are responsible, they
soon find that they form part of an inexorable machine which grinds
minutes, reports, and judgments out of them to such an extent that
they have no time for friendly intercourse with the natives.5 Here
are some of the duties which fall upon a district officer, that district
officer who is called by Dr. Hunter the real ruler of India. He is

Collector of the land revenue.
Registrar of the landed property in the district.
Judge between landlord and tenant.
Ministerial officer of the courts of justice.
Treasurer and accountant of the district.
Administrator of the district excise.
Ex-officio president of the local rates committee.
Referee for all questions of compensation for

lands taken up for public purposes.
Agent for the Government in all local suits to

which it is a party.
Referee in local public works.
Manager of estates of minors.
Magistrate, police magistrate, and criminal judge.
Head of police.
Ex-officio president of municipalities.

The all-important question of raised or increased assessment or

4 The late James Geddes was a notable instance of a man who may be said to
have^sacrificed his career and even his life to the welfare of the'people he went out to
rule. He preferred to state what he believed to be the truth rather than to attain
to the, highest offices by falling in with the prevailing opinion. A Bengal civilian
of the first capacity, he ventured to doubt the beneficence of the system he was called
upon to administer. He died a few months ago at the early age of forty, broken down
by overwork and disappointment. Though his views may have been exaggerated and
his suggestions not very practicable, no nobler character ever honoured the Indian
services by participating in their work.

5 There is in fact no real revenue administration. The collector, especially in
Oude and the Punjab, is a tax-gatherer and nothing more ; he is compulsory jack -of -
all-trades whose days are spent in inditing countless reports on all miscellaneous
matter of great or small importance upon which the local government of the day sets,
or is forced to set, great store ; he has to draw up portentous memos on conservancy,
municipalities, drains, and self-government all the morning ; his afternoons are occu-
pied with his appellate work ; and an odd half-hour or so, as leisure permits, is with
difficulty snatched for the real work of a collector, namely the disposal of the revenue
reports — those papers which have to do with the future prosperity or ruin of whole
villages. ( Our Land Revenue Policy in. Northern, India, by C. J. Connell, Bengal Civil
Service.)

168 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

remission — namely, the very hinge on which the whole welfare of the
district hangs — ' must be perfunctorily rushed through, while a pro-
posal for a new latrine has taken up hours of valuable time.' Over-
whelmed, in short, with clerk work about matters of no moment, the
collector has no opportunity for thoroughly getting to the bottom of
his duties. Can any one wonder that, in such circumstances, the com-
monplace man is content to go on in the ordinary humdrum way ; and
that the man of ability, when he does get to the top of the tree, has all
the ardour for reform taken out of him, and is only eager to get home ?
How can either acquire that intimate knowledge which is so essential,
whilst he is hearing cases or compiling reports ? The pressure of
the bureaucracy is ever on him, and sooner or later he has to give in.
This, perhaps, is one of the most perplexing points in the future
of our connection with India. Although India has known no other
rule than ours for at least three generations, we are getting further
and further from the people, and are less intimate with them than
we were. This arises from various causes, some of which cannot be
removed. But the excess of office work certainly does much mis-
chief, and the constant transfers and frequent furloughs do more.
On this serious difficulty the following remarks from a private letter
to me may be interesting : —

It is in general sadly true that Englishmen in India live totally estranged from
the people among whom they are sojourning. This estrangement is partly unavoid-
able, being the result of national customs, language, and caste. But on the whole
there is no doubt, I think, that it might in great part be removed if Englishmen
would make up their minds (but how can they be ordered to do so ?) to assume a less
contemptuous attitude. Some natives in some respects are (it must be admitted)
contemptible ; but not all, or nearly all. We may say that while there is fault on both
sides, the greater fault is on our side, because we have not performed a duty — clearly
laid upon us by the nature of our position in India — of striving to understand the
natives. The English contempt proceeds in the main from English ignorance, and
English ignorance is accompanied, as so often happens, by English bluster. Those
who have known the natives well have generally liked them, even loved them, and
their love has been returned with a remarkable wealth of unselfish affection. That
natives are worth the effort of knowing, no humane person can doubt ; but because
with the difference of language and habits it does take some effort to know them, most
Englishmen keep aloof. This tendency to aloofness is greater than it used to be,
and is, I fear, increasing. This is a great misfortune. Some think that the in-
creased tendency comes from an increase of Europeans of a lower social order than
those who formerly came to India. It mav be so : if so it can only be regarded and
deplored as a new (but necessary) order of things. Certain it is the natives consider
the Sahib is not what he used to be — certain, too, that English rule is not popular.

This is the great social calamity attending our Raj in India. For it is not
easy to dictate a remedy. Nothing can be effected by preaching or exhortation.
The examples of Englishmen placed in high office may do and have done something
to foster good-will between the different races ; but the respect due to high office
necessarily involves some formality, and forbids the expression of cordial senti-
ments. On the whole, nothing tangible can be achieved till the ordinary English-
man begins by treating the ordinary native as worthy to be known, and treats him,
when found worthy, as an equal and a friend. But that happy day has not come
yet. The army of the ' damned nigger ' philistines is strong.

I may add that my friend, who is an Englishman and an official,

1880. BLEEDING TO DEATH. 169

takes a much more favourable view of the present condition of India
than I do.

Without, however, going further into detail, is it not abundantly
clear that, so far as the main principles of our future administration
are concerned, what we need is to remove from our own officials this
excessive pressure of bureau work, and from the natives the excessive
pressure of Europeans and European ideas, and European taxation
above them ? This can only be done by gradually reconstructing an
improved native administration. The highest posts must, under one
name or another, be in our hands so long as we remain in the country ;
but when we once admit that more native administration is desirable
on all grounds, we shall have really begun that reorganisation which
must be the work of the future.

The chief points to be always kept in view, indeed, in addi-
tion to relentless economy in India and at home, should be de-
centralisation, European supervision, native administration. Decen-
tralisation, because it is utterly impossible — it is the root of many
great grievances now — to rule well and tax fairly many nations and
peoples on one distinct and definite plan. European supervision,
because we have no intention whatever of leaving the country, and
that is the best way of applying our superior knowledge. Native
administration, because in this way alone shall we stanch in part the
drain of produce, and give to the more capable natives that outlet
for their capacities without which they will never be content, because
also in this way alone shall we give free scope to those native arts
and manufactures which at present are being crushed out under our
system. Thus will the great provinces into which India is divided
be prepared very gradually but very surely for that self-government
which will be the noblest outcome of our rule. That India might be
benefited by the English connection is undoubted ; but it will be by
guidance and help, not by stunting all spontaneous growth under a
dead weight of Europeanisation.

In the direction of finance the absolute need for reform is more
generally acknowledged than elsewhere, and it is now recognised that
a new departure is required more especially in regard to the depart-
ments of the Army and Public Works. The Afghan war, when all
accounts are completed, will probably cost a good deal more than
20,000,000^. Full accounts have not been made up for two years.
Even when the English taxpayer has assumed his full proportion of
this inordinate amount, the situation will be sufficiently serious. But
to take the Public Works first. The Committee appointed by the House
of Commons last session fully confirmed the criticisms which I ventured
to make upon the management of that department nearly two years ago.
A more damaging statement, calmly Avorded though it is, it would be
difficult to find, or, it may be added, a more direct contradiction to
the optimist statements of successive Secretaries and Under- Secretaries
of State for India. For from that report it appears that up to the
date of the inquiry 95,000,000^. had been spent upon guaranteed

170 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

railways ; but, in addition to this capital expenditure, not less than
22,000,000?. have been cent from India to England to meet the
guaranteed interest which was never earned. On State railways at
that time 18,600,000?. had been spent — this amount is now some
8,000,000?. larger — but as the money was borrowed at 4£ per cent.,
and the railways cost about 3£ per cent., the sum paid, which was not
earned on account of these railways, is still larger than the guaran-
teed railways in comparison with the total expended and the time
during which the system has bsen in vogue. The loss to India on
the State railways has been upwards of 2,000,000?. By counting the
East Indian Kailway as a State railway the loss disappears in the cur-
rent year ; but of course that is merely a matter of bookkeeping —
the loss is still incurred. Thus on guaranteed and State railways
there had been remitted to England — sticking still to the Keport —
24,000,000?., which had never been earned. What is more, every
additional million spent on the State railways means a further
heavy loss to the State. As to the guaranteed railways, they
did show a balance on the right side in 1877-78. But why?
Simply because there was a frightful famine in Madras and Bombay,
and enormous amounts of grain had to be sent from northern India
to the suffering districts. Will it be believed that in this terrible
year, when, notwithstanding the expenditure of 1 1 ,000,000?. on famine
relief, 6,000,000 people died of starvation, a * bonus ' was paid out of
the produce of India to English shareholders ? Yet so it was, though
the very next year the loss on guaranteed interest figured as usual
against the people of India.

Now in such circumstances what should be done ? Surely
borrowing should be stopped altogether, even if England, which
has really been responsible for all this blundering, had to pay some
of the unemployed officials. For consider even the cost of manage-
ment in the Public Works Department. According to Sir Thomas
Seccombe the outlay on establishments was actually 2,200,000?.,
or enough to deal with an annual expenditure of 47,000,000?. The
proportion on our annual rate would be about 25 per cent. In
Jeypore, as Mr. Caird has pointed out, the cost of establishments
under a European officer amounts to about 6 per cent, on the outlay.
What makes all this the more sad is that, owing to the employment
of so many Europeans in working the railroads, and the maintenance
of the head offices in this country, they confer far less benefit than
they otherwise would on the impoverished people. Yet borrowing
for these ' productive ' public Works is still to go on, though it is
quite impossible to insure that it will not increase the 'drain'
for unearned interest, and still further weaken India. The same
system, I say, is to go on, but on a smaller scale. Happily the European
establishment is being cut down to a considerable extent, though
Cooper's Hill College is kept up to provide useless engineers, and
the whole staff is still far in excess of what is right or needful.
Manifest as is the mistake, none will as yet fully acknowledge it.

1880. BLEEDING TO DEATH. 171

In respect to irrigation works a different tone has fortunately been
adopted. These, with the exception of a few native works restored
or remodelled, are acknowledged to be a loss to the State, and no
more are to be built with borrowed money, though loans for wells
and tanks are recommended.

But in the face of this report and the very doubtful tone in
which the committee speak about the whole of our public works
in India, what becomes of those unfortunate illusions as to the results
of our expenditure in this direction in India ? The excess of European
agency in every direction, the fact that the railways have been built
with money borrowed out of the country, on which interest was paid
whether earned or not — these two causes together have entirely
vitiated the calculations made with regard to the ordinary benefit
derived from such works. One of the poorest countries in the world
has been saddled with expensive machinery of communication, from
which the English investor derives the greatest benefit. Take, then,
what view we may of what has already been done, further doubtful
works ought only to be built from savings.

The Commissions which have been sitting in England and in
India with reference to the Indian army, will certainly report in
favour of economy. It is said that the economies recommended in
India will amount to 1,500,OOOZ., upon an annual total of 17,000,000?.
If justice is done, at least a similar reduction will be made in the
amount of the army charges in England. But the main mischief
was done, as has been pointed out over and over again, when the
amalgamation of the Indian and English armies was carried through,
in opposition to the opinion of every man who had a right to express
one. What is even more to the purpose, this was brought about, as
Mr. Fawcett has said, under a Liberal Government ; and thus, economy
having been begun by the Conservatives, both sides are pledged to
such changes as may remedy the mischief, including the reduction of
the inordinate charge for retired colonels.

The Indian Commission recommends the re-establishment of a local
European force, recruited, officered, and pensioned on Indian account
on reasonable terms. This plan is certain to meet with opposition in
this country, and the drawbacks are already being pointed out by profes-
sional critics. That there were errors in the management of the old
East India Company's local army was urged by none with more energy
than by the eminent men of that army themselves. But that is no
reason why they should be reproduced in the new arrangement. The
army would of course still be at the disposal of the Imperial authorities
in case of emergency, only its first duty will be towards India. In
this way the cost of transport will be greatly reduced, a long service
army of thoroughly seasoned men would be maintained in the country
at far less expense, the depot charges in England would be cut down
to something like the old scale under the East India Company, and
such disorganisation as has lately been brought about by the attempt
to apply the short service system of the Continent in totally different

172 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

conditions would be avoided. Unfortunately the Commission has
come to the conclusion that neither now nor later can the number of
European troops in India be brought below 60,000. This, though
possibly a right, is certainly a regrettable, decision ; for the European
force is that which inflates the military charges of India so inor-
dinately.

If the question is asked, Why, when the Afghan war is over, should
not the army be reduced ? the reply is, Look at the danger from the
native princes. An extraordinary array has been made of the armies
of our feudatories, and 300,000 or 400,000 men with hundreds of guns
have been paraded up and down the columns of English journals, as if
some new or unsuspected peril had suddenly been flashed upon us.
Such * scares ' are both impolitic and silly. They fill the native
princes with an undue sense of their own importance, and at the same
time give them the impression that we wish to treat them unfairly.
If we really have ground to distrust the native States — and it is
possible, though it seems most unlikely, that disaffection exists at
Hyderabad, Gwalior, Indore, or elsewhere — we ought to act with
promptitude and vigour. If not, then fair proposals should be made
to our feudatories themselves to modify the treaties under which
these useless forces are maintained before they are put forward as
bogeys to frighten the English public at home. No one would argue
that we are bound to permit native armies to be kept up in per-
petuity which we have to tax our own fellow-subjects to pay the cost of
watching, whilst the chiefs are themselves protected by us from any
external attack or internal rising. But we have definite engagements,
and these must be honourably dealt with by direct negotiations with the
chiefs themselves. To act otherwise is only to provoke disaffection.
Granting, however, that a satisfactory arrangement is come to, and
that definite peace is the result of our costly war in Afghanistan, then
surely 50,000 European troops ought to suffice to garrison India. Nor
is there any reason why, if the home charges are fairly apportioned and
proper economy used, the cost of the army should exceed 13,000,OOOZ.
in any one year. In view of the unreasoning bitterness of party
conflict, it is well to recall the fact that the late Government began
those reforms and retrenchments which, but for the fearful expen-
diture on the Afghan war, would already have produced an effect.

With respect to taxation, recent events have shown that the
Indian Government is being awakened to a truer conception of the
needs of the people. When the license tax was imposed, Sir John
Strachey justified the taxation of the very poorest of the population
for the means of a provision against famine on the ground that they
first suffered from famine, and therefore ought to find the means for
their own relief. The result of this strange reasoning was soon seen.
The license tax produced more disaffection than any tax that has
ever been imposed in India, and in some districts had a most disas-
trous effect. No wonder. The agriculturist was treated as an agri-
culturist and had to pay all taxes as such ; but the moment he moved

1880. BLEEDING TO DEATH. 173

his grain with his own cart and his own bullocks he became a trader,
and had to pay in that capacity. Now this has been altered, and the
license tax takes the form of an income tax — in itself no doubt an ob-
jectionable impost, but not, like the other, a direct incitement to dis-
affection. Surely it is high time that this tinkering with the interests
of our Empire should be put an end to, and more consideration shown
for the mass of the people. For it is not only with the license tax
that the most serious harm has been done. ' Arrears ' are still
being exacted — arrears for years during which the land produced
nothing at all, when, indeed, the economical rent of which we have
heard so much might be taken to represent a minus quantity. At
the same time, too, the increased salt tax, against which the Madras
Government so strenuously protested, has been imposed and is being
demanded. The result of course is that even during these years of
comparative plenty the agricultural classes are still in want and
misery. On such points it is for the Home Government to express a
decided opinion, and to rescue the oppressed. For the grave mischief
of all this is that the difficulties of one year become hopeless
calamity the next. To crush the poor and spare the wealthy has
been almost the rule with the Indian Government of late years. A
change has begun ; let us hope it will be pushed on vigorously.

Of the details of Indian finance it is needless now to speak at
length. Mr. Samuel Laing's investigation of the figures, so far as they
are known, in the last number of the Nineteenth Century, remains un-
answered and unanswerable. That the condition of the Exchequer is
deplorable is now universally admitted. There is a large deficit,
estimated by Lord Hartington at upwards of 6,000,000^., where
there was stated to be a surplus. But the actual deficit will proba-
bly prove much more considerable than this, and doubt has been
thrown upon the correctness of Indian accounts for years past. What
is still more serious, the improvement of the revenue in certain direc-
tions may as well be considered ' accidental ' as the exceptional expen-
diture on war or famine, whilst the depletion of the cash balances
has been carried to such an extent as to be positively dangerous.
Further borrowing — that easy resort of the spendthrift — has been
rendered necessary to an extent which must alarm even the most
careless. Nothing short of a close and careful scrutiny of the
whole fabric of our Indian finances will now suffice to convince the
public that they rest on a sound basis. The time has gone by when
any set of tables, however carefully manipulated, will carry conviction.
Once more the flattering estimates of an Indian finance have, even
apart from the miscalled productive expenditure, turned out wholly de-
lusive, and this time we may reasonably hope that the blunder cannot
be passed over as a trivial error. For now the English people will them-
selves have to put their hands in their pockets to rectify the mistaken
calculations of the Indian Government, and thus they will have a direct
interest in finding out the truth. But there remain graver facts for
consideration than any affected by the deficit of the current year.

174 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July

Though we have just passed through one famine period at the cost of
millions of lives and millions of money, with the loss of numbers of
cattle, and serious general impoverishment of the districts affected,
within a few years we must come to another time of dearth, and for this
period no preparation whatever is now being made. All the discus-
sion which has taken place on this question, all the efforts of the
supporters of the present Finance Minister, cannot alter the fact
that the 1,500,000£. of surplus that was to have been provided by
extra taxation in order to anticipate the needs of the people has
been used for the Afghan War and frontier railways. Try how we
may to turn the figures about, the truth remains that the Famine
Insurance Fund, the necessary annual amount to make ready for the
next period of drought, or by judicious investment to give facilities
for borrowing at the critical moment, has been utterly swept away
and more and yet more debt incurred. What need have we of
further argument when we see for ourselves that borrowing could not
even be delayed, so heavy was the pressure ? Yet the grave dangers
to which we were exposed are grave dangers still. The people are
miserably poor, taxation cannot be increased without great risk, and
the drain of produce which goes relentlessly on is producing — let
that never be forgotten — a cumulative effect. Period for period,
therefore, each successive year is worse than its predecessor, and does
but bring the final catastrophe nearer to us.

As regards the mere question of finance in itself there is also the
opium revenue to be considered. This even now is not so secure as
it was. Every step which China takes towards organising her naval
and military forces renders this source of income less certain ; whilst
all the time there is a party here at home which to do a little right
would risk a great wrong, and crush the Indian taxpayer rather than
sell to the Chinaman what they consider a harmful drug.6 Here
alone is a danger which sooner or later must be faced and dealt with.
India positively could not raise the additional 6,000,000?. or
7,000,000£. needed to replace the net opium revenue. Thus, then,
the permanent causes of uneasiness are still unshaken, and the little

• The arguments put forward by the moralists who wish to give up the Indian
opium revenue are based, we may suppose, upon the idea that the amount of revenue
thus sacrificed could be raised with equal convenience in some other way ; or at least
that retrenchments could be made which would render some 7,000,0002. of revenue
unnecessary. But no effort whatever is made to show how this sum could be ob-
tained in India, nor do the enthusiasts point out where proportionate economies might
be effected in the expenditure. As a matter of fact 7,000,OOOZ. of additional revenue
could not be obtained in India, and he would be a financier indeed who should show
the way to a genuine surplus of that amount. The truth is also that, though there
is nothing to be said for the manner in which we forced the opium traffic upon China,
opium-smoking is far less harmful in every way than dram-drinking, and, as was ob-
served not long since, Indian opium holds much the same position with respect to
native Chinese opium that fine French brandy does to fusel-oil gin. India, in short,
has a monopoly of the one, as France has of the other, and we use it to lighten Indian
taxation. Find a substitute which shall not oppress our fellow-subjects, or curtail
expenditure prtt tanto, and then the Indian Government can afford to give ear to the
member for Glasgow, the sobriety of his constituents notwithstanding.

1880. BLEEDING TO DEATH. 175

which has been done already is rather an assurance for the future than
a ground for confidence at present.

Yet we have undertaken a great and noble task, one from which
neither as a nation nor as individuals should we turn away dismayed.
The drawbacks to our rule since the Mutiny are only too apparent,
their effects only too grievous. Yet all these can — all these will be —
remedied. The alternative — what would almost certainly occur if
we were to leave India before we had finished the task of remedying
our blunders, and of reorganising a country which under good adminis-
tration would be one of the richest and most flourishing portions of
the earth — is not pleasant to contemplate. Natives of India, broken
up as they are into -many races and religions, would never be content
to settle down each to the peaceful management of their own. We
have enforced peace, order, general security, but we have not yet
built up — have not even tried to build up — any native system fit to
take our place. What, then, would ensue ? A savage contest between
Mahommedan and Mahratta, Sikh and Pathan, for the supremacy of
the country. Our controlling influence removed, all the elements of
disorder would burst forth and have free play. Railways would be
torn up, tanks breached, cities sacked, the Nepaulese and other hill
tribes would descend again into the plains, and the condition of India
in this nineteenth century of ours would be worse than if we had
never entered it. For this intestine strife would not be the end :
some other European State would take advantage of all the turmoil
to thrust its yoke upon the conflicting natives, and to renew in a yet
sterner shape the mischievous system from which we at least are
willing to set it free. Therefore we are bound to go on. But, this
being so, it becomes the duty of every man to take care that the
next twenty years shall not be as the last, that India shall not longer
be regarded as the preserve of any clique or class, and that persistent
optimism or indifference shall not blind us to the hard reality of
facts and figures. The great mass of English voters are now the real
masters of India — it is for them to see that only worthy deeds are
done in their name. Even as we look on, India is becoming feebler
and feebler. The very lifeblood of the great multitude under our
rule is slowly, yet ever faster, ebbing away. Listen then no more to
those comfortable counsellors who, in the face of the fatal truths day
by day made manifest, delude us with their idle talk of growing
strength, of increasing prosperity, of healthful national vigour in the
near future, when all the while the great dependency we are responsi-
ble for is perishing from exhaustion, because we drag from her help-
lessness millions worth of agricultural produce which she cannot
spare. Further delay to act in this matter simply means that the
number of those who will die of starvation at the next scarcity will
be hideously multiplied by our default, that the certainty of their
fate is assured by our neglect. A policy of steady retrenchment at
home, and in India of greatly increased employment of natives and
careful reconstruction of native governments, may be no easy one to

176 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

carry out ; but this way lies the future of India, and thus alone shall
we earn the gratitude of generations to come. Surely Englishmen will
never suffer the shadow of a ruined empire to dim the noble record of
their services to freedom and civilisation.

H. M. HYNDMAN.

POSTSCRIPT.

Since this paper was in type a leading article has appeared in the Times which
would appear to show that India, so far from being impoverished, is steadily advancing
in wealth. This conclusion is arrived at by comparing the export and import trade
of India in 1869-70 with the export and import trade, so far as known, in 1879-80.
The article was written apropos of the statement of the Chairman of the Calcutta
Chamber of Commerce to the effect that the outlook for the Indian export trade is
very gloomy indeed, and that there is little likelihood that it will be any better in
years to come. In reply to that statement the Times shows that the export trade of
India between 1870 and 1880 has increased 20 per cent. ; and the import of merchan-
dise 25 per cent., and then urges with apparent justice that when the trade thus
increases India cannot be getting poorer. The consideration of the trade of India had
been purposely excluded from my paper, for I thought that it had been sufficiently
dealt with in previous papers, and that the admission of the present Finance Minister
that 20,000,OOOZ. of agricultural produce— it is really over 30.000.000J., but let that
pass — leaves India every year without any direct commercial equivalent, was enough
to show that India did not derive any benefit, but on the contrary suffered severe loss,
from her export and import trade. The argument of the Times, however, calls for some
notice. I would therefore point out that between 1870 and 1880 the mileage of
railroads open in India has been increased not 20 or 25, but nearly 100 per cent.,
that there is therefore twice the facility for communication with the seaboard at
the least, and certainly twice the extent of country opened up to foreign trade in
1880 that there was in 1870. The increase of trade might well be proportionate. It
is not so, nor nearly so. But this increase of trade, such as it is, must be in fairness
attributed wholly to the new districts. What then becomes of the trade from the
country already opened up in 1870 ? That, I venture to affirm, has decreased on the
average, and I venture further to predict that the anticipations of the Chairman of the
Calcutta Chamber of Commerce will be only too sadly fulfilled unless we alter our
system. I would further point out that if the imports of merchandise are scruti-
nised or large importers questioned, it will be found that the natives of India in our
own territory are importing no luxuries — the imported cotton of course means the
destruction by greater cheapness of native industries — though during the one period
when they had anything to spare (the cotton famine time) they bought European
articles readily enough. In estimating, therefore, the export and import trade of
India, it is necessary to bear in mind that not only are all the prosperous European
ventures of which the profits are ours, not only is all the trade of the native States,
included in the returns, but that the enormous increase of railway communication
has practically opened up twice the country that was within profitable* reaclrof
the seaboard ten years ago. It is not pleasant to have to admit that a country under
our direct rule is becoming poorer and poorer, but it is useless to shut our eyes to
plain facts, however disagreeable they may be. That way lies min.

H. M. H.

THE

NINETEENTH
CENTURY.

No. XLIL— AUGUST 1880.

AN ENGLISHMAN'S PROTEST.

THREE months ago it was possible to write the following words : —
* The best example of a commonwealth which has lost its Catholic
perfection without losing its traditional but imperfect Christianity,
and has at the same time returned in great part to the natural order
— that is, to the truths of natural religion and to the four cardinal
virtues — may be said to be the British Empire.'

But this British Empire was not the primitive Catholic monarchy
of Alfred, in which Church and State were inseparable, and councils
and parliaments sat simultaneously.

It was not the English monarchy of Henry the Seventh, in which r
at least in public law, the unity of our spiritual and civil life was as
yet unbroken.

It was not the monarchy of Elizabeth, of which Hooker could
still write in his pleasant dream that Church and State were coinci-
dent, and every member of the one was a member of the other.

It was not the monarchy of the Stuarts or of William the Third,
in which whole classes of men were excluded from civil rights and
from legislative powers because of nonconformity with the legalised
form of Christianity.

Neither was it the British Empire of George the Fourth, when
civil rights and legislative powers were thrown open to Catholics and
Protestants, who for three centuries had endured proscription and
persecution, to fine, imprisonment, and death, for their Christian
conscience.

VOL. VIII.— No. 42. N

178 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

Nor, lastly, was it the Monarchy and Empire of Victoria, when
civil rights and legislative powers were extended in full to all who,
believing in the divine and imperishable Theism of the Hebrew
Commonwealth, gave their allegiance, under the same divine sanctions,
to the Christian Empire of Great Britain.

Hitherto the British Empire has rested upon a twofold divine
base, both natural and supernatural. It was built up by our Saxon,
Norman, and English forefathers, first upon the unity of Christendom :
next even they who saw this unity wrecked, or had a hand in wreck-
ing it, preserved of the Law Christian all that it was still possible to
save. Our old jurists used to say that ' Christianity was part and
parcel of the law of England ; ' and our feather-headed political
doctors ridiculed as bigotry a dictum which has created Christen-
dom. They no doubt had never studied the incorporation of the
Christian into the Imperial law, and, to take one only instance, they
were probably unconscious how the Christian law of marriage in its
unity and indissolubility changed the face of the Eoman world ;
and equally unconscious how to this day the same Christian and
Catholic law is the law of England notwithstanding the legal dissolu-
tions of the Divorce Court.

But lying deep below this Christian foundation of our Empire
there are the lights and the laws of the natural order : the truths known
to man by the light of reason and by the instincts of humanity. The
whole civil society of men in all its ages, apart from the common-
wealth of Israel, the monarchies of Assyria and Persia, the liberties
of Greek civilisation, the imperial law and sway of old Home, all
alike rested upon the Theism of the natural order.

I may be asked what is this Theism of the natural order. I
answer : that God exists ; that He is good, wise, just, and almighty :
that He is our Lawgiver and our Judge ; that His law, both eternal
and positive, is the rule of our life ; that we have reason by which to
know it in its dictates of truth and of morals ; that this law binds
us in duties to Him, to ourselves, and to all men ; that this law is
the sanction of all personal, domestic, social, civil, and political life :
in a word, without God there is no society of man, political, social,
or domestic. Society springs from God, and lives by His pervading
will. Deny the existence of God, and nine thousand affirmations are
no more than nineteen or ninety thousand words. Without God there
is no lawgiver above] the human will, and therefore no law; for no
will by human authority can bind another. All authority of parents,
husbands, masters, rulers, is of God. This is not all. If there be no
God, there is no eternal distinction of right and wrong ; and if not,
then no morals: truth, purity, chastity, justice, temperance are
names, conventions and impostures.

There are two conditions possible to men and empires. The one
is the order of nature with its recognition of God, with its lights of

1880. AN ENGLISHMAN'S PROTEST. 179

reason and conscience, its laws and morality, its dictates of conscience
and of duty, its oaths and sanctions of fidelity and truth. On this
rested the great empires of the old world. It is the order of nature,
but it is also divine. There is another condition possible to individual
men, and therefore, though hardly, to multitudes — that is, the state
in which God and morality have passed out of the life and soul
of man. This condition is not divine, nor is it natural, nor is it
human. I read its description in an inspired writer, and he says
that such men are as the irrational creatures, the a\,oya l who in the
things they know naturally in these they corrupt themselves.

But this is not the order of nature as God made it. In creating
man He created human society from its first outlines of domestic
life to its full imperial grandeur as the world has seen it in Eome,
and we see it now in the Greater Britain. Where the lights and the
laws of nature and conscience and morals are lost, men become
herds or hordes, but are civilised men no longer.

Sir William Blackstone, after quoting Sir Edward Coke as saying,
4 The power and jurisdiction of Parliament is so transcendent and
absolute that it cannot be confined, either for causes or persons,
within any bounds,' goes on to say, ' It can transcend the ordinary
course of laws ; it can regulate the succession of the crown ; it can
alter the established religion of the land ; it can change and create
afresh the constitution of the kingdom.' ' So that it is a matter
most essential to the liberties of this kingdom that such members be
delegated to this important trust as are most eminent for their
probity, their fortitude, and their knowledge ; for it was a known
apophthegm of the great Lord Treasurer, Burghley, that England could
never be ruined but by a Parliament.' Judge Blackstone further
quoted the President Montesquieu, who foretold that, i as Eome,
Sparta, and Carthage have lost their liberty and perished, so the
constitution of England will in time lose its liberty and will perish :
it will perish whenever the legislative power shall become more
corrupt than the executive.' 2

The purity of Parliament depends therefore upon the eminent
probity, fortitude, and knowledge of its members. And these quali-
ties are tested, so far as is in man, by the oath or solemn declaration
of allegiance by which every man entrusted with a share in the
supreme power of legislation binds himself by a sanction higher than
that of any mere human authority to be faithful to the Common-
wealth. The oath of the Catholic members of Ireland, and of the
Christian members of England and Scotland, and the affirmation of
the members of the Hebrew religion, and the affirmation of the
members for Birmingham and for Manchester, all alike bind their
conscience by the highest sanctions of the -divine law. So also, if

1 2 S. Peter ii. 12 ; S. Jude 10.

* Blackstone's Commentaries, by Kobert Malcolm Kerr, vol. i. pp. 128, 129.

N 2

180 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

there be any who, resting, as many in the last century did rest, on
the Theism of the old world, and on the lights and laws of nature,
affirm their probity and their allegiance under the sanctions which
trained the prisca, virtus of the Roman Commonwealth, of such men,
under the obligations of the four cardinal virtues of prudence, justice,
temperance, and fortitude, enforced by the dictates of natural con-
science and the eternal laws of morals, we feel sure. Their build
and make is natural and human, in conformity with the common
sense and patriotic traditions of the Christian civilisation of Europe,
by which they were created, and by which they are sustained, in a
higher moral life than a defective belief can account for.

And such, three months ago, was the mixed foundation of the
British Empire, a mingled system of gold and silver, brass and
iron, and the good honest clay of the order of human nature as God
made it, with its rights and laws, like our English mother earth,
in which our secular oaks root deep and outlive generations and
dynasties, but not the monarchy of England.

Thus far I have heard from my forefathers, and understood the
English Constitution. It has a basis of two strata, both divine : the
one the Law Christian, the other the law of nature.

It knows nothing of a race of sophists who, professing to know
nothing about God, and law,^and right and wrong, and conscience,
and judgment to come, are incapable of giving to Christian or to
reasonable men the pledges which bind their moral nature with the
obligations necessary for the command of fleets and armies, and
legislatures and commonwealths. Men will not entrust to them the
august and awful powers of Parliament described by Lord Coke. The
dearest and tenderest and most vital interests of life and home
and welfare depend upon legislation. Ten thousand times rather
would I vote for an upright member of the Hebrew race, whose
commonwealth stands in history as the noblest and most human, as
well as the most divine, government of man, than for the young
gentlemen who cannot make up their mind whether God exists or
no, or whether in the body they adorn and pamper there be a soul
which will have to answer for all they have culpably done, and all
they have culpably failed to know.

When Parliament, to meet the scruples of those who so firmly
believed in the Majesty of God that they doubted the lawfulness of
adjuring Him by way of oath, relieved them by accepting a declaration,
it rested its act on its profound belief of the reverence and fidelity
of the Society of Friends to the Divine Lawgiver whom they feared
to offend.

But let no man tell me that this respectful confidence is to be
claimed by our Agnostics.

Much less by those, if such there be, who, sinking by the inevit-
able law of the human mind below the shallowness and timidity of

1880. AN ENGLISHMAN'S PROTEST. 181

Agnosticism, plunge into the great deep of human pride, where the
light of reason goes out, and the outer darkness hides God, His
perfections, and His laws.

No law of England has entrusted the powers of legislation to
such men. Parliament has never yet weighed and voted the follow-
ing resolution : ' That the British Empire, having ceased to be Catholic,
ceased to be Christian, and ceased even to be Theistic, has descended
below the level of the order of nature and the political civilisation of
the cultured and imperial races of the pagan world.' We Englishmen
still believe that it rests upon a level which the old world in all its
demoralisation never reached. The French pantomime of the last
century voted out and voted in the 'Supreme Being.' Delicta
majorum immeritus lues. The French people of to-day have no
tradition and no basis. It was one of their own wisest sons who said
' Sans Dieu point de societe.' Where God and the unity of His divine
law cease to reign, there can be no commonwealth.

But Parliament has never yet made such a law. There still stands
on our Statute-book a law which says that to undermine the principles
of moral obligation is punishable by forfeiture of all places of trust ; 3
but there is no law which says that a man who publicly denies the
existence of Grod is a fit and proper person to sit in Parliament,
or a man who denies the first laws of morals is eligible to make laws
for the homes and domestic life of England, Scotland, and Ireland.
A by-vote like that which shut the door of the House of Commons
against Home Tooke because he was a clergyman has furtively
opened the door to one whose notoriety relieves me of an odious duty.
But Parliament has not yet confirmed that by-vote, and the moral
sense of this great people has not yet been asked. And yet it
has been heard ; and I trust that there is still left in our statesmen
at least the probity and the courage of Koman senators. One by-
vote of a party majority, if not reversed, will lower for ever the basis
of the British Empire. The evil it has wrought would be complete.
It has laid down for ever that for the highest offices of man — namely,
the making laws for man — it is no longer necessary for a man to be
Catholic or Christian, or Jew or Theist. He may publicly deny and
profane all these things. He may deny the existence of God, and
therefore of divine law, and therefore of all law except the human
will and human passion. But as yet no statute of the Legislature
has declared such men to be eligible to Parliament.

If, however, this by-vote be accepted, Lord Burghley's forecast
will be on the horizon. England will begin to be destroyed by its
Parliament.

HENRY EDWARD, Cardinal Archbishop.
3 9 & 10 Will. III. c. 32. Kerr's Slackstonc, iv. 34, 35, note.

182

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

August

PEASANT PROPRIETORS AT HOME.

DURING a recent visit of some weeks to portions of the distressed
districts of the north-west and west of Ireland in company with two
other gentlemen, several of the glebe-land farms, which have been
recently sold to small proprietors by the Church Commissioners, were
visited. Public attention has recently been so much drawn to the
question of peasant proprietorship, and is so likely to be still more
seriously turned to it, that I think it may not be without interest
to place on record a short account of these very interesting visits,
which formed a pleasant contrast to the disheartening work we were
chiefly engaged upon.

The glebe lands first visited were in the county of Donegal, a
few miles from Dunfanaghy. They consisted of three farms, the
sizes, purchase-money, and other particulars being as under : —

Former
Bent

Acres

Poor Law
Valuation

Purchase

Cash
paid

To
pay

£ t. d.

(1) H. McFadden, bought Feb. 1876

710

22'

550

127

(2) John Sweeney „ „

5 14 0

550

102

(3) Andrew Gallagher „ „

5 15 0

500

102

No. 1 had purchased the tenant-right eighteen years ago (worth
30£. to 40£.), at which time not more than one-fourth of the land now
under cultivation was reclaimed. When he bought the fee simple from
the Commissioners in 1876, he had elected to pay the remaining pur-
chase-money in five years, and has not now more than 30Z. to pay, after
which the farm will be his own freehold. His delight in speaking
of this was unbounded : ' Only to think that I have only 30£. to pay
in May next, and 20L next Allhallows Eve, and then I shall be free,,
free from the landlords,' and again and again he repeated ' free from
the landlords for ever come next Allhallows Eve.' He pays 12s. a
year poor's rate and 18s. for county rate. The legal expenses of the
conveyance were 6Z., nearly a year's rent of the land. This he felt to be
a hardship. As to the condition of the farm, his fields are well fenced
with good stone walls, built after he bought the land, since which
also he had reclaimed and drained a large portion of the land now

1 Much of this was formerly mere mountain or bog land.

1880. PEASANT PROPRIETORS AT HOME. 183

under cultivation. His two sons were hard at work digging side by
side with much energy upon a piece of bog-land which they were
adding to the cultivated land. Much of the latter had already been
dug, and was ready for the crops. He had three cows and a horse or
pony. He had six children, the two sons seen at work, about twenty-
three or twenty-four years of age, two girls in the house, and two
boys away at work, one in Scotland, and the other in the east of
Ulster. When asked whether his elder sons were married, as is
usual with young men of their ages, he replied with emphasis, ' No 1
and I tell them I don't mean them to marry yet. I'm not going to
let them make themselves miserable for life.' The two who were
from home, he said, he intended should find permanent employment
where they are at work, and possibly one of those at home would also
have to go ; and when asked whether the son who remained at home
would be allowed to divide the farm with him, he replied, ' No ! I
won't let it be made a bit smaller ; I'm not going to let us fall back
into the misery which comes from these small farms around.' His
sense of the position he had arrived at, and his determination not
to allow his family to lose it by subdivision and too early marri-
age, were very striking. He said the people around him could not
live on the little holdings of four or six acres they usually rented, and
acknowledged that even without the paying of rents they could not
bring up a family upon them. Not that he did not think it would
be a delightful thing for anyone to possess his own land ; if, he
said, he had only just a place to lie down in, it would be some-
thing to know that it was his own, and he kept perpetually re-
curring to the fact, ' I've paid all but 30£., and just 10£., and then 20^.,
and then I've nothing more to do with the landlords for ever.'

Nos. 2 and 3, Sweeney and Gallagher, had elected, when buying
their farms, to pay off the balance of the purchase-money owing, in ten
instead of five years. This, with the interest, amounted to 91. a year.

Sweeney was from home, and his house, though very superior to
the small tenants around, was not a model dwelling. In addition to
the family, two pigs and a pony shared the house. But there was
a well-to-do air about it, and the spinning-wheel was at work, and
the house fairly clean. Some of the women of the family were at
home ; and if nothing else was clearly ascertained, this certainly was,
viz., their sense of delight in being the owners of the soil — peasant
proprietors, in fact. As in the former case, the thought of the time
when they would be clear from any payment to the Commissioners
was the all-absorbing one. They almost jumped about the room as
they exclaimed, ' Yes ! there's just 91. a year to pay for ten years,
and then we're free from the landlords — free from the landlords.'

No. 3, Gallagher, the other purchaser, was not seen, but was
stated to be doing equally well. He had made very considerable
improvements, and added to the quantity of land under cultivation.

184 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

The very strong anti-landlord feeling entertained by these people
must be to a large extent owing to their surroundings, for the rents they
had paid before becoming purchasers were certainly not exorbitant.

Of these surroundings it may be well to say a few words, as it
may perhaps assist in understanding the intensity of their animosity to
landlords. The contrast between their condition and that of the little
tenants around could hardly be greater — comparative comfort and pro-
gress in the one, and wretchedness and beggary in the other. The
neighbouring estate is one which attracted considerable attention a
few years ago, from the circumstance that the owner, a clergyman, was
shot at by the tenants — ' had his teeth extracted,' as we were told, the
shot haying entered his mouth. This property was purchased through
the Encumbered Estates Court some years ago, and a revaluation
made. The rents were raised — ' doubled,' it is said — and, what was
a still greater offence, the right of the tenants to pasturage over a
large extent of mountain land was taken away. Thus the tenants
were mulcted in two ways — rents raised, and less ground for their
stock to run over. I know nothing of the merits of the case, but it
is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the rents were unduly raised,
and it is certain that the taking away of the immemorial communal
right of grazing on the mountain lands is felt to be a grievous in-
justice. The people in this townland were terribly destitute ; as we
went from house to house, it was pitiable to see their condition.
Many were in rags, and many without bedding ; filth, squalor, and
misery abounded ; they had no stores of food left, and were dependent
on the small supply of Indian meal which the Eelief Committee could
distribute. Some who were not on the list appealed piteously for
assistance to the members of the Eelief Committee who went round
with us. The lands were ill-cultivated, and the people, without a
stimulus to exertion, were depressed and dispirited. Although some
years have elapsed since the rents were raised, several of the people
referred to it, and told of the high rents and the injustice done to
them and the ruin caused by it. A greater contrast to the little
purchasers can hardly be conceived.

It may be well very briefly to notice another instance where glebe
lands were sold, which has led to some newspaper controversy, and
has unjustly been quoted as showing that the attempt to form a
peasant proprietorship has failed. These were situated about thirty
miles south of the above, not far from Dunglow, co. Donegal. They
were formerly held by twelve very small tenants, whose total rental
was about 45£., varying from 21s. to 6£., and one of III. With two
exceptions the purchase-money was under 100L, varying from 191. to
85L, and the higher ones were 129Z. and 209Z., and averaged about
19 years' purchase.

The tenants, it appears, were too poor to find the money, and
applied to some one in the neighbourhood, who stated that he could

1880.

PEASANT PROPRIETORS AT HOME.

185

borrow the money for them at 4 per cent., and they signed agree-
ments with the Commissioners to purchase the land, he finding the
money. Afterwards he told them it must be 10 per cent., not 4
per cent., and he brought them a deed to sign, the contents of which
they say they were quite ignorant of, making over to him their rights
of preemption, which the Commissioners allowed, and he is now the
absolute owner — leaving the so-called purchasers tenants as before,
but under contract to pay the money-lender a rental of 101. per cent.,
equal to double their old rental! Eepresentations made to the
Commissioners were too late to allow of their interfering. The rents
were not paid last year, and certainly none can be paid this.

Whilst at Londonderry my friends also visited the glebe lands
near Urney, three miles south of Strabane, of which full particulars
are given below. These holdings vary from five to fifty acres ; several
of them are of medium size. They were purchased from the Irish
Church Temporalities Commissioners in 1875. The purchase-money
was high for Ireland — from 23 to 25 years' purchase on the rental
— especially when the cost of the tenant-right is added.

Former

Rental

Acres

Valuation
for Poor's
Rate

Pur-
chase

Deposit

To pay

1. John and Unity
Shearin

£ .». (I.
8184

a. r. p.
11 2 5

£ 3. d.
750

£
205

£ s. d.
52 0 0

£ s. d.
153 0 0

2. Denis Shearin

19 7 0

22 0 15

15 0 0

425

107 0 0

318 0 0

3. James Shearin

11 6 0

11 0 30

950

259

65 0 0

194 0 0

4. Moses Adams
5. „
6. John Gallagher
7. Denis Shearin .

75 14 2
4 12 0
556
15 15 0

96 0 0
5 2 10
430
15 3 10

63 15 0
4 10 0
3 10 0
13 5 0

1,892
105
121
362

473 2 1
31 8 5
31 1 4
92 11 10

1,418 17 11
73 11 7
89 18 8
269 8 2

8. John McElwee

6 15 2

7 3 15

700

169

46 7 3

122 12 9

The Adamses (4 and 5) are thriving, flourishing men who had
leases before they purchased, and had done all that men could under
the security of a lease for the improvement of their land ; hence no
marked further improvement could be looked for in their case. They
considered the price paid (25 years' purchase) too high, and that
they would have done better as tenants under lease. They had also
bought, some years ago, the tenant-right at a rate of 101. to 151. per
acre, thus adding very largely to the cost of the capital invested,
making the actual cost of the land 33 to 35 years' purchase.

In all these cases, however, the purchasers complained that the
three years of bad crops which have been so general have made it
very difficult for them to keep up their instalments of principal
and interest without borrowing, which gives a different aspect to
their bargains from that which would have been produced by as many
good years.

The smaller buyers, we found, had borrowed money locally at

186 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

6 per cent, to pay the deposit of one-fourth of the purchase, and so
began in debt. This, followed by the bad years, had greatly im-
poverished them, and they were, we inferred, rather going back in the
world, and the land with them.

Some of them had other means of income : Gallagher, with
4a. 3r., was really a farm labourer to Adams. McElwee, with 7 to 8
acres, a cattle-dealer. Shearin had two daughters in the Lion Flax
Mills. Adams was a blacksmith. All the smaller owners stated
that with the land alone they would have been beggared. This
fact does not at all lessen the advantages which may result from the
possession of a little freehold on which the owner can, with other
employment, be improving and independent.

The circumstances of the seasons since 1875, the date of the
purchase, so greatly affect the result up to this time, that it is
evident no satisfactory conclusion can be arrived at at present.

One man, who had bought the land borrowing a permanent loan
at 4 per cent, the three-quarters of the purchase-money unpaid — that
is to say, not redeeming the purchase-money by annual instalments —
appeared to be the best off, in part no doubt from his lighter annual
payments. Had times been good he thought he should have been
able to repay a considerable portion of the principal.

As showing how Kttle these men realised their new position as
owners, we were told that they had signed a petition to the Com-
missioners to abate a portion of the balance of the purchase-money
on account of the bad times !

Whilst at Omagh, co. Tyrone, we visited the Erganagh glebe lands,
about three miles from Omagh. Here there were twenty-six pur-
chasers, with farms varying from 5 to 30 acres. A few of these
selected from the whole number may be taken as fair samples of the
sizes and values. The lands were purchased in 1876.

No. 1. Thomas Maguvre : old rental, Wl. 5s. ; acres, 19a. Ir. 24p. ;
purchase-money, 273?. — say 27 years' purchase. He was a very in-
telligent man, and was at work planting out cabbages in the field
when we saw him. He had built a limekiln to burn the lime needed
for the bog-land, of which he had brought some quantity into culti-
vation. He had tile-drained the land and made good fences, and
taken down old banks or headlands, and, so far as we could judge, the
land was well farmed, and in a very satisfactory state. He had put
200 loads of clay on the land, and had a good road up to his house, to
which he took us. It had two rooms, and some good furniture in it.
His children were eating potatoes from an improvised dish, and were
certainly neither clean nor well dressed ; none were old enough to
help him on the farm. His wife, a tidy, well-dressed woman, com-
plained of the ' bad times,' and did not know that they were better
off than before, and her husband said that the seasons had been so
against them that he did not know that he could afford this year to

1880. PEASANT PROPRIETORS AT HOME. 187

pay the wages of one of the ' Donegal boys ' who came in spring for
work to these districts, and he must work all the harder himself. He
thought he had given too much for the land, 27 years' purchase : he
admitted he would have given 28 years rather than not have it, for
his father had it before him.2 He and his father had held the land
on a lease ; but he said he felt much greater security in making
improvements now that he was the owner, and was evidently well
satisfied with his position, though the times were much against him.
Many of the rents of these glebe lands had been raised just before
the Church Act passed, so as to increase the selling value for the
incumbent. He brought out a plan of the townland and his deed
of conveyance, and thought the price paid for the stamp (nearly a
year's rent) and the law expenses were very heavy, ' a great tax
for a poor man.' He had paid the whole of the purchase-money
down, which not more than three or four of the other purchasers in
the townland had been able to do ; some paying one-fourth, or a third,
or half down, as they had the means, and the rest by instalments.

No. 2. Robert Hanna : old rental, 81. 2s. ; acres, 11 ; purchase-
money, 177£., one-fourth paid down and the remainder by instal-
lments.— He had lent his horse for the day to a neighbour to make a
pair for ploughing, and seemed to be watching that it was taken care
of, as he remained idle whilst we were looking over the adjoining pro-
perty. No doubt, as is customary, the neighbour's horse would be lent
to him another day for the same purpose. The land seemed well culti-
vated, and the fences between this and the adjoining property were
really remarkable for their neatness and order. Though times were
bad, he was hopeful and rejoicing in his position.

No. 3. T. McKenna: old rental, 71.; acres, 11; purchase-
money, 160?., one-fourth paid. — Here we found the sister of the owner
taking charge of the children whilst her brother and a neighbour, who
had purchased a rather smaller farm, were at work in England. They
were working at the Consett ironworks, Shotley Bridge; earning
35s. a week, as they could not live on these small farms without
other employment, and were earning money to pay for the seed
needed to crop their farms. The sister was an intelligent girl, and
told us that the farm had been much improved, and that her brother
had some grazing land towards the mountain which we saw subse-
quently. The neighbour had a smaller farm of about five acres, for
which he formerly paid 41. 19s. 8d. rent, and had given 103L, of
which 26L had been paid down.

The next farm visited was that of Widow Patterson : rental,
51. 8s. 4d. ; acres, 8a. 2r. 26p.; purchase-money, 1151., 291. paid
down. — The husband had died recently, but she and her family were
most industriously at work, cultivating and improving the land. They

3 The tenant-right had been purchased many years ago, adding, as in the other
instances, at least 10 years' purchase, thus making it 35 to 37 years' purchase 1

183 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

had engaged a man at 2s. a day to plough the land. This man was a
tenant of fourteen acres in a neighbouring parish, and a pleasant and
singularly well-informed man — more so, I think, than any we had
seen — perhaps partly owing to his having been in America for four
years, where he had earned 2501. He had then returned, and bought
the tenant-right of a farm, costing him 200Z., had married, and did
not wish to go out again. He wished he could have a farm of his
own, but of this, he said, there was now no chance for him.

The next man whom we saw was Devlin, who had purchased a
small farm of about eight acres, of which the rent had only been 41. per
annum ; for this he had given 96L, paying down half the purchase-
money. He was a curious loquacious little man, a most energetic
supporter of peasant proprietorship, and could not say enough as to
the advantages resulting from it, and begged us to go with him to
see the improvements which he and some other tenants were making
on a tract of * mountainy land ' which they had enclosed. We were
heartily glad that we had accepted the invitation, and as we walked
with him he told us that he had a contract to keep the roads in
repair, or he could not live on his small farm. On the road we met
the cows of the little community coming home for the night to be
milked, or for shelter.

In addition to the arable lands we had seen, it appeared that
twenty of the purchasers in this townland had a ' right of stray,'
as it is called in England, over 200 acres of rough uncultivated
ground covered with heather. This was offered to them by the
Commissioners at a low sum, and in place of leaving it as a ' stray '
they had agreed to divide it in proportion to their holdings, and had
engaged the ' best surveyor ' they could find to come down and map
it out and allot it among them in separate shares. This gave an
average of ten acres (more or less) to each of the twenty proprietors,
and it was agreed that each lot should be carefully fenced not
only from the adjoining lots, but also from the road and outer
boundaries. This was most substantially done or in process of being
done, and we saw widow Patterson's son, a boy of sixteen, working
most industriously at a fence six feet high of peat and soil, which he
was throwing up, the trench forming a drain for the land.

Some had already ploughed up portions of their newly acquired
lands, others had not touched them, but our guide pointed with
justifiable satisfaction to the good fences and amount of work already
accomplished as a proof of the benefit of peasant proprietorship,
and I do not know that we could require a stronger one than the
Erganagh glebe lands afford.

The stamps and legal expenses of conveyance were complained of
as a hardship by several, and it is well worth consideration in any
future scheme whether these cannot be lessened or avoided. None of
those to whom we spoke thought it probable that these lands would
be divided in future — indeed, the feeling was strongly against it. The

1880. PEASANT PROPRIETORS AT HOME. 191

£•

rents previously paid on these glebe lands struck us as low, compare0
with much we had seen in Donegal, especially when the quality Jo3
the land, which seemed superior, is taken into account. The largei
farms and the grazing land lying between the district and the town
of Omagh appeared to be of really good quality and well farmed.

Maguire, of whom we asked whether he had a vote or not, said
that he ' did not know,' which seemed to indicate that the tenants
did not take much interest in politics or ' agitation.'

The following morning we visited the glebe lands of Tattyreagh,
which had been purchased by the tenants from the Commissioners in
1872, comprising about 40 farms, varying in size from 4 to 154 acres,
and in price from 601. to 1,000^, but chiefly of 20 acres and under.
They are situate about five miles from Omagh in an opposite direction
to those we had seen the previous day.

Before starting, we called upon Mr. Eliot t, a well-to-do trades-
man who had purchased the glebe house and some of the land. He
gave us the names of several tenants who were bona-fide owners, but
stated that many so-called purchasers were too poor to find the fourth
required to be paid down, and that some had borrowed the money,
paying 7 or more per cent, for it. Others had obtained it from a
solicitor in the town, who had in fact bought the lands in their
names, and then obtained a transfer from the so-called purchasers of
their interest in the land. They are therefore no more proprietors
than before, and their position is hardly altered, as the rent or in-
terest charged is nearly the same — the only point in their favour
being (we are told) that long leases had been promised. Mr. Eliott
said that the very small tenants or owners, under ten or fifteen
acres, of whom there are several, could not bring up a family without
other employment, and that one of the purchasers at any rate was so
poor as to need relief. It will be seen from the above how very unpre-
pared in this case the tenants were to change their position into owners.

On arriving at Tattyreagh, the first farm we inquired about was
that of Annie Slevin, who had about five acres. Her son was busily
engaged upon the land. He did not think the land would keep him
and his mother ; but they had another business behind, a whisky
shop, which, judging from appearances, was profitable.

The next farm we saw was that of Bernard Breen, who had been a
tenant at 33£. of thirty-six acres, for which he gave 660^., paying
down 165t., and the re^t is in course of payment by instalments.
With him we met James Young, one of the largest buyers, who
had been a tenant at 49L for sixty acres of land, and for which he
had given 980£., paying down half the purchase-money. Both of
these were very intelligent men, and in the most obliging manner
entered into the subject of our inquiries, and answered our questions.

They had been owners since 1872, longer than those whose farms
we saw on the previous day.

They thought an improvement in cultivation had been the result

183 TIIE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

b of the change throughout the glebe lands, but they added that we
f bad come at a bad time to look for improvements, as unfortunately the
depression in agricultural produce had seriously affected them, and
for the past three years it had been hard work to hold their own and
pay the instalments on their purchases. If there had been three good
. years in place of bad ones, we should have seen much more improve-
ment, but they had all suffered severely. He added : ' It would be a
great deal pleasanter if we could give you a better report ; ' but after-
wards both of them said that the township showed many signs of im-
provement in drainage, fencing, &c. Many had to borrow the fourth
when they became purchasers in 1872, and they had hardly got over
this when the bad seasons came.' So they had not had a fair trial
yet. Both of them thought ownership was the right thing, but it
was not all that was wanted : * peasant proprietorship would not do
alone, it must be coupled with industry.''

These men had good stock and horses : the pair in the plough
would not have disgraced a gentleman's carriage. They had stacks
of hay, &c., around their dwellings, and the land, so far as we saw,
seemed well cultivated. They employed one or two labourers —
cottiers — giving them cottages and a rood or two of potato ground
in exchange for working two days a week, wages being also paid for
the labour given at other times. Here again the fact was strongly
insisted on that the small farms would not keep a family : they
placed the limit higher than many, considering twenty acres the
minimum that would be required. Speaking of subdivision, in their
own case they were fully determined not to allow this to take place,
and would not hear of the thought of their families falling into poverty
from this cause. The air of content and sense of the position ob-
tained was all that could be desired.

They pointed out to us other farms which appeared to be well
cultivated, and also directed us to some smaller purchasers whose
lands we wished to see.

The first of these was a very small farm of about five acres, belong-
ing to a poor man with a very large family ; the oldest boys, about twelve
and fourteen, were helping their father, whose ragged clothing indicated
poverty ; he was preparing the land for potatoes, which appeared to
be well done. The other children were very ragged, and delighted
to have a few pence among them. He was anxious to know whether
he could obtain a supply of seed potatoes and oats from the Union
under the provisions of the recent Act, and we were sorry to have to
tell him that being an ovjner and not a tenant there was no prospect
of his doing so. We were not able to learn whether he had paid the
deposit on the purchase-money, which amounted to about 100?., from
his own earnings, or had borrowed it. The next man we saw had
purchased about eight acres. He had ten children : two of them were
working hard with their father. He complained of the times being

1880. PEASANT PROPRIETORS AT HOME. 191

against him, said that the floods last year had swept away his crop of
hay, and that he had not been able to pay the instalments due for the
past year and a half, and was in fear lest he should be come down
upon for the amount. He begged us to ask for a reduction in the
amount, as it was impossible to pay it ; he could not keep his family
on the land these bad times, though he had work as a blacksmith as
well. He had to borrow the money needed for the deposit. There
were probably personal reasons which prevented this man from suc-
ceeding ; but both these cases seem to me to point to the conclusion,
the evidence of which has been so strong throughout our journey, that
farms under fifteen to twenty acres cannot alone support a family.

The last visit was paid to George (rolorah, an old man, and
4 quite a character,' as we were told by another tenant. He had
bought twelve acres — the rental had been 10?., and the Poor Law
valuation was 9?. a year. The purchase-money was 212?. 11s. 8d,,
and, as he had saved a little money, he had no difficulty in paying the
deposit of 53?. 2s. lid. He had only a small family to support, and
had probably little difficulty in making a living ; but his land was
poorly cultivated, and he himself a ragged-looking man. He had no
complaint to make, though he said he did not know that he had
bettered his position, having been a servant to the rector before the
glebe lands were sold, and taking wages then, which was not now the
case. Though saying so, he was careful to add that he was well con-
tent to be the owner of the land, and when asked what the advan-
tages were, he replied with strong emphasis, ' Satisfaction ! satisfac-
tion ; just the satisfaction of feeling that the land is your own.' He
spoke very strongly against the complaining agitating tone of the
present day, saying the people would ' agitate, agitate for anything —
they would agitate for a sore finger.' He thought that many of the
purchasers of these glebe lands were very poor, and had a hard
struggle to pay their instalments. In Tattyreagh, as in some other
instances, there is no doubt that they were unprepared when the
opportunity of purchasing came suddenly upon them. The intense
desire, the ' satisfaction ' of being an owner of land, which fills the Irish-
man's heart, would no doubt also operate with its magic force. From all
we heard here in reference to the process of converting tenants into
proprietors, it is no kindness, useless in fact, to expect it to succeed,
unless the tenant has previously saved sufficient money to pay the
deposit required by the Act, and is thus able to begin with a fair start.
We heard of some cases, where this having been borrowed, had with
infinite struggling been paid ; but of others, in which the debt was accu-
mulating with heavy interest, and hung like a dead weight around
the neck of the would-be owner. In a few instances, as we have seen,
the so-called purchaser had merely become a tenant under conditions
not changed for the better. No doubt the three lean years which
they have been passing through, have made all the difficulties greater.

192 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

Some who are now struggling with the debt would, with better times,
have paid it off ; but it seems clear that those who take the deepest
interest in the question of peasant proprietorship, and regard its
gradual accomplishment as 6f vital importance to the welfare of
Ireland, must face the fact that unless the tenant actually possesses
the capital needed to enable him to begin his new life as a peasant
proprietor free from debt, it is more likely to prove a failure than a
success. When I speak of being free from debt, I do not include the
balance of purchase-money which is payable to the Commissioners
over a term of years, and which is, in fact, little, if any, more than
the old rent ; but I mean that the purchaser should have had sufficient
capital of his own to pay the third or fourth of the purchase-money
which is required in addition to that needed to till the land. How
far this deposit may properly be lessened, so as to allow of a smaller
sum, say two or three years' rental, being paid down on purchasing,
is a question deserving of careful consideration. So also is the
question of how far legal costs and stamps can be reduced.

Whatever may be the economic benefits resulting from the change
of tenants-at-will into peasant proprietors — and I believe that, with
all the drawbacks now existing, these benefits cannot be too strongly
insisted on — there is yet another point of view from which it is, if
possible, of greater importance in the present disturbed state of
political and social feeling in Ireland. This is, the influence which
the possession of land exercises upon those who obtain it. As a
Protestant clergyman said to me in reference to the sale of glebe
lands in the district in which he lived, * The tenants who had risen
in the morning Radicals and discontented, went to bed Conservatives
and contented the evening they became landed proprietors.' Espe-
cially important, too, in the case of proposals to extend the franchise
in the Irish counties, is any measure which, giving the people a stake
in the country, shall tend to make them contented and loyal, and
render them less accessible to the wild and dangerous influences to
which at present they are subjected.

Whatever difference of opinion may exist as to the policy of the
Church Act, which has led to the sale of these glebe lands, the re-
markable result that 5,000 or 6,000 proprietors, chiefly working their
own lands, have been added to the previously existing number of
19,547 owners in Ireland, cannot be regarded otherwise than as a great
benefit in a country almost wholly agricultural.

Multiply the little centres of content and ' satisfaction ' which
have been shown to exist ; extend throughout the whole of Ireland
instances like those recorded at Erganagh, near Omagh, where, by the
combined labour of twenty tenants alone, 200 acres of land were in
course of reclamation from the mountain ; and you go far to solve the
loud and open dangerous cry for * fixity of tenure ' and ' no landlords,'
and prevent the distress and destitution from which they spring. It

1880. PEASANT PROPRIETORS AT HOME. 193

has been objected that the division of some of these glebe lands has
lessened the number of resident proprietors possessed of education and
means — an undoubted evil if so. But is there not more than com-
pensation in the thought, that for a few hundreds of owners you have
substituted many thousands, each directly interested in the stability
and quiet of the country ? Whilst not sharing the very sanguine
views of those who seem to think it possible to convert the little farms
and bog lands of Ireland into the profitable and luxuriant gardens
which are so marked a feature of Jersey and Guernsey, I do not
hesitate to say that the free and unrestricted liberty to use the land,
and the consciousness of security in the investment of the labour
brought to bear upon it, lie at the bottom of all measures for the re-
generation and development of Ireland. The privilege which of all
others Ireland most desires is that of being permitted to work and
cultivate her own vast wildernesses.

J. H. TUKE.

POSTSCRIPT.

Although apart from the question of Peasant Proprietorship, I
may perhaps be allowed to add (having spent many weeks in the
* scheduled districts ' of Ireland) that I regard the right settlement
of the question involved in the ' Compensation for Disturbances Bill '
as of the utmost consequence to the tranquillity of the West of Ire-
land. Without entering into details, I can hardly refrain from asking
the opponents of the measure whether they really sufficiently take
into account the entirely exceptional circumstances of the distressed
districts, and the wholly different character of the relation of land-
lord and tenant which prevails in Ireland as compared with England ?
1. As to the actual poverty existing. The Keturns of the Agri-
cultural Produce in Ireland for 1879, prepared by the Eegistrar-
Greneral, show ' that the depreciation in the money value of the crops
for that year amounts, at its lowest estimate, to 10,014,788^. as
compared with 1878 ' — a sum nearly equal to the annual rating
value of the agricultural land of Ireland. Of this large sum nearly
one half, 4,238,484^., is the estimated loss on the potato crop alone,
as compared with 1878, the returns showing that the quantity of
potatoes was only 22,000,000 cwt., as against 60,000,000 cwt., the
average for ten years — a most alarming decrease. In addition to this,
very severe losses have been sustained in cattle, not only from heavy
casualties, but also from a great depreciation in prices, owing in part
to the forced sales, and inability of those around to purchase. I
heard of sheep selling at 10s. or less, and small cows at 31. to 51.
Nor must the heavy losses sustained by the tens of thousands of men
who annually come for employment to England or Scotland, and who
last year returned home without any wages, be overlooked. I
VOL. VIII.— No. 42. 0

194 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

believe the estimate of a loss of a million sterling to be under the
exact figures. When to this is added the inability to obtain the
usual credit from the shopkeeper whose debts for the previous year
were unpaid, I think the extreme poverty of the little Western farmer
cannot be doubted.

2. As to the difference in the relations between landlord and
tenant in the two countries. In the one we have the landlord who
has built the house and other buildings, and let his land drained, and
fenced, and cultivated. In the other, the West of Ireland, we have
the tenant whose families have lived on the same lands for genera-
tions, who have reclaimed whatever land has been reclaimed, and
cultivated whatever is cultivated, and built whatever is built, of home
or out-buildings, and who, in consequence, feels that he has a vested
right in the soil, which, even out of Ulster, he can in ordinary times
sell to an incoming tenant.

Is there not some claim on the part of this tenant for consideration
if, under the very exceptional circumstances, he is unable to pay his
rent, and has in consequence notice to quit ?

Nor is it easy to prove a correct estimate in England of the ex-
treme hardships of eviction in a country where the only resource for
the evicted family is either the roadside or the workhouse, it may be
twenty, or thirty, or forty miles distant. In my recent visit I came upon
several villages where processes had either been served or attempted
to be served, and heard of many others, some of which have a public
notoriety from the conflicts which have taken place with the constabu-
lary, ending in serious injuries on both Asides. In addition, it did
not appear to be in any way concealed by many landlords that they
intended to evict for non-payment of rent, and it was often reported
that the number of summonses applied for was without precedent.

The task which the Chief Secretary for Ireland is called upon to
attempt, and to which he brings, in addition to his great abilities as
a statesman, the highest sense of duty and the determination to act
with justice to all whether poor or rich, is one before which a less able
man or one less devoted to duty might well quail ; and for him there
may well come times when he begins to shrink from the thankless task,
in face of the determined opposition of his opponents or the defection
or cool support of his friends, and the worrying of a small body of
determined men, who, under the guise of friends to Ireland, daily
prove themselves her enemies.

J. H. T.

1880. 195

FICTION, FAIR AND FOUL.

II.

* Tie hated greetings in the market-place, and there were generally
loiterers in the streets to persecute him either about the events of the
day, or about some petty pieces of business.'

These lines, which the reader will find near the beginning of the
sixteenth chapter of the first volume of the Antiquary, contain two
indications of the old man's character, which, receiving the ideal of
him as a portrait of Scott himself, are of extreme interest to me.
They mean essentially that neither Monkbarns nor Scott had any mind
to be called of men, Eabbi, in mere hearing of the mob ; and especi-
ally that they hated to be drawn back out of their far-away thoughts,
or forward out of their long-ago thoughts, by any manner of ' daily '
news, whether printed or gabbled. Of which two vital characteris-
tics, deeper in both the men, (for I must always speak of Scott's crea-
tions as if they were as real as himself,) than any of their superficial
vanities, or passing enthusiasms, I have to speak more at another time-
I quote the passage just now, because there was one piece of the daily
news of the year 181 5 which did extremely interest Scott, and materi-
ally direct the labour of the latter part of his life ; nor is there any
piece of history in this whole nineteenth century quite so pregnant
with various instruction as the study of the reasons which influ-
enced Scott and Byron in their opposite views of the glories of the
battle of Waterloo.

But I quote it for another reason also. The principal greeting
which Mr. Oldbuck on this occasion receives in the market-place,
being compared with the speech of Andrew Fairservice, examined
in my first paper, will furnish me with the text of what I have mainly
to say in the present one.

' " Mr. Oldbuck," said the town-clerk (a more important person,
who came in front and ventured to stop the old gentleman), " the
provost, understanding you were in town, begs on no account that
you'll quit it without seeing him ; he wants to speak to ye about
bringing the water frae the Fairwell spring through a part o' your
lands."

' " What the deuce ! — have they nobody's land but mine to cut
and carve on ? — I won't consent, tell them."

196 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

1 " And the provost,'' said the clerk, going on, without noticing
the rebuff, " and the council, wad be agreeable that you should
hae the auld stanes at Donagild's Chapel, that ye was wussing to
hae."

< " Eh ?— what ?— Oho ! that's another story— Well, well, I'll call
upon the provost, and we'll talk about it."

' " But ye maun speak your mind on't forthwith, Monkbarns, if
ye want the etanes ; for Deacon Harlewalls thinks the carved through-
stanes might be put with advantage on the front of the new council-
house — that is, the twa cross-legged figures that the callants used
to ca' Kobbin and Bobbin, ane on ilka door-cheek ; and the other
stane, that they ca'd Ailie Dailie, abune the door. It will be very
tastefu', the Deacon says, and just in the style of modern Gothic."

' " Good Lord deliver me from this Gothic generation I " exclaimed
the Antiquary, — " a monument of a knight -templar on each side of a
Grecian porch, and a Madonna on the top of it ! — 0 crimini ! —
Well, tell the provost I wish to have the stones, and well not differ
about the water-course. — It's lucky I happened to come this way to-
day."

' They parted mutually satisfied ; but the wily clerk had most
reason to exult in the dexterity he had displayed, since the whole
proposal of an exchange between the monuments (which the council
had determined to remove as a nuisance, because they encroached
three feet upon the public road) and the privilege of conveying
the water to the burgh, through the estate of Monkbarns, was an
idea which had originated with himself upon, the pressure of the
moment.'

In this single page of Scott, will the reader please note the kind
of prophetic instinct with which the great men of every age mark
and forecast its destinies ? The water from the Fairwell is the future
Thirlmere carried to Manchester ; the * auld stanes ' l at Donagild's

1 The following fragments out of the letters in my own possession, written by
Scott to the builder of Abbotsford, as the outer decorations of the house were in
process of completion, will show how accurately Scott had pictured himself in
Monkbarns.

'Abbotsford: April 21, 1817.

' Dear Sir, — Nothing can be more obliging than your attention to the old stones.
You have been as true as the sundial itself.' [The sundial had just been erected.]
' Of the two I would prefer the larger one, as it is to be in front of a parapet quite
in the old taste. But in case of accidents it will be safest in your custody till I
come to town again on the 12th of May. Your former favours (which were weighty
as acceptable) have come safely out here, and will be disposed of with great effect.'

« Abbotsford : July 30.

' I fancy the Tolbooth still keeps its feet, but, as it must soon descend, I hope you
will remember me. I have an important use for the niche above the door ; and
though many a man has got a niche in the Tolbooth by building, I believe I am the
first that ever got a niche out of it on such an occasion. For which I have to thank
your kindness, and to remain very much your obliged humble servant,

' WALTER SCOTT.'

1880. FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 197

Chapel, removed as a nuisance, foretell the necessary view taken by
modern cockneyism, Liberalism, and progress, of all things that
remind them of the noble dead, of their fathers' fame, or of their
own duty ; and the public road becomes their idol, instead of the
saint's shrine. Finally, the roguery of the entire transaction — the
mean man seeing the weakness of the honourable, and ' besting '
him — in modern slang, in the manner and at the pace of modern
trade — ' on the pressure of the moment.'

But neither are these things what I have at present quoted the
passage for.

I quote it, that we may consider how much wonderful and various
history is gathered in the fact, recorded for us in this piece of entirely
fair fiction, that in the Scottish borough of Fairport, (Montrose,
really), in the year 17 — of Christ, the knowledge given by the pastors
and teachers provided for its children by enlightened Scottish Pro-
testantism, of their fathers' history, and the origin of their religion,
had resulted in this substance and sum ; — that the statues of two cru-
sading knights had become, to their children, Eobin and Bobbin ; and
the statue of the Madonna, Ailie Dailie.

A marvellous piece of history, truly : and far too comprehensive
for general comment here. Only one small piece of it I must carry
forward the readers' thoughts upon.

The pastors and teachers aforesaid, (represented typically in
another part of this errorless book by Mr. Blattergowl) are not,
whatever else they may have to answer for, answerable for these
names. The names are of the children's own choosing and bestowing,

< August 16.

'My dear Sir, — I trouble you with this [sic~\ few lines to thank you for the
very accurate drawings and measurements of the Tolbooth door, and for your kind
promise to attend to my interest and that of Abbotsford in the matter of the Thistle
and Fleur de Lis. Most of our scutcheons are now mounted, and look very well, as
the house is something after the model of an old hall (not a castle), where such
things are well in character.' [Alas— Sir Walter, Sir Walter !] ' I intend the old
lion to predominate over a well which the children have christened the Fountain^of
the Lions. His present den, however, continues to be the hall at Castle Street.'

' September 5.

' Dear Sir,— 1 am greatly obliged to you for securing the stone. I am not sure
that I will put up the gate quite in the old form, but I would like to secure the
means of doing so. The ornamental stones are now put up, and have a very happy
effect. If you will have the kindness to let me know when the Tolbooth door comes
down, I will send in my carts for the stones ; I have an admirable situation for it.
I suppose the door itself ' [he means, the wooden one] ' will be kept for the new
jail ; if not, and not otherwise wanted, I would esteem it curious to possess it.
Certainly I hope so many sore hearts will not pass through the celebrated door when
in my possession as heretofore.'

' September 8.

4 1 should esteem it very fortunate if I could have the door also, though I suppose
it is modern, having been burned down at the time of Porteous-mob.

'I am very much obliged to the gentlemen who thought these remains of the
Heart of Midlothian are not ill bestowed on their intended possessor.'

198 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

but not of the children's own inventing. 'Robin' is a classically
endearing cognomen, recording the errant heroism of old days —
the name of the Bruce and of Eob Roy. < Bobbin ' is a poetical
and symmetrical fulfilment and adornment of the original phrase.
* Ailie ' is the last echo of * Ave,' changed into the softest Scottish
Christian name familiar to the children, itself the beautiful feminine
form of royal ' Louis ; ' the * Dailie ' again symmetrically added for
kinder and more musical endearment. The last vestiges, you see, of
honour for the heroism and religion of their ancestors, lingering on
the lips of babes and sucklings.

But what is the meaning of this necessity the children find them-
selves under of completing the nomenclature rhythmically and
rhymingly ? Note first the difference carefully, and the attainment
of both qualities by the couplets in question. Rhythm is the
syllabic and quantitative measure of the words, in which Robin, both
in weight and time, balances Bobbin ; and Dailie holds level scale
-with Ailie. But rhyme is the added correspondence of sound ; un-
known and undesired, so far as we can learn, by the Greek Orpheus,
but absolutely essential to, and, as special virtue, becoming titular of,
^the Scottish Thomas.

The ' Ryme,' 2 you may at first fancy, is the especially childish
part of the work. Not so. It is the especially chivalric and Christian
part of it. It characterises the Christian chant or canticle, as a higher
thing than a Greek ode, melos, or hymnos, or than a Latin carmen.

Think of it ; for this again is wonderful ! That these children of
Montrose should have an element of music in their souls which Homer
had not, — which a melos of David the Prophet and King had not, —
which Orpheus and Amphion had not, — which Apollo's unrymed
oracles became mute at the sound of.

A strange new equity this, — melodious justice and judgment as it
were, — in all words spoken solemnly and ritualistically by Christian
human creatures ; — Robin and Bobbin — by the Crusader's tomb, up
to * Dies irse, dies ilia,' at judgment of the crusading soul.

You have to understand this most deeply of all Christian minstrels,
from first to last ; that they are more musical, because more joyful,
than any others on earth : ethereal minstrels, pilgrims of the sky,
true to the kindred points of heaven and home; their joy
essentially the sky-lark's, in light, in purity ; but, with their
human eyes, looking for the glorious appearing of something in the
sky, which the bird cannot.

This it is that changes Etruscan murmur into Terza rima —
Horatian Latin into Provenfal troubadour's melody ; not, because less
artful, less wise.

Here is a little bit, for instance, of French ryming just before

* Henceforward, not in affectation, but for the reader's better convenience, I
shall continue to spell ' Ryme ' without our wrongly added h.

1880. FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 199

Chaucer's time —near enough to our own French to be intelligible to

us yet.

' 0 quant tres-glorieuse vie,
Quant cil qui tout peut et maistrie,
Yeult esprouver pour ne"cessaire,
Ne pour quant il ne Hasina mie
La vie de Marthe sa mie :
Mais il lui donna exemplaire
D'autrement vivre, et de Men plaire
A Dieu ; et pint de Men a faire :
Pour se conclut-il que Marie
Qui estoit a ses piedz sans braire,
Et pensait d'entendre et de taire,
Estleut la plus-saine partie.

La meilleur partie esleut-elle

Et la plus saine et la plus belle,

Qui ja ne luy sera oste"e

Car par verite se fut celle

Qui fut tousjours fresche et nouvelle,

D'aymer Dieu et d'en estre aymee ;

Car jusqu'au cueur fut entame'e,

Et si ardamment enflame'e,

Que tous-jours ardoit 1'estincelle ;

Par quoi elle fut visite"e

Et de Dieu premier confortee ;

Car charitS est trop ysnelle.'

The only law of metre, observed in this song, is that each line
shall be octosyllabic :

But the reader must note that words which were two-syllabled in
Latin mostly remain yet so in the French.

La vi | e de | Marthe | sa mie,

although mie, which is pet language, loving abbreviation of arnica
through amie, remains monosyllabic. But vie elides its e before a

vowel :

and custom endures many exceptions. Thus Marie may be three-
syllabled as above, or answer to mie as a dissyllable ; but vierge
is always, I think, dissyllabic, vier-ge, with even stronger accent
on the -ge, for the Latin -go.

Then, secondly, of quantity, there is scarcely any fixed law. The
metres may be timed as the minstrel chooses — fast or slow — and
the iambic current checked in reverted eddy, as the words chance to
come.

But, thirdly, there is to be rich ryming and chiming, no matter

200 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

how simply got, so only that the words jingle and tingle together
with due art of interlacing and answering in different parts of the
stanza, correspondent to the involutions of tracery and illumination.
The whole twelve-line stanza is thus constructed with two rymes
only, six of each, thus arranged :

AAB|AAB|BBA|BBA|

dividing the verse thus into four measures, reversed in ascent and
descent, or descant more properly ; and doubtless with correspondent
phases in the voice-given, and duly accompanying, or following,
music ; Thomas the Kymer's own precept, that ' tong is chefe in
mynstrelsye,' being always kept faithfully in mind.3

Here then you have a sufficient example of the pure chant of
the Christian ages ; which is always at heart joyful, and divides itself
into the four great forms, Song of Praise, Song of Prayer, Song of
Love, and Song of Battle ; praise, however, being the keynote of passion
through all the four forms ; according to the first law which I have
already given in the laws of Fesole ; * all great Art is Praise,' of which
the contrary is also true, all foul or miscreant Art is accusation,
$ia/3o\ij : ' She gave me of the tree and I did eat ' being an entirely
museless expression on Adam's part, the briefly essential contrary of
Love-song.

With these four perfect forms of Christian chant, of which we
may take for pure examples the ' Te Deum,' the * Te Lucis Ante,' the
' Amor che nella mente,' 4 and the ' Chant de Roland,' are mingled
songs of mourning, of Pagan origin (whether Greek or Danish),
holding grasp still of the races that have once learned them, in times of
suffering and sorrow ; and songs of Christian humiliation or grief, re-
garding chiefly the sufferings of Christ, or the conditions of our own
sin : while through the entire system of these musical complaints are
interwoven moralities, instructions, and related histories, in illustra-
tion of both, passing into Epic and Romantic verse, which gradually,
as the forms and learnings of society increase, becomes less joyful,
and more didactic, or satiric, until the last echoes of Christian joy and
melody vanish in the ' Vanity of human wishes.'

And here I must pause for a minute or two to separate the
different branches of our inquiry clearly from one another. For one
thing, the reader must please put for the present out of his head all
thought of the progress of * civilisation ' — that is to say, broadly, of the
substitution of wigs for hair, gas for candles, and steam for legs.

1 L. ii. 278.

1 ' Che nella mente mia ragiona.' Love — you observe, the highest Reasonallene**T
instead of French irrette, or even Shakespearian ' mere folly ; ' and Beatrice as the
Goddess of Wisdom in this third song of the Convito, to be compared with the
Revolutionary Goddess of Reason ; remembering of the whole poem chiefly the
line : —

' Costei penso chi che mosso 1'universo.
(See Lyell's Canzoniere, p. 104.)

1880. FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 201

This is an entirely distinct matter from the phases of policy and re-
ligion. It has nothing to do with the British Constitution, or the French '
Eevolution, or the unification of Italy. There are, indeed, certain
subtle relations between the state of mind, for instance, in Venice,
which makes her prefer a steamer to a gondola, and that which makes
her prefer a gazetteer to a duke; but these relations are not at all
to be dealt with until we solemnly understand that whether men shall
be Christians and poets, or infidels and dunces, does not depend on the
way they cut their hair, tie their breeches, or light their fires. Dr.
Johnson might have worn his wig in fulness conforming to his
dignity, without therefore coming to the conclusion that human
wishes were vain ; nor is Queen Antoinette's civilised hair-powder, as
opposed to Queen Bertha's savagely loose hair, the cause of Antoi-
nette's laying her head at last in scaffold dust, but Bertha in a
pilgrim-haunted tomb.

Again, I have just now used the words ' poet ' and c dunce,' meaning
the degree of each quality possible to average human nature. Men are
eternally divided into the two classes of poet (believer, maker, and
praiser) and dunce (or unbeliever, unmaker, and dispraiser). And in
process of ages they have the power of making faithful and formative
creatures of themselves, or unfaithful and c&sformative. And this
distinction between the creatures who, blessing, are blessed, and ever-
more benedicti^ and the creatures who, cursing, are cursed, and
evermore maledicti, is one going through all humanity ; antediluvian
in Cain and Abel, diluvian in Ham and Shem. And the question
for the public of any given period is not whether they are a constitu-
tional or unconstitutional vulgus, but whether they are a benignant
or malignant vulgus. So also, whether it is indeed the gods who have
given any gentleman the grace to despise the rabble, depends wholly
on whether it is indeed the rabble, or he, who are the malignant
persons.

But yet again. This difference between the persons to whom
Heaven, according to Orpheus, has granted ' the hour of delight,' 5 and
those whom it has condemned to the hour of detestableness, being,
as I have just said, of all times and nations, — it is an interior
and more delicate difference which we are examining in the gift of
Christian, as distinguished from unchristian, song. Orpheus, Pindar,
and Horace are indeed distinct from the prosaic rabble, as the bird
from the snake ; but between Orpheus and Palestrina, Horace and
Sidney, there is another division, and a new power of music and
song given to the humanity which has hope of the Eesurrection.

This is the root of all life and all Tightness in Christian harmony,
whether of word or instrument ; and so literally, that in precise
manner as this hope disappears, the power of song is taken away,

5 &pa.v rrjs repif/tos — Plato, Laws, ii., Steph. 669. ' Hour ' having here nearly the
power of ' Fate ' with added sense of being a daughter of Themis.

202 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

and taken away utterly. When the Christian falls back out of the
bright hope of the Eesurrection, even the Orpheus song is forbidden
him. Not to have known the hope is blameless : one may sing,
unknowing, as the swan, or Philomela. But to have known and
fall away from it, and to declare that the human wishes, which are
summed in that one — ' Thy kingdom come ' — are vain ! The Fates
ordain there shall be no singing after that denial.

For observe this, and earnestly. The old Orphic song, with its dim
hope of yet once more Eurydice, — the Philomela song — granted after
the cruel silence, — the Halcyon song — with its fifteen days of peace,
were all sad, or joyful only in some vague vision of conquest over
death. But the Johnsonian vanity of wishes is on the whole satis-
factory to Johnson — accepted with gentlemanly resignation by Pope —
triumphantly and with bray of penny trumpets and blowing of steam-
whistles, proclaimed for the glorious discovery of the civilised ages,
by Airs. Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Adam Smith, and Co. There is
no God, but have we not invented gunpowder ? — who wants a God,
with that in his pocket ? c There is no Eesurrection, neither angel
nor spirit ; but have we not paper and pens, and cannot every block-
head print his opinions, and the Day of Judgment become Republi-
can, with everybody for a judge, and the flat of the universe for the
throne ? There is no law, but only gravitation and congelation, and
we are stuck together in an everlasting hail, and melted together in
everlasting mud, and great was the day in which our worships were
born. And there is no Gospel, but only, whatever we've got, to get
more, and, wherever we are, to go somewhere else. And are not these
discoveries, to be sung of, and drummed of, and fiddled of, and gene-
rally made melodiously indubitable in the eighteenth century song of
praise ?

The Fates will not have it so. No word of song is possible, in
that century, to mortal lips. Only polished versification, sententious
pentameter and hexameter, until, having turned out its toes long
enough without dancing, and pattered with its lips long enough
without piping, suddenly Astraea returns to the earth, and a Day
of Judgment of a sort, and there bursts out a song at last again, a
most curtly melodious triplet of Amphisbaenic ryme. ' Qa ira?

Amphisbaenic, fanged in each ryme with fire, and obeying

• ' Gunpowder is one of the greatest inventions of modern times, and what has
given tuck a superiority to civilised nations over barbarous ' ! {Evenings at Home —
fifth evening.) No man can owe more than I both to Mrs. Barbauld and Miss Edge-
worth ; and I only wish that in the substance of what they wisely said, they had
been more listened to. Nevertheless, the germs of all modern conceit and error
respecting manufacture and industry, as rivals to Art and to Genius, are concentrated
in 'Eceningt at Home ' and ' Harry and Lucy ' — being all the while themselves works
of real genius, and prophetic of things that have yet to be learned and fulfilled. See
for instance the paper, ' Things by their Eight Names,' following the one from which
I have just quoted (The Ship), nd closing the first volume of the old edition
of the Eveningt.

1880. FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 203

Ercildoune's precept, ' Tong is chefe of mynstrelsye,' to the syllable.
— Don Giovanni's hitherto fondly chanted 'Andiam, andiam,'
become suddenly impersonal and prophetic : IT shall go, and you
also. A cry — before it is a song, then song and accompaniment
together — perfectly done ; and the march c towards the field of Mars.
The two hundred and fifty thousand — they to the sound of stringed
music — preceded by young girls with tricolor streamers, they have
shouldered soldier-wise their shovels and picks, and with one throat
are singing (7ct iraS 7

Through all the springtime of 1790, ' from Brittany to Burgundy,
on most plains of France, under most city walls, there march and
constitutionally wheel to the Qa-iraing mood of fife and drum — our
clear glancing phalanxes ; — the song of the two hundred and fifty
thousand, virgin led, is in the long light of July. Nevertheless,
another song is yet needed, for phalanx, and for maid. For, two
springs and summers having gone — amphisbsenic, — on the 28th of
August 1792, s Dumouriez rode from the camp of Maulde, eastwards
to Sedan.*

And Longwi has fallen basely, and Brunswick and the Prussian
king will beleaguer Verdun, and Clairfait and the Austrians press
deeper in over the northern marches, Cimmerian Europe behind.
And on that same night Dumouriez assembles council of war at his
lodgings in Sedan. Prussians here, Austrians there, triumphant
both. With broad highway to Paris and little hindrance — we
scattered, helpless here and there — what to advise? The generals
advise retreating, and retreating till Paris be sacked at the latest
day possible. Dumouriez, silent, dismisses them, — keeps only, with
a sign, Thouvenot. Silent, thus, when needful, yet having voice,
it appears, of what musicians call tenor-quality, of a rare kind.
Rubini-esque, even, but scarcely producible to fastidious ears at
opera. The seizure of the forest of Argonne follows — the cannonade
of Valmy. The Prussians do not march on Paris this time, the
autumnal hours of fate pass on — ga ira — and on the 6th of Novem-
ber, Dumouriez meets the Austrians also. ' Dumouriez wide-winged,
they wide-winged — at and around Jemappes, its green heights fringed
and maned with red fire. And Dumouriez is swept back on this
wing and swept back on that, and is like to be swept back utterly,
when he rushes up in person, speaks a prompt word or two, and
then, with clear tenor-pipe, uplifts the hymn of the Marseillaise, ten
thousand tenor or bass pipes joining, or say some forty thousand in
all, for every heart leaps up at the sound ; and so, with rhythmic
march melody, they rally, they advance, they rush death-defying, and
like the fire whirlwind sweep all manner of Austrians from the scene
of action.' Thus, through the lips of Dumouriez, sings Tyrtseus,

7 Carlyle, French Revolution (Chapman, 1869), vol. ii. p. 70 ; conf. p. 25, and the
4ja ira at Arras, vol. iii. p. 276, 8 I d. iii. 26.

204 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

Rouget de Lisle,9 * Aux armes — marchons ! ' Iambic measure with
a witness ! in what wide strophe here beginning — in what unthought-
of antistrophe returning to that council chamber in Sedan !

While these two great songs were thus being composed, and sung,
and danced to in cometary cycle, by the French nation, here in our less
giddy island there rose, amidst hours of business in Scotland and
of idleness in England, three troubadours of quite different temper.
Different also themselves, but not opponent ; forming a perfect chord,
and adverse all the three of them alike to the French musicians, in
this main point — that while the (7a ira and Marseillaise were essen-
tially songs of blame and wrath, the British bards wrote, virtually,
always songs of praise, though by no means psalmody in the ancient
keys. On the contrary, all the three are alike moved by a singular
antipathy to the priests, and are pointed at with fear and indigna-
tion by the pietists, of their day ; — not without latent cause. For
they are all of them, with the most loving service, servants of that
world which the Puritan and monk alike despised ; and, in the triple
chord of their song, could not but appear to the religious persons
around them as respectively and specifically the praisers — Scott of
the world, Burns of the flesh, and Byron of the devil.

To contend with this carnal orchestra, the religious world, having
long ago rejected its Catholic Psalms as antiquated and unscientific,
and finding its Puritan melodies sunk into faint jar and twangle
from their native trumpet-tone, had nothing to oppose but the
innocent, rather than religious, verses of the school recognised as that
of the English Lakes ; very creditable to them ; domestic at once
and refined ; observing the errors of the world outside of the Lakes
with a pitying and tender indignation, and arriving in lacustrine
seclusion at many valuable principles of philosophy, as pure as the
tarns of their mountains, and of corresponding depth.10

I have lately seen, and with extreme pleasure, Mr. Matthew
Arnold's arrangement of Wordsworth's poems ; and read with sin-
cere interest his high estimate of them. But a great poet's work
never needs arrangement by other hands ; and though it is very
proper that Silver How should clearly understand and brightly praise
its fraternal Eydal Mount, we must not forget that, over yonder, are
the Andes, all the while.

Wordsworth's rank and scale among poets were determined by
himself, in a single exclamation : —

' What was the great Parnassus' self to thee,
Mount Skiddaw ? '

Answer his question faithfully, and you have the relation between

' Carlyle, French Revolution, iii. 106, the last sentence altered in a word or two.
'• I have been greatly disappointed, in taking soundings of our most majestic
mountain pools, to find them, in no case, verge on the unfathomable.

1880. FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 205

the great masters of the Muse's teaching, and the pleasant fingerer of
his pastoral flute among the reeds of Rydal.

Wordsworth is simply a Westmoreland peasant, with considerably
less shrewdness than most border Englishmen or Scotsmen inherit ;
and no sense of humour : but gifted (in this singularly) with vivid
sense of natural beauty, and a pretty turn for reflections, not always
acute, but, as far as they reach, medicinal to the fever of the restless
and corrupted life around him. Water to parched lips may be better
than Samian wine, but do not let us therefore confuse the qualities
of wine and water. I much doubt there being many inglorious
Miltons in our country churchyards ; but I am very sure there are
many Words worths resting there, who were inferior to the renowned
one only in caring less to hear themselves talk.

With an honest and kindly heart, a stimulating egoism, a whole-
some contentment in modest circumstances, and such sufficient ease,
in that accepted state, as permitted the passing of a good deal of
time in wishing that daisies could see the beauty of their own
shadows, and other such profitable mental exercises, Wordsworth has
left us a series of studies of the graceful and happy shepherd life of
our lake country, which to me personally, for one, are entirely sweet
and precious ; but they are only so as the mirror of an existent reality
in many ways more beautiful than its picture.

But the other day I went for an afternoon's rest into the cottage
of one of our country people of old statesman class ; cottage lying
nearly midway between two village churches, but more conveniently
for downhill walk towards one than the other. I found, as the good
housewife made tea for me, that nevertheless she went up the hill to
church. ' Why do not you go to the nearer church ? ' I asked. ' Don't
you like the clergyman ? ' < Oh no, sir,' she answered, ' it isn't that ;
but you know I couldn't leave my mother.' * Your mother ! she is
buried at H— - then ? ' ' Yes, sir ; and you know I couldn't go to
church anywhere else.'

That feelings such as these existed among the peasants, not of
Cumberland only, but of all the tender earth that gives forth her
fruit for the living, and receives her dead to peace, might perhaps
have been, to our great and endless comfort, discovered before now,
if Wordsworth had been content to tell us what he knew of his own
villages and people, not as the leader of a new and only correct school
of poetry, but simply as a country gentleman of sense and feeling,
fond of primroses, kind to the parish children, and reverent of the
spade with which Wilkinson had tilled his lands : and I am by no
means sure that his influence on the stronger minds of his time was
anywise hastened or extended by the spirit of tunefulness under
whose guidance he discovered that heaven rhymed to seven, and Foy
to boy.

Tuneful nevertheless at heart, and of the heavenly choir, I gladly

206 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

and frankly acknowledge him ; and our English literature enriched
with a new and a singular virtue in the aerial purity and healthful
tightness of his quiet song ; — but aerial only, — not ethereal ; and
lowly in its privacy of light.

A measured mind, and calm ; innocent, unrepentant ; helpful to
sinless creatures and scatheless, such of the flock as do not stray.
Hopeful at least, if not faithful ; content with intimations of immor-
tality such as may be in skipping of lambs, and laughter of children,
— incurious to see in the hands the print of the Nails.

A gracious and constant mind ; as the herbage of its native hills,
fragrant and pure ; — yet, to the sweep and the shadow, the stress and
distress, of the greater souls of men, as the tufted thyme to the
laurel wilderness of Tempe, — as the gleaming euphrasy to the dark
branches of Dodona.

[I am obliged to defer the main body of this paper to next month, — revises pene-
trating all too late into my lacustrine seclusion ; as chanced also unluckily with the
preceding paper, in which the reader will perhaps kindly correct the consequent
misprints, p. 960, 1. 10, of 'scarcely ' to 'securely,' and p. 962, 'full,' with comma, to
' fall,' without one ; noticing besides that ' Redgauntlet ' has been omitted in the
italicised list, p. 957, 1. 15 ; and that the reference to note 16 should not be at the
word ' imagination, 'p. 956, but at the word ' trade,' p. 957, 1. 7. My dear old friend,
Dr. John Brown, sends me, from Jamieson's Dictionary, the following satisfactory
end to one of my difficulties : — ' Coup the crans.' The language is borrowed from
the ' cran,' or trivet on which small pots are placed in cookery, which is sometimes
turned with its feet uppermost by an awkward assistant. Thus it signifies to be
completely upset.]

JOHN BUSKIN.

1880. 207

THE CREED OF THE EARLY
CHRISTIANS.

THE early Christian belief was expressed in the formula .which has
since grown up into the various creeds which have been adopted by
the Christian Church. The two most widely known are that of
Chalcedon, commonly called the Nicene Creed, and that of the
Koman Church, commonly called the Apostles'. The * Nicene ' Creed
is that which pervaded the Eastern Church. Its original form was
that drawn up at Nicsea on the basis of the creed of Caesarea produced
by Eusebius. Large additions were made to it to introduce those parts
which affirmed the dogmatical elements discussed in the Nicene
Council. No addition was made at the Constantinopolitan Council,
but at the Council of Chalcedon there were the clauses added which
followed the mention of the Holy Ghost. It then assumed its present
form, though it underwent a yet further change in the West from
the adoption of the clause respecting the procession of the Holy
Ghost from the Son. The creed of the Eoman Church came to be
called ' the Apostles' Creed,' from the legend that the Apostles had
each of them contributed a clause. It was successively enlarged by
the * Eemission of Sins,' ' the Life eternal,' then by the ' Kesurrec-
tion of the Flesh,' then by the 'Descent into Hell,' and the
1 Communion of the Saints.' It is observable, before proceeding
further, that the Creed, whether in its Eastern or its Western
form, leaves out of view altogether such questions as the necessity of
Episcopal succession, the origin and use of the Sacraments, the honour
due to the Virgin Mary, the doctrine of Substitution, the doctrine
of Predestination, the doctrine of Justification, the doctrine of the
Pope's authority. These may be important and valuable, but they
are not in any sense part of the belief of the early Christians. The
Eastern and Western Creed alike represented the simple baptismal
formula, as expressed in St. Matthew's Gospel, which, of whatever
date, is certainly anterior to the Creeds. The additions were un-
doubtedly made, as in the greater part of them is demonstrable,
for the purpose of explaining more fully the articles of belief in

208 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

the Father, the Son,1 and the Holy Spirit. It is in pursuance of
this same principle that we here propose to examine into the meaning
of those sacred names.

I. It is proposed to ask, in the first instance, the Biblical meaning
of the words. In the hymn Quicunque vult, as in Dean Swift's
celebrated 'Sermons on the Trinity,' there is no light whatever
thrown on their signification. They are used like algebraic symbols,
which would be equally appropriate if they were inverted, or if other
words were substituted for them. They give no answer to the ques-
tion what in the minds of the early Christians they represented.

1. What, then, is meant in the Bible — what in the experience
of thoughtful men — by the name of The Father? In one word it
expresses to us the whole faith of what we call Natural Religion.
\Ve look round the physical world ; we see indications of order,
design, and good-will towards the living creatures which animate it.
Often, it is true, we cannot trace any such design ; but whenever we
can, the impression left upon us is the sense of a Single, Wise, Bene-
ficent Mind, the same now that it was ages before the appearance of
man— the same in other parts of the Universe as it is in our own.
And in our own hearts and consciences we feel an instinct corre-
sponding to this — a voice, a faculty, that seems to refer us to a Higher
Power than ourselves, and to point to some Invisible Sovereign Will,
like to that which we see impressed on the natural world. And, fur-
ther, the more we think of the Supreme, the more we try to imagine
what His feelings are towards us — the more our idea of Him becomes
fixed as in the one simple, all-embracing word that He is Our Father.
The word itself has been given to us by Christ. It is the peculiar
revelation of the Divine nature made by Christ Himself. But it was
the confirmation of what was called by one of old time the testi-
mony of the naturally Christian soul — testimonium animce naturaliter
Christiana. There may be much in the dealings of the Supreme
and Eternal that we do not understand ; as there is much in the
dealings of an earthly father that his earthly children cannot under-
stand. Yet still to be assured that there is One above us whose
praise is above any human praise — who sees us as we really are —
who has our welfare at heart in all the various dispensations which
befall us — whose wide-embracing justice and long-suffering and
endurance we all may strive to obtain — this is the foundation with
which everything in all subsequent religion must be made to agree.
' One thing alone is certain : the Fatherly smile which every now and
then gleams through Nature, bearing witness that an Eye looks down

1 It is not certain that in early times this formula was in use. The first profession
of belief was only in the name of the Lord Jesus (Acts ii. 38, viii. 12, 16, x. 48,
xix. 5). In later times, Cyprian (Ep. Ixiii.), the Council of Frejus, and Pope Nicholas
the First acknowledge the validity of this form. Still it soon superseded the pro-
fession of belief in Jesus Christ, and in the second century had become universal.
(See Dictionary of Christian Antiqiritieg, i. 162.)

1880. THE CREED OF THE EARLY CHRISTIANS. 209

upon us, that a Heart follows us.'2 To strive to be perfect as our
Father is perfect is the greatest effort which the human soul can place
before itself. To repose upon His perfection in sorrow and weakness
is the greatest support which it can have in making those efforts.
This is the expression of Natural Eeligion. This is the revelation
of God the Father.

2. What is meant by the name of the Son ?

It has often happened that the conception of Natural Religion
becomes faint and dim. ' The being of a God is as certain to me
as the certainty of my own existence. Yet when I look out bf my-
self into the world of men, I see a sight which fills me with unspeak-
able distress. The world of men seems simply to give the lie to that
great truth of which my whole being is so full. If I looked into a
mirror and did not see my face, I should experience the same sort of
difficulty that actually comes upon me when I look into this living
busy world and see no reflection of its Creator.' 3 How is this diffi-
culty to be met ? How shall we regain in the world of men the idea
which the world of Nature has suggested to us ? How shall the dim
remembrance of our Universal Father be so brought home to us as
that we shall not forget it or lose it ? This is the object of the
Second Sacred Name by which God is revealed to us. As in the
name of the Father we have Natural Religion — the Faith of the
Natural Conscience — so in the name of the Son we have Historical
Religion, or the Faith of the Christian Church. As ' the Father '
represents to us God in Nature, God in the heavenly, the ideal world
— so the name of * the Son ' represents to us God in History, God in
the character of man, God, above all, in the Person of Jesus Christ.
"We know how even in earthly relationships, an absent father, a
departed father, is brought before our recollections in the appearance
of a living, present son, especially in a son who by the distinguishing
features of his mind or of his person is a real likeness of his father.
We know also how in the case of those whom we have never seen at
all there is still a means of communication with them through reading
their letters, their works, their words. So it is in this second great
disclosure of the Being of God. If sometimes we find that Nature
gives us an uncertain sound of the dealings of God with his creatures,
if we find a difficulty in imagining what is the exact character that
God most approves, we may be reassured, strengthened, fixed, by
hearing or reading of Jesus Christ. The Mahometan rightly objects
to the introduction of the paternal and filial relations into the idea
of God, when they are interpreted in the gross and literal sense. But
in the moral spiritual sense it is true that the kindness, tenderness,
and wisdom we find in Jesus Christ is the reflection of the same
kindness, tenderness, and wisdom that we recognise in the gover-

2 Kenan's Hibbert Lectures for 1880, p. 202.

3 Dr. Newman, Apologia, p. 241.

VOL. VIIL— No. 42. P

210 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

nance of the universe. His life is the Word, the speech that comes
to us out of that eternal silence which surrounds the Unseen
Divinity. He is the Second Conscience, the external Conscience,
reflecting, as it were, and steadying the conscience within each of us.
And wheresoever in human history the same likeness is, or has been,
in any degree reproduced in human character, there and in that pro-
portion is the same effect produced. There and in that proportion is
the Word which speaks through every word of human wisdom, and
the Light which lightens with its own radiance every human act of
righteousness and of goodness. In the old Homeric representations
of Divinity and of Humanity, what most strikes us is that whereas
the human characters are, in their measure, winning, attractive,
heroic, the divine characters are capricious, cruel, revengeful, sensual.
Such an inversion of the true standard is what the revelation of God
in Christ has rectified. If in Christ the highest human virtues are
exalted to their highest pitch, this is intended to tell us that in the
Divine nature these same virtues are still to be found, not less exalted.
If cruelty, caprice, revenge, are out of place in Christ, they are
equally out of place in God. To believe in the name of Christ, in
the name of the Son, is to believe that God is above all other qualities
a Moral Being — a Being not merely of power and wisdom, but a Being
of tender compassion, of boundless charity, of discriminating tender-
ness. To believe in the name of Christ is to believe that no other
approach to God exists except through those same qualities of justice,
truth, and love which make up the mind of Christ. 'Ye believe
in God, believe also in me,' was His own farewell address. Ye believe
in the Father, ye believe in Religion generally, believe also in the
Son, believe also in Christ. For this is the form in which God has
made Himself most palpably known to the world, in flesh and blood,
in facts and words, in life and death. This is the claim that Chris-
tianity and Christendom have upon us, with all their infinite varieties
of institutions, ordinances, arts, laws, liberties, charities — that they
spring forth directly or indirectly from the highest earthly mani-
festation of Our Unseen Eternal Father.

We take Christianity as it has appeared to Voltaire, Rousseau,
Goethe, Mill, Renan. We speak of the story of the Gospels, in
those parts which contain least matter for doubts and difficulties.
We speak only of * the method ' and ' the secret ' of Jesus as they
have been presented to us in the most modern works. When we
read of the Cross of Calvary, the reason why it speaks so directly to
the hearts of so many is that in those sufferings it expresses what we
may believe to be the purposes of God in the sufferings of the whole
human race. When we read of the weakness, the depression, the
uncertainties of the Agony at Gethsemane, though in one sense
thrown off to the furthest distance from the Absolute Sovereignty of
the Almighty, yet in a deeper sense it brings us most nearly to it.

1880. THE GREED OF THE EARLY CHRISTIANS. 211

' The origin of Christianity forms the most heroic episode of the
history of humanity. . . . Never was the religious consciousness
more eminently creative ; never did it lay down with more absolute
authority the law of the future.' 4

Those few years in which that Life was lived on earth gathered
up all the historical expressions of religion before and after into
one supreme focus. The ' Word made flesh ' was the union of re-
ligion and morality together in one, was the declaration that in
the highest sense the Image of Man was made after the Image of
(rod. ' ^Sterna sapientia sese in omnibus rebus, maxime in humana
mente, omnium maxime in Christo Jesu manifestavit.' 5 In the gallery
through which, in Goethe's Wilhehn Meister, the student is led to
understand the origin and meaning of religion, he is taught to see in
the child which looks upwards the reverence for that which is above
us — that is, the worship of the Father. ' This religion we denominate
the Ethnic ; it is the religion of the nations, and the first happy
deliverance from a degrading fear.' He is taught to see in the child
which looks downwards the reverence for that which is beneath us.
' This we name the Christian. What a task it was ... to recognise
humility and poverty, mockery and despising, disgrace and wretch-
edness, suffering — to recognise these things as divine.' This is the
value of what we call Historical Religion. This is the eternal, never-
dying truth of the sacred name of the Son.

3. But there is yet a third manifestation of God. Natural religion
may become vague and abstract. Historical religion may become,
as it often has become, perverted, distorted, exhausted, formalised ;
its external proofs may become dubious, its. inner meaning may be
almost lost. There have been oftentimes Christians who were not
like Christ — a Christianity which was not the religion of Christ.
But there is yet another aspect of the Divine Nature. Besides
the reverence for that which is above us, and the reverence for that
which is beneath us, there is also the reverence for that which is
within us. There is yet (if we may venture to vary Goethe's parable)
another form of Religion, and that is Spiritual Religion. As the
name of the Father represents to us God in Nature, as the name of
the Son represents to us God in History, so the name of the Holy
Ghost represents to us God in our own hearts and spirits and con-
sciences. This is the still, small voice — stillest and* smallest, yet
loudest and strongest of all — which, even more than the wonders of
nature or the wonders of history, brings us into the nearest harmony
with Him who is a Spirit — who, when His closest communion with
man is described, can only be described as the Spirit pleading with,
and dwelling in, our spirit. When Theodore Parker took up a stone
to throw at a tortoise in a pond, he felt himself restrained by some-

4 Kenan's Hibbcrt Lectures for 1880, p. 3.
4 Spinoza, Ep. xxi., rol. iii. p. 195.
r 2

212 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

thing within him. He went home and asked his mother what that
something was. She told him that this something was what was
commonly called conscience, but she preferred to call it the voice of
God within him. This, he said, was the turning-point in his life, and
this was his mode of accepting the truth of the Divinity of the Eternal
Spirit that speaks to our spirits. When Arnold entered with all the
ardour of a great and generous nature into the beauty of the natural
world, he added : * If we feel thrilling through us the sense of this
natural beauty, what ought to be our sense of moral beauty, — of
humbleness, and truth, and self-devotion, and love? Much more
beautiful, because more truly made after God's image, are the forms
and colours of kind and wise and holy thoughts and words and actions
— more truly beautiful is one hour of an aged peasant's patient cheer-
fulness and faith than the most glorious scene which this earth can
show. For this moral beauty is actually, so to speak, God Himself,
and not merely His work. His living and conscious servants are
—it is permitted us to say so — the temples of which the light is God
Himself.'

What is here said of the greatness of the revelation of God in the
moral and spiritual sphere over His revelation in the physical world,
is equally true of its greatness over His revelation in any outward
form or fact, or ordinance or word. To enter fully into the signifi-
cance of what is sometimes called the Dispensation of the Holy
Spirit, we must grasp the full conception of what in the Bible is
meant by that sacred word, used in varying yet homogeneous
senses, and all equally intended by the Sacred Name of which we
are speaking. It means the Inspiring Breath,6 without which all
mere forms and facts are dead. It means 7 the spirit as opposed to
the outward letter. It means the freedom of the spirit, which blows
like the air of heaven where it listeth, and which, wherever it prevails,
gives liberty.8 It means the power and energy of the spirit, which
rises above the 9 weakness and weariness of the flesh — which, in the
great movements of Providence,10 like a mighty rushing wind, gives
life and vigour to the human soul and to the human race. To
believe in a Presence u within us pleading with our prayers, groaning
with our groans, aspiring with our aspirations — to believe in the
Divine supremacy of conscience — to believe that the spirit is above
the letter — to believe that the substance is above the form 12 — to
believe that the meaning is more important than the words — to
believe that truth is greater than authority or fashion or imagination,13
and will at last prevail — to believe that goodness and justice and love
are the bonds of perfectness,14 without which whosoever liveth is counted

• Luke iv. 18 ; John i. 33. ' 2 Cor. iii. 6. 8 John iii. 8 ; 2 Cor. iii. 28.

• Matt. xxvi. 41. »« Acts ii. 4, 17.

11 Rom. viii. 16, 26 ; Eph. ii. 18. >2 John iv. 24.

11 Gal. v. 22 ; Eph. v. 9. >« John xiv. 17, 26 ; xv. 26 ; xvi. 13.

1880. THE CREED OF THE EARLY CHRISTIANS. 213

dead though he live, and which bind together those -who are divided
in all other things whatsoever — this, according to the Biblical use of
the word, is involved in the expression : ' I believe in the Holy Ghost.'

II. Such is the significance of these three Sacred Names as we con-
sider them apart. Let us now consider what is to be learned from
their being thus made the summary of Eeligion.

1 . First it may be observed that there is this in common between
the Biblical and the scholastic representations of the doctrine of the
Trinity. They express to us the comprehensiveness and diversity of the
Divine Essence. We might perhaps have thought that as God is
One, so there could be only one mode of conceiving Him, one mode
of approaching Him. But the Bible, when taken from first to last
and in all its parts, tells us, that there is yet a greater, wider view.
The nature of God is vaster and more complex than can be embraced
in any single formula. As in His dealings with men generally it
has been truly said that

God fulfils Himself iu many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world,

so out of these many ways and many names we learn from the Bible
that there are especially these three great revelations, these three ways
in which He can be approached. None of them is to be set aside. It
is true that the threefold name of which we are speaking is never in
the Bible brought forward in the form of an unintelligible mystery.
It is certain that the only place 15 where it is put before us as an
arithmetical enigma is now known to be spurious. Yet it is still true
that the doctrine of the Trinity, whether in its biblical or its meta-
physical form, is a wholesome rebuke to that readiness to dispose of
the whole question of the Divine nature, as if God were a man, a
person like ourselves. The hymn of Reginald He her, which is one of
the few hymns in which the feeling of the poet and the scholar is
interwoven with the strains of simple devotion —

Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty —

refuses to lend itself to any anthropomorphic speculations, and takes
refuge in abstractions as much withdrawn from the ordinary figures
of human speech and metaphor, as if it had been composed by Kant
or Hegel. To acknowledge this triple form of revelation, to acknow-
ledge this complex aspect of the Deity, as it runs through the multi-
form expressions of the Bible — saves, as it were, the awe, the
reverence due to the Almighty Ruler of the universe, tends to
preserve the balance of truth from any partial or polemical bias,
presents to us not a meagre, fragmentary view of only one part of the
Divine Mind, but a wide, catholic summary of the whole, so far as
nature, history, and experience permit. If we cease to think of the
Universal Father, we become narrow and exclusive. If we cease to

»* 1 John v. 7.

214 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

think of the Founder of Christianity and of the greatness of Christen-
dom, we lose our hold on the great historic events which have swayed
the hopes and affections of man in the highest moments of human
progress. If we cease to think of the Spirit, we lose the inmost
meaning of Creed and Prayer, of Church and Bible. In that apologue
of Goethe before quoted, when the inquiring student asks his guides
who have shown him the three forms of reverence, ' To which of these
religions do you adhere ? ' 'To all the three,' they reply, ' for in their
union they produce the true religion, which has been adopted, though
unconsciously, by a great part of the world.' ' How then, and where ?'
exclaimed the inquirer. < In the Creed,' replied they. ' For the first
article is ethnic, and belongs to all nations. The second, Christian,
belongs to those struggling with affliction, glorified in affliction. The
third teaches us an inspired communion of saints. And should not the
three Divine Persons justly be considered as in the highest sense
One?'

2. And yet on the other hand, when we pursue each of these sacred
words into its own recesses, we may be thankful that we are thus
allowed at times to look upon each as though each for the moment
were the whole and entire name of which we are in search. There are
in the sanctuaries of the old churches of the East on Mount Athos
sacred pictures intended to represent the doctrine of the Trinity, in
which, as the spectator stands at one side, he sees only the figure of Our
Saviour on the cross, as he stands on the other side he sees only the
Heavenly Dove, as he stands in the front he sees only the Ancient of
Days, the Eternal Father. So it is with the representations of this
truth in the Bible, and, we may add, in the experiences of religious
life. Sometimes, as in the Old Testament, especially in the Psalms,
we are alone with God, we trust in Him, we are His and He is ours.
The feeling that He is our Father, and that we are His children, is all-
sufficing. We need not be afraid so to think of Him. Whatever
other disclosures He has made of Himself are but the filling up of
this vast outline. Whatever other belief we have or have not, cling
to this. By this has lived many a devout soul in Jewish and in
Pagan times whom He assuredly will not reject. By this faith lived
many in Jewish times, and obtained a good report, even when they
had not received the promise. By this faith have lived many a devout
sage and hero of the ancient world. So long as this great Ideal
remains before us, the material world has not absorbed our whole
being, has not obscured the whole horizon.

Sometimes, again, as in the Gospels or in particular moments of
life, we see no revelation of God except in the world of history.
There are those to whom science is dumb, to whom nature is dark,
but who find in the life of Jesus Christ all that they need. He is to
them the all in all, the True, the Holy, the express image of the Highest.
We need not fear to trust to Him. The danger hitherto has been

1880. THE CREED OF THE EARLY CHRISTIANS. 216

not that we can venerate Him too much, or that we can think of
Him too much. The error of Christendom has far more usually been
that it has not thought of Him half enough — that it has put aside
the mind of Christ, and taken in place thereof the mind of Augustine,
Aquinas, Calvin, great in their way, — but not the mind of Him of
whom we read in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Or if we should
combine with the thought of Him the thought of others foremost
in the religious history of mankind, we have His own command
to do so, so far as they are the likenesses of Himself, or so far as they
convey to us any truth from the unseen world, or any lofty concep-
tion of human character. With the early Christian writers, we may
believe that the Word, the Wisdom of God which appeared in its
perfection in Jesus of Nazareth, had appeared in a measure in the
examples of virtue and wisdom which had been seen before His
coming. On the same principle we may apply this to those who have
appeared since. He has Himself told us that in His true followers
He is with mankind to the end of the world. In the holy life, in the
courageous act, in the just law, is the Eeal Presence of Christ.
Where these are, in proportion as they recall to us His divine excel-
lence, there, far more than in any consecrated form or symbol, is the
true worship due from a Christian to his Master.

Sometimes, again, as in the Epistles, or in our own solitary com-
muning with ourselves, all outward manifestations of the Father and
of the Son, of outward nature and of Christian communion, seem to
be withdrawn, and the eye of our mind is fixed on the Spirit alone.
Our light then seems to come not from without but from within, not
from external evidence but. from inward conviction. That itself
is a divine revelation. For the Spirit is as truly a manifestation of
God as is the Son or the Father. The teaching of our own heart and
conscience is enough. If we follow the promptings of truth and
purity, of justice and humility, sooner or later we shall come back to
the same Original Source. The witness of the Spirit of all goodness
is the same as the witness of the life of Jesus, the same as the witness
of the works of God our Creator.

3. And this distinction, which applies to particular wants of the
life of each man, may be especially traced in the successive stages of
the spiritual growth of individuals and of the human race itself. There
is a beautiful poem of a German poet 16 of this century of whom it has
been said that he represents the chief current and tendency of
modern thought, in which he describes his wanderings in the Hartz
Mountains, and as he rests in the house of a mountain peasant, a
little child, the daughter of the house, sits at his feet, and looks up
in his troubled countenance, and asks, ' Dost thou believe in the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost ? ' He makes answer in words
which must be read in the original to see their full force. He says :

16 Heine.

21 G THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

' When I sate as a boy on my mother's knees, and learned from her
to pray, I believed on God the Father, who reigns aloft so great
and good, who created the beautiful earth and the beautiful men and
women that are upon it, who to sun and moon and stars foretold
their appointed course. And when I grew a little older and bigger,
then I understood more and more, then I took in new truth with my
reason and my understanding, and 1 believed on the Son — the well-
beloved Son, who in his love revealed to us what love is, and who for
his own reward, as always happens, was crucified by the senseless world.
And now that I am grown up, and that I have read many books and
travelled in many lands, my heart swells, and with all my heart I
believe in the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of God. He it is who works
the greatest of miracles, and greater miracles yet shall He work than
we have yet seen. He it is who breaks down all the strongholds of
oppression and sets the bondmen free. He it is who heals old death-
wounds and throws into the old law new life. Through Him it is
that all men become a race of nobles, equal in the sight of God.
Through Him are dispersed the black clouds and dark cobwebs
that bewilder our hearts and brains.'

A thousand knights in armour clad

Hath the Holy Ghost ordained,
All His work and will to do,

By His living force sustained.
Bright their swords, their banners bright ;
Who would not be ranked a knight,

Foremost in that sacred host ?
Oh, whate'er our race or creed,
May we be such knights indeed,

Soldiers of the Holy Ghost.

III. The name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost will
never cease to be the chief expression of Christian belief, and it
has been endeavoured to show what is the true meaning of them.
It may be that the Biblical words in some respects fall short of
this high signification. But it is believed that on the whole they
contain or suggest thoughts of this kind, and that in this develop-
ment of their meaning, more than in the scholastic systems built
upon them, lies their true vitality.

Apparet domus intus, et atria longa patescunt.

But even when the true Biblical meaning of them has been
recovered, there still remains the universal and the deeper truth
within. In Christianity nothing is of real concern except that
which makes us wiser and better ; everything which does make us
wiser and better is the very thing which Christianity intends.
Therefore even in these three most sacred words there is yet, besides
all the other meanings which we have found in them, the deepest and
most sacred meaning of all — that which corresponds to them in the
life of man. Many a one has repeated this Sacred Name, and yet

1880. THE CREED OF THE EARLY CHRISTIANS. 217

never fulfilled in himself the truth winch it conveys. Some have
been unable to repeat it, and yet have grasped the substance which
alone gives to it spiritual value. What John Bunyan said on his death-
bed concerning prayer is equally true of all religious forms : ' Let
thy heart be without words rather than thy words without heart.
Wherever we are taught to know and understand the real nature
of the world in which our lot is cast, there is a testimony, however
humble, to the name of the Father ; wherever we- are taught to
know and admire the highest and best of human excellence, there
is a testimony to the name of the Son ; wherever there is implanted
in us a presence of freedom, purity, and love, there is^a testimony to
the name of the Holy Ghost.

A. P. STANLEY.

218 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

ICELAND.

So far to the north-west of Europe lies this great island as to be a
connecting link between the eastern and •western continents, and it is
said that on a clear day the Snsefells-Jdkull in Iceland and Greenland's
icy mountains may be seen simultaneously from the deck of a ship.
Iceland is, however, a portion of Europe rather than of America ; its
fauna and flora are European, and its inhabitants are of the pure
Scandinavian stock. Politically, as well as ethnologically, Iceland is
an integral part of what we are accustomed to call * Scandinavia,' a
group of kindred countries, usually included by their own inhabitants
in the comprehensive title of Norden, ' the North/ The countries so
designated are Denmark, with its dependency Iceland, and the
' United Kingdoms ' (De Forenede Riger), Sweden and Norway.

These northern countries have their own political and religious
history, separating them distinctly from the rest of Europe proper on
one side, and from the semi-Asiatic empire of Russia on the other.
The Northmen have visited, as invaders and conquerors, all the
principal European countries, but they have never bowed their own
necks to any foreign yoke, and they have vindicated their indepen-
dence with equal success against Pope and Kaiser.

The Roman legions never invaded Scandinavia, and even to those
Teutonic princes who claimed the inheritance of the Western Caesars,
the river Eyder was always ' Finis Romani Imperii.' The civil law,
which was the best legacy left by Rome to her emancipated provinces,
and which is still the basis of the legal system established throughout
Western Europe, even in ' Caledonia invicta Romanis,' never pre-
vailed in the far North. The Christian religion, which spread so
rapidly over the Roman Empire, and so slowly beyond its limits, was
long in conquering the stubborn worshippers of Odin ; and even as
late as A.D. 1000 the Scandinavians might still be called * the
Heathen of the Northern Sea.'

Thus the feudal system and the ordinance of chivalry, both of
which prevailed for so many centuries throughout Christendom, and
so profoundly modified all political and social institutions in other
Christian countries, hardly obtained any hold over Scandinavia. In
particular, the feudal land tenures characteristic of Scotland never

1880 ICELAND. 219

took root on the opposite side of the North Sea, nor in any Scandi-
navian dependency, such as Orkney and Shetland, where the com-
plicated Scotch system of conveyancing has not yet been able to
supersede (in spite of frequent encroachments) the simple allodial
tenure of the free-born Northmen. To these important peculiarities
of early northern history may be attributed the distinctive character
of ancient Scandinavian traditions, customs, and literature, our
knowledge of which has been mainly derived from Icelandic sources.
Ten centuries have now elapsed since certain freedom-loving
Norwegians, seeking a country where they might live in safety, far
away from * kings, jarls, and other evil-doers,' settled upon the
recently discovered shores of Iceland. The free republic which they
there established in the ninth century of the Christian era, resembled
marvellously in its original constitution the communities flourishing
in the south of Europe more than a thousand years earlier. Those
who wish to understand the primitive social condition of the Aryan
settlers in Europe may study authentic accounts of a comparatively
modern Aryan migration in the North, and will find in the proceedings
of Floki or Ingolfr a singular resemblance to those of Odysseus or
^Eneas. Mr. J. A. Hjaltalin thus describes the first settlement of
Iceland : —

When a chief had taken possession of an extensive tract of land, he allotted
portions of it to his friends and retainers and even to his slaves; for it was a thing
of frequent occurrence that slaves, when they distinguished themselves in any way,
obtained their liberty and a farm from their master. The chief also built a temple
at his residence, placing under its foundations earth from the temple in his old
home. He was himself the priest of the temple, and had to keep it in repair, to
perform the sacred rites and to bear the expense of the sacrificial feasts. His
retainers, or those who had fixed their abodes within the boundaries of his settle-
ment, were to pay a tax to the temple. They also had to attend their chief, and
assist him in his quarrels with other chiefs. In return he had to adjust their quar-
rels, and protect them against other chiefs and their retainers. Thus a kind of
patriarchal government was at once instituted, each chief being entirely independent
of all other chiefs.

The first meeting of the Alping (Althing), or General Legislative
Assembly for all Iceland, took place A.D. 929. The whole island was
divided into thirteen districts under thirty-nine chiefs or 4 temple
priests,' each of whom had a seat in the Althing, and the right of
taking with him two retainers ; the total number of members was
144, and the Assembly exercised legislative and judicial powers over
all Iceland. An aristocratic commonwealth of precisely the same
character existed in Attica before the days of Solon : —

Toute autorite fut aux mains des Eupatrides ; Us 6"taient seuls pretres et seuls
archontes. Seuls ils rendaient la justice et connaissaient les lois, qui n'etaient pas
ecrites et dont ils se transmettaient de pere en fils les formules eacrees. Ces
families gardaient autant qu'il leur etait possible les anciennes formes du regime
patriarcal. Elles ne vivaient pas re"unies dans la ville. Elles continuaient a vivre

220 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

dans les divers cantons de 1'Attique, chacune sur son vaste domaiiie, entour£e de
ses nonibreux serviteurs, gouvernee par son chef eupatride et pratiquant dans une
independence absolue son culte hert-ditaire. La cite" athgnienne ne fut pendant
quatre siecles que la confederation de ces puissants chefs de famille, qui s'assem-
blaient a certains jours pour la celebration dti culte central ou pour la poursuite des
inte*rete communs.

A Rome aussi chacune des families patriciennes vivait sur son doraaine, entoure"e
de ses clients. On venait a la ville pour les fetes de culte public, ou pour les
assembles. Pendant les anne"es qui suivirent 1'expulsion des rois, le pouvoir de
1'aristocratie fut absolu. Nul autre que le patricien ne pouvait remplir les fonc-
tions sacerdotales dans la cite ; les seuls patriciens rendaient la justice et connais-
saient les forniules de la loi.

In these words M. Fustel de Coulanges, quoting from the
best classical authorities, describes a state of society existing long
before the Christian era. Mr. Hjaltalm is speaking of a period at
least fifteen centuries later ; the locality is changed, but the social
and political condition described is the same. For example, in the
Saga of Gisli the Soursop, translated by Sir George W. Dasent, we
have a life-like picture of Icelandic society during the tenth century,
a picture drawn by the hand of one who flourished only three genera-
tions later. In almost every detail appear indications of manners
and customs existing among the heathen settlers in Iceland, identical
with those prevailing in Southern Europe at the dawn of authentic
history. The casual mention (without any expression of censure) of
Hallsteinsness, as ' the farm where Hallstein offered up his son, that
a tree of sixty feet might be thrown up by the sea,' recalls not merely
the sacrifice of Iphigenia, but also the laws of early Home, which
gave the son's life absolutely into the hands of his father. When
Thorgrim the priest is slain, ' Bork sets up his abode with Thordisa,
and takes his brother's widow to wife, with his brother's goods ; '
here the author considers it necessary to add : ' that was the rule in
those days — wives were heritage like other tilings.' Bork also
assumed the priestly functions of Thorgrim, until he was superseded
and turned out by Snorro, Thorgrim's posthumous son and true heir.
Iceland was at that time ruled by an hereditary aristocracy or
oligarchy of priestly chiefs, who wielded their authority mainly
through the action of the District Things or assemblies, where they
were all powerful, the Althing being indeed established, but not
having as yet made good its jurisdiction over the whole island.
Hellenic society, as it is described in the Odyssey, was ruled in a
similar fashion about 2,000 years earlier, and a /3acri\£vs in Ithaka
1000 B.C. must have been very like a priest in Iceland A.D 1000.

During that long interval the Koman Empire arose, flourished,
and declined, completely changing the face of European society by
means of the civil law and the Christian religion ; but * where Rome's

1 La Cite Antique, livre Iv. chap. 4.

1880. ICELAND. 221

eagles never flew,' a primitive Aryan community maintained itself
unmodified almost down to modem times.

The Icelandic Republic, which endured down to the middle of
the thirteenth century, was a purely aristocratic commonwealth, and
the Althing was an assembly constituted on the same principles as
the original Comitia Curiata, in which the Patricians were supreme,
and into which the client was admitted only as the follower of his
patron. The Icelandic chiefs had not expelled a king, but had re-
moved themselves out of his reach, and they established in their
western island the same institutions which Harald Haarfager had
overthrown in Norway. Their ideas of liberty, like those of other
ancient and mediaeval republicans, were thoroughly aristocratic, and
their love of power was as strong as their hatred of subjection. The
period immediately preceding the settlement of Iceland was through-
out Europe one of political consolidation. Charlemagne united under
his sceptre a large portion of the Western Roman Empire, England
under Egbert became a single monarchy, and the three Scandinavian
kingdoms were established. But the young colony was founded under
peculiar auspices, and flourished for centuries amid the frost and fire
of Ultima Thule, a republic of the early classical type, free from all
taint of mediaeval feudalism or of modern democracy. The absence
of towns in Iceland prevented the growth of a plebs, and the rural
population was composed of freemen and thralls, or patricians and
clients, for the Northern thrall resembled in social position rather the
client of early Roman history than the slave of later times. The
social equality characteristic of Iceland at the present day did not
prevail during the palmy days of the Republic, which was in fact a
confederation of chiefs, with no capital city or permanent central
authority.

Notwithstanding constant feuds and contests between rival chiefs,
the country flourished under this government, or rather in the ab-
sence of all regular government, as it has never done since, and the
most turbulent period of Icelandic history was also a period of the
greatest literary activity, while the rest of Europe was plunged in in-
tellectual torpor. But in Iceland, as elsewhere, foreign domination
proved fatal to intellectual life, and with the loss of political inde-
pendence was lost also literary pre-eminence. The Icelanders, seek-
ing for political repose, surrendered themselves into the hands of the
Norwegian kings, A.D. 1264, and soon discovered that in politics
repose is death, and that mental vitality withers among a people
ceasing to exercise any control over public affairs. When the free
Icelanders became Norwegian subjects they did not lose their love of
letters, but they lost all power of original thought and composition,
and sank from authors into mere transcribers. When Norway was
united to Denmark, A.D. 1380, Iceland was transferred to the Danish
rule, under which it has since remained. The recent history of Ice-

222 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

laud — a poor, outlying province of a distant metropolis — has been
gloomy enough : misgovernment has combined with famine, pestilence,
and volcanic eruptions to depress the condition of the inhabitants,
who have distinctly retrograded in material prosperity since the days
of Snorri Sturluson. A few Danish merchants enjoyed a complete
monopoly of the Icelandic trade down to a recent date, when the
legal bonds, which prevented the Icelanders from trading with the
world at large, were relaxed. Governed entirely by Danes (whom
they have always regarded as foreigners), compelled to deal with
Danes only in all commercial affairs, it is not surprising that the
natives of Iceland should gradually have lost much of the energy and
self-reliance which characterised their free forefathers. Six centuries
of subjection have succeeded four centuries of independence, and now
a third era is commencing in the history of Iceland, which is hence-
forth to experience the benefits of local self-government, and is in
fact to enjoy a modified form of ' Home Rule.'

In 1874 the King of Denmark celebrated by a personal visit to Ice-
land the thousandth anniversary of its colonisation, and he also signed
a new constitution whereby the Icelanders acquire legislative inde-
pendence, and a certain amount of administrative control over their
own affairs ; being unrepresented in the Danish Rigsdag, they are not
required to contribute to the general expenditure of the kingdom,
nor have they any direct voice in the general State administration.
The King has, however, retained a large share of power in his own
hands, and the Icelanders can hardly be said to have a Parliamentary
government or responsible Ministers. The King appoints a Governor,
to whom the chief executive functions are entrusted, and who is
responsible, not to the Althing, but to the Ministerial Department of
Justice in Copenhagen. The Althing, or Legislative Assembly, meets
each alternate year, and consists of six members nominated by the
King, with thirty elected by the people, and is divided into two
Houses. The Upper House contains the six nominated members and
six chosen from among themselves by the thirty elected deputies ;
the remaining twenty-four compose the Lower House. As regards
judicial matters, there lies a right of appeal to the Supreme Court of
Denmark from Icelandic tribunals in all criminal cases, and in civil
cases when the matter in dispute is above a certain pecuniary value.
Altogether the new constitution of Iceland is analogous to those of
the Channel Islands, or the Isle of Man, and there is reason to hope
that it may work as smoothly and favourably as in the case of those
prosperous and loyal communities. It is, however, at present a griev-
ance that the Secretary of State, on whose advice the King acts in
vetoing or assenting to bills passed by the Althing, is responsible in
Icelandic matters to the King only, although, as being also Danish
Minister of Justice, he is liable to be turned out of office by a vote of
the Rigsdag.

1880. ICELAND. 223

Primary education is diffused over Iceland to a degree which is
quite marvellous, considering the sparseness of the population, the
extent of the country, and the enormous difficulties of intercommu-
nication. Time for teaching is afforded by the long dark winters,
when out-of-door work is impossible, and teachers for children are
abundant, where all in childhood have been instructed. Even in the
most remote habitations a certain knowledge of the humane arts has
produced softness of manners, and rosy-faced, flaxen-haired urchins
will walk up to a stranger and shake hands with a friendly ' Grod Dag ! '
In Reykjavik, and among the clergy in general, are to be found men
of high literary culture, scholars who would do credit to any seat of
learning in Europe. It is to be regretted, however, that Icelandic
students should devote their attention so exclusively to languages and
literature, neglecting science and mathematics. Scholars and lin-
guists abound, but architects and engineers are rare in Iceland, and
educational reform is necessary even in this educated community.
The achievements of their ancestors have been a damaging inherit-
ance for the modern Icelanders, who are too conservative, and fail to
realise the progress that human knowledge has made in recent times.
In order to reap the full benefit of their new constitution the Ice-
landers must be prepared to inaugurate many practical reforms.

They nmstbe left free, unfettered, and unchecked by the State to which they "be-
long (Denmark) to follow out the course which they think most beneficial to them-
selves. They must be made to feel the responsibility of the management of their own
affairs, that the making or marring of their fortune is in their own hands. On
their part the Icelanders must throw off the sluggishness and indolence of former
years. They must not any longer be absorbed in the contemplation of the past.
They must learn to become self-reliant, to make it clear to themselves that they cannot
expect anything from others, and if they wish to thrive, they must do so with their
own means.2

If the Icelanders are able to carry out their ' Home Eule ' experi-
ment under the conditions for which their countryman thus stipulates,
it can hardly fail to prove a success, and to strengthen the hands of
all who advocate decentralisation and local self-government. Under
similar conditions British Colonies have risen, from the smallest be-
ginnings, to be populous and wealthy States within the lifetime of one
generation, while Ireland still suffers from the effects of the opposite
course of policy.

Icelanders learn to speak the English language with an excellent
pronunciation, due partly to the fact that they possess in their own
vernacular the double sound of i/i, which is so great a stumbling
block in English pronunciation to most Europeans. The Icelandic
possesses two special letters : •}>, identical with the Greek 0, and •$,
equivalent to B ; the first letter ty (or theta) is pronounced like th in

- TJie Thousandth Annivmary of thf Norwegian Settlement in Tcrland, by J6n A.
Hjaltalin. The first English Pamphlet printed in Iceland.

224 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

' thing,' the second $ (or delta), like th in ' thou.' These letters have
been adopted in addition to the ordinary Roman alphabet, used in
Iceland only since the introduction of Christianity, prior to which
epoch there was no Icelandic literature, and the runes were the only
known literary symbols. As a genuine living dialect, spoken, written,
and even printed in newspapers at the present day, Icelandic may
claim to be the oldest in Europe ; for even Romaic, strongly as it
resembles classical Greek, has dropped many cases and tenses, follow-
ing the general tendency of modern languages. Thus Danish and
Swedish are modernised and simplified dialects, while Icelandic still
retains the archaic forms of the ancient Scandinavian tongue, once in
use throughout Northern Europe. Icelandic literature, written in
the popular idiom, was always much studied by the people, and has
thus been the principal means of preserving almost unchanged this
ancient language, an isolated survivor from a bygone historical
period.

Iceland is a country of snow and glaciers, without trees and without
coal, where the peat is bad in quality and can be dried only with great
difficulty, and where fuel is so scarce that human beings and animals
have no better resource against the cold than to huddle together in ill-
ventilated, semi-subterranean dwellings. In such a country it is only
natural that the existence of lignite in various situations among the
basaltic rocks, which compose a very large portion of the island,
should have been a fact full of interest, and even of hope, for the half-
frozen inhabitants. Lignite, under the poetical name of ' Surtur-
brandr ' (Demon-coal), has long been known to. the Icelanders, and it
was at one time hoped that places might be discovered by experts
where it would be sufficiently abundant, and sufficiently accessible, to
become an article of commercial value in a land producing so little
that is commercially valuable. These hopes have, however, been
doomed to disappointment, and Surturbrandr is now interesting only
from a geological point of view. It is found in small quantities, it is
imperfectly combustible, and even where exposed on the face of cliffs,
it is inaccessible for practical purposes. The astonishing fact is that
it should exist at all. There are no trees growing now in Iceland
except dwarf birches and willows ; but here are the almost uninjured
remains of great forest trees under mountains of superincumbent rock,
which must have spread over them in a molten condition, when they
were embedded in mud beneath the sea-surface.

Within an easy day's ride of IsafjorSr, the principal port and
trading village of North-western Iceland, layers- of this lignite are
found ; and having a day to spare while the ' Diana,' Danish mail
steamer, lay in the perfectly land-locked harbour, Captain Wandel
and I resolved to make an expedition in search of Surturbrandr. The
little town of IsafjorSr, like other trading places in this part of Ice-
land, lies on a stony spit of land, doubtless the moraine of a huge

1880. ICELAND. 225

glacier, which once occupied the site of the existing fjord. This
4 Eyri,' or spit of land, runs out from the western shore of the fjord,
and almost reaches the opposite bank, leaving only a narrow, deep
channel close to the precipitous cliffs of basaltic trap, rising on every
side to a height of 2,000 feet, so close in fact that it seems as if the
avalanches of stones, which frequently descend from the rocky terraces,
might fall on the decks of a passing vessel, or even on the houses of
IsafjorSr.

These houses are built entirely of wood, unlike the ordinary farm-
houses or * Baers ' of Iceland, are brightly painted, and with the red
and white Dannebrog, the flag of Denmark, fluttering everywhere in
honour of the l Diana,' the little town presented quite a gay appear-
ance, as we galloped through the stacks of dried fish, piled high on
every side. Our guide was the local pilot, a lively veteran of seventy-
two, and we had three capital ponies, sure-footed, good-tempered,
and willing. The guide's pony was rather too willing, for in his case
the brisk canter, with which we started, soon developed into a gallop,
and he tore past us at full speed. There is but little ground in Ice-
land suitable for racing purposes, and very soon horse and man rolled
over in a soft green bog, into which our guide, unable to restrain his
gallant little charger, found it necessary to direct his career. This
was a bad start, but the fall had a sobering effect upon both, and when
extricated they gradually restored our shaken confidence by their
successful pilotage amid bogs, torrents, and snow-drifts.

The main difficulty in Icelandic travelling is to find ground firm
enough to bear a horse and his rider, and the safest track is often
along the sea-beach, where that is available, or even in the bed of a
stream. Water is everywhere, and the traveller constantly crosses
fords, either in the river whose course he is following, or through
torrents rushing down from the fjeld on either side. The pass over
which we had to ride is about 1,500 feet high, and in the month of
June the l divide ' was still blocked with snow. This snow was hard
enough to bear a man or a pony, but in many places it would give
way beneath them, when both on the same set of feet, and in conse-
quence the captain and I did a good deal of walking. The old
guide, however, stuck to his steed, except when obliged to cross a
torrent on a precarious bridge of snow, and they managed to
flounder triumphantly through all difficulties. An Icelander ins
riding uses neither whip nor spur, but works his arms and legs pur-
petually like the sails of a windmill, and can thus keep his pony
moving at a pace which leaves the foreigner far in the rear.

On the quiet waters of the fjord the eider-ducks were taking their
newly hatched broods for a first swim, and as we scrambled up the
fjeld, the cock ptarmigan fluttered and croaked over our heads, accord-
ing to his habit when the hen is sitting upon eggs. The region
of forests, represented by dwarf birches and whortleberries, is soon
VOL. VIII.— No. 42. Q

226 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

left behind, and near the summit of the pass there is hardly any vege-
tation of a higher order than Icelandic moss, while the bare rocks are
profusely marked with striations from glaciers that have long since
disappeared.

Descending towards the head of a small salt-water loch or firth,
the SugandafjorSr, we came upon a little herd of piebald and cream-
coloured ponies, and soon afterwards reached the solitary farm of this
remote and desolate region.

Frowning black precipices enclose the little land-locked bay, and
the scanty pastures upon its shores, so as apparently to cut off all
communication with the outer world ; and in winter, when snow lies
deep on the fjeld, and ice blocks up the fjord, the inhabitants of this
lonely glen are indeed thrown very much upon their own resources.
Even in summer a visitor is a very rare bird indeed, and the sight of
a Danish gentleman is as strange to these simple folk as that of an
Englishman, so that our arrival excited intense interest. A ' Dreng '
(boy) was told off to show us the spot where the Surturbrandr has
been exposed by the action of a mountain torrent, about 400 feet
above the sea. The lignite is in thin layers, mixed with slaty rock ;
it is partly carbonised, partly in the condition of ordinary wood, with
the bark still adhering, but infiltrated with a certain amount of
mineral matter ; over it lie enormous masses of basaltic rock.

Returning to the farm we ate our luncheon, sharing it with the
admiring crowd of youngsters — Gisli, Hjalmar, Thora, Gudrun, &c. —
who surrounded us. Like the modern Greeks, the Icelanders delight
in naming their children after men and women whose names are
-associated with the heroic period of their country's history. It was
•quite touching to witness the delight of these children at seeing certain
.pictures of the Illustrated London News, in which our food had been
packed. We gave them both the papers and their contents ; but, al-
though hard-boiled eggs and ham sandwiches must have been rare
• dainties to them, the elder children evidently thought far more of
the pictures, and pounced upon these with the eager love of know-
: ledge conspicuous in Icelanders, who are full of admiration at the
sight of things new and strange — a characteristic of intelligent races
:.all the world over. We could only regret that so much capacity for
^intellectual enjoyment should be wasted in this wilderness, and that
vie had nothing better to give them in the way of literature than
fragments of a foreign newspaper.

All the able-bodied men were absent from home, engaged either
in fishing or looking after sheep ; but their wives did the honours of
*he place, and supplied us with hot coffee. On their invitation we
inspected the interior of their dwelling, which externally looks like a
•mere heap of stones and turf, with a chimney and one or two panes
of glass. On the ground floor are the ' Eld-hus ' (' fire-house ' or
kitchen), and store rooms, all very dark and dirty. The family resi-

1880. ICELAND. 227

dence is in the ' Ba'cSstofa ' (' bath-room,' a sad misnomer at the
present day), which is reached by means of a ladder, and is dimly
lighted, but not ventilated, by a small window hermetically closed.
Here, in a low-roofed, narrow garret, is the abode of the whole clan,
numbering some five-and-twenty souls of every age and either sex.
Along the sides of the room are placed the beds, but the obscurity —
which was increased by the festoons of stockings and other garments
suspended from the rafters — at first prevented our making out whether
these were occupied or not.

Our eyes became accustomed to the lack of light more readily
than our nostrils to the lack of fresh air, and we gradually discovered
the inmates of the apartment.

On one bed sat a blind old woman knitting, with an old man, her
husband and the patriarch of the family, seated beside her ; he re-
ceived us politely, and entered into conversation in Danish, which is
a foreign language in Iceland, but is generally understood throughout
the island. On the opposite bed one of the younger women disclosed
to our view, with maternal pride, a pretty little sleeping ' Pige ' (girl),
and in a cradle alongside lay another new-born infant. From a par-
ticularly dark corner proceeded sounds of feeble moaning, and on
•closer inspection we were able to make out that these proceeded from
a very old woman, evidently as near to the close of her life as the two
infants were to the commencement of theirs — ' Last stage of all, that
•ends this sad eventful history.' Thus within this narrow space the
seven ages of man were all represented, most of them by the female
sex only, as there was no male on the premises intermediate in age
between the school-boy and the ' slippered pantaloon.' At the door
of the only human habitation passed in the course of to-day's ride be-
tween Isafjor-Sr and SugandafjorSr we saw an old man of eight j
basking in the sun ; and altogether it is clear that crowded, unwhole-
some dwellings, together with a somewhat free indulgence in stimu-
lants, and a very severe climate, do not prevent the hardy Icelanders
from attaining a good old age. The discomfort of living in such a
hovel amidst damp, darkness, and evil smells can hardly be surpassed,
and yet our friends at Sugandafjor$r must not be regarded as reallj
poor. They possess plenty of liye stock in the form of ponies and
sheep, they have always enough to eat, they are warmly c]othed, and
they can even indulge in such exotic luxuries as snuff, coffee, and loaf
sugar.

They might easily build better habitations, following the example
of the Danish merchants and other settlers, whose clean, airy houses,
adorned with flowers and pictures, present a striking contrast to those
of their Icelandic neighbours. But the modern Icelander prefers the
rude architecture of his ancestors ; he therefore continues to build
in a style which enables one to realise at the present day the
domestic economy of a Sutherland ' Pict's house.'

228 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

"We parted after a general hand-shaking with old and young ;
kissing is a customary salutation in Iceland, but from this, under all
the circumstances, we were not sorry to be excused upon the present
occasion. It was otherwise at Reykjavik, where a pretty little
* Stulka ' (young lady), running out into the street, persuaded me to
come in and look at specimens of her embroidery in gold and silver
thread ; of course I bought one, and she shook hands with me cordially
upon the bargain, but I should have preferred in that case the Ice-
landic salute. As a matter of fact, however, it is between men that
this form of greeting is most common, and in so democratic a country
it is peculiarly inconvenient. I have been greatly amused at witness-
ing the annoyance of an accomplished and reverend gentleman, just
returned to his native shores from a trip to Scotland and Denmark,
when a snuffy old fisherman attempted to kiss him in the street : he
availed himself of his superior stature, and pretended not to notice
that his humble friend wished thus to testify his esteem for the
parson.

Perhaps in no country is social equality more complete than in
Iceland ; the priest indeed enjoys a certain rank and distinction, along
with the title of ' Sira,' but even the governor himself, whose office is
one of power as well as of dignity, is liable to have his hand grasped
by farmer or fisherman with the familiar inquiry : ' How are you,
Finsen ? '

Nothing peculiar in the way of national costume is now worn in
Iceland by men, except that they encase their hands in woollen
mittens with double thumbs, and their feet in moccasins and leggings
of untanned sheepskin. The women, however, invariably wear a
small cap of black cloth with a long silken tassel ornamented in gold
or silver. This cap is worn jauntily on one side, and is fastened with
pins to the hair, which is plaited around the head in elaborate loops
and coils. As the hair is usually fair and abundant, this forms a very
becoming headdress ; but out of doors it is concealed by a dark shawl
wrapped round the head and partially veiling the face. The analogies
between Iceland and Greece are numerous and striking, unlike as the
two countries at first sight appear, and it is remarkable that the
Athenian ' bourgeoise ' wears a cap almost identical, except in its red
colour, with that worn by Icelandic women of all classes.

Travelling is similar in Greece and in Iceland — both countries
are devoid of roads, and are much intersected with arms of the sea ;
in both locomotion involves long rides among barren mountains, and
the total absence of inns, except at a few points on the sea-coast,
makes the traveller dependent upon his own resources, or upon the
hospitality of the country people. As I happened to visit both Ice-
land and Greece within the space of a few months, the analogy between
them was to me peculiarly striking ; and in both countries my other-
wise solitary rides were enlivened by the company of a first-class

1S80. ICELAND. 229

specimen of the native youth acting as guide aud interpreter. Of
each it may be truly said that he was a good scholar, speaking several
languages fluently, familiar with the history and literature of his
country, proud of its fame in the past, and zealous for its interests in
the present and future.

It would be absurd to compare the ancient fame of Iceland with
that of Greece — in arts, in arms, and in song, Hellas stands pre-emi-
nent ; but even in the far North gallant deeds and poetic genius have
made classic ground of almost every habitable spot, and, like the cul-
tivated Greek, the Icelander lives much in the past, knowing well
that, whatever benefits the future may have in store for his race, it
can never again occupy its former conspicuous position upon the
world's stage.

Although patriotic natives have styled Iceland ' the best country
on which the sun shines,' it must be regarded by impartial strangers
as one of the worst that has ever been inhabited by civilised human
beings. Peopled originally by some of the boldest and most energetic
individuals of a peculiarly bold and energetic race, it 'shone, a
northern light, when all was gloom around.' All the natural disad-
vantages of their situation were insufficient to quell the spirit of the
Icelanders, so long as their dependence was on themselves alone, but
it cannot be denied that their energy has diminished under foreign
rule.

The language, laws, and traditions of Iceland are distinct from
those of Denmark, and it is too remote in situation to be governed
properly as an integral portion of the Danish kingdom. So remote
is it, without a telegraph cable, and with infrequent mail steamers,
that during a summer month, spent there at the time of a European
crisis, no news reached us from the outside world, and no one in the
island knew whether there was peace or war in Europe.

In a country so poor as Iceland the down of the eider-duck is an
appreciable source of wealth, and the bird has been practically domes-
ticated. Close to every little Handel-stad, or trading station, if there
is a convenient island, there is sure to be a colony of eider-ducks, and
the birds are to be seen by hundreds, swimming and fluttering about
their island home, or squatted upon its shores in conscious security
from the foxes, which infest the mainland.

The eider-ducks are protected all the year round under heavy penal-
ties, being the only birds enjoying legal protection in Iceland, and
they prefer the neighbourhood of human habitations for their breeding
places. From the largest of these < duckeries ' as much as 3001. is
cleared annually, the down being worth about a sovereign per pound
on an average ; but we were surprised to hear that its value was a little
depressed in 1878, owing to the war in Turkey.

The ducks make their nests among the rough hummocks, charac-
teristic of all grass-land in Iceland, laying their large, olive-green

230 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

eggs upon neat little beds of down, * so soft and brown.' They are
perfectly tame, allowing themselves to be lifted off their eggs and
replaced, with only a few querulous notes of remonstrance, or they
will flop slowly and heavily away for a few yards on the approach of
an intruder, waddling hastily back as soon as he retires. The duck is
of a mottled grey and brown colour, and is hardly to be distinguished
at a short distance, when squatted upon her nest ; it is she who-
furnishes the precious down. The drake, on the contrary, has a
showy black and white plumage, and is a remarkably conspicuous
bird ; he is not so tame as his mate, and has an easy time of it, while
she is attending to her domestic duties. When the nest, however,
has been repeatedly robbed of the down, and the poor duck finds-
difficulty in replacing it, the drake comes to the rescue, and recog-
nises his paternal responsibility by furnishing a supply of down from
his own breast.

Iceland is a pleasant country in which to spend a month of
summer, when there is no darkness, and when the longest riding ex-
peditions may be undertaken without any fear of being benighted.
The midnight sun may be seen resting on the surface of the Arctic
Ocean, not hasting to go down, nor up, and diffusing over moun-
tain and glacier for hours together those tints of purple and gold
which in lower latitudes last only for a few minutes at sunrise or
sunset. Such a spectacle is alone well worth a visit to Iceland r
although ice fogs render it almost as rare as an eruption of the Great
Geyser, and he maybe considered a lucky visitor who sees the midnight
sun. A day among the floating ice-fields, covering the sea as far as
the eye can reach, and blocking up the entrance to the northern
fjords, is a novel experience for a stranger from the South ; and as the-
steamer slowly winds her way along, seeking an open channel between
the brilliant blue-green edges of the broken ice, an idea may be
gained as to what an arctic voyage is like. The people of Iceland
are intelligent, cultivated, and kindly: there are barely 70,000 of
them scattered over an area equal to two-thirds of England and
Wales, yet they can boast of many learned men, and several poets
now living. In this respect no community of equal numbers can
rival them, and they deserve all praise for their gallant struggle with
nature, under a hostile sky, and on an ungrateful soil.

Draining and imported hay might enable the Icelanders to increase
the number of their permanent live stock to a considerable extent ;
but it is to the water rather than to the land that they must look
for increased prosperity. Fish of all sorts, including salmon, are Ice-
land's best and most certain crop — a crop which is not fully reaped
by the inhabitants of the island, partly owing to the want of decked
vessels adapted for deep- sea fishing, partly because the 'truck' system
prevails, and the fish cannot be sold on the spot for ready money.
Fleets of large fishing-boats spend the summer months at work off the

1880. ICELAND. 231

coasts of Iceland, but these are chiefly French or English, Norwe-
gian colours are frequently to be seen in Icelandic harbours, as they
are in every part of the globe ; but the Icelanders themselves have
ceased to be a sea-faring people, and rarely own anything more sea-
worthy than an open boat. They have recently been relieved from an
oppressive commercial monopoly which enriched a handful of Copen-
hagen merchants at their expense, and they are beginning to enter -
into trade ; their lack of capital is at present a serious impediments. .
but may be got over by the formation of co-operative companies.
Emigration to British North America has been attempted on a consi-
derable scale, under the auspices of the Canadian Government; but
the results have not been altogether encouraging, as might perhaps"
have been expected, when persons altogether unacquainted with agri-
culture were suddenly transferred to a country where they could only
thrive by the cultivation of the soil. A population of fishermen and
shepherds from the coasts of a treeless land is certainly ill prepared to
fell the forests and till the prairies of the American interior. The
Icelanders were the first Europeans to set foot in the New World, five-
hundred years before its re-discovery by the great Genoese ; but they
failed at that time to establish permanent colonies, possibly from the
same causes which even now tend to disqualify them for being suc-
cessful American -set tiers.

Like other races who are much exposed to inclement seasons ' and
churlish chiding of the winter's wind,' the Icelanders have a certain
harshness of feature, but there is a very pleasing expression in their
weather-beaten faces and frank blue eyes. In a sparsely peopled country,,
without public-houses of any sort, hospitality is a necessary virt«ey
and the Icelanders are hospitable to all comers, as far as their means
will permit. But to those who happen to live near much-frequented
tracks the burden of hospitality would be ruinous were it not customary
for them to accept a pecuniary present from such guests as are well
able to afford it. From foreign visitors a present is always expected,
although it is never demanded, and it is customary on taking leave
for the guest to hand a few marks to his host with a polite ' Vser saa
god ! ' (Be so good, or If you please). ' Mange Tak ! ' (Many thanks !)
is the usual reply, with a warm grasp of the hand, but not without
a careful inspection of the coin. The fare at an Icelandic Bser or farm
is often frugal enough, but the traveller may count at least upon a
draught of delicious milk, and need never scruple to ask for it. Un-
less he is invited to enter, he will drink it as a stirrup cup outside the
door ; for Icelandic etiquette forbids a stranger to walk into a house
without an express request. During the months when there is no
darkness in Iceland, midnight arrivals are of frequent occurrence :
the numerous dogs, reposing on the grassy roofs of the parsonage or
farmhouse, soon arouse the inmates by a noisy greeting to the tra-
vellers, and preparations are made for their reception in the guest-

232 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

chamber or in the church, if there is one close by. The church is
utilised for a variety of secular purposes, frequently as a storehouse
for the parson's wool, and as regards air and light is usually a prefer-
able bed-room to the guest-chamber of the establishment ; being
built entirely of wood, without any turf on the roof, it is also much
drier than ordinary Icelandic habitations.

On one occasion we arrived, a party of three, at midnight, and
found no one stirring about the farm except a woman, who was watch-
ing the cattle in the home-field or ' Tun.' Being invited into the
house, we entered the usual dark passage, sliding and stumbling over
the slippery and uneven pavement, and knocking our heads against
the low beams of the roof. The guest-chamber contained only one
bed, which the good woman at once proceeded to arrange for us all
three to sleep in, heads and tails, like herrings in a barrel. Two of
us being tall and one stout, while the bed was both short and narrow,
it was clear that this arrangement would not be suitable ; but polite-
ness sealed our mouths, and we solemnly watched her operations, as
she spread the couch with pillows at both ends, and removed from its
interior a great variety of household articles, for which it was used as
a general receptacle. As soon as she had retired our suppressed
merriment burst forth, and we soon dragged bedding and eiderdown
quilts off the bed enough to make two lairs in other parts of the room.
Although we were of various nationalities (a Dane, an American, and
an Englishman), and had all three travelled much and roughed it in
many countries, we had never elsewhere witnessed similar bedmaking
nor seen a bedstead used instead of a wardrobe and cupboard.

A gun and a fishing-rod may come into real use during a ride in
Iceland : ptarmigan and golden plover abound on the fells and heaths,
and furnish a very agreeable addition to the traveller's fare, even when
simply cooked in a boiling spring ; the same may be said of the lake
char, which are remarkably fine. A light tent with a couple of
waterproof blankets can easily be carried by a single pony, and will
make the traveller independent, even of churches, as regards sleep ;
occasionally a tent is offered by a farmer to a foreign visitor, and if
he accepts it, he will probably find, on comparing notes, that he has
had more untroubled repose outside than his guide inside the house.
Besides this equipment nothing is required except a couple of stout
boxes of native manufacture, to be fastened like panniers upon a pony,
and warranted to stand any amount of knocking about.

In order to travel with speed and comfort, each horseman requires
a couple of ponies, which are saddled and ridden alternately, while the
loose horses and those carrying the baggage are driven forward in a
little herd, with shouts and cracking of whips. Spurs are unknown,
and an Icelandic whip is certainly a most humane invention, with a
thin leather strap for a thong, and devoid altogether of a lash ; the
ponies despise it utterly, and although it makes a noise, it evidently

1880. ICELAND. 233

does not hurt. Hearing a loud sound of blows on one occasion about
twelve o'clock at night, I looked out of the window, and saw our host
angrily belabouring a man with a riding-whip ; the individual
assailed made no attempt to retaliate, hardly even to ward off the
blows, receiving each with a mild ejaculation of ' Nei I '

Outside the little town of Eeykjavik there are no roads, merely
tracks, worn deeply by the feet of ponies in soft peat, or in hard lava,
but among loose stones marked out with cairns known as 'old
women ' (Kerlingar). Along these tracks the ponies pick their way
with singular intelligence, invariably selecting the safest place for
crossing a ' HerSi ' (boggy heath), a ' Hraun ' (lava stream), a river, or
a snowdrift. Accustomed from his birth to find his own way over his
wild mountain pastures, an Iceland pony is so clever and sure-footed
as to give his rider a sense of security, even in the most awkward
places, and if left to himself he will never make a mistake. He is as
cautious as an elephant, snuffing at every suspicious place, and test-
ing it with his forefoot ; if dissatisfied, nothing will induce him to
proceed, and he turns aside to search for a safer way, being particu-
larly on his guard when crossing water upon a bridge of snow, or when
in the neighbourhood of boiling springs. Even where the ground
was roughest I have not hesitated to throw the bridle on the pony's
neck, and open a knife in order to scrape certain cartridges too large
for the rifle which I carried under my arm. The gallant little beast
picks his way rapidly over all obstacles, like the sturdy Stulka, who
can knit and stare at the passing stranger, while she strides along
over ' Hraun ' and * Heifti,' as if she were on a shaven lawn. Boggy
ground is to a horseman always a very troublesome obstacle ; but so
remarkably dry was the country in June 1878, that bogs could be
avoided, and we were a good deal annoyed by dust and drifting sand.
The ponies got nothing to eat, except the scanty herbage by the
wayside, and were much disposed to linger, wherever they could find
a few blades of grass. To any such temptation the poor animals were,
however, not often exposed, and they jogged along with great perse-
verance, making up for little food with much drink at the numerous
streams which they had to ford.

Fords across glacier torrents full of rocky boulders are often
disagreeable, sometimes dangerous, and bridges are very rare ; I only
saw two. For crossing rivers too deep to be forded, there are ferries,
where the horses are unloaded and unsaddled ; one or two are then
towed behind the boat, and the rest swim across after them.

Iceland ponies are generally of a light colour, dun, pale chestnut,
white, or piebald ; under a rough exterior they hide many good
qualities, and are as well adapted for the peculiar country which they
inhabit as is the noblest thoroughbred of Arabia. A vicious animal
is almost unknown, and a dealer in ponies, who has passed more of
them through his hands than anybody else in the business, assured me

234 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

that he has not encountered more than one. The endurance of the little
nags is astonishing : they will keep up a steady jog for hours together,
and will travel on through the long summer days of northern latitudes,
with no other sustenance than may be picked up during an hour's
midway halt.

Distances in Iceland cannot be estimated correctly from examina-
tion of the map, as the tracks are of necessity circuitous, avoiding as
far as possible swamps or lava, and leading to fords or passes.

The best ground for travelling is usually that which lies just along
the lowest part of the hill slopes : beneath are moss-hags and marshes,
above are moss-hags and rocks, while there is a strip of tolerable grass
between. Caravans of ponies are constantly moving to and from the
coast during summer: going down country they are laden with wool,
going up country they are almost concealed under loads of planks and
dried cod's-heads. The heads are that portion of the fish which the
Icelanders reserve for their own consumption, while the bodies are
sent to Spain and other Roman Catholic countries. Wood is
imported from Norway, and must be carried into the interior on
horseback, in the absence of roads and wheeled vehicles ; I once saw
a wheelbarrow, never a cart.

Wool, on the other hand, is the chief article of export, besides dried
fish, and is of excellent quality, although it presents a very ragged
appearance, not being shorn, but simply pulled off the sheep's back ;
unlike the ponies, the sheep are commonly dark in colour, black or
brown.

Farmers in Iceland are obliged to combine a good many trades
and accomplishments : they must be their own carpenters and black-
smiths, they must know how to mend almost anything that they are
in the habit of using, and even how to make a piece of packthread do
duty upon occasion for a saddle-girth. Shoes are rarely worn, the
ordinary chaussure being moccasins of untanned sheepskin, over
which for riding are drawn huge ' skin-socks,' or loose jack-boots, of
the same parchment material, well greased and water-tight.

Roughing it in every possible way, facing all the hardships of a
colonial pioneer, without his prospects and hopes, in a land which
seems to have been left unfinished by the hand of nature, and under a
most inclement sky, the Icelander still enjoys the first of blessings, a
healthy and vigorous constitution. Not only do Icelanders frequently
live to be very old, but they almost always look younger than their true-
age ; they are late in attaining their full stature and strength, and
the hair of a sexagenarian is almost untinged with grey. A youthful
appearance in elderly men is a pretty certain sign of having enjoyed
habitual good health, and it seems as if a diet of fish and dairy
produce, which Icelanders consume in great abundance, must be
strongly conducive to longevity.

At the present time, when Italians and Germans display their

1880. ICELAND. 235

readiness to sink all minor differences in order to build up one great
nationality, it is disappointing to find among Scandinavians so little
of the political wisdom which has made Piedmont, Lombardy,
Tuscany, Eomagna, and the Two Sicilies into the kingdom of Italy,
and has welded so many petty principalities into the mighty German
Empire. The last scene has just been played in that tragic farce,
whereby an integral portion of Scandinavian territory has been
annexed to Germany, and it is to be feared that the Danes of North
Slesvig must now finally reconcile themselves to be Danes no longer.
Such has been the result of the policy pursued by successive Danish
rulers, who persisted in separating the Duchy of Slesvig from the
Danish monarchy and uniting it by dynastic ties with the German
province of Holstein : the greater body has attracted the lesser.
Holstein, once a State of the German Confederation, is now a province
of the German Empire, and Slesvig has shared her fate.

To a sympathetic foreigner it seems as if nothing can save the
Danes of the kingdom from being drawn in the same direction as the
Slesvigers, except union with their Scandinavian brethren on the other
side of the Sound. When we are told of jealousies subsisting between
Denmark and Sweden, or between Copenhagen and Stockholm, or of
dynastic difficulties being insuperable, we cannot help feeling that
Scandinavians either do not realise the perils of the situation, or that
they are indifferent as to the continued existence of their own noble
nationality. Unless Sweden is contented to become even as Finland,
and unless Jutland wishes to follow Slesvig, the three Northern crowns
must be again united upon one head, as they were upon that of
Margaret, ' Kong Volmers Datter prud.'

The Italians were in earnest about an independent Italy, and the
Houses of Bourbon, Este, and Lorraine were obliged to retire in
favour of the House of Savoy, nor were the differences of dialect in
the various provinces regarded as any valid impediment to union.
The Germans were also in earnest when the Empire was consolidated,
and the dynastic claims of royal and serene personages in Hanover,
Nassau and Hesse were not allowed to stand in the way of a change
essential to the greatness, if not to the security, of the German people.
It is difficult to believe that Scandinavians can be in earnest as to
maintaining their own independence when they urge the existence of
a modern Swedish law (excluding females from the throne) as a
serious objection to the ultimate union of the three crowns upon the
head of the young prince whose parents are the Crown Prince of
Denmark and the only daughter of the late King of Sweden and
Norway. If the heirs male of Bernadotte, the Bearnais, are to be
regarded as having a divine right of succession, and if a rivalry
between Copenhagen and Stockholm is sufficient to prevent Sweden
from being united to Denmark, as she is already united to Norway,
there is a serious danger lest Scandinavia should become what Italy

236 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

once was — ' a mere geographical expression.' Such a consummation
would be a cause of sincere regret to the people of Great Britain, who
are justly proud of their Scandinavian ancestry, and who claim to
have inherited their naval supremacy from the hardy Sea-kings of the
North.

The establishment of a united Scandinavian nation, a free mari-
time, Protestant people, of our own kindred, would seem to be a
political event in all respects desirable from an English point of view,
and calculated to frustrate territorial aggressions on the part of the
two great military empires by which the existence of the Scandina-
vian kingdoms is now menaced.

The Northern question as well as the Eastern affects British
interests ; the Sound is a channel of commerce not less important than
the Bosphorus ; and a free Copenhagen is as essential to Europe as a
free Constantinople.

The dynastic union of Sweden and Norway was accomplished by
force, against the wishes of the Norwegian people ; but both countries
are now prosperous and contented, each enjoying self-government
within its own borders, and being united for all purposes of external
defence. It is difficult to discover any valid reason why the * United
Kingdoms ' should not be three, instead of two, and why Denmark
should not aspire to be the third kingdom of the league, which would
unite all Scandinavians, 8,000,000 in number — a nation strong enough,
with Western alliances, to defend itself against its formidable neigh-
bours on the east and on the south.

DAVID WEDDERBURN.

1880. 237

REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT IN
THE COLONIES.

KECENT events in more than one of our most important colonies have
revived the apprehensions of those who have anticipated at former
periods the failure of the system called ' Eesponsible Government '
in communities unadapted, as they conceived, for its successful
development. The dead lock of 1878 in the colony of Victoria,
and the almost simultaneous ministerial crisis at the Cape, and the
disputes of last year in New South Wales, present conspicuous
examples of these embarrassments.

We are also frequently reminded, as an element of difficulty, of
the vast numerical disproportion in our Asiatic and African depen-
dencies between the dominant aftd subject races, the latter out-
numbering the former by more than thirty to one. Nor can it be
denied that this disproportion, aggravated as it is by the infinite
diversities in race, language, and religion of the native populations,
presents political difficulties sufficiently formidable.

To retain under a common dominion

The thousand tribes nourished on strange religions,
And lawless slaveries,

which we have gradually gathered under our rule, to apportion equi-
tably as between ourselves and our dependencies the powers to be
exercised and the burdens to be borne by each : — all these were tasks
hard enough for autocrats unfettered by Parliaments. Problems
such as these perplex even now our Indian Administration.

But the case of our self-governing colonies of which we now speak
is far more complicated. For when not only full powers were conceded
to colonial assemblies over their territorial revenues, but they were
enabled to displace by their votes the Ministry by whose aid the re-
presentative of the Crown was carrying out his Imperial instructions, it
became obvious that the last-named functionary might be called upon
at any time to choose which of his two masters he was to obey.

The system of 'responsible government' began in our colonies
about forty years ago. After the lapse of so long a period it may
not be uninteresting briefly to revert to the circumstances under
which it was first inaugurated.

In 1838 an attempt was made in Canada to place the Executive

238 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

•

Council on the same tenure of responsibility to the Assembly of that
province as that now held by the British Ministry in reference to the
House of Commons — removeable, that is to say, by vote of censure.
In a despatch addressed to Lord Sydenham, and dated the 14th of
October, 1839, Lord J. Eussell, then Secretary of State for the Colo-
nies, thus expressed himself on the subject:—

It appears from Sir George Arthur's despatches that you may encounter much
difficulty in subduing the excitement which prevails on the question of what is
called responsible government. I have to instruct you, however, to refuse any
explanation which may be construed to imply an acquiescence in the petitions and
addresses on this subject The power for which a Minister is responsible in England
is not his own power, but the power of the Crown, of winch he is for the time tho
organ. It is obvious that the executive councillor of a colony is in a situation
totally different.

The Governor under whom he serves receives his orders from the Crown of
England. But can the Colonial Council be the advisers of the Crown of England ?
Evidently not, for the Crown has other advisers for the same functions, and with
superior authority. It may happen, therefore, that the Governor receives at one and
the same time instructions from the Queen and advice from his Executive Council
totally at variance with each other. If he is to obey his instructions from England,
the parallel of Constitutional responsibility entirely fails. If, on the other hand,
he is to follow the advice of his Council, he is no longer a subordinate officer but an,
independent Sovereign.

This despatch was immediately followed by another, bearing date
the 16th of October in the same year, the object of which is stated
to be to lay down certain rules in Canada respecting the tenure by
which offices in the gift of the Crown were then held throughout the
British colonies. In this second despatch Lord John Russell instructs
Lord Sydenham that hereafter the tenure of certain enumerated
functionaries being members of council and heads of departments
holding office during Her Majesty's pleasure would not be regarded as
equivalent to a tenure during good behaviour, but that such officers
would be called upon to retire from the public service ' as often as any
sufficient motives of public policy might suggest the expediency of
that measure.' This despatch has been interpreted to sanction the
removal, by vote of eensure or otherwise, of the members of executive
councils whenever unable to command majorities in the representative
assemblies ; and has been thus regarded as the charter of ' responsible
government,' in respect of which Lord John Russell had two days
previously forbidden Lord Sydenham to grant any explanation which
might imply acquiescence.

The principles involved in responsible government are nowhere
more plainly defined than in the following resolutions passed by the
House of Assembly of Canada in September 1841 : —

I. That the head of the executive Government of the province being within tha
limits of his Government the Representative of the Sovereign, is responsible to the
Imperial authority alone, but that nevertheless the management of our local affairs
can only be conducted by him, by and with the assistance, counsel, and information
of subordinate officers in the province.

1880. COLONIAL REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. 239

II. That in order to insure between the different branches of the provincial
Parliaments that harmony which is essential to the peace, welfare, and good
government of the province, the chief advisers of the Representative of the
Sovereign constituting a provincial Administration under him ought to be men
possessed of the confidence of the Representatives of the people. Thus affording a
guarantee that the well-understood wishes and interests of the people, which our
gracious Sovereign has declared shall be the rule of the Provincial Government,
will on all occasions be faithfully represented and advocated.

The principle involved in these resolutions is now established and
acknowledged in five of the provinces confederated with Canada in
1867, in Newfoundland, the Cape Colony, New Zealand, Tasmania,
and the four chief colonies of the Australian group.1

The formal step by which responsible government is usually
established in a colony is the insertion in the Governor's instructions
of an unlimited power to appoint new councillors, subject to the
Oown's confirmation, it being understood that councillors who have
lost the confidence of the local legislature will tender their resigna-
tion to the Governor.

But responsible government, like all other critically devised
political machines, has been often out of repair, and lias undergone
•considerable changes since its first invention. We sometimes hear
of 'judge-made law.' Responsible government having been manu-
factured by Lord John Russell and Lord Sydenham, has been since
tinkered by successive Colonial Secretaries and Governors. For
instance, the Duke of Newcastle, writing in 1862 to the Governor of
•Queensland, gays that

The general principle by which the Governor of a Colony possessing responsible
•Government is to be guided is this, that when Imperial interests are concerned ha
is to consider himself the guardian of those interests, but in matters of purely
local politics he is bound1, except in extreme cases, to follow the advice of a Ministry
which appears to possess the confidence of the Legislature.

But extreme cases are those which cannot be reduced to any recognised
principle, arising in circumstances which it is impossible or unwise to anticipate,
^xnd of which the full force can in general be estimated only by persons in im-
mediate contact with them.

In plainer words, the Duke might have said to the Governor : ' When
you get into a scrape with your Parliament, get out of it as best you
•can, but don't look to the Secretary of State.'

Again, in 1868, the Duke of Buckingham, in attempting to deal
•with a dispute which had then arisen between the two branches of
the Legislature in the colony of Victoria, in respect of a proposed
grant of 20,000£. to Lady Darling, imitates the example above quoted
-of Lord John Russell, and perplexes the then Governor of Victoria,
Lord Canterbury, with instructions, following each other at the brief
interval of a month, which it is difficult to reconcile.

1 Besides the thirteen colonies possessing responsible government, there are cine
others in which a representative element exists.

240 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

The practical question which then arose was very much the same
as that which perplexed Sir George Bowen in the same colony two
years ago when the dispute as to payment of members arose — namely,
whether the Executive Council and Assembly of Victoria could over-
ride the Legislative Council, by tacking items of disputed policy to
the Appropriation Bill. But, in both the cases of 1868 and 1877,
the subject-matter in dispute (though involving a constitutional
question of some importance) was merely local — it might be almost
added, personal — and of little interest beyond the limits of the
colony, certainly not worth risking a collision between the Victorians
and the Imperial Government.

The issue raised by the attempt of the late Prime Minister of
Victoria to deprive the Legislative Council of all financial powers,
and to reduce it to a body of nominees whose decisions may at any
moment be swamped by a plebiscite, is of course a very serious one.
But it is in the colony itself that the question must be settled. For
the constitution of Victoria was framed in 1855 by the colonists
themselves. They created a bi-cameral Parliament, and if a dead-
lock arises which impedes its action, it can only be on the united
solicitation of both Houses so created that the Imperial Government
can with any hope of success, or indeed with constitutional propriety,
intervene.

But the embarrassments which may beset the Queen's repre-
sentative in working out the theory of responsible government have
received their most conspicuous illustrations in New Zealand and in
South Africa. For one decade at least during the brief annals of the
former colony, comprising even now little more than forty years, the
energies of the parent State were expended in adjusting the endless
disputes between the European and native populations.

Twice was the same officer summoned somewhat abruptly from
other Governments on the simple ground of his supposed qualifica-
tions for dealing with native races and the problems arising out of
their treatment. The policy of Sir George Grey and its results form
no part of our present inquiry, except so far as they may illustrate
the accumulated difficulties of each advancing stage of colonial Keif-
government. During his first administration, which began in 1845,
and closed before responsible government was full blown in New
Zealand, Sir G. Grey was practically an autocrat, whose fiat was law,
except in those rare instances in which it might be reversed or
modified by the Home authorities. Contrast this comparatively calm
political horizon with the storms which greeted the same Governor on
his return, only a few years later, to resume his former administra-
tion. It was not only that a newly-elected Legislature, flushed by
successful conflicts with his predecessor, had been in the meantime
substituted for the simple machinery which had before proved the
unresisting instrument of his will ; but even the native policy, which

1880. COLONIAL REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. 241

he had been specially commissioned to regulate, was gradually drift-
ing from his control. The functionaries to whom, under various
titles, the protectorship of native rights and lands was officially com-
mitted, scarcely knew whether they owed allegiance to the Home
authorities in Downing Street or to the Colonial Ministry in Auck-
land. The same might almost be said of the large army of Imperial
troops, which, though nominally commanded by Imperial officers,
and drawing its pay from the Imperial treasury, was by the mysterious
working of responsible government compelled to march or halt with
inarionette-like obedience to the colonial managers who pulled the
wires. Thus it came to pass that while the "Waikato chieftains were
laying in abundant supplies of powder and copper caps, illegally
purchased from colonial traders, deepening their rifle-pits and strength-
ening the stockades which surrounded their forest fastnesses, the
Governor and his executive councillors were brandishing in each other's
faces the ' memoranda ' of their quarrels. At the same time the
Commander of the Forces and the Deputy Commissary-General were
wrangling with the civil power over the tactics by which they were to
terminate a war, which was, in fact, only ended at last by the simple
process of withdrawing the Imperial troops, and leaving the respon-
sible government of New Zealand to fight its own battles and pay its
own bills. And now fifteen more years have passed away, and though
over 40,000 natives still survive, Maori wars are a matter of history ;
and the Governor of other days was, about a year ago, in his capacity
of Prime Minister of New Zealand, giving lessons in responsible
government to Lord Normanby.

But if it has been through much tribulation that self-government
has been wrought out in New Zealand, what shall be said of the
processes by which it has been accomplished in the Cape Colony.

In South Africa, as in New Zealand, the native difficulty has
been the chief problem to be solved ; but in the former with two
aggravations not present in the latter case.

First. We have at the Cape succeeded to a Dutch occupation of
more than a century and a half, and it has resulted that two-thirds
of the whole European population of the South African colonies
(certainly not less than 200,000) are of Dutch descent.

Secondly. The coloured population of British South Africa
numbers nearly two millions, who (unlike the 40,000 Maoris of New
Zealand) are a vigorous and increasing race, showing no tendency to
amalgamate with, or succumb to, the European population, who form
less than one-seventh of their number. It is difficult to imagine
circumstances more unfavourable to self-government ; and when it is
farther considered that the outlying provinces, as West Griqua Land,
the Transvaal, and the independent Orange Free State, have all been
mainly formed by Dutch farmers ' trecking ' away from the old colony
in order to enjoy freedom from what they regarded as the rigorous
VOL. VIII.— No. 42. II

242 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

philanthropy of our native policy, it will not be a matter of surprise
if we find our successive Governors sometimes bewildered in their
attempts to reconcile interests so conflicting.

During the period of seventy years British occupation of the
Cape, from 1806 to 1877 inclusive, we have had six Kaffir wars, and
the last, which can hardly be said to be as yet a matter of the past,
has afforded one of the most remarkable illustrations of the practical
difficulties of responsible government. The system was first intro-
duced in the Cape Colony, only six years ago — not at the demand of
the colonists, as in Canada and Australia — but rather under pressure
from the Home Government. The bill establishing it was carried in
the Cape Parliament, by a majority of seven in the House of Assem-
bly, and of only one in the Legislative Council, and would probably
not have been carried at all but for the reluctance of some leading
men in both Houses to oppose a pet project of the Government.

Mr. Molteno, the first Premier, contrived to hold the balance
with tolerable success for some six years ; but when in 1877 a frontier
war broke out with the Galekas, and the colony was at the same time
threatened with aggression from the Zulus, a question arose which
strained to the utmost the workings of representative government.
The available Imperial force in the colony consisted then mainly of
two regiments, supported by mounted police, volunteers, and Fingo
levies.

It was under these circumstances that the Prime Minister and
the Commissioner of Crown Lands, both civilians, claimed on behalf
of the Colonial Ministry military control over the movements of all
the colonial troops ; and, in spite of the grave remonstrances of the
Governor, Sir Bartle Frere, against the perils certain to arise from a
divided command, these gentlemen succeeded for a time in seriously
embarrassing the action both of the Commander of the Forces and of
the Governor.

It seemed to me [writes Sir Bartle Frere, in addressing the Secretary of State, on
the 5th of February 1878] that it was quite impossible to allow this state of things
to continue. If Ministers were justified in their proceedings, there was no course
consistent with the respect due to H. M.'s Government and the safety of H. M.'s
forces, but to withdraw the Governor, the Commander of the Forces, and troops,
as distinctly suggested by Ministers. This was obviously impossible at present
with any regard for the safety of the Eastern province, and there seemed no course
open to me consistent with my duty to the Colony and H. M.'s Government but to
intimate to Ministers that their services were dispensed with, and that I must
endeavour to find successors who would carry on the government of the country
more in accordance with what seemed to me the obvious requirements of law and
reason, and with due regard to the public peace and safety.

In a subsequent despatch, addressed also to the Secretary of State,
and dated the 21st of May, 1878, Sir B. Frere adds :—

It is, I believe, the constitutional duty of the Governor rand Commander in
Chief to guard against such a dangerous anomaly as a divided command of military

1880. COLONIAL REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. 243

forces operating for a common object in one area of operations ; and if Ministers
insisted on such a divided command it "would, I believe, be tlie Governor's duty to
prevent by all constitutional means in his power their imperilling the safety of the
State by any such division of authority and responsibility.

In the meantime, military operations on a great scale were un-
dertaken by colonial forces acting under the orders of civilians, with-
out previous communication with the Governor or Commander of the
Forces, and in direct opposition to the advice and opinion of both
functionaries. After many communications, written and oral, be-
tween the Governor and his Ministers, in the course of which resig-
nations were tendered and withdrawn, but no disposition was manifested
on the part of Mr. Molteno and his colleagues to recede from the
position they had taken up, Sir B. Frere deemed it necessary, in
February 1878, to dismiss them from office; whereupon Mr. Gordon
Sprigg, who had up to that time led the Opposition, formed a new
Ministry. The Secretary of State, in replying to the Governor's
despatch announcing the dismissal of the Cape Ministry, and its
cause, states very distinctly the constitutional grounds on which the
action of Sir Bartle Frere in this matter was entirely approved by
the Home Government.

In a despatch dated the 21st of March 1878, Sir M. Hicks
Beach, after commenting on the confusion and disaster inevitably
consequent on a divided military command, goes on to say : —

One important constitutional question is here raised, as to the power of the
Prime Minister of the Cape Colony to appoint an executive officer to take command
of military operations without your consent as Governor and Commander in Chief.
In civil matters, lying entirely within the Cape Colony, I desire, of course, that
the responsibility of your Ministers for the time being should be as full and complete
as in other colonies under the same form of government, but in affairs such as
those in which you have been recently engaged your functions are clearly defined
by the terms of your commission. As the Queen's High Commissioner you are
specially required and instructed to do all such things as you lawfully can to
prevent the recurrence of any irruptions into II. M.'s possessions of the tribes
inhabiting the adjacent territories, and to maintain those possessions in peace and
safety, and all the Queen's officers and ministers, civil and military, are commanded
and required to aid and assist you to this end. I am, therefore, surprised that on
the occurrence of any difference of opinion as to the conduct of the war your
Ministers should have hesitated to subordinate their opinion to yours, it being
obvious that the successful and speedy suppression of the present outbreak con-
cerns either directly or indirectly the interests of large numbers of H. M.'s subjects
in South Africa.

It will be observed that while condemning the action of the Cape
Ministers as impolitic and dangerous, the main ground on which Sir
M. Hicks Beach rests his censure of it is, as being unconstitutional
and inconsistent with the Royal Commission and instructions of the
Governor ; and it was perhaps the more important that the Secretary
of State should dwell on this point as the most critical that had ever
arisen in a self-governing colony. There had been, it is true, grave

n 2

244 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

disputes between civil and military officers fifteen years ago, both in
New Zealand and in Jamaica, to which it ia only necessary to advert
here, in order to distinguish between them and the recent controversy
at the Cape. A wrangling correspondence, occupying sixty-nine
closely printed folio pages, was carried on in 1865 between Governor
Grey and General Cameron, at a period when the critical position
of New Zealand demanded, above all things, the most perfect accord
between all the executive departments of the Government ; and at
about the same time a smaller squabble arose in Jamaica between
Governor Eyre and General O'Connor, at a moment when the
imminent peril of that colony was, according to the concurrent
statements of both officers, necessitating a series of official battues
among the negro population. But neither in the New Zealand nor
in the Jamaica case were these untimely departmental disputes
aggravated, as now at the Cape, by any unconstitutional extrava-
gances, professing to be founded on the laws and traditions of re-
sponsible government. I do not affect to arbitrate on the past dispute
between Sir Bartle Frere and his Ministers. Though no longer to be
described as a lis pendens, it may possibly raise hereafter collateral
points, such as the policy of employing Imperial troops, under any
circumstances, in Cape frontier wars, an issue foreign to the purpose
of our present enquiry. But it has been dwelt upon at some length,
as a case in which the principles of responsible government have been
subjected to a strain unexampled in our colonial annals. And
there may be those who, in contemplating these difficulties, incidental
as they may at first sight seem to the premature application of self-
government to communities unripe for them, would at once counsel
a return to a more autocratic policy. But apart from the dangers
proverbially incidental to all backward steps in administration, there
are special reasons in the present instance which would render such
retrogression both impracticable and impolitic, for we have, in fact,
no alternative but to advance.

The romantic dream of summoning Colonial Eepresentatives to
the Imperial Parliament has been dissipated by the irrevocable
grant of independent Legislatures to all our most important colonies.
To secure harmonious working between these Legislatures and the
Imperial Executive is the practical problem now before us. The
most recent illustration of the difficulties attending its solution is
afforded by our South African Colonies, comprising an area of more
than 400,000 square miles, and a population of which perhaps about
one in every thirty is of British origin. Five thousand miles of ocean
lie between England and Cape Town. Telegraphy has done little as
yet to abridge this distance. What Burke said 100 years ago of our
North American Colonies is true to-day of the Cape : ' No contrivance
can prevent the effect of distance in weakening Government. Seas
roll and months pass between the order and the execution, and the

1880. COLONIAL REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. 245

want of a speedy explanation of a single point is enough to defeat a
whole system.'

Sir B. Frere was sent to the Cape in the spring of 1877. During
the Trans-Kei and Zulu wars which have since taken place,
despatches have constantly reached the Colony too late to affect the
action of the Governor. He found on his arrival that under the
authority of a Commission issued some six months before, a Dutch
Eepublic larger than the United Kingdom, and enjoying the luxuries
of both bankruptcy and anarchy, had been added to his unwieldy
empire. Much mischief has resulted, for which Sir B. Frere is wholly
irresponsible. Nevertheless, he has to stand a galling fire for the
acts of others. The attacks led by Sir C. Dilke and Lord Lansdowne
last year have been now renewed, and are feebly parried by the
Prime Minister, who contents himself by pleading for a brief respite
for the Governor until he shall have completed the work of confedera-
ting the South African Colonies, which, according to our latest
advices, decline to be confederated. Whether this task of welding
together old colonies with new ones, of reconciling the political
claims of Kaffirs and Dutchmen, of colonists who have tasted the
sweets of self-government with those who know nothing of its
charms, is ever likely to be accomplished at all is by no means
certain. But to commit such a task to a representative of the
Crown with a ' rope round his neck,' which the Imperial Govern-
ment may tighten whether he fails or succeeds, is not a very hopeful
experiment in the best interests of colonial administration. The
moral of it all is that if you send proconsuls to your colonies, you
must ' trust them not at all or all in all.'

Responsible government has now been established for good or evil
in all our important groups of colonies, which have been and are large
fields for British settlement and enterprise. In our North American,
South African, and Australasian colonies, the same causes which have
led to government by party, in all countries in which representative
government exists at all, have naturally operated.

Men desire [says Adam Smith] to have some share in the management of public
affairs chiefly on account of the importance it gives them. Upon the power which
the leading men, the natural aristocracy of every country, have of preserving or
defending their respective importance depends the stability and duration of every
system of free government. In the attacks which these leading men are con-
tinually making upon the importance of one another, and in defence of their own,
consists the whole play of domestic faction and ambition.3

And though it may be as true even now, in our most advanced
colonies, as in the days of Lord Metcalfe, that ' statesmanship has not
risen to an independent position, but is an appendage to the more
certain support of professional occupation,' and that consequently
there may still be a deficiency of men uniting the qualifications of
2 Wealth of Nations, book iv. cap. 7.

246 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

leisure, capacity, and inclination for the task of legislation ; never-
theless, experience has proved that the safety-valve afforded by re-
sponsible government is and will continue to be our best security
against the restlessness of those active spirits who naturally seek to
reproduce a counterpart of our home institutions in the outlying
provinces of our empire.

It is not too much to say that it is on the condition of maintain-
ing and expanding the principle of self-government, and on that
condition alone, that we can hope to maintain a durable political
union with our distant dependencies. It must be borne in mind
that Great Britain alone, among the five States of modern Europe
which have, at various periods, attempted the occupation and govern-
ment of distant provinces, still retains a large portion of her dominions.
Portugal. Spain, Holland, and France, each in their turn aspired to
colonial empire of precisely the same fragmentary and disjointed
character as that which now owns the sway of England. There was
an age when 150 sovereign princes paid tribute to the treasury of
Lisbon ; for 200 years more than half the South American continent
was an appanage of Spain. Ceylon, the Cape, Guiana, and a vast
cluster of trading factories in the East, were at the close of the
seventeenth century colonies of Holland ; while half North America,
comprising the vast and fertile valleys of the St. Lawrence, the
Mississippi, and the Ohio, owned, little more than a hundred years
ago, the sceptre of France. Neither Portugal, Spain, Holland, nor
France have lacked able rulers or statesmen, but the colonial empire
of each has crumbled and decayed. The exceptional position of
Great Britain in this respect can only be ascribed to the relinquish-
ment of all the advantages, political and commercial, ordinarily
presumed to result to dominant States from the possession of de-
pendencies. Imperial England not only exacts no tribute, and
imposes no commercial restrictions, but protects by her navy the
courses of her colonial trade, and shields her colonists from all
perils which may be the outcome of Imperial policy. It is true
that by a wise limitation of her liability, Great Britain no longer
undertakes, as formerly, to scatter over her dependencies fragments
of her land forces for the purpose of discharging in cases of internal
disturbance, as an imperial police, duties which obviously appertain
to the local administration of each colony, but with this reservation
it is distinctly understood that an aggression on even the remotest
portion of the British empire is and will be regarded as an attack
on Great Britain herself. It is not, perhaps, surprising that our
colonists should acquiesce complacently in an arrangement involving
a distribution of burdens and privileges so eminently favourable to
themselves. The objection, if any, to such a contract might have
been expected to arise rather in the interests of the parent state
than of the colonies. And if claims are sometimes urged, as recently

1880. COLONIAL REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. 247

at the Cape, inconsistent with the terms on which alone any central
responsibility for the peace and good order of the empire can be
undertaken, it will generally be found that the error has arisen from
an entire misconception of the basis on which alone a lasting relation
between England and her colonies can be founded. For the only
possible condition on which a responsibility so vast can be fulfilled
is that of the undisputed recognition of the supreme authority of the
Queen's representative, whenever perils may threaten any outlying
province of her empire. It is not in the interests of the central
power, but in those of the safety and well-being of all concerned, that
the retention of such a prerogative is essential ; nor can it be
regarded as at all inconsistent with the fullest development of
responsible government in our colonies. Indeed, any other ar-
rangement must inevitably lead to that irresponsibility which is
the parent of anarchy, and a long experience has proved that the most
perfect freedom in all matters of civil government is consistent with
the maintenance of this prerogative. If we exacted from our fellow-
subjects at the Cape or elsewhere that (like the thirteen United
States before the revolution) they should provide the whole cost of
their defence from the produce of their own taxes, they might per-
haps apply to their position the good old maxim that * he who pays
the piper orders the tune.' But our policy is at once wiser and more
generous, and with the responsibility of defence follows the preroga-
tive of command. The House of Commons affirmed in 1862 the
recommendations of the Committee on Colonial Military Expenditure,
by adopting the following resolution : — ,

That this House, while fully recognising the claims of all portions of the
British Empire to protection against perils arising from the consequences of Imperial
policy, is of opinion that colonies exercising the right of self-government ought to
undertake the main responsibility of providing for their own internal order and
security, and ought to assist in their own external defence.

It will be by extending the principle of colonial self-government that
we shall be able to extend that of colonial self-defence, and it is by
grouping our colonies wherever practicable, that both these objects
will be best attained. It is too late to speculate whether bargains
might have been made long ago with our Colonies for their own
self-defence, and for free-trade with us, as the price for the conces-
sion of self-government. Such stipulations, if attempted, would
probably have failed. Now, at all events, our trust for friendly
tariffs, and for co-operation in the defence of the Empire, must be
on the influence of an enlightened public opinion on the free Colonial
Parliaments which we have ourselves created.

For while the Crown reserves precisely the same control over the
external relations of all our dependencies as over those of the British
islands, the Parliaments of the thirteen colonies in which respon-
sible government has been established exercise precisely the same

248 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

unfettered administration over all the internal affairs of those
colonies as is exercised at home by the Imperial Parliament, and
it is in the uncontrolled exercise of these powers by our colonies that
we shall find our surest guarantee for their enduring connection with
the parent State. It is true that by the gradual relaxation of the
ties of dependence the union must more and more lose the protective
and approximate to the federative character.

But it does not follow [says Mr. Merivale] as a necessary consequence that the
attainment of domestic freedom is inconsistent with a continued dependence on the
Imperial Sovereignty. The epoch of separation is not marked and definite, a
necessary point in the cycle of human affairs, as some theorists have regarded it, for
the mer« political link of Sovereignty may remain by amicable consent long after
the Colony has acquired sufficient strength to stand alone. On such conditions as
these, and assuredly if not on these then on none — may we not conceive England
as retaining the seat of the Chief Executive Authority, the prescriptive reverence
of her station — the superiority belonging to her vast accumulated wealth as the
commercial Metropolis of the world, and linked by those ties only with a hundred
nations not unconnected like those which yielded to the spear of the Roman, but
her own children, owning one law and one language. s

By whatever other agencies this consummation may be attained,
one, at all events, will be the fearless extension through all those dis-
tant provinces whose subjection could never have been enforced by
bayonets or bought by commercial monopolies, of that free consti-
tution which has been to Great Britain, through the vicissitudes of
six centuries, the secret of her strength, and the mainspring of her
moral and material progress.

ARTHUR MILLS.

• Lectwrct on Colonisation, by Herman Merivale, delivered at Oxford in 1841.

1880 249

OUR NATIONAL ART COLLECTIONS AND
PROVINCIAL ART MUSEUMS.

PKOVINCIAL MUSEUMS and Galleries of Art may be made to exercise an
influence for good the importance of which it is hardly possible to
overrate, or on the other hand they may, by confusion of aims, and
by the indiscriminate mixing up and appraisement of things good
and bad, conduce to a low level of appreciation whereby the public
taste may be positively vitiated. But the question presents itself —
if provincial Art museums are to occupy the higher status, from
whence is to come the vast aggregate mass of original specimens
needed to furnish them forth ? The answer, paradoxical as it may
seem, is not far to seek — such an aggregate will not be forthcoming.
In respect to the art of bygone periods, provincial museums and those
of new countries, unless in exceptional instances, can no longer hope
to acquire really important series of original specimens.

The finest works of art in many categories are already nearly all
permanently placed ; or whenever they do, at rare intervals, come
into the market, the avidity of wealthy private amateurs is so great
that even Imperial Institutions often find themselves outbid ; the
more limited funds, then, which Provincial Collections are likely to
have at their disposal would be utterly inadequate.

It may safely be predicted that at the present day even America,
if her unbounded wealth were freely drawn upon for the task, would
find it impossible to create one single National Art Museum on
the level of those of even secondary rank in European countries.
Doubtless time was, and that not long ago, when the annual ex-
penditure of sums of money by our several Imperial Art Administra-
tions— greater, it is true, than the pittances which have been fitfully
disbursed, but yet ludicrously small by comparison with the untold
millions which hava been lavished in other ways, with absolutely
nothing to show for the outlay — would literally have drained Europe
of its Art treasures for the benefit of the English race. The myriad
treasures which slumbered, and indeed still slumber unseen, although
in ever-waning numbers, in the cabinets of wealthy amateurs, or
which pass from hand to hand amongst dealers and speculators as

250 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

symbols of pecuniary value, surpassing in their exorbitant price even
the wildest dreams of the uninitiated, might then have been gathered
almost as grain in harvest time, and in the possession of the State
have furnished forth a hundred museums and galleries — but these
chances have for ever passed away. The great European war of the
early part of this century threw into England an enormous volume of
Art treasures, and the exhaustion and impoverishment of Continental
countries for a generation afterwards, still further enriched us.
During all this time fine works of Art were a drug in England, and
the rarest and most exquisite things were often bandied about for
shillings even. As a people we were ignorant, apathetic, and taste-
less ; the pearls, alas ! were cast before us in vain. Now, however,
this is all changed. Within a very few years even, the tables have
been completely turned on us — fine works of art no longer gravitate
to this country, but, on the contrary, they are being eagerly sought
for in our midst by a host of wealthy explorers, speculators, and
dealers from all parts of the Continent. \Ve are outbidden in
our own field, and things of the highest art value are now, in
fact, being as rapidly taken out of this country as they were at any
time brought into it. It has indeed become axiomatic that public
museums can no longer contend with wealthy private individuals
for the possession of the finest works of art which occur for sale.
This at all events indicates that the scale of funds hitherto allotted
by the State to our Imperial collections has become entirely inade-
quate.1

What, then, is the prospect for provincial collections — literally, of
what kind of materials are they to be formed ? Fine original works,
as it is seen, are practically unattainable, and second-rate originals
are of little value. The reply will be anticipated from the tenor of
my previous paper. Provincial museums must in the main fall back
on copies and reproductions. As has been already estimated, so mar-
vellous has been the progress in this field in recent times, that in
almost every category of art, wonderful representations, in one shape or
other, of the greatest masterpieces, can be supplied for little more
than nominal sums. It is true that the mind of man is so constituted
that the difference of value betwixt the original and the copy will
ever have its full weight, but in a thousand instances this difference,
so far as regards purposes of instruction and innate enjoyment, will
be found to be merely sentimental, and that the copy is virtually as
good as the original. I do not, however, mean that provincial museums
are to be exclusively confined to this field : on the contrary, limited or
typical collections of original specimens of greater or less extent may

1 It should be said in passing that, nevertheless, in the face of the fact that the
pecuniary value of such things is literally increasing by leaps and bounds, the late
Government of this country has, for two or three years past, greatly reduced the
annual grants to our museums for the purchase of specimens.

1880. ART COLLECTIONS AND MUSEUMS. 251

still in some cases be formed, whilst single or a few representative
specimens, to place at the head of methodic series of reproductions, by
way of illustration and comparison, would form an integral part of
my scheme. I shall, however, take up this point again. It is scarcely
necessary to observe that the foregoing remarks as to the increasing
scarcity and pecuniary value of specimens refer more particularly to
works of art of former periods, for of course there is a great distinc-
tion to be made betwixt ancient and modern art — the original
monuments of the former are, it is needless to say, a fixed quan-
tity, and already a very large proportion of the finest specimens are
located in the great European museums and galleries, from whence
they are not likely ever to be removed. On the other hand there
is, so to speak, a perennial supply of contemporary art produc-
tions, and an open market for them, in which the longest purse will
prevail.

Coming now to a very practical aspect of the question — the late
Government some two or three years ago was appealed to by an
influential deputation on the subject of direct pecuniary grants to
provincial museums for the purchase of specimens, and the reply does
not seem on the whole to have been an adverse one ; but the financial
depression, which then existed in its full intensity, furnished a valid
reason for postponing the matter. It is doubtful however if, on this oc-
casion, any one person on either side had an adequate comprehension
of the real extent and bearing of the application.

There is an ostensible justification in according annual pecuniary
grants from the Imperial Exchequer to the museums of Dublin and
Edinburgh as metropolitan centres, but in reality it cannot be denied
that other great cities have an equal claim to consideration. If, it
may be asked, Edinburgh and Dublin are to be thus favoured, why not
Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield, and a score of other populous
places — where indeed should the line be drawn? On the face of
it the thing is impracticable. In this age of high prices petty
sums are of no use, and subventions on the higher scale alone
likely to respond to the expectations and requirements of the
recipients, would burden the country to an extent which it may
be safely said no Government will ever be likely to sanction.
There would, moreover, be an utter waste of power in the process, as
will hereafter be shown.

There will, of course, be no question of rescinding the boon ac-
corded to the two minor metropolitan centres, but in my opinion
the principle of direct pecuniary subvention, unless perhaps in rare
and exceptional instances, should be no further extended. Let me
not, however, be mistaken. I do not mean that the State is to be
absolved from all pecuniary obligation towards provincial museums —
far from it ; there is indeed a great work to be done, and the
public purse-strings have yet to be drawn for this purpose, but the

252 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

modes of assistance must be different. My present remarks
are intended to apply only to the proposal that public money
should be periodically granted to local authorities, to be by them
disbursed in the purchase of specimens. Such is, as I understand it,
the expressed desire of some enthusiastic movers in the museum ques-
tion. Let us only suppose, for instance, what would happen if, in
addition to the purveyors for our Imperial museums, a score or two
of provincial committee men and curators, armed with funds to com-
pete for works of art, were to enter the already narrow field of acqui-
sition ; inexperienced as such persons would be, helpless as against the
innumerable frauds of dealers, falsifiers and forgers of art treasures,
aiming at the unattainable, and uninformed as to the current value
of really available matter, they would simply flounder about and per-
petrate innumerable blunders — there would, in short, be a scandalous
waste of public funds.

One of the chief duties, one of the most difficult tasks indeed, of
State administration in this department, will be to keep provincial
museums up to a high level, and to prevent them becoming mere
receptacles for huge accumulations of trivial or useless matter. Pro-
moters of provincial collections, in their eagerness to achieve imme-
diate results, are as a rule inclined to receive and heap up all kinds
of incongruous trash, but it is not for the State to abet any such
illusory progress.

The reasons of existence of provincial museums, from the point of
view of the State, should be that of their direct educational value ; it
should be well understood that there must be no difference in kind
betwixt provincial and metropolitan museums — that collections and
specimens, which are of doubtful value in the metropolis, will be
equally worthless, if not indeed actively detrimental in the country.
Let it not be forgotten that there is no delusion greater, no occupa-
tion emptier, than sham art culture ; no more futile work than the
accumulation of huge hoards of worthless matter, which so often pass
current as treasures of ' art and vertu.'

Movers in the museum question must get rid, once for all, of the
notion that there is an inexhaustible store of duplicate or second-rate
original specimens, hidden away in reserve in the cellars and store-
rooms of the great national museums, available for direct distribution
to local collections. A certain amount of valuable matter there un-
doubtedly is, and it is certainly discouraging to see any portion of it
got rid of, as has just been done in the case of the sale of the British
Museum duplicate prints : but the great bulk of such unexhibited
specimens are only useless lumber, which would be quite as valueless
in the provinces as it is in London. Probably the best use to be
made of the really valuable duplicate specimens at present in store,
will be their arrangement in methodic series, and circulation on loan,
on the occasion of special local exhibitions, the illustration of courses
of lectures, &c.

1880. ART COLLECTIONS AND MUSEUMS. 253

Provincial art museums, in the nature of circumstances, must differ
greatly in their .constitution and aims from the great imperial or
metropolitan institutions of the like kind, and they will also be very
varied as regards each other ; in other words, there can be no uniform
type or model for such establishments — the wants and require-
ments of each locality, from the points of view of art in reference to
special industries, will in the first place be an important factor, very
likely to give a special character to some local museums. This
consideration, in particular, will probably have a beneficial effect in
preventing the stereotyped sameness of constitution and aspect, which
might perhaps in some degree result from methodic systems of State
assistance, more especially if, as we have advocated, local collections
must rely mainly on reproductions of fine works of art, rather than of
original specimens.

Considerations somewhat different again will have to be taken
into account in regard to colonial art museums. A wider range and
comprehensiveness of representation will perhaps, as a rule, be necessary
for them than for those of the home centres. The former, thousands
of miles away from the great European collections, which can only be
visited at rare intervals by even the most enthusiastic colonial art
votaries, should perhaps generally speaking be made as complete
reflexes of their imperial prototypes as in the nature of things is pos-
sible. In the mother country, on the other hand, communication with
the metropolis has become so easy, expeditious, and inexpensive, that
the great central collections may be said to be almost at the door of
every true art student, no matter where he may actually reside.
Feeble imitations of the British Museum, the National Gallery, or
South Kensington, then, are not required in Manchester, Glasgow, or
Birmingham.

The pecuniary resources of the State must, then, in some shape or
other be brought in aid of local resources ; in other words, it is for
the State to concern itself with the nature and constitution of the
typical provincial museum, and to assist in shaping such collections
as already exist into forms of practical yet at the same time elevating
usefulness.

It is true there will perhaps always be a mixture of intention in
provincial aims qua museums : the end will be to a great extent to
attract and amuse the masses. This more trivial purpose may, however,
be safely left to provincial endeavour ; amusing rubbish, if amusing it
really be, will accumulate fast enough without the assistance of the
state. It is difficult enough to keep out such matter from imperial
museums even. Whether, by the way, the inferior weedings of those
establishments should, on any pretext, be transferred to even the
humblest and least ambitious of local museums is, I think, a moot-
point. This country, in any case, has not yet arrived at the stage of

254 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

taking into account, as a national obligation, the mere amusement of
the people. So far from this, we may note, as a matter of fact, that
we even shut the doors of the places where the wearied toiler might
resort for rational solace and instruction, at the only times when
he could resort to them. But if ever we do as a nation take up the
important matter of amusing the people, care must be taken not
to mix it up with the still higher and more important object of
intellectual culture. It is at all events this last aspect of the matter
we are now discussing.

I have briefly indicated in my former paper the various ways in
which Government has, through the system for many years in opera-
tion at the South Kensington Museum, already assisted provincial
and colonial institutions. This system is directed by the Science
and Art Department of the Committee of Council on Education ; by
which the Kensington Museum is governed. It should not be a
question of superseding the action of this department by estab-
lishing any new or concurrent jurisdiction, but of enabling the
other imperial museums, whilst retaining their separate organisations
and government as at present, to co-operate with South Kensington
in the special field in question. From the first foundation of the
Science and Art Department, the annual parliamentary grants for the
purchase of museum specimens were required to be expended, in a
certain measure, with the ultimate view of directly benefiting provin-
cial institutions ; thus representative specimens, even though virtual
duplicates of others already acquired, have been freely purchased for
the express purpose of being circulated on loan to provincial schools
of art, museums, and temporary exhibitions. There has never, it is
true, been a sufficient supply of such available specimens, and, as a
matter of fact, the permanent collections of the Museum have been
and are continually drawn upon for this purpose. An infinite number
of the most precious objects are indeed withdrawn, often for consi-
derable periods, from exhibition in London and circulated in the
provinces. But it is time this practice should be discontinued,
for, setting aside the inconvenience caused by the continual dislo-
cation and disarrangement of the metropolitan collections, the disap-
pointment caused to students and amateurs of art by the apparently
capricious withdrawal, often of the very specimens they most wish to
inspect, and the actual risk of deterioration by frequent moving
about, or the ultimate loss by accident or fire of unique and precious
objects of art, render the practice entirely unwarrantable. The risk,
in short, is greater than the end to be obtained will justify. The
provinces should be content with casts, photographs, and other illus-
trations of invaluable objects, the originals of which are always within
easy reach, supplemented by well-chosen typical series of original
specimens acquired ad hoc.

It is with no carping desire to reproach the authorities of the

1880. ART COLLECTIONS AND MUSEUMS. 255

British Museum and the National Ofallery, to reinsist on facts which
have been already stated, to the effect that no portion of the funds
allotted to these institutions has ever been expended with any refer-
ence to the direct assistance of the provinces. The pecuniary resources
at the disposal of heads of departments of these institutions have
always been notoriously insufficient for the purchase of the specimens
actually required to enrich and complete the permanent series under
their charge. Consequently it has always been a special object to avoid
the acquisition of duplicates or the purchase of specimens, which,
although not of primary importance to an imperial collection, might
be of inestimable value to provincial museums. In thus acting, the
eminent specialists to whom the practical disbursement of imperial
funds for the purchase of specimens is entrusted, have simply fulfilled
their duty ; but it would be doing these gentlemen great injustice to
omit to state, that they would gladly and eagerly have co-operated in
the work of catering for the provinces, if the means had ever been
afforded them of so doing.

The unfortunate sale of duplicate engravings which has just taken
place at the British Museum was decided on simply to procure funds
for ihfc-, purchase of a special and unique collection of great import-
ance to the Print Koom, and only after all endeavours to procure
the insignificant sum required by way of special grant from the
Exchequer had proved abortive.

I cannot but again allude to the shortsighted manner in which
the annual grants to our national collections have been curtailed of
late years. It has already caused the loss of inestimable treasures,
the opportunity for the acquisition of which will never again occur,
for fine works of art in these days are indeed sybils' books. The pur-
chasing power of money in this field diminishes in an incredibly rapid
ratio ; it would be a moderate estimate to say that any fixed sum
would not go half as far now as it would have done ten years ago.
The country must then provide for a considerable increase in the
annual expenditure on our imperial collections, if they are to continue
to retain their relative status, and for a still further augmentation, if
they are to concern themselves effectually in seconding provincial
endeavours; increased annual grants should in fact be made to several
of the departments of the British Museum, on the express under-
standing that a portion of the amount should be systematically applied
to the collection of duplicate or other representative specimens for
provincial use. More important still will be the devising an effectual
system of mutual co-operation, of the authorities of all our. imperial
museums, to the end in question. As I have already intimated, it
would be an entirely needless waste of power to duplicate the
machinery already in operation at South Kensington ; it would, for
instance, not be advisable to appoint another staff of special officers,
and to call into existence another set of appliances at the British

256 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

Museum, to do the same work on a separate and independent footing.
There should, on the contrary, be one central department charged
with the administrative work of all our national collections, qua
provincial and colonial museums. At South Kensington, the nucleus
and framework, considerably more than this, in fact, is established ;
what is now required is a more complete, methodic, and extensive or-
ganisation of this department. This, I think, could be effected with-
out any very immediate or abrupt departure from its present lines,
and with little, if any, addition to its present staff. It would doubt-
less involve an increase of expenditure, but the amount could be
methodically estimated and apportioned ; whereas, if something of
the kind be not done, and if our respective science and art institu-
tions are to be separately exposed to the rapidly increasing pressure
of provincial demands, I can foresee only irregular, fitful, and im-
perfect action, jealousy and cross purposes on all hands, and the
probable expenditure of public money to a much greater amount,
than would be likely to occur under an orderly system such as I have
shadowed out.

I am somewhat reluctant to quit the field of generalisatior, and
I feel that a paper of this kind is scarcely the proper vehicle l or the
putting forward of detailed plans and recommendations ; but definite
suggestions, when distinctly fundamental, can at least be clearly
weighed and discussed, when they will work their way if sound and
well founded, or be dismissed once for all if proved to be unsound or
impracticable. I shall, therefore, make no further apology for stating
in plain terms the principal reforms and improvements I advocate.
Before doing so, however, the fundamental question of pecuniary
assistance to local institutions requires a little further discussion.

In the first place the object should be to assist local endeavours
in the formation of art collections by indirect, not direct, pecuniary aid.
How is this assistance, if sanctioned by the legislature of the country,
to be practically given ? I can see only one safe principle. Let the
amounts annually accorded by the State to provincial institutions be
based on, and respond in greater or less measure to, the sums which
the localities themselves raise for the purpose. Whether the State in
any given instance should contribute an equal, a greater, or a less
amount is a matter which I do not pretend to prejudge. I appre-
hend, however, that there should be no inflexible rule in this respect.
On the one hand the gross annual amount which Parliament may
decide to apportion in any year will be an all-important factor, and
on the other hand the scarcity or abundance of local means, considered
in respect to the relative importance of their requirements, or the
inherent costliness, or the reverse of the matter to be acquired, must
in each instance be to some extent determining factors. As I have
already assumed, the State should give its assistance in kind, not in
money. Thus if any locality raises, say, one hundred pound;", and if

1880. ART COLLECTIONS AND MUSEUMS. 257

the State meets it with another hundred, fifty, or five-and-twenty, as
the case may be, the sum so contributed will be given in the shape
of specimens, either originals or reproductions, which may either be
•chosen for the localities by the skilled officers of the central depart-
ment, or by the officers of special departments of the imperial
museums, who, I doubt not, would gladly give their invaluable
assistance and advice in this manner ; or local directors and curators
might themselves select specimens from the central store, which
should be founded at South Kensington. There are of course other
possible methods of assistance, which especial cases may suggest, but
as a general rule the State, whilst it should give every possible
facility to local authorities, by the assistance and advice of its officers,
in the advantageous disbursement of the sum which the localities
themselves raised, should retain a greater, if not even an absolute,
control over that proportion which itself contributes.

Our colonial cities stand of course on a different footing from
those of the United Kingdom proper. As the colonies do not
directly contribute their quota to imperial taxation, they can of
course . have no claim to direct pecuniary assistance from the State
qua museums ; but in every other respect the large and generous
spirit, which it is to be hoped will ever animate our national dealings
with our great dependencies, should be manifested in this matter.
The South Kensington administration has already frequently assisted
in the development of colonial museums, schools of art, &c., and it is
to be hoped that the facilities which the home provincial museums
enjoy, especially in regard to obtaining the assistance and adviee of
the officers of our imperial museums, will, as far as possible, be ex-
tended to the Colonies. What, then, are the practical suggestions to
be brought forward ? I should premise by saying that my recom-
mendations may appear somewhat disconnected and disjointed, but
it is impossible within the limits of such a paper as this to do more
than put on record jottings as it were. Moreover it would be no
compliment to the able and devoted body of public servants, who
administer our public collections, to enter too minutely into details.
I have indeed been emboldened to take the line I have done in this
paper, mainly from the conviction that my views are substantially
shared by many, perhaps the greater number, of these gentlemen.

Firstly, then, I think that there should be a distinct locality, a
series of rooms and galleries, set apart at South Kensington as a cen-
tral store or depot for all circulating duplicates, or otherwise dispos-
able matter in the category of art, for the housing and display of all
easts, electro deposits reproductions, photographs, hand copies of
all kinds, engravings, etc. ; secondly, that a general revision of all our
national art collections should be made, and all superfluous matter
forthwith weeded out. This important work should, I think, be com-
pletely and thoroughly done, once for all, by a Government commission,
VOL. VIII.— No. 42. S

258 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

to consist of heads of special departments in our museum adminis-
trations, to whom might, if thought necessary, be joined a few out-
siders of eminence in their special branches. The matter thus
eliminated should be forthwith transferred bodily to the South
Kensington places of deposit, classified and sorted, say, into three
categories — firstly, of specimens to be permanently retained for the
purpose of forming methodic representative series, to be circulated on
loan, the illustration of lectures, &c. ; secondly, of matter to be dis-
tributed or sold to provincial museums; and lastly, the worthless
residuum to be finally made away with. Such a clearance has
indeed been long called for in the interests of the national collections
.themselves, which in some instances are encumbered with masses of
superfluous matter, the fortuitous accretion of long series of years,
the effect of which is in every respect derogatory to the invaluable
substratum.

The action thus taken should be continued, in the sense of periodi-
cally transfering to the same receptacle all duplicate or superfluous
specimens, from time to time acquired by any of our museums, either
by bequest or on the occasion of the purchase of entire collections,
in which, as is usually the case, there is a proportion of specimens
not specially taken into account or required, but which have to be
taken en bloc with the rest. Moreover, the duplicate or represen-
tative specimens, which I have assumed would thenceforth be syste-
matically purchased for provincial supply, by the various departments
of our museums, would be also handed over, accompanied with ade-
quate catalogues or descriptive labels, furnished by the authorities
by whom the acquisitions had been made.

Again, this establishment would become the central depot for
all casts, electrotypes, photographs, engravings, in short, of every kind
of copies and reproductions made at the expense of the State, as well
from notable specimens contained in our own collections, or others
obtained from works in foreign collections, museums, private collec-
tions, churches, or other sources. Obviously the adequate illustra-
tion of such matter, infinitely varied as it would be in its nature,
would be an arduous task, requiring the co-operation of eminent
authorities in their several specialties, whilst the important work
of selecting and deciding upon specimens to be reproduced at the
expense of the State would require knowledge and judgment of the
highest order. Probably it might be found desirable to supplement
the labours of the officers, who would be the practical administrators
of the establishment, by the formation of a permanent advising
board or committee, similarly constituted to that which would be
appointed to make the preliminary weeding already adverted to.

It has been already intimated that the requirements of special in-
dustries of a more or less artistic nature would, in some localities, sug-
gest the formation of collections of original specimens ad hoc. The

1880. ART COLLECTIONS AND MUSEUMS. 259

Staffordshire potteries, for instance, should endeavour to get together
a special collection illustrative of ceramic art ; similarly at Birming-
ham or Sheffield, works in metal, such as arms, cutlery, locksmith's
and silversmith's works, jewelry, &c., whilst at Manchester, Glasgow,
or Leeds, textile fabrics, and at Nottingham, lace, would be the
chosen specialties.

Such special gatherings would, of course, be supplementary to
the general collection, illustrative of art in the abstract, and which
we have assumed would mainly consist of copies and reproductions.
There would be a great advantage in this, if it were only in directing
local endeavour in well-defined channels — it is astonishing how
rapidly the work of collecting progresses by such concentration of
effort : personal interest is more easily enlisted in such a course,
the work grows on all concerned, whilst gifts and donations are more
readily obtained when there is a fixed object in view.

Moreover, as the object of these collections would be a mixed one,
technological illustration, as a case in point, would be a scarcely less
important consideration than that of art — a wider field and perhaps
even greater facilities for acquisition would be open to the provincial
than to the metropolitan museums even. There are, for instance, in-
numerable specimens, which, for various reasons, fastidious private
collectors and dealers regard as of little pecuniary value, but which,
from the point of view I have indicated, might be of great im-
portance to provincial special collections. Such specimens are of
course comparatively easy to be obtained. Again, fragmentary speci-
mens, for which dealers in works of art can scarcely find a market,
may nevertheless often be instructive, as intrinsically valuable as the
most perfect and costly pieces of their kind. What would it
matter indeed to the Staffordshire potter if the exquisite Sevres por-
celain cup, the Majolica salver, the antique Greek vase, the splendid
glazes and enamels, the admirable painting or infinite variety and
refinement of form of which were the special objects of his study,
were to be, the one without a handle, or the others shattered and
built up again from fragments ?

Our Continental neighbours are already actively at work in this
direction, and in more than one manufacturing centre in France,
such mixed art and industrial or technological collections are being
formed.

Manchester, for instance, might take a valuable lesson from Lyons,
where, during the last few years, in addition to the really important
collections of pictures and other works of art, antiquities, &c., which
have been accumulated by the city from the beginning of the present
century, a special collection, of ancient silks and textile fabrics in
general, has been formed. The singular activity which, during the
last four or five years only, has been shown in the matter of collect-
ing ancient stuffs, embroideries, &c., as a case in point, has been

260 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

mainly brought about by the exertions of provincial directors and
curators of collections, and of manufacturers and designers abroad,
whose eyes have been at last opened to the importance of rescuing
from destruction the few and rare specimens of textile fabrics of
former ages which yet remain to us.

The chief sources of such things are the sacristies of ancient
churches and convents in Italy, Germany, and Spain. A host of ex-
plorers are actively engaged in ferreting out all such specimens, and
in a very short time the supply will be practically exhausted, and this
perhaps before our own great centres of textile industries have given
a thought even to the matter.

Although it may seem not entirely in sequence or relevant to
my previous argument, I have now to pass to another aspect or heading
of my subject — that of the buildings to contain provincial art collec-
tions. The transition is, however, not a merely capricious one. I
am in fact moved to it by the conviction that too much attention is
now being given to the erection of buildings, and too little to the
timely acquisition of specimens to put into them, seeing that bricks
and stones can be piled on each other at any time, whereas every day
now lost in the research of fine works of art entails irrevocable loss
of opportunity.

Of late years provincial towns have developed a great propensity
for the erection of showy architectural structures, and museums and
galleries of art, in particular, seem to be regarded by ambitious pro-
moters of public works, and by architects, as of all institutions the
most fit and proper to be gorgeously housed. It seems to be imagined
that art treasures necessarily require, as it were, a splendid casket, the
jewels, to need the most magnificent setting. But it is possible to
diminish the lustre of a gem by unsuitable adjustment, as it is to
impair the effect of a picture by an ill-adapted frame. The notion, if
not radically fallacious, is especially liable to lead to bad results.
More frequently than not, the proper effect of works of art is
damaged by too ornate surroundings, and oftener still, practical
requirements of the first necessity, such as convenience of arrange-
ment, adequate space for appropriate juxtaposition, and provision for
future growth are sacrificed to this idea.

As a rule, the fundamental conception of modern architectural
monuments is antagonistic to those requirements. Rigidity and com-
pleteness of plan are necessary in such structures in order that the
•exterior elevation, which is usually more considered than the interior
arrangements, may shape itself in the desired lines. What, for
instance, is the aspiring architect to do, when the style of his design
suggests arcades and windows, towers and high-pitched roofs ? But
the real requirements of the building call for long galleries of in-
considerable height, plain walls, and skylights.

The temptation to begin at the wrong end first, moreover, is

1880. ART COLLECTIONS AND MUSEUMS. 261

great, when, as is too often the case, the adoption of a design is
determined rather by its striking effect on paper than its inherent
fitness for the end in view. In museums, however, utility should be
the paramount consideration. As a matter of fact, plain substantial
brick -built galleries, with little interior decoration, and that little of
the most subdued and sober kind, are what is required. They should
be long and spacious galleries, not suites of separate rooms, and so
placed as to admit of ready extension and alteration in response to
the demands of ever-growing collections. For this reason, and other
obvious ones, museums should, wherever it is possible, be placed clear
of other buildings, with ample surrounding space, in suburban parks
or gardens, for instance, rather than in the heart of crowded cities.
Flimsy glass and iron structures, * Crystal Palaces,' again, are especially
to be avoided. Their type is that of the hothouse, of all receptacles
the least adapted for the permanent safe-keeping of works of Art.

A melancholy instance of what a provincial museum should not
be has just come under my notice. Without naming it, I will merely
say that it is the last growth of one of our ancient cathedral cities.
In the central part of the picturesque High Street of the city a lofty,
new, stone-built structure, bristling with turrets and pinnacles, and
with a tall campanile in the centre, has just risen, high above the
quaint brick-built mansions and the old parish churches in its
vicinity, which, huddled together in artistic irregularity, seem as if
shrinking in horror from the rampant intruder. Designed in a
strange medley of styles, half conventual, half castellated, with a
dash of the Italian Palazzo Communale, it is wholly hideous and
vulgar. This extraordinary structure bears a conspicuous stone-cut
tablet flanking its high arched portal — a veritable shop-card — which
informs us that it is the ' City Museum and School of Art,' erected
by the exertions of certain local magnates, whose names are duly
recorded in deeply cut and rubricated letters, only a degree less con-
spicuous than the flaming characters which follow, specifying the
name and address of the firm of provincial architects by whose genius
the portentous structure was brought into existence. It should be
added that the edifice is flanked and hemmed in by houses and
narrow streets and lanes on all sides, and that there is not an inch of
available ground around it. The thing, indeed, is all outside show.
An entrance hall and staircase occupying more space than is neces-
sary lead to a series of small and awkwardly disposed rooms, the in-
valuable wall-spaces of which are cut up with mullioned windows,
affording the worst possible kind of light. There is but one con-
gruous thing about the place — it is that the collections within are
worthy of the structure. The absurd omnium gatherum is somewhat
as follows : there is the well-known dried head of a New Zealand
chief and his moth-eaten old feather cloak, half a dozen clubs and
paddles, a case of Napoleon medals and miscellaneous coins and

262 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

tradesmen's tokens, minerals, shells, stuffed birds, snakes in bottles,
a lamb with two heads, and a mummy ; worthless pictures with high-
sounding names, and several very conspicuous works of art on a large
scale, such as a cork model of the cathedral three yards long, made
by an ingenious but misguided shoemaker; big bulky curiosities,
contributed by generous donors, evidently with an eye to killing two
birds with one stone — to wit, the getting rid of worthless incum-
brances, and gaining a reputation for public spirit and liberality by
BO doing. This picture is not overdrawn ; the thing, in fact, is a
veritable incubus, not only useless, but offensive. Public spirit in
the same locality is nevertheless at this very time manifesting itself
in the laying out of a public park in the outskirts. Now if only one
third of the cost of the structure in question had been expended on
the construction of plain brick-built galleries in this locality, and
the residue of the money laid out under competent guidance in the
purchase of interesting and instructive specimens, the foundations of
a really useful and creditable local museum might have been laid.

It has been impossible within the limits of these articles to do
more than touch discursively on the chief points of the question
before us, and I have an uneasy feeling that undue prominence has
been given to some considerations, whilst others of more real
moment have been entirely passed over. There is, however, one
subject to which, in conclusion, I am desirious to call attention, it is
that of gifts and bequests to public museums. On the first blush it
will be assumed that there is but one aspect of this matter, and that
an entirely satisfactory one — by all means, it will be said, do every-
thing to encourage the practice, as well for the central 'as for pro-
vincial institutions. Further consideration, however, will make it
evident that there is more than one side to this question. Persons
who make gifts to museums during their lifetime can of course be
reasoned with, and if they seek to impose inconvenient conditions,
their intentions may be modified, or the gift declined ; but it is
needless to say that bequests stand upon another footing. In the
first place very few private collections are ever formed without the
accretion of more or less inferior, incongruous, or absolutely worthless
matter — of course when the proportion is large, there should be no
question of the acceptance of such mixed collections, but cases may
occasionally occur of gatherings in which there are isolated specimens
of transcendent excellence, and the temptation is then strong to
secure them, even if accompanied with an inordinate makeweight of
absolute trash — but in the present condition of things, such super-
fluous trash cannot be got rid of, and this alone, in the long-run,
becomes a serious difficulty. It may be assumed that bequests of
such mixed collections would only be accepted if entirely free from
hampering stipulations, such as their being kept together and ex-

1880. ART COLLECTIONS AND MUSEUMS. 263

hibited as a whole, or their being permanently housed in any specified
establishment or locality.

But the difficulties and perplexities attending the question of
bequests become far more obvious, when it is a question of the accept-
ance or rejection by the State of really important or high-class collec-
tions, when accompanied by inconvenient conditions. Several such
instances have occurred within the last few years, and much of the
objectionable duplication and clashing of interests of our national art
•collections have arisen from this source alone. My meaning will be
made clear by referring to examples in evidence, taking in the first
instance the Sheepshanks bequest of modern pictures, made to the South
Kensington Museum. One of the conditions in this case is that the
collection should always remain fixed at South Kensington, but ob-
viously these pictures should have been added on to the modern art
section of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. As it is, this
nucleus at South Kensington has been augmented by further gifts
and bequests of similar specimens, and the broad result is, that the
country now possesses two distinct national galleries of modern
English art, separately housed and administered. The waste of
national resources necessarily involved in the duplication and sever-
ance of absolutely identical matter need not be dwelt upon ; its
inexpediency in a practical point of view is evident, when it is
considered that the pictures of the very same masters are arbitrarily
distributed between two localities a couple of miles apart.

Again, in the section of water-colour drawings it was stated in my
former article, that the formation of a national collection illustrative
•of this peculiarly English branch of art had been taken in hand some
years ago by the South Kensington administration, which had travelled
out of its proper province in so doing. But quite recently, the
Henderson bequest specifically made to the British Museum has
endowed that establishment also with a splendid series of water-colour
•drawings, and in consequence we have now two distinct national
•collections in this category. Obviously the Henderson drawings
should have been given to the National Gallery, to whose jurisdiction,
also should be transferred the rival collection at South Kensington.

The majority of the other works of art composing the Henderson
collection are of the medieval and more recent periods, comprising
fine specimens of Majolica ware, Damascened metal work, arms, and
other richly ornamented objects of Oriental origin. But the proper
place for such works was obviously the South Kensington, not the
British Museum.

On the other hand, two important collections have, within the last
few years, been bequeathed to the South Kensington Museum, both of
which by the wills of the testators are to be kept intact and separate
as distinct entities, bearing their respective names : these are the
Dyce and Forster collections. But the strength of these collections lies

264 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

in directions with which the South Kensington Museum has little or
no concern. The most valuable sections in both cases consist of books
and manuscripts of purely literary interest, drawings by the ancient
masters, engravings, miniatures, and a few pictures. These collec-
tions ought to have been broken up and divided mainly between the
British Museums and the National Gallery.

These are but a few instances of the imbroglio which is being
created for us by inconvenient bequests. What is the remedy for
this state of things? It will, of course, be objected that as persons
who make bequests are usually actuated in great measure by a craving
for posthumous recognition, even if it be to the extent only of having
their names placed permanently in evidence, any general rules which
would have the effect of dispensing the State from such implied
liability would tend to prevent bequests being made. I do not think
that any such result would permanently ensue, but, even if it should
be so, the evils of the present slipshod system are so great as to over-
weigh any possible loss. I think that once for all a broad rule to
apply to all our national museums and similar institiitions should be
laid down by the State, to the effect that gifts and bequests can only
be received on the understanding that they should be unclogged by
any conditions whatsoever ; in other words, that the State should be
entirely at liberty to make use of the specimens so contributed in any
manner found to be necessary.

It is possible that at first, until the rule became generally known,
some encumbered bequests might be made, and have to be relinquished
in consequence ; but testators and their legal advisers would soon-
become aware of the [rule, and frame their dispositions in accord-
ance.

Furthermore, I would suggest that gifts and bequests should, in
future, be made to vest in some one public officer or administrative
department. If such a central store for all unappropriated or floating
art matter, as that which I have shadowed out as desirable to be
formed at South Kensington, were established, there should be the
temporary place of deposit for objects transferred to the State by gift
or bequest, and the ultimate location of the several specimens, whether
in this, that, or the other imperial central establishment, or in pro-
vincial museums, might be determined by such a council of heads of
departments and others as I have intimated it would be desirable to
form, for the regulation of other functions of the same establishment.

The undoing of much that has been tied up for us by the caprices
and gratuitous calculations of previous donors and legatees appears to
me imperative. An Act of Parliament would probably be necessary
for the purpose, or to enable our several museums to make such a
thorough weeding of their respective possessions, and to carry out
such a system of giving and taking to and from one another and
to provincial collections as is urgently required, inasmuch as doubt-

1880. ART COLLECTIONS AND MUSEUMS. 265

less a considerable proportion of the matter to be dealt with would
consist of specimens originally obtained through gifts and bequests.

This Act might perhaps with advantage be so framed as to deal
comprehensively with the entire subject. Our neighbours the French
have already more than once, during the present century, effected
such extensive revisions of their national art collections; and the
relatively high status to which provincial museums have attained in
France, as compared with those of this country, has in great measure
resulted from the systematic transference of innumerable works of
art not required by the central collections.

Perhaps it will be objected that the measures I now advocate are
of too sweeping a nature, and that English methods of procedure
are not to be regulated by French models. To this I reply, that
English procedure, qua national museums, is at present devoid of
any definite guiding plan or coherent aims; a chaos, in fact, in
which all manner of cross purposes are rife, in which forces neutralise
each other, and results are minimised. I have endeavoured to call
attention to some of the most obvious shortcomings in this field, and
whilst so doing I might have refrained from suggesting remedies.
The critic, however, who shrinks from the responsibility of offering
advice, of the urgency of which he is known to entertain earnest con-
victions, would be justly scouted as a carping intermeddler. The
share I have had in the formation and practical management of
public collections in this country will, I trust, be regarded as a
justification for again entering the field, and if my opinions and
suggestions are called in question, it will at least have the effect of
tending to keep alive public interest in the subject.

J. C. ROBINSON.

266 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

THE FUTURE OF CHINA.

WHEN, three years ago, I described in the columns of a daily paper
the progress of the Chinese campaign in Central Asia, and when at a
later period I narrated, in my Life of Takoob Beg, the whole of the
events that had happened in the countries between Khokand and
China from the year 1862 down to the present time, there were many
persons who disbelieved the stories told of the extraordinary marches
made by Chinese soldiers, of the quality of the weapons in their
hajids, and of the tactical, aye the strategical, ability of their leaders.
But the evidence has now accumulated, and there is no longer any
doubt that the narratives referred to represented facts which belong to
the reality, and not the romance of history. We are also to-day
brought face to face with the prospect of a rupture between China
and Russia, which was then only a remote possibility ; and on all
sides eagerness is shown to acquire information on a subject which is
not only very imperfectly understood, but which promises to become of
very urgent importance to this country. It is not so much my desire
to discuss here the existing difficulty between these two great Powers
— the collision between whom, although appearing imminent, may be
yet for a short time put off — as it is to enter into the larger question
of the probable future of the Chinese Empire. He would be a rash
man who would attempt to cast the horoscope of that most singular of
institutions — and certainly I have no intention of incurring the
charge. But many gentlemen who speak with considerable authority,
and who are friendly disposed towards China, have recently discussed
this question, and some of them have gone so far as to describe what
that future might be on certain conditions. They have based their
arguments on the self-flattering formula that, if the Chinese will
only follow their advice and accept the ideas of Western nations, then
their Empire will become more prosperous, and the future before it
will be of a brilliant hue. I will not affirm that their silence is ex-
pressive of what will happen if their advice is not accepted ; but at
all events they are silent as to what the future of China will be, if
shaped by the Chinese themselves in accordance with their ancient
opinions. With your permission, I wish to bring this latter side of
the picture prominently forward, and to say a few words on the future
of China from the Pekin, and not the London, point of view. They

1880. THE FUTURE OF CHINA. 267-

may possibly serve to show that Chinese statesmen have less thought of
foreign assistance in their plans than our reformers of their empire
conceive to be necessary.

The present condition of China is such as must inspire the ob-
server with a feeling of respect. In extreme age its Government
exhibits all the vigour of youth, and now, fifteen years after it was
supposed to be passing through the throes of dissolution, it stands,
having given the most striking proof of military power, unconcerned
to all appearance on the brink of a contest the outcome of which no
man can see. Nor if we consider the subject in its details is the
effect weakened. The supremacy of the law is evident from Yunnan
to Manchuria, and from the coast to the Pamir. Kebellious states
and races of hostile creeds are again united under the sway of the
Bogdo Khan ; and the authority of the Emperor is as much respected
at the extremities of his dominions as it is in the streets of his
capital. At the same time the Manchu dynasty — which is after all
of little importance in comparison with the Chinese nation — appears
to have received a further lease of power. It could be wished that it
were possible to feel more certain on this point, as one element of
doubt in the problem would then be removed. The trade of the country
is flourishing, and the resources of several of the larger provinces are
being steadily developed. The vast tracts of country, depopulated
during the civil wars, are being gradually allotted to colonists, who
will speedily restore them to their former state of prosperity. The
finances are satisfactory, although there can be no doubt that exten-
sive peculation prevails in the services ; and the Chinese find less
difficulty than many European Powers in borrowing money for the
purchase of ironclads and improved weapons. There is no apparent
reason for supposing that China's credit would very soon become ex-
hausted, although a great war must inevitably shake foreign con-
fidence. At the present time China possesses the nucleus of an army,
the raw material for which she has always enjoyed, and the first step
has been taken in the establishment of the Kiangnan Arsenal towards,
rendering it independent of foreign manufacturers. The alphabetical
gun-boats and the few ironclads that have been purchased represent
the beginnings of a fleet which may one day be very powerful in the
Eastern seas. The greater knowledge the Pekin statesmen have ac-
quired of European countries and politics enables them to exercise
their judgment in deciding when and where to act with vigour ; and
in many ways this, although the most difficult to grasp, is the most
important advantage the Chinese have derived from the progress
effected during the last fifteen years. Such then is the present
position of China as exposed to our gaze. Her statesmen might be
well content if the future were to be only a repetition of it ; but they
naturally aspire to a continuance of the same progress which would

268 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

lead to the attainment of a height of prosperity justifying comparison
with anything realised by the greatest of their Emperors.

The remarkable successes of Chinese armies, which have been the
ostensible means of promoting peace and prosperity at home, have
not failed to enhance the national credit abroad. All the Mongol
and Kirghiz tribes, some of whom are subjects of Kussia, and also
connected by ancient ties with China, have been stirred to their
hearts' core by the victories of Tso Tsung Tang. Nor has the effect
been restricted to these semi-civilised tribes. In Western Turkestan
the Tashkent Gazette itself admits that there has been and still is
great agitation in consequence of the reconquest of Kashgaria ; and
the independent courts of Burmah and Siam have been much exer-
cised in their minds because of the demands made upon them by the
Chinese. Within our own Indian borders, too, something of the
same influence is perceptible. Neither Nepaul nor Cashmere has
been an unconcerned witness of those events which have made the
Chinese power more vigorous in Tibet, and which have brought the
Celestials back to Sirikul and Khoten. To understand, therefore, in
all its details the position which China at present occupies, it is
necessary to take into consideration the reputation she has acquired
among her neighbours as well as her internal condition. Without
entering into historical particulars, it will suffice to say that the
reputation won by Tso's victories, and by the pacification of Yunnan,
is increased by the remembrance of China's prowess in the past, not
only in Eastern Turkestan, but also on the banks of the Amour, and
in the passes and valleys of Nepaul.

At the present time China raises a revenue which, at the lowest
computation, exceeds fifty, and possibly reaches sixty, millions ster-
ling ; and, although much of this is paid in kind, and consequently
re-spent in the local capitals, the Government can depend on this
sum under all circumstances. In addition, another four millions are
received annually from the customs at the ports open to foreign
commerce, thus placing the Chinese revenue almost on an equality
with that of India, including the return from the railways. In this
direction China has not by any means reached the limit of her capa-
city, and, apart from foreign trade altogether, there is an illimitable
field available for the employment of capital and labour to the ad-
vantage of the people and of the exchequer at the same time. The
Chinese are among the lightest taxed people in the world, and the
frirden of contributing to the maintenance of the state only presses
upon them in the exceptional districts where a disposition has been
manifested to repudiate the obligations of citizenship. Until the
means of communication have been improved to a certain extent —
not, I must emphatically state, by the construction of railways which,
except in a very few places, would be attended with quite as much
danger as advantage to China — the progress must necessarily be

1880. THE FUTURE OF CHINA. 269

slow ; but, when the navigation of the rivers has been turned to
better account, an expansion of the internal commerce, large as it at
present is on the Yang-tse, may be expected on an extensive scale.
The coal-mines in Kiangsi and Shantung are now being worked
skilfully and successfully, while other provinces are not backward in
developing their latent resources. In a very few years the results of
this extraordinary activity in a direction where so little had been
done must become apparent, and both directly and indirectly the
State will benefit by the increased wealth of the people. While
most persons are asserting that the dislike to build railways is a
proof of China's backwardness in the scale of civilisation, I contend
that there are many sound arguments to justify the hesitation shown
by the Pekin ministers in sanctioning such enterprises. It may be
admitted that railways would give a great impulse to foreign trade,
and that consequently the Chinese would derive as much advantage
as any one else from their construction; but the Government is
guided in its policy by other considerations as well as those of pecu-
niary advantage. Even without railways Chinese commerce has
reached a flourishing point, and it will be long before the Pekin
ministry will be induced to disturb the status quo, and incur possible
dangers for the sake of benefiting the foreign trade. If things go on
at their present rate the Chinese can count on certain and very satis-
factory returns as a balance in their favour on the foreign trade of
the country. They have little to gain, and, perhaps, much to lose,
by attempting to disturb the arrangements on which this trade exists.
Intimately connected with the subjects of the revenue and the
trade of the state is the administration of the public service ; and here
we find many things that should not be permitted to exist. I will not
go so far as to say that the Civil Service of China is an Augean stable
waiting the advent of a Hercules ; but certainly to purge it of the
prevalent abuses, to instil fresh life into the ranks of its members,
and to make them, in fact, as they are in name, public servants, will
task the tact, courage, and perseverance of the ablest of administrators
and the most determined of reformers. In this direction much re-
mains to be done, and very possibly the only effectual remedy may
prove to be one of resorting to extremities. But unless the labour is
attempted everything accomplished in military reorganisation and in
statecraft can have only partial effect. The future power of China
does not depend on any single condition being fulfilled or not, but
certainly were any real reforms to be effected in the Civil Service,
which is composed of the mental aristocracy of the country, a greater
guarantee would have been obtained of the future before China than
by any other measure that can be called to mind. Nor are the ruling
powers blind to this. Various edicts on the subject have been is-
sued, and, what is more important, a disposition has been shown to
employ officials in places of great trust and responsibility apart from

270 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

their literary merits. This has the look of reverting to the plan of
the -great emperors of the first dynasty, who sought their ministers in
the ranks of the people — that is to say, they rewarded original merit.
"Whenever a reform can be wholly or even partially carried out in this
direction the Chinese Government will experience no difficulty in
raising a revenue of one hundred millions sterling.

The first conclusion which, therefore, forces itself upon the mind
is that China is a rich country, with a considerable revenue, suscept-
ible under careful management of being almost doubled. Possessed
of what are termed the sinews of war, she is also, to a greater extent
than is supposed, independent of the foreign trade. It is much less
of a necessity to her than it has become to a large section of the
community -at home among us, and, even were it otherwise, the
grievances of a class would receive but scant attention if brought into
conflict with the views of the Government. Unlike England, China
subsists on her own produce, and could regard with equanimity the
severance of all connection with, the outer world, and unlike India
also, her great rivers and ancient highways, which pass through the
remotest districts of the empire, and only require a certain amount
of repairing to be restored to their original usefulness, supply the
ready means for protection against famine. All these facts relating
to the commercial and financial condition of China have to be taken
into consideration and duly appreciated if we are to discuss, with any
chance of arriving at sound conclusions, the future prospects of this
empire in a world of rivalry in politics and in war. The financial
and commercial independence of China is beyond question, despite
the supposed value of the Customs in the eyes of her rulers. These
dues are in reality small matter of congratulation among thinking
Chinese ; for at the best they are only ' the gilding of the pill.' The
practical1 conclusion at which we must arrive is that the foreign trade
supplies no inducement to the Pekin Government to keep the peace
with any foreign Power were it for other reasons to hold it safe and
politic to embark upon a war ; while it is no secret that there is
much in that trade to which the official classes will never become re-
conciled. Having said this much on the natural progress that China
should make in material mutters, the remainder of our attention may
be directed to the probable development of China's military power,
and to the consequences it must have as operating on her own policy
and also on that of the nations brought into contact with her, parti-
cularly of Russia and England, her neighbours on the continent of
Asia.

The military force of China numbers nominally nearly eight
hundred thousand men, but these are at present of course only on
paper. It is divided into four divisions by Timkowsky, the Kussian
traveller, and in general matters his description, written fifty years
ago, still applies. This large force is made up of 68,000 Manchu?.

1880. THE FUTURE OF CHINA. 271

80,000 Mongols, and 625,000 Chinese. The last are divided into
two bodies, the first of which partakes more of the character of a
regular army than the second, and musters about half a million of
men called the Green Flag army. The remaining Chinese division
is a raw militia, and land is allotted to them for cultivation, their
pay being too small to exist upon. The other soldiers receive four
silver taels (nearly 27s.) per month. Timkowsky only returns the
Mongol force at 48,000 men ; but since the war the levies in Man-
churia and Mongolia have been largely increased, and it is a low es-
timate to say that there are 30,000 more troops between Moukden
and Kobdo now than there were when he • travelled from Kiachta to
Kalgan. While, therefore, we may take the strength of the Tartar
army as falling little, if at all, short of the estimated 150,000 men,
a very large deduction must be made from the Green Flag, and the
resident militia which is subordinate to it. Yet it is from this force
that the future armies of China must be created. The Bannermen of
the Mongols, the elite of the dominant Manchus, are already enlisted.
To their numbers it would be difficult to add any permanent rein-
forcement, although for hostilities on the Amour or the Irtish swarms
of hardy clansmen are available to swell the garrisons of the northern
districts to the proportions of a large and formidable army. And this
observation serves to remind us of one of the great secrets of China'a
power. In whatever direction she may have to engage in a war she
can depend that there will be no lack of fighting material once the
nomad peoples recognise that she is in earnest. There is not another*
country that can say the same. A single reverse to Eussia on a large-
scale in Central Asia would destroy the peace she- has laboriously
created in Turkestan.

The Green Flag army only partially exists as a fighting force*
No one who has read M. Hue's graphic description of the review
which he witnessed during his return from Tibet can be expected to
have a very high opinion of the soldiers of the Green Flag, for in
those days they were only called out on rare occasions, and then the
inspection made by the general was a pure sham. Their arms were
of the most nondescript pattern, and, in a word, they were only
civilians playing at soldiers once a year. ' Yet the material was excel-
lent ' has been the comment of every writer on the subject since the
French missionary. As yet no attempt has been made to reform
this portion of the army as a whole. It was quite recently an accu-
rate description to say that most of the men were to be found only on
paper, while the Commander-in-ehief drew pay for the total number.

But the hard law of necessity has worked out a partial improve-
ment in spite of apathy in high pkces. The three great civil wars-
waged concurrently in the centre, the south, and the west of the
empire, and the numerous, risings which have accompanied them,
rendered .it necessary in many provinces that .the civilian Chinese

272 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

should join the ranks, and thus in a short campaign he learnt more of
soldiering than he had done during a lifetime of annual drills. Al-
lowance must be made for these facts in considering the present con-
dition of the Green Flag army, but I confess that the estimate of
300,000 effectives, which has been given me by an authority on the
spot entitled to respect, appears to me to be excessive. It is true
that the reviews are now held more frequently in the towns and forts
of the eastern provinces than at any previous epoch ; but, allowing for
all these causes of improvement, it may be doubted whether there are
more than half that number of the Green Flag effective, in the most
modest sense of the word. The principal evil at the root of fhis
deficiency in the numbers of the Green Flag army is the corruption of
the military authorities. The Commander-in-chief set the example
which his subordinates were not slow to follow, and the burden of
maintaining a force which did not exist fell heavily on the people of
China. No reform which ignored the radical cause of the shortcomings
of the national army could produce more than a very partial improve-
ment, and until a few months ago there was no evidence that there was
any party at Pekin in favour of the sweeping measures that are ab-
solutely necessary to make the Green Flag force an army in fact and
not in name. The eridence is now afforded by the appointment of
Prince Chun, the Emperor's father, to the post of Commander-in-
chief. This has been regarded with considerable alarm by foreigners
in China, as Prince Chun is their recognised enemy ; but on the
other hand in the interests of China it is an immense stride forward,
as he is a man of great ability, and moreover the friend and patron of
Tso Tsung Tang. One of his first steps will be to reform the Green
Flag army, and, although he is considered to be inimical to Europeans
it is most probable that he will avail himself at first of their services.
As his object is to create a national army he will undoubtedly dispense
with them whenever he thinks they have served his turn. This is
the extreme concession to Western ideas that may be expected from
the party which, if not representing the exact progress Englishmen have
sketched out for China, has a programme of its own well calculated to
satisfy the Chinese and to preserve their empire.

The Tartar army is in a much higher state of efficiency, and
great efforts have been made to arm it with modern weapons. The
troops sent to Turkestan have been supplied with Berdan rifles, and
the Pekin garrison includes a large detachment placed on the same
footing. More recently a large quantity of rifles has been purchased
in the United States, and these are now being rapidly distributed to
the troops in Kansuh, Mongolia, and Pechili. A still more decided
step in advance has been taken by the establishment of the arsenal and
ship-yard at Kiangnan, near Shanghai, for the Chinese already obtain
from it nearly all, if not all, the ammunition required for their army.
The small-arms factory is not yet in full working order ; but artillery

1880. THE FUTURE OF CHINA. 273

of considerable calibre has been turned out. During last year twenty
Armstrong forty-pounders, manufactured by Chinese hands, and
tested by English engineers, were completed by the Kiangnan
officials and sent to join ' the active army.' Since then seven-inch
150-pounders have been constructed with like success, and these are
to be placed in the forts on the Peiho. In a very short time the
Kiangnan Arsenal will have rendered China independent of the
foreigner in the necessaries for an army ; and there is no reason why
it should not be maintained in a fair state of efficiency by the
Chinese themselves, without even the aid of foreign superintendents.
Kiangnan has yet to earn its laurels as a naval dockyard. A
terrible storm during the typhoon last year did extensive damage,
and threw the works out of gear, so that the Chinese navy consists
only of foreign purchased vessels. But this is to be remedied as
speedily as possible. Within a certain space of time, which may be
either more than ten years or much less, Kiangnan will be an arsenal
and shipyard vying in its way with anything we possess. The works
already cover two hundred and twenty acres ; the future before it
might prove to be what would now seem incredible. This instance
alone opens up a boundless vista for speculation, and there are other
circumstances scarcely less striking which furnish proof of the re-
markable progress China can make on her own initiative and with
scarcely any foreign aid.

There now only remains in conclusion to say a few words on the
probable effect these reforms and organic changes will have upon the
foreign policy of the Pekin Government. Let it be assumed that ten
years hence China has a fairly disciplined and well armed army of
half a million of men, that her arsenals suffice to supply all her wants
in arms, ammunition, and torpedoes, and that her navy for coast and
river purposes is respectable, what would be the probable attitude of the
Pekin Government towards foreign Powers ? The question loses little
of its significance if the period has to be put off for another decade,
and the war, which is morally certain to take place between Eussia
and China within the shorter period, must, be it remembered, hasten
the arrival of that time, because the Chinese will have to learn in the
hard school of necessity where they have already learnt so much. A
war fought either in Central Asia or in Mongolia would be one ii>
which China could, and would if necessary, throw away several armies.
Under such conditions it would be hard if her soldiers did not become
veterans, or her leaders capable. It is probable then that within ten
years China will be in a position to hold her own, and to shape her
policy not in deference to foreign Powers, but in accordance with her
own instincts, which warn her to have as little to do with foreigners
as possible until she can treat with them on a perfect level of equality.
The prospect thus raised up cannot be expected to appear a
pleasant one in the eyes of those who have regarded China as a factor
VOL. VIII.— No. 42. T

274 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

of no importance in Asian politics ; but no sensible man, anxious to
discern the future, can close his eyes to what is almost the inevitable.
So far as India is concerned the danger from China's military growth
is not of a kind to inspire us with much apprehension ; although
China's interest in Burmah, Nepaul, and even Cashmere, is much
more active than is allowed by Anglo-Indians. But as China's new
policy will be framed on the old lines laid down by the experience of
centuries, teaching her what is requisite on the land side, and as India
has always been outside her influence, there will be no danger of a
collision between ourselves and the Chinese, until at all events we
have advanced to Bhamo, or to a point threatening the road from
Bathang to Tibet. Also, no invader would be opposed with greater
unanimity than the Chinese would be by the whole population of
Hindostan. There will be great opportunity therefore for showing
diplomatic ability in settling the Burmese difficulty, which cannot be
much longer put off, but no settlement will be satisfactory if it gives
umbrage to China.

With regard to Eussia, there are no similar reasons for anticipat-
ing that a hostile collision can be averted. From Sagalien to the
Kizil Yart, at Kuldja, Chuguchak, Ourga, and Haylar, the interests
of the two empires meet, and they meet only to conflict. The caravan
trade through Kiachta has been forced on the Chinese, partly by the
strong hand, and partly by the astuteness of the Russians ; but it has
always been distasteful at Pekin. More serious cause for disagree-
ment is to be found in the unsettled questions connected with the
frontier in the upper Amour region, and in the fact that Baikal has
been made a Russian lake. Nor is the forcible annexation twenty
years ago of the maritime province of Manchuria either condoned or
forgotten. The dispute with respect to Kuldja has brought all these
latent differences to the surface, and the complications must sooner
or later develope into a struggle between Russia and China for
supremacy in Northern Asia. The best energies of the Chinese will
be devoted to that contest, which, whether its result be victory or
defeat, will further quicken the progress of the empire ; but apart
from it the day is very near at hand when the Pekin Government will
be able to carry out, in its own way, and on conditions which it
approves, its policy towards foreign states, especially in regard to
matters of external trade.

DEMETRIUS CHARLES BOULGER.

1880. 275

STATE AID AND CONTROL IN
INDUSTRIAL INSURANCE.

THE earnestness of conviction and the warmth of heart with which
Mr. Blackley advocated his scheme of National Insurance in this
Eeview in November 1878, led him to extreme proposals which
have been severely criticised. His suggestion was to include the
youth of every class in the realm in a system of compulsory contri-
bution to a vast insurance fund. Mr. Edwards, in the number of
this Eeview for November last, asserted that this was bad political
economy and impracticable ; but I venture to think that in de-
nouncing the principle of compulsion altogether in reference to
the question at issue, Mr. Edwards has been carried into the other
extreme.

Mr. Edwards is in error in saying that an association has been
formed for the furtherance of the scheme propounded by Mr. Blackley.
The object of that association is described to be ' to disseminate in-
formation and create opinion in favour of some such measure.' And
I believe that some such measure can be pointed out which will not
be open to the condemnation pronounced by Mr. Edwards upon Mr.
Blackley's too comprehensive proposals ; and that a certain degree of
compulsion, calculated to promote the objects in view, is defensible
on the grounds both of political economy and justice.

In order that the point at which • the question has now arrived
may be clearly seen, it is necessary to carry the view back a few
years, to the inquiries of the Royal Commission on Friendly Societies
from 1870 to 1874, which resulted in legislation in 1875 and 1876,
but not to the extent desired.

In December 1872 a memorial was presented to the Commissioners
which they describe as numerously and influentially signed, recom-
mending that (1) the system of Government Life Insurance through
the Post Office, (2) the system of Deferred Annuities, (3) the In-
surance of ' Small Endowments, that is to say, sums to be paid at
a certain time,' should be so extended as to bring those benefits
within the reach of the humbler classes ; and (4) that the Govern-
ment should undertake the business of payment in sickness.

That the memorialists, in submitting these proposals, were not
likely to commit themselves to indefensible propositions, may be

T 2

276 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

gathered from the terms in which the memorial is noticed by the
Commissioners : —

Amongst the names attached to this memorial will be found those of the
Archbishops of Canterbury and York, G bishops, 17 lay penrs, including1 Lords
Shaftesbury, Lichfield, Eversley, Lyttelton, Ebury, &c., 35 M.P.'s of all shades of
political opinion, headed by Mr. Gathorne Hardy and Mr. Cowper Temple, Sir
Baldwyn Leighton, Sir Charles Trevelyan and several other baronets ; Sir James
Hannen, Mr. II. S. Tremenheere, formerly Commissioner on the employment of
children, young persons, and women in agriculture, and two of his assistant commis-
sioners, 87 chairmen and 8 deputy-chairmen of Boards of Guardians, headed by the
Dean of Winchester and the Hon. Francis Scott . . . several chairmen and deputy-
chairmen of quarter sessions, 52 Justices of the Peace not included in previous
categories, among whom may be mentioned Mr. T. B. L. Baker and Mr. J. Spedding,
nearly 90 clergymen not included in previous categories . . . and a considerable
number of other persons who come within the description of the Commissioners as
having given ' a great deal of time and thought to the subject of Friendly Societies.' *

Of the four points presented for their consideration, the Com-
missioners expressed their concurrence in the first three. The first
two — the system of Government Life Insurance through the Post
Office, and the system of Deferred Annuities — have been carried into
effect ; the third, which aimed at giving the Government power to
reduce the minimum sum that can be insured for at death, from 201.
to 51. or less, yet remains to be dealt with ; and I shall show further
on why it should receive the early attention of the Government.

Upon the fourth point, the Commissioners state (Fourth Report,
§ 848) that * they are inclined to think that the danger of imposition
and the difficulty of preventing " malingering " would be great in a
Government Friendly Society ; but without entering fully into this
controversy, they are, upon other grounds, of opinion that it is not
desirable that the State should, under present circumstances at all
events, undertake what is called sick-pay business.'

The suggestion of the memorialists that the Government should
undertake, to its full extent, the business of insuring sick-pay, and
therefore in time entirely supersede the Friendly Societies, was
prompted by the apparently very unsatisfactory state at that period of
nearly all the Friendly Societies in the Kingdom, as set forth in the
annual Reports of the then Registrar of Friendly Societies. The
legislation in 1875 and 1876, consequent upon the inquiries of the
Royal Commission above referred to, although to a considerable
extent simply permissive, has laid the foundation for great
improvements in those Societies. But there is nevertheless still
a field open in which the interposition of Government, in under-
taking to insure sick-pay to a limited extent, would be most salu-
tary, not only to the working classes, but to the Societies themselves.
I hope to show that the objections which weighed with the Com-
missioners in 1874 may be removed by the mode in which I propose
that the subject should now be dealt with.

And in adopting to that end the principle of compulsion suggested
1 Note to Section 845.

1880. INDUSTRIAL INSURANCE. 277

by Mr. Blackley, I beg leave to bear my testimony to the value of
his arguments as to the expediency and justice of applying it to the
matter in question.

Without attempting a full summary of them, it will suffice in
this place to say that Mr. Blackley reminds his readers that both
personal and social duties are already in numerous cases enforced by
Act of Parliament ; that in the case of Poor Law Eelief, ' it is in fact
contributed by rate-payers a large proportion of whom have perhaps
worked harder, have been more temperate, frugal and self-denying,
and yet are hardly less poor, than the very paupers whom they have
to support ; ' and that consequently ' a tremendous compulsion exists
now in this matter, but it is exercised on the wrong persons, to the
injury of the provident and to the moral ruin of the wasteful.'

The objections against compulsion, and other objections raised
against such a plan as I am about to propose, will be more con-
veniently dealt with after I have explained the plan itself. Some of
them, I take leave to think, will be answered by the explanation.

Great advantages would arise if it were rendered possible for the
youths of the wage-earning class to accumulate in the Post-0 ffice
Savings' Bank, before the age of twenty-one, a sum which, paid down
at once, would purchase for them one or more of the following
benefits : (1 ) a certain payment in sickness up to a specified age,
(2) an annuity after that, and (3) a certain sum at death, ' suffi-
cient,' according to their well-known desire, ' to prevent the cost of
their burial from falling upon their children, and to guard them
against the risk of being buried as paupers ' — (Fourth Eeport, § 851).

A principle embodied in the Factory and Workshop Act 1878
(consolidating the previous Acts) affords a precedent which might be
fairly extended with the view of meeting as far as practicable the
above objects.

By Sect. 25 of that Act, power is given to the occupier of a
factory or workshop to deduct from the wages of a child a weekly sum
not exceeding one- twelfth of such wages, and to pay over such sum
as a school-fee to the School Board or to the manager of an efficient
school ; and the sum may be recovered as a debt from the occupier.
I leave out of sight the amount to which the school-fee is limited —
threepence — as not bearing on the principle adopted.

The liability of the child to submit to this deduction of one-twelfth
of his wages (I confine attention at present to male children), in case
his parents either cannot or will not pay the school-fee, begins from
the first moment of his employment, at the age of ten years, and
continues until he is fourteen, unless at thirteen he has attained the
required standards of proficiency or of school attendance.

For the purpose of the proposed insurance, that liability to sub-
mit to the deduction of one-twelfth of their wages might be very
properly continued from the age of fourteen until they attain the age
of twenty-one, in the case of all youths employed in factories and

278 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

workshops in England and Wales, and also extended to all such
youths employed in agriculture. And the proceeds should be paid to
the credit of each contributor, into the nearest post-office, either by
the employer or by convenient arrangements which it would not be
difficult to point out.

Hereafter it would doubtless be desirable to extend the system to
all employed in coal and metalliferous mines, and to the large number
of persons brought under the Act of 1877 relating to those living in
canal boats; thus embracing all who, being subject to protective
legislation, are well-defined classes, and already habituated to certain
degrees of administrative regulation. But the peculiar conditions as
to health and mortality belonging to the class first mentioned would
require adjustments which would probably too much complicate the
question on its first introduction ; and the administrative regulations
of the latter are yet incomplete.

It would, doubtless, also be desirable, if possible, to include the
youths between fourteen and twenty-one, belonging to other branches
of employment within or just above the line of weekly wages, if they
could be brought within any practicable definition. I am unable to
suggest any such definition. The numbers brought within the very
wide definitions of the Factory and Workshop Act,2 and those employed
in agriculture, would be so considerable as fully to justify a commence-
ment being made with those two classes. Hereafter it may be found
possible to include the mining and canal populations. The only other
classes of labourers named in the Census are those engaged in ' transport
service ' on railways and roads and in docks, and the class of ' general
labourers,' amounting together to about 800,000 (vol. iv. of Census,
1871, p. 53). The ' indefinite class,' the last in the Census, is men-
tioned as consisting of those whose occupations have been imperfectly
or vaguely described, and most of whom ought to have been included
among the industrial classes. The exclusion, possibly only temporary,
of the classes adverted to, and also of females, from the benefits of
the legislation proposed, can afford no good ground for refusing those
benefits to the three millions who, as I shall show presently, would in
the course of a generation be included in it. Many railway servants
are already included in a compulsory contribution to the insurance
funds of their respective Companies.

2 The inquiries of our Assistant Commissioners in the Children's Employment
Commission (1862-6), embracing ' all trades and manufactures not already regulated
by law,' induced Parliament to extend the legislation that had been previously con-
fined to textile factories in which steam or water power was used, to all factories and
workshops in the kingdom. By Section 93 of the Consolidating Act of 1878 the ex-
pression ' workshop ' means ' any premises, room, or place, not being a factory within
the meaning of the Act, in which premises, room, or place, or within the close or
curtilage or precincts of which premises, any manual labour is exercised by way of
trade or for the purposes of gain, in or incidental to the making of any article, or of
part of any article, or in or incidental to the altering, repairing, ornamenting, or
finishing of any article, or in or incidental to the adapting for sale of any article.'

1880. INDUSTRIAL INSURANCE. 279

What would be the probable sums so accumulated at the age of
twenty-one by the respective contributors ?

The means of arriving at a fair approximation upon this point are
afforded by a Keturn of the Inspectors of Factories to Parliament,
1871 (there is no later one), giving a statement of the average earn-
ings of operatives in the principal places in Mr. Eedgrave's district
(nearly half the kingdom), l chiefly prepared by the manufacturers
themselves,' and by the accounts of earnings in the agricultural dis-
tricts in the Reports of the Agricultural Employment Commission
(1867-70), collected by our Assistant-Commissioners.

It may be gathered from those sources that the lowest average
rate of wages for the seven years between fourteen and twenty-one
may be placed at 8s. per week, and this only in small manufacturing
industries, and in a few localities in the agricultural districts. The
general mean in manufacturing and agricultural employments for
youths between 14 and 21 maybe stated as ranging between 10s. and
12s. per week for the seven years. But the numbers whose average
earnings for that period would have amounted to 13s. and 14s. would be
found to be considerable. In the highest paid branches of manufactur-
ing work youths before arriving at 21 can earn from 20s. to 25s. per
week, and in agricultural labour, in some parts of the country, up to 20s.

Assuming first broadly that full employment has continued during
the whole period (the contrary supposition will be dealt with here-
after), there would have been accumulated at the end of those seven
years about the following sums : —

Without With interest

interest. at 3 per cent.

By those whose ave- & s. d. & i. d.

rage earnings were 8s. per week, the sum of 12 2 8 13 8 8

„ 9s. „ 13 13 0 15 3 0

„ 10s. „ 15 3 4 16 17 3

„ 11s. „ 16 13 8 18 9 5

„ 12s. „ 18 4 0 20 4 0

„ 13s. „ 19 14 4 21 18 2

„ 14s. „ 21 4 8 23 12 8

and correspondingly larger sums by those who had been earning the
highest rates of wages.

What would be the best way, in the interest of the respective
contributors, of applying these sums with the view of laying the
foundation of their future independence ?

Of the three objects which an intelligent and thoughtful working
man aims at as a provision against the" future — (1) securing a pay-
ment in sickness, (2) payment for burial expenses on the death of him-
self and his wife, (3) an annuity in old age — the first will always
have the preference. The second he seeks to attain either through
the same society which he joins in order to receive sick-pay, or through
a separate burial society, including also his children. The third,
although offered on liberal terms by the Government, he has hitherto
for the most part considered as beyond his reach.

280 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

Supposing the Government, therefore, to undertake the business
of sick-pay, what should be its amount, and what the premium which,
paid down in one sum, would be required to insure it ?

Mr. Blackley proposes in his essay 8s. per week sick-pay up to
70, and 4s. per week annually after that age.

I think it more desirable that the objects aimed at should be 5s.
a week sick-pay up to 65, an annuity of 5s. a week after that age,
and 5l. at death (with 3Z. or 4£. on death of wife where the accumu-
lations permit it). And I have reason to believe that the first and
the third of those objects could be attained, even by those earning
the lowest rates of wages, before, or soon after, the age of 21 ; and
that all three are attainable within the same period by those earning
the higher rates.

The following are the reasons for the limitations proposed.

(a) The small sum of 5s. per week insured with the Government
would not injuriously affect the interests of the Friendly Societies.
It would, on the contrary, promote their interests by reason of the
habit that had been commenced during those seven years of youth,
among the whole industrial population, of making some provision for
the future.

(6) So small a sum as 5s. per week sick-pay would not, as a
general rule, satisfy even a single man ; he would proceed to insure
himself for at least 5s. per week more in some good society. He
would most probably aim at 7s. or 9s. more according to his means.
(Second Report of Friendly Societies Commission, p. 13 ; Fourth
Report, p. xxxiii.)

(c) Having paid, before the age of twenty-one, his assurance
for 5s. per week sick-pay up to sixty-five, and the small sum of
ll. 18s. 7d. to secure 51. at death (if the minimum sum that the
Government can insure for were reduced, as recommended by the
Commissioners, from 201. to 5?.), he would have more resources at
command to meet the monthly payments of his society for the smaller
sum needed from it as sick-pay.

(d) Those who, earning the higher rates of wages, had been able
also to purchase an annuity of 5s. per week after the age of sixty-five,
would have secured a large proportion of what they would look to for
their independence ; inasmuch as to this 5s. per week would be added
the half or quarter pay, or an equivalent sum as a distinct annuity,
that they would be entitled to if they had maintained their sub-
scriptions to their societies up to that age. An annuity to begin at
a later age than sixty-five would be unacceptable to the working
classes (Second Report, p. 17.)

(e) I shall also be able to show that a still greater benefit to the
Friendly Societies would be likely to arise from the accumulations of
all who had been earning the higher rates of wages, by putting it
within their power to purchase from the Government, with very little
further effort, before the age of twenty-five, an additional annuity of

1880. INDUSTRIAL INSURANCE. 281

3s. per week at sixty-five ; thus enabling the societies to relieve
themselves of a burden which weighs so heavily upon them — the so-
called sick-allowance of half or quarter pay after a given age.

(/ ) The benefits that would arise to the public from the fact of
all the youths of the classes designated having been able to purchase
for themselves sick-pay to the amount of 5s. or even 4s. a week from
the age of twenty-one, would be that, for single men, out-door relief
would in a few years be, in those classes, nearly extinguished ; and
for the married both out-door and in-door relief would, after a further
period of a few years, be very materially reduced.

The present saving of rates from the action of Friendly Societies
is estimated at 2,000,OOOL a year (Fourth Eeport, § 821). < And if
this be true,' the Commissioners proceed to say, ' under present cir-
cumstances, it is clear that any improvement in the stability of these
societies, or encouragement to people to join them, would not only
benefit the labouring classes by leading them to help themselves
instead of depending on others, but might tend to alleviate in no
slight degree the pressure of local taxation now so generally com-
plained of.'

The next question is, What would be the premium required to
purchase these benefits at the age and in the manner specified ?

The data for this calculation are to be found in the following
considerations.

In the youths of the classes defined the Government would have
a very large body of contributors. At present an approximation only
to the exact number can be arrived at. According to the Eeturn of
the Inspectors of Factories to Parliament in 1871 (the last in which
both factories and workshops are included) the number of male
operatives in both, in England and Wales, between fourteen and
twenty-one, may be estimated at about 360,000. The number of
those of similar ages employed in agriculture may, according to the
Census of 1871, be taken at 340,000. giving a total of 700,000 ; or,
in other words, 100,000 youths of the age of fourteen would come
into contribution in each succeeding year from the passing of any Act
for this purpose. This would give a total in the course of a genera-
tion of, in round numbers, about 3,000,000 contributors.

The next completed Keturn of the Chief Inspector of Factories,
and the Census of 1881, will probably show an addition to those,
numbers ; but taking them as they stand, by way of illustration, and
even taking the moderate sum of 151. in the Table of Contributions
at page 279 as a mean, the total in the hands of the Government, on
the basis of 100,000 fresh contributors annually yielding 1,500,000^.,
would, with the accumulations at 3 per cent., after all payments
made, show in a generation a large sum ; and a much larger if, as is
probable, the mean for each contributor should approach 201.

The example of the Post-Office Savings Bank shows that those
large numbers and amounts need present no difficulty. Mr. Scuda-

282 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

more, in his evidence to the Friendly Societies Commission (Third
Report, 27,778) states that, in the twelve years since the Post-Office
Savings Bank had been established, they had 76,000,000^ of money
in deposit, and had 1,500,000 accounts open ; that they had con-
stituted a separate branch of the Post Office for the purpose ; and
that ' in the business of life insurance the premiums had more than
covered the expenses up to that time.' The sums that have been de-
posited in the Savings Bank branch now amount to 1 11,012,000^., and
the number of accounts they have had open have risen to 5,783,527.

The favourable conditions that would arise from the large number
of the contributors, and from the manner in which the contributions
would be paid, would be the following : —

As the contributors would come from the whole body of the
manufacturing and agricultural population, the higher average of
general health among the latter would go far towards counterbalancing
the especially unfavourable conditions in certain portions of the
manufacturing population. It is to be observed, also, that those
conditions will be gradually improved by the more stringent sanitary
regulations of the Factory and Workshops Act of 1878 ; and also by
the more strict enforcement of sanitary laws in the large towns now
in progress.

As the contributions would cease from each contributor on his
attaining the age of twenty-one, the costs of collection would neces-
sarily be very much less than in the Friendly Societies, where they
continue weekly or monthly to nearly the end of life.

On the other hand is to be considered * the danger of imposition,'
which the Commissioners on Friendly Societies were * inclined to think
would be very great if the Government undertook the business of
sick-pay.'

This is unquestionably an important element in determining the
amount of premium which the Government would have to charge
with a view to safety. I hope to show that there are means which
did not exist when the Commissioners formed that opinion, by which
the apprehended danger may be avoided.

The Friendly Societies, in endeavouring to guard against im-
position, rely first and chiefly on the doctor's certificate ; partly on
4 sick visitors,' appointed usually from among their fellow- workmen,
for the occasion, and as to whose efficiency for that purpose there is
much difference of opinion. Boards of guardians, on the other hand,
have the security of the opinion of two permanently appointed officers
in every case of sickness involving an application for relief — the
relieving officer and the medical officer.

This latter principle is one which the Government might usefully
follow — keeping at the same time its administration of sick-pay
entirely distinct, as is most desirable, from all contact with the
officers of the Poor Law.

The new machinery devised for the administration of the com-

1880. INDUSTRIAL INSURANCE. 283

pulsory clauses of the Education Acts of 1870 and 1876, is capable of
affording the Government the first portion of the aid required.

A trustworthy officer, corresponding to the relieving officer of
the Poor Law, well acquainted with the character and circumstances
of the labouring population, might be obtained by co-operation with
the School-Boards or School Attendance Committees under those Acts.

The School-Boards and School Attendance Committees have the
power of appointing two paid officers : an Inquiry Officer, who is
employed to ascertain in what cases the school fees cannot be paid
by the parents, and a School Attendance Officer, whose duty it is to
carry out the compulsory clauses of the Act. The business of the
latter is to know the particulars of every child in his district between
the ages of 5 and 14. When they passed that age and entered
various employments, he could easily maintain his acquaintance with
them as long as they remained in his district. His duties necessarily
bring him into contact with the whole working population in their
homes, and take him continually into every part of his district. No
great portion of his time could be occupied were he also to be em-
powered to act as Inquiry Officer for the Grovernment in the adminis-
tration of sick-pay.3 There seems, therefore, no reason why the two
offices might not be combined, under an arrangement providing for
a suitable addition to his salary. His duty for the Government
would arise when a claim was made for sick-pay. Notice would be
sent by the claimant to the Sick-Pay Inquiry Officer and to the
Medical Officer of the Gfovernment. In any case of doubt as to the
bona fide, nature of the sickness, the knowledge which the Inquiry
Officer would presumably possess of the character and habits of the
applicant would be a material aid to the Medical Officer, and their
joint interposition would afford a strong protection against fraud.

The Inquiry Officers and School Attendance Officers of the School-
Boards and School Attendance Committees will probably before long
be found in every School district. There is now either a School-
Board or a School Attendance Committee in every district in Eng-
land and Wales. And as compulsory attendance under Bye-laws is
now the law for 70 per cent, of the whole population of England and
Wales, and for 95 per cent, of the whole borough population, the
above-named officers are already in existence to that extent. (Educa-
tion Report for 1878-9, p. xxiv.) It may be fairly assumed that the
expectation of the Education Department will be fulfilled, that 'year
by year the number of rural parishes in which school attendance was
not enforced would diminish, and .that the appointment of those
officers will therefore ultimately become general. But in any case it
is to be anticipated that the School-Boards and School Attendance
Committees would readily aid the Government, either by making-
combined appointments, or where those two offices are already com-

8 In the Friendly Societies twenty out of every hundred members, speaking gene-
rally, are found to claim sick-pay in the course of a year.

284 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

bined, as is often the case, by recommending suitable persons for the
purpose required.

The usual salaries of the School Attendance Officers range, as I
am informed (for there has not yet been any Keturn) from 101. to
501. per annum, rising to a higher sum where the district is very
large. This will enable a rough estimate to be made of the cost to
the Government of a staff of officers of this description. There are in
round numbers 14,000 parishes and parochial districts in England
and Wales. Many of them are so small, both in area and population,
that one Sick-pay Inquiry officer would be sufficient for two or three
or more, as is now the case with the School Attendance Officers. An
average of 101. for the whole (giving a total of 140,OOOZ.) would
probably be more than sufficient to permit of a full and fair adjust-
ment of the salaries required. The sum necessary to provide for this
annual charge may be taken to be about 10 per cent, upon the con-
tributions received, if they amount, as stated at page 281, to only
1 ,500,000^. ; but less if, as is probable, they exceed that amount.

These officers having been appointed primarily to aid the Medical
Officer in detecting any attempted fraud in an applicant for sick-pay,
would be also valuable as Visiting Officers in cases where the sick-
certificate had been granted. In the course of their daily duties in
the district they would be able to exercise a considerable degree of
supervision, and accordingly to give great aid to the Medical Officer
in the matter of the weekly renewal of the certificate.

In regard to the selection of suitable Medical Officers to act for
the Government, this appears a matter of easy solution as to the
manufacturing and town populations. For the purposes of the
Factory and Workshop Act there are Certifying Surgeons within easy
reach of nearly every factory and workshop in the kingdom. Their
number in England and Wales, according to a recent Keturn, is 880.
It is only when there is no Certifying Surgeon within three miles of
a factory or workshop that, by § 71 of the Act, the Poor Law
Medical Officer is empowered to act in his stead. I am informed that
practically it is very seldom necessary to use this permission. Where
the numbers to which the Certifying Surgeon has to attend are small,
the appointment, as far as remuneration is concerned, is little more
than honorary. Where they are large, he is remunerated either by a
sum fixed by agreement with the occupier, or according to a scale of
fees specified in the Act ; and the occupier * may deduct the fee, or
any part thereof, not exceeding in any case threepence, from the
wages of the person for whom the certificate was granted.' It is
obvious that no medical practitioners would be more eligible for the
duty of granting the sick-certificate on behalf of the Government
than these Certifying Surgeons, who are brought into such direct
contact with the whole youth of the manufacturing population up to
the age of sixteen, and who also in the course of practice acquire a
considerable knowledge of the habits and character of the town

1880. INDUSTRIAL INSURANCE. 285

population generally. I have reason to believe that there would be
no difficulty in securing their services, at a moderate cost, for the
duty in question.

In the country districts, the Government might anticipate in this
case also the willing co-operation of the School-Boards and School
Attendance Committees towards the selection of suitable Medical
Officers unconnected with Poor Law administration.

It would be a matter of inquiry hereafter what would be the pro-
bable total number of Medical Officers necessary, both for town and
country, and the consequent amount of ' loading ' on each premium,
to cover a contract for their services. Their number probably would
not be much, if at all, below that of the Sick-pay Inquiry Officers,
and their average salaries would be somewhat larger. A rough
estimate of their cost will be included in the following paragraph.

One more point remains for consideration, — the office costs of
management.

These would be favourably affected by the fact of the costs of
collection ceasing with the contributors at the age of 21, when the
premium for the purchase of the amount of sick-pay insured by the
Government would be paid down once for all. The difference in the
cost of management between insurances thus effected and those for
which the payments are carried on from week to week or month to
month is very great. Mr. Scudamore, in reference to insurance
through the Post-Office Savings Bank, states that ' the loading is 2 per
cent, when the insurance is effected in a single payment ' (Second Re-
port, 27, 778). Mr. John Watts, who had been largely connected with
insurance companies in Manchester, states (Second Report, Appendix,
p. 454) that ' while the cost of insurance to the Government is 2 or
3 per cent, on the business they have done, the actuarial tables for
life-insuring companies allow about 30 per cent.' As regards the
costs of collection, therefore, the position of the Government would
be favourable. In regard to the office costs in making the sick-pay
payments through the Post-Office, an indication is given in the ex-
planatory Statement 2 preceding the Post-Office Tables, pp. 7-8,
namely, that where superannuation allowances are paid monthly, a
charge of 10 per cent, upon the policy 'includes all costs and charges.'
What would be the charge necessary to meet the sick-pay payments
on the basis of the average number of weeks' sickness from 21 to 65
is an actuarial question presenting no difficulty. I have reason to
believe that, bearing in mind the items and the conditions enumerated
in the preceding paragraphs, the charge which the Government
might find it necessary to make for the risks and costs of sick-pay
management would not exceed 30 per cent upon the premium.

Having thus indicated the conditions as to the cost to the Govern-
ment of the administration of a system of sick-pay of the amount
proposed, the way is prepared for an approximate estimate of what
should be the premium required for it.

286 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

I believe I am right in saying that according to Ratcliffe's tables,4
with 3 per cent, interest, and the age 21 (excluding expenses of
management)

£*.<*.£ i. a.

The value of 5s. per week sick-pay up to Go is, if paid at 21 7 0 G
Add 30 per cent., to include expenses of management . 220

926

According to the Post-Office Tables (Table 2, p. 19), the

cost of 51. at death would be, if paid at 21 ... 1 18 4

Cost of sick-pay and Burial Fund , . . 11 0 10

According to the Post-Office Tables for Deferred Annuities
(p. 46) the cost of 13/. or 5s. per week at G5 would be,
if paid at 21 12 0 6

Add 10 per cent, for cost of monthly instead of half-yearly
payments, as specified in p. 8 of explanatory statement

of Post-Office Tables 140

13 4 G

Cost of sick-pay, Burial Fund, and annuity . * 24 5 4

Now, referring to the table of accumulations of one-twelfth from
average wages at page 279, it will be seen that from the average of 14s.
per week for the seven years, the sum accumulated, with interest,
would amount to 231. 12s. 8d., or only 12s. 8d. less than would
be sufficient to purchase, at the age of 21, the whole of those
benefits.

It is plain, therefore, that to all the youths subject to the proposed
legislation who had been earning an average of 14s. per week and
upwards for the seven years between 14 and 21, all these three bene-
fits would be easily accessible ; and it is superfluous to say how large
their number would be. To those whose accumulations may have
fallen a few pounds short of the sum required to purchase the whole
at that age, the inducement would be strong to complete it volun-
tarily with as little delay as possible. Those who, from having been
able to command only the lower rates of wages, or from having been
often out of work, had accumulated lesser sums, would have the means
of purchasing smaller benefits only — say 4s. sick-pay and 4s. annuity,
and possibly also the 51. at death.

In either case they would have attained a great object. They
would at the age of 21 have freed themselves from the prospect
of future dependence; and with this example before them of the
results of saving, a disposition towards voluntary thrift and fore-
thought may be expected to have taken some root.

The accumulations of those who had commanded the highest rates
of wages would considerably exceed the above-named 231. 12s. 8d.
If they should find themselves in possession of the additional sum of
31. 17s. 4d., they would, according to the Post-Office Tables, be able to

4 It is to be borne in mind that the tables here used include the sickness experience
of societies whose members are of very various occupations.

1880. INDUSTRIAL INSURANCE. 287

purchase an additional annuity at 65 of Is. Qd. per week. The same
tables show that 4£. 8s. Id. more, so applied within the next four
years, would give them at 65 another Is. 6d. per week. They would
have thus secured for themselves a total of 8s. per week at the age of
65. This would be at least one half more than, in most cases, they
could expect from any society, even if they had been able to keep up
their subscriptions during the whole period up to that age. And the
societies would universally appreciate the benefit of being released
from the prospective burden .

The * other grounds,' besides the difficulty of preventing imposition,
upon which the Commissioners were of opinion that State action in the
matter of sick-pay was not desirable, were directed against the proposal
then before them, namely, ' the direct assumption by the State of the
whole business now carried on by the societies, or, in other words, to
the establishment of a National Friendly Society managed, and there-
fore virtually guaranteed, by the Government ' (Fourth Keport, § 844).
Against that proposal, as tending to supersede the Friendly Societies,
the Commissioners adduce very strong arguments (§ 848). But
those arguments do not apply to the limited system I am advocating,
the effect of which, if adopted, would be to strengthen the financial
position of the societies, and probably to add greatly to the number
of their members. I venture to anticipate that the societies, on
giving it their candid consideration, will look upon it in that light.

The Burial Societies, on the other hand, may be expected to be
unfavourable to the proposal that Parliament should give effect to
the recommendation of the Commissioners by reducing the minimum
sum that can be insured at death to 5L But after a full considera-
tion of their case the Commissioners came to the following conclusion
regarding them :—

If we take the view that Burial Societies exist for the benefit of the people, not
the people for the benefit of the managers of Burial Societies ; if we are satisfied
that great abuses now exist in the management of many of these societies, from
which it is most difficult for the members to protect themselves, and which it is
almost equally difficult for legislation to prevent ; and if we find that the State can
carry on this class of business without involving the public in pecuniary loss, and
without mischievously affecting the spirit of individual independence, we shall
scarcely recognise the right of the societies to object to its doing so, on the ground
that the competition of the Government might be prejudicial to their own interests.
(§ 852.)

Although in the year following that Report (1875) an Act was
passed directed against the most glaring defects of those Societies,
the Report of the Chief Registrar of Friendly Societies for 1878
shows that much remains uncorrected, and that ' the costly nature of
the operations of those Societies ' also continues to supply a strong
reason for the alteration of the law recommended by the Commis-
sioners. Last year another Act defined the scope of the Acts of 1875
and 1876 which a legal decision had made doubtful.

It would require more space than can be now asked for to point

288 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

out how the difficulties with regard to apprentices, and to those agri-
cultural labourers in some districts of England and Wales who
receive part payment of their wages in food, might be met ; to con-
sider whether a minimum should be fixed, below which no stoppage
from the youths' wages should be made ; to consider how long after
the age of twenty-one, and in what ratio to the wages earned, the
obligation should continue to replace sums withdrawn in cases of
need, and what portion, in case of death or emigration, should be re-
turnable ; and to determine whether, from the accumulations which
would be in the hands of the Government, a periodical bonus might
not be paid, by which the self-interest of the assured would be enlisted
in checking imposition in the matter of sick-pay. But a few other
topics must be briefly noticed.

It has been asked whether employers would be willing agents in
making the proposed deductions from wages, and paying them over
periodically to the nearest Post-Office Savings Bank to the credit of
the contributors, if such duty were cast upon them by Act of Parlia-
ment. Experience on a large scale has already raised a strong
presumption that they would be. In many of the large iron-works
and collieries in Northumberland and Durham, in Yorkshire, Shrop-
shire, and South Wales, the practice has prevailed for many years
of making it a condition of employment that certain sums should be
deducted from wages for some or all of the following objects : — sick-
pay, doctor's fee, school fees, payment in case of accidents, and burial
fund. I had occasion to notice most of the instances of this practice
in the course of my annual reports to Parliament as Commissioner to
inquire into the state of the mining population from 184.4 to 1858 ;
and the practice was found by the Assistant Commissioners of the
Friendly Societies Commission during their inquiries between 1871
and 1873 to be still existing. I never heard that the masters had
any fear of a claim being made that the rate of wages should be in-
creased by the amount of the sum retained for the objects mentioned.
Wherever the practice was carried on with due consideration for the
interests and feelings of the men, as was the case in all the best
managed works, whether belonging to companies or individuals, it
was satisfactory to the members. It was unpopular in the smaller
works, where it was thought to be conducted with a view rather to
the advantage of the employers than of the men. It exists largely
among the great Eailway Companies. The principle is visible in the
deductions which go to form the reserved pay in the army, and in
the compulsory retiring fund of the Indian Civil Service. In the
proposed deductions from the wages of youths from fourteen to
twenty-one, the benefit both to the youths themselves and to the
public cannot fail to be recognised by employers in general ; to the
first, by putting them in the way of raising themselves in the social
scale ; to the public, by its direct tendency to cause by degrees a large
reduction of the rates.

1880. INDUSTRIAL INSURANCE. 289

I should be sorry to believe that so important a question as the one
under discussion could be disposed of by the phrase that ' you cannot
teach thrift by Act of Parliament.' It is unfortunately the case that
" unthrift ' has been taught by Act of Parliament for many genera-
tions, by the Poor Law, and in an especial manner by its mal-
administration, under the mistaken ideas of the day, during a great
portion of the last and the early part of the present century. It
must also be remembered to how great an extent improvident habits
have been stimulated in the young as well as in their elders, by por-
tions of the legislation of the last half-century, which have brought
the temptations to self-indulgence in various ways to their very
doors. If a measure accustoming them to the act of saving can be
applied to the young at a time of life when they are most capable of
being led to a higher estimate of themselves and of their future con-
dition, the effort would surely be justifiable. It might, I think, be
pretty confidently asserted that it would be difficult to find a well-
disposed father of a family among the working classes who would not
welcome for his sons such a boon as this plan would offer.

Education, it may be said, will, by degrees, correct the improvi-
dent habits which have the twofold result of lowering the condition
of such large numbers of the working classes, and throwing first or last
a heavy burden on society. But the mature judgment of the country
determined that the slow progress of education required the stimulus
of compulsion. The Education Act of 1 876, in stating in its
preamble that ' it is expedient to make provision for securing the
fulfilment of parental responsibility ' in relation to the education of
children, has interfered on good grounds, and for a moral purpose,
with the most elementary liberty of civil society, the responsibility
of the parent. Assuredly, therefore, the step is a natural one to
putting such a degree of pressure upon the child, after it has received
the benefit of that education, as will train him to fulfil his duty to
himself and to society by laying the foundation, while he has the
best means of doing it, of his future independence.

I feel confident that I shall receive the support of the best friends
of the working classes in furthering the object sketched out in this
paper.5 Nor can I think that such a measure would be open to the
-charge of ' stretching the province of government beyond due bounds.'
The cry of ' Let us alone ' has been raised against all the great
measures of material and moral improvement which have distinguished
this century, from the first Sir Eobert Peel's Act of 1802 (entitled
* An Act for the Preservation of the Health and Morals of Apprentices

* The winner of the first prize for essays on Superannuation Allowances in con-
nection with friendly societies, offered by the Right Honourable W. E. Forster, M.P.,
refers to ' the struggle to keep up the club payments to the end of their lives,' and
the importance of ' educating the working classes in general up to meeting the con-
ditions necessary for securing a provision for old age.' The plan of beginning with
the young, which I propose, would materially forward those ends.

VOL. VIII.— No. 42. U

290 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

and others in Cotton and other Factories ') to the present day. But,
on good cause shown, public opinion has sanctioned the widening of
the sphere of salutary regulation. This measure would strengthen
the existing institutions that have done so much to help on the pro-
gress which the working classes have made in self-reliance ; would
show yearly more and more examples of men who in their youth had
begun to make some provision for the future ; and would thus aid the
process of restoring to the whole body of the working classes the
pride of independence, which has been so disastrously weakened by
much of the legislation, and many of the changed circumstances, of
the hist century.

Since the preceding pages were written, this question has made
some progress in engaging public attention.

A well-supported Society was formed early in this year, entitled
the National Providence League * for promoting national compulsory
insurance against destitution in sickness, infirmity, and old age ; '
and to that end ' to disseminate information and create opinion in
favour of some such measure of National Insurance as that set forth
by the Eev. "W. Lewery Blackley in his writings on this subject/
(Offices, Lancaster House, Savoy, Strand.) Among Mr. Blackley's
collected essays published under the auspices of that Society, is one
in answer to Mr. Edwards's objections to the principle of compulsion.
At the crowded conference on ' National Thrift,' held at the Man-
sion House under the presidency of the Lord Mayor (Sir Francis W.
Truscott) on the 1 2th of March last, the principle of compulsion was
treated as open to argument.

On the 4th of June, the Earl of Carnarvon called attention in the
House of Lords to the principle of ' insurance against sickness and
old age under public guarantee.' The subject was admitted to be
one worthy of consideration, and the l practical difficulties ' which
readily suggest themselves were referred to by several noble lords who
took part in the debate.

Those difficulties fell under the following heads : the question of
management by the Government ; of the mode of investment of the
large sums which a national system of insurance would place in their
hands ; of the possibility of the Government protecting itself from
fraud ; of the fear that the burden of the tax might fall upon the
employers ; of the extent to which good lives would pay for the bad ;
of the possible hardships to many earning the lowest rates of wages
if any portion of their earnings were taken for the purposes of insur-
ance ; and that compulsory insurance is not thrift.

I venture to think that the mode of meeting most of these diffi-
culties has been indicated in this paper, and that the answer to
others has been suggested ; and other difficulties not adverted to in
that debate have been pointed out (at page 288) as important sub-
jects for consideration.

1880. INDUSTRIAL INSURANCE. 291

These are the details which would be the fitting subjects of exami-
nation by the Council of the above-named National Providence
League, a body of about fifty gentlemen eminently qualified by posi-
tion and experience of public life to arrive at sound conclusions,

I am strongly impressed with the belief, from my experience as
a member of a similar body before that league was formed, that it
would be among their earliest efforts to put themselves in communi-
cation with many of the representative men of the labouring classes,
to explain to them what appear difficulties and objections, and to take
counsel with them as to the manner in which this principle might be
made most acceptable to them in its working details.

It will not be lost sight of in such discussions that this question
interests primarily, not the adults of the working-class, but the youths
under age. The adults will, as in duty bound, closely criticise what
is put forward as intended for the benefit of the young in the first in-
stance, and in the end for that of the whole adult labouring popula-
tion ; and they will scarcely fail to recognise the fact that if, by the
moderate pressure proposed to be put upon the young during their
minority, they should be able to insure themselves, with money which
they would not miss, against sickness, old age, and what they very
properly consider the disgrace of a pauper's funeral, they will have
done that which will greatly raise them in their own self-esteem, and
will have won for themselves a distinction which no other working-
class in any civilised country in the world can parallel.

The July number of this Eeview contains some observations by
Mr. Blackley on the discussion in the House of Lords of the 4th of
June, in which, I am sure inadvertently, he claims the Earl of Car-
narvon as an advocate of his plan.

The apparent object which Lord Carnarvon had in view in intro-
ducing the subject was to feel the pulse of the House on the principle
of compulsion as applicable to a system of national insurance against
sickness and old age. And Mr. Blackley has certainly good ground
for congratulating himself that the principle met with a fair degree
of acceptance, and was opposed by prinia, facie objections only,
capable of explanation and removal.

But this amount of acceptance is very far from implying acquies-
cence in Mr. Blackley's scheme as he has presented it to the public.

Lord Carnarvon gave only a brief and very general outline of what
he would desire to do. His suggestion was * that every man should
be compelled, before he was 21 years of age, to invest, through the
Government, a sum not less than 10Z., the accumulated interest on
which would form a provision either in case of sickness or old age,
and he would thus be saved from the necessity of going into the
workhouse.' His Lordship did not explain what interpretation was
to be put upon the words ' every man ; ' but he proceeded to say that
'no one who knew the condition of the agricultural classes could

292 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

doubt that its male members could easily save that sum (10£.) before
they came of age. . . . To insure the money being saved, however, the
employer should be required to deduct a certain portion of the wages
weekly and to pay it over to the Government.'

Lord Carnarvon is evidently aware that 1 OL paid down before the
age of 2 1 is not sufficient to procure a provision against both sick-
ness and old age ; he therefore puts it in the alternative — ' either
in the case of sickness or old age.' But this is not sufficient to save
a man from the necessity of going into the workhouse ; neither is it
Mr. Blackley's plan.

In order to make so small a sum as 10Z. sufficient for both pur-
poses, Mr. Blackley is obliged to resort to the contrivance which is
the peculiar characteristic of his plan, and which, in his article in this
Eeview of November 1878 (p. 851), he thus describes.

He proposes not only that all persons of the wage-earning class
should be compelled to pay the sum of 10£. into the Government
Savings Bank before they attain the age of 21, but that ' every youth
of every class ' should pay out of his earnings, if he is earning any-
thing, if not, that his parents should pay for him, the same sum in
the same manner before the age of 21. 'Why?' it may well be
asked, and ' for what ? ' Because, says Mr. Blackley, a certain per-
centage (no matter how small), belonging to the middle and upper
classes, does, in point of fact, come ultimately upon the rates as
paupers, the result either of their misfortunes or their vices; and
therefore the public ought to be insured against the cost of providing
for them, by a tax levied upon every member of those two classes.
The logic is somewhat startling, but Mr. Blackley urges that its
defects are cured by the result. As a consequence, he says, of the
youths of the families above the wage-earning class, or the heads of
those families for them, being compelled to make this contribution
of }Ql. to the credit of the general insurance fund, the sick and the
aged of the wage-earning class would get for 101. a provision which
would otherwise cost them, as Mr. Blackley variously puts it, from
14£. or 151. to very nearly 20^. ; and poor rates would, in a generation,
be extinguished. This is the essence of Mr. Blackley's plan ; and I
should be much surprised to learn that any responsible public man
could be found, after giving it full consideration, to undertake its
advocacy. To the small shopkeeper, to the struggling professional
man, to persons of all grades above, it would present itself as an
arbitrary act of compulsory composition for the poor rates. To the
economist and politician it would appear open to the strongest
objections in the interest of the wage-earning classes themselves, as
another mode of teaching them to look to others for what they can
and ought to do for themselves. It would, in a new form, permanently
and indelibly fix upon the whole wage-earning class the stigma of
dependence, from which, and from the many other evils arising from

1880. INDUSTRIAL INSURANCE. 293

the mal-administration of the old Poor Law, the best among them
are slowly rising.

Notwithstanding the favourable allusion to Mr. Blackley's plan
made by the Bishop of Winchester, I do not think that it is to be
gathered from the general tenor of the debate that their lordships
considered it to be before them. No distinct reference to it was
made by the Earl of Carnarvon, and his Lordship concluded the very
slight sketch of what he took upon himself to submit to the House
with the expression of his belief that much might be done 'by
adopting some such proposal as he had indicated.'

Mr. Blackley deserves all thanks for having had the boldness to
be the first to suggest that the principle of compulsion should be
applied to stimulate the process of insurance against sickness and old
age. The great object in view in any scheme of the kind is, that
the thrifty should be relieved from the burden of paying for the
reckless ; and that a disposition to provide against the future should
be encouraged among the whole youth of the wage-earning class by
some system which, taking them by the hand in their early days,
would guarantee them against pauperism, and make their after efforts
for an increased provision against sickness and old age more easy to
them. The important point now is, can such a principle be reduced
to practice ? This paper is an attempt to answer that question.

HUGH SEYMOUR TREMENHEERE.

POSTSCRIPT.

Mr. Blackley's figures having been referred to generally in the preceding page, it
would probably be more satisfactory to him that they should be stated in his own
words. In his article in this Review of November 1878, pp. 851-2, he says that the
sum which, in a single payment, would entitle an insurer to receive 8*. a week, when-
ever sick, till the age of 70, and after that age a pension of 4*. a week as long as he
lived, would be, if paid at the age of 18^, HI. ; if at the age of 20, 15Z. In his
Collected Essays, p. 66, he says that, according to the tables of the Hampshire
Friendly Society, the proposed benefits would cost, at the medium age of 19, 181. Is.
But he urges that as this rate is based on an investment at 3 per cent, per annum,
and the Government might invest a National Insurance Fund at 4 or 4£ per cent, (a
very doubtful assumption, considering the largeness of the sums to be dealt with),
the average National Club rate might be placed at 14Z., which the contributions
from the moneyed classes would reduce to 101., as above described.

I give reasons (at pp. 280-1) for believing that the sums more generally acceptable
would be 6*. a week in sickness up to 65, and an annuity of 5s. a week after that age ;
and I state at p. 286, on actuarial authority, that their cost, including expenses of
management, would, if paid down at the age of 20-1, be — Sick pay, 9£ 2s. &d.,
Annuity, 131. 4*. Gd., = 221. 7s. The sums would of course be smaller if, as assumed
by Mr. Blackley, circumstances should enable a young man to pay down his in-
surance money at an earlier age. And there is no reason why he should not be
allowed to insure himself for smaller benefits, as I have stated at p. 286, if he could
not command the larger.

H. S. T.

294 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

POLITICAL OPTIMISM: A DIALOGUE.

M. (glancing at the book which his companion has just laid down).
Ah ! Candide. Then you have had a pleasant morning. What a
testimony it is to the immortality of art that that book should still
delight, when the philosophy it ridicules has been so long dead and
buried !

N. Dead and buried ? Not a bit of it ! Great Pan may be dead,
tmt not great Pangloss. He still lives, a prosperous gentleman, and
-may be heard discoursing every day.

M . What ? You believe that optimism has survived Voltaire's
ridicule ?

N. Survived ? Why, of course. Creeds so comfortable do not die
so easily. Besides, optimism is not so much a creed as a tempera-
ment.

M. Oh ! I see. You are using the word in the loose popular
sense. When you talk of an optimist you mean — and, with advan-
tage to clearness of thought and precision of language, you might just
as well say — a sanguine, an unduly hopeful person.

N. Indeed, I do not mean that, and could not say it. Nor have
I on my conscience any such sin against philosophic accuracy as you
suggest. When I say optimism, I mean optimism in the strict,
Leibnitzian sense of the word ; and I repeat that, in that sense, it is
a living, thriving faith at the present hour. True, it has come down
in the world, and, as generally happens in such circumstances, it is
forced to be content with a less spacious abode than once it occupied ;
T)ut its vitality within the narrower limits of its present quarters is as
vigorous as ever. It has been expelled from the domain of cosmo-
logic speculation by a sterner creed ; but in the region of politics its
authority is still unquestioned and supreme. If nobody now holds
the dogma that ' everything is for the best in the best of all possible
worlds,' there is still an astonishing number of adherents to the faith
that in the microcosm of civilised communities events are supernatu-
rally ordered not only for the ultimate welfare of the human race at
large, but also for the immediate good of individual nations.

M. Impossible!

N. Credo quia. You are mentioning one of the most approved
recommendations of a creed.

1880. POLITICAL OPTIMISM. 295

M. It is impossible, I mean, that anybody should maintain such
a doctrine.

N. Napoleon used to declare in councils of war that the word
6 impossible ' was not French. As a matter of fact it has no place in
any language when the human capacity for belief is in question.

M. Well, prove to me that there is any considerable body of
rational Englishmen who would adopt the formula you have just
laid down, and I shall say

N. What?

M. Why, that human opinion is more capriciously inconsistent
than even I had ever supposed it to be. Events ordered for the
welfare not only of the community of nations but of the individual
nation \ That the creed of any political school in an age which has
accepted Evolution, and believes that the law of progress for the
mass is the law of loss, of misery, of defeat, of extinction for the un-
favoured unit !

N. Nevertheless it is the silent faith of one entire political party
in England, and the express teaching of some of its principal spokes-
men.

M. Teaching ! Do you mean that this preposterous doctrine is
taught as by philosophers who are anxious to win disciples ?

N. I would rather say, as by theologians who are satisfied with damn-
ing heretics. Such offenders are common enough on the Continent.
The late M. Thiers was a flagrant example. The guiding principle
•of his foreign policy was founded upon an absolute denial of the true
faith. So far was that benighted statesman from believing that all
things international worked together for the good of all nations, that
he often saw even in the ' legitimate aspirations ' and * movements '
of foreign peoples a distinct danger to his own country. He dreaded,
and would, if he could, have prevented, the accomplishment of Italian
independence ; he never forgave Napoleon the Third for having by
his halting diplomacy permitted Bismarck to weld the disunited
German States into an Empire. For such a policy as this our English
optimists could find no form of anathema sufficiently strong.

M. But stay, you are surely going a little too fast. One need not
be an optimist to join in the condemnation. Practical Judgment
may pronounce it with as little hesitancy as Sentiment or Superstition.
Might not M. Thiers' foreign policy be censured not so much for its
immorality as for its unwisdom ? Surely it might be urged that it is
unreasonable for any nation to expect to be able to check the natural
growth of growing communities on its borders ; that the forces which
impel races towards political unity will not stand still to suit the
convenience of great Powers which would prefer to be surrounded by
weak and divided States ; and further, that it is the business of states-
men to measure those forces accurately, and not to earn the ill-will of
neighbouring peoples destined to become powerful by fruitless attempts

296 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

to obstruct their progress. Nay, might it not even have been argued
that such a policy as that of M. Thiers was doubly unsound, as
proceeding probably not from any real calculation of national interest,
however erroneous, but rather from a mere impulse of national vanity ?
Might it not have been said that it was not an over-anxious patriot-
ism, but an overweening Chauvinism, which impelled him to oppose
the causes of German unity and Italian independence ; that he op-
posed them because he feared not that a united Germany or an inde-
pendent Italy would endanger the safety of France, but merely that
they would diminish her importance ; that he desired for her an en-
tourage of feeble and disunited peoples, not simply that she might
live and flourish, but that she might dictate and domineer ?

N. No doubt. All this might have been very plausibly urged.
It is the peculiar strength of my case that it wasn't.

M. Do you mean to say that ?

N. I mean to say that if any of our modern Radicals — optimists-
almost to a man — condescended to any such practical arguments, it
was merely ' for the hardness of our hearts ' that they did so. Their
real reliance was upon loftier principles. According to them, M.
Thiers was to be condemned, not for resisting the rise of Germany
and Italy when resistance was futile, but for resisting it at all.
They would have anathematised him even more heartily if his policy
had succeeded. His sin lay in not welcoming and favouring these
national movements, as events which, like all others of the same kind,
he should have perceived to tend to the advantage of his own
country.

M. But how do those who hold such doctrines contrive to hit
it off with subsequent events ? Nay, on what terms are they with
contemporary facts ?

N. On a footing of distant politeness, as other mystics are with
the phenomena around them. You know they belong to a class of
persons who make it a rule never to allow themselves an indecently
familiar intimacy with the realities of things.

M. But surely such an article of faith as theirs must carry them
far.

N. It does, and they have the courage of their logic.

M. If it be necessarily a good thing for every State that its
neighbours' aspirations for unity and longings for political indepen-
dence should be gratified, how about Panslavism, Panhellenism, or,
if we will, Panteutonism, Panlatinism, Pananythingism ? Is every
one of these movements justified of its prefix and suffix alone? Is
every one of them to be supported by each and all of the States of
the old order, lest ' haply they be found to fight against God ' ? Is
any one of the existing political aggregates which may happen to-
stand in the way of some vast and vague confederation scheme in-
vented by professors .and propagandised by filibusters, to execute the

1880. POLITICAL OPTIMISM. 297

4 happy despatch ' under pain of standing convicted of opposing the
purposes of a beneficent destiny, if it ventures to obey the vulgar
law of self-preservation ?

N. Compose yourself, my dear M. You grow warm.

M. But is it so ? I ask.

N. Most certainly it is so. The question of Panslavism has not
yet perhaps come within the range of practical politics, but when it
does our optimists are bound in consistency to determine it only in
one way. They must favour ' the movement,' and by consequence
the Power that puts itself at the head of the movement.

M. Whatever Power that may be ?

N. Undoubtedly, and that is the beauty of it. For it begins to
look as if this precious Panslavist movement would lead to a life-
and-death struggle between two great empires. Everyone must have
felt, when the Eastern question was reopened in 1876, and Kussia
appeared at the head of the Slavonic conspiracy against the Ottoman
Empire, that Austria could not suffer her to push the enterprise to
its apparently contemplated issue — could not tamely submit to be
dashed by the insurging tide of Panslavism against the iron headland
of the German Empire. At the moment she seems likely enough to
turn the tables ; but just as little can Eussia allow Austria to retort
the danger upon her, and raise the impregnable barrier of a Grermano-
Slavonic federation in her southward path. Which then of the two
Powers is to efface itself in the name of progress and the beneficent
' principle of nationality ' ?

M . It seems a pretty case of conscience indeed.

N. Yes ; but there is a prettier still. As between Eussia and
Austria the question may be left to decide itself. So soon as the
great * ism ' has definitely cast in its lot with the one Power, the
resistance of the other will become a flying in the face of Providence,
an offence against the sacred doctrine that race-aspirations are
supreme. But what are we to say when two ' isms ' come to blows
with each other, when Hellenism and Panslavism are at each other's
throats, as one of these fine days they must be ? Two equally holy
principles at war with each other ! Two races bent upon appropriating
the same thing, each equally bound by the great law of political
* destiny ' to secure that thing for itself, and each equally guilty of
unpardonable wickedness in attempting to wrest it from the other !

M. Ay, but you need not wait for the Slav and Hellene to grapple
with one another, to disclose the absurdity of the theory you are
combating ; nor need you go so far from home as the Balkan
Peninsula. It is enough to utter the one word ' Ireland.'

N. Very true : you mention the home of a race which has been
among the oldest assertors of the ' sacred principle of nationality.'

M. Do you then accuse our optimists of maintaining that the
divine law of self-rewarding virtue holds good in this case also, and

298 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

that we should profit as a nation by the establishment of an in-
dependent kingdom of discontented Celts on our western coast — a
bared dagger with its point towards the heart of England, and its hilt
towards the hand of America ?

N. Why, no, not exactly that. In this case our optimists are at
present content to sacrifice their credit for consistency to their
reputation for sanity. But that is only for the present. Have
patience. Time and party exigencies are wonderful ripeners of
conviction. Wait till the Home Rulers hold the balance between
Liberals and Conservatives, and we may then perhaps see the sacred
principle carried even to this length.

M. Well, it is a truly comfortable creed, and one can hardly
wonder at its popularity. The belief that every national or racial
movement, however unpropitious in its first appearance, must ulti-
mately tend to increase the sum of human happiness and

N. Excuse my interrupting you ; but you are not at all accurately
describing the political optimism of our friends.

M. No?

N. By no means. The creed you have just defined is a perfectly
reasonable, though not of course a demonstrable one. It involves no
inherent contradiction, and, for aught we know, is as likely to be true
as its contradictory. But, I repeat, it is not the creed of our friends.

M. How then does it differ from theirs ?

N. It would be more difficult to say wherein it resembles theirs.
There is no sort of connection between a belief in the progress of the
race and a theory as to the destiny of individuals — between a con-
viction that every national movement, however subversive of existing
order, must * ultimately tend to increase the sum of human happiness,*
and a belief that this, that, or the other group of human beings must
be the gainer by it. In a wider than the political field the distinction
would be perceived at once. We hold that animal organisms have
advanced towards perfection under the law of evolution. But is
that law a dispensation of blessing to every variety ? Is Darwinism
a gospel of good tidings to the unselected types ?

M. No, indeed ; but do you think there are unselected types in
politics ?

JV. Why not ? The same law of strife prevails in politics as in
nature : the * struggle for power ' is as keen and as incessant as the
' struggle for existence.' And though its results may be as beneficent
in the whole, they may also — nay, in a certain number of cases they
must also — be just as fatal to the individual competitor. But this is
what our head-in-air philosophers never for a moment deign to
consider. A ' great movement ' is in progress : some scattered race
is bent on making itself into a nation ; some nation already made is
bent on making itself a greater nation ; some northern community is
' pressing irresistibly towards the light and warmth of the south j '

1880. POLITICAL OPTIMISM. 299

some land-locked people is struggling seaward in the name of commerce
and colonisation. Assume that these movements are all destined to
succeed, and that humanity at large is destined to profit by their
success. Why may it not be equally matter of destiny that races
and nations which lie across their path should be swept aside or
trodden under foot by them and effaced ?

M. In a certain sense, of course, that is possible.

N. Then what folly to call upon all the world to rejoice in these
movements, and to invite the God-speed of those nations whom
they are destined to destroy, as well as of those whom they will
aggrandise and advance ! What simplicity to hold forth on the
blessings of evolution to an audience of unselected types !

M. Stay a moment. I said I admitted your proposition in a
certain sense. But there is surely a sense in which the individuals
who form nations must necessarily profit by any advantage to hu-
manity in general.

N. No doubt; but the sense in which that is true is not the
political sense. For the purposes of politics nations are individuals,
and the only individuals with whom politics are concerned. But
even in the sense in which your counter-proposition is true, it is by
no means invariably true. The arrangements — the artificial arrange-
ments if you will — of politics are often such as to make the material
welfare of individuals dependent on the status of the nations to which
they belong. For there are nations to whom the loss of international
status means the loss of trade, and does that mean nothing to the
individual citizen ? Scarcely. It means ' no fowl in the pot ' for
hundreds, bread without butter for thousands, half a loaf to those who
now have a whole one, starvation to the man who now has a crust.
But I will put all that aside. I will assume that the loss of empire,
whether followed or not followed by the loss of trade, would detract
no atom from the material well-being of any individual inhabitant of
these islands : that no single Englishman would be the poorer in any-
thing but his pride, the loser in anything but the consciousness of
being ' a citizen of no mean city,' and of belonging to a powerful
nation of the traditions of whose splendid history he has not shown
himself unworthy. I will assume that he would suffer no other than
the sentimental pang of reflecting that the ' morning drum-beat ' of
his garrisons had discontinued the fatiguing labour of 'journeying
with the sun and keeping company with the hours,' and that, instead
of ' encircling the whole earth with the martial airs of Great Britain,'
it contented itself with awaking the drowsy burghers of some hun-
dred military stations within the four seas. I will assume that the
loss of empire means this, and only this, for Englishmen, and then I
will ask you who are they that think this nothing ? Who are they
who are able to feel, and dare to say, that if the causes which deprived
us of our empire should ultimately tend to the welfare of humanity

300 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

at large, the loss of the nation would be completely merged in the
gain of the world ? A philosopher here and there perhaps, a stray
sociologist or two who by much taking thought has risen superior to
the ' bias of patriotism,' and has schooled himself to look only at
great contemporary events as they make for the infinitesimally
speedier advent of an indefinitely distant future. But our optimist
politicians — men immersed in the practical politics of the day and
as subject in their degree to the influence of those politics as the
most sceptical of their adversaries — will any one of these affirm
that the loss of our empire would be a matter of indifference ? Why,
out of every hundred of them who have the cant of cosmopolitanism
on their lips, not more than twenty accept the creed to this uncom-
promising extent in their hearts. Of the twenty who do, not three
would dare to avow such an acceptance of it, and thereby to destroy
their influence over their countrymen for ever. There are but a
small number of them who think, and but the merest fraction of
them who would say, that the loss of our empire was anything but
the greatest of calamities. And I say then that when they preach
the promotion and encouragement of every ' national movement '
whatever, without regard to its probable or possible effect upon our
own fortunes as a nation, they can only do so on the blindly opti-
mistic principle that everything is for the best in the best of all
possible political worlds.

M . But, after all, what would you have us do ? You surely
would not go back to the international policy of the old school — to
the Congress~of- Vienna style of diplomacy ? Would you have a dozen
gentlemen assemble in a Conference chamber to decree that trees
shall not grow, or grow only in a particular direction, that rivers
shall not presume to flow in such a course as may be displeasing to
the great Powers ?

N. 'Jesus, mon Sauveur,' as Paul Louis exclaims, < sauvez-nous de
la metaphore.' Will you kindly descend from the figurative to the
literal ?

M. Well, are we to imitate the policy which married Catholic
Belgium to Protestant Holland against its will, only to see the union
dissolved by revolution in 1831 — which tied Italy to Austria only to
see her break her bonds by war in '60 and '66 ?

N. Why not ? The one arrangement insured fifteen, and the
other forty-five years of peace to Europe.

M. Of peace ! Forty-five years of conspiracy and assassination,
of Carbonari and infernal machines, you mean ! And pray what are
we, or what is Europe, the worse for the separation of Holland from
Belgium, or the conversion of Italy from a * geographical expression '
into an independent State ?

N. Respice finem, my dear M. The destiny of Holland and
Belgium has yet to be seen. Shall we, or will Europe, be the better
off, think you, if the one becomes French and the other German, as in

1880. POLITICAL OPTIMISM. 301

all probability they respectively will ? As for Italy — has the ' peace
of Europe ' gained by her rise into a nation ?

M. (conveniently inattentive}. How idle, again, was that fight at
Paris in '56 for the separation of Moldavia and Wallachia, which in
two years were united into the principality of Eoumania ! And how do
we know that Lord Beaconsfield's much-vaunted feat of political
surgery performed upon the ' Great Bulgaria ' of San Stefauo is not
as idle a

N. You need not finish your question ; the answer is simple. We
do not know. But it is the merest fatalism to argue that because an
event may be unalterably fixed we are to make no effort to avert it.
Politics, my dear fellow, is a hand-to-mouth science, a business of
shifts, stopgaps, and expedients. Believe no one who tells you the
contrary. He is either a gambler who treats possibilities as certain-
ties, or a visionary who holds that all political possibilities work to-
gether for the good of all men. The plenipotentiaries at Berlin had
a work to do, and they did it. They had to prevent an immediate
European war by preventing the formation of a great Kusso-Bulgarian
principality on the southern frontier of Austria. True, the future of
Bulgaria and Eoumelia may not be settled, possibly cannot be settled
without a European war ; but so it may be fixedly destined that I am
to die next year. Shall I therefore refuse to send for a doctor if to-
night I find myself sickening for a fever ? However, we are wander-
ing somewhat from the point. I am not now concerned with the
fatalism which would have sat helplessly by to let this war break out,
any more than I am concerned with the Philoslavonic or Philo-
Kussian, or Miso-Mohammedan, or Anti-Austrian enthusiasm which
would have actively helped to bring that war about. Fatalism is
not to be reasoned with, and these other impulses are above reason.
They pretend no philosophy ; they no more seek a philosophic basis
for their activity than the trout for his risings at the fly. What I
am protesting against is the paradoxical optimism which would
encourage the Panslavist to set Europe in flames because Panslavism
is a ' national movement.'

M. It does seem a strangely radiant delusion to be entertained
by rational observers of the very neutral-tinted world (to say no worse
of it) in which we live. It is singular, though, that your optimists
should optimise only on a European scale, and should not apply their
doctrines to the forecast of the political future of their own island.

N. But who says they don't ? How about the ' democratic prin-
ciple ' ? Could anything be more superstitiously optimist (except
where it is blindly fatalist) than the spirit by which the devotees of
this principle are animated ?

M. Of what devotees do you speak ? I see nothing either opti-
mistic or fatalistic in labouring for the realisation of certain definite
political ideals, in order thereby to influence the course of political
affairs in a certain definite way.

302 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

N. Neither do I. But what I do not perceive is the definiteness
either of the ideals in this case, or of the results which their realisa-
tion is expected to produce.

M. What ? Do you mean to say that no Radical definitely con-
ceives his ideal of policy ? that every Radical is to be accused of —

N. Excuse me. I never deal in * everybodys ' and ' nobody?.'
But let me ask you from your own experience how many even of your
most ' thoughtful ' Radicals perceive clearly whither democracy is
leading them, and are sure that they want to go there ? When you
put your Radical through a thorough cross-examination — when you
take him past his Disestablishment of the Church of England and his
vague schemes of reform (differing according to each man's fancy) in
the tenure and transmission of landed property, and ask him what he
understands as the ulterior attainable and desirable ends of democratic
progress — is he ever able to give you a rational and ' watertight '
answer ? Does he not fall to talking about ' manifest destinies ' and
' irresistible forces ' — which is mere fatalism — or else lapse into poetic
rhapsodies about the ' spear of Ithuriel ' and the mysteriously self-
healing, self-educating, self- reviving properties of Democracy itself —
which is optimism of the purest water ? He has nothing else to say
for himself — as, indeed, how should he have ?

M. How should he have ! Well, a good many very eminent poli-
tical writers have expended a considerable amount of thought and
eloquence in giving him something more to say for himself.

N. Yes, I know ; but none of it, unfortunately, is any longer ap-
plicable, either in generals or in particulars. Times have greatly
changed, my dear M., since the most effective of these thoughtful and
eloquent defences of Democracy were written. The condition of things
in England is very different from what it was in 1830, and for nearly
a generation thereafter. Now-a-days, there are no gross political and
social abuses to inflame the righteous wrath of numbers of intelligent
and sober-minded men, and to make them eagerly enlist the aid of
popular forces in what was really then the ' good work ' of destruction.
Small blame to the Liberals of the pre-Reform era, if, with so much
to overthrow, they thought little of reconstruction, and did not stop
to inquire whether the crowbar which they caught up to do their
levelling work withal would be of any use to the future builder when
the ground was cleared. But that's gone and past now, and treatises
on the excellence of crowbars are of no great authority now that there
is little or nothing to destroy. And there is little or nothing of that
kind. However you may lash yourself into a private fury against
the Church of England, or however many political Dissenters and
professional destroyers you may get to imitate you in the act of self-
flagellation, you can't make the unpretending, conciliatory, conscien-
tious, industrious old Establishment do duty for one of those flagrant,
arrogant, aggressive abuses which fired the indignation of the quietest,
most reflective, and least militant of Liberals half a century ago.

1880. POLITICAL OPTIMISM. 303

Unless your arm is nerved by mere sectarian hatred (which is not a
strictly political impulse at all) to strike the blow, you would have to
4 make believe ' more than Oliver Proudfute himself in his encounters
with his ' wooden Soldan.' The Dissenter, or the demagogue trading
on the Dissenter's denominational animosities, may one day force the
moderate Liberal to assent to, or even to assist in, the pulling down
of the Church ; but he will be the unwilling and not the willing agent
in the enterprise. He will be joining in the work of destruction for
the sake of temporary peace with his democratic allies, and not, as in
1830, entering into that alliance, almost reckless of its future embar-
rassments, for the very sake of doing a particular destructive work.

M. Humph ! well, yes. I confess there is no very good rallying
cry for the Liberal-Radical alliance in these days. But how about
the general arguments in justification of the democratic principle ?

jfi I know of none but the old Whig argument of Macaulay and
others, and that too is dead and done with. Macaulay himself, and
all those who argued the case of popular against aristocratic govern-
ment, were really, in conscious or unconscious fashion, arguing the case
of educated middle-class government against government by a small
privileged order. None of their reasonings apply to such a regime
as was instituted in 1867, and has in 1874 and 1880 shown us what
spirit it is of. The theory that the greatest number of electors
would, on the whole, govern the country in the manner most condu-
cive to its interests (which are their own), is true only of an electorate
which is not, like our present one, too ignorant even to attempt to
discern its interests for itself. It is not true, it plainly could not be
true, of a vast aggregate of voters who sway blindly from one party to
the other in the vague hope that a mere change of governors — quite
irrespective of the rival policies submitted to them, or of any attempt
to compare their merits or even comprehend their meaning — will, in
some mysterious way or other, improve their worldly prospects and add
to their material happiness.

M. But we do not all admit

N. The truth on this matter? Of course we don't. Party
government, party journalism, and half-a-dozen other arts and
businesses providing bread and occupation for many thousands of
worthy Englishmen, would cease to exist if we did admit it — that is
to say, publicly. But in private, if we except a few revolutionary
Radicals (and not all of those in private), we all do admit that we
live under ' government by toss-up.' And surely there could be no
greater optimist living than he who believes that if ' heads ' stand
for 'catastrophe,' a beneficent destiny will always bring the coin
down ' tails.'

M. But, after all, is not optimism in politics, or some form of
optimism, a necessity of active participation in affairs ? Is it not an
enforced alternative to throwing up the game altogether, a simple
refuge against despair ?

304 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

N. As how ?

M. Well, as thus for instance. We see that political systems
tend in all progressive societies towards socialistic democracy. We
see everywhere that it must come to that. You may call the con-
viction ' fatalism ' if you like, but that doesn't help you. You might
give the same name to any morally certain forecast of the future
from the past. We all of us feel this conviction, or all of us, I
suppose, who have reflected upon the matter. We feel, too, that
nothing we can do can avert or possibly long delay the consumma-
tion ; that any forcible damming of the democratic stream by reac-
tionary legislation will only lead hereafter to a torrential on-rash of
the waters as soon as the obstacle is swept away. Well, then, I say,
we must believe, whether with a theological or a philosophic faith,
that the movement is being guided or is guiding itself to happy
issues, or we should be forced to throw up the political game in
sheer blankness of despair.

N. There are a good many * musts ' which I might challenge in
all that. I might indeed dispute your primary assumption as to the
inevitable tendency of progressive communities — an assumption
based upon a course of observation which has not yet extended over a
hundred years in any European country, a short period enough in
the life of nations. But I waive that point. I will grant you your
assumptions in the matter of ' manifest destiny,' and then I say, Hope
as much as you please that the inevitable may prove to be the
ultimately desirable, but act towards it in public affairs as you do in
your private business — that is to say, ignore it and the consideration
of it altogether. Depend upon it, my dear M., politicians would work
far more wisely at their trade if they recognised its essential analogy
on a larger scale with the conduct of the everyday concerns of life.
What man of spirit and energy allows his mind to dwell upon such
considerations as you have been contemplating in respect to his
private affairs ? Such a man decides deliberately and to the best of
his judgment as to what he will strive to attain and what he will
struggle to avoid ; and he stakes his powers and his happiness un-
hesitatingly on his decision. He knows that he may possibly be
mistaking evil for good, and good for evil. He knows that the
good may perhaps be unattainable and the evil inevitable, and that
destiny may be smiling ironic at his fruitless efforts. But he does
not therefore submit in blind fatalism to the evils which he fears, or
in superstitious sentimental optimism persuade himself to welcome
them, to embrace them, to smooth the way for their approach as
blessings in disguise. If he does this in his private affairs, we give
him the name which his folly and cowardice have earned him ; and if
he does the same in public affairs, I for one will not admit his claim
to the style and title of political philosopher.

H. D. THAILL.

1880. 305

THE LANDOWNERS' PANIC.

1 DOCTOR, the thanes fly from me ! ' Did Mr. Gladstone utter any such
words during the last few days as rumour came of the resignation of
some other lord-in-waiting or gold-stick in office ? Is est-il possible
gone too? ^Such is the one joke said to have been made by James
the Second. It was announced that his daughter Anne's husband had
passed over to the enemy. Anne's husband had been in the habit
before that of greeting each new announcement of defection from his
father-in-law with the remarkable words est-il possible ? Therefore,
when he too went, James made his one jest. Who is the est-il possible
of the present crisis, and has he gone yet ? The author of Coningsby
could alone have done justice to the events and the rumours of the
last few days — the revolt of lords-in-waiting, the alarm that more sub-
stantial politicians were about to follow in their path. Mr. Glad-
stone was certainly placed in a difficult position when trying to carry
his Compensation for Disturbance Bill through the House of Commons.
Lord Elcho I think it was who likened the Prime Minister's trouble,
with the Tories on one side and the Irish members on the other, to
the proverbial condition of one placed between the devil and the
deep sea. An honest French bourgeois once wrote to Scribe offering
to pay him handsomely if Scribe would allow him, the bourgeois, to
become a collaborates in some future drama. Scribe wrote back an
angry line or two in which he declared that it was not usual to yoke to-
gether a horse and an ass. The bourgeois was equal to the occasion,
and instantly dashed off a letter demanding indignantly how Scribe
had dared to compare him to a horse. Acting on the principle of the
bourgeois, I shall assume that Lord Elcho compared the Irish mem-
bers to the deep sea. Between the Conservatives, a section of the
Whigs, and the Irish members, Mr. Gladstone was undoubtedly
burdened with a difficult task. I cannot of course speak for the Con-
servatives or the Whigs, but I think I can say for the Irish members
that even when they felt themselves most strongly compelled to op-
pose any of Mr. Gladstone's propositions they recognised to the full
the spirit in which they had been put forward, and credited Mr.
Gladstone and Mr. Forster with an honest purpose to serve the Irish
tenantry.

The measure itself is curiously out of proportion to the amount of
VOL. VIII.— No. 42. X

306 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

panic which it seemed to stir up amongst Whigs and Conservatives.
Although it has been explained again and again in the newspapers, I
may venture on a very few words to put clearly before the readers of
the Nineteenth Century what the object of the Bill really was.
The Land Act of 1870 recognised a certain ownership or copartner-
ship of the tenant in his holding. The labour of his hands must
have gone to give the land some of its value, and the Act passed by
Mr. Gladstone in 1870 recognised this fact. Where the Ulster
tenant right existed, and where therefore the tenant had a recognised
right to compensation for improvements and to the sale of his
goodwill or ownership when leaving his holding or ejected from it,
Mr. Gladstone simply took this Ulster custom and made it law.
Where the Ulster tenant system did not exist, the Land Act of 1870
recognised the right of a tenant to compensation for improvements,
and recognised also his right to claim compensation for the loss of his
holding in cases of capricious, or unjust, or unreasonable eviction.
The one exception it made was in the case of eviction for non-pay-
ment of rent. If the tenant failed from any cause to pay his rent,
he lost that claim to compensation which it would^otherwise have been
his recognised right to make. But when the distress of 1879 and 1 880
set in and threatened to deepen into famine, it was certain that a
great many tenants would be unable to pay their rent simply because
of the failure of the crops — in other words, by reason of what is for-
mally described as the visitation of God. The question raised by
the Compensation for Disturbance Bill was whether it is fair that
a man who would pay his rent if he could, but whose crop had
failed, should, on being evicted from his holding, forfeit all
claim to the compensation to which he would have been entitled
if Providence had not decreed that his field should be barren. That is
the question in dispute. I hardly think there is any reasonable man
who, looking at that question calmly, will not say that justice and
equity, and feeling of right and every other consideration that can
influence a statesman, were on the side of Mr. Gladstone when he
introduced the measure to allow the evicted tenant in such a case
some claim for compensation. It was to be strictly a measure for
the relief of distress. It was to apply only in districts scheduled as
actually suffering from distress, and to apply only for a short and
limited time. Be it observed, too, that the claim which the Bill
proposes to give to the tenant is not an absolute legal right which
he is simply to ask for and to have. It is merely a claim which he is
•entitled to raise before the county court judge. The county court
judge is to look into the whole circumstances of the case, and if he
thinks the dispossessed tenant has any fair claim he may award him
as much or as little as he believes the tenant entitled to demand.
He may award the tenant nothing at all if he thinks he is entitled
to nothing. The landlord gets his arrears of rent, and gets his land,

1880. THE LANDOWNER® PANIC. 307

before the tenant gets anything. The county court judges in
Ireland are certainly not a class of men likely to be infected with
socialistic doctrines. They are not, as a rule, members of the Land
League. They are not enthusiasts on the subject of the Social Con-
tract or the rights of man. They are not likely to be absolutely
indifferent to the interests or the feelings of the landlord class. I am
sure I do not wrong them when I say that, other considerations being
equal, they would most of them rather stand well with the landlord
class than not. Assuredly the tenant is not likely to get more than
justice at their hands. I believe he would get justice as a rule ; but
there is not the slightest probability of any leaning in the minds of
the judges towards any view of the relations between property and
labour which could put the landlords in the least fear for the due
preservation of their interests.

A great deal was heard of the Irish Land League during all the
recent discussions. The Irish Land League is supposed to set all
sorts of dangerous agitation in motion. It is apparently regarded
by many men in the House of Commons as the fountain and origin
of all the ills of Ireland. The Land League, it should be remembered,
is a body which has been only a very short time in existence, and it
seems to me that we heard something of distress, and suffering, and
agitation, and disaffection in Ireland, a good many years and for a good
many generations before the Land League ever came into operation.
But if the Land League is really so powerful and so dangerous a body
as it is represented to be, there is only one way to render it less
powerful and less dangerous," and that is to take away from it the
excuse which it has at present. The other night, in the House of
Commons, Mr. Gladstone, speaking of the alleged operation of
Russian agitation and Russian intrigue in Bulgaria, made use of
some words which, with a mere alteration here and there, might be
applied to the present condition of things in Ireland, and to the
alleged operations of the Land League. Mr. Gladstone declared
that the only way to disarm foreign intrigue was Ho remove
the pabulum of foreign intrigue, and take away the diet on which
it feeds.' * Our desire is to shut out that influence that approxi-
mates too dangerously to intrigue, but the only mode of obtaining
that end is to procure, by just and firm measures, that some
stop shall be put to the monstrous evils that prevail in the Ottoman
Empire.' Substitute ' Ireland ' for the ' Ottoman Empire,' and ' agita-
tion ' for 'foreign intrigue,' and we have the moral applied with aptitude
and with force. Mr. Gladstone's very simple Bill for compensation
for disturbance would not of itself do very much to disarm agitation,
or to take from disaffection the pabulum on which it feeds. It is so
simple a measure, even regarded in its application to the present
moment and to a limited district, that I for myself felt bound to
join in a protest against its insufficiency. Something larger, more

x 2

308 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

comprehensive, and having more promise of permanence, must be in-
troduced into the Irish land system before we can disarm agitation
and take from disaffection the pabulum on which it feeds. But the
Bill was an earnest of an intention to do something towards the settle-
ment of the land question in Ireland. In that spirit and because of
that promise it was denounced and obstructed by the Tories.

But of course it was not the poor little Compensation Bill which
caused so much stir amongst Conservative politicians, and which
threatened to lead to the opening of a * Cave ' among the Liberals. What
alarmed Whigs and Conservatives was the fact that Mr. Gladstone
was evidently resolved to deal with the whole land question at the
first opportunity, and their conviction that this little measure for the
relief of temporary distress embodied a principle which could never
be got rid of, and was only an indication of the direction which future
legislation is sure to take. The panic was hardly better than what
f ome critics described it — a mere scare. There are two or three facts
which must be well known to all landlords, reasonable or unreasonable,
and for which all reasonable owners of property have long since made up
their minds. In England the artificial restrictions which cling around
and clog the settlement and the transfer of land are undoubtedly
destined to be removed before long. The object of all rational legisla-
tion must be, as far as possible, to bring about that free trade in land
which shall make it as easy to transfer property in land as property in
railway shares or in shipping. The law of primogeniture will unques-
tionably before long have to be abolished. The law which makes the pos-
sessor of an estate not its owner but simply its occupant, and hands
the ownership over his head to a yet unborn heir, is one which must
be abolished. It is hardly possible to suppose that any educated
landlord really doubts that such alterations in our law must be made.
None of these alterations would in the slightest degree affect the just
right of the landlord — that is to say, in the sense of restricting it. On
the contrary, such legislation would tend to free the landlord from some
of the restrictions which now in so many cases prevent him from
following the dictates of prudence and of justice. Such legislation
would be legislation, strictly speaking, for the relief of landlords from
unreasonable restraint. In Ireland it is certain that legislation must
take the direction of the Ulster tenant custom all over the country,
and that some extended and systematic effort must be made, after the
example of the Church Commission, to facilitate the purchase
by tenants of their holdings. The experiment of founding a peasant
proprietary in Ireland must be tried. If it be tried under the guidance
of statesmen, and with the wise co-operation of landlords, it will have
infinitely greater chances of success than it might have under
other conditions. But the man who believes that the experiment
will not be made ought to believe that the sun will not rise the
day after to-morrow. The only alarm which Whigs or Conservatives

1880. THE LANDOWNERS' PANIC. 309

could have felt if they looked reasonably into the question, when Mr.
Gladstone brought forward his Compensation for Disturbance Bill,
was that kind of alarm which people feel when the first announce-
ment of a change is given which they always knew was certain to be
made. This is not an alarm which calls for much sympathy or
soothing. It is excusable on the part of the little boy who is going
to be dipped into the sea to feel a nervous shudder when the moment
comes for undergoing the actual immersion ; but if we could assume
the little boy to have sense enough to know that the dip was to do
Mm good, and that it ought not to be postponed, we should expect
him to get over his nervousness easily, and we should make no
allowance for it at all in the case of one who had passed beyond the
years of infancy. Even timid Whigs and old-fashioned Conservatives
ought by this time to have grown out of the notion that Mr. Glad-
stone is a statesman of revolution. No measure that he has ever
brought in has tended in any way to the disturbance of sound exist-
ing systems. On the contrary, all the measures for which he is
responsible have tended to the settlement of our political systems on
a more satisfactory basis. It was shown over and over again during
the course of the recent debates in the House of Commons that where
the Ulster custom existed in Ireland there has been no hint of disturb-
ance, even in places where keen distress prevailed. Disturbance
existed where there was distress, where there was the terror of
famine, and where at the same time the unfortunate tenant had no
security for his holding, or chance of compensation if, unable to
pay his rent, he were to be evicted. It ought to be, one would
think, an axiom in politics by this time that security for a man's
holding does not tend to make him quarrelsome and disaffected.
The impression on the mind of the Irish peasant that he has a moral
right to a certain ownership of the soil he cultivates is founded in
many cases on strict historical justice. There are many estates in
Ireland which were transferred by confiscation to the ancestors of their
present owners, and of which the owners, during generation after
generation, did nothing but receive the rents. I am far from saying
that it is so in all cases, or in the majority of cases, but there are
many instances of Irish estates, the improvement and development of
which were left for generations to those who worked the soil, while
the owners did nothing but receive the rents. It would be impos-
sible that under such conditions the man who tilled the soil should
not become impressed with the idea that he had a moral right to a
share of its ownership, and that the law was unjust which denied
to such a right its practical recognition.

What I am anxious to point out is that some change in our land
system is unavoidable and is near ; that only harm will be done by
trying to prevent or to shirk it ; and that it can be most safely carried
out under the guidance of a man at once bold and conscientious like

310 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

Mr. Gladstone. We hear much talk of a new ' cave.' Suppose some
alarmed Whig landowners did or do form a cave, what would come
Df that? We know what came of the cave formed in 1866, under
the guidance of men so able as Mr. Lowe and Mr. Horsman, so in-
fluential as the Earl Grosvenor of that day. The secession was
made in order to prevent the passing of a very moderate, not to say
niggardly, Eeform Bill ; and it ended in the passing of household
suffrage. It ended, too, in the accession of the Eeform Ministry
which abolished the Irish Church and passed the Land Act of 1870,
that very Land Act which is denounced as the source of all the
present agitation. The lesson of that time can hardly have been
thrown away upon Whig peers and members of the House of
Commons. Mr. Gladstone is strong in his energy, in his inex-
haustible eloquence, and in his readiness to receive new ideas ; but
he is stronger still in the possession of that instinct which is genius
in itself, and which enables him to discover long in advance the
direction which an unavoidable movement of political or social
forces is destined to take, and to put himself in harmony with it^
This time he evidently sees that a reform in the conditions of our
land-tenure systems is the demand made by the social and political
necessities of the condition at which our civilisation has arrived.
The changes to be accomplished will of course be effected most safely
and satisfactorily if they are made by a willing combination of all the
great representative forces and interests of the country. It would be
a solid advantage for Mr. Gladstone, or whatever Liberal statesman
may undertake this reform, to have the cordial co-operation of so
intelligent and influential a class as the great Whig peers and land-
owners. But the movement will not stay for the great Whig peers
and landowners. It will not wait until they have made up their
minds whether to help or to hinder it. With them or without them,
it will still go on. Although my views on the land question are
decidedly what would be called advanced, I should prefer that, in
England especially, the changes to be made should be worked out by
a combination of all the great interests concerned, the landowner as
well as the landholder ; the peer as well as the peasant. But if the
landowners, and especially those of the Whig order, choose to stand
outside the movement or try to prevent it altogether, and, wrapping
themselves up in the obstinacy of mere class interest, refuse to help
Mr. Gladstone in his enlightened and really moderate schemes of
reform, then I for one can only hope that he will soon make up his
mind to do without them, and to rely altogether upon the assistance
of more robust and less prejudiced men.

There are admirers, amateur, officious, and others, who appear to
think that it might be a wise stroke of policy for the Lords to pass
the Compensation Bill in some emasculated form which yet, owing
to the necessity for seeming to do something, the Commons might be

1880. THE LANDOWNERS' PANIC. 311

persuaded to accept. Personally I should not much care. I do
not much care about the Compensation Bill except as an evidence of
good intention. But the territorial aristocracy would gain nothing
whatever by a stroke of this kind. No one would be taken in by it.
The evil day, as some of them think it, would not be postponed.
The Conservatives themselves have acknowledged more than once
that a change of some kind is necessary in the land-tenure system of
this country. They acknowledged it even by their poor and peddling
Agricultural Holdings Act. Of course by making the Act permissive
they took away from it all value to the tenant, and indeed all in-
fluence of any kind on the land system. But so far as it went it was
an acknowledgment that some change was needed, and its introduc-
tion was preceded and accompanied by admissions from supporters of
the Conservative Government in both Houses that the existing con-
dition of things could not be allowed to remain unaltered. In fact the
English land system has long since reached that condition which draws
from all parties and all sides and all manner of voices the acknow-
ledgment that something ought to be done. No one who is worth
listening to insists any longer that its present state is perfection, and
is destined to be perpetual. The only question is, what is this some-
thing that is to be done ? For myself I have a considerable dread
of the sort of legislation which is introduced because the Government
or the public or both have found out that something ought to be
done. I fear that the Compensation for Disturbance Bill was intro-
duced in this spirit and because of this impulse. I fear that its
defects are owing to the hasty manner in which a government is
compelled to legislate when it finds that something must be done.
Every excuse of course is to be made for the present Government
because of the distress which rendered some immediate action neces-
sary. But the Bill bears the evidence of its origin, and is therefore
a warning to the Government when they come to prepare a general
scheme of legislation as regards England no less than Ireland. We
must have for England as well as for Ireland some scheme born of
fuller deliberation and wiser counsel than that which comes of the
discovery that something must be done. The Whig territorial aris-
tocracy, if any assistance is yet to be expected from them, could
undoubtedly play a most important part in assisting and guiding such
legislation. The Conservatives, it is to be feared, will recognise but
one undivided duty towards such legislation, that of obstructing and
perverting it. From them we cannot expect any genuine help towards
a settlement of the land question. Left to themselves they would
very soon bring the country to a social revolution. The Whig terri-
torial aristocracy, if they are really going to be worthy of their place
in history, must assist Mr. Gladstone and the Liberals to avoid that
revolution by sound and timely legislation. There is now a great chance
for them to regain some of the active and positive influence which they

312 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

once had in the political life of these countries. For a long time they
have )>een content to be merely passive ; and now there are voices,
chiefly indeed coming from Conservative ranks, which urge them to try
a negative influence, an antagonistic influence, to set themselves in op-
position to the Liberal and forward movement on this land question.
No doubt it would be a very convenient thing for the Conservatives if
they could make a catspaw of a certain section of the Whigs. But
this arrangement will hardly, I think, be effected. The position which
the Conservatives would have the territorial Whigs now to take up was
virtually abandoned by the party when Lord Hartington made his
memorable declaration during the debate on Mr. Chaplin's motion for
an agricultural commission. Lord Hartington frankly admitted that
the existing system of land tenure in this country had broken down.
Many attempts were made afterwards to give an exaggerated inter-
pretation to his meaning, and Lord Hartington found it necessary
to make some explanation. But what he meant to say and what
he said alike acknowledged the fact, plain to every one outside the
sphere of territorial Conservatism, that some change must be made
in the relations between landlord and tenant in England, if the
rural population are to be admitted to share in the development
and improvement which are open to every other class. Political
forces, as well as social and economical, are destined to act in the
same direction. Not even the slowest of Tory squires, if he thinks
over the matter at all, has any doubt that a large extension of the
county franchise is one of the near and certain reforms. The county
franchise will unquestionably, within a very short time, be put
upon a level with the franchise in boroughs, and then the rural
labourer will be permitted to have a say in the political business
of the country. If that change be made before any alteration in
the land laws of England, it seems hardly necessary to point out that
the land reform will probably be somewhat deeper and wider in its
character than it would be if undertaken at present. Even from
selfish motives, the most prudent course which English landlords
could take would be to endeavour to get the inevitable land reform
put into shape before the county franchise is so expanded as to admit
the rural labourers to a vote. It would be wise on their part to assist
and even to hasten the reform, instead of trying to delay it. Delay
must to a certainty mean greater change in the end.

JUSTIN MCCARTHY.

1880. 313

RECENT LITERATURE.

[Compiled by W. MARK W. CALL — ALFRED CHURCH — H. G-. HEW-
LETT— CLEMENTS R. MARKHAM — WILLIAM MINTO — JAMES PAYN —
Gr. J. ROMANES— F. W. RUDLER — LIONEL TENNYSON— and E. D. J.
WILSON.]

THEOLOGY AND METAPHYSICS.

The Religions of China : Confucianism and Taoism described and com-
pared with Christianity. By JAMES LEGGE, Professor of the Chinese
Language and Literature in the University of Oxford. (London :
Hodder and Stoughton.)

A POPULAR exposition of the Religions of China, by the Oxford Professor of the
language and literature of that mysterious land, will deservedly attract numerous
readers to the study of its instructive pages. Dr. Legge has so familiar an ac-
quaintance with the subject of which he treats that a certain deference to his
judgment is a homage justly due to his superior attainments. Occasionally, how-
ever, we suspect that his representations are modified by the influence of religiously
orthodox prepossession. Kemusat, the first occupant of a Chinese Chair in Europe,
detected, in the three monosyllables 1, hi, wei, the Hebrew word Jehovah. From
such philological hallucinations Dr. Legge is happily free ; but is it certain that the
zealous missionary's theological proclivities do not bias him in favour of the conclu-
sion that a refined ' monotheistic faith was coeval with the Founders of the Chinese
nation ' ? The argument based on the primitive characters for heaven and lordship
is subtle and ingenious, but does not convince us. Accepting his interpretations,
we should still question the inference. A Power may be Supreme and personal,
yet not the only God, not the God of the Christian monotheist. In a lecture, from
many of the critical judgments in which we widely dissent, a comparison is in-
stituted between the religions known as Confucianism and Taoism and the religion
of Christ. Protesting against the view which degrades the former into a moral
system of political theory, Dr. Legge insists that the primitive monotheism of his
ancestors was never abandoned by Confucius, who, while sacrificing to spirits and
the dead, still prayed to Heaven as a personal being. Taoism, which is both a
religion and a philosophy, did not exist till after the commencement of the Christian
era. Originally a heap of superstitions, it has been developed under the influence
of Buddhism into a system of Rationalism. At present it seems but imperfectly
understood, and Dr. Legge's own researches are avowedly such as cannot satisfy
critical inquiry. The forms resemble those of Buddhism. It has a Trinity parody-
ing the three logical abstractions of that religion, in its speculative construction of
the three Holy Ones, the Gods of Void-existence. It boasts also of an obscure
metaphysic, a moral philosophy, a metempsychosis, a purgatory, an everlasting hell,
and an ' Infernal Majesty.' The existence of God, though not formally denied,
makes no part of its creed. For the moral and social elevation of the Chinese,
Dr. Legge, while denouncing ' the ambitious and selfish policy of so-called Christian
nations,' looks to the adoption of Christianity and its triumph over the ancient
religions of China.

314 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

After Death. An Examination of the Testimony of Primitive Times
respecting the State of the Faithful Dead and their Relationship to
the Living. By HERBERT MORTIMER LUCKOCK, D.D., Canon of Ely,
&c. Second edition. (London, Oxford, and Cambridge : Rivingtons,
1880.)

THE testimony of primitive times respecting the state of the faithful dead is the
subject of a learned treatise by Dr. H. M. Luckock, bearing the impressive title
After Death. As a fragment from the history of the human mind, as a registration
of the feelings, longings, and beliefs of early Christian ages, it possesses some value
even for those who do not share its author's creed. Patristic, liturgical, and monu-
mental evidence on such speculation and sentiment is carefully examined ; many
curious facts and traditions are related, and the legitimate conclusions, or what the
author deems such, are placed intelligibly before the reader. To the Vincentian
canon of Universality Dr. Luckock attaches an importance which we cannot con-
cede, and, in conformity with its principles, regards with favour the doctrine of a
spiritual purgatory or purification of the soul during the intermediate state, accepts
that of the Intercession of the Saints, but discountenances the practice of appealing
to the dead in prayer.

Scotch Sermons. (London : Macmillan, 1880.)

NOT only is Religion entering into this equivocal partnership with German meta-
physics, but the old Theology is undergoing a purifying or, it may be, a destruc-
tive transformation. Even the dogmatic intolerance of Scotland is shaken by the
mighty rushing wind of the New Pentecost. An illustration of this spiritual
commotion may be found in a volume of sermons by clergymen of the Church of
Scotland, which many will welcome as a Presbyterian manifesto of the Liberal
section in that Church. Without any surrender of what is now regarded as the
essential truth of Christianity, these heralds of the ' Second Reformation ' spiritu-
alise and refine the old doctrines in the interest of the ' undeveloped kingdom of
righteousness and love and truth,' claiming entire freedom for the examination of
all scientific, philosophic, and critical problems. A belief in miracles is no longer
necessary, we are told, to entitle a man to bear the name of Christian. The dogmas
of scholastic theology, the descent of man from Adam, the fall of our first parents,
the imputation of guilt to their posterity, the eternal perdition of the unregenerate,
the plenary inspiration of the Bible, are cited as instances of dogmas which the
leaders of modern theological thought regard as specially untenable. With a posi-
tive acceptance of or general sympathy with these latitudinarian views, the hostility
of the writers to scientific materialism or agnosticism is very decided.

Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as illustrated by the Religion
of Ancient Egypt. Delivered in May and June 1879 by M. LE PAGE
RENOTTF. (London : Williams and Norgat«, 1880.)

A LUCID and comprehensive account of the religion of ancient Egypt is offered us
by M. le Page Renouf in the Hibbert Lectures for 1879. Critical, expository, and
constructive, these Lectures, which are six in number, exhibit the results of the
long and laborious investigation of the students of the Egyptian past. In the lec-
ture on the antiquity and characteristics of the civilisation of Egypt, M. Renouf
explains by what means an Egyptian chronology is constructed, and by what tests
it is insured ; inscriptions checking or corroborating inscriptions, and the Royal Lists,
so called, being verified by monuments. Numerous geological investigations de-
monstrate, or all but demonstrate, the existence of the human race in Egypt in
prehistoric time. The Egyptian monarchy itself was anterior to B.C. 3000.
M. Renouf, rejecting the opinion once universally received, that Moses was the
author of the Pentateuch, declares that the Exodus of the Israelites cannot be
brought lower down than B.C. 1310 : the date of the Great Pyramid he carries back
to B.C. 8000. We regret to find that the absolute dates of M. Biot and others,

1880. RECENT LITERATURE. 315

grounded on the supposed heliacal risings of certain stars, must be abandoned, as
it is now known that the text of the Calendars speaks of the transit, never of
the rising, of the stars. This abandonment, however, does not necessarily involve
that of the fixed dates of Dr. Diimichen, Dr. Lauth, and other scholars. The signs
of the zodiac, to which Mr. McLennan ascribes a remote antiquity, are not in
reality anterior to the Christian era, and are not Egyptian at all, but are borrowed
from the Greeks. There are other rectifications of popular errors in M. Renoufs
pages, among which we may specify the refutation of the opinion respecting the
Trimuarti or Indian Trinity, and the hypothesis that the sublime Mosaic
formula / am that I am had its origin in the Egyptian Nuk pu Nuk. We entirely
agree with M. Renouf when lie asserts that the gods of Egypt were native powers,
and in his rejection of Mr. Spencer's hypothesis that the rudimentary form of all
religion is the propitiation of dead ancestors. That in a remote antiquity a germinal
monotheism and a belief in a posthumous existence were doctrines of Egyptian
theology appears to admit of no doubt ; but, as our author explains, the magnificent
predicates of the one only God were never rigidly monotheistic, the most advanced
theism of the orthodox Egyptian stopping short in Pantheism. The worship of
animals M. Renouf apparently regards as having an exclusively symbolical origin —
a view which we cannot accept. Neither can we subscribe to the opinion which
he shares with Professor Max Miiller, that the primary element of religion is
the intuition of the Infinite, or that the myth is a mere phrase descriptive of some •
natural phenomenon. The third lecture in the volume has in it most original
matter. In his conception of Maat as law or order, M. Renouf has been in some
degree anticipated by M. Gre"baut, and in the identification of certain deities by M.
Naville. Anubis, he thinks, represents the dusk following the disappearance of the
sun. The story of Osiris he declines to refer to the year ; the victory of Set over
Osiris being in his opinion that of night over day, and the resurrection of Osiris the
rising of the sun. This is a plausible view, but one which requires careful scrutiny.
Formerly Egyptian civilisation was supposed to have been brought down the Nile
from the more southern region of Africa, but ' most scholars now point to the in-
terior of Asia as the cradle of the Egyptian people,' and the Egyptian type of skull
has been found to approach the European.

The Prophecies of Isaiah. A new Translation, with Commentary and
Appendices. By the Rev. T. K: CHEYNE, M. A., Fellow and Lecturer
of Balliol College, Oxford, &c. In two volumes. Vol. I. (London :
Kegan Paul, 1880.)

THE revival of the study of Hebrew in the country which once boasted of a Selden
and a Lightfoot is a subject of cordial congratulation. We greet Mr. Cheyne's
Prophecies of Isaiah, therefore, with an emphatic welcome. His work on the great
Hebrew prophet consists of a new translation, with a commentary and appendices.
In the translation, while we miss the large utterance and musical flow of the
Authorised Version, we recognise with pleasure the superior accuracy with which
Mr. Cheyne renders difficult words and phrases. The substitution of ' mirage ' for
' parched ground,' and 'night-fairy ' (better, we think, ' night-spectre ') for ' screech-
owl' (ch. xxxiv., xxxv.), we consider a great improvement. These are only speci-
mens of a characteristically commendable reinterpretation, though sometimes the
rendering in the revised version may be reasonably preferred. Believing that light
has been thrown on the historical references in Isaiah by the Assyrian and Egyptian
inscriptions, Mr. Cheyne does not fail to suggest the inevitable chronological correc-
tions. The Prophecies of Isaiah as a whole cannot be attributed to one author, or
even to one period ; in particular the passage xxxvL-xxxix. cannot be the production
of the Isaiah of the earlier part of the book, as it records the death of Sennacherib,
who survived the Jewish expedition twenty years ; and there are other passages
which critics rightly pronounce spurious. The most interesting part of the book —
the latter chapters of which form a grand patriotic poem, in which the ideal Israel

316 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

is glorified by its promotion to the sublime office of the religious Teacher of the
Nations — was assuredly not written by Isaiah, and we learn with surprise that
Mr. Cheyne regards the problem of its date as unsettled. This opinion is the
more surprising, as he admits that in the greater part of thejsection xl.-lxvi. (really
written by an unknown prophet in the time of the Captivity) the poet-seer incon-
trovertibly occupies the standing-ground of a Jewish exile at Babylon. Again, it
is disappointing to find that while Mr. Cheyne repudiates the interpretation of an
orthodox expositor who identifies Jesus with ' the deaf and blind sen-ant,' and ad-
mits that the people of Israel is that mystical servant, he stultifies his admission
by metaphorical super-refinements designed to include a personal Mediator in
the same category of ' the Sen-ant and Messenger of Jehovah.' Thus, while he pro-
tests against the intrusion of 'Christian elements ' into philological exegesis, he
permits the introduction of the ' Christian point of view.'

The Canon of the Bible. Its Formation, History, and Fluctuations. By
SAMUEL DAVIDSOX, D.D. of Halle, and LL.D. Third edition, revised
and enlarged. (London : Kegan Paul, 1880.)

THE late date of the Babylonian Isaiah is affirmed by Dr. S. Davidson, a veteran
theologian, in the new edition of his Canon of the Bible. This decision readers
unversed in Biblical criticism will be little disposed to accept ; and if they are
offended at a sentence that more than half deprives the Prophet of the vision and
the faculty divine, they will be still more ready to take offence when they learn
that Dr. Davidson not only denies the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, and
refers the Book of Daniel to the Maccabsean period, but pronounces the epistles to
the Ephesians, Timothy, and Titus post-Pauline, and boldy asserts that ' the Johan-
nine authorship of the Fourth Gospel has receded before the tide of modern criti-
cism.' The instructive and scholarly little work from which these unwelcome but,
as we believe, unimpeachably sound conclusions are derived, was written towards the
close of the year 1875, for the new edition of the Encyclopedia Brittennica. Un-
abridged, enlarged, and revised, it will now, let us hope with the author, be accepted
as a comprehensive summary of all that concerns the formation and history of the
Bible Canon.

An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion. By JOHN CAIRD, D.D.,
Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Glasgow, and one
of Her Majesty's Chaplains for Scotland. (Glasgow : James Maclehose,
1880.)

IT is not very long since Mr. Baring Gould announced that the philosophy of
Hegel was to be the golden gate through which the sceptical intellect of a degene-
rate Europe was to re-enter the glorious domain of the old Christian faith ; and
now Dr. Caird, in his Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, offers us a similar
solution of the great theological problem. His Hegelianism, however, is judiciously
veiled under tie graceful drapery of language with which he has invested his
visionary metaphysics. To Dr. Caird's reflective powers, his talent for fluent
literary exposition, and his acuteness in the detection of fallacious reasoning, we
desire to do all justice. If religion, that is, if theology, admits of a legitimate vin-
dication, Dr. Caird is right in asserting against the adherents of the intuitional
school the competency of human reason to supply that vindication. We think him
right also in refuting Mr. Herbert Spencer's theory of the undefined consciousness
of the Absolute. We follow him in his condemnatory criticism of the cosmological,
ideological, and ontological arguments for the existence of a Deity ; but when, after
stigmatising them as inadequate — when, in particular, after refuting the Cartesian
form of proof, he sets up his own theory of religious consciousness — when, further,
he allows that the presence of a conception in the mind does not demonstrate the
existence of a corresponding object out of the mind, and-yet makes an exception in
favour of the one idea which it ia his interest as a theologian to uphold, and so

1880. REGENT LITERATURE. 317

affirms the existence of ' a Universal Reason that thinks in us ' — we see that he is
but repeating the old error, that he is but converting logical abstractions into reali-
ties, and calling up in opposition to Mr. Spencer's Absolute an Absolute of his own,
which Mr. Spencer would demolish with just as little ceremony as Dr. Oaird de-
molishes Mr. Spencer's metaphysical idol. With Hegel, Dr. Oaird proclaims his
belief in the ultimate unity of Knowing and Being, contending that individual
Thought presupposes Absolute Intelligence : a conclusion which, in our opinion, no
science and no sound philosophy can justify. In his assault on the materialistic
hypothesis he maintains that ' in making thought a function of matter its advocates
make thought a function of itself ; that they make that the product of matter which
is involved in the very existence of matter.' This is an old argument, but surely a
fallacy underlies it. Why should the problem of materialism be made to depend
on the abstract nature, either of mind or matter, on our power to conceive them ?
That matter is only known through mind is a proposition certainly not incompatible
with the persuasion that mental phenomena may, by some 'concurrence of physical
agencies, result from appropriate conditions of the organisation of matter. At
best the philosophy of Hegel does but identify God with the world ; God therefore
is not an extra-mundane, not an infinite and transcendent, Being. Hegel's expres-
sions concerning the personal nature of the Deity are so obscure and indefinite that
a philosophical adept like Dr. Zeller, while refraining from saying what Hegel's
real opinion was, has no hesitation in declaring that his exclusive interest lay in
the belief that the personality of God was realised in the personality of man. Accord-
ing to other eminent German critics the consciousness of the Divine in man is the
ideal existence of God opposed to Nature as the real existence. Simple-minded
Christians regard the history of their Saviour as fact, and fact of supreme importance.
Hegelian Christians, except Dr. John Caird and Mr. Baring Gould, reduce the life
of Jesus to a legend, and attenuate its most sacred facts into moral or allegorical
platitudes. Can simple-minded Christians be contented with the reconciliation
of theology and philosophy which Hegel pretended to have effected, with a
religion which is a form of thought, with a logic of contradictions, in which being
is equivalent to non-being, a realm of visionary Opposites, a world of spirit without
intelligence, a universe in which they will be left face to face with the God of Void-
Existence, ' pinnacled dim in the intense inane ' ?

PHYSICAL SCIENCE.

Science Primers : ' Introductory.' By Professor HUXLEY, F.R.S.
(London: Macmillan.)

IT is generally admitted that the various branches of physical science offer the best
and fullest illustration of the ascertainment of truth by means of observation and of
reasoning. From an educational point of view, the value of an acquaintance with
natural science lies not so much in the mere accumulation of facts as in familiarity
with the methods of scientific investigation. The man who has been well trained
in physical science has so great an intellectual advantage over the man who has not
been thus trained, that, other things being equal, he will be able to form a sounder
judgment not only on scientific questions but on things in general. Opinion may
be divided as to the age at which it is desirable to commence the study of natural
science, and as to the means by which it may be best introduced ; but there can
surely be no difference of opinion as to the expediency of its introduction, at some
time and in some way, into every rational scheme of education. All beginnings,
however, are proverbially difficult, and the youth who approaches the study of
science for the first time needs careful guidance in taking the initial step. For-
tunately, the hand of a master has just been stretched out to assist the beginner,

318 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

and the first step across the threshold of science may now be taken under the firm
guidance of Professor Huxley.

As Professor Huxley's little work is sent forth as an introduction to a series of
primers on special subjects, its aim is not to enter into the details of this or that
particular science, but rather to sweep lightly over the entire field of scientific
inquiry. Yet it differs immensely from the old-fashioned type of introductory text-
book which offers to the young student a heap of crude facts picked from every
point in the circle of the sciences. The Primer, it is true, contains a great deal of
useful information ; but its special value lies in its attempt to discipline the intellect
of the young student, so that he may learn to acquire a scientific habit of mind.
The pupil is not stuffed with facts while his reasoning powers are stunted. But
he is brought into personal contact with the common objects around him, he is
taught the relation between cause and effect, and he gets an insight into the way
in which the laws of the physical world have been discovered. The subject is made
attractive to the young student by its intrinsic interest, and not by artifices which
are too common in popular works. There is no attempt to gild the pill, or to bury
it in sweetmeat, so that the pupil may be inveigled into swallowing a certain dose
of scientific instruction. But the reader feels himself face to face with the simplest
phenomena of nature, and hears the plainest truths set forth in the plainest words.
He sees how men of science use their senses in observing the phenomena around
them ; how they introduce artificial conditions, so as to vary the circumstances in
their experiments; and how they exercise their intellectual powers in reasoning
upon such observations. It is obvious that the cause of primary education is under
a weight of obligation to Professor Huxley for writing the very simplest of text-
books on so philosophical a plan.

Degeneration : a Chapter in Daricinism. By Professor E. RAT LAKKESTER,
F.R.S., Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. (London : Macmillan, 1880.)

THIS little essay originally constituted one of the evening lectures before the last
meeting of the British Association, and now constitutes one of the ' Nature Series.'
It is marked by the well-known ability of its author, and, being written in a style
adapted to a general audience, is a book to give an additional relish to an after-
dinner cigar. We are first warned to be careful that we take not the name of Science
in vain, or lend our countenance to the blasphemy of that arch-heretic ' the late
Oxford Professor of Fine Art,' who ' gravely pointed out ' ' such things as electric
lighting and telegraphs, the steam-engine, gas, and smoky chimneys of factories ' ' as
the pestilential products of a scientific spirit,' when, ' in fact, they are nothing of the
kind. American inventors and electric lamps, together with all the factories in Shef-
field, might be obliterated without causing a moment's concern to a single student
of science.' Science is really quite distinct from Invention. * Invention is worldly-
wise, and awaits the discoveries of Science, in order to sell them to Civilisation ; '
while Science is actuated only by ' a thriftless yearning after knowledge, a passion-
ate desire to know the truth — to ascertain the causes of things.' We have next a
few pages on the methods of science, which, although necessarily sketchy, are sound
and good as far as they go, and which serve to introduce us to the real subject of
the essay by the words with which most intelligent men will be prepared to agree :
' Suddenly one of those great guesses, which occasionally appear in the history of
science, was given to the science of biology by the imaginative insight of the
greatest of living naturalists — I would say the greatest of living men — Charles
Darwin.'

The subject of the essay is a development of an idea, or rather a doctrine, that
was first comprehensively propounded several years ago by Dr. Dohrn, to whom
the little book is appropriately dedicated. Dohrn pointed out that, in the eager
pursuit of evidence of Evolution or Development, naturalists had too much neglected
the evidence of a converse process which is perhaps of no less universal occurrence

1880. RECENT LITERATURE. 319

— the process of Degradation or Retrogression. It may be perfectly true that
natural selection is always persistently trying, as it were, to improve a given type ;
but ' improvement ' in this sense only means a better degree of adaptation to the
environment, and if, from any changes in the innumerable conditions which go to
constitute an environment, this better de gree of adaptation would be secured by
lessening instead of increasing the complexity of an organism, then clearly natural
selection would operate in the direction of producing greater simplicity of organisa-
tion ; it would tend to degrade the organism. ' We have as possibilities either
BALANCE, or ELABORATION, or DEGENERATION.'

' Retrogressive metamorphosis,' or degradation of type from changed habits of
life, has long been recognised as having taken place in many species of parasites ;
and it is only required to extend this principle to certain other anomalous forms, in
order to reveal the lines of their genetic descent. Thus, for instance, ' the goose-
barnacle,' which in its adult condition is fixed, and so like a bivalve mollusk as to
deceive even Cuvier, is now known to be allied to the crustaceans; but ' were it not
for the recapitulative phases in the development of the barnacle, we may doubt
whether naturalists would ever have guessed that it was a degenerate crustacean.'

But of much more importance than that of any other case is the case of the
Ascidian. From a study of the low and inert form of the adult animal it would
be impossible to surmise that its remote ancestors had once been vertebrates ; but
now that the larva is known to be a tadpole comparable with that of a frog, there
can be no doubt that such was the case. Prof. Lankester here draws attention to
one very interesting point : —

It has long been known as a very puzzling and unaccountable peculiarity of
vertebrates, that the retina or sensitive part of the eye grows out in the embryo as
a bud or vesicle of the brain, and forms deeply below the surface and away from
the light. The ascidian tadpole helps us to understand this, for it is perfectly trans-
parent and has its eye actually inside its brain. The light passes through the
transparent tissues and acts on the pigmented eye, lying deep in the brain. We
are led to this conclusion — and I believe this inference is now for the first time put
into so many words — that the original vertebrate must have been a transparent
animal, and had an eye or pair of eyes inside its brain, like that of the ascidian
tadpole. As the tissues of this ancestral vertebrate grew denser and more opaque,
the eye-bearing part of the brain was forced by natural selection to grow outwards
towards the surface, in order that it might still be in a position to receive the influ-
ence of the sun's rays. Thus the very peculiar mode of development of the vertebrate
eye from two parts — a brain-vesicle and a skin-vesicle — is accounted for.

Besides the barnacles, ascidians, and innumerable forms of parasites, Prof.
Lankester considers as degenerate animals the planarian worms which have re-
cently been shown by Mr. Geddis to feed by decomposing carbonic acid in the same
manner as plants. He also considers the Lamellibranch Mollusk, Star-fish, Rotifers,
Ostracoda, Polyzoa, Polyps, and Sponges as the degenerate progeny of forms
respectively higher. Some examples of probable degeneration are also given from
the field of botany.

The essay concludes with a few general considerations on the bearing of the
new doctrine on the possible future of the human race. ' In accordance with a
tacit assumption of universal progress — an unreasoning optimism — we are ac-
customed to regard ourselves as necessarily progressing.' But we really have no
warrant for this tacit assumption; 'we are subject to the general laws of evolution,
and are as likely to degenerate as to progress.' As a matter of fact, we have not
improved, either in body or mind, upon ' the immediate forefathers of our civilisa-
tion— the ancient Greeks.' ' Possibly we are all drifting, tending to the condition
of intellectual barnacles or ascidians.' In one respect, however, we are certainly
more ' fortunate than our ruined cousins — the degenerate ascidians.' For ' to us
has been given the power to know the causes of things, and by the use of this power

320 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

it is possible for us to control our destinies.' Therefore it is to the full and earnest
cultivation of science — the knowledge of causes — that we have to look for the pro-
tection of our race from relapse and degeneration.

The Crayfish : an Introduction to the Study of Zoology. By T. II. HUXLEY,
F.R.S. (London : Kegan Paul.)

THAT rational system of teaching natural science which proceeds from the concrete
to the abstract, from that which is familiar to that which is unknown — a system
BO often and so ably advocated by Professor Huxley — is well illustrated in his
recently published work on the Crayfish. Here the reader starts not with subtle
definitions or with the enunciation of broad principles, but with a solid and simple
basis of concrete fact. A common crayfish lies before the student, and he is bidden
to examine it for himself, part by part. The facts which this familiar object pre-
sents are examined in the light of common sense, and are reasoned upon in just the
same way that the affairs of daily life would be reasoned upon by a shrewd man of
business. It is astonishing what an amount of information may be extracted from
the commonest of natural objects under the guidance of a skilful master. Just as
the author, in his Primer, uses a glass of water as the vehicle through which he
conveys a great deal of information touching the physical properties of mineral
bodies, so, in this work, he uses the common crayfish as a basis upon which he
succeeds in raising a biological structure of great magnitude and solidity. Almost
without knowing it, the reader rises from the study of this crustacean to the con-
templation of some of the grandest generalisations and most difficult problems of
zoological science. In fact, the study of the crayfish as a special type expands
into an introduction to zoology in general. And we dare to say that the student
who has made himself master of this work upon crayfishes will possess a far deeper
insight into the fundamental truths of biology than many a student who has wearily
plodded through an orthodox text-book of zoology. He will gain a clear, though a
limited, knowledge of all the branches of study to which the biojogist addresses
himself: he studies morphology in dealing with the form, the structure, and the
development of the crayfish ; physiology, in noting the action of the animal's
mechanism ; and chorology, in tracing the distribution of crayfishes in space and in
tjme — that is to say, in marking their location on the surface of the globe at the
present day, and their past existence as preserved in the records of the rocks.
Finally, the attempt to solve the causes which have led to the phenomena presented
by the morphology, the physiology, and the chorology of the crayfishes leads us to
the pinnacle of biological thought — the study of (etiology. Here at length the
student has to face the great scientific problem of the day, and from the evidence
which has been placed before him in the study of the crayfishes he may be safely
left to shape his own verdict for or against the doctrine of transformism.

Throughout this work upon the Crayfish, and also throughout the introductory
Primer, Professor Huxley has spared no pains in insisting on the simplicity of the
scientific method. It is a lesson which he has often enforced before, but it is well
worth the trouble of reiteration. Men of science do not dwell within a charmed
circle, from which ordinary individuals are shut out. Marvellous as the results of
scientific investigation have been, there is no mystery around them ; and the method
of ascertaining scientific truths may be followed by any one who can reason soundly
on the passing events of daily life— in short, by any one possessed of healthy common
sense. ' Science,' says Professor Huxley in introducing the study of the crayfish,
' is simply common sense at its best ; that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and
merciless to fallacy in logic.'

Metallurgy : the Art of extracting Metals from their Ores. ' Silver and
Gold.' Part I. By JOHN PERCY, M.D., F.R.S. (London: John
Murray.)

AMONG the publications which have recently enriched the literature of applied
science, Dr. Percy's new volume on Metallurgy may be especially referred to. In this

1880. RECENT LITERATURE. 321

country, where we are fortunately in command of vast mineral resources, few arts
would seem to be more important than that in which the scientific principles of
chemistry are intelligently applied to the extraction of metals from their ores. And
yet when Dr. Percy projected his great work, the literature of this country was
but ill-furnished with writings on metallurgy. Germany was far ahead of us ;
France had long outrun us ; and even Sweden had beaten us in this respect. For
more than twenty years Dr. Percy has been striving to wipe away our reproach,
and during that time has contributed volume after volume towards the formation
of a treatise that shall be worthy of the vast metallurgical interests of this country.

The most striking features of Dr. Percy's volumes are their trustworthiness and
thoroughness. Scarcely a single statement is made without reference to the original
authority, and in a large number of cases the statements have been verified by
appeal to original experiments. The pages are, in fact, laden with knowledge at
first hand ; and, where it is not the direct result of personal observation, the writer
bas spared no pains in appealing to the very highest authorities. Yet with all its
thoroughness the work is far from being a mere agglomeration of technical details.

Ten years have passed since the appearance of the last volume — a volume which
treated of lead-smelting, including the processes of extracting silver from argenti-
ferous lead. The present volume is mainly occupied with the metallurgy of silver,
but touches also on the allied subject of gold. Nevertheless, stout as the volume
is, it leaves a number of complex processes of silver-extraction to stand over to the
next part, when the entire work will probably be brought to a completion. But,
as the subject seems to grow larger and larger the longer it is looked at, it is
dangerous to prophesy as to its completion within the compass of another volume.
Already the treatise has run to considerably more than three thousand pages, and,
even in its present incomplete form, is a work of which the literature of any
country might well be proud.

Water- Analysis for Sanitary Purposes, with Hints for the Interpretation of
Results. By E. FRANKLAND, Ph.D., D.C.L., F.R.S. (London : John
Van Voorst.)

FIFTEEN years ago Dr. Frankland undertook the monthly analysis of the metro-
politan waters for the Registrar-General. But as all the methods of examina-
tion then in use were extremely unsatisfactory, he set himself to work, jointly
with Dr. Armstrong, to elaborate more searching methods of analysis. The chief
outcome of the investigation, as every chemist knows, was the famous ' combustion
process ' — a process for determining the relative proportions of carbon and nitrogen
in the organic matter with which the water may have been polluted. The details
of this process are fully explained and illustrated in this volume. But, as those
analysts who are not familiar with eudiometric determinations object to the trouble
involved in the combustion process, other and simpler means of examination are
also explained. In all cases of real importance, however, the author strongly re-
commends that recourse should be had to the actual combustion of the organic
matter, since he holds that this alone is competent to give thoroughly trustworthy
results. Surely, where the public health is at stake, no difficulties of manipulation
should be allowed to stand in the way of using that method which promises the
largest measure of information on so vital a question as the purity of our drinking
water.

VOL. VIII.-No. 42.

322 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

POLITICS AND SOCIAL SCIENCE.

Hodge and his Masters. By RICHARD JEFFERIES. 2 vols.
(London : Smith, Elder, and Co., 1880.)

THE author of The Gamelceeper at Home and its companion volumes — delightful
books which have already won their place of honour beside The Complete Aiif/lcr,
White's Selborne, and Oobbett's Rural Rides — has given us in Hodge and his
Mastei-s an elaborate and careful study of the natural history of the labourers and
farmers of rural England. The subject is one which is at least as worthy of atten-
tion as the society of some barbarous race or the habits and structure of a division
of the animal kingdom. It has, however, been hitherto entirely neglected, and,
until the publication of Mr. JefFeries's work, we do not know where a foreign in-
quirer into the social organisation of modern England could have been directed in
his search for a satisfactory account of the condition and tendencies of our agri-
cultural classes. The peasantry of France and Germany are better known, by
books, if not by personal observation, to many intelligent English people than our
own farming folk, and it may be said that, if we except the rural clergy, perhaps
not one Englishman out of a hundred, whether he lives in town or country, has ever
had a chance of understanding what kind of being the British agricultural labourer
really is. There is no longer any excuse for this ignorance. Hodge and his
Masters ought to be studied by all who appreciate the gravity of the political change
imported by the proposed extension of household suffrage to the counties. Mr.
Jefferies does not profess to be absolutely without bias ; knowing the people of
whom he writes so well, it is impossible that he should not have formed some
practical conclusions about them ; but it is only bare justice to say that these
conclusions are not thrust upon the reader, or more adroitly insinuated in the de-
scriptions and narratives. The good points and the bad discovered in each type are
brought out with sympathetic patience and the intellectual 'detachment' of the
botanist or the ornithologist. There are few who will feel surprise at the multitude
of the types among those classes loosely spoken of in common parlance as ' farmers '
and ' labourers,' as one might speak of ' butterflies ' and ' moths.' Even the farmers,
who are reckoned among the middle ranks of society, are currently conceived in
the lump as represented by the traditional John Bull of Mr. Tenniel's cartoons in
Punch, stout and self-satisfied, with mutton-chop whiskers, broad-brimmed hat, and
top-boots. This type, with some slight modifications of costume, is still to be met
with, but around it how many new types have grown and are growing up ! Mr.
Jefferies sketches the most generally diffused and the most interesting varieties, and
the environment of each. The squire, the parson, the country solicitor, the ' man
of progress,' the borrower and the gambler, the agricultural genius, and their
womankind, lend themselves no less to his kindly though at times satiric portraiture.
The bank, the county court, the old-fashioned newspaper, the social life of the
country town, the village 'public' and its customers, all find their place in this
varied and animated picture of rural life in England. But the marrow of the book,
regarded as a contribution to politics, is its acute analysis of the ideas at present
fermenting in the minds of the agricultural labourers, and of the intellect and con-
science on which those ideas work. No politician who has not mastered Mr. Jef-
feries's volumes is competent to deal either with the question of agricultural depres-
sion or with that of the extension of the franchise in counties. The brilliancy of
the author's style may detract from his influence : and there are, indeed, some pas-
sages in which a temptation to mere smart writing or to ' word-painting ' of the sort
now so generally overdone has not been duly resisted ; but it i?, nevertheless, true
that the characteristics of the book are sagacity, impartiality, quick and close obser-

1880. RECENT LITERATURE. 323

vation. It is a contribution to the scientific study of a group of problems which
ought to be of paramount interest to all thinking Englishmen.

Monarchy and Democracy : P/tases of Modern Politics. By the DUKE OF
SOMERSET, K.G. (London : James Bain, 1880.)

PUKE Pyrrhonism in politics is rare, although the conflict of optimists and pessi-
mists is producing the conditions of absolute scepticism. The Duke of Somerset has
published a little volume which comes nearer in the political domain to the specu-
lations of the school of Hume in the region of metaphysical and religious thought
than anything we have met with hitherto. With a certain dry air of superiority
becoming a Whig duke, the noble sceptic examines the British Constitution and all
the influences which work together in that system, and, indeed, in the whole struc-
ture of modern civilisation. He finds nothing that is not hollow and untrustworthy,
unless it be palsied or putrescent. One by one the illusions of our parties are
brought to the test, mercilessly exposed, and dismissed to the limbo of demolished
shams in a few curt and pungent sentences. The Duke of Somerset has too stern
a contempt for unrealities to deal in epigrams, but the directness with which he
announces the most unpleasant truths often gives an epigrammatic flavour to a
blunt and simple sentence. There has rarely appeared a book which must offend
so many readers, yet almost every one, offended though he may be, will be pleased
to witness the castigation of others. The political annals of the last few months
would enable the Duke of Somerset to add to his stock of discouraging illustrations.
Among exploded illusions must now be classed the hope which many Conservatives
avowed that they had ' touched bottom ' with the enfranchised masses by appealing
to the sentiment which Liberals denounce as 'Jingoism.' Those who have read
the Duke of Somerset's little book will not, if they agree at all with the author, be
astonished at the disappointment either of those hopes, or of the not less unfounded,
though antagonistic, expectations that have taken their place.

Conversations with Distinguished Persons during the Second Empire. By
NASSAU WILLIAM SENIOR. 2 vols. (London : Hurst and Blackett,
1880.)

THE latest instalment of Mr. Senior's admirable and almost unique journals extends
over the years 1860-63, and deals with the questions involved in the policy of the
Second Empire, with respect especially to Italy, Poland, and the war of the Seces-
sion in the United States. The persons with whom Mr. Senior conversed on political
affairs were most of them of indisputable eminence in public life, and of wide ex-
perience and knowledge of the world. Among them were Guizot, Thiers, Lamar-
tine, Pelletan, Duvergier du Hauranne, Changarnier, Me'rime'e, Lasteyrie, Chevalier,
Re'musat, Drouyn de Lhuys, Montalembert, Prince Napoleon, Trochu, the Due de
Broglie, Corcelle, Lavergne, Renan, Lanjuinais, Buffet, and Circourt. A few official
names appear now and then, but upon the whole it is clear that Mr. Senior when
in France lived chiefly with those classes who stood to the sovereignty of Napoleon
the Third in the attitude of frondeurs. It is remarkable that while these clever
and discontented personages showed singular acuteness as well as pungency in their
criticisms upon the Emperor and his system of government, illuminating indeed to
an astonishing degree a chapter of history which does not cease to be obscure because
it is close to our eyes, one and all rushed with surprising recklessness into predic-
tion, and committed themselves to prophecies which events with severe impartiality
have falsified. It is difficult to refrain from murmuring Oxenstiern's hackneyed
ejaculation when we examine in the ' dry light ' of Mr. Senior's journals the
blundering guesses which passed 'for political wisdom with the elite of intellectual
France during the reign of Napoleon the Third. When we appreciate[the incapacity
for seizing the real meaning of events either at home or abroad which the Guizots
and the Thiers repeatedly displayed, we begin to understand how the Second Em-
pire, with all its gaspillage and brutality, lasted so long.

T 2

324 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

Parliamentary Government in tie British Colonies. By ALPHKTB TODD.
(London: Longmans, 1880.)

SEVERAL years have elapsed since Mr. Alpbeus Todd, the Librarian of the Dominion
Parliament at Ottawa, published a valuable work on ' Parliamentary Government
in England,' the merits of which have been abundantly recognised, and in the most
practical manner, by politicians and publicists in the mother country and in the
Colonies. The plan of Mr. Todd's clearly arranged and comprehensive volumes
•was that of a legal text-book, in which every statement of principle or of fact was
supported by reference to authoritative decisions. The ' case law,' as it may be
called, of the British Constitution was never more thoroughly and accurately di-
gested. No point relating to political machinery could be raised upon which Mr.
Todd's work did not provide the means of forming an opinion, the rulings of the
courts, the statutory action of Parliament, the proceedings of the two Houses
within the sphere of their privileges, the dicta of eminent statesmen, jurists, and
political writers upon questions of practice, morality, and expediency in politics.
The professed object of Mr. Todd's original labours was ' to explain the operations
of parliamentary governments, in furtherance of its application to Colonial institu-
tions,' and in this a large measure of success was achieved. "Wherever ' responsible
government ' is established in the British Colonies, the constitution of the mother
country as embodied in unwritten not less than in written law supplies in the
absence of special legislation the rules governing the relations of the different
powers in the State, and the separate movements of all. It is impossible, however,
that under so great a change of conditions as that which necessarily results from
the transfer of English precedents to the virgin soil of the Colonies, the process of
differentiation should be avoided. Mr. Todd, in his new and most interesting
volume on Parliamentary Government in the British Colonies, explains by reference
to settled cases or t^ the opinions of high authorities the manner in which colonial
institutions have diverged from the original type, the reasons for the divergence,
the extent and the prospects of the change. After an historical account of the intro-
duction of parliamentary institutions into our Colonies, Mr. Todd goes on to ex-
amine and to illustrate with examples and quotations the imperial control still
exercised in colonial affairs by the mother country. He next reviews the relations
of a central colonial government to provincial administrations, a subject upon which
the history of the Canadian Dominion during the past few years has thrown much
light, and which derives increasing importance from the project of South African
Confederation, and the discussion of a similar scheme in the Australian Colonies.
But perhaps the most interesting part of Mr. Todd's book is his conclusive demon-
stration that the goverro: of a, colony is not a mere ' figure-head,' a notion en-
couraged by some recent popular criticisms on constitutional politics. It has been,
as Mr. Todd says, ' tco frequently assumed that the political functions of the Crown
have been wholly obliterated whenever a parliamentary government has been es-
tablished.' That this assumption is inconsistent with the facts is known to all
practical statesmen, but it is essential that the truth should be understood in our
colonies, since a colonial governor may often be under an obligation to use his
authority in the interests of the imperial connection, where a constitutional
sovereign himself would be at liberty to recognise the preponderating expediency
of inaction.

1880. RECENT LITER A TURE. 325

GEOGRAPHY, VOYAGES AND TRAVELS.

A Physical, Historical, Political, and Descriptive Geography. By KEITH
JOHXSTOX, F.R.G.S. Maps, Illustrations. (London: Stanford, 1880.)

ME. KEITH JOHNSTON died in the cause of science, while conducting an African
exploring expedition under the auspices of the Geographical Society. The con-
cluding portion of this work was actually written in Africa, when its lamented
author was on the point of starting for the interior, and was printed after his death.
It is an excellent treatise, and the historical portion is prepared with great care and
attention to accuracy of detail. A special feature is the interesting series of maps,
all on the small scale, showing the gradual progress of geographical discovery from
the earliest times. Discovery, Mr. Keith Johnston observes, in concluding his
historical review, is now taking a new direction, and the truly scientific conquest
of the world has begun. After tracing out the gradual development of knowledge
of the earth by sea and land, the author takes a comprehensive survey of what is
now known of the form and dimensions of the world, of its movements, of the
causes which determine climate, and of the peoples inhabiting the continents and
islands, their religions and political systems. Then follow detailed descriptions
of the countries, illustrated by physical maps. Although there are a few unim-
portant mistakes, due to the absence of final revision by the author, the work is, in
our opinion, the best of its kind that has yet appeared.

The Voyages and Works of John Davis the Navigator. Edited, with an
Introduction and Notes, by ALBERT H. MABKHAM, Captain R.N.
(Hakluyt Society, 1880.)

THE narratives of the several voyages in which John Davis, the great Elizabeth
navigator, wus engaged, are here brought together in a single volume, for the first
time ; together with all that remains of his writings on navigation and hydrography.
Captain Markham has discovered several new points in the career of Davis, and
has corrected serious blunders in the accounts of former writers who have dealt
with the subject. An appendix contains a descriptive list of all the works on
navigation, from the days of Sacrabosco to the close of Elizabeth's reign, with some
account of their authors, which will be valuable for reference, and is very suggestive
of further research. Davis was not only a discoverer, but also a student and a
writer on the art of navigation. Hence the descriptive chronological list of works
on that subject, furnished by Captain Markham, has special relevancy in this place.
It shows the position taken by the treatises of Davis, while, at the same time, it
furnishes a useful key to the history of the progress of nautical science.

The River of Golden Sand. The Narrative of a Journey through China
and Eastern Tibet to Burmah. By G. W. GILL. With an Intro-
ductory Essay by Colonel H. YULE, C.B. 2 vols. 8vo. (London :
John Murray, 1880.)

THIS important geographical work is prefaced by an essay, written by Colonel
Yule, on our knowledge of the geography and hydrography of Eastern Tibet.
Captain Gill furnishes very complete materials for the geographer, in describing
his adventurous travels. His first journey is from Tien-tsin to Peking and the
Great Wall of China. His second and third cruises were up the Yang-tsze river
to Hankow and beyond. The last and most important journey was to Batang, in
Eastern Tibet, and thence by Talifu to Bhamo. Captain Gill paid close attention
to the identification of places mentioned by Marco Polo, and to the comparison of
modern conditions with the state of affairs in the time of the great Venetian ex-
plorer. His work also contains descriptions of scenery, and much information re-
specting the history, social condition of the people, and products of a large section
of the Chinese Empire.

326 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

Report on the Irrawuddy llin-r. Parti.: 'Hydrography.' Part II.:
'Hydrology.' Part III.: 'Hydraulics.' By B. GORDON, Rangoon.
\Vi'th Maps and Tables. Folio.

Mi:. GORDON, in opposition to the belief of the majority of modern geographers,
has come to the conclusion that the great Tibetan river Sanpo is a feeder of the
Irrawaddy, and that it is not, as generally supposed, a tributary of the Brahma-
putra. He discusses this important question very fully, chiefly depending on
arguments connected with the estimated volumes of the several streams in question.
The Report also contains detailed technical information respecting the floods of the
Irrawaddy, and the physical agencies which affect the supply and distribution of
rainfall. The maps are hydrographical, orographical, and hyetographical, and an
atlas of plates is in course of preparation.

The first part, in which Mr. Gordon discusses the hydrography of the Irrawaddy,
and the extent and peculiar conditions of its valley, with a view to investigating
the causes of its floods, is that which is more especially deserving of the attention
of geographers. The appendices contain very full information respecting the rain-
fall and other meteorological data at various stations in British Burmah.

Jirazil, the Amazons, and the Coast. By HERBERT H. SMITH. With Map
and Illustrations. 8vo. (London : Sampson Low.)

MR. HERBERT SMITH visited the Amazons iu 1870 and again in 1875, also exploring
several northern tributaries and the great river Tapajos to the south. His book is
a valuable addition to the literature of the Amazonian valley, containing accounts
of the natural productions and physical aspects of several localities which are as
yet little known ; and the author has devoted special attention to the myths and
folk-lore of the Indian tribes. There is also an excellent account of the arid
Brazilian district of Ceara, and of the famine which recently devastated it.

A History of Ancient Geography among the GreeJcs and Romans, from the
earliest Ages till the Fall of the Roman Empire. By E. H. BmrBiTRY,
F.R.G.S. With Twenty Illustrative Maps. 2vols. (London: John
Murray, 1879.)

No review of recent work in the department of classical literature should omit
to notice the admirable work on Ancient Geographrj with which Mr. Bunbury has
enriched the reference library of English scholars. His subject offers an immense
field, and Mr. Bunbury has traversed it from one end to the other with a zeal and
an industry which are beyond all praise. Beginning with the voyage of the
Argonauts, to which he attributes no geographical value, he deals at some length
with the Homeric geography, estimating the poet's knowledge of this subject less
highly than does Mr. Gladstone. (We do not think, by the way, that he is right
in describing as a * very strange theory ' Nitzsch's suggestion that the account of
day and night among the Lsestrygones indicates some knowledge of an extreme
north where the summer nights are of the shortest. Homer's language seems to
admit of no other explanation.) Herodotus, whose knowledge is made the subject
of a very just and able estimate, Ctesias, Xenophon, the writers who concerned them-
selves with the campaigns of Alexander, Polybius (Mr. Buubury, we observe, de-
cides in favour of the route over Mount Cenis as that probably followed by
Hannibal), Ctesar, Strabo, the elder Pliny, and Ptolemy, are the principal authors
passed under review. Mr. Bunbury, as far as we can see, omits nothing. He has,
too, no little skill in making attractive a subject of which the treatment from a
literary point of view is anything but easy. Unsparing himself of toil, he indul-
gently contemplates the case of persons who may 'shrink from the labour of
perusing the whole,' and has accordingly made successive portions as complete as
possible. To such we may specially recommend the chapters on Herodotus, Strabo,
Pliny, and Ptolemy.

1880. RECENT LITERATURE. 327

Modern Greece. Two Lectures delivered before the Philosophical Insti-
tution of Edinburgh, with Papers on ' The Progress of Greece ' and
' Byron in Greece.' By K. C. JEBB, LL.D. Edin., Professor of Greek
in the University of Glasgow. (London : Macmillan.)

THE object of Professor Jebb in this most interesting collection of Essays is to
prove the vitality of Greece. The first Lecture is a striking summary of the
historical evidence for ' the essential continuity of the Hellenic race ' and character.
' The ties,' he says, ' which connect the Greeks of to-day with the ancient Greeks
are chiefly three — race, character, and language/ and it is on the particulars of
this connexion that Professor Jebb discourses. The second Lecture gives a
traveller's picture of Greece of the present day. The Paper entitled ' The Progress
of Greece ' is published from Macmillan. The advance made by Greece since 18G3,
and the hindrances presented by her social condition, are here delineated. ' No
impartial observer,' says Professor Jebb, ' can refuse to admit that Greece has
already done much, and is in a fair way to do more. . . . The great need of all for
Greece, if Greece is to go on prospering, is that politics should cease to be a game
played between the holders and seekers of office, and that all local and personal
interests whatsoever should be uniformly and steadily subordinated to the public
interests of the country.' The author only claims for his little book the office of
guide ' to the sources of information more important than itself.' . But any student
of Hellenic matters, apart from the pleasure he will derive from the actual perusal
of Modem Greece, will be glad to find recorded the convictions of one who is so
well qualified to entertain an opinion on the subject.

An Englishwoman in Utah. The Story of a Life's Experience in Mormon-
ism. An Autobiography. By Mrs. T. B. H. STENHOTJSE, for more
than twenty-five years the wife of a Mormon Missionary and
Elder. (London : Sampson Low.)

' I HAVE told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,' says Mi's.
Stenhouse, and the genuine character of the book is vouched for by Mrs. Harriet
Beecher Stowe : ' In these pages a woman, a wife, and mother speaks the sorrows
and oppressions of which she has been the witness and the victim. ... It is no
sensational story, but a plain, unvarnished tale of truth, stranger and sadder than
fiction.' The book is well written, and there is something terribly pathetic in the
situation of the loving wife, whose happiness is blighted by the spectre of poly-
gamy. There are many curious details of Mormon social life and Mormon
wickedness.

HISTORY AND BIOGEAPHY.

Lord Minto in India. Life and Letters of Gilbert Elliot, first Earl of
Minto, from 1807 to 1814, while Governor-General of India, being
a sequel to his ' Life and Letters ' published in 1874. Edited by his
great-niece, the COUNTESS or MINTO. (London : Longmans.)

MOST Governors-General of India may be classed as interventionists and non-
interventionists. But Lord Minto's foreign policy has earned him both these
titles, and, as his biographer says, furnishes an ' instructive commentary on
Talleyrand's celebrated reply to one who asked him the meaning of the term
" non-intervention." " C'est un mot politique et metaphysique qui veut dire a pen
pres la metne chose qu'intervention." ' It was during Lord Minto's administration
that the system of missions was developed which has now culminated in what
is known as the Afghan question, and which arose from a fear of invasion on the
part of France, just as the later missions were caused by Russophobia. The
earlier portion of this volume deals with the Persian, Sikh, and Afghan missions,
and is particularly interesting to us at the present day. The mutiny of the

328 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

officers of the Madras army, ' than which greater perils have perhaps never
threatened British ruler,' furnished another of Lord Minto's trials, and the corre-
spondence on this much-debated subject will also be perused with interest. The
military expeditions to the Mauritius and to Java are also treated of in the
biography before us. Lord Minto writes to his wife not to publish his corre-
spondence, ' since it is a sort of posthumous work that, I think, seldom does much
for the fame of the writer.' Yet it is while reading the correspondence of others
that he makes this remark. When the events of a man's life have become history,
the publication of his correspondence may give that history flesh and blood,
and history may become biography. Lord Minto's character is peculiarly favour-
able to biography : the playfulness and humour, the want of assumption, the long-
ing for home which he endured during the seven long years he spent in India, and
lastly the fact that while actually on the road to Minto the cup was dashed from
his lips, invest Lord Minto's character with a human interest. Lady Minto's
work is well done, and the volume is eminently readable.

A Short History of India and the Frontier States of Afghanistan , JVj)w/,
and Surma. By J. TA.LBOYS WHEELER, late Assistant Secretary
to the Government of India, Foreign Department, and late Secretary
to the Government of British Burma. With Maps and Tables.
(London: Macmillan.)

THE name of Mr. Talboys Wheeler is already familiar as an historian ; and it is
not too much to say that what Sir John Kaye did for the modern history of India,
Mr. Wheeler has done for the Hindu and Mahomedan periods. The compilation
of an Indian history is a work of extraordinary difficulty. Previous to the con-
nection of Hindustan with England, that continent was occupied simultaneously
and successively by a multiplicity of dynasties and nations, whose names and
whose histories are alike unfamiliar to the British reader, and whose fortunes for
centuries presented no points of contact ; and yet it is apparent to the historian
that each separate state is a factor of modern Indian civilisation. When we say,
then, that Mr. Wheeler has written ' a short history of India,' we bestow the-
highest praise on his work. His history is really short, and evidences the historian's
feeling for historic balance and moderation. His object is to produce a readable
work, and he has succeeded. In the maps and tables with which the volume is-
furnished the reader will find valuable assistance.

Francis Dedk, Hungarian Statesman. A Memoir. With a Preface by
M. E. GRANT DUFF, M.P. (London : Macmillan, 1880.)

THE anonymous writer of this Memoir speaks of it modestly as a makeshift, a
provisional biography of a statesman whose life ought to be known in England,
designed only, as it were, to keep the field open till a more worthy biography shall
be written by some one more competent to the task. But for this modesty, so rare
a virtue in biographers, the work itself furnishes no justification. The reader is
more struck with its high merits than with its defects and shortcomings, if he
thinks of the latter at all. We have here an accurately touched portrait of a
noble character, one of the greatest, and, as Mr. Grant Duff points out in his
Preface, one of the most ideally successful statesmen of this century. The writer
narrates the facts of his career quietly and unostentatiously, but the method is none
the less effective that it is entirely free from display. We are enabled to see the
character of a man who enjoyed the rare fortune of being apotheosised by his
countrymen during his lifetime, through a perfectly clear medium ; yet the
grandeur of the figure never suffers, because the biographer, writing with a perfect
sense of true proportion, never loses sight of the noblest features of the subject.
There probably never was a hero with less of the glitter, the pomp, and circum-
stance of greatness about him than Beak ; and a book like this, which tells the
story of his life with plainness and simplicity, is perhaps the most fitting biography
that he could have.

1880. RECENT LITERATURE. 329

' English Men of Letters.' Edited by JOHN MORLEY. Milton. By
MARK PATTISON, B.D., Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford. (London :
Macmillan, 1879.)

THIS little book chiefly commends itself to those who have not had sufficient leisure
or courage to undertake Prof. Masson's vast and exhaustive biography ; but we
doubt if any one, however familiar with the subject, can fail to attain new light
upon it from Mr. Pattison's broad and masterly portraiture. AVith a skill in which
reverence is combined with justice, the poet's majestic lineaments, furrowed by
sharp personal afflictions and darkened by passionate party-storms, but never shorn
of dignity and grace, are brought out in bold relief against the historic background
of his age. We remember few passages in modern criticism more suggestive than
the terse analysis here given of Samson Agonistes as a ' covert representation ' of
the wreck of the Puritan cause and the misfortunes of Milton's own life which so
intimately allied him with it (pp. 196-7). Not less striking are the comments
upon the contrasted tones of Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained in accordance
with the different periods at which they were composed. In the former the poet's
sense of having ' fallen upon evil days ' was keenest, and his passion thus ' seethes
beneath the stately march of the verse, with the intensified fanaticism which defies
Fortune to make it " bate one jot of heart or hope." ' At the date of the latter he
had become so absorbed in ' his own meditations that they were now all in all to
him,' and in its ' stoical compression ' we look in vain ' for any traces of the season
of suffering and disaster ' through which London had just passed. ' The horrors of
the present were as nothing to a man who had outlived his hopes. Plague and
Fire, what were they after the ruin of the noblest of causes ? ' (pp. 143, 144, 159).
Admirable in its spirit, if not wholly convincing, is Mr. Pattison's defence of
E Allegro and II Penseroso against the charge of unfaithfulness in their description
of Nature (pp. 28, 29). Conclusive, too, is his argument that the ' Miltonic dialect,r
against which Wordsworth uttered his protest in endeavouring to reform poetic
language, was not that of the master himself, but only what it ' had become in the
hands of the imitators of the eighteenth century — sound without sense, a husk
without the kernel, a body of words without the soul of poetry ' (p. 209). We
are not equally able to follow him in his contention (pp. 199, 200) that there is
an element of decay in the vitality of Paradise Lost owing to the loss of belief
which has come over the Christian world in the demonology and angelology which
the poet devoutly accepted. Why should this succeed in sapping the ' epic illusion'
more effectually than the still completer disbelief of all ages after Virgil's in the
truth of the Olympian theology, which the yEneid has survived ? The poet's im-
mortality may safely be trusted to lie in his own yerse, spite of all changes of
opinion and faith ; and we heartily echo Mr. Pattison's concluding sentence, that
f an appreciation of Milton is the last reward of consummated scholarship.'

'English Men of Letters.' Edited by JOHN MORLEY. Chaucer. By
ADOLPHTJS WILLIAM WARD. — Cvwper. By GOLDWIN SMITH.
(London: Macmillan.)

THE Life of Chaucer, ' the poet of the dawn,' must of necessity be without the in-
teresting details of biography which tend to elucidate the meaning of more modern
poets. Much of Mr. Ward's Chaucer is occupied in sifting the evidence which has
been given as to the particulars of the poet's life and belief, and no one is more
competent than Mr. Ward for this task. There is much interesting matter also
with regard to the influence of the literature of the time on Chaucer's work ; and
Mr. Ward takes a highly moderate line as to the literal tests which have been applied
to the early English poems with the view of proving their chronological sequence,
though, he says, ' there is no poet whom, if only as an exercise in critical analysis,
it is more interesting to study and re-study in connection with the circumstances
of his literary progress.' Chaucer's position in English literature may be summed
up in the following quotations. ' This fact alone — that our first great English poet

330 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

was our first English lore-poet properly so called — would have sufficed to transform
our poetic literature through his agency.' And with reference to the subsequent
age of dramatic literature — a theme on which Mr. Ward has proved himself
thoroughly competent to discourse : ' Chaucer was a born dramatist ; but fate willed
it that the branch of our literature which might probably have of all been the best
suited to his genius was not to spring into life till he and several generations after
him had passed away. . . . With how sure an instinct, by the way, Chaucer
has anticipated that unwritten law of the modern drama according to which low
comedy characters always appear in couples ! '

.Mr. Ward's book is one of the most laborious and remarkable of the series.

Like Chaucer, Cowper was connected with a religious revival, but, unlike the
former poet, his whole life and literary career seem to have shaped themselves from
it. He was saved from the bigotry and exclusiveness that disfigured other votaries
of Methodism by his large human sympathy ; though it would be ungrateful to
deny that the spring of simple sentiment which constituted him a leader in the
revival of nature-poetry was in a great measure awakened by the Wesleyan
influence.

Mr. Goldwin Smith has aptly contrasted by quotation the cockney description
of nature by Pope with the truly natural feeling of Cowper ; and in the same por-
tion of the book he points out the advance of Wordsworth and Shelley on Cowper
in this respect : ' He never thinks,' says Mr. Smith, ' of lending a soul to material
nature, as Wordsworth and Shelley do. He is the poetic counterpart of Gains-
borough, as the great descriptive poets of a later and more spiritual day are the
counterparts of Turner.' In speaking of ' The Task,' also, Mr. Smith contrasts Cowper
with Thomson: 'He is perfectly genuine, thoroughly English, entirely emancipated
from false Arcadianism, the yoke of which still sits heavily upon Thomson.'
Cowper is perhaps known to the British reading public more by his letters than by
his poems ; and of both prose and verse the biographer has made judicious selec-
tions. He has with like discretion abstained from undue insistence on the more
painful parts of Cowper 's life ; so that the reader will find an interesting and in-
structive account of Cowper, conveyed in the vivid and pleasant style which charac-
terises all the literary work of Mr. Goldwin Smith.

John Keats. A Study. By F. M.'OwEN. (London : Kegan Paul.)

THE authoress has written this essay in order to demonstrate the consistency and
the larger aims of Keats, which she traces throughout his works. ' True lovers of
Keats,' she modestly says, ' will have to forgive me. My work, except perhaps as
an attempt to make others love him, will have small value for them.' But we
would surmise that there are many constant readers of Keats's poetry who have
not found there the ' real harmony ' which is so carefully and intelligently pointed
out in this little book. And if it gets its due, ' a study by F. M. Owen ' will be the
cause of much gratitude even amongst ' true lovers of Keats.'

A History of the Reign of Queen Anne. By JOHN HILL BUETON , D.C.L.,
Historiographer Royal for Scotland. (London : Blackwood, 1880.)

THE phenomenon of a magnum opus that has occupied twelve years in gestation is
sufficiently rave in these days of .hasty literary production to deserve particular
attention ; and the high reputation of its author, coupled with the varied interest
of the theme, must arouse expectation of a great intellectual treat. The work has
sterling merits which will satisfy expectation up to a certain point. The relations
between England and Scotland which rendered the Union a political necessity, and
the mutual advantages and inconveniences which its consummation involved, have
perhaps never before been so thoroughly considered. The abstruse technicalities of
Scottish law which forbade its assimilation to that of England are dilated on by Dr.
Burton in this connection with a professional pride that is almost humorous. The

1880. RECENT LITERATURE. 331

calm judicial temper in which he discusses the questions at issue between the Church
and the Nonconformists during the period under review cannot be too highly com-
mended. Nothing, too, can be more admirable than the lucid manner in which he
has treated another branch of his subject — the progress of the War of Succession ;
whether tracing the steady course of Marlborough's splendid triumphs in the
Netherlands and Germany, or the fluctuations of the Spanish campaign under
Peterborough and Stanhope, wherein brilliant flashes of victory were followed by
disastrous collapse. Here he rises to the height of his intent, and personal visits to
the principal battlefields have enabled him to illustrate his narrative with lifelike
touches that bring the scene before us.

But having done full justice to all that is praiseworthy in this work, we must
confess to a disappointment, that we think will be widely shared, at its conspicuous
shortcomings. In dealing with the political conflicts at home, which make up a no
less important part of the history of this reign than its foreign wars, the author
labours heavily without awakening our interest in them, or reviving any image of the
spectacle which they presented to an onlooker. An almost total absence of pictu-
resque detail and the substitution of outline sketches for those finished portraits of
character to which the readers of Lord Macaulay, Mr. Motley, and Mr. Froude
have become accustomed, necessarily deprive such a work as this of any chance of
popularity. To students in search of solid information its undramatic quality might
commend it rather than otherwise, but they too must be prepared for disappoint-
ment. Its paucity of dates, in the first place, seriously detracts from its usefulness.
A still greater drawback is the disproportionate attention bestowed on small
episodes, such as the Aylesbury election dispute between the two Houses of Par-
liament, and the inadequate survey of so large a province as the nation's ' intellectual
progress.' How inadequate this is may be judged from the fact that it includes no
estimate of the state of metaphysics or theology, and merely incidental references
to the character of the drama and the novel development of periodical literature-
From the list of contemporary authors whom he has thought worthy of notice, Dr.
Burton actually excludes a poet so sparkling as Prior, and an essayist so vivacious
as Steele ; while De Foe, whose claims as a political pamphleteer are duly recognised^
is ignored as a writer of fiction.

Happily, these are faults of omission rather than commission, which may be
remedied in a second edition. If the care and research which Dr. Burton has de-
voted to certain favourite branches of his subject be applied to those which he has
neglected, the work may yet take that authoritative rank which at present must be
denied to it.

Sister Dora. A Biography. By MAEGAKET LOKSDALE,
(London : Kegan Paul.)

FEW instances of devotion more remarkable than the life of Dorothy Pattison have
been recorded in the history of women. Her vigorous mind, her sympathy with
suffering, her ready humour, her personal attractions, her almost miraculous strength,
the curious combination of masculine nerves with feminine sensibilities, marked her
out as a leader in the terrible battle with disease and crime that is being daily and
hourly fought in our manufacturing towns, and seem to have endowed her with that
wonderful influence she possessed over the rough men of the Black Country. The
active period of her life, from 1861 to 1878, the year of her death, she spent, if we
except three years at Lichfield, almost entirely at "VValsall, in South Staffordshire.
Her biographer has done her work unobtrusively and well, and has recognised the
golden principle of biographies, that, generally speaking, the strength of a character
is not increased by the suppression of its weaknesses. In the course of the narrative
it will be discovered that at certain epochs of Sister Dora's career, where her desire
to lead a life of public and practical benevolence collided with private and domestic
duties, she elected in favour of the former. Judging from a standard of cold-

332 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

blooded morality, ih? reader may perhaps be too prone to censure her for such con-
duct ; but he should remember that the key to her whole life was the desire to
merge the flickering light of scepticism, which few great minds have been without,
in the strong blaze of ' personal devotion to Christ.' There may too perhaps be
descriptions of scenes which the squeamish reader would readily omit. But without
the wonderful and horrible narrative of Sister Dora's single-handed struggle with a
town smitten by epidemic small-pox, without the sickening details of sufferings
which Sister Dora knew and loved so well to mitigate, we should have but a faint
idea of the wonderful heroism of her life.

Four Centuries of English Letters. Selections from the Correspondence
of one hundred and fifty writers, from the period of the Paston
Letters to the present day. Edited and arranged by W. BAFXISXE
SCOONES. (London : Kegan Paul.)

THERE has been, as far as we are aware, no selection of English letters, and the
collections in existence are not exhaustive, but have been compiled without a proper
knowledge of the subject. Mr. Scoones's book will, therefore, be gladly received
by the literary public. It is, as it were, the magic lantern of history, and each
slide is accompanied with a few appropriate words from the compiler. The
laborious nature of the task is self-evident, and it only remains for us to compliment
Mr. Scoones on his judgment and conscientiousness. ' Political letters,' he says,
' except in a very few instances, will be conspicuous by their absence.' But this
remark applies rather to the letters belonging to the two latter centuries, as in the
earlier portions of the book will be found many interesting communications on the
great political events of English History. 'The quality of English epistolary
correspondence is not surpassed by that of any other European nation,' says Mr.
Scoones, and if his remark be accompanied by a perusal of his book, it will, we
think, carry conviction. We thoroughly agree with him in his ' hope that the
volume, as a whole, may commend itself to the young and unenlightened equally
with their more cultured elders.'

POETRY AND BELLES LETTKES.

Songs of the Springtides. By ALGERNON CHARIES SWINBURNE.
(London : Chatto and Windus, 1880.)

THIS is the most satisfactory work that we have had from Mr. Swinburne's hand
since he reached the summit of his poetic achievement in Erechtheus. The impe-
tuous flight of song, which is at once his strength and his weakness, is more under
control than heretofore. The strong simplicity of language which he has always
had at command, but has so often sacrificed to the superior attractiveness of a
rhetoric rich in colour and musical in sound, but voluble, diffuse, and formless, is
here allowed its just rank. The reckless audacity with which he has too often
treated themes which demand reverence or reticence is here reduced to a minimum,
and only a few regrettable outbursts of political violence and some irritating tricks of
style interfere with the pleasure which the proofs of so much imaginative power
and artistic skill cannot fail to impart. These proofs are unmistakeable in
' Thalassius,' the first of the four poems which compose the book. Under a thin
vein of allegorical narrative its drift is plainly autobiographical, and the account it
gives of his genesis, culture, and career may be taken as the poet's own credentials
for his self-assumed laureateship of the sea. Conceding the egotism of the theme
as justifiable on the plea of immemorial usage, he must be allowed to have executed

1880. RECENT LITERATURE. 333

an exceptionally difficult task with rare grace and delicacy. We have space but
for a single passage, descriptive of his passionate delight in storms : —

For when the red blast of their breath had made
All heaven aflush with light more dire than shade,
He felt it in his blood and eyes and hair
Burn as if all the fires of the earth and air
Had laid strong hold upon his flesh, and stung
The soul behind it as with serpent's tongue,
Forked like the loveliest lightnings : nor could bear
But hardly, half distraught with strong delight,
The joy that like a garment wrapped him round,
And lapped him over and under
With raiment of great light
And rapture of great sound,
At every loud leap earthward of the thunder
From heaven's most furthest bound.

' On the Cliffs,' a rhapsody on Sappho, is far less clear in its tenor and diction
than ' Thalassius/ but has passages of great beauty and pathos. In both the irre-
gularity of the metre, which fluctuates with the mood of the singer, adds an appro-
priate charm to the music.

' The Gardens of Cyrnodoce,' a rhapsody on the island of Sark, contains some
fine bursts of exaltation and vignettes of picturesque description.

'The Birthday Ode to Victor Hugo,' which concludes the volume, is a remark-
able tour deforce, embodying in the course of its lyrical interchange of strophe,
antistrophe, and epode a complete conspectus of all the master's writings. Much
must be taken for granted in these outlines by readers who cannot boast Mr. Swin-
burne's exhaustive acquaintance with the series, but it is only necessary to have
read the most famous of them in order to appreciate his skill as an epitomiser.
After due allowance has been made for the disciple's extravagance, no one can refuse
sympathy with the homage thus rendered to one of the greatest artists of our time.

Mr. Swinburne's defects of temper and taste are conspicuous enough even in
this volume to provoke censure, but the evidence it affords of his capacity of self-
restraint may justify the hope that none of them are inveterate.

An Essay on the Life and Genius of Calderon. With Translations from
his Life's a Dream and Great Theatre of the World. By the ARCH-
BISHOP OF DUBLIN . Second edition, revised and improved. (London :
Macmillan, 1880.)

THE opening sentence of the book runs as follows : f There are few poets who have
been so differently judged, who have been set so high and set so low, as Calderon.'
The Schlegels have perhaps done more to exalt his fame than any other critics.
Goethe qualifies his admiration for the Spanish poet by comparing his dramas to
leaden bullets all cast in the same mould. Hallam notes a certain sort of similarity
between his dramas and the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, but adds, ' As he
wants their fertility of wit and humour, we cannot, I presume, place the best of
his comedies on a level with even the second class of theirs.' Salfi accuses him of
making venial bids for popularity. Sismondi calls him ' the poet of the Inquisi-
tion,' and complains that ' truth is unknown to him ' and ' that he oversteps the
line in every department of art.' An author whose worth has called forth such
various estimates, and who has for two centuries and a half been an object of wide and
increasing attention, cannot fail to be an interesting subject ; and when we re-
member the debt that the modern theatre, and especially the English theatre, owes
to Calderon, that interest will be enhanced. Before opening the little volume we
rejoice therefore that the task has fallen into the hands of Archbishop Trench,
and when we shall have perused it our first satisfaction will not be diminished.

334 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

Oalderon was born in the early decadence of Spain. Spain had been imbued
•with Eastern literary influence, and stimulated by the contest with the Moorish
usurpers. She had made her effort ; the reaction was at hand ; and Calderon's
plays, notwithstanding his genius, are marred by floridity of style and reiteration
of simfle, tinctured with fanaticism. But fertility of plot, beauty of language,
freedom from pedantic restriction, endowed his works with qualities that contem-
porary nations were not slow in attempting to imitate. Archbishop Trench has
linked Calderon with a history of his time and his nation in a manner which has
not, as far as we know, been attempted before, and thereby performed a service for
which the world of literature should be grateful. His translations are so successful
that we may perhaps feel a little angry at having to use our dictionaries to the
other passages he has cited. Probably the most generally interesting chapter in
the volume will be that which deals with the autos or sacred dramas which, in
•respect to the manner of their development, are peculiar features of the Spanish
theatre.

Poems. By WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK. (London : Chatto and
Wiudus, 1880.)

THE motto upon the title-page of this volume, ' The mount is mute, the channel
dry,' is not to be taken au pied de la lettre. Mr. Mallock has written poems of later
date than those here collected, and will doubtless write many more, but they have
not been and will not be of the same quality as the productions of a youth between
seventeen and twenty. These are sufficiently remarkable to deserve publication
apart. That their tone and manner should be to a large extent imitative was only
to be expected, but it is rare to find such a young writer imitating several living
masters in succession with so much dexterity, and preserving at the same time a
distinct force and individuality of handling. These early efforts attest that the
charm of style which is seldom lacking to his matured writings, even when the
matter is weakest, belongs to him as a natural gift. Many of the poems are stated
to have been composed by the sea, and much of its freshness, its music, and its
endless play of light and shade has been interfused with their texture. Such lines
as

Clouds that shone,
Grey fleeced with silver, o'er the silver sea.

The shifting sunlights on the shadowy bay
And faint horizons flash with lengths of light ;

nnd such phrases as ' the crisp shore-song of the ebb's retreat,' ' the tumbled silver
of the sea,' &c., display singular delicacy of touch and command of pictorial lan-
guage. In ' A May Idyll,' perhaps the most original of the series, the same graphic
art is applied with even greater skill to an inland landscape. Xo word-painting
could describe the wavering reflections in a clear woodland pool more happily than
these lines : —

The little tangled tremor of woven shade
Spreads its live tissue o'er the pebbly floor.

Of sustained imagination the volume shows few traces. Forecasts of the writer's
later development are indicated here and there. His vein of moral earnestness
appears in ' Natura Verticordia,' which impressively depicts the chastening effect of
natural beauty upon a soul stained but not corrupted by sin. ' Pygmalion to his
Wife,' an idealist's confession of disillusion, is marked by his familiar tone of half
cynical, half tender melancholy ; and ' Proteus,' ' The Light of the World,' and
other poems display his tendency to find the solace of doubt and suffering in blind
faith rather than in suspended judgment and hopeful inquiry.

1880. RECENT LITERATURE. 335

Neio Poems. By EDMUND W. GOSSE. (London : Kegan Paul, 1879.)

AMONG those of our younger poets who have imbibed the perilous influences of the
French ' Neo-Renaissance,' Mr. Gosse appears to us the most masculine and healthy ;
the attraction of the school for him obviously lying more on the side of form than
of spirit, in the beauty of the bees' hexagons rather than in their ' poisonous honey.'
This volume marks a distinct advance above the level of On Viol and Flute, and a
•wider range of instrumental mastery ; but we fear that the musician is still uncon-
scious of his true strength. We hope he will soon convince himself that it does not
lie in striking a Greek lyre or tinkling a French mandoline. His classical lyrics,
though passably pretty, seem to us thin and tame, and his attempts to naturalise
Provencal verse-forms, alien alike to the genius and structure of our language,
merely ingenious trifles. But such English idylls, sonnets, and love-songs as ' The
Farm,' < By the River,' ' The Whitethroat,' ' Greece and England,' ' Winter Green,'
' To my Daughter,' ' The Burden of Delight,' ' On Dartmoor,' and many more are
full of fresh colour and gracious music. If an echo of morbid sentiment occasionally
rings in his tone, it is dominated by the chords of joyous and tender feeling ; and
any tendency to regard life as subordinated to the conditions of aesthetic culture is
qualified by a prevailing sense of the claims of human sympathy, and the duty of
artistic consecration. The philosophy of Carpe diem finds a wholesome corrective
in these fine lines :—

Cling to the flying hours ; and yet

Let one pure hope, one great desire,
Like song on dying lips, be set,
That ere we fall in scattered fire
Our hearts may lift the world's heart higher.

Here in the autumn months of time,

Before the great new year can break,
Some little way our feet should climb,

Some little mark our words should make

For liberty and manhood's sake,

Sophocles. With English. Notes by F. A. PALEY, M.A. Vol. II.,
containing Philoctetes, Electra, Trachinise, Ajax. (London : Whit-
taker; George Bell, 1880.)

THE Bibliotheca Classica seems likely to rival the Acta Sanctorum in the length of
its period of production. A former generation received with at least adequate sup-
port the gigantic work in which Valpy included almost the whole range of the classics ;
but the students of to-day, wholly engrossed in the work of examining and being ex-
amined, confine within the narrow limits of academic requirements an activity
sufficiently energetic in its way, while the public of general readers seems to have
almost disappeared. We therefore the more gladly welcome in Mr. Paley's Sophocles
a volume worthy, and even more than worthy, of its predecessors. Mr. Paley, to
whom we already owe what is, we believe, the only complete English edition of
Euripides, has taken over in this second volume the responsibility which in the pre-
paration of the first was committed to Mr. Blaydes. In a very able preface he ex-
plains the principle on which he has acted in the settlement of the text. Mr.
Blaydes has used, especially in his later separate editions of the plays, a very wide
license of conjecture which is often ingenious, but not seldom passing the verge of
. rashness, and sometimes, especially in the ' prodelisions ' on which he ventures, we
may even say impossible. Mr. Paley returns to more conservative methods. His
maxim is 'Let ivell alone, and alter nothing without some icell-established necessity,
or, at least, some very strong reason for altering ; ' and he explains that this
' necessity ' or ' very strong reason ' is not to be found in the critic's preconceived
notions of what Sophocles ought to have written. The poet's language must not

336 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

be regulated by the formal syntax of later times, to which we may easily suppose
him as indifferent as his younger contemporary Thucydides. Mr. Paley points out
with great force the transitory character of editions which are founded on the
principle of free conjecture. The number of generally accepted restorations and
emendations of corrupt or obscure texts is, even if we take the whole range of the
classics, exceedingly small. An editor regards the work which a predecessor has
done in this direction without respect and even with prejudice, indulges himself in
the fascinating license of guessing, or, as Mr. Paley says, ' goes back to the readings
of the MSS. and the scholia.' Mr. Paley 's application of his principle, which does
not indeed exclude a safe and temperate exercise of criticism, seems to us judicious
and able. We cannot examine it in detail, and can only cite one passage (Aja.v,
600-604):

tyu 5' 6 T\an<av va\atbs a<f>' ol xp^oj

'I5a?o jiu'.iuu,' Xiifiiavi cfiravXa fj.TjXuv
a.t>T]pi8tJ.ot alfv ivvaitnv,

where ivvaiuiv seems a happy conjecture for the tlv6pq of the MSS., and where he
resists, with what is perhaps an excess of virtue, the tempting ^vS)v for /ir}Xo>i>.
This he calls ' far-fetched.' But p^v was emphatically the measuring time of
early days ; and there seems not a little difficulty in translating fifjXuv dvrjptfffios
as ' having the charge of a countless number of sheep.' In his exegetical notes
also Mr. Paley has done good service to his author. He shows his accustomed
mastery of the text, and supplies tasteful and felicitous renderings. Sophocles,
already illustrated by the valuable labours of Professors Campbell and Jebb, owes
not a little to his latest editor.

Hettenica, A Collection of Essays on Greek Poetry, Philosophy, History,
and Religion, edited by EVELYN ABBOTT, M.A., LL.D., Fellow and
Tutor of Balliol College, Oxford. (London : Rivingtons.)

THE idea of collecting in one volume a number of independent essays, written by
different authors, is not a new one : but the editor is right in supposing that there
is much practical need for such a volume, which, ' while it helps to increase the
interest taken in Greek literature, will also show how that literature may be of
service in the present day.' Hettenica has for its contributors Messrs. Ernest
Myers, Abbott, Nettleship, Andrew Bradley, Courtney, Dakyns, Strachan-Davidson,
Frederic Myers, and Professor Jebb, and will well repay perusal.

The Defence of Home, and other Poems. By ERNEST MYERS.
(London : Macmillan.)

THE principal poem under the title of which the volume is issued is the story of '49.
A brief account of the treachery of Oudinot will be found in the preface. The De-
fence of Home is a very spirited composition, and the reader will find in it passages
of great poetic merit. The same metre in which this poem was written has been
used for a translation of the eighteenth Book of the Iliad, a very successful experi-
ment. Mr. Myers writes with such unerring taste and scholarly feeling that we
feel at a loss how to make a selection out of the minor poems. The Wordsworth,
however, will be generally recognised as having more imaginative qualities than the
others.

The Ode of Life. By the Author of ' The Epic of Hades.'
(London : Kegan Paul, 1880.)

To a series of short odes arranged under the several heads of ' Creation,' ' Infancy,'
« Childhood," Youth,' 'Love,' 'Perfect Years,' 'Good,' 'Evil,' 'Age," Decline,'
and ' Change,' a lyrical unity is here given by the theme of human life of which
they depict the course. That the work shows more evidence of grace than of power
may be explained by the familiarity of the subject, which it would be difficult, if

1880, RECENT LITERATURE, 337

not impossible, for any but a poet of the highest genius to handle \vithout lapsing
into commonplace. To treat of Childhood, Youth, and Love from an abstract and
ideal point of view, when they lend themselves so much more readily to concrete
illustrations from real life, was, we think, ah initio, an error in art. The grace,
however, of the writer's treatment to a great extent atones for this, and is not un-
worthy of his established reputation. It is apparent, for example, in his descrip-*
tion of Love as ' lurking ' in youth's ' fair time of flowers,'

With purple folded wing

And bird-like thoughts that sing ;

and io his picture of the voyagers on eastern seas —

Borne careless still, and free
By hoary cape and gleaming southern town,
And many an Islet clothed with palm and vine,

And on the wine-dark sea-depths looking down,
High-based on wave-worn fronts the marble shrine,

Or see the white town flush with dying day,
And the red mountain fire the glimmering bay.

Such trace as there is of power is manifest when the theme is highest, especially in
giving expression to the strong emotional yearnings which struggle through our
dim intellectual apprehension of the central spiritual force of the universe. A high
devout purpose and wide human sympathy ennoble all the writer's work, and hia
clear language and quiet 'music will retain his audience.

Apple Blossoms.

OUR American cousins have made ' a new departure.' in the way of wonders. Not
content with rearing ' the most remarkable men in this country, sir,' in every ' city '
that can boast of twelve houses and a newspaper office, they have now produced
the two most remarkable children. Miss Elaine Goodale and Miss Dora Reade
Qoodale, of the respective ages of eleven and thirteen, have published a volume of
poetry, now in its fifth edition, which is really noteworthy, even independently of
the extreme immaturity of the waiters. They live at a farmhouse in Berkshire
county, among the trees and flowers ; and as yet, I am glad to think, have never
held a reception or appeared on a platform. They are literally children of nature,
and instead of dealing with melodrama and romance, as is the way of juvenile
poets, they sing of what they have seen. There is nothing of a hothouse character
about their muse ; the fruit is wholesome and not forced. The dedication of the
little book to their mother is just as it should be, and for simplicity, and even
grace, may vie with almost any production of the same class : —

The loveliest blossom of the spring

By rain and sunlight fed,
To limpid blue and pearly cloud

Uplifts its drooping head.

Even so with impulse warm we bring

The bloom of infancy,
The fragrance of our earliest years,

O mother dear, to thee.

The love that gave us life and strength,

That guarded day by day,
What tenderest words can half express,

What answering love repay ?

Yet take the fresh and simple wreath

Whose every flower is thine,
Till riper years their triumphs bring

To offer at thy shrine.

VOL. VIJI,— No, 42. 2,

338 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. August

I confess that seems to me to have more truth and feeling in it than most poems of
the inspired cobbler school, though his muse is so much more mature.

We have it on good authority that it is not every one, even of full years, who
sees anything to speak of in a yellow primrose ; yet our Lilliputian pair can see
neither a harebell nor a trailing arbutus without bursting into song. Of the latter
they write (I only quote in fragments) : —

Deep in the lonely forest,

High on the mountain side,
Long is the dreary winter,

Short is the summer tide ;
Just in the breath between them,

Pregnant with sun and shower,
Starts from the earth primeval

Fairest of northern flowers.

All through the sunny summer,

Lavish with wealth of bloom,
She, too, hath shared life's fulness,

Hid in her forest gloom ;
Nurtured with dews and sunlight,

lUchly her buds are fed,
Fresh when the summer fadeth,

Fresh when its flowers are dead.

FICTION.

Jeff Brigg's Love Story ; Peter Schroeder ; Views from a German Spion.
By BEET HARTE. (London : Chatto and Windus.)

MR. BRET HARTE'S department in fiction is a very narrow one, but every fresh
story he writes has something fresh about it. He writes about the free West, and
he is Bret Harte. His originality moves freely within the bounds, narrow though
they be. In the first story, the p&ce de resistance of the volume, Jeff" Brigg's Love
Story, and Peter Schroeder, we recognise the qualities that we have before admired ;
here and there, too, we welcome an old friend. Views from a German Spion is a
delightfully written chronicle of an hour spent in a German window-seat.

A Beleaguered City. Being a Narrative of certain recent Events in the
City of Semur, in the Department of the Haute Burgogne : a Story
of the Seen and the Unseen. By MRS. OifPHAirr. (London:
Macmillan.)

IT is not an unfrequent criticism of a creative work that it is good in spite of its
subject. On the other hand it is in the choice of a subject that the highest literary
capacity shows itself. Such a subject is the subject of A Beleaguered City ; but in
the words of the title, ' a narrative of certain recent events,' Mrs. Oliphant has set
herself a hard task. We are accustomed to hear almost daily stories of a super-
natural character, but they are seldom vouched for by more than one person. We
have in the book before us the narrative of a battle between a living city and a dead
population, happening in ' recent ' times. The interest of a fictitious work of this
kind depends upon whether it carries conviction to the mind of the reader, and that
s a point on which we cannot pretend to judge ; all we can say is that the authoress

1880. RECENT LITERATURE. 339

has employed imaginative talents of a rare and precious kind in heightening the
vraisemblance of her narrative. She has, likewise, in making mouthpieces of the
inhabitants of Semur and in employing French-English, succeeded in creating an
atmosphere for her story which is removed from the ordinary ken of Englishmen.

Orlando. By CLEMENTIXA BLACK, Author of ' A Sussex Idyll,' &e.
(London : Smith, Elder, and Co.)

THIS charming novel has the rare merit of natural simplicity. The style, though
•without adornment, is saved from tameness by the strong human interest that
marks the character of the heroines, Elizabeth and Viola ; and the art displayed
in contrasting them entitles Orlando to a very favourable reception at the hands of
the public.

Mary Anerley. A Yorkshire Tale. By R. D. BLACKMORE.
(London : Sampson Low.)

THE style of Mr. Blackmore is a contrast to that of Miss Black, which would
doubtless be ineffective in dealing with the variety of incident and character that
marks Mr. Blackmore's writing. We are reminded of the luxuriance of Spanish
romance by the complexity of plot and character found in Mary Anerley. Indeed,
it is difficult in BO small a compass to deal with so rich a work. A quick succession
of thrilling incident, a thorough knowledge of country life of the period — the be-
ginning of this century — are merits which the reading world has long recognised as
belonging to Mr. Blackmore, and this story is not deficient in these respects, nor is
there wanting that glamour of romantic sentiment which contributes the real
iterary value to ;all the author's writings.

Poet and Pew. By HAMILTON AID£, Author of ' Penruddock,' ' Rita,' &c.
(London : Hurst and Blackett.)

MB. AIDE'S work is generally distinguished by careful and thoughtful writing, and
Poet and Peer is no exception. The character of Lord Athelstone is the principal
feature of the book, and is original and true in its conception. Cleverness and
eccentricity in high life have been ere this mistaken for genius and originality, and
we are not surprised to find them coupled with dogmatic combativeness and selfish
obstinacy — faults which lead Mr. Aide's hero into difficulties only to be expiated
by the death of his peasant wife, whose simple devotion furnishes an admirable foil
to the complex workings of her husband's mind. We may perhaps be pardoned
for our inability to believe in the lasting qualities of Lord Athelstone's contrition
at this untoward event and his recognition of his errors, but a novelist has the
privilege of choosing a suitable moment for the conclusion of his story. The minor
characters show considerable humour, and the Roman scenes have a delightful
tinge of local colour.

The Sisters. A Romance. By GEOKG EBEKS, Author of ' An Egyptian
Princess,' ' Marda,' &c. From the German, by CLARA BELL. (London :
Sampson Low.)

HERR EBERS has given to the world in The Sisters a remarkable work of recon-
struction. The date of his narrative he puts at 164 B.C., and the scene is laid at
Alexandria. A preface by the author precedes the story, and, after having sketched
slightly the historic characters of the period of which he treats, concludes with the
following words : 1 1 gave History her due, but the historic figures retired into the
background beside the human beings as such; the representatives of an epoch
became vehicles for a Human Ideal, holding good for all time ; and thus it is that
I venture to offer this transcript of a period as really a dramatic romance.' The
name of the translator is a surety for the excellence of the translation, and the
reader will find no difficulty in reading The Sisters.

340 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

The Dukes Children. A Novel. By AKTHOXY TROLLOPE,
(London: Chapman and Hall.)

THERE are few novelists who write so evenly as Mr. Trollope : when we open a
new volume of his we know that we have some delightful hours of reading before
us. In The Dukes Children we shall find many old acquaintances, and we shall
welcome their reappearance. The opening of the story is taken up with a. descrip-
tion of the loneliness of the Duke of Omnino, now a widower, and a humorously
pathetic picture of his inability to manage his family, whose various fortunes Mr.
Trollope details. The canvas is very full of characters, all of which are drawn
with graphic distinctness. We single out ' Lady Mabel,' however, as standing out
from thq rest, Many readers will probably consider it a merit that the political
element la less prominent in The Duke a Children than in many of Mr. Trollope'a
later novels.

John Cddigate. By ANTHONY TKOLLOPE. (London : Chapman and Hall.)

John Caldigote is another proof of Mr. Trollope's extraordinary versatility ; it would
be difficult to find a greater contrast than between this story and The Dukes
Children, noticed as here, and yet both are recent products. The scene is laid
partly in this country and partly in the Australian goldfields, which are graphically
described. The interest of the book is unflagging, and by no means limited to the
principal characters. Perhaps, however, its distinctive feature is the portrait of
John Caldigate's wife, remarkable for her courage, her sweetness, and her strength.
Joftn Caldigate is worthy of especial recommendation.

Mademoiselle de Menac. By W. E. NORMS. (London : Smith,
Elder, and Co.)

THE period of this story is that of the Franco-Prussian War, which determines
many of its events, but the scene is divided between England and Algeria. The
style is easy, and the description of Algerian scenery and society picturesque and
bright. The author has been fortunate in his avoidance of French-English, and
has chosen more artistic methods of delineating French character.

THE

NINETEENTH
C E N T U E Y.

No. XLIIL— SEPTEMBER 1880.

IRELAND.

SEVEN hundred years have now passed since Henry the Second
attached Ireland to the English Crown : for all those years successive
English administrations have pretended to govern there ; and as a re-
sult we saw in the last winter the miserable Irish people sending
their emissaries, hat in hand, round the globe to beg for sixpences
for God's sake to save them from starving. The Irish soil, if it
were decently cultivated, would feed twice the population which now
occupies it ; but in every garden there grow a hundred weeds for
one potato. If a landlord ejects an inefficient tenant, and gives
the land to some one who will grow potatoes and not weeds,
gangs of ruffians with blackened faces drive out the new-comer, or
the landlord himself is shot, like Lord Leitrim, at his own door,
as a warning to his kind. The Irish representatives in Parliament
tell their constituents to pay no rent except when it is convenient to
them, yet to hold fast by their farms, and defy the landlord to expel
them ; while the only remedy which the English Government could
devise, since the people would not obey the law, was to alter the law
to please them, and to propose that for two seasons at least the
obligation to pay their rents should be suspended. What was
to happen at the end of the two seasons we were not informed.
It was easy to ^foresee, however, that, like the spendthrift's note
of hand, the bill would have had to be renewed with interest. Lord
VOL. VIII.— No. 43. A A

342 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

Leitrim's assassins were known throughout the neighbourhood.
Persons present saw the shots fired, yet no one dared to give evidence.
Men, otherwise well disposed, will not risk their lives to assist authori-
ties which allow their own officials to be murdered with impunity.
Talbot, a detective policeman, was shot in Dublin in the open day.
His crime was that he had been exceptionally active in discovering
treasonable conspiracies. Kelly, who killed him, was taken with
the smoking pistol in his hand. Here, at any rate, there was no
room for doubt ; but when Kelly was brought to trial it was said
that the wives of the twelve jurymen received widows' caps by post.
Whether the story is true or not matters little ; the murderer was
acquitted on the ground that Talbot had lived twenty-four hours
after he was shot, that he had, therefore, not died of his wound, but
of the unskilful treatment of the surgeon. And the strangest part
of the business was that no one was surprised ; the law had so long
become a garden scarecrow that nothing else was expected — society
shrugged its shoulders and laughed; the ruling powers in Dublin
Castle were perhaps in their hearts not sorry to be rid of an incon-
veniently efficient public servant.

This has been the history, except at rare intervals, of seven hun-
dred years, and the question arises whether the experiment of an
English government of Ireland has not lasted long enough. An ill-
success so enduring must be due to causes which will not cease to
operate. As it has been in the past, so it will be in the future.
There appears to be some ingrained incapacity in the English nature
either to assimilate the Irish race or to control them ; and, however
politically undesirable it might be to us to set Ireland free, it is doubt-
ful whether we have a right to sacrifice thus ruinously the moral and
material welfare of a whole people to our own convenience, when we
are unable to discharge the elementary duties of protecting life and
property. We may make the best resolutions : so our fathers made
resolutions : but they availed nothing, and ours will avail nothing.
We have failed — failed ignominiously ; and bad as any government
would be which Ireland could establish for herself, it could hardly
lie worse than the impotent mockery witli which the English con-
nection has provided it.

The Irish people are said to be unfit for freedom — of course they
are, but it is we who have unfitted them. It is our bitterest reproach
that we have made the name of Irishman a world's byword. There
is no reason in the nature of things why Irishmen, whenever
they are spoken of, should suggest the ideas of idleness and tur-
bulence. The Celts of Ireland, before the Teutonic nations meddled
with them, were not a great people : they had built no cities ; they
had scarcely a home among them with etone walls and a roof over it ;
they had no commerce and no manufactures ; they iiad arrived im-
perfectly even at the notion of private property, for a chief and his

1880. IRELAND. 343

tribe held the land in common, and shared the produce of it. They
quarrelled and fought ; war was their glory, and the killing of
enemies the single theme of their bards' triumphal songs. But contem-
porary nations were not so very far in advance of them : English life
in those times has been described by high authority as the scuffling
of kites and crows ; before Charlemagne, France and Germany and
Italy were but stages on which each summer brought its score of
battlefields. The Irish were no worse than their neighbours, and
they had the germs of a civilisation of a peculiarly interesting kind.
Their laws, however afterwards corrupted, were humane and equitable
as they came from the first Brehons. They became Christians sooner
than the Saxons. There were schools of learning among them, where
students gathered from all parts of Europe ; and Irish missionaries
carried the gospel into Scotland and Germany. Their literature
speaks for itself: the ancient Irish hymns and songs compare not
unfavourably with the Edda ; their Latin hagiology, their Lives of
St. Patrick and St. Bride and St. Columb, contain, amidst many
extravagances, genuine and admirable human traits of manner and
character.

The Danish invasions destroyed all this. At the time of the Eng-
lish conquest the island had become a den of wolves: Giraldus
Cambrensis and the Irish annals tell the same story. But the element
of better things was still in the people, and under wise treatment might
have blossomed as it blossomed elsewhere. Under the spell of English
cultivation it has borne thistles instead of figs, and for grapes, wild
grapes. The history of political blunders is not an edifying study.
We preserve the good work of poets and artists, we leave the bad to be
forgotten ; and the management of Ireland by successive generations
of English statesmen might be cheerfully consigned to a place where
they would never more be heard of. The same hand, unfortunately,
is still busy at the same office of mischief ; and though there is small
hope that it will cease from its baneful activity, yet a course of
failure, prolonged as it has been through so many ages, is worth
examination, if but as a scientific curiosity.

A continuous principle there must have been to account for the
sameness of result. Yet there has not been a continuity of system.
We have tried many systems. We have been tyrannical and we have
been indulgent, we have been Popish and we have been Protestant.
We have colonised Ireland with our own people, taking the land
frcm the Celtic tribes and giving it to strangers ; and, again, we
have repented and made what we have considered reparation. We
have repeated these processes time after time, and all that we
have effected has been to alienate our own colonists, without re-
covering the confidence of the Irish. We have piped to them, and
they have not danced ; we have mourned to them, but they have
not believed in our sorrow. Conscious in ourselves that we have

A A 2

344 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

meant no ill to the poor people — that we have desired only to see
them free and happy, BO far as their freedom has been compatible
with our own security — we ask in wonder what more we could have
done ? Unhappily, we have left unaccomplished, and scarcely at-
tempted, the one return which a conqueror is bound to make to those
whose independence he has taken away for his own convenience. We
have never given Ireland a firm, just, and consistent administration.
We never have tried to do it in the past, except for an interval so
brief that there was not time for the result to be seen. \Ve do not
any more attempt to do it at present. There is no inherent diffi-
culty. We have ruled India well : we might rule Ireland well if we
chose ; and yet it is impossible for us to choose. A spell more
powerful than was ever wrought by wand of enchanter warns us off,
and condemns us to travel helplessly round and round on the track
which was marked by the steps of our forefathers. The holy Brigitta
inquired of her good angel * in which Christian land most folks were
damned.' The angel pointed to a country in the western part of
the [then known] world, and ' there she saw the souls falling into
hell as thick as hail-showers.'

The name of this land, so unhappily distinguished, the saint either
never knew or left untold. But at the beginning of the sixteenth
century it was inferred that she must have meant her own Ireland, so
miserable, so hopeless it appeared three hundred and fifty years after
the Conquest. Then, as now, politicians were perplexing themselves
over the problem, asking eagerly for a medicine which neither they
nor their ancestors could find, and driven to suppose that there was a
fatality about Ireland — that ' the herb which would heal her wounds
did never grow.' Another three hundred and fifty years are gone,
and it is the same story. The herb has not grown yet. And under
England's husbandry it seems as if it could not grow. If for a
moment anywhere a few green blades have appeared, our instant
effort has been to tear them up as weeds. One common principle
can be traced from the first in Anglo-Irish policy. We have insisted
on transferring to Ireland our own laws and institutions, whatever
they might be. We never cared to inquire whether they suited the
Irish conditions. We concluded that because they suited us they
must be good everywhere. We have been a free, self-governed
people, therefore Ireland must have freedom and self-government — if
not the reality, then some counterfeit or parody of it to save appear-
ances. Popery, Feudalism, Parliaments, trial by jury, the English
land system, Anglican Protestantism, the Act of Uniformity, and
lately, again, modern toleration, the extension of the suffrage, and a
free press — these one after another we have established and disestab-
lished in Ireland as the evolution of our own constitution brought
changes among ourselves. We have flattered ourselves that we were
bestowing on Ireland the choicest of our own blessings, forgetting

1880. IRELAND. c45

wilfully that free institutions require the willing and loyal co-opera-
tion of those who are to enjoy and use them ; that the freedom which
the Irish desired was freedom from the English connection ; and
that every privilege which we conferred, every relief which we con-
ceded, would be received without gratitude, and would be employed
only as an instrument to make our position in the country untenable.

At the Conquest the Irish tribes were governed by elective chiefs,
independent one of another, and generally at war. The Irish Church,
though orthodox in doctrine, paid neither Peter's Pence nor obedi-
ence to Eome. Needy Anglo-Norman barons saw an opportunity of
improving their fortunes and doing heaven a service by carrying
their swords across St. George's Channel. The Pope's blessing gave
the expedition the character of a crusade. Henry the Second at first
hesitated ; but, finding it necessary to earn his pardon for the murder
of Archbishop Becket, put his hand to the work. As the country
was subdued, it was treated as England had been by William — par-
celled out under the Norman lords; and the Irish chieftainships
were superseded by military rulers who held their land from the
English sovereign by feudal tenure. The authority of the Pope was sub-
mitted to without opposition. It was the one exotic introduced by
us which took root and prospered. The Church and the invaders at
first worked together in maintaining order and law, and for a time
the state of Ireland was improved. The feudal system was a disci-
pline of obedience in all classes of society. Liberty was submission
to just authority ; and during the two centuries which followed
the Conquest towns were established with municipal institutions on
the European model ; monasteries were built, and cathedrals and
churches and baronial castles. Stone houses were scarcely known to
the Celts. In 1170 Baron Finglas says that there were not four
castles in all Ireland ; at the Eeformation there were many hundred.
The finest architectural remains, ecclesiastical or secular, are due to
the Anglo-Normans. Ireland was being trained into order, and for
those two hundred years was happy, according to the proverb, in
having no other history.

But the Normans were few ; their kinsmen both in England and
France were busy fighting Saracens in Palestine or Spain, or work-
ing out their own problems at home. The Plantagenet kings had
too much work on their hands to attend to a country of which it was
•enough to know that they were titular lords. A Lord President in
Dublin represented the sovereign, but he brought over no force with
him to make his power a reality. The invaders, cut off from home,
grew into the habits of the country of their adoption. Their autho-
rity was the more easily admitted the more independent they made
themselves. They governed by Irish customs, they learned the Irish
language, they married into Irish clans. They held their ground,
but it was by becoming Irish themselves. There is a phrase in use

346 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

in Ireland applied to families which have known better things, but
have receded into Celticism and barbarism. The simile is borrowed
from the land which, having been once reclaimed, has relapsed into
its natural moisture, and such families are spoken of as having * gone
back to bog.' So it was with the Norman Irish in the fifteenth cen-
tury. They went back to bog.

The better sort of them struggled for a while. The sea towns
were points from which communication was kept up with the outer
world. A ' Pale,' as it was called, including four counties, was drawn
round Dublin ; there were smaller Pales round Cork and Waterford ;
and within these lines English law and manners still prevailed. There
was a Parliament in Dublin after the English pattern, with a first
edition of the penal statutes. Within the Pales no Irish might be
spoken, no Irish dress might be worn. At last no Irishman of the
old race might enter without special permission. But spiritual in-
fluences cannot be kept at bay by Acts of Parliament. The Irish
element which had been crushed at the Conquest was reoccupying
the country by subduing the hearts of its garrison. Beyond the
Pales the chiefs and barons ruled openly each by his sword, indepen-
dent, if he was strong enough to defend himself, or if he was too
weak, then in alliance with some more powerful neighbours. The
great Anglo-Norman earls, the Greraldines of Kildare, the House of
Desmond (the Munster branch of the same clan), and the Butlers of
Ormond — each ruled in their own district by conniving at Irish
manners, or by openly adopting and imitating them.

So the first attempt by England to civilise Ireland by feudalism
went to wreck. It succeeded so long as the Normans retained the
nature which they brought with them and ruled as a superior race.
It failed when they ceased to be supported from home, and were left
exposed to a contagion too strong for them. We have a glimpse in
Froissart of an Irish interior as described to him by an acquaintance
who had been a prisoner there. The Dean of St. Patrick's might
have improved his picture of the Yahoos from it. Occasionally the
anarchy became intolerable. An English king would take over an
army, and kill a few hundred or thousand wretches, and go home
again. Attempts such as these were but like stones thrown into the
sea : the water closes over them, and all is again as before.

Thus on the accession of the Tudors, Ireland had become once
more Celtic — Celtic with- a Norman cross, which only made it the more
dangerous. The anarchy was as complete as it had been at the Con-
quest, but it was anarchy organised into fighting condition, with arms
and fortresses. Loyalty to England there was none, either within the
Pale or without it. England's difficulty was already understood to be
Ireland's opportunity. The Earl of Kildare took up Lambert Simnel
and crowned him in Dublin. The English Council considered that
Irish treason could best be cured by making concessions to it. Kildare

1880. IRELAND. 347

was sent for to court and flattered, and made Lord President, and so
Lambert Simnel was got rid of. But concession produced its natural
effects : such effects as melted fat produces upon a fire. Fresh vio-
lence followed. The Dublin Parliament became troublesome, and
there was a turn of vigour. Sir Edward Poynings, a soldier, was
sent over to strap the Parliament into a strait-waistcoat. It was
left standing for decency's sake, but its teeth were drawn by an act
forbidding the discussion of any measure which had not been first
approved by the English Council. The Parliament was made into an
imposture, and though it cannot be said that imposture always fails,
yet when it does fail it fails badly. Had Henry the Seventh possessed
means and inclination to take Ireland resolutely in hand, he might
have restored order there as any English Government might do, and
might have done at any period of history ; but the work would have
been troublesome, and the new dynasty had other things to attend to,
and for another forty years coercion and indulgence followed in alter-
nate decades. When the Kildares became unendurable, their rivals,
the Butlers, were placed in office instead of them ; when the Butlers
could not stand without support from England, it was found that
Ireland could best be managed by humouring 4 Irish ideas,' and that
the Geraldines represented those ideas. ' All Ireland,' the English
Council was told, ' could not govern the Earl of Kildare.' * Then/
answered Wolsey, like a modern Prime Minister, l let the Earl of
Kildare govern all Ireland.' Ireland, Wolsey thought — Ireland, the
young Henry the Eighth thought with him — would be loyal to
England if she were allowed to manage her own affairs in her own
way. If English law did not suit the people, then they might live by
their own laws. Unhappily it was a policy which reason might ap-
prove while it was disowned by fact. Loyal Ireland would not be till
the truth was brought home inexorably to her, that the bond which
fastened her to England could never be broken, nor could England
with the best intentions persist long in a course which it was soon
evident must end in a violent separation.

Luther's Eeformation came and the quarrel of Henry with the Pope.
The Catholic Powers would not tolerate heresy, and Europe was divided
into hostile camps. The Irish leaders held themselves emancipated
from obedience to a sovereign out of communion with Eome. The
Earl of Desmond began to correspond with Charles the Fifth. . . .
The Geraldines of Kildare openly rebelled. Irish ideas thus ex-
pressed could not be borne with. Lord Thomas Fitzgerald and his
five uncles had to be hanged at Tyburn, and the fiction of an Irish
Parliament, held tight in leading strings, was required to follow the
English example and declare the Pope's authority to be at an end.
Henry by this time understood his work. He had a strong hand,
and he was not afraid to use it. He bribed the chiefs with peerages
and with the confiscated abbey lands. He persuaded or overawed into

348 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

compliance a certain number of the bishops. Between force and
address he carried his point, and had Henry lived ten years longer, and
had the conviction been driven fairly into the Irish mind that in
essentials no difference of ideas would be tolerated, Ireland's later
history might have worn a fairer complexion. Henry had not
meddled with the Church's doctrines — the priests could sing their
masses undisturbed, if they left the Pope unprayed for — and it is
likely enough that if their creed had been left alone they might have
remembered that the Pope, after all, had been forced on them by the
Normans, and that they were happily rid of him. But Edward's
Council chose to go into Calvinism, and, as usual, must drag Ireland
along with them. Then came Mary and put back the Pope into the
Service Book, and the monks into the ruins of the monasteries ; and
when the crown came to Elizabeth, Ireland broke into flame from end
to end.

The Irish administration of the Great Queen deserves to be
studied, as exhibiting in epitome all the faults of the historical
English method of dealing with the problem, and the consequences
fully developed and rendered clearly visible. What Ireland wanted
was first a vigorous police, and next some effective spiritual teaching,
delivered in earnest, and therefore capable of being believed. Eliza-
beth furnished neither one nor the other. It was necessary to have some
Church or other which the law recognised. The Church of Rome
she could not come to terms with, for the Church of Eome declared
her illegitimate and a heretic ; so she set up an Anglo-Irish hierarchy
with a liturgy and articles. Ireland had her act of uniformity and
her oaths of allegiance precisely as in England. But the ecclesiastical
establishment was a mockery, and Elizabeth never meant it to be more.
The clergy had no protection ; they could not reside in their bene-
fices ; the parish churches went to ruins ; her laws were laughed at,
for she would not allow them to be executed. Her fixed idea was to
keep the people quiet by avoiding practical interference with them,
and letting them live in their own way with an outward appearance
of loyalty — a pleasant theory, so pleasant that statesman after states-
man adopts it, nothing daunted by past failures ; but to a people like
the Irish it is simply an invitation to rebellion. Chief after chief rose
in revolt against Elizabeth. Her viceroys, to save expense, set the
bear and the ban dog to tear each other, as one of them expressed it.
Toleration had not disarmed the anger of the Catholics. The Earl of
Desmond raised the Pope's banner. The Butlers, the hereditary
enemies of the Geraldines, were let loose upon him, and in the fury
of the struggle the whole of Munster was wasted. Tens of thousands
of men were killed, tens of thousands of women and children crawled
into the woods and perished of hunger. So frightful was the desola-
tion that it was said ' the lowing of a cow or the whistle of a
ploughboy was not to be heard from Waterford to Dingle.' Such was

1880. IRELAND.

the fruit of indulging Irish humours and neglecting or refusing to
discharge the duties which belonged to Government. But there was
no improvement. The war had cost little, but that little was too
much. Ireland had been chastised, and it might perhaps take the
correction to heart. The old system was to continue. London
companies offered to colonise the desolated southern province with
English settlers. Elizabeth would not allow the estates of the Irish
owners to be confiscated. Lord Grey, who was then President, declared
himself ready to make ' a Mahometan conquest ' of the whole island.
Cruel surgery it would have been, but in the long-run merciful if the
Queen intended to keep Ireland subject to her. But Lord Grey was
rebuked and removed; and wars continued ever fiercer and more
destructive to the very end of her reign. She had hoped to pre-
serve the country for its own people. She might have succeeded
had she maintained an adequate army of police ; but the burden
would have been heavy for the English taxpayer, and if Ireland was
to be self-governed and to pay its own expenses, the alternative
was another Norman occupation in a new form — a plantation of
loyal Scotch and English farmers in sufficient numbers to control the
disaffected.

When James the First came to the throne, the experiment was
tried. Ulster had been the scene of the latest troubles. The greatest
part of it was forfeited to the Crown. Many thousand Protestant
families were introduced and set down upon the northern counties.
Their presence and the severe example produced its natural effect.
The land began to be cultivated ; industry introduced order and
prosperity ; rebellion ceased, and there were thirty years of peace.

But the Irish were waiting their time. They knew the meaning
of the presence among them of alien proprietors. That they would
ever under any circumstances acquiesce willingly in the English
domination was and is a sanguine illusion. There were two ways
only in which that domination could be maintained, either by magis-
trates with an effective force behind them, as we now govern India,
or by a garrison of colonists rooted into and supported by the soil.
Experience had shown that from the first method they had nothing to
fear. It was too costly to begin with ; and England, proud of her own
freedom, would not tolerate a vigorous despotism so close to her own
shores, carried on in the name of her own sovereign. Protestant coloni-
sation was the real danger. If they could ruin or cripple the settlers
they would be secure. An English viceroy created the opportunity.
The Ulster colonists were chiefly Presbyterians. Lord Strafford had
many of the qualities of a great ruler ; but he was a Tory and a High
Churchman. He had come to Ireland with schemes which went be-
yond the welfare of the miserable island under his charge. He had
as slight respect as Lord Grey for Irish ideas. He too understood
the means by which they could effectively be combated. He aimed

350 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

at extending the Ulster principle, but by introducing settlers better
inclined to the English monarchy than the northern Calvinists. Per-
haps he imagined that English Churchmen would have a better
chance of bringing Papists into conformity. At any rate he hoped
so to organise Ireland that he could maintain an army there which
might be useful to his master at home.

The Irish problem was sufficiently difficult in itself without
introducing into it ulterior aims. Strafford's brilliant ability com-
manded for the moment extraordinary success ; but it was for the
moment only. The Ulster men distrusted his politics and his
Church propensities. The Irish distrusted him ; for he had com-
pelled the proprietors in the west to produce their titles to their
estates. Titles such as an English lawyer could recognise they had
none to show, and he was suspected of intending to expel them to
make room for a fresh importation of Anglican settlers. He raised
an army for the defence of Charles against the Scots, but it was an
army of Celts, and it was used for a darker purpose.

It is curious to see for the first time in history the English
Liberal party raising capital out of the wrongs of Ireland. A com-
mon enmity makes strange bedfellows. In Strafford's impeachment by
the Long Parliament, his violent handling of the old Irish proprietors
formed an important element. The Long Parliament before the
year was out understood their nature better. Then, as always when
any gleam of hope has presented itself, the Irish idea, the most
intense of all their ideas, has been to recover the land from the Pro-
testant settlers. The civil war in England gave the chance; the
cause for which Strafford had raised his army gave Sir Phelim O'Neil
a pretext for asserting that he was acting in the king's interests and
under the king's commission; and in the memorable October of 1641
a conspiracy was secretly organised for an Irish day of St. Bartho-
lomew. The intention was the complete eradication of the colonists.
Forty thousand men, women, and children actually perished, either
by the sword or by famine and cold. Their houses were burnt, and
those who were not killed were turned adrift naked to starve.

The Irish pretend now that there was never any massacre at all.
They call it a Protestant fiction, as they call the Bulls of Adrian the
Fourth and Alexander the Third, Norman fictions. They might as well
pretend that there was no civil war in England. There is not a fact in
history more completely authenticated. The evidence taken in 1642
before a Commission in Dublin lies in the library of Trinity College,
Dublin. It has not been analysed and calendared, out of deference,
I suppose, to Irish susceptibilities. Irish patriotism, if it is sincere
in its disbelief, should rather insist on a fresh Commission to examine
and report upon it. Could it be proved that the English Government
permitted or enabled an enormous calumny to be imposed upon the
world, to justify the confiscation of the Irish soil, they would establish

1880. IRELAND. 351

a claim for compensation, even now after two centuries of Protestant
ownership, which the conscience of mankind would indorse.

On the Irish insurrection of 1641 the later history of the country
entirely turns. Cromwell ended it. The representatives of the Ulster
families were replaced ; all the rest of Ireland, except Connaught, was
divided among the troops who had conquered it, and for the few years
of the Protectorate there was a real government, such as there had
never been before, and never has been since. Doubtless it was a hard
thing to seize the property of an entire nation and give it to strangers.
It is a hard thing, also, to compel an unwilling people to submit to a
rule which they detest. Bat the hardest thing of all is the hesitating
so-called policy which maintains the unpardonable grievance of
domination, yet feeds a hope of ultimate deliverance by yielding and
weakness in detail, and drives the people when maddened by disap-
pointment into fury and fresh rebellions.

The Norman plantation had created order after the feudal pattern,
which lasted for a hundred and fifty or two hundred years. It had
then run to waste, and was swallowed in the general wilderness.
Again, the work had been done, and this time thoroughly. The new
settlers were Calvinists of the sternest type, no lukewarm Episcopalians,
half-fledged Romanists, Laodiceans neither hot nor cold, but soldiers
of the Eeformation, of the sort without whom neither Anglican, nor
Arminian, nor mild advocate of the via media could have had ground
to stand on — such men as had fought the Guises in France, and Alva
in the Low Countries, and Tilly and Wallenstein in Germany, Coven-
anters, Puritans, men who had a real belief, by which they would live
and die. Once in seven centuries an opportunity had been found and
used to make an end of the Irish hydra. The .work was done, and
thenceforward it had but to be let alone to maintain itself.

Unluckily there were two Englands -—the England of the Com-
monwealth, and the England of Charles the Second and the Bishops.
Oliver died, and Charles and his Bishops came in again, and the
Irish Catholics clamoured for what they called justice. They de-
clared that they had all along been loyal subjects of his father.
His father's murderers had crushed and plundered them, and they
demanded to have their lands given back to them. The answer
ought to have been that the Crown could recognise no loyal service
in the murderers of 1641. Once for all Ireland had been made Pro-
testant, and Protestant it was to remain. But compromise was the
order of the day — all sores were to be closed, and all quarrels for-
gotten. A complete restoration was not possible. A partial restora-
tion was allowed instead of it. Just enough was done to weaken the
plantation, to concede the principle that the Catholics had been
wronged, and to encourage them in the hope and determination to
recover the whole of what had been taken from them. The usual lan-
guage was then used, that the arrangement was final, and that thence-

352 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

forward there was to be no change. The Protestants were to yield part
of their possessions to be secured in the rest for ever. On these lines
was drawn the Act of Settlement of 1662, one more of the fond
half-measures which have been the delight of English statesmen,
and have been the certain preludes of increased misery and confusion.
The colonisation had been made, however, so effectively, that the
Act of Settlement alone would not have materially impaired its value.
But it was exposed at the same time to another and deadlier mis-
chief. The High Church party were in the ascendant ; the colo-
nists, having been soldiers of Cromwell, were almost all Nonconformists;
and Nonconformity was under a ban ; and Jeremy Taylor and his
brother bishops were allowed to close the Calvinist chapels, imprison
the ministers, and disable the Puritan population from holding any
office of any kind, from magistrates to parish constables, unless they
submitted to the Church. It was not to be treated thus that the
Cromwellians had grappled with the Irish Fury, pared her claws,
and chained her in her den. With a consent almost universal (for
Lord Clarendon says that in 1680 not ten of those families
were left in Ireland), the stern Puritan soldiers sold their grants
to English speculators, and sought a more congenial home be-
yond the Atlantic ; where their grandchildren a century later gave
us reason to regret the prelatical zeal which had sent them thither.
With them went the only element which could really have leavened
Ireland. In the Cromwellian the Irish Catholic encountered a
faith as intense as his own ; and the Calvinism which naturalised
itself so easily among the kindred Celts of the Highlands, of
Wales, and of the Isle of Man, might possibly enough, if so recom-
mended, have been accepted in Ireland. But it was not to be.
They went, and they left in their places a body of enterprising adven-
turers who came over to improve their fortunes. The new comers
were not like the Ironsides, but they were made of sensible Saxon
stuff. They had bought their estates on the security of the
Act of Settlement, and they went to work manfully to improve them.
Even encountered thus the Irish difficulty would not have been in-
surmountable. Again there were twenty-five quiet years. In that
time the towns had risen from their ruins ; the harbours were full
of ships, the soil was fenced and ploughed and planted. Crom-
well had left Irish trade unhampered, and English jealousy had not
yet meddled with it. There was no need for Parliaments, there
were no eloquent orators spouting from patriot platforms, and Ireland
really prospered. Judge Keating, summing up what had been done
in 1690. could speak of ' buildings ' rising everywhere, of ' trade and
commerce,' of ' vast herds of cattle and sheep equal to those of Eng-
land,' ' great sums of money brought in by those who came to pur-
chase,' ' manufactures set on foot in divers parts, whereby the meanest
inhabitants were at once enriched and civilised,' * overflown and

1880. IRELAND. 353

moorish land reduced to the bettering of the soil and air,' ' so that it
could hardly be believed to be the same spot of earth.'

These were the fruits which the Cromwellian settlement, lamed
and emasculated as it had been, had still been able to produce ; and
the English Government, if not the Irish people, ought to have been
gratified. But the people had been taught to believe that the land,
with all its improvements, would soon be their own again, and they
waited and watched for their opportunity. In England came the
Catholic revival ; the king was Catholic, the court was Catholic. The
nation, it was hoped, was sick of its Puritan fanaticisms, and would
soon be Catholic too. Those who directed the English policy con-
cluded that the time was come when compensation must be made in
full to the race who fought so long and had suffered so disastrously
in the Catholic cause. Justice was to be done to Ireland, and of
course at the expense of the Protestant landowners. She was to be
governed according to Irish ideas, and the idea uppermost was to
carry out completely the principle of concession which had been
admitted in the explanation of the Act of Settlement.

Dick Talbot, a pattern specimen of the Irish blackguard, who-
rarely spoke a sentence without an oath, or spoke the truth except
by accident, was chosen by the king to clear out the landlords,
having been made Earl of Tyrconnell for the occasion, and appointed
viceroy to succeed Lord Clarendon. The storm was soon raised.
Tyrconnell said openly that the Act of Settlement, so far as it
affirmed the confiscations, had been robbery, and that the soil of
Ireland belonged to the Irish. The tenants were encouraged to with-
hold their rents. Land disputes in the law-courts were decided
uniformly against the Protestant settlers. Their stock was stolen,
and the police were not allowed to protect them, for fear the peace
might be disturbed. Their own liabilities were not diminished ; they
had the land tax to pay, and the interest on their mortgages, and all
their other expenses. Their cattle were houghed, they were them-
selves shot at, or their houses entered and their families outraged.
The avowed object was to make their situation intolerable and their
estates valueless to them ; while the Government, whose duty it was
to maintain the law, were in sympathy with the aggressors. There
is nothing new in Ireland. It is interesting to observe how very
nearly the present situation was anticipated.

A few years of such experiments would no doubt have given
Tyrconnell the game. If the people are at war with the landlords,
and the administration of the day takes the people's side, the land-
lords must of course surrender. So it would have been in Ireland
had James the Second remained on the throne. The Protestant
colonists, if left entirely to themselves, might perhaps have held their
ground successfully ; but the weight of England would have been
thrown into the scale against them — an absurd position, which,

354 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

however, has repeated itself more than once in that country, and
will repeat itself again. But events moved too fast. The Revolu-
tion came. The Stuart dynasty departed, carrying with it the
Catholic revival. The English Government was Protestant again ;
and from the new king the Protestants of Ireland could look for
justice.

Even so, had Tyrconnell been moderate, William would have agreed
to a compromise extremely dangerous to the Protestant interest ;
but the viceroy saw, or thought he saw, a constitutional opportunity
of asserting the Irish national independence, and so at one stroke
winning the whole campaign. The English might change their own
sovereign if they pleased to commit treason. They could not compel
the Irish to commit treason. William might be king across the
Channel, but James was still king in Ireland with the Catholic nation
at his back. The Irish Parliament was called together ; the single
really national Parliament which has ever met in that country. With
an affectation of Liberalism, prophetic of future combinations, it
abolished distinctions of creed, and proclaimed opinion free ; but it
declared every Protestant proprietor who did not come forward in
James's support to be guilty of treason, and to have forfeited his
estates. The whole effect of Cromwell's conquest was destroyed at a
blow. This was too much. Could the Irish have maintained their
legislation by the sword, all history would have applauded them.
England had never been intentionally cruel ; but the alternations
of weak indulgence and spasmodic violence had been worse than
cruelty. She had taken possession of Ireland. Her duty had been
to govern it, and except Cromwell no English ruler had ever seriously
tried to govern it. Unhappily for themselves, the Irish, though they
can conspire and agitate, and occasionally murder, have never in their
own country been worth much in the field. They fought and lost
two battles, and the English yoke was again riveted on their necks.
As the Catholics had twice tried to extirpate the Protestants, so their
own religion was now proscribed in turn. The Penal Code both of
England and Ireland, borrowed with ingenious irony from the Edict
of Nantes, forbade thenceforward the succession of a Catholic to real
estate. Thus at last there was to be an end of the difficulty with
them. They must either conform or leave the country, or dwindle
into serfs. The Irish Parliament was allowed to stand, but the
Protestant peers and gentry were alone members of it. The Catholics
were all excluded. Under these conditions, with their enemies tied
up and padlocked, the colonists were left to take care of themselves.

And this was supposed to be government — self-government, the
best of its forms ! To err on one side or to err on the other was
England's fate or England's folly ; but in both the cause was the
same — an insolent and careless neglect of its own obligations, a de-
termination to escape trouble, to pass unpleasant duties over to others,

1880. IRELAND. 355

to have the advantage of possession without the expense and respon-
sibilities of it.

The Protestant gentry were individually men of character and
intelligence ; but the Protestants were but a fifth of the population,
and their interests were not identical with the interests of the four
fifths who were disfranchised, but directly opposite to them. If Ire-
land was to be governed by a local Parliament, the Penal Laws were
inevitably necessary; but parliamentary government, when it means
the supremacy of a privileged minority, is not the best form of
government, but the worst. The landowners would have been ad-
mirable instruments of a vigilant and wise executive. With irre-
sponsible authority either individually or collectively it was unsafe
and unjust to trust them. But parliamentary government was an
English institution, therefore Ireland must have parliamentary
government. An unpaid magistracy was an English institution,
therefore Ireland must have an unpaid magistracy. So with trial by
jury, with the Established Church, and the rest. Ireland was to be a
copy of the English model; and instead of a copy it became a parody.
Ill, however, as in many ways the Irish Parliament used its powers,
the English Government used considerably worse the powers which
they reserved to themselves ; and if not happy under her own Pro-
testant gentry, she would have been less miserable than through
England's interference she actually was.

The Irish Protestants were not looked on with much favour in
England. Trouble and expense had been incurred to secure them in
possession of their estates. The colonies, according to the theory
of the time, existed for the sake of the mother country. It was not
_good to allow them to be too prosperous, lest their rivalry should be
dangerous ; and for the sacrifices which she made in defending them
the mother country was entitled to indemnify herself. If Ireland
had a Parliament on one side of the Channel, England had hers on
the other. The ministers of the day had to consult the parliamentary
majority, and the majority represented the interests- of the constitu-
encies. The Irish colonists, after the war was over, had gone on with
their improvements. Their wool crop was abundant and the best in
Europe. Their water-power was unlimited ; and everywhere, even in
the wilds of Kerry, they had started manufactures where it was woven
into cloth. Their forests furnished ship timber, and Cork and Dublin
began to fill with vessels built in Ireland and manned by Irishmen.
Droves of Irish cattle were landed in Bristol. Irish bacon and butter,
even Irish corn, made its way into the English markets, threatening
the farmers with ruin. Merchants, manufacturers, shipowners, land-
owners, clamoured for protection against the Irish cockatrice which
had been hatched at England's cost; and no* Ministry could encounter
the combined indignation of such powerful interests. Irish industry
was deliberately destroyed. An extension of the Navigation Act

356 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

ended their shipping. The Woollen Act killed their manufactures ;
even the wool itself they were permitted to sell only to England, and
at a price which England was to fix ; while agriculture was placed
under every disadvantage which could be decently inflicted upon it.
Industrious habits, the one remedy for all the woes of Ireland
spiritual and material, were thus at the start ingeniously blighted,
and the mass of the people condemned to poverty, out of which no
effort of their own could raise them. The intense injustice produced
a natural animosity which united Protestant and Catholic against
the common oppressor. All means were thought legitimate to defeat
the provisions of so abominable a code. The harbours and coves
round the coast became the depots of a universal smuggling trade ;
and before the middle of the last century the country had become a
general institute for the education of the entire people in a defiance
of the law. I should recommend the Sultan to study Irish history,
that he may be ready with an answer when Mr. Goschen next lec-
tures him on the maladministration of the Turkish Provinces. \Ve
may have repented of some of our sins, but the confession of the Irish
Secretary in this present year seems to show that, however ashamed
we may be of the misdeeds of our fathers, our repentance has not yet
been productive of particularly improved results. The Sultan might
recommend us to study the parable of the mote and the beam.

The trade legislation was but the beginning of sorrows. Had
Church preferment been competed for in an open market, no doubt
there would have been in England a similar jealousy of Irish scholars
and divines. English patrons happily had the English appoint-
ments in their hands, and could protect themselves. No protest
was necessary to prevent Fellows of Trinity from being advanced
into the high offices of the Church of England. Ireland suffered,
however, in another way and in a worse way. The Irish Church
became a receptacle for persons whom English ministers desired to
promote, yet at home did not dare to promote. Swift's story of
the highwaymen who killed the bishops elect, stole their letters
patent, and were consecrated in their places, is no extreme caricature.
Even in the present century, after the lesson of the last rebellion, a
correspondence passed relating to one of the Irish sees which in
any future history of Ireland should hold as conspicuous a place
as the largest type can give it. A certain prime minister wished
to give an Irish bishopric to the younger son of a certain noble family.
The Irish Primate, when the name was mentioned to him, replied
that ' the young man's character was notoriously infamous,' and that
he would rather resign than consecrate him. Yet the English
Cabinet persisted. The Primate's scruples were got over, I know
not how, and the young man of notoriously infamous reputation
was forced upon the Bench. Mr. Gladstone, when he disestablished
the Church of Ireland, spoke of it as a missionary institution which

1880. IRELAND. 357

had been tried and failed. Under such conditions its failure is not
surprising.

There were other ways, too, in which Ireland was used as a con-
venience. England had a Pension List for honourably distinguished
services. Ireland also had a Pension List — for services dishonourably
distinguished. On the Irish Pension List are found the names of
royal mistresses, favourites, poor foreign relations, or corrupt senators
whose votes had been bought. It was a frequent subject of com-
plaint in the Irish Parliament, and the complainant was silenced by
being himself admitted as a recipient of the polluted bounty. The
Viceroys' letters for seventy years contain reports humorously
uniform, at the close of each session, of the members of the two
Irish houses who had been corrupted, and of the terms which had
been agreed on.

Less than all this would have ruined a country already prosperous.
It was not to be expected that Ireland would thrive under it. With
fair treatment, the colonists could at least have improved the con-
dition of the peasantry, and thus their own relations with them.
The action of the English Government left them no interests in
common, unless it was a community of resentment. There was
another point also in which the Protestants were treated with unin-
tentional but more real injustice. The Penal Code had been adopted
as a supposed necessity. The Irish Acts were transcripts of the
English, and the English Parliament was responsible for them.
Policy may excuse such laws, if the creed or institution proscribed
has been fairly shown to be an irreconcilable enemy. It is fatuity to
place such laws on the statute-book and to leave them unenforced ;
for of their nature they can never be forgiven, and therefore, in
common prudence, should be carried out till their end is attained.
Catholics now refer to those laws with indignation, and Protestants
with shame. It is natural that it should be so. Catholics might
remember, however, that the arrow with whieh they were wounded
was borrowed from their own quiver. In every country where they
have had the power, Protestantism has been placed under precisely
the same disabilities. If circumstances could be conceived which
would justify a Protestant Power in retaliating, those circumstances
existed in Ireland, although the experiment certainly was of a kind
which, if tried, should not have been allowed to fail. But it pleased
England to leave the odium of the Penal Laws on the colonists, while
she herself was to interfere with their execution. We had provoked
the resentment of the colonists ; it was convenient to secure the
gratitude of the native population by appearing as their prote'ctors.
When the object was not so immediately sinister, it gratified our feel-
ings of humanity to prevent oppression ; and it served to smoothe our
diplomatic relations with Catholic allies on the Continent. But the
effect was to produce the utmost amount of evil and least possible
VOL. VIII.— No. 43. B B

358 THE XIXETEESTH CENTURY. September

degree of good. The Protestant landlords have been reproached, like
the Established Church, with having failed in their mission. It may
be asked whether England ever allowed to either of them a chance of
succeeding.

For another fault they cannot be themselves excused. There had
been still left in Ireland a considerable number of Dissenters, some
the descendants of the original Ulster settlers, and others who had pur-
chased from the Cromwellians. In the North the majority of Pro-
testants were Presbyterians, and were the very bone and sinew of the
English interest. Jeremy Taylor's traditions, however, still governed
the Establishment ; and while England was destroying Irish industry,
the passion of the bishops and gentry was to enforce the Act of
Uniformity. So intense was the animosity that even Swift affected
to believe that the Presbyterians were a real danger to Ireland.
They were long subjected to every sort of persecution. Their schools
were closed, and even their chapels, except in particular districts.
They were shut out from public employment. The Tory landlords
ejected them from their farms at convenient opportunities. At length
too many of them turned their backs on a country where industry
was frowned on and trade blighted, and themselves feared and hated
as schismatics and Republicans. Every one of these men (could the
Anglican gentry have but known it) was of priceless worth to them ;
but they were blind and could not see ; and a second flight of hardy
Protestant yeomen winged their way across the Atlantic, to be heard
of again at Bunker's Hill and Lexington. It was not merely the loss
of so much life-blood to the Protestant interest, but the small
estates were sold, and, as there was no longer any competition for
land in Ireland, were bought up by the large proprietors, whose
domains grew more extensive and unwieldy as the numbers decayed,
and of whom an ever-increasing proportion became absentees.

To these conditions England's policy and its own want of wisdom
had by the middle of the last century reduced the ' colony ' which wiser
men had so carefully planted. And yet, blighted and blundering
as it was, Protestant ascendency represented the principles of order
and the authority of intelligence over ignorance ; and the period of
which English politicians affect to be most ashamed was that in
which Ireland did to some extent really wear the aspect of a civilised
country. The two rebellions which shook Great Britain in 1715
and 1745 did not disturb the peace of Ireland. Crippled, insulted,
plundered as they were, Arthur Young found thousands of gentlemen
reclaiming land, introducing improved systems of agriculture, plant-
ing, and building. English manners, even the graces of English
country life, reproduced themselves ; and instead of mud cabins and
naked beggary, there once existed an Irish 'Auburn.' Excellent,
schools were established, where brilliantly gifted men were trained
to do honour to their native land. Strike the Anglo-Irish names

1880. IRELAND. 359

from the rolls of fame in the last century, and we lose our foremost
statesmen, scholars, soldiers, artists, lawyers, poets, men of letters.
Voltaire was not a person to be taken in by plausible appearances.
I commend to the believers in the progress which has been brought
about by what are now called Liberal opinions, the following passage
from the Essai sur les Mceurs. Voltaire, speaking there of Ireland,
says : ' Ce pays est toujours reste sous la domination de 1'Angleterre,
mais inculte, pauvre, et inutile, jusqu'a ce qu'enfin dans le dix-
huitieme siecle, 1'agriculture, les manufactures, les arts, les sciences,
tout s'y est perfectionne, et 1'Irlande quoique subjuguee est devenue
une des plus florissantes provinces de 1'Europe.' *

To speak thus of poor Ireland now would be impossible, even in
mockery. The prosperity which Voltaire witnessed was the result of
Protestant ascendency. The emancipation of the Celts has brought
with it the return of misery.

But by this time the dragons' teeth which England had sown about
her Empire had sprung up, and her insolent colonial system was to end.
The American States revolted. The Irish Protestant gentry, too
naturally, but in an evil day for themselves, raised the flag of Irish
patriotism. They broke their trade fetters ; they armed, and wrested
from their oppressors the Constitution of 1782. Dreaming that they
could make allies of a race whom neither flattery could cajole nor
reparation could reconcile, they repealed the Penal Laws ; and in re-
pealing them they revived the old traditions, and blew into flame the
hopes which had been smothered and lain dormant since the Boyne
and Aghrim. The English Liberal party, not to be behindhand, and
to share the gratitude of the Catholics, agitated for their admission to
the franchise. Grattan had lighted the fire of an Irish nationality.
Alas ! the Irish nation, if a nation it was again to be, was not to be
composed of the shining regiments of volunteers who had marched
through Dublin and Belfast behind banners of liberty. These fine
enthusiasts were the unconscious instruments of their own ruin. The
Irish nation, in the days of reform and government by majorities,,
was to be the nation of the Celts, and could be no other. Too late
they saw the error ; but the tide was too strong for them, and once
more the Irish of the old blood rose in arms to make an end of British
authority. For a time the Presbyterians of Ulster, having their own
wrongs to remember, were inclined to m«ke common cause with them.
Happily, the alchemy had not been discovered which could combine
Catholic Celt and Scotch Protestant. The glamour of the unnatural
union disappeared before Vinegar Hill and the barn of Scullabogue ;
and the northern Protestants, who had caused more fear in Dublin
Castle than Lord Edward Fitzgerald or Father Murphy, or even the
French fleet, recoiled from such allies in disgust, and became Orange
and loyal.

1 Essai sur les Mceurf, cap. 50.
BB 2

360 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

Concessions to Irish agitation lead necessarily to rebellion, and
rebellion can only end in one way. The Irish are taught to believe
that England is afraid of them. Their demands rise to something
which cannot be granted, and then they rise in insurrection. They
do not know that England has no fear of them. She is afraid, but
not of an army of peasants led by blustering patriots. She is conscious
to the heart of her own misdoings ; she dreads the public shame of
having again to put Ireland down, and she precipitates the catastrophe
bv the weakness with which she tries to avert it. 1798 was but
1641 and 1690 over again ; in all the three insurrections the object
was the same, to recover the confiscated lands. It was a miserable
business, and it was miserably ended. In the useless endeavour to
cover our own disgrace, English opinion has extenuated the ferocity
of the Irish, and ridiculously exaggerated the ' atrocities ' of the
Protestant yeomanry. The impotent peace which was concluded by
Cornwallis left the fire smouldering to be blown again into flame,
and the moral authority of the Protestant gentry almost extinguished.
It was a crisis the meaning of which is only now beginning to be
understood. Ireland ought to have been completely conquered, but
the most entire subjugation would have availed nothing unless we
had been prepared thenceforward to maintain a real government
there : and we had not realised, we have not even realised yet, that
it is our duty to do anything save to put an end to Protestant
.ascendency.

The one indispensable requirement in Ireland is authority armed
with power to make the law obeyed. This principle in an objectionable,
•but still a real, form, Protestant ascendency had represented for
three quarters of a century, with the effect which had been observed
•by Voltaire. But Protestantism as such is no longer entitled to
a place of exclusive superiority, nor is Catholicism as such any
longer exchangeable with a spirit of revolt. Authority has to find
some other form for itself if the English connection is to be any-
thing but a curse to Ireland, and what that form is to be has yet to
be considered. The Union, which was to have settled everything, has
settled nothing, and has created only fresh difficulties. The ruling
power of the Irish landlords ended with the Parliament on College
Green. The unjust reflections on their action in the Eebellion had
not improved their relations with their tenants ; they lost heart, and
they lost their personal interest in their country. Their estates
became more neglected, absenteeism more shameless; and such of
them as continued to reside grew notorious chiefly for wild manners
and reckless extravagance. Much of this there had always been.
The air of Ireland was never favourable to sobriety of temperament,
but there had been along with it the high qualities of a ruling race,
which after the Union disappeared. The functions of the landlord
were reduced to the shooting his game and the exaction of his rent ;

1880. IRELAND. 361

the population multiplied and became more and more miserable;
while the Irish members in the House of Commons, since Catholic
emancipation, have held in their hands the fate of Ministers by con-
trolling the balance of parties ; they have thus offered temptations
which neither Whig nor Tory has had virtue to resist, and by extorting
concession after concession have now almost completed the destruc-
tion of Cromwell's work, and made their beggared and ungovernable
country once more the opprobrium of English administrations.

We remember Mr. Gladstone's Upas-tree with its three branches.
According to Mr. Gladstone Protestant ascendency has been Ireland's
poison-plant. One of these branches was hewn off ten years ago.
The second was cut half through, and it appears that his present
mission is now to make an end with this.

The Anglican Church ought never, perhaps, to have been esta-
blished in Ireland. An institution which was neither Catholic nor
Protestant, but a combination of the two adapted to a peculiar con-
dition of the English temperament, was as ill fitted as any institution
could be for purposes of conversion, especially when confronted with
a creed which was bound up with the national traditions and aspira-
tions. The efforts of the bishops in expelling the Presbyterians
might have been advantageously dispensed with ; and of all the instru-
ments of mischief to the Protestant interest, they were perhaps in
their way the most effective. Yet Mr. Gladstone might have re-
membered, in reproaching the Irish Church with its failures, that it
might have succeeded better than it did if it had received fair play.
It was not the Irish clergy who appointed bishops of ' notoriously
infamous character,' and they had deserved and won for themselves
at the time of the disestablishment the affection of millions who did
not belong to their communion. It was not desirable, it was not
possible, for them to retain their exclusive privileges ; but being
what they were, their overthrow as the branch of a Upas-tree served
chiefly to weaken English authority, which one day will have to be
asserted again. To disestablish the Church in obedience to the
dictation of agitators for immediate political convenience was but to
strengthen the elements in Ireland inveterately and irreconcilably
opposed to the English sovereignty.

The same must be said of the Land Bill of 1870. The intention
of Cromwell was to cover Ireland with a race of Protestant Saxon
freeholders who would permanently take root, and control and assimi-
late the Celtic peasantry by superior force and intelligence. The shifts
and changes of policy at the English court, ecclesiastical intolerance
in the heads of the Irish Church, and the scandalous commercial
jealousy by which Irish industry was discountenanced, had defaced
and mutilated the original purpose. The small freeholds had been
absorbed in the overgrown estates of the peers and county families ;
the Protestant landowners became, like the Spartans, a privileged

362 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

aristocracy in diminishing numbers surrounded by a nation of helots.
When the helots were emancipated and by their numbers controlled
the representation, the ownership of land became a mere invest-
ment of money or commercial transaction ; and to attach a power to
it, to drive from their homes families able and willing to pay their
rent, whose forefathers had lived in the same spot for immemorial
generations, was to give the landlords rights which, if unwisely
exercised, might cause a revolution in our whole system of landed
tenure. Even in England, where confiscations have been unknown for
centuries, and the tenures of the proprietors have never been chal-
lenged by rival claimants, such an authority, when exercised only for
the pleasure and interest of the owner, becomes at times intolerable.
Not a mile from the place where I am now writing, an estate on the
coast of Devonshire came into the hands of an English Duke. There
was a primitive village upon it occupied by sailors, pilots, and fisher-
men, which is described in Domesday Book, and was inhabited at the
Conquest by the actual forefathers of the late tenants, whose names
may be read there. The houses were out of repair. The Duke's pre-
decessors had laid out nothing on them for a century, and had been
contented with exacting the rents. When the present owner entered
into possession, it was represented to him that if the village was to
continue it must be rebuilt, but that to rebuild it would be a need-
less expense, for the people, living as they did on their wages as fisher-
men and seamen, would not cultivate his land, and were useless to
him. The houses were therefore simply torn down, and nearly half the
population was driven out into the world to find new homes. A few
more such instances of tyranny might provoke a dangerous crisis. In
ages less enlightened than ours the right itself did not exist in its
present shape. The serfs and villains under the feudal system held
their farms originally at their lord's pleasure ; all that they possessed
belonged to him if he chose to claim it, and by a word he could strip
them bare. But time and custom created rights where none had
before existed. When families of villains had remained for centuries
at the same spot, and the lords for any reason wished to dispossess
them, the English Courts of Law decided that so long as the
customary rent was paid they could not be ejected without reason
shown ; and thus even under the despotism of the Norman nobles
the peasant tenures became copyholds and eventually freeholds. That
was a wise, humane, and rational arrangement. Land is not, and can-
not be, property in the sense in which movable things are property.
Every human being born into this planet must live upon the land if he
lives at all. He did not ask to be born, and, being born, room must
be found for him. The land in any country is really the property of
the nation which occupies it ; and the tenure of it by individuals is
ordered differently in different places according to the habits of the
people and the general convenience.

1880. IRELAND. 363

All tins must be freely admitted ; and it applies with peculiar
force to Ireland. The form into which landowning has drifted in.
England is but one of many possible arrangements. Perhaps in
Ireland's present state the happiest method would be one in which
the State should be the owner and the landlord (if we still pleased to
call him so) should be the State's agent, with ample powers, but
responsible to the Government for the use of them, holding his
position like the governor of a Crown colony, or the captain of a
man-of-war, to be continued in office and promoted if the estate under
his charge was wisely managed, to be dismissed if he was found unjust
or incompetent. But this is theory. Governments as they are now
constituted are unfit for so invidious a duty. Land is bought and
sold under the guarantee of the law. The purchaser must receive
value for what he has purchased in good faith, and any change to be
hereafter introduced must be the result of the gravest and protracted
deliberation. ' La propriete Jest le volj says M. Proudhon, and it is
possible that hereafter society may be constructed on that principle.
But the alteration will be the work of centuries, and may be post-
poned to the millennium. To confiscate or to propose sudden and
unheard-of restrictions upon the property of individuals under an
impulse of political enthusiasm is le vol also, and a breach of faith
besides, and the government which tries it does not deserve to survive
the experiment. The purchaser of land is entitled to his money's
worth. If, for political reasons, the State interferes to prevent him
from collecting his rents, the State must compensate him. But he
is not entitled to more. If he desires to expel solvent tenants who
disagree with him in opinion, or because he wishes to improve his
estate, or to enlarge his park or his shooting grounds, he in turn
must compensate them ; and so far there is no fault to be found with
the famous Land Act of 1870. It was a fair corollary from the
existing condition of Irish social institutions. The tenant's solvency
was the test of his right to remain. If he could not, or would not,
meet his engagements, the landlord was robbed of what belonged to
him, and might appoint a fitter person in the tenant's place. In
itself, therefore, the act was a just one. But, like so many other
Irish reforms, it was introduced with language which gave it a double
meaning. Mr. Gladstone's * Upas-tree,' his bold admission that his
Irish policy was due to Fenianism and the Clerkenwell explosion,
turned a measure right in itself into so much fuel for disaffection ; it
encouraged hopes which can never be gratified, save with the final
release of Ireland from the English connection ; it raised incendiaries
and assassins to the rank of patriots, and encouraged them to go on
with their work by telling them that if they were only violent and
mischievous enough they would have their desires. If it be answered
that what Mr. Gladstone said was true, and that under a constitution
like ours it is only by such means that justice is ever practically done,

364 THE NINETEENTH CESTURY. September

we can but say so much the worse for the constitution ; but the fact,
if fact it be, will not prevent the confession from producing its;
natural consequences.

The ' Upas-tree ' was a singularly unlucky metaphor. It corre-
sponded precisely to the fixed idea of the Irish that the land had
been unjustly taken from them, and it encouraged them to believe
that Mr. Gladstone shared their conviction. The Irish agitators
regarded it as a step towards a repeal of the Act of Settlement. Miv
Gladstone insisted, when he brought his Land Act forward, that it was
not intended to convey any right whatever of property to the tenant-
He has discovered since, or his colleagues have discovered for him,
that if he did not intend to convey a right of property to him, he at
least intended to confer on him a proprietary right. The tenant
himself and the local money-lender took the same view of it from
the beginning. The tenants have raised loans everywhere on the
security of their occupancy. The interest on these loans has become a
second rent, and has been the chief cause of the present distress. One
useful result has come of it. The cottier tenants have shown what their
fate would be if, by any means, they were raised into the condition of a
peasant proprietary. The present landlords would have been ' evicted,'
only that their places might be filled by the local capitalists of the
country towns, who in a few years would have foreclosed their mort-
gages. And what mercy the wretched peasantry might expect from
men of their own blood who had them in their power may be read in
the history of the middlemen. No harsher tyrant over the poor was
ever known than an Irishman a degree above them in social rank.
An experiment which would destroy so many beautiful illusions might
be worth trying completely if it were not so expensive.

A statesman who understood Ireland would never have spoken of
Upas-trees unless he was prepared to sanction a revolution. The patriot
orators in the last ten years have profited by Mr. Gladstone's hint.
The cry has been steadily, ' The soil for the Irish people ! Pay no rent
if you can help it ; and keep your grip upon the land.' The policy
has been to make the property of the landlords worthless, and their
position so dangerous that they would find their estates not worth
keeping. Lord Leitrim's murder was part of the same conspiracy — if
not prompted by the leaders of the agitation, yet an outcome of the
spirit prevailing. The English administration looked helplessly on-
When a Government is not afraid to exert itself, it will find in
Ireland as elsewhere sufficient well-disposed people who will stand by
it and maintain the law. But where the anxiety is merely to keep
the outside of things tolerably smooth, such persons will not expose
themselves in a thankless service. The assassins of Lord Leitrim were
notorious, but a witness who had told the truth would have been shot
as a traitor to his country, and would only have fallen uselessly as
another unavenged victim. And this state of things was allowed to

1880. IRELAND. 365

go on. Lord Beaconsfield had a majority which made him in-
dependent, of Irish support, and might have made him careless of
Irish enmity. An honest effort to put down agrarian terrorism and
a frank appeal to England for support would have created a respect
for the Conservative Ministry which might have kept them in office
to the end of the century. Some of us were fond enough to hope in
1874 that such an effort was about to be made, and that Ireland
would cease to be a national disgrace. ' The wise man mindeth his
business, but the fool's eyes are in the ends of the earth.' Lord
Beaconsfield was no fool, but Ireland was too poor a stage for his
high-vaulting ambition, and was left to go its own wild way, till Mr.
Gladstone's return to power reopened the revolutionary chapter.

The secret history of Mr. Forster's Compensation Bill will perhaps
never be known. Mr. Forster's part in it is clear enough. He was
appointed Secretary for Ireland, knowing little or nothing either of
the country or of the passions of the people. He found that there had
been a bad harvest, that there was a real or professed difficulty in the
payment of rents, and on the landlords' part, in some quarters, an
abuse of their powers of eviction, which he, as the head of the Irish
executive, was called on to support by armed force. He wished, as
he said, to make the law respected; but it was necessary for him
first to be assured that he had justice on his side, and he therefore
proposed that over about half the country the power of these hard
landlords, whom he considered to be only a few, to extort their rents
by forcible means should be suspended for two seasons, in cases where
the tenant's disability could be shown, to the satisfaction of a county
court judge, to be due to misfortune. It seemed to him so natural, so
obviously right, so plain a carrying out of the precepts of the Gospel,
that he never anticipated that it could do any harm or even meet
with an objection. The rich country gentleman on one side, the
Connemara peasant with his starving family on the other ! What
could be more desirable in the eternal interest of Dives himself than
that he should be compelled to show mercy to Lazarus ? And yet no
responsible English minister even committed himself to so unfor-
tunate a suggestion. There is no occasion to thresh over again the
straw which has been already beaten into dust, or to point out for
the thousandth time the complicated injustice which Mr. Forster's
equity would inflict. If a benevolent State is to claim the right of
supervising contracts, and deciding where an act of (rod requires
them to be cancelled, it will have work enough upon its hands. The
principle cannot be confined to Irish landlords. It is either un-
sound in itself, or its application is universal.

But I confine myself to the political aspect of Mr. Forster's action
as it affects Ireland. He supposed himself to be dealing with an
accidental state of things, which in a couple of years would have
passed away. Had he been tolerably acquainted Avith Irish history,

366 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

lie would have known that he was taking an irrevocable step on the
most critical and inflammable of all Irish questions. He was telling
the people that in the opinion of the Cabinet the Irish landlords had
not the same right of property in their estates which they had in
England or elsewhere. He might pretend that the act was to be
temporary only, and confined to particular districts. He never asked
himself whether at the end of the two years the reluctance to pay
rent would not be as emphatic as at present, and immeasurably more
difficult to overcome, or whether, meanwhile, every occupier in Ire-
land would not raise the same objection, and claim the same protec-
tion. We have been told of the legitimate application of the
principles of the Land Act of 1870. If Mr. Forster's proposal is a
development of the Land Act, then, if it had been carried, it must
have developed equally naturally into a transfer of the land from the
present owners to the occupiers. He was telling the Land League
that they were right, that they had but to persevere and that they
had won the battle. Mr. Gladstone said, in excuse for the Bill, that
Ireland was already * within measurable distance of civil war.' To
enforce the landlords' claims again when the two years were over
would have made civil war a certainty, if the then inevitable demand
for further change should be refused.

All this was obvious to every one who knew Ireland and the Irish
people. Already, between the landlords and tenants themselves,
such mutual confidence and good feeling as survived has been de-
stroyed. Their relations were already severely strained. They must,
now each of them fall back upon the rights which they suppose them-
selves to possess, and a struggle has begun which cannot end till one
or other has given way. The tenant has been told by the Cabinet,
and by a vote of the House of Commons, that, whether he pays his
rent or not, he has an equitable property in his holding ; and he will
defend what such high authority has declared to belong to him. The
landlord, threatened as he has been with an interference which may
mean the loss of everything which he possesses, will rely upon the
law as it now stands, and the refusal of the Peers to allow it to be
changed, and will insist upon his due. The form which the con-
flict will take is uncertain, and depends, probably, on the course
which Mr. Parnell and his friends consider most politic. With cards in
their hands so favourable, they may be careful how they play their
game. If left to themselves, the people would certainly have recourse
to their usual methods. Evictions would be resisted by force.
Tenants willing to pay their rents would be threatened, cattle would
be houghed, and agents and landlords shot at. Mr. Biggar's open
commendation of the killing: of Lord Leitrim in the House of

Commons suggests that, if rifles are used again for a similar purpose,
some at least of the popular leaders will not disapprove. Mr. Forster
may congratulate himself that he has brought on a crisis in the Irish

1880. IRELAND. 367

land question more momentous than any which has occurred since the
renewal of the Act of Settlement after the treaty of Limerick. His
bill was one of those measures of conciliation, so called, of which
there have been so many, and which have been the invariable prelimi-
naries of a catastrophe. He considered, perhaps, that he was pro-
ducing something original. The dress may be changed, but the
figure inside it is a very old acquaintance indeed.

But there is another and very serious question. What did Mr.
Gladstone mean by sanctioning this act of his Irish Secretary ? Mr.
Gladstone does not know Ireland well, nor its history well ; but he
has attended to both, he has formed views about both, and to some
extent must have understood what he was doing. It may have been
that he was merely careless, that he wished to please his Irish sup-
porters, to pass pleasantly through the remainder of the Session, and
to save himself from being troubled, for a few months at any rate,
with Irish disturbances. But Mr. Gladstone is not a person to act in
so serious a matter without a clearer purpose ; and expressions have
dropped from him which betray a feeling of another character. The
landowners were a branch of the Upas-tree, a surviving symbol of Pro-
testant ascendency. The House of Commons was reminded that Irish
land was not like other property, that money held in trust might not
be invested in Ireland. Mr. Gladstone intimated, too, that if he could
have had his way ten years ago, a clause in his original Land Bill would
have made the present proposal unnecessary. It would seem, therefore,
that he at least did not look on Mr. Forster's suspension of rent pay-
ing as merely temporary, but as the preliminary of a permanent
change, equivalent to the disestablishment of the Church — as if he
was approaching step by step to some disendowment of the Irish
landlords as he had disendowed the clergy, and was preparing for
revolutionary alterations. Mr. Gladstone is an enthusiast for
liberty, and considers, from the point of view of modern Eadical-
ism, that Ireland ought to be governed according to Irish ideas.
But as with Tyrconnell, so now with Mr. Gladstone — before the
ideas of the Irish can be carried out, the prejudices of Englishmen
on the security of property must be encountered and overcome.
The Premier, with his forty-eight years' experience of parliamentary
life, must have known that the House of Lords would refuse to pass
his Bill. Very probably he anticipated the extent of the majority.
It is to be presumed, therefore, that he has considered what he intends
to do. He has brought about a situation in which the two Houses
are at issue on a subject which touches the quick of Irish feeling. If
he leaves things as they are, the language which he used about the
Fenian outrages is an invitation for a repetition of them. This much
respect the Irish are likely to show to a vote of the House of Commons,
that where it has been given in their favour they will consider it to
justify them in anything which they may please to do, and the civil

368 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

war which he described as within measurable distance will be brought
a good many degrees nearer. Civil war indeed, century after century,
has been the inevitable outcome of attempts to caress the Irish into
loyalty. They are led on to hope that they are to have their own
way. They find that they are not to have it after all, and then they
rebel, and a great many of them have to be killed. Any way we are
at the first act of an extremely interesting political drama, and who
can say where we shall find ourselves at the end of the fifth ? Mr.
Gladstone will not willingly allow himself to be foiled, yet if he per-
severes he may bring on the struggle, so long foretold, between demo-
cracy and the rights of property, and in a great Empire like ours,
with such enormous interests at stake, it is not difficult to foresee on
which side the victory will be. However this may be, another apple
of discord has been flung into Ireland, there to spread its poison. Cruel
stepmother has England been for seven hundred years to that unhappy
island, and cruel still she remains. One by one we have thrust our
political inventions upon her, and called it governing. We are now
giving her our latest discovery, that there ought to be no such thing
as governing, that the power of man over man is to be abolished, that
every one must look out for his own interests, with a fair stage and
no favour. * And Cain answered and said, I am not my brother's
keeper.' From the ruined fields and wasted potato gardens, from a
million miserable cabins where human beings have lived under our
charge for twenty generations more like wolves than men, the silent
cry appeals to us — Take charge of us, rule us, guide us, help us out of
our wretchedness ; and the remedy, it seems, which we are to try next,
is to be the extension of the borough franchise. The Irish require order,
and we give them anarchy. They ask a fish and we give them a scor-
pion. Let no one say that we live in an age of scepticism. The faith
of England in the present object of her worship is worthy of all admira-
tion ; but if we offer sacrifices to liberty, we should offer them at the
expense of ourselves, not of others. It was England which introduced
landowning and landlords into Ireland as an expedient for ruling it.
If we choose now to remove the landlords or divide their property
with their tenants, we must do it from our own resources ; we have no
right to make the landlords pay for the vagaries of our own idolatries.
But liberty, as now understood, is a local divinity, peculiar to the
modern English and Americans, and will never save Ireland. Pro-
testant ascendency is gone. But what Protestant ascendency really
meant must be realised in some new shape, or there is no hope.

In Ireland, as everywhere else in this world, there is a minority of
sensible, loyal, well-intentioned people of all creeds who understand
what are the real conditions under which their country can prosper.
A Government which will win the confidence of such men as these,
and try to do what they would wish to see done, instead of bidding
for the Irish vote in Parliament by submitting to the dictation of

1880. IRELAND. 369

pseudo-patriots and patrons of assassination — a Government which
would make the law respected and obeyed, which would hang
murderers caught in the act, would insist on hanging them, and, if
juries would not convict, would call on Parliament to suspend trial by
jury in Ireland, and pass an Act for trying of criminals by a commis-
sion of judges — such a Government would repeat the miracle of St.
Patrick and drive the devils out of the country. As soon as
authority had been properly asserted, and a resolution to do justice
cannot be misinterpreted into cowardice, the land laws might then be
dispassionately revised, with a resolution to consider only what
would tend most to make the people of Ireland really prosperous.
To treat land, with the present privileges attached to the possession
of it, as an article of sale, to be passed from hand to hand in the
market like other commodities, is an arrangement not likely to be
permanent either in Ireland or elsewhere. But changes, if changes
can be made, must be deliberate and tentative, and carried out with
a resolved superiority to terrorism. Agrarian outrage, at all hazards
and by any means, must be brought to an end ; and the future state of
Ireland depends entirely on the courage of a Ministry to propose,
and the willingness of Parliament to allow, such measures as may be
necessary for the purpose. It depends, therefore, on the virtue of the
Liberal party. If they can resist the temptations of the Irish vote,
they may have a storm to encounter, but they will have the support
of every single person in the two kingdoms whose approval they
ought to desire. If not, if Ireland is still to remain the plaything
and the victim of the English constitutional system, there is nothing
to be looked for but the continuance of the chronic misery which the
fatal contiguity of the two islands has created from the hour of Henry
the Second's conquest.

J. A. FROUDE.

370 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

A REAL 'SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY:

THE principle of participation by workmen in the profits of employers,
•which was first tentatively put into operation by the Parisian house-
decorator Leclaire, in 1842, has since that time made signal progress.
According to the most recent information l upwards of forty-six in-
dustrial establishments in France, Alsace, and Switzerland alone are
now working upon this principle. The material advantages accruing
both to employers and employed from systems of participation have
been distinctly recognised by English writers on political economy —
Babbage, Mill, Fawcett, and others — but the intellectual and moral
benefits which attach to the best existing methods of applying the
principle have not, in this country at least, as yet attracted a degree
of public attention at all commensurate with their importance. A
lecture 2 addressed to an audience of working men in Cambridge on the
9th of December, 1879, by Mr. W. H. Hall, contains, in a biographical
form, an excellent sketch of the development of Leclaire's institution,
and faithfully reflects the spirit which animates it. From this lecture —
the only existing English source for the facts which it communicates —
I received a strong impulse to make a personal examination, on the
actual scene of Leclaire's labours, into the most recent results there
attained. On making my wish known, through Mr. Hall, to the
present heads of Leclaire's house, I received from them a most cordial
invitation coupled with an offer to place their time and information
unreservedly at my disposal. When I presented myself to these
gentlemen in Paris, they proved in every respect as good as their
word. I was allowed free access to the accounts of the establishment
and to every source of information for which I chose to ask ; my long
string of questions, too, were answered with thorough-going fulness
and unwearied patience. It is entirely owing to the kindness of
MM. Eedouly et Marquot, managing partners of the house of Leclaire,
and of M. Charles Eobert, president of the mutual aid society con-
nected with it, that I am enabled to make known, in the most au-
thentic shape, the present condition of perhaps the most beneficent
industrial foundation now extant. To M. Marquot, who received me

1 Bulletin de la Participation. Paris, Chaix ct ie., 1879. Pp. 107-112.
- Reported in full in the Cambridge Independent Press of the 13th of December,
1879, and since republished as a pamphlet by the Central Cooperative Board.

1880. A REAL 'SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY: 371

in the absence of his senior colleague, and to M. Charles Robert, my
heartiest thanks are due for considerate attention and unfailing
courtesy.

As a condition of understanding the present working of Leclaire's
institution, some preliminary study must be devoted to the facts of
its historical development. These, again, are inextricably interwoven
with the incidents of Leclaire's life. I have accordingly found it
indispensable, before describing his establishment as it actually exists,
to narrate those facts of his life which bear most directly on the
development of participation. In doing this I have, with the author's
express permission, made full, and in places direct translational, use
of the excellent French biography of Leclaire 3 written by his ardent
admirer and disciple, M. Charles Eobert. English readers will find
interesting details, which I am obliged to pass over here, in Mr.
Hall's lecture already referred to.

Edme-Jean Leclaire was born on the 14thof May, 1801. The son of a
poor village shoemaker, he was removed from school at ten years old,
with the scantiest knowledge even of reading and writing, and put to
work, first in the fields, and next as a mason's apprentice. At seven-
teen, having arrived, penniless and unfriended, at Paris, he apprenticed
himself to a house-painter. After three years passed amidst much
privation under a hard master, Leclaire became a journeyman, and
after seven more, when only twenty-six years of age, took the bold
step of setting up in business on his own account. Extraordinary
capacity, energy, and daring enabled him to force his way with signal
success and celerity. Within three years' time he had attracted the
notice of architects by the excellence of the work done under his
direction, and was already employed on considerable undertakings.
In 1834 he was called on to execute works at the Bank of France and
on the buildings of several railway companies : in fact by this time
his success as an employer of labour was definitively assured.

Even had Leclaire done nothing more than this, he would have
deserved a high place among the heroes of ' self-help,' who, though
destitute of all extraneous aid, have by innate force and indomitable
perseverance fought their way from penury to posts of industrial
command. But Leclaire was far indeed from contenting himself
with the part of a mere exploiteur of other men's labour. No sooner
was his own position as an industrial chief assured, than, with rare
width and generosity of view, he threw himself into plans and efforts
for raising the condition of his own workmen, and, ultimately, of the
wage-earning class in general. I have said that the scope of this
article permits me to dwell only on those steps taken by Leclaire
which directly forwarded the principle of participation ; it is, how-
ever, impossible to pass over without incidental notice an innovation
of his in a different field which has permanently benefited a whole
8 Leclaire, Biographic d'un Hommc L'tile. Paris, Sandoz & Fischbacher, 1878.

372 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

group of workers — the substitution, in the painting trade, of white of
zinc for white of lead. Leclaire, having convinced himself that, as
long as an active poison formed an ingredient in the paints employed,
the ravages which it inflicted on the workmen of his house could only
be palliated, never effectually counteracted, resolved to make search
for some innocuous substitute for white of lead. Though totally
ignorant of chemistry, he succeeded, with the help of experts whom
he called to his aid, in discovering how to utilise white of zinc for
this purpose, i.e. how to procure it sufficiently cheap, and make it
dry with sufficient rapidity. Armed with these results he entirely
suppressed the use of white of lead in his establishment, and thereby,
as far as his own workmen were concerned, put a stop for the future
to * painter's colic' and all its train of attendant and consequent
miseries. I am assured by M. Marquot that the white of zinc now
exclusively used by the house is not only perfectly innocuous to the
health of the painters, but that work executed with it is both fresher
and more durable than that done with the old deleterious ingredient.

Decisively efficacious as was the sympathy which Leclaire felt for
the physical sufferings of his workmen, it was the precariousness of
the tenure under which they gained their livelihood that caused him
the most poignant solicitude. His attention was early fixed on the
calamitous effect which the sale of a business has upon the old hands
who have been employed under it, when the new master dismisses
without mercy every workman whose appearance indicates a dimi-
nishing capacity for labour. ' A dismissal of this kind,' wrote Leclaire
in 1865, * inflicts a terrible blow on the workman who undergoes it.
From this fatal day he acquires the sad conviction that, go where he
may to ask for work, the conclusion will be instantly drawn from his
face and bearing that he is too old to do the work well.'

Knowing that a workman with children or infirm relatives to
maintain could not make the least saving for the time of old age,
and perfectly aware of the fate which, on his own retirement, would
overtake many of those whose labour had contributed to place him in
a position to pass his old days happily, Leclaire centred his attention
on schemes for supplying the more providently disposed among his
workmen with the means of an assured future. The first impulse in
the direction which his plan ultimately took came from a M. Fregier,
who, in 1 835, told Leclaire that he saw no way to get rid of the
-antagonism which existed between workman and master except the
participation of the iwrkman in the profits of the master. From
this time forward Leclaire was constantly c cudgelling his brains ' (se
/rapper le front) to find the best means of bringing this idea into
practical operation.

In 1842 he prepared the ground for his first experiment by a
very remarkable proceeding. Frauds were at that time numerous in
the painting trade, and Leclaire foresaw that his scheme of participa-

1880. A REAL 'SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY: 373

tion would be set down as an attempt to enlist the cupidity of work-
men by the prospect of illicit gain. Accordingly he proceeded to
publish several pamphlets, exposing in the most unreserved manner
the secrets of dozens of ways in which high pay could be got for bad
work even on orders secured by enormous reductions in price. By
these publications Leclaire, to use his own words, ' compelled people
to be honest,' and made it next to impossible for his workmen to
swerve from the rule which he constantly impressed upon them — that
the most complete honesty should characterise all their relations with
the customers of the house.

On the 15th of February, 1842, Leclaire announced his intention
of dividing among a certain number of his ouvriers and employes a
part of the profits produced by the work done. The police, who saw
in this nothing but a deeply-laid scheme for enticing workmen away
from other masters, did their best to thwart Leclaire's presumed
designs by prohibiting a meeting of his workmen which he had asked
permission to hold for the purpose of explaining the advantages
attaching to his plan of participation. The meeting was of course
abandoned, but Leclaire gave notice that the division of profits for
the year 1841 would take place in accordance with his previous an-
nouncement. A section of his workmen had from the first distrusted
his offers, and they were supported in that attitude by a newspaper,
L1 Atelier, which accused him of manoeuvring in this fashion in order
to reduce wages. When, however, Leclaire, after collecting his
participants, 44 in number, threAv upon the table a bag of gold con-
taining 11,886 francs (475?.), and then and there distributed to each
his share, averaging over 101. per man, it was found impossible to
withstand the ' object-lesson ' thus given. All hesitation vanished,
and was replaced by unbounded confidence. On the profits of the
succeeding years larger sums were divided among increasing numbers
of participants. Thus, during the six years from 1842 to 1847
inclusive, an average of 750L was annually divided among an average
of 80 persons. The share assigned to each participant was proportional
to the sum which he had earned in the shape of wages during the
year for which the assessment was made. There were, accordingly,
wide differences in the amounts of the bonuses severally received, but
the average, for the period above named, came to a little over 91. a
year per head.

In 1838 Leclaire had established a 'Mutual Aid Society ' for the
workmen and employes of his house, which was supported by monthly
subscriptions from its members and offered the advantages of an
ordinary benefit club. Its statutes provided that a division of the
funds of the society might be demanded at the end of fifteen years from
the date of its establishment. Accordingly a liquidation took^place
in 1853, and the society was, in the following year, reconstituted on
an entirely new basis. Subscriptions from the members ceased, and

VOL. VIII.— No. 43. C C

374 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

the resources of the Society were thenceforth to consist in a share of
profits to be freely given by the house at its annual stock-taking.

In 1860 Leclaire, bent on realising his idea of a provision for
workmen in their old age, proposed to the members of the Mutual
Aid Society that they should relinquish their right to a future division
of its funds, and consent to the establishment of retiring pensions.
He now found himself in presence of a determined opposition. A
capital of about 1,6001. had accumulated since 1854, and the persons
interested in a division declined to forego the considerable sums
which it would bring them. The issue was exceedingly critical, for,
had the funds of the Society been again dissipated, the most charac-
teristic feature of Leclaire's scheme could hardly have been developed.
He had committed a most serious oversight in allowing the right to
a subsequent division of funds to remain on the statutes of the
Society after its reconstitution in 1854, and he seemed now on the
point of being worsted in the decisive battle of his campaign. For-
tunately, for the best interests of his opponents even more than for
his own, he had reserved to himself the means of victory. He pointed
out that, though the members of the Society undoubtedly possessed
the right of compelling a division of its funds, the statutes had
conferred on himself an unlimited power of introducing new members
who would be entitled to full shares in the division. By threatening
to make a swamping use of this constitutional weapon, and also to
withhold the annual subvention hitherto paid by the house, Leclaire
induced the recalcitrant members of the Society to give way and
consent to the creation of a permanent association and the establish-
ment of retiring pensions.

The next step was to confer on the Society thus reorganised an
independent legal status, and, at the same time, to link its interests
indissolubly with those of the house from which it sprang. It was
registered as an incorporated society, and made a perpetual sleeping
partner (commanditaire) in the firm of ' Leclaire et Compagnie.'
The words of the founder on handing over the new statutes to the
members in 1864 are well worthy of citation here : —

The members of the Mutual Aid Society are no longer mere journeymen who
act like machines and quit their work before the clock has sounded its last stroke.
All have "become partners working on their own account: in virtue of this nothing
in the workshop ought to be indifferent to them — all should attend to the preser-
vation of the tools and materials as if they were the special keepers of them. . . .
If you wish that I should leave this world with a contented heart, it is necessary
that you should have realised the dream of my whole life ; it is necessary that,
after regular conduct and assiduous labour, a workman and his wife should have
the wherewithal to live in peace without being a burden upon any one.4

4 ' Lcs membres de la Society de secours mutuels ne sont plus de simples jour-
naliers qui agissent machinalement et qui quittent 1'ouvrage avant que 1'horloge ait
frappe son dernier coup de marteau. Tous sont devenus des associes qui travaillent
pour leur propre compte ; a ce titre rien dans 1'atelier ne doit leur etre indifferent :
tous doivent veiller au soin des outils et des marchandises comme s'ils en £taient

1880. A REAL 'SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY: 375

In 1865 Leclaire, who had already devolved the greater part of
his duties on the colleague designated as his successor, M. Defournaux,
retired to the village of Herblay, near Paris, with the avowed in-
tention of accustoming his young institution to walk alone. The
following year saw him take a further step in the same direction by
resigning his post as President of the Mutual Aid Society in favour
of M. Charles Kobert, who has occupied it ever since with conspicuous
energy and devotion. Leclaire's retirement into country life led,
however, to no cessation, but only to a change, of activity. He was
at once appointed Maire of Herblay, and spent the two years and a
half during which he held office in untiring efforts for the benefit of
those placed under his administration. Most of his projects of village
reform were successfully carried into effect, but that to which he
attached cardinal importance, the application to agriculture of a
system of industrial partnership, was not destined to pass, in his hands,
beyond the form of an elaborate paper scheme in which he unavail-
ingly urged it on the inhabitants of Herblay.

We have seen that, in 1864, Leclaire gave a permanent legal
status to the Mutual Aid Society connected with his house. In 1869
he impressed a like character of perpetuity on the organisation of
the house itself. A formal deed enacted that thenceforth the net
profits of the business should be divided, in certain fixed proportions,
between the managing partners, the Mutual Aid Society, and the
workmen forming the regular staff of the house. This decisive act
of incorporation was preceded by "an elaborate inquiry, in which every
member of the establishment was invited to take part. A printed
list of questions on the principal issues involved in the approaching
settlement was addressed to each workman, and the answers to these
questions, of which about 200 sets were sent in, were carefully
analysed and reported on by a committee appointed for that purpose.
The final scheme proposed by Leclaire, which was based on the
recommendations of this committee, received the approval of the
workmen assembled in a general meeting, and, on the 6th of January,
1869, became the legally binding charter of the house.

Leclaire lived to see his institution pass unscathed through the
ordeals of the siege of Paris, and of the revolutionary conflict of the
Commune. During the former calamity, though no longer Maire of
Herblay, he remained at the village in order to support the inhabi-
tants under the rigours of the German occupation. On the outbreak
of the latter he boldly re-entered the capital, determined, ' if Paris
was to be destroyed, to be buried under its ruins with his workmen.'

In the summer of 1872 the heroic old man's health rapidly gave

spccialement Ics gardiens. ... Si vous voulez que je parte de ce monde le cceur
content, il faut que vous ayez realise le reve de toute ma vie ; il faut qu'apres une
conduite reguliere et un travail assidu un ouvrier et sa femme puissent, dans leur
vieillesse, avoir de quoi vivre tranquilles sans etre & charge a personne.'

c c 2

376 Till-: NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

way, and symptoms of the disease which was soon to carry him off
began to show themselves. He was able, however, to be present at
the annual meeting of his house on the 23rd of June of that year,
and to learn that, as the result of the recent stock-taking, 1,350£.
would be paid over to the Mutual Aid Society, and 2,700Z. divided
in bonuses to labour. A week before his death, when disease was
about to lay its paralysing finger on his restless brain, Leclaire expe-
rienced his last earthly happiness in hearing that on the previous
day 2,000£. had been actually distributed among upwards of 600
workmen, and that there was good reason to believe that the sums so
allotted would be either carefully laid by, or else applied to the wisest
immediate purposes in the homes of the recipients.

Leclaire died at Herblay on the 13th of July, 1872, of apoplexy,
in his seventy-second year, and was buried at Paris in the cemetery
of Montmartre amidst the tears and outspoken grief of those to whom
his life's best energies had been devoted.

In describing the present state of Leclaire's institution, I shall
have to dwell with special emphasis on the moral achievements
brought about by the administrative machinery with which he
supplied it. But before passing from the founder's life to its results,
I may with advantage state what, from a purely economic point of
view, is sufficiently striking, that during the period from 1 842, when
he first established participation, until his death in 1872, he had
paid over to the Mutual Aid Society and to his workmen, directly,
sums amounting in all to not less than 44,000£. This was done, too,
without impoverishing himself, for he left behind him a private for-
tune of 48,OOOL

Leclaire's foundation consists, as has been already seen, of two
institutions, closely connected indeed, but separately administered, and
capable of independent action — the house, or business-undertaking
proper, and the Mutual Aid Society. The capital of the house
amounts to 16,000^., one half of which is the property of the two
managing partners, MM. Redouly et Marquot, while the other half
is held by the Society as sleeping partner. There is also a reserve
fund of 4,000?., which can be drawn upon in case of an emergency.
The Society possessed, on the 2nd of April 1880, 43,99 H., of which
about one-third is placed in securities guaranteed by the State, and
about two-thirds invested in, or lent upon interest to, the house.

The annual profits made by the house are distributed as follows.
The two managing partners receive 240Z. each as salaries for super-
intendence. Interest at 5 per cent, is paid to them and to the
Society on their respective capitals. Of the remaining net profit one
quarter goes to MM. Redouly et Marquot jointly, and another
quarter to the funds of the Society ; the remaining half is divided
among all the workmen and others employed by the house, in sums
proportionate to the amounts which they have respectively earned

1880.

A REAL 'SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY:

377

in wages, paid at the ordinary market rate, during the year for

which the division is being made.

It is important to notice that participation in profits in proportion
to wages earned is the right not only of the corps of picked workmen
who form the regular staff of the house, but also of the apprentices,
and even of every casual auxiliary picked up, perhaps only for a single
day's work, at the street corner. M. Marquot pointed out to me in
the books of the house instances of this minute application of the
principle, e.g. one where a man who had done but ten hours' work in
1877 received at the end of that year 1 franc 15 centimes as profits on
6 francs 50 centimes earned as wages.

Down to 1871 the benefits of participation were restricted to the
workmen who formed the permanent staff of the house, but in that
year they were thrown open to every man in its employ. The im-
pulse which led to the introduction of this generous measure came,
M. Marquot informed me, from a quarter to which Leclaire was ordi-
narily little disposed to look for inspiration. A socialistic workman
not belonging to his establishment had tauntingly said to him in
1870, ' Your house is nothing but a box of little masters, who make
money out of the others.' 5 Leclaire felt the force of this criticism,
and determined to make employment by the house and participation
in profits rigorously coextensive expressions.

Through the kindness of M. Charles Eobert I am enabled to pre-
sent here a table showing the amounts paid in wages and in bonuses
to labour from 1870 to 1879.6 The sums are given in English money
true to the nearest pound.

Tear

Number of
Participants

Total of Wages

Total of Bonuses
to Labour

1870-1871

758 •

16,257

2,331

1871-1872 '

1,038

22,260

2,700

1872-1873

976

29,083

3,530

1873-1874

633

20,327

2,580

1874-1875

827

24,012

3,160

1875-1876

1,052

27,862

4,000

1876-1877

1,081

27,943

4,500

1877-1878

826

25,820

4,600

1878-1879

1,032

28,546

5,200

These bonuses range from 12 per cent, to 18 per cent, on the
amount of wages earned. They average, for the nine years selected,
15 per cent., a very substantial annual addition to income.

The Mutual Aid Society confers even greater advantages.
Besides performing the functions of an ordinary benefit club, it

5 ' Votre maison n'est qu'une boite de petits patrons qui exploitent les autres.'

6 I learn by a letter just (June 16) received from M. Charles Robert, that the
balance-sheet for the last pay-day (June 13) assigns G,400Z. for distribution among
1,125 workmen, on 34,715Z. earned by them in wages during the year ending
the 15th of February 1880.

378 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

bestows a retiring life-pension of 40Z. per annum on every member
who has attained the age of fifty and has worked twenty years for the
house, and it continues the payment of half this annuity to the widow
of such pensioner during her life. It further insures the life of every
member for a sum of 40Z., to be handed over to his family at his
death.

A feature of extraordinary generosity which distinguishes this
Society is the following provision. If a workman, even though he be
neither member of the Society, nor even on the list of those perma-
nently employed by the house, meets, while actually engaged in its
service, with a disabling accident, he becomes at once entitled to the
full retiring life-pension of 40Z., and, if the accident results in his
death, a half-pension reverts to his widow. At the annual meeting
of the Society on the 4th of April of this year, I witnessed a striking
application of this generous statute. A poor fellow casually called in
for an odd job, who never did a stroke of work for the house before,
had met with an accident which within a few days put an end to his
life. The facts of the case, including a medical certificate as to the
cause of death, having been briefly put before the meeting by the
President of the Society, the assembled members, by a unanimous
show of hands, at once voted to the widow for her life the half-pension
of 201.

It results from the preceding statements that a workman in Le-
claire's house finds within his reach the following economic benefits,
none of which he can look for in an establishment organised on the
ordinary system : —

1. A yearly bonus of 15 per cent, on his aggregate wages.

2. All the advantages of an ordinary benefit club.

3. A life-pension of 40£. from his fiftieth year of age and twen-
tieth year of work, half of which is continued to his widow for her
life.

4. 40L payable to his family at his death.

5. The certainty that, if disabled from work by accident en-
countered when on duty, he will be placed beyond the reach of want,
and that, if he be killed, his family will not be left without some per-
manent means of support.

Conspicuous as are these material advantages, they are far from
constituting the whole, or even the principal, good attaching to
membership in Leclaire's beneficent institution. Its founder re-
cognised in the principle of participation not merely a means of im-
proving the pecuniary situation of the wage-earning class, but also a
powerful lever for raising their moral condition, and with it, of course,
their whole social status. Accordingly he sought to bring that prin-
ciple into operation in such a form as to constitute an intellectual,
moral, and almost religious training for all who came into contact

1880. A REAL 'SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY: 379

•with it. A few of the main provisions by which this result has been
attained with signal success shall here be briefly .described. Those
among the whole number of men employed by the house who prove
themselves to be first-rate workmen and of unexceptionable moral
conduct can claim admittance into what is called the Noyau — the
kernel or core — of the establishment. The members of the Noyau,
who at present number 122 men, possess an influential voice in the
administration of the house. They form the constituency by whom
the comite de conciliation, which is for most purposes the governing
body of the house, is annually elected. The two managing partners
are ex-ofjicio chairmen of this committee, and with them sit eight
other members chosen by and out of the Noyau, five of whom must
be workmen, and three clerks or other superior employes. The
comite de conciliation conduct the examination of candidates for
admission to the Noyau. On the death or resignation of a managing
partner they nominate his successor for election by the assembled
Noyau, and they alone are authorised to pronounce the definitive
dismissal, for misconduct, of a member of the Noyau, and the con-
sequent forfeiture of all the claims which he may have on the Mutual
Aid Society.7 The powers of this body stop short, however, of
executive functions. The business direction of the house is placed
exclusively in the hands of the two managing partners, who hold half
the capital, and undertake personal liability for losses, which does
not attach to the workmen except in an indirect manner through
their interest in the reserve fund. In order to render possible the
election as managing partner of the best qualified man in the house,
irrespectively of his pecuniary circumstances, it is provided that,,
on the occurrence of a vacancy, the capital of the outgoing partner
shall not be compulsorily withdrawn until the expiration of such a
period as shall enable it to be replaced out of the sum accruing to
his successor as share in profits from the date of the latter's appoint-
ment onward. During this interval, which at the present rate of
profits would not exceed three years in the case of the senior, or five
in that of the junior partner, interest at 5 per cent, on the retained
capital would be paid to the ex-partner or his representative, but no
share of profits.

The conditions of admission to the Mutual Aid Society are
membership of the Noyau, five years of work for the house, good
conduct, and freedom from any chronic disease. The administration
is in the hands of a conseil de famille, consisting of a president,
six officers annually elected by the whole body of members, and
twelve ' visitors ' chosen by yearly turns from the roll of the Society.

7 So keen is the sense of disgrace incurred by an unworthy appearance before
this body when sitting judicially, that men brought to its bar to be thus judged and
sentenced by their own comrades have been known to shed tears like children, and
be unable to utter a word in their own defence.

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

These latter, besides taking part during their year of office in the
proceedings of the managing council, are charged with very specific
and important duties of brotherly kindness towards such members
of the Society as, by reason of sickness or distress of any kind, stand
in need of its active intervention. The visitors serve only one year
at a time; the officers, on the contrary, are re-eligible. The
conseil de famille regulates the admission of new members to the
Society, the administration of aid during sickness and at death, and
the assignment and payment of pensions, life insurances, &c. It
also causes the books of the house to be annually inspected, in order
to be able to certify that the share of profits due to the Society has
been fully paid over.

The property of the Society was on the 4th of April last 43,99 U.,
the number of its members 92, and that of its pensioners 42.

It is obvious that the organisation roughly sketched out in the
preceding pages must by its very nature put those who co-operate in
working it through an invaluable school of practical training in
morality and public virtue. To have obtained access to the Noyau
and the Mutual Aid Society by good conduct and active self-improve-
ment, to have discharged the 'visitor's' duty in the homes of
suffering comrades, to have sat on committees, made and received
reports, contributed to important decisions, perhaps even to have
been entrusted, as a member of the comite de conciliation, with
weighty disciplinary powers and attendant responsibilities — every
such step is itself a lesson in self-control, in humanity, in impartial
conduct and judicial integrity. The workman in Leclaire's unpre-
tentious foundation shares in fact the moral discipline which Mr.
Mill has described as attaching to the participation of the private
citizen in public functions. ' He is called upon to weigh interests
not his own ; to be guided, in case of conflicting claims, by another
rule than his private partialities ; to apply at every turn principles
and maxims which have for their reason of existence the general
good ; and he usually finds associated with him in the same work
minds more familiarised than his own with these ideas and opera-
tions, whose study it will be to supply reasons to his understanding
and stimulation to his feeling for the general good.' 8

With minds expanded and invigorated in this practical school,
the members of Leclaire's house have come to grasp firmly and
apply unhesitatingly conclusions which, though no doubt direct
consequences of the principle of participation, would hardly be recog-
nised as inseparably bound to it, except by minds familiar with at
least the elements of political economy.

They know that the more expeditiously work is despatched, the
greater will be the amount of business which the house can get
through in the course of the year, and the greater the return on

• Representative Government, p. 68.

1880. A REAL 'SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY: 381

labour which will accrue to each individual workman. Accordingly,
abandoning the system of organised waste of time which was thought
an excellent expedient for thwarting the master under the old system,
they work with self-sustained energy during the hours of labour.

They know that if the work executed is always of the very best
kind, the reputation of the house and their earnings will remain at
the highest point, but that every piece of work badly done tends to
drive away its custom and prejudice their own interests. Accordingly
the scamping of work and the introduction of inferior or defective
materials, in fact every form of trade dishonesty, is sternly discoun-
tenanced by the men themselves.

They know that the wanton destruction of tools or materials is
merely one way of throwing their own money into the sea. Accord-
ingly this proceeding, which has a certain zest about it when thought
to be practised to the sole detriment of a non-participating master,
is seen in its true character and replaced by a vigilant watch exer-
cised over every article of property belonging to the house.

In these and numberless other ways the feeling of identity of
interest which animates the establishment has wonderfully softened
the bitter spirit of antagonism towards the possessing class to which
no men are more disposed than the Parisian ouvriers. The following
incident strikingly illustrates the intensity with which this sentiment
of solidarity is capable of acting. A workman, dismissed a few years
before for having assailed with abuse one of the managing partners,
applied in 1876 for readmission to the Noyau. The formerly
offended partner and his colleague readily consented, but in spite of
the efforts made by the latter as chairman of the comite de concilia-
tion, the other members of that body, on which representatives of
the workmen are in a majority, decided unanimously that the former
offender should remain permanently excluded from the Noyau, on
the grounds that, having permitted himself to insult a partner of the
house, no indulgence ought to be shown him ; that the rules must
be respected ; and that it was better to sacrifice the interest of one
man than to compromise the general interest.

M. Charles Kobert informed me that, after a long experience of
the proceedings of the Noyau, he considered the appointments made
by them to have been uniformly good and to have justified the very
great trust reposed in that body by Leclaire. In particular he
referred to their recent selection, at a general meeting and without
any official candidature, of a committee for adjudging prizes to the
apprentices for progress in technical study, as having been extremely
well managed ; great care having been taken to place no one on the
committee who was personally connected with any of the competitors.

Of the general moral improvement now manifest throughout the
house, M. Marquot, who was private secretary to the founder and
has enjoyed the amplest opportunities of watching this progress,

382 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

spoke to me in the strongest terms. The house- painters were, he
said, at the time when Leclaire commenced his efforts on their be-
half, notoriously the most dilatory, intemperate, debauched, and
intractable workmen to be found in Paris. The members of the
Noyau — the ' Old Guard ' of the house, as Mr. Hall has most
happily designated them — are now greatly in request among archi-
tects in consequence of their exceptional possession of diametrically
opposite qualities.

The introduction of participation by workmen in the profits of
employers admits of being recommended on purely economic grounds
as a benefit to both the parties concerned. The increased activity of
the workman, his greater care of the tools and materials entrusted to
him, and the consequent possibility of saving a considerable part of
the cost of superintendence, enable profits to be obtained under a
participating system which would not accrue under the established
routine. If these extra profits were to be wholly divided among
those whose labour produced them, the employer would still be as
well off as he is under the existing system. But, assuming that he
distributes among his workmen only a portion of this fresh fund, and
retains the rest himself, both he and they will at the end of the
year find their account in the new principle introduced into their
business relations.

It was on this tangible ground of mutual advantage that Leclaire
by preference took his stand when publicly defending the system
incorporated in his house. He constantly insisted that his conduct
had been for his own advantage, and that it was better for him to
earn a hundred francs and give fifty of them to his workmen than
to earn only twenty-five francs and keep them all for himself. 1 1
maintain,' he wrote in 1865, 'that if I had remained in the beaten
track of routine, I should not have arrived, even by fraudulent
means, at a position comparable to that which I have made for
myself.'

This may be fully admitted as far as concerns the mere stimula-
tion of the workman's energy by the prospect of increased gain ; but
the most superficial glance at the great institution reared by Leclaire
suffices to show that his real aims were of an entirely different
order from those of the self-interested speculator with whom, in his
anxiety to avoid the dangerous reputation of an innovating visionary,
he professed to identify himself. He was at bottom, as M. Robert
assured me, and as is indeed evident from many passages in his
published writings, an ardent social reformer, passionately desiring
the emancipation of the wage-supported classes from the precarious
situation in which the present relations between capital and labour
hold them bound as though by some inflexible law of nature. It was
with an eye consciously fixed on this distant goal that he thought
and wrote and laboured in the immediate interests of his own work-

1880. A REAL 'SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY: 383

men. As was the case with so many of those who have applied
genius to philanthropy, the fountain of Leclaire's enthusiasm was
essentially religious, though of a kind unconnected with the special
dogmas of any particular Christian body. How intensely he held
the ' great commandment ' of Christian morality appears from the
following words written in sight of death when he felt ' sincerity ' to
be ' more than ever a duty : ' —

I believe in the God who has written in our hearts the law of duty, the law of
progress, the law of the sacrifice of oneself for others. I submit myself to his will,
I bow before the mysteries of his power and of our destiny. I am the humble dis-
ciple of him who has told us to do to others what we would have others do to us,
and to love our neighbour as ourselves : it is in this sense that I desire to remain a
Christian until my last breath.9

We have seen what one unaided man, imbued with this victorious
spirit, was able to contribute towards the solution of the great social
problem of our day — how, by bettering the relations between capital
and labour, to assure to the toiling masses a self-respecting present
and a hopeful future. I cannot believe that this consummation will
ever be reached through the conflicts of opposing self-interests : it
can only be from ' economic science enlightened by the spirit of the
Gospel, 10 and pointing over the heads of lower antagonisms to a
higher unity, that an ultimate solution is to be looked for.

SEDLEY TAYLOR.

9 ' Je crois au Dieu qui a ecrit dans nos creurs la loi du devoir, la loi du progres,
la loi du sacrifice de soi-m6me pour autrui. Je me soumets a sa volonte, je m'incline
devant les mysteres de sa puissance et de notre destinSe. Je suis 1'humble disciple
de celui qui nous a dit de faire aux autres ce que nous voudrions qu'il nous f ut fait,
et d'aimer notre prochain comme nous-memes ; c'est ainsi que je veux rester chretien
jusqu'a moh dernier soupir.'

10 M. Charles Eobert, La Question Sotialefp. 43. Paris, Henri Bellaire.

384 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

A FEW MORE WORDS ON NATIONAL
INSURANCE.

THE interest which was excited by a speech that I made last June in
the House of Lords upon National Insurance, the criticisms which it
provoked, the discussion which has since followed, and, lastly, the
courtesy which has placed these pages at my disposal, induce me to
make a few observations on the subject, not with the intention of
arguing out all objections, or making any complete statement of the
question, but rather in the hope of carrying on the discussion a stage
further, and of showing at least that, whatever difficulties may beset
the proposal of a general and compulsory insurance, the question is
not to be disposed of by the simple allegation that it is chimerical
and impracticable. ' My aim,' as Mr. Burke once said on a larger
question, ' is to bring the matter into more public discussion. Let
the sagacity of others work upon it.' I will only add that in the
observations which I made in the House of Lords, and which were,
perhaps, somewhat too briefly and generally reported to convey my
exact meaning, I was careful not to commit myself to any figures,
or details, or particular modus operandi : and I propose in this
paper, for obvious reasons, to confine myself to much the same line.
Let me, however, in the first place, render justice where justice is
due. The idea of a National Insurance which should secure to the
poorer classes a moderate provision in old age and in time of sickness,
and which should have an operation wide enough to enable us to
dispense with a large part at least of our system of poor relief, is not
a new one. In various forms it has been frequently discussed ; it was
contemplated in the earlier Friendly Society Acts ; it has, within the
scope of private enterprise, been attempted by philanthropists like
Mr. Curwen, of Cumberland, in the last century ; and it has to some
extent been practically carried into effect by some of the Friendly
Societies and great commercial companies ; but the credit of giving it
distinct shape by investing it with details sufficiently full and precise
to bring it into the arena of public discussion belongs to Mr. Blackley,
the rector of North Waltham, Hants.

It is probable, nay certain, that if it ever receives a legislative

1880. NATIONAL INSURANCE. 385

sanction, many, and perhaps most, of those details will undergo great
alteration in the crucible of public discussion.

But this is the condition to which all measures of importance must
submit. There must be a preliminary and definite proposal, and
no one has a right to expect that the first and final form of such a
measure should be the same. Time, debate, the sifting of details,
the removal of misconception, of exaggerated advantages or diffi-
culties, and, lastly, the familiarising men's minds with the subject, are
the necessary steps by which alone a great change can be brought
about and be made beneficial.

The inducements to attempt at least some changes in this case are
great, though differing in character and degree. They may, perhaps,
be said to be, first, our system of poor relief; and, next, the position
of a large number of the Friendly Societies. The authors of the
early legislation on Friendly Societies, it cannot be doubted, hoped
that these beneficent institutions would go far to relieve the burden
of the poor law ; but this hope has been to a considerable extent
frustrated by a variety of causes too long here to discuss. It is
enough for my present purpose to say, that our wasteful, irregular,
and mischievous expenditure of more than 2,500,OOOZ. per annum in
the form of out-of-door relief, together with the failure of a large
proportion of the Friendly Societies to discharge the objects for which
they exist, create a difficulty and an evil the magnitude of which can
hardly be exaggerated, and which justify the careful consideration,
at least, of any remedy which has in it a fair show of reason.

It is quite unnecessary here to enter upon the thorny question
of poor relief. With all its anomalies, defects, and dangers, it' has
so interwoven itself with the public life of this country, that any
reduction or change must be made gradually with great caution and
tenderness ; but it is, of course, important always to remember that
that relief consists of two very different kinds — in-door and out-of-
door — the whole, with its accessories, amounting to the enormous sum
of 8,000,000£. per annum ; that the in-door relief, subject to changes
in the direction of better control and more regularity, must probably
long continue ; but that the out-of-door relief, subject to just and
humane consideration for existing lives, may one day be very largely
reduced, if not wholly extinguished ; and that it is on this last branch
of poor law expenditure — the out-of-door maintenance — that the
adoption of some such principle as that on which I am now writing
may be made most effectively to operate.

Of the objections which may be or have been urged against this
proposal, and which greatly vary in their value, some have been very
clearly dealt with by Mr. Blackley in a recent article in this Eeview,
some have been alluded to in an article of last month by Mr. Tremen-
heere. I may, however, even at the risk of seeming to traverse the
same ground, say a few words more on what appear to me or to others

386 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

matter at least for careful consideration in this question, only pre-
mising that I approach it rather in the spirit of an enquirer and even
a friendly critic than of an advocate.

1. It was objected in the House of Lords, and it has been objected
elsewhere, that this proposal must lead to an inquisitorial interference
on the part of the State, and to a vast increase of centralisation. I
certainly am not one to underrate the risks or encourage the advances
of bureaucratic interference. The encroachments of the State upon
voluntary action are in these days often quite as unnecessary as they
are mischievous ; but it is idle to argue on these subjects as if we
were at the beginning of the eighteenth instead of at the end of the
nineteenth century, to cry out against that which already exists and
cannot be undone, or to turn catch- words into supposed principles.
Whether we like it or not, State interference has grown with the
growth of wealth and all the complicated machinery of modern life
in England, and, for a time at least, the tares and the wheat are in-
separably mingled. The child in his cradle must be guarded by
vaccination against disease ; a few years later he must be instructed in
particular subjects and branches of education ; and when finally he
comes to man's estate he will not be allowed to live, to sleep, to eat,
to drink, to read, or to travel as he pleases, but will become the
creature of all that intricate protection which Acts for model lodging-
houses and libraries, public analysts, sale of meat, and many other
public institutions have built up — perhaps even, before long, Parlia-
ment will fence in his moral inclinations by restrictions on the use of
intoxicating liquors at certain times or in certain places. The atmo-
sphere, in fact, of State interference in which men live is so thick
around them that they forget how artificial it is, forget the drift of
modern legislation and thought, forget how inextricably this action
of the State is already bound up with their daily lives. I certainly
will not say that tin's is pure gain ; but it is pedantic and idle, when
we have travelled so far on the road, to refuse to go a little further,
when that one step — if, indeed, it be a step — is attended with ad-
vantages that none will seriously deny.

2. Much apprehension appears to be awakened in the minds of
many who have long ago accepted this state of tilings, by the idea of
compulsion forming a part of this scheme ; and, whatever modifica-
tions may be made, I am afraid that compulsion is a necessary part of
it. It will be readily admitted that, a pi*iori, all compulsion is
objectionable. It is morally better that men should do their duty
from a sense of right and conscience, as it is practically more conve-
nient that the State should be spared the necessity of an intervention
to induce them so to do it. But the first of these conditions often
fails ; and unless the second is invoked, the public obligation with all
its -consequences is cast upon the industrious, thrifty, and deserving
part of the community, whilst the lazy, thriftless, and unworthy go

1880. NATIONAL INSURANCE. 387

scot free. It cannot be too often repeated, that generosity to the
wasteful and profligate means injustice to the industrious and honest.
Liberty is the first of political and social blessings, but liberty does
not mean a license to every one to do as he pleases ; and it is no cur-
tailment of liberty, in its true sense, that men should be deprived of
the power of becoming paupers, and of living on the charity or the
hard-won earnings of those who often, with no superior advantages,
have, by a manly and lifelong struggle with fortune, kept themselves
and their families above the level of dependence.

Those who raise this outcry against compelling the lazy and
wasteful to make the necessary provision at a time of life when it
can be made with the least effort, seem to forget that, as regards
poor relief in England, we have already, in its most odious and unjust
form, compulsion on the thrifty to support the thriftless.

3. It has been urged, in the House of Lords and elsewhere,
that a system of National Insurance, enforced by law and accepted
reluctantly, will not inculcate thrift as a moral principle upon a
thriftless generation. It is very likely ; and I am not aware that
any one has rested this proposal upon such a defence. Even in
Utopia and in Plato's Republic the policeman cannot make men act
on virtuous motives ; he can only compel obedience to virtuous and
wise legislation ; but every moralist knows that, where the primary
motives to right action fail, the secondary are not to be rejected, and
that, under the moulding influences of time and habit, the indirect
sanctions and inducements of human conduct often become powerful
and direct. So here it is easy to conceive that the compulsory con-
tribution to a National Insurance fund, which in one generation
would be felt to be a burden and a hardship, in the next, when it
had become customary and had found its level, might meet with a
general acquiescence, especially when the weight would rest on a
numerically limited class of young men with good wages and without
homes or families to maintain.

4. A more substantial difficulty, however, exists in making the
scheme applicable to all classes. In the House of Lords my ob-
servations had mainly reference to the agricultural labourer ; but it
is unnecessary to argue that the justice and the success alike of a
system of National Insurance depend upon all classes besides the
agricultural being included in its purview.

That there may be some difficulties with the lowest and rather
migratory population of towns, and perhaps even greater difficulties
with some ratepaying classes not very far above the level of pauperism,
it is impossible to deny ; but I see no reason to think them of an
insurmountable character. The first class is one which yearly is
becoming more and more amenable to those influences which affect
the more settled parts of the community ; and the second class, if once
they can be brought to recognise the overwhelmingly large compen-

388 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

sation which they will receive in a reduction of the poor rate, will
scarcely hesitate to exchange a large and indefinite for a small and
fixed payment.

Looking to the great gain to every ratepayer in the kingdom by
the establishment of a National Insurance fund, I see no substantial
hardship that all, whatever their class or profession may be, should
pay their quota towards the fund between the ages, say, of 17 and
21 ; and, in an actuarial point of view, no one can doubt that
such payments would not only secure the success of the scheme, but
would enable the State to reduce to a very low figure the sum re-
quired from each individual. To meet an objection entertained on
this point, a suggestion has been made that the State should accept,
in lieu of the present payment, a guarantee from those who can show
good grounds for believing that they will never appeal to support
from the poor rate. It is a suggestion which may very properly be
considered, but my impression is that it would open up greater
difficulties than the original proposal. Such persons would be like
the honorary members of a Friendly Society who never pay their
subscriptions. Two things, however, seem tolerably clear in this
branch of the question : first, that an agricultural labourer can, under
ordinary circumstances, easily save, before the age of 21, a considerable
sum which may safely, I think, be put as high as 151. ; and, secondly,
that there is no impossibility, as has been represented, in deducting
that amount, if necessary, from his wages through the agency of the
employer. Such deductions are habitually made both abroad and in
England ; and stoppages of pay in the army, superannuations in the
police force, deductions in the Civil Service at home, in India, and in
some of the Colonies — above all, school fees taken out of the wages of
factory hands through the agency of the employers, and by employers
themselves, who are also landlords, for the rent of their workmen's
cottages — are some few of the many illustrations that might be quoted.
Constant practice, therefore, shows that there need be no substantial
difficulty here ; whilst, as regards any rise in the wages which it is ap-
prehended that the employer may incur as a consequence and equiva-
lent of the amount deducted, there is probably less risk than is supposed
from the fact that the lads whom this provision would affect will repre-
sent in each parish but a small minority, and will be in competition
with all the male population above 21 years of age. In such a
case as this the ordinary conditions of the labour market are not
likely to be disturbed.

Not more weighty are, I think, the objections which have been
raised on the ground that a sufficiently minute and careful registration
of the individuals, who have paid or are in process of paying their
quota to the Insurance fund, is impossible. In most agricultural
parishes the question of identity, age, amount paid, would scarcely
arise ; but, when change of residence and employment may make some
provisions necessary, the machinery may, as Mr. Blackley has argued,

1880. NATIONAL INSURANCE. 389

be of a simple character. In towns the conditions are of course dif-
ferent, and perhaps somewhat less easy to deal with ; but year by year,
as the system became established, the difficulty would dimmish, nor
need obstacles so great as those which have been successfully over-
come in the case of tickets-of -leave be apprehended.

These objections — which in some cases deserve serious consideration,
but which in no instance, I believe, present any unconquerable obstacle
— are objections of principle, and they are at all events worthy of a
careful examination in view of those most grave evils which pauperism
and poor law relief import into the life of the nation. There are,
however, also objections of detail, not for that reason less important
or weighty ; and these, or the principal of them, it is fair here to
indicate, though space forbids any real discussion.

1. One of the most serious questions, though less objection
has been made than might be anticipated, arises on the calcula-
tions and arithmetical data upon which the amount to be paid at
an early period of life should be fixed. It is a question which
needs a close and careful examination, though it is impossible here to
enter upon it, or to argue whether 17 and 21 are the best limits of
ages, what is the minimum sum needed, or what even should be
the precise amount of sick pay or old age annuity which would be
possible, and, having regard to all the circumstances of the case,
desirable. Nor can I stop to consider whether old age be defined at
65 or 70, except to say that, looking to the hard life and the pre-
mature aging of many of the poorer classes, the earliest practicable
period — even if a somewhat increased rate of payment is involved — is
the best. Nor, again, can I perceive any serious difficulty in those
possible changes in the rate of payment which the changing condi-
tions and circumstances in the life of the poorer classes may involve.
It may become necessary from time to time, as Mr. Blackley has
suggested, to revise the scale of payments; but there is no serious
inconvenience here. Such a revision of rates of payment is no un-
common occurrence in some of the best managed Friendly Societies,,
whilst the untold advantage of perfect security under a Govern-
ment guarantee would go far to reconcile contributors to this as to
many other parts of the scheme. Taking, therefore, everything into
account, there is, I believe, in the contingencies of the future more to
facilitate than to hinder the general operation of the proposal. I
have, indeed, read ^ith surprise the objection that sound and reliable
calculations are not possible ; for why in this particular subject there
should be insuperable difficulties, or why that which is admitted to
be practicable in the case of the largest and best Fiaendly Societies
should be beyond the power of Government agency, it is not easy
to see. It really seems a point scarcely worth pursuing. It is
certain that the larger the area of calculation is, the less is the
risk of failure.

VOL. VIII.— No. 43. D D

390 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

2. What I have just said as to the actuarial calculations on
which a National Insurance must be based, is true also of the machinery
by which it must be maintained in operation. How far the Post
Office can be safely made available for this as it is for savings banks
and deferred annuities, how far the agency of magistrates, guardians,
police, can be utilised in the registration of those whose duty it would
be to insure ; what part of the work can be undertaken by local com-
mittees, what the actual amount of labour which may be imposed on
public functionaries, what even the precise expense which the State
may incur in carrying out the proposal — are details, it is plain, of
very great importance, but still only details which need not alarm, and
which do not present any insuperable difficulties. As regards the
two last considerations of labour and expense, I believe that the
former need not be great, and that the latter certainly ought to be
small ; but if, indeed, it should be somewhat larger than I anticipate,
it can bear no sort of proportion to the grinding and uncertain load
of some 2,500,000£. which is now paid for the out-door maintenance
alone of the poor.

3. A more serious difficulty might arise — and it is one which I
have not anywhere seen noticed — in the opposition of those great
Friendly Societies which deservedly exercise so much influence,
number so large a body of supporters, and might view with an adverse
eye any system which might come into competition with them. I
am far too sensible of the good which they have done and are doing,
as also of the value of the voluntary principle by which they are
bound together, to desire to see their corporate life and action, if I
may so express it, crippled by new institutions, or superseded by any
Government or State agency. I should deplore any mischief done to
them, and willingly would raise up no enemy or rival to them. The
success indeed of this scheme must greatly depend upon the approval
of the best of the working classes and the general concurrence of the
larger Friendly Societies. My belief is that in it there is nothing
really antagonistic to these bodies or their interests, but, on the con-
trary, much that may be of service to them ; and that, if the attempt
be honestly made, it is possible to combine it with the free life and
practical working of all those societies which are founded upon correct
financial rules, and may be truly said to be discharging the duties
for which they came into existence.

On this point I will now only say that the sum paid under a
compulsory insurance ought on every ground, and in fairness to all
parties, to be the smallest which will secure the necessary, and only
the necessary, result.

4. To these difficulties must be added yet another of a serious
kind. In an actuarial point of view it is, I apprehend, perfectly easy to
frame an absolutely reliable table of payments as regards insurance for
old age. This is a contingency which can be calculated with almost

1880. NATIONAL INSURANCE. 391

mathematical certainty. But when provision is to be made for sick-
ness, an element not only of uncertainty, but of self-interest and fraud,
is introduced, against which even in the best Friendly Societies it is
not easy adequately to guard ; and it is argued, and not wholly without
reason, that the great numbers involved in a National Insurance,
combined with the common disposition to consider a fraud upon the
Government as no real fraud, will enhance the difficulty. The ob-
ject was one which seemed to the Friendly Societies Commission so
great that they — somewhat hastily as I think — pronounced against it.
But the provision against sickness seems to me essential to a complete
scheme of National Insurance. Kemove it, and there would remain
little, except the compulsory obligation, to distinguish the present
^proposal from the Government Annuities which any one can now buy.
If, therefore, a National Insurance is to be established, a provision
against sickness must form a part of it. But I can see here no insu-
perable obstacle. After allowing a certain margin for occasional fraud
and consequent loss, as most insurance offices and benefit societies
ought to allow, the supervision of certifying doctors, as exists under
the Factory Acts, and the co-operation of police, magistrates, guar-
dians, and local committees supported by the sense more or less of
self-interest on the part of ratepayers, when once the system had
taken root and was understood, would be found to afford a reasonable
amount of protection. Other means indeed there are, too long to
describe here, by which appeal might be made to the self-interest
of the insurers themselves, and would, in a large proportion of cases
at least, exercise a restraining influence. The true object, in fact,
is to introduce Government agency and intervention only where and
so far as they are absolutely necessary ; and wherever it is possible
to preserve or awaken self-help and self-government, there to cherish
the principle as in every point of view the best for the State, and
the most wholesome for the individual.

To give effect, then, to the proposal under consideration, three
things are necessary : first, compulsion ; secondly, compulsion within
certain narrow limits of age ; thirdly, the application of the scheme
to all classes of the community above the level of paupers. All involve
Government action ; but of the three the first two are clearly essential,
and the third appears to be nearly indispensable. To them, however,
certain undeniable objections are made, practical and theoretical.
The practical are, as far as I can judge, to be overcome withoiit greater
difficulty than has been experienced in many of the public reforms
which this and the last generation have effected or witnessed in
England ; the theoretical are perhaps less easy to dispose of. It may
be that here the objectors wall have the best of the argument; but the
question will remain whether the enormous benefits do not outweigh
i>he somewhat abstract disadvantages that can be urged against the
adoption of a proposal which involves certain trouble to Government,

D D 2

392 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

possible opposition of particular interests, and perhaps the adverse
criticism of many whose political economy is shocked by the appa-
rently rough and ready treatment incidental to the scheme.

I have now, however briefly and imperfectly, said enough, I hope,
to indicate that there are at least answers to many of the objections
made and the difficulties anticipated, and that there is ground for a
careful examination of this question. My observations have already
run beyond the limits of my intention ; yet, before I bring them to a
conclusion, I desire to add a few words upon a point too often lost
sight of, but of the highest practical importance — the vast suffering
and mischief annually caused by the insolvency and failures of those
many Friendly Societies which have not been founded upon correct
financial data. Some were established many years ago, before the true
principle of their organisation was understood ; they flourished as long
as honorary subscriptions were numerous, when the great majority of
the members were * young lives,' and whilst the calls made in respect
of sickness and old age were inappreciable ; but when these conditions
fail the original errors of their constitution come into full light and
bear most disastrous fruit. The expenditure for the banquet, the band,
the annual meetings, and such like charges, which ought not to rest,
as too often is the case, upon the common fund, can no longer be de-
frayed ; the * old lives,' with their disproportionate burden of sickness
and death, begin to tell fatally on the general resources ; the bonus
— that mischievous and gambling addition to the constitution of the
society — is no longer forthcoming for division ; the younger men see
plainly how little chance there is of solid and ultimate advantage to
them, and naturally withdraw from connection with a languishing
and wasting body. Then soon the crisis — delayed, perhaps, for a
while by the exertions of the Squire or Rector — can no longer be
staved off, and the society is dissolved with an amount of disappoint-
ment, irritation, and misery which can hardly be exaggerated, and
which none but those who have witnessed it can estimate.

To all this there is an opposite and striking picture in the consti-
tution and operation of those happier societies which have been
based on sound financial principles. Yet even these are open to a
serious objection when compared with such a scheme of National
Insurance as that of which I am now writing ; and the objection is
this : Whereas, under the scheme of a National Insurance, the re-
quired sum must be paid withhi the limits of a very few years, and
at a time of life when no other claims or money calls exist, when
wages are easily earned and in most cases as easily spent, the sub-
scription in these societies is paid at short monthly or quarterly
intervals. Hence when a time of distress occurs, and money has to
be raised and household expenses to be retrenched, providence which
brings with it only outlay and no immediate compensation is out-
weighed by the pressing wants of the hour, the subscription is aban-

1880. NATIONAL INSURANCE. 393

doned, all that has been hitherto subscribed is lost, and, worse still,
membership with the society is forfeited. Last year, to take one
illustration of many, whilst there were no less than 711 admissions,
there were 589 forfeitures of membership in the Hants Friendly
Society, which deservedly ranks amongst the best and soundest of these
societies.

Let any one, then, calmly examine the relative merits of our present
system, and of the scheme of which I am writing, and then say
whether there is not ground at least for further inquiry before dis-
missing it, in a few trenchant sentences, as Utopian and impracticable.
It must, I think, be freely admitted by its advocates that there are
considerable difficulties ; but it may also be reasonably contended that
none of them are insurmountable. To me it appears that there is a
strong primd facie case for inquiry ; and, if so, we are bound to con-
sider whether, in the face of undeniably great evils, this proposal can
be reduced to practice. It is, of course, beyond the compass of
private or individual effort ; it is, if practicable, a matter for the
Government alone. But Governments exist for such purposes as
these, while certainly within the domain of philanthropy no higher
or more beneficent work can be conceived. Reforms such as these
are, it is true, unequally matched against the more exciting measures
and incidents of political controversy ; they have little that is pictu-
resque or attractive ; the bulk of the argument may sometimes seem
even to be against them ; the advantages are rather remote, the
disadvantages and trouble are immediate. They are not among the
' arts and shifts whereby counsellors and governors gain favour with
their masters and estimation with the vulgar ; ' they are too commonly
among those things of Government ' which are not observed, but are
left to take their chance; ' but they really go down to the roots of
national life, they bring comfort and happiness to the humblest
homes, they touch the feelings and stir a deep interest in large
classes of our very mixed society ; and, to use once more Lord Bacon's
words, they directly 4 tend to the weal and advancement of the
State.'

CARXARYON.

394 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL.

III.

[BYRON.]

* Parching summer hatli no warrant

To consume this crystal well ;
Rains, that make each brook a torrent,
Neither sully it, nor swell.'

So was it, year by year, among the unthought-of hills. Little Duddon
and child Roth a ran clear and glad ; and laughed from ledge to
pool, and opened from pool to mere, translucent, through endless
days of peace.

But eastward, between, her orchard plains, Loire locked her
embracing dead in silent sands ; dark with blood rolled Iser ;
glacial-pale, Beresina-Lethe, by whose shore the weary hearts forgot
their people, and their father's house.

Nor unsullied, Tiber ; nor unswoln, Arno and Aufidus ; and
Euroclydon high on Helle's wave ; meantime, let our happy piety
glorify the garden rocks with snowdrop circlet, and breathe the
spirit of Paradise, where life is wise and innocent.

Maps many have we, now-a-days clear in display of earth con-
stituent, air current, and ocean tide. Shall we ever engrave the
map of meaner research, whose shadings shall content themselves in
the task of showing the depth, or drought, — the calm, or trouble,
of Human Compassion ?

For this is indeed all that is noble in the life of Man, and the
source of all that is noble in the speech of Man. Had it narrowed
itself then, in those days, out of all the world, into this peninsula
between Cockermouth and Shap ?

Not altogether so ; but indeed the Vocal piety seemed conclusively
to have retired (or excursed?) into that mossy hermitage, above Little
Langdale. The Unvocal piety, with the uncomplaining sorrow, of
Man, may have had a somewhat wider range, for aught we know : but
history disregards those items ; and of firmly proclaimed and sweetly

1880. FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 395

canorous religion, there really seemed at that juncture none to be
reckoned upon, east of Ingleborough, or north of Criffel. Only
under Furness Fells, or by Bolton Priory, it seems we can still write
Ecclesiastical Sonnets, stanzas on the force of Prayer, Odes to
Duty, and complimentary addresses to the Deity upon His endurance
for adoration. Far otherwise, over yonder, by Spezzia Bay, and1
Eavenna Pineta, and in ravines of Hartz. There, the softest voices
speak the wildest words ; and Keats discourses of Endymion, Shelley
of Demogorgon, Goethe of Lucifer, and Burger of the Eesurrection
of Death unto Death — while even Puritan Scotland and Episcopal
Anglia produce for us only these three minstrels of doubtful tone, who
show but small respect for the ' unco guid,' put but limited faith in
gifted Gilfillan, and translate with unflinching frankness the Morgante
Maggiore.1

Dismal the aspect of the spiritual world, or at least the sound of itr
might well seem to the eyes and ears of Saints (such as we had)
of the period — dismal in angels' eyes also assuredly ! Yet is it possible
that the dismalness in angelic sight may be otherwise quartered, as it
were, from the way of mortal heraldry ; and that seen, and heard,
of angels, — again I say — hesitatingly — is it possible that the good-
ness of the Unco Guid, and the gift of Gilfillan, and the word
of Mr. Blattergowl, may severally not have been the goodness of
God, the gift of God, nor the word of God : but that in the much
blotted and broken efforts at goodness, and in the careless gift which
they themselves despised,2 and in the sweet ryme and murmur of
their unpurposed words, the Spirit of the Lord had, indeed, wander-
ing, as in chaos days on lightless waters, gone forth in the hearts and
from the lips of those other three strange prophets, even though they
ate forbidden bread by the altar of the poured-out ashes, and even
though the wild beast of the desert found them, and slew.

This, at least, I know, that it had been well for England, though
all her other prophets, of the Press, the Parliament, the Doctor's
chair, and the Bishop's throne, had fallen silent ; so only that she had
been able to understand with her heart here and there the simplest
line of these, her despised.

1 < It must be put by the original, stanza for stanza, and verse for verse ; and yon
will see what was permitted in a Catholic country and a bigoted age to Churchmen,
on the score of Keligion — and so tell those buffoons who accuse me of attacking the
Liturgy.

' I write in the greatest haste, it being the hour of the Corso, and I must go and
buffoon with the rest. My daughter Allegra is just gone with the Countess G. in
Count G.'s coach and six. Our old Cardinal is dead, and the new one not appointed
yet — but the masquing goes on the same.' (Letter to Murray, 355th in Moore, dated'
Ravenna, Feb. 7, 1828.) ' A dreadfully moral place, for you must not look at anybody's,
wife, except your neighbour's.'

2 See quoted infra the mock, by Byron, of himself and all other modern poets,.
Juan, canto iii. stanza 86, and compare canto xiv. stanza 8. In reference of future
quotations the first numeral will stand always for canto ; the second for stanza ; the
third, if necessary, for line.

396 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

I take one at mere chance :

4 Who thinks of self, when gazing on the sky ? ' 3

Well, I don't know ; Mr. Wordsworth certainly did, and observed,
with truth, that its clouds took a sober colouring in consequence of
his experiences. It is much if, indeed, this sadness be unselfish,
and our eyes have kept loving watch o'er Man's Mortality. I have
found it difficult to make any one now-a-days believe that such
sobriety can be ; and that Turner saw deeper crimson than others in
the clouds of Groldau. But that any should yet think the clouds
brightened by Man's Immortality instead of dulled by his death, —
and, gazing on the sky, look for the day when every eye must gaze
also — for behold, He cometh with clouds — this it is no more possible
for Christian England to apprehend, however exhorted by her gifted
and guid.

* But Byron was not thinking of such things ! ' — He, the reprobate !
how should such as he think of Christ ?

Perhaps not wholly as you or I think of Him. Take, at chance,
another line or two, to try :

1 Carnage (so Wordsworth tells you) is (rod's daughter ; 4
If he speak truth, she is Christ's sister, and
Just now, behaved as in the Holy Land.'

Blasphemy, cry you. good reader ? Are you sure you understand it ?
The first line I gave you was easy Byron — almost shallow Byron —
these are of the man in his depth, and you will not fathom them,
like a tarn, — nor in a hurry.

* Just now behaved as in the Holy Land.' How did Carnage
behave in the Holy Land then ? You have all been greatly ques-
tioning, of late, whether the sun, which you find to be now going out,
ever stood still. Did you in any lagging minute, on those scientific
occasions, chance to reflect what he was bid stand still for? or if not
— will you please look — and what, also, going forth again as a strong
man to run his course, he saw, rejoicing ?

' Then Joshua passed from Makkedah unto Libnah — and fought
against Libnah. And the Lord delivered it and the king thereof
into the hand of Israel, and he smote it with the edge of the sword,
and all the souls that were therein.' And from Lachish to Eglon,
and from Eglon to Kirjath-Arba, and Sarah's grave in the Amorites'
land, * and Joshua smote all the country of t"he hills and of the south
— and of the vale and of the springs, and all their kings ; he left

* Island, ii. 1 6, where see context.

4 Juan, viii. 5 ; but, by your Lordship's quotation, Wordsworth says ' instrument'
— not 'daughter.' Your Lordship had better have said 'Infant' and taken the
Woolwich authorities to witness : only Infant would not have rymed.

1880. FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 397

none remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed — as the
Lord God of Israel commanded.'

Thus ' it is written : ' though you perhaps do not so often hear
thess texts preached from, as certain others about taking away the
sins of the world. I wonder how the world would like to part with
them ! hitherto it has always preferred parting first with its Life
and God has taken it at its word. But Death is not His Begotten
Son, for all that ; nor is the death of the innocent in battle carnage
His ' instrument for working out a pure intent ' as Mr. Wordsworth
puts it ; but Man's instrument for working out an impure one, as
Byron would have you to know. Theology perhaps less orthodox,
but certainly more reverent ; — neither is the Woolwich Infant a Child
of God ; neither does the iron-clad ' Thunderer ' utter thunders of God
— which facts, if you had had the grace or sense to learn from Byron,
instead of accusing him of blasphemy, it had been better at this
day for you, and for many a savage soul also, by Euxine shore, and
in Zulu and Afghan lands.

It was neither, however, for the theology, nor the use, of these
lines that I quoted them ; but to note this main point of Byron's
own character. He was the first great Englishman who felt the
cruelty of war, and, in its cruelty, the shame. Its guilt had been
known to George Fox — its folly shown practically by Penn. But
the compassion of the pious world had still for the most part been
shown only in keeping its stock of Barabbases unhanged if pos-
sible : and, till Byron came, neither Kunersdorf, Eylau, nor Water-
loo, had taught the pity and the pride of men that

' The drying up a single tear has more
Of honest fame than shedding seas of gore.' 5

Such pacific verse would not indeed have been acceptable to the
Edinburgh volunteers on Portobeilo sands. But Byron can write a
battle song too, when it is his cue to fight. If you look at the intro-
duction to the Isles of Greece, namely the 85th and 86th stanzas of

the 3rd canto of Don Juan, — you will find what will you not find,

if only you understand them ! ( He ' in the first line, remember,
means the typical modern poet.

' Thus usually, when he was asked to sing,

He gave the different nations something national.
'Twas all the same to him — " God save the King "
Or " £a ira " according to the fashion all ;

5 Juan, viii. 3 ; compare 14, and 63, with all its lovely context 61 — 68 : then
82, and afterwards slowly and with thorough attention, the Devil's speech, beginning,
* Yes, Sir, you forget ' in scene 2 of T/te Deformrd Transformed : then Sardanapalus's,
act i. scene 2, beginning 'he is gone, and on his finger bears my signet,' and finally,
the Vision of Judgment, stanzas 3 to 5.

398 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

His muse made increment of anything

From the high lyric down to the low rational :
If Pindar sang horse-races, what should hinder
Himself from being as pliable as Pindar ?

* In France, for instance, he would write a chanson ;

In England a six-canto quarto tale ;
In Spain, he'd make a ballad or romance on

The last war — much the same in Portugal ;
In Germany, the Pegasus he'd prance on

Would be old Goethe's — (see what says de Stael)
In Italy he'd ape tfee ' Trecentisti ; '
In Greece, he'd sing some sort of hymn like this t' ye.'

Note first here, as we did in Scott, the concentrating and fore-
telling power. The * God Save the Queen ' in England, fallen hollow
now, as the * Ca ira ' in France — not a man in France knowing where
either France or ' that ' (whatever ' that ' may be) is going to ; nor
the Queen of England daring, for her life, to ask the tiniest English-
man to do a single thing he doesn't like ; — nor any salvation, either
of Queen or Realm, being any more possible to God, unless under the
direction of the Eoyal Society : then, note the estimate of height
and depth in poetry, swept in an instant, ' high lyric to low rational.'
Pindar to Pope (knowing Pope's height, too, all the while, no man
better) ; then, the poetic power of France — resumed in a word —
Beranger ; then the cut at Marmion, entirely deserved, as we shall
see, yet kindly given, for everything he names in these two stanzas
is the best of its kind ; then Romance in Spain on — the last war,
(present war not being to Spanish poetical taste), then, Goethe the
real heart of all Germany, and last, the aping of the Trecentisti
which has since consummated itself in Pre-Raphaelitism ! that also
being the best thing Italy has done through England, whether in
Rossetti's ' blessed damozels ' or Burne Jones's ' days of creation.'
Lastly comes the mock at himself — the modern English Greek —
(followed up by the ' degenerate into hands like mine ' in the song
itself) ; and then — to amazement, forth he thunders in his Achilles-
voice. \Ve have had one line of him in his clearness — five of him
in his depth — sixteen of him in his play. Hear now but these, out
of his whole heart : —

' What, — silent yet ? and silent all ?

Ah no, the voices of the dead
Sound like a distant torrent's fall,

And answer, " Let one living head,
But one, arise — we come — we come : "
— 'Tis but the living who are dumb.'

Resurrection, this, you see like Burger's ; but not of death unto death.

1880. FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 399

' Sound like a distant torrent's fall.' I said the luhole heart of
Byron was in this passage. First its compassion, then its indig-
nation, and the third element, not yet examined, that love of the
beauty of this world in which the three — unholy — children, of its
Fiery Furnace were like to each other ; but Byron the widest-hearted.
Scott and Burns love Scotland more than Nature itself : for Burns
the moon must rise over Cumnock Hills, — for Scott, the Rymer's
glen divide the Eildons ; but, for Byron, Loch-na-Gar with Ida,
looks o'er Troy, and the soft murmurs of the Dee and the Bruar
change into voices of the dead on distant Marathon.

Yet take the parallel from Scott, by a field of homelier rest : —

' And silence aids — though the steep hills
Send to the lake a thousand rills ;
In summer tide, so soft they weep,
The sound but lulls the ear asleep ;
Your horse's hoof-tread sounds too rude,
So stilly is the solitude.

Nought living meets the eye or ear,
But well I ween the dead are near ;
For though, in feudal strife, a foe
Hath laid our Lady's Chapel low,
Yet still beneath the hallowed soil,
The peasant rests him from his toil,
And, dying, bids his bones be laid
Where erst his simple fathers prayed.'

And last take the same note of sorrow — with Burns's finger on the
fall of it :

' Mourn, ilka grove the cushat kens,
Ye hazly shaws and briery dens,
Ye burnies, wimplin' down your glens

Wi' toddlin' din,
Or foamin' strang wi' hasty stens
Frae lin to lin.'

As you read, one after another, these fragments of chant by the
great masters, does not a sense come upon you of some element in
their passion, no less than in their sound, different, specifically, from
that of ' Parching summer hath no warrant ' ? Is it more profane,
think you — or more tender — nay, perhaps, in the core of it, more
true?

For instance, when we are told that

1 Wharfe, as he moved along,
To matins joined a mournful voice,'

400 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

is this disposition of the river's mind to pensive psalmody quite
logically accounted for by the previous statement, (itself by no
means rhythmically dulcet), that

1 The boy is in the arms of Wharfe,
And strangled by a merciless force ' ?

Or, when we are led into the improving reflection,

t How sweet were leisure, could it yield no more
Than 'mid this wave-washed churchyard to recline,
From pastoral graves extracting thoughts divine !'

— is the divinity of the extract assured to us by its being made at
leisure, and in a reclining attitude — as compared with the medita-
tions of otherwise active men, in an erect one ? Or are we perchance,
many of us, still erring somewhat in our notions alike of Divinity
and Humanity, — poetical extraction, and moral position ?

On the chance of its being so, might I ask hearing for just a few
words more of the school of Belial ?

Their occasion, it must be confessed, is a quite unjustifiable one.
Some very wicked people — mutineers, in fact — have retired, misan-
thropically, into an unfrequented part of the country, and there find
themselves safe, indeed, but extremely thirsty. Whereupon Byron
thus gives them to drink :

' A little stream came tumbling from the height
And straggling into ocean as it might.
Its bounding crystal frolicked in the ray
And gushed from cliff to crag with saltless spray,
Close on the wild wide ocean, — yet as pure
And fresh as Innocence ; and more secure.
Its silver torrent glittered o'er the deep
As the shy chamois' eye o'erlooks the steep,
While, far below, the vast and sullen swell
Of ocean's Alpine azure rose and fell.' G

Now, I beg, with such authority as an old workman may take con-
cerning his trade, having also looked at a waterfall or two in my
time, and not unfrequently at a wave, to assure the reader that here
is entirely first-rate literary work. Though Lucifer himself had
written it, the thing is itself good, and not only so, but unsurpass-
ably good, the closing line being probably the best concerning the
sea yet written by the race of the sea-kings.

But Lucifer himself could not have written it ; neither any
servant of Lucifer. I do not doubt but that most readers were sur-
prised at my saying, in the close of my first paper, that Byron's ' style '

• Idand, iii. 3, and compare, of shore surf, the 'slings its high flake?, shivered
into sleet ' of stanza 7.

18SO. FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 401

depended in any wise on his views respecting the Ten Command-
ments. That so all-important a thing as ' style ' should depend in
the least upon so ridiculous a thing as moral sense : or that Al-
legra's father, watching her drive by in Count Gr.'s coach and six, had
any remnant of so ridiculous a thing to guide, — or check, — his poetical
passion, may alike seem more than questionable to the liberal and
chaste philosophy of the existing British public. But, first of all,
putting the question of who writes, or speaks, aside, do you, good
reader, know good ' style ' when you get it ? Can you say, of half-
a-dozen given lines taken anywhere out, of a novel, or poem, or play,
That is good, essentially, in style, or bad, essentially ? and can you
say why such half-dozen lines are good, or bad ?

I imagine that in most cases, the reply would be given with
hesitation, yet if you will give me a little patience, and take some
accurate pains, I can show you the main tests of style in the space of
a couple of pages.

I take two examples of absolutely perfect, and in manner highest,
i.e. kingly, and heroic, style: the first example in expression of anger,
the second of love.

(1) f We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us,
His present, and your pains, we thank you for.
When we have match'd our rackets to these balls,
We will in France, by God's grace, play a set
Shall strike his father's crown into the hazard.'

(2) c My gracious Silence, hail !

Would'st thou have laughed, had I come cofrm'd home
That weep'st to see me triumph ? Ah, my dear,
Such eyes the widows in Corioli wear
And mothers that lack sons.'

Let us note, point by point, the conditions of greatness common
to both these passages, so opposite in temper.

A. Absolute command over all passion, however intense ; this the
first-of-first conditions, (see the King's own sentence just before, ' We
are no tyrant, but a Christian King, Unto whose grace our passion is
as subject As are our wretches fettered in our prisons ') ; and with this
self-command, the supremely surveying grasp of every thought that
is to be uttered, before its utterance ; so that each may come in its
exact place, time, and connection. The slightest hurry, the mis-
placing of a word, or the unnecessary accent on a syllable, would
destroy the ' style ' in an instant.

B. Choice of the fewest and simplest words that can be found in
the compass of the language, to express the thing meant : these
few words being also arranged in the most straightforward and in-
telligible way; allowing inversion only when the subject can be

402 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

made primary without obscurity : (thus, c his present, and your pains,
we thank you for ' is better than ' we thank you for his present and
your pains,' because the Dauphin's gift is by courtesy put before the
Ambassador's pains ; but ' when to these balls our rackets we have
matched' would have spoiled the style in a moment, because —
I was going to have said, ball and racket are of equal rank, and there-
fore only the natural order proper ; but also here the natural order is
the desired one, the English racket to have precedence of the French
ball. In the fourth line the ' in France ' comes first, as announcing
the most important resolution of action ; the ' by God's grace ' next,
as the only condition rendering resolution possible ; the detail of issue
follows with the strictest limit in the final word. The King does not
say ' danger,' far less ' dishonour,' but i hazard ' only ; of that he is,
humanly speaking, sure.

C. Perfectly emphatic and clear utterance of the chosen words ;
slowly in the degree of their importance, with omission however of
every word not absolutely required ; and natural use of the familiar
contractions of final dissyllable. Thus, ' play a set shall strike ' is
better than ' play a set that shall strike,' and ' match'd ' is kingly
short — no necessity could have excused ' matched ' instead. On the
contrary, the three first words, * We are glad, would have been
spoken by the king more slowly and fully than any other syllables
in the whole passage, first pronouncing the kingly ' we ' at its
proudest, and then the * are ' as a continuous state, and then the
< glad,' as the exact contrary of what the ambassadors expected him
to be.7

D. Absolute spontaneity in doing all this, easily and necessarily
as the heart beats. The king cannot speak otherwise than he does —
nor the hero. The words not merely come to them, but are com-
pelled to them. Even lisping numbers ' come,' but mighty numbers
are ordained, and inspired.

E. Melody in the words, changeable with their passion fitted to
it exactly and the utmost of which the language is capable — the
melody in prose being Eolian and variable — in verse, nobler by
submitting itself to stricter law. I will enlarge upon this point
presently.

F. Utmost spiritual contents in the words ; so that each carries
not only its instant meaning, but a cloudy companionship of higher
or darker meaning according to the passion — nearly always indicated
by metaphor : ' play a set ' — sometimes by abstraction — (thus in the
second passage ' silence ' for silent one) sometimes by description

7 A modern editor — of whom I will not use the expressions which occur to me —
finding the ' we ' a redundant syllable in the iambic lino, prints ' we're.' It is a
little thins? — but I do not recollect, in the forty years of my literary experience, any
piece of editor's retouch quite so base. But I don't read the new editions msch : that
must be allowed for.

1880. FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 403

instead of direct epithet (' coffined ' for dead) but always indicative of
there being more in the speaker's mind than he has said, or than he
can say, full though his saying be. On the quantity of this attendant
fulness depends the majesty of style ; that is to say, virtually, on the
quantity of contained thought in briefest words, such thought being
primarily loving and true : and this the sum of all — that nothing
can be well said, but with truth, nor beautifully, but by love.

These are the essential conditions of noble speech in prose and
verse alike, but the adoption of the form of verse, and especially
rymed verse, means the addition to all these qualities of one more ; of
music, that is to say, not Eolian merely, but Apolline ; a construction
or architecture of words fitted and befitting, under external laws of
time and harmony.

When Byron says ' rhyme is of the rude,' 8 he means that Burns
needs it, — while Henry the Fifth does not, nor Plato, nor Isaiah — yet
in this need of it by the simple, it becomes all the more religious :
and thus the loveliest pieces of Christian language are all in ryme —
the best of Dante, Chaucer, Douglas, Shakespeare, Spenser, and
Sidney.

I am not now able to keep abreast with the tide of modern
scholarship ; (nor, to say the truth, do I make the effort, the first
edge of its waves being mostly muddy, and apt to make a shallow
sweep of the shore refuse : ) so that I have no better book of reference
by me than the confused essay on the antiquity of ryme at the end

8 Island, ii. 5. I was going to say, ' Look to the context,' but am fain to give ib
here ; for the stanza, learned by heart, ought to ba our school-introduction to the
literature of the world.

' Such was this ditty of Tradition's days,
Which to the dead a lingering fame conveys
In song, where fame as yet hath left no sign
Beyond the sound whose charm is half divine ;
Which leaves no record to the sceptic eye,
But yieMs young history all to harmony ;
A boy Achilles, with the centaur's lyre
In hand, to teach him to surpass his sire.
For one long-cherish'd ballad's simple stave
Rung from the rock, or mingled with the wave,
Or from the bubbling streamlet's grassy side,
Or gathering mountain echoes as they glide,
Hath greater power o'er each true heart and ear,
Than all the columns Conquest's minions rear ;
Invites, when hieroglyphics are a theme
For sages' labours or the student's dream ;
Attracts, when History's volumes are a toil—-
The first, the freshest bud of Feeling's soil.
Such was this rude rhyme — rhyme is of the rude,
But such inspired the Norseman's solitude,
Who came and conquered ; such, wherever I'!-*
Lauds which no foes destroy or civilise,
I-^xist ; and what can our accomplish'd art
Of verse do more than reach tiie awaken 'd heirt ? '

404 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

of Turner's Anglo-Saxons. I cannot however conceive a more inter-
esting piece of work, if not yet done, than the collection of sifted
earliest fragments known of rymed song in European languages.
Of Eastern I know nothing ; but, this side Hellespont, the substance
of the matter is all given in King Canute's impromptu

* Gaily (or is it sweetly ? — I forget which, and it's no matter) sang the

monks of Ely,
As Knut the king came sailing by ; '

much to be noted by any who make their religion lugubrious, and
their Sunday the eclipse of the week. And observe further, that if
Milton does not ryme, it is because his faculty of Song was concerning
Loss, chiefly ; and he has little more than faculty of Croak, concerning
Gain ; while Dante, though modern readers never go further with him
than into the Pit, is stayed only by Casella in the ascent to the Eose of
Heaven. So, Gibbon can write in his manner the Fall of Koine ; but
Virgil, in his manner, the rise of it ; and finally Douglas, in his manner,
bursts into such rymed passion of praise both of Rome and Virgil, as
befits a Christian Bishop, and a good subject of the Holy See.

* Master of Masters — sweet source, and springing well,
Wide where over all ringes thy heavenly bell ;

Why should I then with dull forehead and vain,

With rude ingene, and barane, eruptive brain,

With bad harsh speech, and lewit barbare tongue

Presume to write, where thy sweet bell is rung,

Or counterfeit thy precious wordis dear ?

Na, na — not so ; but kneel when I them hear.

But farther more — and lower to descend

Forgive me, Virgil, if I thee offend

Pardon thy scolar, suffer him to ryme

Since thou wast but ane mortal man sometime.'

4 Before honour is humility.' Does not clearer light come
for you on that law after reading these nobly pious words ? And
note you ichose humility ? How is it that the sound of the bell comes
so instinctively into his chiming verse ? This gentle singer is the
son of — Archftald Bell-the-Cat !

And now perhaps you can read with right sympathy the scene in
IformtOH between his father and King James.

' His hand the monarch sudden took —
Now, by the Bruce's soul,
Angus, my hasty speech forgive,
For sure as doth his spirit live

1880. FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 405

As he said of the Douglas old

I well may say of you, —

That never king did subject hold,

In speech more free, in war more bold,

More tender and more true :

And while the king his hand did strain

The old man's tears fell down like rain.'

I believe the most infidel of scholastic readers can scarcely but
perceive the relation between the sweetness, simplicity, and melody
of expression in these passages, and the gentleness of the passions
they express, while men who are not scholastic, and yet are true
scholars, will recognise further in them that the simplicity of the
educated is lovelier than the simplicity of the rude. Hear next
a piece of Spenser's teaching how rudeness itself may become more
beautiful even by its mistakes, if the mistakes are made lovingly.

' Ye shepherds' daughters that dwell on the green,

Hye you there apace ;
Let none come there but that virgins been

To adorn her grace :

And when you come, whereas she in place,
See that your rudeness do not you disgrace ;

Bind your fillets fast,

And gird in your waste,
For more fineness, with a taudry lace.'

' Bring hither the pink and purple cullumbine

With gylliflowers ;
Bring coronations, and sops in wine,

Worn of paramours ;

Strow me the ground with daffadowndillies
And cowslips, and kingcups, and loved lilies ;

The pretty paunce

And the chevisaunce
Shall match with the fair flowre-delice.' 9

Two short pieces more only of master song, and we have enough to
test all by.

(2) 'No more, no more, since thou art dead,
Shall we e'er bring coy brides to bed,
No more, at yearly festivals,

We cowslip balls

9 SJtephcrd's Calendar. ' Coronation,' loyal-pastoral for Carnation ; ' sops in wine,'
jolly-pastoral for double pink ; ' paunce,' thoughtless pastoral for pansy ; ' chevisaunce '
I don't know, (not in Gerarde) ; ' flowre-delice ' — pronounce dellice — half made up of
1 delicate ' and ' delicious.'

VOL. VIII.— No. 43. E E

40(5 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

Or chains of columbines shall make,
For this or that occasion's sake.
No, no ! our maiden pleasures be
Wrapt in thy winding-sheet with thee.' 10

(3) 'Death is now the phcenix re?t,
And the turtle's loyal. breast
To eternity doth rest.
Truth may seem, but cannot be ;
Beauty brag, but 'tis not she :
Truth and beauty buried be.' n

If now, with the echo of these perfect verses in your mind, you
turn to Byron, and glance over, or recall to memory, enough of him
to give means of exact comparison, you will, or should, recognise
these following kinds of mischief in him. First, if any one offends
him — as for instance Mr. Southey, or Lord Elgin — * his manners have
not that repose that marks the caste,' &c. This defect in his Lord-
ship's style, being myself scrupulously and even painfully reserved in
the use of vituperative language, I need not say how deeply I deplore.12

Secondly. In the best and most violet-bedded bits of his work
there is yet, as compared with Elizabethan and earlier verse, a strange
taint ; and indefinable — evening flavour of Co vent Garden, as it were ;
— not to say, escape of gas in the Strand. That is simply what it
proclaims itself — London air. If he had lived all his life in Green-head
Ghyll, things would of course have been different. But it was his fate
to come to town — modern town — like Michael's son ; and modern Lon-
don (and Venice) are answerable for the state of their drains, not Byron.

Thirdly. His melancholy is without any relief whatsoever ; his
jest sadder than his earnest ; while, in Elizabethan work, all lament is
full of hope, and all pain of balsam.

Of this evil he has himself told you the cause in a single line,
prophetic of all things since and now. ' \Yhere he gazed, a gloom
pervaded space.' 13

So that, for instance, while Mr. Wordsworth, on a visit to town,
being an exemplary early riser, could walk, felicitous, on Westminster
Bridge, remarking how the city now did like a garment wear the
beauty of the morning ; Byron, rising somewhat later, contemplated

14 Herrick, Dirge for JrjrfitJtah's Daughter. " Passionate Pilgrim.

12 In this point, compare the Curse of Minerva with the Team of tin: .")/«,</".<.

11 'He,' — Lucifer; (Vision, of Judgment, 24). It is precisely because Byron was not
his servant, that he could see tlje gloom. To the Deril's true servants, their Master's
presence brings both cheerfulness and prosperity; — with a delightful sense of their
own vrisdom and virtue ; and of the 'progress ' of things in general : — in smooth sea
ami fair woather,— and with no need either of helm touch, or oar toil : as when once
one is well within the edge of Maelstrom.

1880. FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 407

only the garment which the beauty of the morning had by that time
received for wear from the city : and again, while Mr. Wordsworth,
in irrepressible religious rapture, calls God to witness that the houses
seem asleep, Byron, lame demon as he was, flying smoke-drifted,
unroofs the houses at a glance, and sees what the mighty cockney heart
of them contains in the still lying of it, and will stir up to purpose
in the waking business of it,

' The sordor of civilisation, mixed
With all the passions which Man's fall hath fixed.' u

Fourthly, with this steadiness of bitter melancholy, there is joined
a sense of the material beauty, both of inanimate nature, the lower
animals, and human beings, which in the iridescence, colour-depth,
and morbid (I use the word deliberately) mystery and softness of it, —
with other qualities indescribable by any single words, and only to
be analysed by extreme care, — is found, to the full, only in five men that
I know of in modern times ; namely Eousseau, Shelley, Byron, Turner,
and myself, — differing totally and throughout the entire group of us,
from the delight in clear-struck beauty of Angelico and the Trecen-
tisti ; and separated, much more singularly, from the cheerful joys of
Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Scott, by its unaccountable affection for
' Eokkes blak ' and other forms of terror and power, such as those of
the ice-oceans, which to Shakespeare were only Alpine rheum ; and the
Via Malas and Diabolic Bridges which Dante would have condemned
none but lost souls to climb, or cross ; — all this love of impending
mountains, coiled thunder-clouds, and dangerous sea, being joined in
us with a sulky, almost ferine, love of retreat in valleys of Charmettes,
gulphs of Spezzia, ravines of Olympus, low lodgings in Chelsea, and
close brushwood at Coniston.

And, lastly, also in the whole group of us, glows volcanic instinct
of Astraean justice returning not to, but up out of, the earth, which
will not at all suffer us to rest any more in Pope's serene ' whatever
is, is right ; ' but holds, on the contrary, profound conviction that
about ninety-nine hundredths of whatever at present is, is wrong :
conviction making four of us, according to our several manners,
leaders of revolution for the poor, and declarers of political doctrine
monstrous to the ears of mercenary mankind ; and driving the fifth,
less sanguine, into mere painted-melody of lament over the fallacy
of Hope and the implacableness of Fate.

In Byron the indignation, the sorrow, and the effort are joined to
the death : and they are the parts of his nature (as of mine also in its
feebler terms), which the selfishly comfortable public have, literally,

14 Island, ii. 4 ; perfectly orthodox theology, you observe; no denial of the fall,
— nor substitution of Bacterian birth for it. Nay, nearly Evangelical theology, in
contempt for the human heart ; but with deeper than Evangelical humility, acknow-
ledging also what is sordid in its civilisation.

£ £ 2

408 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

no conception of whatever ; and from which the piously sentimental
public, offering up daily the pure emotion of divine tranquillity, shrink
with anathema not unembitterecl by alarm.

Concerning wlu'ch matters I hope to speak further and with more
precise illustration in my next paper ; but, seeing that this present
one has been hitherto somewhat sombre, and perhaps, to gentle
readers, not a little discomposing, I will conclude it with a piece of
light biographic study, necessary to my plan, and as conveniently ad-
missible in this place as afterwards; — namely, the account of the
manner in which Scott — whom we shall always find, as aforesaid, to
be in salient and palpable elements of character, of the World,
worldly, as Burns is of the Flesh, fleshly, and Byron of the Deuce,
damnable, — spent his Sunday.

As usual, from Lockhart's farrago we cannot find out the first
thing we want to know, — whether Scott worked after his week-day
custom, on the Sunday morning. But, I gather, not ; at all events his
household and his cattle rested (L. iii. 108). I imagine he walked
out into his woods, or read quietly in his study. Immediately after
breakfast, whoever was in the house, 'Ladies and gentlemen, I shall
read prayers at eleven, when I expect you all to attend ' (vii. 306).
Question of college and other externally unanimous prayers settled
for us very briefly : ' if you have no faith, have at least manners.' He
read the Church of England service, lessons and all, the latter, if in-
teresting, eloquently {ibid.}. After the service, one of Jeremy
Taylor's sermons (vi. 188). After sermon, if the weather was fine,
walk with his family, dogs included and guests, to cold picnic (iii.
109), followed by short extempore biblical novelettes ; for he had his
Bible, the Old Testament especially, by heart, it having been his
mother's last gift to him (vi. 174). These lessons to his children in
Bible history were always given, whether there was picnic or not.
For the rest of the afternoon he took his pleasure in the woods with
Tom Purdie, who also always appeared at his master's elbow on Sunday
after dinner was over, and drank long life to the laird and his lady
and all the good company, in a quaigh of whiskey or a tumbler of
wine, according to his fancy (vi. 195). Whatever might happen on
the other evenings of the week, Scott always dined at home on Sunday ;
.and with old friends : never, unless inevitably, receiving any person with
whom he stood on ceremony (v. 335). He came into the room rubbing
his hands like a boy arriving at home for the holidays, his Peppers and
Mustards gambolling about him, ' and even the stately Maida grin-
ning and wagging his tail with sympathy.' For the usquebaugh of
the less honoured week-days, at the Sunday board he circulated the
champagne briskly during dinner, and considered a pint of claret each
man's fair share afterwards (v. 339). In the evening, music being to
the Scottish worldly mind indecorous, he read aloud some favourite
author, for the amusement or edification of his little circle. Shakespeare

1880. FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 409

it might be, or Dryden, — Johnson, or Joanna Baillie, — Crabbe, or
Wordsworth. But in those days ' Byron was pouring out his spirit fresh
and full, and if a new piece from his hand had appeared, it was sure
to be read by Scott the Sunday evening afterwards ; and that with
such delighted emphasis as showed how completely the elder bard
had kept lip his enthusiasm for poetry at pitch of youth, and all his
admiration of genius, free, pure, and unstained by the least drop
of literary jealousy ' (v. 341 ).

With such necessary and easily imaginable varieties as chanced in
having Dandy Dinmont or Captain Brown for guests at Abbotsford,
or Colonel Mannering, Counsellor Pleydell, and Dr. Eobertson in
Castle Street, such was Scott's habitual Sabbath : a day, we per-
ceive, of eating the fat, (dinner, presumably not cold, being a work of
necessity and mercy — thou also, even thou, Saint Thomas of Trumbull,
hast thine !) and drinking the sweet, abundant in the manner of Mr.
Southey's cataract of Lodore, — ' Here it comes, sparkling.' A day
bestrewn with coronations and sops in wine ; deep in libations to good
hope and fond memory ; a day of rest to beast, and mirth to man, (as
also to sympathetic beasts that can be merry,) and concluding itself
in an Orphic hour of delight, signifying peace on Tweedside, and
goodwill to men, there or far away ; — always excepting the French,
and Boney.

' Yes, and see what it all came to in the end.'

Not so, dark-virulent Minos-Mucklewrath ; the end came of quite
other things : of these, came such length of days and peace as Scott
had in his Fatherland, and such immortality as he has in all lands.

Nathless, firm, though deeply courteous, rebuke, for his some-
times overmuch light-mindedness, was administered to him by the
more grave and thoughtful Byron. For the Lord Abbot of Newstead
knew his Bible by heart as well as Scott, though it had never been
given him by his mother as her dearest possession. Knew it, and,
what was more, had thought of it, and sought in it what Scott had
never cared to think, nor been fain to seek.

And loving Scott well, and always doing him every possible plea-
sure in the way he sees to be most agreeable to him — as, for instance,
remembering with precision, and writing down the very next morn-
ing, every blessed word that the Prince Eegent had been pleased to
say of him before courtly audience, — he yet conceived that such
cheap ryming as his own Bride of Abydos, for instance, which he
had written from beginning to end in four days, or even the travel-
ling reflections of Harold and Juan on men and women, were scarcely
steady enough Sunday afternoon's reading for a patriarch-Merlin like
Scott. So he dedicates to him a work of a truly religious tendency,
on which for his own part he has done his best, — the drama of Cain.
Of which dedication the virtual significance to Sir Walter might be
translated thus. Dearest and last of Border soothsayers, thou hast

410

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

September

indeed told us of Black Dwarfs, and of White maidens, also of Grey
Friars, and Green Fairies ; also of sacred hollies by the well, and
haunted crooks in the glen. But of the bushes that the black dogs
rend in the woods of Phlegethon ; and of the crooks in the glen, and
the bickerings of the burnie where ghosts meet the mightiest of
us ; and of the black misanthrope, who is by no means yet a dwarfed
one, and concerning whom wiser creatures than Hobbie Elliot may
tremblingly ask ' Gude guide us, what's yon ? ' hast thou yet known,
seeing that thou hast yet told, nothing.

Scott may perhaps have his answer. We shall in good time
hear.

JOHN RUSKIN.

1880. 411

THE THOROUGHBRED HORSE— ENGLISH
AND ARABIAN.

AT this year's Goodwood Meeting a proposal, originating with myself,
was laid by Lord Calthorpe before the Stewards of the Jockey Club,
which has for its object the restoration on the English Turf of weight-
for-age races for horses exclusively of Arabian blood. The proposal,
whether or not it be adopted — and it is still I believe under considera-
tion— deserves more than a passing notice. It is just a hundred years
since any race of the kind was run in England ; and to sportsmen of
the modern school, disciples and admirers of the late Admiral Ron?,
the notion of a return to Eastern blood, in their search for that ideal
of the Turf which all who breed pursue, will be looked on as reac-
tionary, perhaps by some as childish. It was an axiom with the
gallant Admiral that a second-class English thoroughbred could give
five stone to the best Arabian horse and beat him one mile or twenty,
while he drew therefrom the not illogical inference that, from a racing
point of view, the latter must be now regarded as a merely worthless
brute. Some scratch races run in Egypt and a match or two recently
witnessed at Newmarket have gone far in the minds of Englishmen
towards confirming this view ; and other circumstances which I will
enumerate presently have completed the general disrepute into which
the Arabian has fallen in this country. There exists, however, though
in rapidly diminishing numbers, an older school of sportsmen who
still cherish the reverence for Eastern blood which was once an article
of faith with Englishmen, and to whom the proposal will seem less
surprising than to younger men. Here and there one meets a squire
or yeoman, generally a Yorkshireman, who remembers, as a boy, having
seen the four-mile heats at Doncaster, and who has heard his father
say that Flying Childers, a horse of purely Eastern descent, was a
better horse than any of a later day. These represent an opinion
which, as I have said, was once an article of faith at New-
market, and which, though now abandoned, was held by a race of
sportsmen far indeed from being children on the Turf. Admiral
Rous notwithstanding, I believe that it has still claims on our
attention, and, as such, I propose here simply to restate it.

The i-aison d'etre (if I may be allowed a French phrase on a very

412 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

English subject) of the thoroughbred horse is twofold. He is in the
first place, and essentially, a racehorse, and in the second a sire. On
the Turf he supplies the public with the material of an amusement
which has become in England a necessity ; and at the stud he per-
forms a duty no less serious — that of getting sound and handsome
stock. He must have the monopoly of speed, and he must have that
quality peculiar to high breeding which enables him to impress his
own stamp and image on his progeny. For these two purposes, and
these alone, is he of supreme value.

It is, then, of importance to consider in what degree the English
thoroughbred, as at present found in these islands, fulfils the double
duty required of him, and to contrast him in both respects with the
thoroughbred horse of Arabia, his only possible rival. And first as to
his position on the Turf, where not only Admiral Kous, but pro-
bably every breeder of horses in England for the last fifty years, has
held him to be beyond fear of competition.

The history of the English thoroughbred has been often told, but
it will bear repeating. It is improbable that there was any indi-
genous breed of horses in these islands, or that till a comparatively
late date the animals found in England differed greatly from those of
Northern Europe generally. The connection of England with France
under the Plantagenets doubtless introduced among us the first strain
of Eastern blood, brought through Spain to Languedoc and thence to
Limousin by the Moors, and it is possible, nay probable, that true
Arab blood may have found its way to our shores with the returning
Crusaders. From both these sources an improved riding horse may
have been produced, but there seems no warrant in recorded fact of
England having possessed 'any special breed of coursers earlier than
the seventeenth century. In James the First's reign, however, we read
of ' running horses,' engaged in three and four mile heats, which were
of a race accounted English. Their quality, however, can hardly have
been high, in spite of the enthusiasm of their panegyrist, the respect-
able Gervase Markham ; for we find them classed with Neapolitan and
Spanish horses in point of speed, while as yet the Barb and Turk alone
represented Eastern blood in the knowledge of the writers of the day.1
It was not till the Stuart Restoration, fifty years later, that the foun-
dation of the present ' thoroughbred ' breed was laid by Charles the
Second, who, by his connection with Tangier, his Queen's dowry,
obtained certain Barb mares of a quality superior to anything hitherto
imported for the Royal Stud, and which, as ' Royal Mares,' form the
foundation of our English Stud Book. That some of these Royal
mares may have been true Arabians is possible, though there is no
evidence to show this; for Charles seems to have sent agents to the
Levant as well as to Barbary, and we know that the Levant Company

1 Markham's Arabian, imported as early as 1605, seems to have attracted little
notice. He was a small hor?e, and, according to the ideas of the day, a plain one.

1880. THE THOROUGHBRED HORSE. 413

was then already established at Aleppo, where English merchants
would be in easy communication with the North Arabian desert. At
the same time Eastern blood was being rapidly introduced in the
male line through the Turkish Barb and Arab sires purchased by these
very merchants in different ports of the Mediterranean ; and the pro-
duce of these sires, partly from the Eoyal and partly from native
mares — whose produce, a gain, was constantly recrossed with Arabian or
quasi-Arabian blood — became accepted generally as thoroughbred.
Though vastly superior to the old ' running hack ' of a previous
generation, the ' thoroughbred ' racehorse of 1700 was evidently but
a poor performer on the Turf compared with such later giants as
Childers and Eclipse. The exact composition of his blood it is hard
to determine ; for, apart from the nameless mares which figure in his
pedigree, and which may have been of any blood, Spanish, English, or
even Flemish, we know little even of the sires. Turk, Barb, Arabian
seem to have been terms almost convertible with Englishmen in the
seventeenth century ; and as to the distinctions between Arabian and
Arabian, none such had vet been heard of.2

«/

But in the later years of Queen Anne an undoubted Arabian of
the purest breed was brought to England which was destined to be
the true sire of the English thoroughbred. This was the Kehilan
Eas-el-Fedawi,3 purchased from the Anazeh by Mr. Darley, an English
gentleman residing at Aleppo in connection as it would seem with the
Levant Company, and who sent the colt home to his brother, a squire
of the North Riding of Yorkshire, where, as the ' Darley Arabian,' he
became progenitor of Childers, Almansor, Daedalus, and other great
horses of their day, as well as, in a second generation, of Eclipse. The
performances of Childers — a horse bred in England, of wholly Eastern
blood, and with an undoubtedly pure Arabian for his sire — formed a
second epoch in Turf history. From that moment pure Kehilan blood
was more eagerly sought than ever. The Grodolphin — sometimes called
a Barb, but according to recent authority a pure Kehilan of the Jilfan
breed — took up the mantle of the Darley, and between them they may
be said to have recreated the English thoroughbred, every horse now
running on the Turf deducing his origin from these two. Without at-
taching full credence to the tale of Childers having run his three miles
six furlongs and ninety-three yards in six minutes and forty seconds, or
still less of Eclipse's mile in a minute, we must recognise the fact, as
it was recognised at the time, that nothing equal to the speed of these
two horses had as yet been seen in England, nor can it be doubtful that

2 The Turks and Barbs of the English Stud Book were probably so named from
the countries where they were purchased, not necessarily where they were bred, and
may many of them have been pure Kehilans. True Barbs are the produce of a c-r< >ss
between the Kehilan of the Arab invasions of the seventh century and the indigenous
Mauritanian breed.

3 Kehilan is the Arabic equivalent for thoroughbred. Eas el Fedawi, headstrong,
distinguishes a special strain of blood.

414 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

the result was due directly to the new infusion of this best Anazeli
blood of their immediate ancestors. Still the infusion was an infusion
only ; and Childers and Eclipse themselves, though far more nearly
Arabian than any of their predecessors, had more than one strain of
inferior blood ; nor, to the best of my knowledge, has any horse been
yet bred in England absolutely pure Kehilan in all his ancestry.
That the cross-breeding was a matter of necessity, not of choice, with
the breeders of the day, seems hardly to require proving. Horses it
was possible to procure of any blood from the Anazeh ; but their
best mares were then never sold ; and in default of such Barbs and
English dams seemed no unworthy substitute. Still, importations
of stallions from Arabia continued to be frequent during the greater
part of last century, and there seems little doubt that these were of
the best. Xiebuhr, writing about 1765, speaks of the Kochlani
(Kehilans) as being purchased at Aleppo or on the Euphrates by English
merchants at the price of 800 to 1,000 crowns, and adds that they were
expected, ' when sent to England, to draw four times the original price,'
which would bring their figure to as many pounds. Moreover, their
value as sires was recognised in the special stakes run for by imported
stallions at Newmarket till towards the close of the century.

A third epoch may be considered as having then been reached.
The Levant Company had fallen into decay, and the fanatical Wahhabi
power had arisen in Arabia — two circumstances which cut Englishmen
off from their commercial dealings with the Bedouins. The stallions
imported were no longer procurable from the Anazeh who alone
possess the strains of blood suited to racing purposes ; and such animals
as reached England, though possessing excellent qualities, were found
too small and too slow for successful use as sires for the Turf. More-
over, high feeding and selection had so far increased the size of the
English racehorse sprung from the Darley and Godolphin that, all
stains in his pedigree notwithstanding, he was more than a match in
speed to the new comers. It was found that a first cross from im-
ported Arabians no longer improved the produce for racing purposes,
and the best mares ceased to be put to any but the home-bred stock.
This sealed the fate of the Arabian at the stud, and he disappeared
finally from the English Turf.

The Arabian, nevertheless, though no longer seen at Newmarket,
survived his disappearance for many years as an honoured name in
England, and it is only in recent times that from an idol he has be-
come a byword with our sportsmen. The causes which have led to
his decay in fame are worth tracing. The severance of English com-
mercial intercourse with the Syrian desert by the decline of the
Levant Company, and the long war with France which followed, and
•which so greatly increased the risks of importation through the
Mediterranean, were, as I have said, a prime cause of the deteriora-
tion in quality of such stallions as still reached our shores. In the

1880. THE THOROUGHBRED HORSE. 415

early half of the present century our knowledge of the Arab (he had
ceased to be called the Arabian) was confined almost entirely to Indian
officers, military and civilian, who knew him as he is known in India
— an animal of whom it is vulgarly said there that he has but one
pace — the gallop — and that is a bad one. The Anazeh Kehilan, the
real progenitor of our English racing stock, had ceased to be known.4
Then camo the age of touring in the Levant, of visits to Sultans and
Pashas with their mixed studs of prancing steeds, all mane and tail
and curvetting action. Occasionally Bedouin camps were visited ; but
they were Bedouins of Syria and the Holy Land, very rarely indeed
of the Anazeh, nor probably ever of the Bisshr Anazeh, where the best
horses of all are bred. The rank and file of horseflesh in the desert,
is notoriously indifferent, and travellers came back disappointed.
But the cruellest blow of all was when, after the Crimean war, our
troop-ships brought back scores of sorry hacks, Turks, Cossacks, cross-
breds of all sorts, yet dignified, every one of them, with the name of
Arab. At the sight of these three-cornered ponies English sportsmen
felt and protested they had been the victims of an ancient hoax
played on them by story-books from childhood up. It became a
matter almost of honour to minimise the relationship between Eng-
and and Arabia, and it began to be discovered that it Avas to an in-
digenous rather than the imported breeds that the British racehorse
owed his quality. The coup de grace was put by the victory of a
half-bred English mare, Fair Nell, over all the Pasha of Egypt's stud.
Then, indeed, the name of Arab became at Newmarket a mockery and
a derision.

In the meanwhile, though neglected and unprized, and I may say
unknown, the only true thoroughbred horse of the world lived on
where our fathers had found him a hundred and fifty years ago,
neither better nor worse than what he then was, and as capable as ever
of breeding Childerses and Eclipses to those who might have looked
for and secured him. The desert changes little, nor do to any great
degree its horses. The only change is that the Anazeh, the great
horse-breeding tribe, is no longer prosperous, and that in our day
mares as well as horses come sometimes to the market. What Mr.
Barley could not do is possible now for us. We can procure both
dams and sires of the most fancy strains of blood for breeding stock,
and that at no enormous cost of time or money. The Anazeh, by a
series of disastrous wars and the pressure of a famine which is raging
over half Asia, have been driven to the unfortunate alternative of
selling their mares or seeing them starve ; and many have thus been
sold within the last twelve months, and are now to be found among

4 That Anazeh horses occasionally find their way to India I do not deny ; but
most of those sold at Bombay as Anazeh are bred in reality by the Shammar, a few
by the Ibn Haddal. Last year I asked several of the Bombay dealers if they never
dealt with the Sebaa Anazeh, the great horse-breeding tribe, and was answered :
* Why should we go to them ? They live too far away, and ask too much.'

416 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

the villages of the desert frontier. The prohibition of export, too, so
long imposed by the Turks, 1ms lately been removed, and no difficulty
exists in bringing home purchases from any of the Mediterranean
ports. It is possible, therefore, as it never previously was, to breed
the pure Arabian stock in Europe, in England, at Newmarket — pos-
sible ! it is being already done. The French Government, more
keenly alive than we are to the value of this blood, has this summer
despatched agents with commission to purchase largely ; and, though
our own Government has long ceased to interest itself in horse-breed-
ing, private enterprise in England is endeavouring to supply the want
by private importation.

* But what, in fact,' I hear it asked, c are the merits of the Kehilan
blood which we do not find in our own racehorse ? Is it or is it not
a fact that the Arab is unable to run against the English horse at any
weights ? Is he as capable of breeding us good hunters and hacks and
carriage horses as the sires we now possess ? ' To this I answer that no
Kehilan, purchased of the Anazeh and imported into England, would
be likely^to run with success against English thoroughbreds even at
the 2 stone 4 Ibs. allowed him in the Goodwood Cup and over a two-
and-a-half mile course, nor would I recommend speculators to invest
their money on him at greater weights and over a longer distance.
I maintain, nevertheless, that he is essentially a racehorse, the sire of
racehorses, and that his produce bred in England for a few genera-
tions will be able to hold their own upon the English Turf, perhaps
more than their own. I say, moreover, that in shape and power and
courage he is better adapted to breed hunters than any but excep-
tional English thoroughbreds, that his temper should make him a
better sire for hacks, and his soundness and action for carriage stock.
I maintain, moreover, that, being truer bred than any other horse, he
is more likely to impress his own character on his produce.

First, however, as a racehorse, let it be distinctly understood that
it is only in Northern Arabia and perhaps only now among the Anazeh
that the racing Arab is bred. Whatever it may have been in early
times and before the invention of gunpowder, the Arabs of Nejd and
the Peninsula fight now not on horseback, but on dromedaries, and
breed horses rather for show than [use. These are consequently
not bred for speed. The dry climate and want of green pasture,
moreover, keep them stunted in size, as the same conditions stunt
every other animal there, and they have become ponies for reasons
analogous to those which have caused the horse to become a pony
in Shetland. Their average height hardly exceeds 13.2; and 14
hands is there a tall horse. It is not, therefore, from Nejd that a
racing sire should be looked for, in spite of the name Nejdi, which
is applied by Arabs as an epithet of honour to their horses. The
true racing Arabian is to be looked for further north. There the
conditions of life are better suited for the development of speed.

1880. THE THOROUGHBRED HORSE. 417

i
In the first place, from superior pasture the horse is on a larger

scale ; and, secondly, the Bedouin wars, waged on horseback and
with the lance, have acted as a selective power on the quality of speed.
Where the rider's life depends on the swiftness of his beast, that beast
will develop swiftness. In Nejd it is the camel — among the Anazeh
it is the horse.

The confusion which exists on the subject of Nejd horses, and
which has been aggravated by an account, which I am obliged to con-
sider fanciful, of the stud Mr. Palgrave saw at Eiad in 1864, arises, I
believe, from a distinction as to their horses made by the Anazeh them-
selves. The Anazeh are in their origin a tribe of Western Nejd, and
marched northwards no longer than about two hundred years ago.
The pastures where they now live were then occupied by tribes of
earlier Arab invasions (for there has been a constant pressure out-
wards from Central Arabia) — the Tai, Weldi,Beni-Sokhor, and others
whom they conquered and reduced to tribute. In the course of their
wars, being stronger than the rest, they gradually absorbed all the
horseflesh of the country into their own tribes ; but having, like all
' noble ' Arabs, a scrupulous regard for distinctions of blood in their
' breeding, they have distinguished the produce of these captured mares
by the name of Shimali, or Northerners, reserving to that of the mares
they brought with them the title of Nejdi. Hence it happens that,
having a prejudice in favour of the latter as more especially their own,
the term Nejdi is used by them as an encomium. I am, however, by
no means sure that the preference is justified in actual merit, for I
have more than once heard it admitted that many of the Shimali
are as fast or faster gallopers than their rivals. In appearance an
Englishman would perhaps even prefer them, nor should I hesitate
myself to purchase these where the breed was certain. It may be
taken pretty well for granted that at least the Shimali have no ab-
solutely foreign element in their blood. The real truth, however,
about these distinctions and definitions it is exceedingly difficult to
ascertain. If superior merit there be in these Anazeh Nejdi) it is
probably rather one of endurance than of speed.

Nejdi or Shimali, the racing Arab is generally of a bay colour
with black points, and generally of one or other of the breeds espe-
cially called Kehilan. An Englishman would hardly do wrong in
selecting his purchases according to the approved English ideas
of shape, remembering that it is blood stock he is choosing, not
any other. The fact is that many an Arab mare might pass
without comment in England as an English thoroughbred ; nor is
this wonderful considering how nearly they are allied. There are,
all the same, certain points of distinction which he should bear in
mind.

As to the. head — which in the Arab differs more from that of the
English thoroughbred than any other point — it should be large, not

418 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

•

small, as i.- vulgarly supposed; but the size should be all in the upper
n -i; ions. The muzzle should be fine — it cannot be too fine. The
nostril in the best breeds is peculiar. Instead of running down to a
point as in our thoroughbred horses, it should lie flat with the face,
turning upwards, so that, as they say, the rain could drop into it.
This gives it, when distended, a greater volume than with the English
thoroughbred, and aids respiration after a manner artificially con-
trived for asses and camels by the Arabs, who sometimes slit the
nostrils of their beasts of burden if short-winded. The face should
be very broad between the eyes, and with the bones sharply marked
and prominent. It should have a convex look, almost as if swollen ;
but this should be the conformation of the skull, not caused by
fleshiness. It is very important that there should be a prominence
n the forehead terminating below the eyes — a peculiarity which must
not be confounded with the Eoman nose. The eyes should be full,
bright, and prominent, and should be surrounded with black skin,
bare of hair, giving it the appearance of having been painted with
kohl (whence the name Kohlan, or Kehilan). The jowl should be
lean and very deep and wide at the throat, and the jaw-bone well
marked. The under lip longer than the upper, ' like that of the
camel.' Ears, especially in the mare, long, but fine and delicately
cut like a leaf. The neck long and light as with us ; the shoulder
much sloped, but not necessarily ending in a high wither. The back
will be found invariably shorter than in English thoroughbreds, and
the loins more powerful, but there should be length below. With
regard to the limbs the cannon bone is generally shorter, the joints
larger, and the sinews straighter and stouter than in these. The
pastern will be thought too long, but it is a sign with the Bedouins
of speed. The calf knee, though objectionable, is not a defect in
Arab eyes. Perhaps the point after the head least like the English
thoroughbred is the hock. It is larger in the Arabian and less
straight ; the point of the hock being specially prominent, and the
sinew standing visibly out from it downwards. The tail is invariably
carried high in galloping, generally too in repose, and a contrary
carriage is almost always a sign of inferior blood. High knee action
is never seen in the best bred Kehilans ; but shoulder action is almost
always found, combined to a degree rarely equalled in England with
action behind. No attention need be paid to artificial marks, as they
indicate nothing as to breeding. The little cuts inside the ears only
show that the animal has been foaled in the desert, where they sew
his ears together as soon as born, and this will be the case whether
he is asil (noble) or Kadish. Natural markings occur in certain
strains of blood, and may serve as a confirmation of, though they can-
not prove, his origin.

Such in shape and appearance is the racing Arabian. His height
depends mainly on his treatment as a colt. If foaled in a year of

1880. THE THOROUGHBRED HORSE. 419

plenty he may reach fifteen hands ; if in a year of drought fourteen
will be his limit. The usual height is 14.2.

AVith regard to his speed, which for racing purposes is of course
the main question, it is not easy to judge. Few of those who
have witnessed his ' wretched exhibitions ' on the Turf, know how
little the circumstances of his desert breeding have fitted him for
better performances there. The desert-bred Arab has had everything
from the first against him. Starved before birth, he is generally a
puny foal, but is nevertheless weaned at a month old according to the
invariable Bedouin practice. Even during that first month he is not
allowed to run with his dam, being kept at the tent ropes tied by the
near hind leg above the hock ; nor has he any exercise, unless the tribe
be on the march. During the next few months he is fed by the hand
on camel's milk, or such refuse dates as his owner can spare him, or
on gathered pasture if pasture there be. Then in his first autumn he
is turned out to shift for himself, shackled, to prevent his being stolen,
with heavy iron handcuffs. As a yearling he is like a little half-starved
cat, and he only begins to grow in his third spring. Then — it will be
in his second if he has been foaled in the autumn — lie is mounted, I do
not say broke, for he needs no breaking, and, unless he is to be kept
as a stallion for the tribe, is sold to the village dealers on the edge of
the desert. These put him into their close and filthy stables, where
he generally sickens for a while : but then grows fat and sleek, when,
after a sufficient training in such circus tricks as the Turks delight in,
he is resold at an immense profit to some Pasha, Caimakam, or
Ulema, as the case may be, from whom he finds his way into Frank
hands. During all this time, he has probably had not one fair gallop
in his life, and has hardly stretched his legs even in a loose-box, for
he is kept hobbled day and night. At six, seven, or eight years old,
when all his tones are set to short paces, and he has served, maybe,
some seasons at the stud, he is suddenly put by his new owner into
training, and disappoints him because he cannot win a common
country race against English thoroughbreds. Yet surely a son of
Doncaster and Eouge Eose, if treated so, might be excused from win-
ning a Goodwood Cup even at 321bs. allowance. It is therefore, I say,
difficult to judge, by such performances as we have seen, of all that
the Arab is capable of as a racehorse. It is, on the contrary, strange
that he should be as good a horse as he is.

On the other hand I fully admit an actual superiority in point of
speed in the English thoroughbred. It is not for nothing that New-
market has bred a galloping machine for the last two hundred
years, and the Arabian has much time to make up. But I believe
him, as really better bred, to be of really better stuff, and therefore
capable of really better things. The speed that is in the English
horse, though developed by a long process of selection, came all from
the Arabian ; and the pure -bred Arabian must in the long run 'beat

420 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

the impure. At least the experiment is worth trying, and as such I
hope the Jockey Club will regard it.

In the meanwhile we have what to some will appear an even more
important function of the thoroughbred to consider — his function as
sire. I believe it to be pretty generally admitted that, though the
best we possess, the modern British thoroughbred is not an ideal pro-
genitor of half-bred stock. To say nothing of his constitution,
which is hardly all we could wish, but which may be to a certain
extent due to the circumstances of his forced and unnatural existence,
his shape is hardly, even in British eyes, perfection. He is seldom
quite sound of limb, nor often quite sound of wind. His back and
loins fit him for little weight compared with his size, and he is
decidedly leggy. His action too, though admirable for the Turf,
wants form and finish. It is generally poor behind, and it is quite
the exception to see a thoroughbred trot with all-round action. He
is, besides, strange in his temper, easily disturbed and frightened, ex-
tremely often vicious. His offspring naturally partake in some
degree of all these failings, and, though the good blood in him more
than outweighs the defects, still he is far from perfect.

In every point that I have named the thoroughbred Arabian is
his superior. He is sound of wind and limb in nine cases out of ten,
whatever work he may have done and however he may have been
treated. He has a strength of frame equal perhaps to a third as
much again as any other horse of his size. His action is true and
sustained ; and only eyes wedded to certain types of ugliness can fail
to see his beauty. He is, moreover, of admirable temper and strange
intelligence, so that it is hard not to recognise in him a moral and
intellectual being. This suits him, as no other horse is suited, to be
the sire of animals connected with our pleasures — nor is his temper less
valuable even from a purely material point of view. None who have
had experience in breeding will deny the advantage commercially of
breeding from animals which neither savage their attendants nor
each other ; which, when taken in hand as colts, require hardly a
preliminary preparation to be mounted or put in harness ; which will
suffer themselves to be handled from the day they are foaled and
caught by a stranger in their paddocks ; which are startled neither
by sights nor sounds, and 'which in difficulties never lose their heads.

As a sire for hunters I can conceive no more admirable type than
a well-chosen Anazeh horse, with the long shoulder some of them
possess, and the deep ribs and well-knit loins which are their special
points of power. In courage across country the Arab is without a
rival, and his is a courage tempered with intelligence. He is not
only a big but a clever jumper, and one that delights in his work.

It is, however, as a breeder of carriage stock that I believe him
to be specially superior to the English thoroughbred. There his
soundness of foot and limb and his true action would find all their

1880. THE THOROUGHBRED HORSE. 421

advantage, while his low wither would be of little consequence.
Nearly every Arabian I have put in harness has proved a fast and
showy trotter, displaying, moreover, a power of draught quite dispro-
portionate to his size.

It is my opinion that the thoroughbred Arab is seen less to his
advantage as a hack than in any other circumstances. In spite of
his finely-shaped shoulder, the low wither gives a more forward seat to
his rider than is suited to the English taste. He is, however, ex-
cellent in all his paces, being as fast and safe a walker as the cross-
bred straight-shouldered animal which represents him in India is the
contrary. I have ridden him many thousand miles, and have never
yet been ' put down ' on the road.

As size is a condition sine qua non for most purposes in England,.
I feel that something needs to be said on that head. I have every
reason to believe that pure Arabian produce, bred in England, will in
the first generation reach the height of 15 hands 2 inches. I have at
present in my stud farm a yearling colt measuring already 14.2,
although his dam is hardly that height, and I believe it to be a fact
that crossbred produce from an Arabian sire is always taller than the
mean height of sire and dam. That this should be so seems to me
quite accountable. The Arabian of 15 hands is not a big pony but
a little horse — little only through the circumstances of his breeding,
and ready at once to develop as Nature under kindlier influences
intended him to do. It may seem a paradox to say it, but I believe
size to be no less a quality of the racing Anazeh than speed. The
English racehorse of 1700, if we may believe Admiral Ecus, was
under 15 hands in height, being then, as I have shown, by no means
a pure Arabian, whereas immediately after the infusion of Darley
blood he rose to 16 and 16.2. The soil and climate of England will,
I doubt not, do now what it did then ; and I think it is the Duke of
Newcastle who remarks ' there is no fear of having too small horses
in England, since the moisture of the climate and the fatness of the
land rather produce horses too large.' Neither do I doubt that in 4
Arabian cross-breeding a like result will be obtained.

Lastly, the Arabian has this in his favour as a sire. He is lesj
likely, from the real purity of his blood, to get those strange sports of
Nature which are the curse of breeders, misshapen offspring recalling
some ancient stain in not a stainless pedigree. The true Arabian
may be trusted to reproduce his kind after his own image and
likeness, and of a particular type. It will rarely happen to the
breeder of Arabians that a colt is born useless for any purpose in the.
world, except, as they say, ' to have his throat cut or be run iu a
hansom.' Whether he be bred a racehorse or not, the Arab will always-
find a market as long as cavalry is used in England or on the Con-
tinent. He is a cheap horse to breed, doing well on what would1
starve an English thoroughbred, and requiring less stable work from
VOL. VIII.— No. 43. F F

422 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

his docility. Above all, whatever diseases he may acquire in time,
he starts now with a clean bill of health, inheriting none of those
weaknesses of constitution which beset our present racing stock. He
endures cold as he endures heat, fasting as plenty, and hard work as
idleness. Nothing comes to him amiss. For what other creature
under heaven can we say so much ?

Such, then, are the considerations which have determined Lord
Calthorpe and some of his friends to support a scheme for the en-
couragement of thoroughbred Arab breeding in England. The
English Jockey Club, though not exactly, like the French, a ' society
for the encouragement of horse-breeding,' can do much towards coun-
tenancing and assisting the scheme. The establishment of a weight-
for-age race for Arabs, with a respectable stake to run for, would be a
decided inducement to all, who have hitherto had a se'ntimental love
only for the Arabian, to breed him seriously ; and the present is, as I
have explained, an admirable opportunity for obtaining the requisite
blood. We may hope, if races are established in England, to obtain
similar support in France, Italy, and Germany, whose Jockey Clubs
have been always ready to take a hint from ours, and in all which
countries Arab studs are found. These, it is true, are not now
devoted to racing, but to military purposes, although in time they
will become so. The colonies, and especially the Cape of Good Hope,
where the Arabian is already in high estimation, may be expected to
come forward. At first it can hardly be anticipated that Arab entries
should be numerous ; but all things must have their beginning.

Should the event justify at all Lord Calthorpe's hopes and those
of his friends, the future has much in store for those who will try
the experiment. The idea has in it nothing contrary to English
traditions, and may be productive of incalculable good to the country.
Sportsmen will no doubt receive it at first merely as an experiment ;
and they will do well, for such it is. But it is possible for a sanguine
mind to look forward to the day when a new race of thoroughbreds,
this time really thoroughbred, shall have taken its place without help
or favour on the English Turf, and a more perfect animal have been
-contrived for the stud than any that England has yet possessed.

WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT.

POSTSCRIPT.

Since the foregoing pages were written my original letter to Lord Calthorpe has
been published by order of the Stewards of the Jockey Club, and a certain amount of
correspondence has resulted in the sporting press concerning it. A3 might have
been expected, the scheme has found opponents, partisans of the existing order of
things as the best possible in the best of possible worlds. To these I can hardly
expect that what I have now written will prore convincing, but I trust that it may

1880. THE THOROUGHBRED HORSE. 423

be taken by them as an answer to most of their objections. On one matter, however,
I feel that I have perhaps been hardly quite explicit. My belief in the innate
superiority of the Kehilan does not blind me to the existing merits of the English
thoroughbred. I believe him to be, next to the Arabian, the purest bred horse in
the world, and of all now the fastest. It is impossible for me, nevertheless, to
accept as strictly exact his title to thoroughbreeding. By the avowal of his warmest
friends his blood is the result of more than one ingredient, itself not pure, while the
very name of thoroughbred has been his hardly for two hundred years. The Arabian,
on the other hand, is the descendant of a single race kept pure since its first domestica-
tion, and bred with fanatical reverence for many hundreds — probably for many
thousands — of years ; and it has, moreover, been accepted as the one thoroughbred horse
of Asia certainly from the time of Mahomet. At that time, the seventh century, the
Kehilan overran Asia, and Northern Africa, and Spain, leaving everywhere the token
of his superiority in the semi- Arabian stock which has there replaced indigenous
breeds. Neither Persian, nor Turk, nor Barb, nor Andalusian, are pure races. They
are half-bred Arabs, owing to the Kehilan all their quality. So, too, is the English
horse, whose very name ' thoroughbred ' is but a paraphrase of the ' Kheyl asilat ' of
Arabia, and whose pretension to true blood is but a copy of theirs. England, it in
true, possesses a noble horse, but there is still a nobler ; and she should possess it too.
This is my reason for pressing the Arabian's claims upon my countrymen.

424 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

ENGLISH RATIONAL AND IRRATIONAL.

1 Die Hauptsaclie iiberall die ist, die Erkenntniss von der Meinung zn unter-
scheiden.'— F. E. D. SCHLEIERMACILER.

PEREMPTORY and unreasoned pronouncements as to what is bad
English are not the least of the minor pests which vex our en-
lightened age ; and the bulk of them, as the better-informed are well
aware, may be traced to persons who have given only very slight
attention to verbal criticism. The effective disseminators of these
pronouncements are, indeed, far from numerous. By these we mean,
for the most part, those would-be philologists who collect waifs and
strays of antipathies and prejudices, amplify the worthless hoard by
their own whimseys, and, to the augmentation of vulgar error, digest
the whole into essays and volumes. That, however, their utterances
should be echoed unquestioningly by the demi-literate, and adopted
as subordinate articles of the Philistine creed, is only what might be
expected. Far more readily than the contrary, whatever partakes of
the nature of disparagement may calculate on popular acceptance.
Account should be taken, also, that any seeming evidence of a man's
superiority to his associates is, in general, a source of keen gratifica-
tion to him. Of all that he claims as his own, nothing is likely to
raise him higher in his own conceit than his fancied possession of
knowledge to which, with the] elegance implied in it, they are
strangers. Then again, research, or even patient reflection, where
the subject-matter lies deeper than the most obvious superficialities,
is a characteristic of scholars, and, as being so, is entirely secure from
appropriation by the half-educated and their favourite guides. All
things considered, we may be thankful, and perhaps we ought to be
surprised, that the conceit of omniscience, original and derived,
touching propriety in English, is not more widely diffused than we
find it to be.

Nevertheless, instinctive legislation concerning our language is
too frequent and too obtrusive to be endured without occasional
protest. Suspicion of its temerity can hardly occur to those who
indulge in it deliberately. That they should see the matter in its
true light, that they should surmise its utter presumptuousness, their

1880. ENGLISH RATIONAL AND IRRATIONAL. 425

complacent self-sufficiency renders all but impossible. Philology, as
they rate it, is a thing light enough to serve as their mere avocation
and pastime. In their own opinion, and by their tacit profession,
they have read all that one needs to read, they are infallible in point
of memory, and their taste and their judgment are past gainsaying.
Their attitude is, in short, exactly that which conciliates most speedily
the adhesion of the multitude. Acting on the maxim, that modesty
is not a note of inspiration, they believe unwaveringly in themselves,
they are visited by no doubts, they cautiously avoid dealing in alter-
natives ; and none, sooner than such, are welcome to the unthinking
and the timid, and may assure themselves of a host of disciples. To
the ordinary mind there is something irresistibly attractive, and
something which invites unstinted confidence, in the pretensions of a
man who, conforming to a familiar practice, declares, for instance,
that a given word or sense of a word had no existence before a defined
date, or is not to be rnet with in the pages of any reputable writer.
Only arrant sciolists, certainly, will venture on sweeping assertions of
this stamp. It is, however, precisely these that are wholly at one with
the vulgar mob of readers, characterised as it is, what with impotence
and indolence, by a repugnance to all enunciations which bewilder
by being limited or qualified. On these worse than blind dictators
argument would, of course, be wasted. Still, it is not altogether
hopeless that suggestions of their incapacity, for cause shown, may
penetrate, and with good effect, to some whose reliance on their false
lessons, if it continued unshaken, would promote the propagation of
foolish and mischievous fancies.

In the case of a living language, not yet in its decline, interesting
as its historical philology may be, its practical philology is of im-
portance vastly greater. Of this the scope is, to discover and to record
the best recent and present usage — in other terms, eligible precedents.
Nor can a different view of its functions be accepted, unless one
first postulates, consciously or unconsciously, principles which will
bear no serious examination. The view specially alluded to is that
of grammarians, lexicographers, and rhetoricians, of the autocratic
type. Pronouncing, as they do, arbitrarily, or from a predilection
for the obsolete, as to what is right and what is wrong, they ought,
certainly, to produce credentials from heaven, or from some other
exalted quarter, conclusive that their autocratism is authentic. In the
meantime, all is not so smooth as it ought to be. If we are to believe
themselves, they are virtually inspired ; and, it being only injunc-
tions that they have to do with, the hapless sceptic is constantly
molested by doubts how to separate, therein, warrantable prescriptions
from personal suggestions. But a language is never a finality, nor a
fixture ; and its course is beyond the staying or the controlling of
speculators or theorists. Its prevailing features, at whatever period
of its career, are impressed upon it, of necessity, by circumstances

426 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

•which constitute and distinguish that period. Depreciation of the
former is, therefore, depreciation, inclusively, of the latter. For
example, when modernisms are decried, as often happens, on the sole
avowed ground of their being modernisms, it is silently taken for
granted, that, in comparison with our forerunners, we have retro-
graded in good sense, or in good taste, or in having superfluous
wants ; for, if we have not, the expressions which satisfied them
would satisfy us. It does not seem to occur to the rigid philological
conservative, that every particular of what he idolises as classicism of
phrase was once the very freshest of novelties, and so every word
ever spoken, back to the primeval interjections or what not. If, as
he contends, we do amiss when we innovate on what has been handed
down to us, it behoves him to show what there is about us for which
we should be denied a privilege enjoyed by all bygone generations.
He is to show, also, and antecedently, that, after a certain course of
development, a language need change no more, and that it differs
from all things else, in not being relative, and subject to the law of
mutation which reigns throughout nature. In fact,[taken as a whole,
speech, equally with the form of our coats and of our hats, is at no time
otherwise than a precarious and fugitive fashion, a resultant of causes
so inscrutable in their working that it looks much like the offspring of
caprice ; and, while we can but blindly appreciate its true antecedents,
its future fortunes wholly transcend our divination. However, from
the point of view of practice, all that imports most of us, respecting
it, is, to ascertain what English is accredited by the best contem-
porary writers, and to govern ourselves accordingly. Adepts will, in
exigency, go further than this ; but let no one believe lightly that he
belongs to their select brotherhood.

That which we have here set forth being, on the face of it, barely
in advance of the axiomatic, it is curious to observe the inconside-
rateness in which even men usually most circumspect are seen to
allow themselves. Thus, Lord Macaulay l speaks of Bunyan as afford-
ing a sample of 4 the old unpolluted English language,' and tells us
' how rich that language is in its own proper wealth, and how little it
has been improved by all that it has borrowed.' Prudently enough,
the thesis of what constitutes the unpollutedness of Bunyan's English
is left unattempted. And is not that pleonastic property, its being
'rich in its own proper wealth,'3 just as predicable of our present
English as it is of Bunyan's ? And has ' borrowed ' English been a
peculiarity of the last two or three centuries ? On the assumption,
as a starting-point, that the English of a certain age was a gift direct
from the skies, and so pure and perfect as not to admit, save to its
harm, of alteration or addition, Lord Macaulay's eulogy is reconcil-

1 In his Essayt, vol. i. pp. 423, 424, 7th ed.

2 Another pleonasm of Lord Macaulay's is such as an irresolute man would hardly
hazard : 'He walled on foot, bareheaded,' &c. (Ifirtory, $c., vol. i. p. 657, 10th ed.)

1880. ENGLISH RATIONAL AND IRRATIONAL. 427

able with right reason. But it is not that he delivered himself
ambiguously. His error is fundamental. If it had been said of
Bunyan, that, looking to all his circumstances, he utilised a simple
style of English with most unexpected felicity, quite enough would
have been said. To Lord Macaulay the English of the Bible, as of
those older writers who recall it to mind, was powerfully attractive.
And we are not obliged to suppose that it was so adventitiously, that
is to say, owing to those early associations whose bias few outgrow^
Tried by the severest canons of taste, it is found to merit praise which,,
cannot easily be exaggerated. For who can deny its exquisite eoncin-
nity with its subject-matters, or be insensible to the charm of its un-
constrained and rhythmical fluency ? Still, for the general purposes ot
us moderns, it would, indisputably, prove most meagre and insufficient.
The history of English, from the days of those happy ventures whose
fruits, no more than slightly modified, we see in the authorised version
of the Bible, is the history of what Lord Macaulay would have called
its pollution. Previously to the later years of Henry the Eighth, so
inadequate was our tongue for most purposes other than social com"
munication, that the more learned Englishmen who aspired to make
a mark in literature were, with few reservations, fain to content
themselves with Latin. Such quasi-vernacular phenomena as are
associated with the names of Bishop Pecock, Lord Berners, and a
few others, are noteworthy, over and above their unseasonableness,
simply as having been too daringly tentative to induce imitation*
While revolting, from their ungainly novelty, to the educated with
whom their appearance was contemporaneous, probably they were well-
nigh unintelligible to all except the educated. Our older poetry apart,
from the works of Sir John Mandeville, Wicliffe, Sir John Fortescue,
Sir Thomas Malory, Tyndale, and Sir Thomas More, with the Paston
Letters, one may derive a very fair idea of the speech of our forefathers,
as exhibited in what were its most acceptable forms, down to near the
middle of the sixteenth century. But the outburst of intellectual
vigour and activity which concurred with the Eeformation and the
introduction of printing could not but tell on our language advanta-
geously. To Sir Thomas Elyot we are indebted for the first reso-
lute attempt that proved successful, towards its enrichment and its
improvement throughout. In contrast to his predecessors who had
experimented to the same end, Elyot was a man of consummate tact.
Besides this, he presented himself just when the public temper was
attuned to the propounding of innovations. The authority which
attached to his diction, in the eyes of the generation next succeeding
his own, is .exemplified by a rugged couplet of Eicharde Eden, himself,
at least in prose, and for his age, no indifferent literary practitioner.
In deprecation of censure at the hands of purists, he says : —

I have not for every worde asked counsayle
Of eloquent Eliot or Sir Thomas Moore [ate].

428 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

As to the good writers who, in uninterrupted series, connect his
day with our own, it is enough here to glance at the nature of their
services which have .brought English to be what it is. The art was
very soon discovered of framing sentences not unreasonably protracted ;
and, by degrees, involution and complexity — though most translators,
nnd those who leaned to foreign modes, were slow in disusing
them — came to be looked upon as questionable merits. But, from
the first, the want of an ampler vocabulary was practically acknow-
ledged, and steps were taken to supply it. Latin, French, and
Italian are the chief sources which were deemed available for this
object ; and, as short words are better than long words of equivalent
import, it is to be regretted that our dialects were not freely laid
under contribution. The preference given to Latinistic importations
increased steadily for something like a century, after it had set in
with force, above all among ecclesiastics and those whose style they
influenced. Though it never reached the exorbitant pitch which
•was gravely advocated by Henry Cockeram, it surely neared the
limits of the conceivably endurable in Milton, Sir Thomas Browne,
and Henry More. That, in the meanwhile, the tradition of English
such as the run of men could follow understandingly did not disappear
from books altogether, we have to thank, in a great measure, the
humbler divines. With the Restoration, a new phase of our language
was developed. Foremost among its representatives are, not to name
others, Sir William Temple, Tillotson, Dryden, Jeremy Collier,
Shaftesbury, Defoe, Addison,Steele, Swift, Bolingbroke, Pope, Berkeley,
Middleton, Fielding, and Richardson. And then came Dr. Johnson,
with his monotonously balanced periods and his superficial reminders
of the Caroline divines. We say superficial ; for, while classical poly-
syllables were, to them, often little more than aids to mere grandi-
loquence, they served, in his use, to mark genuine distinctions and
refinements. Successful imitators he could, in the nature of things,
have but few. His sonorousness and the structure of his cadences
may easily be mimicked ; but his style, in its distinctive essence, is a
faithful reflex of his mental idiosyncrasy, and, until we shall see his
second self, can be only counterfeited, not reproduced. The short-
sighted idea was, in his day, rapidly gaining ground, and with in-
jurious practical effect, that our language had attained a form from
which to deviate must be to deteriorate. This, though not at all
intentionally, he contributed directly to counteract. Yet, quite inde-
pendently of his undesigned philological liberalism, there were causes
at work, even before his death, operating to break the uneasy shackles
by which the expression of thought had so long been hampered
among us, and promoting the advent of the more cosmopolitan
English of the last seventy years, the English of Bentham, Southey,
Coleridge, Landor, Mr. J. S. Mill, Bishop Thirlwall, Cardinal Newman,
Mr. Swinburne, and Mr. John Morley.

1880. ENGLISH RATIONAL AND IRRATIONAL. 429

As long ago as 1557, Sir John Cheke was persuaded that English
could dispense perfectly well with further accessions from without.
Not only so, but he deemed that such accessions, if realised, would
entail something very portentous. He predicted, with reference to
our language, that, ' if we take not heed bi tiim, ever borowing and
never payeng, she shall be fain to keep her house as bankrupt.' How
the borrowing here could possibly be compensated by the paying, he can
hardly have troubled himself to inquire. Just as little did antiquity
warrant him from writing nonsense, as it warranted many a wiser
man. Like Lord Macaulay, Cheke must have entertained the notion,
that our language, at a certain point in time, shared the nature of a
revelation, and that a self-sufficing revelation. Alternative to this
absurd position is the superstition, equally absurd, which magnifies
the wisdom of our ancestors into inerrancy, and supposes that they
foresaw what must be good for us better than we ourselves see it.
To the one or to the other we must, perforce, trace the long-lived
lament — for it comes to this — so worthy of its fatuous origin, that
our speech has grown, grows, and bids fair to go on growing.

The unreason which we have thus stripped to its nakedness is, of
course, ordinarily so disguised, that, until closely scrutinised, it looks
more or less plausible. A dogmatiser in the province of philology is
almost certain to be a good deal in the clouds. Instead of intelligent
and intelligible convictions, he has scarcely more than tenacious
partialities. These he would justify, if he could ; and, in his inability
10 establish them on grounds of plain sense, the device, alike most
obvious and most imposing, to which he is wont to resort as a
preliminary, is a vague appeal, with magisterial air, to something be-
yond average apprehension. Having thus thrown dust into the eyes
of the unwary, he ventures whatever first occurs to him that seems to
subserve the argument from analogy. This done, he retires with a
metaphorical bow ; the silent salute being designed to signify that
your submission is anticipated, at the peril of your being accounted
no more sagacious than you should be. The procedure here sketched
shall be illustrated by an extract from the Edinburgh Review : 3 —

YvTe cannot admit the authority of usage, when it is clearly opposed to the very
principles of language. There is, we fear, ample authority, amongst writers of the
present day, for the use of the word supplement, not as a noun substantive, which
is its proper meaning, but aa a verb active, in the sense of ' to supply what is de-
ficient,' ' to complete.' We have seen it used, of late years, by prelates and judges,
who ought to have abhorred such a solecism ; nay, we will even confess, so in-
fectious has it become, that it has, once or twice, crept, notwithstanding our utmost
vigilance, into these pages. Svfplentent is, by its form, the ' thing added or sup-
plied,' not the ' act of supplying ' it. You might just as well say, that, instead of
appending another page to your book, you intend to appendix it.

From a writer who openly denies the authority of usage we ought
not to be astonished at any shallowness or at any sophistry. And, when
s Vol. 120, p. 42(1864).

430 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

such a person preludes about ' the very principles of language,' it is
odds that his acquaintance with those principles is not of much the
same scientific stamp as was that of Ephraim Jenkinson with cos-
mogony and Ocellus Lucanus. According to what we have just tran-
scribed, as to ' the word supplement,' ' a noun substantive ... is its
proper meaning.' It may be that we are not to complain of this,
however, unless we would at once lower ourselves in the estimation of
the reviewer, and would be thought to demand impossibilities. For
we are admonished, in the next page but one after that from which
we have quoted : ' If a man writes in a way which cannot be mis-
understood by a reader of common candour and intelligence, he has
done all, as regards clearness, that can be expected of him. To attempt
more is to ask of language more than language can perform.1
Assuredly, this is no improvement on the maxim of Quintilian : Non
ut intelligere possit, sed ne omnino possit non intelligere curandum.
To proceed, supplement, as a verb, is asserted to he a solecism ; and
what is meant for a reason is brought forward to substantiate the as-
sertion. We are directed to mark the signification which alone is
deducible from the substantive supplement, on account of its form.
Restricting ourselves to English, we reply that achievement denotes
both ' act of achieving ' and ' thing achieved ; ' and similarly twofold
in meaning are acquirement, allotment, assignment, attainment,
and averment, to go no further. On the other hand, abasement is
not 'thing abased ; ' and in the same class with it are abetment, abridg-
ment, adjustment, adornment, allurement, amazement, amusement,
appointment, arraignment^ arrangement, assessment, astonishment,
and so on to weariness. The termination -ment supplies a variety of
senses ; and even the Latin termination -mentum supplies two.
Supplementum, and with strict regularity, is either * thing supplied '
or ' act of supplying ; ' and convention would have broken no squares
in decreeing that supplement should bear the second of these imports
as well as the first. And all this might, surely, be discovered with-
out much of what the critic calls, at p. 56, 4 high literary acumen.'' It
would have sufficed us, indeed, to enunciate the indisputable fact,
that, in English, the significatory relation between a substantive and
its corresponding verb, whether they have the same form or not, and
whichever of them preceded the other, is, to a very great extent,
arbitrary. Supplement, as a verb, and meaning what it does, is,
consequently, not a shade more irregular, viewed etymologically or in
any other way, than augment, ornament, torment, or the Scotch
implement, or the obsolete detriment, l injure.' Again, the adduc-
tion of the verb appendix, with intent to discredit the verb supple-
ment, is peculiarly unfortunate. We have often seen the phrase ' to
climax an argument ; ' and who, after having heard a few times ' to
appendix a book,' would revolt against it, any more than against
' to index it,' or against ' to catalogue a library ' ?

1880. ENGLISH RATIONAL AND IRRATIONAL. 431

By way of pointing the lesson, how futile it may be, save as
furnishing material for history, to comment on expressions of recent
emergence or comparative rarity, we shall specify some words which,
in the centuries when our language was undergoing most rapid trans-
formation, were designated for their novelty, if not also with disap-
proval or ridicule. Sir Thomas Elyot, in 1531, condemned, by
implication, industry, magnanimity, maturity, and modesty ; and
shortly afterwards he proposed crudity and lassitude. Nicolas
Udall, in 1542, while using, explained, clime, geography, parasite,
pedagogue, prorogation, and stratagem. And we are to add
fountain, which Bishop Bale, too, in 1550, would not risk without
a definition tacked to it. Thomas Langley, in 1546, introduced
circus, labyrinth, and obelisk, with interpretations which show that, in
his judgment, they were then entire strangers. Writing in 1577,
Eicharde Willes frowned on despicable, destructive, homicide,
imbibed, obsequious, ponderous, portentous, and prodigious.
These words, he says, * cannot be excused, in my opinion, for smellyng
to much of the Latine.' Among words which Dr. William Fulke, in
1583, scouted as i affected novelties of termes, such as neither English
nor Christian ears ever heard in the Christian tongue,' are gratis, neo-
phyte, paraclete, prepuce, scandal; and he thought no better of
advent, evangelise, sandal, scandalise, and schism. Reginald Scot,
in the year following, gave, as specimens of ' mysticall termes of art/
* termes of the art alcumystical, devised of purpose to bring credit to
cousenage,' the substantives induration, ingot, mollification, termi-
nation, test, and the verbs cement, imbibe, incorporate, and sublime*
Eobert Parke, in 1588, defined, when he used, the word hurricane,
or, as he writes it, uracan. Greorge Puttenham, in 1589, named,
as new-comers, compendious, declination, delineation, dimension?
figurative, function, harmonical, idiom, impression, indignity?
inveigle, method, methodical, metrical, numerous, obscure, penetra-
ble, penetrate, placation, prolix, refining, savage, scientific, signi-
ficative, &c. &c. Sir John Smythe, also in 1589, reclaimed against
beleaguer. Ben Jonson, in 1601, derided clumsy, conscious, damp,
in/late, puffy, reciprocal, retrograde, and strenuous. Dekker,
Chettle, and Haughton, in Patient Grissil, published two years later,,
levelled their wit at accoutrements, adulatory, capricious, compli-
ment, conglutinate, fastidious, misprision, project ; and Chapman.,
in 1606, saw something to amuse in collaterally, condole, endeared,
and 'model. Among expressions which Philemon Holland, in 1609,
held it necessary to elucidate for his readers, are included aborigines?
cataract, cylinder, father-in-laiu, hemisphere, sectary, and, in 1629r
on using myriad, he expounded it in a marginal annotation-
Holocaust, rational, and tunic stand in the list of terms for avoiding-
which King James's revisers of the Bible plume themselves on having
'shunned the obscurity of the Papists.' Edward Leigh, in 1639,

432 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

found avarice, coadjutor, dominical, impudicity, paraclete, and
prevaricate unendurable. Dr. Peter Heylin, criticising the phraseo-
logy of the Romish version of the Bible, enumerates, as among its
' words utterly unknown to any English reader, unlesse well-grounded
and instructed in the learned languages,' acquisition, advent, host,
presence, proposition, victim. The date of this remark is 1656, at
which time its author, giving proof of a memory as often treacherous
as faithful, did not hesitate to apply the epithets * uncouth and un-
usuall' to abstruse, acquiesce, adequate, adoption, adventitious,
alleviate, amphibious, animadvert, antagonist, asperse, causality,
chirography, commensurate, compensate, complacence, complicate,
concede, concrete, confraternity, culpability, depredation, despon-
dence, desponding, destination, dual, embryo, emerge, emergent,
emolument, eradicate, erudition, evacuate, excogitate, excoriate,
exuberancy, fortuitously, germinate, gestation, gust, hectic, hibernal,
horizontal, hypothesis, identity, imminent, impede, impetuosity,
impurity, inaudible, inauspicious, incantation, incurious, inflame,
initiation, inquietude, intense, interfere, intersect, intrinsic,
irritate, iteration, luminary, luxuriancy, magnetic, meliorate,
metamorphosis, minatory, mode, morass, narrator, nave, nonsense,
noxiousness, nude, oblique, occult, ocular, odium, offertory, omen,
onerous, operate, opine, organical, placable, ponderous, portentous,
precarious, preponderate, prevarication, radiant, rancidity, reci-
procate, reduction, refulgent, relax, repertory, respond, retention, re-
verberation, salubrious, scheme, scintillation, sedulous, series, sterile,
stimulate, stipulate, stricture, supinely, susceptible, symbol, synopsis,
system, temerity, temporalities, tendency, treatment, trepidation,
unison, vacuity, valediction, veniality, veteran, vigil, virile. But
we must desist. As every wide and observant reader is fully aware,
not only do strictures of this description bestrew our literature most
freely, from the days of Heylin to our own, but that fanciful and very
subjective critic has had an army of followers as unadvised as
himself.

Executive faculty and judicial we usually look to find each by it-
self. Proficiency in an art and proficiency in its related science
seldom offer themselves to view conjoined in one person. Be his use
of his native language ever so irreproachable, a man is not con-
sequently a philologist. From a mere instinct of conservatism, super-
ficially cultivated, he may avoid very much that rationally offends.
If, however, he would judge language critically, he must habituate
himself to that industry of observation and that needfulness of state-
ment which are essential in the exact sciences, and by recourse to
which, sound philology assimilates to those sciences so closely.
These remarks we shall illustrate very briefly.

Archbishop Whately, after assigning the character of ' unfortunate '
to Locke's ' encomium upon Aristotle,' goes on to say : —

1880. ENGLISH RATIONAL AND IRRATIONAL. 433

He praises him for the ' invention of syllogisms,' to which he certainly had no
more claim than . . . Harvey to the praise of having made the blood circulate. . . .
And the utility of this invention consists, according to him, in the great
service done against ' those who were not ashamed to deny anything ; ' a service
which never could have been performed, had syllogisms been an invention of Aris-
totle's ; for what sophist could ever have consented to restrict himself to one parti-
cular kind of arguments dictated by Ms opponent f 4

Apparently, His Grace must have had peculiar notions as to what
is meant by ' Invention of the Cross ' in the Prayer-book. Before
criticising the English of one of our older writers, he ought, surely,
to have acquainted himself with the language of that writer's age ;
and, had he construed Locke as Locke was construed by his contem-
poraries, there would not have been a vestige of foundation for the
animadversion here remarked on. If invention had, in Locke's
day, something of ambiguity about it, the same kind of defect, only
heightened, unquestionably attached to discovery, senses of which,
then familiar to the learned, were ' exploration,' ' examination,' ' ex-
hibition,' ' exposure,' 4 disclosure,' &c.

Sir James Fitzjames Stephen suffers himself to be moved from
his philosophic equanimity by what he is pleased to call ' the hideous
adjective educational, and its even more hideous substantive educa-
tionist.'1 5

Now, are additional, conditional, congregational, constitutional,
devotional, discretional, emotional, fractional, functional, inten-
tional, national, occasional, professional, proportional, provisional,
rational, sectional, sensational, sessional, traditional, and transi-
tional ' hideous ' ? And are abolitionist, excursionist, opinionist,
oppositionist, protectionist, and religionist 'even more hideous'?
Educational was in print as long ago as 1652 ; it was used by Mrs.
Mary Knowles, in a colloquy with Dr. Johnson, and, as far as is known,
escaped rebuke; and it enjoyed the sanction of Edmund Burke. It
has age in its favour, then, besides analogy ; and its respectability
and utility, being attested by good modern usage, stand in need of
no vindication. As to educationist, not only is it a regular formation,
and euphonious enough, but it dispenses us, as educational does,
from the necessity of a long periphrasis. But this, and much more that
we might urge pertinently, must be all but superfluous to any one
who troubles himself to reflect a little. For the rest, it is at least
somewhat singular that Mr. Justice Stephen, with his judicial turn
of mind, should proffer unsubstantiated'disparagement as a substitute
for argumentation. His mere pleasure that educational should be
' hideous,' and that educationist should be ' even more hideous,' is
hardly likely to be accepted as an irreversible ruling.

That, in a province of investigation where keenly perceptive

4 Elements of Logic, Book i. § 1, foot-note.
* Essays b'j a Uarritter, p. lyi.

434 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

critics like Archbishop Whately and Sir James Fitzjames Stephen
have strayed from the right road, men of no more than average
prudence should go well-nigh utterly astray, can occasion no surprise.
In former generations, self-important, and generally useless, and popu-
larly pernicious speculators, of this calibre, abounded more in Scotland
than in England ; and, of very late years, they have had a whole legion
of imitators and copyists in the United States. Their vagaries we have,
at present, no great inclination to expatiate on. However, among
the American followers of misguiding Britons, there has been one
whose quixotic attempt to set our language on what he took to be its
legs we purpose to appreciate briefly. We refer to the late Mr. William
Cullen Bryant.6 The home-reputation of this gentleman has, in Great
Britain, only the faintest of echoes to such as have read his poem
bearing the impossible title of Thanatopsis ; 7 for, in America, and
above all in New York, Mr. Bryant is, in reminiscence, a power of
formidable magnitude. Provided that fulness of years confers sagacity,
he must have constituted a rather troublesome argument to all good
Democrats, considering that, at the ripe age of eighty-three, and as a
recent seceder from their ranks, he was still editing a Eepublican
newspaper, and with considerable vigour. Reformed himself, he would
have reformed others, and, as we shall see, in more things than one.
The political party with which he was originally identified is, notori-
ously, that which embraces among its adherents nearly the whole of
the most lawless, turbulent, and illiterate elements of the American
citizenry ; people whose leading aim, it would seem, is, first to
establish a general social equality, and Heaven alone knows what
by and by. After parting company with these levellers, Mr. Bryant
did not, however, make a halt at the conviction that the instinctive
wisdom of the rabble is unequal to the task of managing the State to
the best advantage. He also came to believe that the practice of right
English was a matter in which his countrymen required lessoning.

6 This article, substantially as now given, was in the hands of the editor several
months before Mr. Bryant's death.

7 Thanatopsia or T/ianatopsy is correct. Compare autopsy. Thanatopsis, like the
naturalists' cereopsii and coreopsis, is just as indefensible a formation as ti'lryram,
which Mr. Bryant would not hear of even in his newspaper. Synopsis is right ; but a
large number of the Greek-derived technicalities in -is, coined by English scientists,
as biogenesis, &c., are quite illegitimate, and as bad as Svffrvxy or 0to5d|a would be.
Every philologist, not still in his novitiate, knows the reason.

Mr. J. C. Pickett, an American, imitating Mr. Bryant's impossibility, has entitled
one of his poems ' Thfrmopsis : The Hot Weather.'

People who make new words would often do well to submit their coinages to
scholars. Mr. A. J. Ellis, in one of his works, treats of homonyms and also of ' heteric
polynym*.'' See A Pleajor Phonetic Spelling, pp. 173-176 (ed. 1848). Of course, he
can have no notion that the second constituent of honw»ym is from uyu^a (uvo^ta).

The objection to synonym and homonym, as ordinarily employed, we have set forth
elsewhere. Mr. Ellis's homonyms and polynym* (polyonym») we would call homoplwncs
and ho-mograpfa. The first are identical to the ear only ; the second, identical to
the eye.

1880. ENGLISH RATIONAL AND IRRATIONAL. 435

With intentions which had, no question, a laudable motive, he would
have promoted the diffusion of that practice ; but the method by
which he essayed to achieve his object was, as far as in him lay, that of
a rigid absolutist. No one connected, as a writer, with his journal was
to act on his own notions as to what was English, unless, as respected
a long list of words and phrases, those notions tallied with such as were
held by his chief.8

Mr. Bryant is not always by any means desirably clear ; but still
we think we do not err in understanding that he proscribes outright
the substantives aspirant., authoress, humbug, interment, item,
nominee, oration, poetess, proximity, raid, rough, seaboard, tele-
gram? vicinity ; the adjectives jubilant and talented ; the verbs
base, collide, commence, inter, jeopardise, locate, notice, repudiate,
state,10 taboo ; the adverb subsequently ; and phrases like is being done,
with prior to,11 take action, the deceased, try an experiment, we are
mistalten in,12 which man,13 ivould seem.u Add the familiar artiste,
•cortege, debut, depot, employe, en route, role, tapis, via. The title
Rev. is to be allowed, if ushered in by the definite article ; but Esq.
and Hon. are not to be borne with on any terms.

But, before going further, we wish to note a fact of literary his-
tory, make a few quotations, and propose a query or two. Some
years ago, then, Mr. Bryant put forth a moderate-sized volume called
Letters of a Traveller. Its contents are, manifestly, the result of
great care and elaboration. And, in that volume, we find the author
practically neglectful of the following articles from his list of evitanda:
* call attention, for direct attention ; ' e claimed, for asserted ; ' £ co-
temporary, for contemporary ; ' ' numerous, as applied to any noun
save a noun of multitude ;' '•past two iueeks,foT last two weeks, and
all similar expressions relating to a definite time ; ' ' quite, prefixed

8 See, for the details which follow, Mr. W. Fraser Kae's Columbia and Canada ,
pp. 56-58 (1877).

9 The prohibitory mandate runs thus : ' telegrams, for despatclies.'1 But a despatch
may be of many sorts besides telegraphic. Indistinctness, it thus appears, is recom-
mended in preference to neoterism.

With similar want of precision, Mr. Bryant has : ' nominee, for candidate ; ' ' raid,
for attach ; ' ' state, for say.'

10 If locate, repudiate, and state are unendurable, are location, repudiation, and
statement to be dismissed along with them ? And may one no longer ' repudiate a
wife ' ? Further, disinter, disinterment, misstate, and unnoticed should go out with
inter, interment, state, and notice.

11 Perhaps Mr. Bryant would ignore this phrase only when used adverbially; his
substitute, ' before,' being ambiguous. But even the adverbial prior to is supported
by respectable authority.

12 We are instructed to say ire mistake in, as if the other were not far better.

" Interrogatively, also ? And may we not say ' I do not know mhich man you
allude to ' ? We are lef fc quite in the dark here.

14 Put < seems,' enjoins Mr. Bryant. Not to speak of the almost incredible
contempt here shown for the sanction of the best writers, a man must be musing wh»
does not at once feel the difference between teems and mould seem.

436 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

to good, large, &c. ; ' 15 'talent, for talents or ability;' ' tariff,
for rates of fare or schedule of rates ; ' ' those who, for those persons
who ; ' * wharves, for wharfs.''

Among Americanisms which Mr. Bryant forbids are ' bogus ; '
' donate; ' ' loafer; ' * loan or loaned, for lend or Zen£; ' ' on yester-
day ;' ' over his signature ; ' 'posted, for informed ; ' 'primaries, for
primary meetings;' 'section, for district or region.' None of
these peculiarities are seen in his Letters, where, however, we find,
and uncondemned by his later criticism :

At evening we arrived at Cenada — p. 45. And at p. 1C.

I look upon the introduction of manufactures at the South as an event of the
most favourable promise for that part of the country — p. 349.

Back of the bluffs extends a fine agricultural region — p. 68. At pp. 250, 273,
285, 321, 329, 389, also.

If the new tariff obliges them to sell it for considerable less, they will still make
money— pp. 318, 319.

I went on deck, and saw one of the Faro Island ponies, which had given out
during the night, stretched dead upon the deck — p. 423.

We passed through a well-cultivated country, interspersed with towns which
had an appearance of activity and thrift — p. 201. And at pp. 321, 329, also.

We meet, besides, with dry-goods merchant ; dutiable ; floor,
for pave ; molasses, for treacle ; parlour, for drawing-room ; side-
walk, for pavement ; spool, for reel. Mr. Bryant also improves the
railroad-car of his countrymen into railway-waggon.

Even in what precedes, we have ample data from which to con-
struct an estimate of Mr. Bryant as a verbal critic. His decisions as
to admissible English are attributable to what our forefathers now and
then grandly called opsimathy, ' late culture ; ' and Cicero's reminder,
o-^rL/jiaQds quam sint insolentes non ignoras, can only by accident
not have been forestalled by Solomon. We have seen, from his regis-
ter of unlawful expressions, that, in drawing it up, he must have had
in his contemplation, with others, his former self, as exhibited in his
Letters. And we have further seen that his Letters contain very
strange things which his register passes by unnoticed. Did he sup-
pose these Americanisms to be good English ? That he would have
disallowed, in the currently written columns of a newspaper, words and
phrases which he would have allowed in a volume destined for more
leisurely perusal, and for greater duration, than the issues of the Neiv
York Evening Post, is not to be presumed.

But we have not yet done with his category of exclusion. He
lays under ban : ' action, for proceeding ; ' ' aggregate, for altogether
or total ; ' * average, for ordinary ; ' ' beat, for defeat ; ' 'conclusion,
for close or end ; ' 16 * couple, for two ; ' 17 ' decade, for ten years ; '

11 This wording would apply to such an expression as ' not quite large enough.'
But quite large, unqualified by a negative, is, in many contexts, good English, as
even Mr. Bryant ought to have recollected.

11 Why not, then, restrict conclude to the sense of ' infer ' f

17 Yet he saw, somewhere, 'apair of mango trees ' I Lcttert, «kc., p. 374.

1880. ENGLISH RATIONAL AND IRRATIONAL. 437

' decease, as a verb ; ' * endorse, for approve ; ' ' graduates, for is
graduated ; ' ' issue, for question or subject ; ' ' leniency, for lenity ; '
' majority, relating to places or circumstances, for most ; ' ' materially,
for largely or greatly,'™ 'partially, for partly,' 'portion, for
part;' 'progress,19 for advance or growth;' 'realised, for 06-
tained ; ' ' spending, for passing ; ' ' start, for frer/m or establish ; '
* £A<3 United States, as a singular noun.' 20 Nor, if he could help
it, were his fellow-citizens to speak of greenbacks, but treasury-
notes, or of the fall of the year, or of a freshet ; and yet he himself
used the provincial slut, for bitch, with the Scotticisms winded, for
ivound, and sparse. The austerity of taste which would have effaced
Brother Jonathan and John Bull could not, of course, permit that a
negro should ever be called a darkey. And there is to be no tolera-
tion of ' Wall-street slang generally : bulls, bears,21 long, short, flat,
corner, tight, moribund, comatose, &c.' In the interest of some-
thing undeclared, and not easy of conjecture, aftenuards is never to
show itself, but the quaint and not over-euphonious aftenuard. As
to 'banquet, for dinner or supper,' 'indebtedness, for debt,' and
4 lengthy, for long,' who ever misuses them thus ? Here, however, as
often elsewhere, it may be that Mr. Bryant, with his bewildering
obscurity of drift, meant to interdict words absolutely, and did not
trouble himself about exactness of definition. But, for brevity, we
must leave unsaid much that we should like to say.

Of Mr. Bryant's own ventures in English, to the end undisclaimed,
we shall presently give some specimens, supplementary to those pro-
duced already. On his practical authority, as will be seen, or as would
be seen from vouchers for which we have no room, the following pas-
sage, in spite of what will strike English readers as its singularities,
ought to be accepted as quite faultless: —

I am from America, where my home is at the North ; and I would like to know
why so many Englishmen dislike me on that account. For some time, my circum-
stances have been better ivith every year ; and I have laid by thousands after thou-
sands annually. So, having a good sum of money beforehand, enough not to give

18 "Would he have demured to material, in ' a material difference ' ?

19 On the verb progress he is silent.

20 "Why, then, did Mr. Bryant, in his Letters, &c., p. 335, write 'Bellows Falls is'l
In the sequel, we shall try some points of Mr. Bryant's fastidiousness by the

standard of Lord Macaulay. With reference to one particular of idiom, however, he
contrasts to advantage with that celebrated stylist. ' Eight dollars a month is the
common rate.' {Letters, &c., p. 137.) Lord Macaulay has: ' four shillings a week,
therefore, mere, according to Petty's calculation, fair agricultural wages.' {History,
&c., chap, iii^ ' Ten thousand pounds sterling mere sent for outfit.' {Ibid. chap, x.)
And so often. Yet Lord Macaulay is not consistent. ' The ambassador told his
master that six thousand guineas was the smallest gratification that could be offered
to so important a minister.' {Ibid. chap, vi.) And who does not prefer mas here,
appealing, in its defence, to Coleridge's dictum about ' the inward and metaphysic
grammar resisting successfully the tyranny of formal grammar' ?

21 Can Mr. Bryant really have supposed financial bulls and bears to le psculiar to
Wall-street, New York ?

VOL. VIII.— No. 43. G a

438 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

out soon, I have come to mate England a visit. Before my late voyage, I had
never been on the main ocean ; and it took me with surprise. At morning and
evening, I could not but observe the appearance of the brine, which, to inspection,
appeared to be tinged of a. peculiar colour. I am much subject to sea-sickness ; and
I took a severe attack. But the ship-surgeon's supply of remedies were all at my
disposal ; and he put me by the danger of being weakened. I landed at Queens-
town in due time, and afterward proceeded on the railroad. I was glad to find
myself in a railway-waggon once more, though I took an unpleasant jolting, and
though my travelling companions were very disagreeable individuals ; these parties
being apair of squalid females and two equally unwelcome personages of the male
sex. I was at Dublin a week, and each day was more interested. The lower Irish
are curious for the costume. The number of them enjoying thrift, though waste-
ful, is, as compared with Americans, very/ca;. Your climate is trying; but I
have already began to take a seasoning. During a week as a visitor to Malvern, I
every day ascended a steep declivity near by there. The orchards of the apple and
pear in your western counties excited my admiration. Here in London, I was
not satisfied with either the hotels I tried at first ; and I shall not remain long where
I am now. They are flooring the sidewallis on either side of the street ; and the din
is incessant. Day after day have passed, and there are no signs of its discontinuance.
Besides this, just back of me is a house of religious worship, where, by the by, I have
attended at church several times. Its rector is, I judge, a considerable able and
energetic man. He has a good record, I am told, and preaches to acceptance ; and
I hear that his parishioners held a meeting the other day, to his honour, and voted
him a testimonial. But I have arrived to the conclusion that his constant bell-
ringing is too much for me. Consequently, as I am of that nature that I love quiet,
I keep without my lodgings as much as possible. But I have not inclination to the-
telling of any more of my discomforts.

In contrast to this, we offer a paragraph wholly inadmissible,
because of the expressions in it which are italicised, to the pages of
Mr. Bryant's daily journal : —

Here is a telegram from London. Its items are numerous enough ; and some
few of them are worth noticing. The progress of the Turco-Russian contest is very
slow. The Russians have beaten the Turks again ; but we are not to base hopes of
immediate peace on the fact. The aggregate loss of the Turks was only two thou-
sand men ; and this cannot cripple them materially. It would seem that we are
mistaken in supposing that the Conservatives purpose intervention. Several of their
leading men repudiate the idea. The Liberals are, of course, jubilant. Their desire
to see the war brought to a conclusion will probably be realised before very long.
Attention has again been called to the continued imprisonment of certain Fenians ;
and the result has been the release of a couple of them. During the^as^ week, two
well-known authoresses, one of them a poetess, have died. Neither of them was
interred in "Westminster Abbey. It is stated that the panic about hydrophobia is
decreasing. General Grant intends to spend several months in the south of Europe.
That he is a man of only average ability as a statesman, or even of less, may be
quite true ; but he showed true genius as a soldier. Experiments have been tried
with the telephone, first in London, and aftencard* at Dover. The majority of
them were successful. In London and its vicinity, snow has scarcely been seen
this winter. The moon has been partially eclipsed. Just subsequently to the
eclipse, the wind was unusually high. Bull Ram Ghoose has made his appearance
as an aspirant to the throne of Choochoo ; but the proximity of powerful tribes
favourable to its present occupant threatens to defeat his ambition.23

K Among recent writers of note, no one, perhaps, has been more fastidious than
Lord Macaulay. And yet, in turning over some of his pages, we have fallen in with

1880. ENGLISH RATIONAL AND IRRATIONAL. 439

What Mr. Bryant believed to be English, the excerpts from his
Letters, here following, bear speaking evidence. Nine-tenths, at
least, of the sentences which we marked for extraction must, however,
be omitted.

These are all curious for the costume — p. 53.

They tell you very quietly, that everybody who comes to live there must take
a seasoning — p. 60.

They are, in fact, becoming "better with every year — p. 107.53

Turning out of the main road, we began to ascend a steep green declivity — p.
157. And at p. 332.

In the afternoon I attended at one of the churches — -p. 179.

By my side was a square-built-, fresh-coloured personage, who had travelled in
America, aud whose accent was almost English — p. 203.

He carried it to a large pond near his house, the longest diameter of which is
about a mile — p. 250.

Five years ago, the number was very few — p. 259.

Among them I saw a face or two quite familiar in Wall-street — p. 277.

A single stroke of the paddle, given by the man at the prow, put us safely by
the seeming danger — p. 281.

It is about ten miles from either the hotels to the summit — pp. 332, 333.

The vast extent of the mountain-region . . . took me with surprise and
astonishment — p. 333.

Commonly the dead are piled, without coffins, one above the other, in the
trenches — p. 366.

I saw a group of children, of different ages, all quite pretty — p. 379.

Here are broad woods, large orchards of the apple and pear — p. 430.

A fine piece of old Etruscan wall . . . built of enormous uncemented parallelo-
grams of stone — p. 439.

We find, moreover, such old words as depasture, disfurnish,
minsters, and haunt as a verb neuter; together with 'a dense um-
brage of leaves,' and ' the leaves grow sere.' Emigrants is, from fear
of a most useful modernism, made to do duty for immigrants.
Impend is often preferred where good taste would dictate hang ; and
we have ' looms from which two unfinished mats were depending.'^*
Yet Mr. Bryant cashiers, as intolerable Latinisms, inter, jubilant,

proof that even he, if living, would have had to mend his ways, in order to pass muster
as a penny-a-liner on the staff of the New York Evening Post. For, by his use of
afterwards, aggregate, aspirant, average,, banquet, beat, call attention to, commence,
conclusion, graduate, inter, interment, issue, materially, nominee, notice, numerous, ora~
tion, partially, portion, progress, quite, raid, realise, spend, state, subsequently, talent,
tariff, those mlw, try an experiment, vicinity, and mould seem, he has infringed Mr.
Bryant's dictates ; and he has also ' above seventy,' ' above five thousand men,' ' above
a year,' &c., in which phrases, according to that gentleman, above, for more than,
is bad English.

Lord Macaulay uses freely both try an experiment and make an experiment, and
in one and the same sense ; but he has the former at least twice as often as the
latter. The truth is, that there is little or nothing to choose between them. Try an
experiment is almost an instance of what, in Latin grammar, is known as the cognate
accusative, of which we have a fair number of samples in older English.

23 This Germanism is becoming very common in the United States. Compare
mit jedern Jahre, mit jcdem Tage, mit jedem Augenblicke, &c. Another Germanism
often heard there is ' what for a,' rvasfur ein,

2< Letters, &c., p. 292.

GG2

440 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

oration, proximity, repudiate, subsequently, and vicinity. But we
ought not to wonder at any judgment, or at any crotchet, how eccentric
soever, as regards the English language, from a man who ascends a
declivity, who meets with a pond of at least three diameters of diffe-
rent lengths, and a wall built of parallelograms, figures of only two
dimensions ; and who can write : ' To use a phrase very common in
England, they are the most extraordinary pictures I ever saw.' 25

As lately as 1873, Mr. Bryant brought out a volume entitled
Orations and Addresses, of his own composition. To give all desir-
able completeness to our body of evidence as to what this gentleman,
afterwards so severe a censor of the language of others, was then capable
of, in the way of sinning against good English, we remit the curious to
pp. 3, 45, 50, 70, 99, 104, 112, 163, 164, 168, 169, 191, 202, 228,
247, 275, 371, 391 of the volume in question, where will be found
' of that nature that,' * a public dinner to his honour,' * conclusions to
which he arrived,' * booked for a pleasantry,' ' written to such accept-
ance,' ' with no enemy to lay the axe at its root,' &c. &c.

The violations of idiomatic propriety, with the occasional bad
grammar and vulgarity, observable in the passages referred to, speak
abundantly for themselves. In particular, it is, we apprehend, a writer's
appropriate choice of prepositions, quite as much as anything else,
that evidences conclusively his genuine familiarity with the tongue
he is using; and herein the punctilious Mr. Bryant failed most egre-
giously. It is instructive, also, to see, in the case of many things
which, eventually, he would not suffer in his newspaper, how soon be-
fore he was unconvinced of their disreputableness. In the volume
under notice, though he employs afterward twelve times, he em-
ploys afterwards, which he later came to turn his back on, eight
times. Parties, when not technical for persons, at last was ostra-
cised, and with reason; but, at p. 116, Mr. Washington Irving and
the lady he would have married are spoken of as 'both parties.^
Further, at p. 320, he has ' for nearly half a century past ; ' at p. 186,
poetess ; at p. 357, the substantive progress ; at p. 70, the verb state ;
at p. 159, 'years had been spent;'' at pp. 221, 223, tariff; at
p. 326, telegram ; at p. 116, try an experiment. ' His party-record,'
•exemplifying an American innovation which he subsequently repudi-
ated, occurs at p. 282. Indeed, the very title of his book contains a
word which was forbidden to his contributors, orations. How any
literary assistant of his could have obeyed the law laid down for him,
-if he had taken this book as the subject of a review, passes our conjec-
ture. But enough of this, if not more than enough .

Here< it must be admitted, is a rather startling portrait of a
verbal critic, as outlined by himself. Who can now question, that,
in the function which he arrogated, the artist had vastly more to
learn than to teach ? Not only Germans, Hollanders, Danes, Kussians,

** Letters, kc , p. 165.

1880. ENGLISH RATIONAL AND IRRATIONAL. 441

Italians, Hungarians, Greeks, and Finns, but divers Hindus, Parsees,
and Japanese, distinctly better versed than Mr. Bryant in the em-
ployment of the English language, have, from first to last, crossed our
path. Fully regardful of the claims to venerable memory which may
be urged in behalf of a high-minded, energetic, and altogether esti-
mable man, who lived to weather more than four-score winters, we
submit for consideration whether he has not exhibited himself as
a very novice in the management of our mother-tongue. To speak
within compass, his qualifications to pose as an Aristarchus were, for
the most part, barely, if at all, short of ludicrous. Living, as he did,
among a people among whom, in the case of all but a very few writers
and speakers, our language is daily becoming more and more depraved,26
he is not to be refused praise for having exerted himself, according to
his lights and opportunities, to prevent the diffusion of unquestionable
inaccuracies and vulgarisms ; for of these there are, in his catalogue of
unpermitted expressions, many, not remarked on in this paper, which
every one would do well to avoid. But why, it is obvious to ask, did
he pass by scores of such things, including a large number of Ameri-
canisms, which contributors to his journal must have been just as
likely to trespass into as into those which he has particularised ? Was
it, as his silence and his own practice lead us to infer, because they
had his approval ? Be this as it may, he is seen to have stigma-
tised an abundance of forms and modes of speech against which
there is no rational objection whatever, as must be clear to all who
know what is, in England, deemed unexceptionable English.

And whence did he derive his opinions as regarded impure
English ? We have no hesitation in hazarding a surmise on this
point. The consensus as to words and uses of words, to be discovered
by perusing the best English writers of this century, can have counted,
in his estimation, as only most unimportant. On the other hand,
unless we suppose as possible an amount of consentaneous whimsicality
bordering on a miracle, the unweighed judgments of the criticasters
whose noxious sway we set out with deploring, were, to him, so many
laws, and laws precluded from all reversal. Nor was he peculiar, in this
respect, among Americans. He was simply an exponent of an enormous
class of them. Independence of determination touching what is

28 While preparing this paper, we have chanced to run through Edgar Huntly, by
Charles Brockden Brown, an American novelist of the end of the last century and
beginning of this. Edgar Huntly was finished and published in 1799. Despite its
occasional oddities and inaccuracies of expression, it seldom reminds one of its
author's nationality. Whoever compares it with Mr. Bryant's Letters, the English
of which is not much worse than that of ninety-nine out of every hundred of his
college-bred compatriots, will very soon become aware to what degree the art of
WTiting our language has declined among educated Americans.

According to Mr. C. A. Bristed, ' the admitted classics ' of American literature,
' such as Irving and Bryant, for example, use language in which the most fastidious
would be puzzled to detect any deviation from the purest English models.' — Cam-
Midge Essays, 1855, p. C2.

442 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

good English, or bad, founded on observation of the usage of the most
creditable modern authors, they, with rare exception?, apparently
acknowledge to be beyond their competence. To the decisions of
sundry Englishmen and Scotchmen, mainly shallow pretenders, whom
they are pleased to take for deep philologists, they defer, however,
with uninquiring submission. These decisions are reissued and
countersigned among them, with amplifications, in books, and
magazines, and newspapers, by persons who, for no more solid reason
than their positiveness in asserting, are recognised as of authority ;
and misconceptions of the grossest and most absurd cast are thus
obtruded upon all who can read. Something of this kind of result is
seen in England ; but, in the United States, the evil of which we
speak is far more conspicuous. So influential there are the lessons of
prejudice and caprice, inculcated by indigenous teachers, that, for in-
stance, aftenvards, instead of afterward, is usually accounted an error
quite unpardonable. As to imperfects passive, like i-s being built,™ to
say that they have been reprobated as seemingly on a plane with moral
turpitude, is not to exaggerate facts. Again, Professor William C.
Fowler, in his English Grammar, rules that any manner of means,
demoralise, furst-rate, fogy, full swing, goings-on, humbug, on to,
out of sorts, snooze, to stave off, &c. &c., are Americanisms. The
doings of American philologasters are, in truth, a curious study.
On the aversion, entertained by so many Americans who affect im-
maculate English, to reputable words of recent introduction, or, where
the words are old, to current senses of them which lack, or are thought
to lack, the countenance of long prescription, we forbear to dilate. Yet
we may note, that, as a type of the rest, Mr. Bryant, while he dis-
dained certain of these words and senses, patronised still more, pro-
bably from being unaware of their comparative novelty. Nor shall
we dwell on other salient features of the misplaced precisianism of
Americans, of which the greater share is to be attributed, where not
to ignorance, at least to misappreciation, of those precedents of usage
which Englishmen are content to abide by. And, as these character-
istics of unwisdom and bad taste have been illustrated sufficiently, so,
it will be granted, we have given a full measure of attention to Mr.
Bryant and his fantastic and parcel-learned ambition to render
aesthetic aid and comfort, in the province of speech, to the upward or
to the downward career of the American ochlocracy.

*7 Lord Macaulay, we are informed by his biographer, Mr. Trevelyan, reproved, as
solecistic, 'the tea is being made.' Yet, at different dates, beginning with 1826, he
himself, in familiar letters, did not scruple at ' while it is being read,' ' all the Edin-
burgh Reviews are being bound,' ' measures are being taken.'' See Life, <Scc. (1st ed.)f
vol. i. pp. 140, 354 ; vol. ii. p. 124, foot-note.

That imperfects passive were creeping into use upwards of a hundred years ago,
is now ascertained. James Harris, the philologist, wrote, in 1779, ' Sir Guy Carlton
mat . . . being examined ; ' and his wife wrote, ten years earlier, ' there is a good
opera . . . now being acted.'

1880. ENGLISH RATIONAL AND IRRATIONAL. 443

Common-sense, if duly exercised, would, assuredly, avail to put an
end to false philology. In every ancient language whose literature
has reached us, we can clearly mark an era when, in the combined
articles of expressiveness, perspicuity, and other qualities of excellence,
it was eminently at its best. This era we call classical ; and locutions
which belong to a posterior era we are taught to look upon with a
certain contempt ; as if Tacitus, and even St. Augustine and the first
Pope Gregory, among the later developments with which they abound,
did not offer, in many a normal derivative, and in many a terse and
pregnant phrase, genuine improvements on Ciceronian circumlocution
and diffuseness. Nevertheless, not to award the palm of merit to the
Roman writers who flourished just before and during the reign of
Augustus, would be preposterous. With the strictest propriety, we
may speak of the golden age of Latin ; only it is for a reason which
forbids that we should speak of a golden age of English. Latin has
a finished history ; whereas it may still be early, twenty centuries
hence, to tell how English rose, culminated, and gradually parted
with its identity. And yet there are many, at this day, as there pro-
bably have been from time out of mind, so unthinking as to bewail
the decadence of our mother-tongue. It has likewise been, and it
still is, the express wish of these visionaries, with Dean Swift as their
spokesman, ' to settle our language, and put it into a state of continu-
ance.' 28 Heedless that new discoveries, inventions, and speculations,
converse with foreign nations and their literary productions, and
various other causes tending to modify human speech, have always
been working changes in English, our linguistic conservatives uncon-
sciously demand, for the realisation of their insensate chimera of
fixity, that the course of nature should be suspended, and, withal,
that the mind of man should be reduced to complete stagnation.
Page after page might be filled with absurdities conceived in the
same spirit as that of these rhymes of Robert Gould,29 dated in the

year 1687 : —

Our language is at best ; and it will fail,
As th' inundation of French words prevail.
Let Waller be our standard : all beyond,
Tho' spoke at court, is foppery and fond.

To turn to dreamers of another species, not a whit behind Gould,
on the score of irrationality, is Gilbert Wakefield, with his idolatry,
whatever its consequences, of analogy and grammar. These being in
his contemplation, not in their real character, as things in perpetual
flux, but as though they possessed the constancy of space, or of the
folly of the wise, he thus delivers himself : 30 'It isj certainly, high time

28 If we may believe Lord Macaulay, the consummation here wished for has been
attained ; for, referring to the seventeenth century, he speaks of it as a time ' lon°-
after our speech had been fixed.' {Essays, vol. i. p. 405, 7th ed.)

89 Prefixed to Fairfax's Godfrey of Bulloifjne.

80 See his Memoir i, vol. ii. p. 231.

444 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

for our unconstructed and solecistic style to be modelled by the recti-
tude of their immutable and applicable standard, which, sooner or
later, must be called in to our assistance, and will then essentially
impair the beauties and diminish the utilities of our noblest writers,
in prose and verse, to future generations.' Jupiter forbid that we
should ever give ourselves to the worship of Wakefield's false gods, and
incur the retribution for it which is so frigidly presaged I Nor shall
we ; but, to the very end, we shall do as countless generations have
done before us. When it shall come to be at all patent, that the
English nation, whether from luxury, neglect of mental culture, or
any other moral or intellectual cancer, has entered on the downhill
road to barbarism, or to some like calamity, the day will have arrived,
and not till then, to view the later fortunes of our speech with mis-
giving. In the meantime, despondents and small critics would evince
a discretion beyond expectation, by the modesty of silence, and by
being satisfied with following, instead of aiming to lead. To the
small critics, moreover, it cannot be too often reiterated, that what
Dr. Johnson 31 frivolously speaks of as ' the more airy and elegant
studies of philology and criticism,' are not things on which, without
long and patient preparation, it is otherwise than rash to trust one's
self as a legislator. They may rest assured, that we of the nineteenth
century, who have worked our way to so much that is good, have
shaped our English to a fashion which harmonises, and more fitly
than any other fashion of it could harmonise, with the grand total of
our complex environment. In the vigour and intrepidity which
signalise our time, there is something wholly alien to an apprehensive
and emasculate finicalness of expression. Having ceased largely to
think as our fathers thought, we can no longer, with justice to the
change which has passed on us, write as they wrote. For the rest,
given in combination those disciplines which, as a whole, alone
deserve to be entitled education, one will hardly select the most
appropriate vesture for one's ideas, if one makes it a subject of
harassing inquisition. And, on the part of the world at large, we shall
not, it is likely, see in. it anything better than reminders of the phari-
saic tithe-paying and slight of matters much weightier, as the fruit
of deferring to the conceits and the counsels of a piddling and
nibbling philology.

FlTZEDWABD HALL.
11 In the Idler, No. 91.

1880. 445

A COLORADO SKETCH.

IT would appear that the American continent was originally of con-
siderably larger dimensions than it is at present. It was probably
found to be altogether too large for comfort or convenience, and it
was reduced by the simple process of pressing or squeezing it toge-
ther from the sides — an operation which caused it to crumple up to-
wards the centre, and produced that great, elevated, tumbled, and
tossed region generally and vaguely known as the Kocky Mountains.
If this simple theory of the formation of a continent sounds some-
what infantile, it must be remembered that I am not a scientific
man, and that it is not more unscientific than many other theories of
creation. There is no such thing as a chain of Rocky Mountains.
Under that name are included various ranges and belts of mountains
and hills, which embrace within their far-stretching arms fertile
valleys, arid deserts, sunny hill-slopes clothed with valuable timber,
parks full of pastoral beauty basking beneath a sun that warms
them into semi-tropical life, but which never melts the virgin snow
whitening the hoary heads of the mountains that for ever look
down upon those smiling scenes. Rich and extensive plains, tracts
of inhabitable land almost large enough to be the cradle and home
of nations, are included in the Rocky Mountains. Among all the
states and territories that lie wholly or partially within the borders
of this vast, upheaved region, there is none, so far as I am aware,
more favoured by nature, and, at the same time, more accessible to
man, than Colorado. It is easily reached from all the great cities of
the Eastern States ; its scenery is varied, beautiful, grand, and even
magnificent. Crystal streams of pure, wholesome water rush down
the hill-sides, play at hide-and-seek in the woods, and wander devi-
ously through the parks. The climate is health-giving — unsurpassed,
as I believe, anywhere — giving to the jaded spirit, the unstrung
nerves, and weakened body a stimulant, a tone, and a vigour that
can only be appreciated by those who have had the good fortune to
travel or reside in that region.

The parks of Colorado constitute its special feature : there is
nothing elsewhere on the American continent resembling them in

446 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

natural characteristics. They are not valleys ; they are too flat and
too extensive for that. They cannot be called plains, for they are not
flat enough ; and, besides, plains are generally bare and destitute of
trees, while the parks are rich in timber, with beautifully undulating
surfaces, broken up by hills, spurs from the parent range, and iso-
lated mountains. The term ' Park ' is usually applied to ground
more or less artificially made ; and these places are very properly
called parks, for they look, if it be not rank heresy to liken nature
to art, as if ground naturally picturesque had been carefully laid out
and planted with most consummate skill and taste. Some of them are
of great size, such as the North, Middle, South, and St. Louis Parks ;
others — and it is with them I am best acquainted — are comparatively
small.

There are many things to arouse deep interest in that favoured
region. Where you find lofty mountains, foot-hills, plain, valley,
forest, and quick-flowing stream, in a southern latitude, you have in
combination all that can gratify the scientific student, as well as all
that can content the eye of man, in the way of scenery. The philo-
sopher who devotes himself to the study of atmospheric conditions
could nowhere find a more fitting field for observation. The moun-
tain ranges and extensive level spaces comprised within their
limits are important factors in the economy of nature. The great
masses of heat-radiating rock temper the winds that blow over
them, and shed genial warmth far and wide. The whole region is
one vast brewery of storms. Chemical changes are constantly going
on. Electricity is working with exceptional vigour, riving the
solid rocks, devastating trees, and putting forth most vividly the
awful and mysterious manifestations of its strength. Hot currents
and cold currents fight aerial battles round those patient peaks, that
stand unmoved amidst the roar and racket of elemental strife. Fre-
quent lightnings blaze or flicker round the mountain heads ; con-
tinuous thunder crashes on their slopes, and rolls and rumbles in the
caverns and valleys that seam their sides. Tempests shriek round
the crags, and moan dismally as they toss the gnarled and matted
branches of the stunted trees that force their adventurous way up the
broad shoulders of the range. Snow in winter, rain and hail in
summer, pour upon the higher summits ; while, beneath, the land is
glowing under a cloudless sky. Contending air-currents of different
density discharge their moisture on the hills. The sun draws up
fresh moisture from the valleys, like drawing water from a well. All
nature seems seething in that region of heat and cold, sunshine and
tempest, dryness and damp, constantly fabricating those great cloud
masses that, breaking away from their cradle, carry rain and fertility
over thousands and thousands of miles. Sometimes they over-exert
themselves, carry their good intentions too far, exceed their proper
limits, and, transgressing the boundaries of their native land, cross

1880. , A COLORADO SKETCH. 447

the wide Atlantic and pour their accumulated store of rain upon
those already sodden little islands, Great Britain and Ireland.

The parks and valleys which spread out beneath the mountains,
or nestle cosily amid the warm folds of the forest mantles which
clothe them, play also an important part. They act as reservoirs ;
they catch the little, tiny, ice-cold rills that trickle out from under
the ever-melting but never-melted snow, gather them together, hold
them till they grow strong enough to carve their way through the
granite flanks that hem them in, and launch them out into the
world, forming rivulets bright and sparkling, flecked with light and
shade, over which the quivering aspen bends from banks, sweet and
bright with flowers ; growing into brooks down which lumber may be
rafted ; swelling into streams which carry irrigation and fertility to
arid wastes ; becoming rivers upon which steamboats ply, and ships
ride at anchor.

Physical geography is a fascinating science ; and to the student
of it nothing can be more interesting than to stand upon some com-
manding mountain top, and, with a large, comprehensive view, study
the configuration of the country that gives birth to those rivers that
in their course determine the natural geographical features of a
continent, and consequently shape the destiny of a race. From
many a peak in Colorado the geographer can trace the devious line
of the ' water- shed,' the ' divide ' that separates the rivers and sends
them out, each on its appointed course ; and can see, shining like
silver threads, the rivulets from which they spring. Looking west-
ward, and to the north and south, he can see the fountains of both
Plattes, of the Eio Grande — the Grand river — the Arkansas, the Blue,
the White, and the Bear rivers, and other streams which unite to
form that most extraordinary of all rivers on the American continent
— the Colorado. Turning to the east, a very different scene greets
his eye ; there, spread out like an ocean beneath him, lies the Prairie,
that great deposit of gravel, sand, and unstratified clays, the debris
of the mountain range on which he stands.

Where could the geologist find a region more suitable for the
exercise of his peculiar branch of science than one which combines
the vast deposit of the prairies with mountain masses obtruded
from the bowels of the earth, and deep canons exposing broad
sections of the earth's crust to his view ? And where is the mineralo-
gist more likely to be rewarded for his pains ? As to the botanist,
I would almost warn him from visiting those scenes, lest he should
never be able to tear himself away ; for the variety of the flora is in-
finite, ranging from Alpine specimens blooming amid everlasting
snows, to flowers of a very different character, growing in rich luxuri-
ance in deep valleys under a subtropical sun.

I have not included hunting among the sciences, but in reality
I might have done so. It is a very exact science, and one in which

448 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

excellence is rarely obtained. Many men never become, never can
become, good hunters. They are not endowed with the necessary facul-
ties ; and those who are gifted with them require years of study and
hard work before they can be entitled to call themselves masters of
the art. I hope no one labours under the delusion that hunting is
a mere barbarous, bloodthirsty sport. Every good hunter will agree
with me that it is not the killing of the animal that gives pleasure.
The charm lies in overcoming difficulties — in matching your natural
intelligence and acquired knowledge and skill against the instinct,
cunning, intellect, and reason of the animal you are endeavouring
to outwit. The reward of the hunter is the same as that of the
student of languages, of the archaologist, of the geologist — in fact, of
all scientific people. His triumph is the triumph of unravelling a
mystery, tracing and discovering a hidden fact, grappling with and
overcoming a difficulty. It is the fact of overcoming, not the act of
killing, that brightens the hunter's eye, and renders his occupation
so charming. The hunter's craft gives health, its surroundings are
beautiful, it calls forth some of the best qualities of man, it is full of
fascination, and it is no wonder that primitive races find it difficult
to emerge from the hunting condition. It is most annoying that
everything that is pleasant is all wrong. We all know that peoples,
in their progress towards civilisation, advance from the hunting to
the pastoral state, from the pastoral to the agricultural, and from
thence to a condition of existence in which the manufacturing in-
stincts of man are fully developed. This is the sequence — hunting,
cattle-tending, sheep-herding, fresh air, good water, lovely scenery,
wholesome excitement, healthy lives, and — barbarism ; agriculture,
manufactures, great cities, hideous country, poisoned water, impure
air, dirt, disease, and — civilisation. It is difficult sometimes to know
exactly what to say when preaching civilisation to the savage. It is
certain that, so far as the masses of the people are concerned, the highest
aim of civilisation is to secure to a large number the same blessings
that a small number obtain, freely and without trouble, in an uncivi-
lised state.

It was sport — or, as it would be called in the States, hunting —
that led me first to visit Estes Park. Some friends and I had visited
Denver at Christmas to pay our proper devotions to the good things
of this earth at that festive season, and, hearing rumours of much
game at Estes Park, we determined to go there. \Ve spent a day or
two laying in supplies, purchasing many of the necessaries and a few
of the luxuries of life, and wound up our sojourn in Denver with a
very pleasant dinner at an excellent restaurant, not inaptly styled the
* Delmonico ' of the West. During dinner one of those sudden and
violent storms peculiar to that region came on. When we sat down
the stars were shining clear and hard with the brilliancy that is so
beautiful in those high altitudes on a cold dry mid-winter night, and

1880. A COLORADO SKETCH. 449

not a breath of wind disturbed the stillness of the air ; but, before we
had half satisfied the appetites engendered by the keen frosty atmo-
sphere, the stars were all shrouded in cloud, the gale was howling
through the streets, and snow" was whirling in the air, piling up in
drifts wherever it found a lodgment, and sifting in fine powder
through every chink and cranny in the door. It did not last long.
Before morning the sky was clear, cloudless, steely, star-bespangled
as before, and when we left by an early train for Longmont Station
the sun was shining undimmed upon fields of freshly-fallen snow.

By way of enlivening the journey we were treated by thoughtful
nature to a magnificent spectacle — a beautiful exhibition of that phe-
nomenon known, I believe, as a parhelion. The sun was only a few
degrees above the horizon. The sky was very clear and intensely
blue overhead, but slightly clouded with a thin gauzy film round
the horizon, and, on looking up, one could see that the air was full of
minute crystals of ice. It was tolerably cold — probably about fifteen
or twenty degrees below zero — and perfectly calm. All round the
horizon ran a belt of pure bright white light, passing through the
sun. This belt was not exactly level, but dipped a little to the
east and west, and rose slightly to the north and south. The sun
was surrounded by a halo showing rainbow colours on the inside,
which faded into white light on the outside edge. A bright perpen-
dicular ray of white light cut through the sun, forming, with the
belt that ran round the horizon, a perfect cross. There was a similar
cross in the west, and another in the north, but none in the south
at first, but after an hour or so a fourth cross formed in that quarter
also. Eight overhead was a partially- formed horizontal rainbow, the
colours of which were very bright. Sometimes this rainbow would
develop into an almost perfect circle ; then again it would diminish till
there remained only a small segment of the circle. The points where
the solar halo cut the belt which encircled the horizon were intensely
brilliant — almost as bright as the sun — and rays of white light struck
down from them. As the sun rose the halo surrounding it became
very dazzling, and assumed the colours of the rainbow, and a second
rainbow-tinted circle formed outside it. The rainbow in the zenith
increased at the same time in brilliancy, and a second circle formed
outside that also. The whole phenomenon was very beautiful ; it con-
tinued some hours, gradually fading away, and finally disappeared
about three in the afternoon.

The next morning we loaded up a wagon with stores, and
started on our toilsome expedition to the Park. It is very easy
•work — it is not work at all, in fact — to get into the Park nowadays.
It was a very different affair at that time. There are two good stage
roads now ; there was no road at all then — only a rough track going
straight up hill and down dale, and over rocks and through trees and
along nearly perpendicular slopes, with the glorious determination to

450 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

go straight forward of an old Eoman road, but without any of the
engineering skill and labour expended upon the latter. It was a
hard road to travel, covered with snow and slippery with ice ; but by
dint of literally putting our shoulders to the wheel uphill, by chain-
ing the wheels downhill, and by holding up the wagon by ropes and
main strength on precipitous hill-sides, we got to our destination
very late at night with only one serious accident — the fracture of a
bottle containing medical comforts.

The road from Longmont to the Park traverses the level plain
for about fifteen miles, and then enters a canon flanked on either side
by strange-shaped masses of bright red sandstone, outcropping from
the surface, and in some places tilted nearly on end. It then follows
along the bank of the St. Vrains Eiver — teeming with trout — crosses
that stream, and works its way with many curves and twists up
through the foot-hills, along grassy slopes, through pine forests,
past fantastic masses of rock, crosses a little creek hiding deep
among aspens and poplars, and, after plunging down two violent
descents and mounting up again, enters a long valley rejoicing in
the euphonious title of ' Muggins's Grulch.' I do not know who
Muggins was — no doubt an honest citizen ; but he should have
changed his name before bestowing it upon such a pretty spot. You
ascend this valley at an easy gradient till you reach the summit,
when suddenly a lovely view bursts upon you, and the Park lies
spread out at your feet. On the left the hill-side rises steeply,
crowned with a buttress of frowning rock. On the right a mountain
of almost solid rock stands naked and savage. In front, beyond the
Park, the main range of mountains rears itself, topped with snow,
rent in great chasms, pierced by the gloomy heavily-timbered depths of
black canon. On the extreme left and in the distance Long's Peak
towers above its fellows ; and beneath you, in strange contrast with
the barren foot-hills through which you have passed, and the savage
stern grandeur of the range, lies the Park — undulating, grass-covered,
dotted with trees, peaceful and quiet, with a silver thread of water
curving and twining through its midst.

A log-house is comfortable enough at any time; and on that par-
ticular night it appeared eminently so to us, as, cold and wearied, we
passed the hospitable threshold. What a supper we devoured, and
what logs we heaped upon the fire, till we made the flames leap and
roar on the open hearth ! and then lay down on mattresses on the
floor, and listened to the howling of the wind, till the noise of the
tempest, confusedly mingling with our dreams, was finally hushed in
deep, unbroken sleep.

The winter weather in Northern Colorado is most enjoyable. At
the high altitude of Estes Park, between 7,000 and 8,000 feet above
sea level, it consists of alternate short storms and long spells of fine
weather. You will have several days of bright clear weather, hard

1880. A COLORADO SKETCH. 451

frost, the thermometer very low, but the sun so powerful that you
can lie down and go fast asleep, as I have frequently done, on a warm,
sunny, and sheltered bank in the very depth of winter. Then the
clouds begin to accumulate, growing denser and denser, till they
break and descend in a snowstorm of some hours duration. The
cattle, which before dotted all the open ground, disappear as if
by magic, seeking and finding shelter in little hidden gulches and
unnoticed valleys, and the land looks utterly desolate. The snow-
storm is invariably succeeded by a violent tempest of wind, which
speedily clears the ground of snow, heaping it iip in drifts, and blow-
ing the greater part of it into the air in such a thin powdery con-
dition that it is taken up by the atmosphere and disappears com-
pletely. So dry is the air and so warm the winter's sun that snow
evaporates without leaving any moisture behind it. Another period
of clear, still, cold weather then follows after the gale.

The violence of these tempests is very great. Many a night
have I lain awake listening to the screams and clamour of the gale ;
now rising suddenly to a shriek as a fresh gust of wind came tearing
down the level plain, snatching up pebbles and stones, sending them
hopping over the ground, and hurling them against the log-house ;
then sinking to a long melancholy moan ; whistling shrilly around
the walls, hoarsely howling in the wide chimney ; while, under all, the
low continuous roar of the tempest raging in the distant forest
sounded like a mighty bass note in the savage music of the storm.

That is the time to appreciate the comfort of a warm weather-
proof house, to snuggle up in your blanket and idly watch the merry
sparks fly up the chimney, and the warm ruddy flicker of the fire
casting shadows on the rough brown pine-logs; gazing and blinking,
listening and thinking, one's thoughts perhaps wandering very far
away, and getting less and less coherent. The storm chimes in with
your fancies, mingles with your dreams, till with a start you open
your eyes, and find to your astonishment the level rays of the rising
sun lighting up a scene as calm and peaceful as if the tempest had
never been.

In spring and summer the scene and climate are very different.
Ice and snow and withered grass have passed away, and everything is
basking and glowing under a blazing sun, hot but always tempered
with a cool breeze. Cattle wander about the plain — or try to wander,
for they are so fat they can scarcely move. Water-fowl frequent the
lakes. The whole earth is green, and the margins of the streams are
luxuriant with a profuse growth of wild flowers and rich herbage.
The air is scented with the sweet-smelling sap of the pines, whose
branches welcome many feathered visitors from southern climes ; an
occasional humming-bird whirrs among the shrubs, trout leap in the
creeks, insects buzz in the air ; all nature is active and exuberant
•with life.

452 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

I and a Scotch gillie, who had accompanied me from home, took
up our abode in a little log-shanty close to the ranche house, and made
ourselves very cosy. There was not much elegance or luxury in our
domicile, but plenty of comfort. Two rough rooms — a huge fire-place

in one of them two beds, and no other furniture of any kind whatever,

completed our establishment. But what on earth did we want with
furniture ? We were up before daylight, out hunting or fishing all
day, had our food at the ranche, sat on the ground and smoked our
pipes, and went to bed early. One's rest is a good deal broken in
winter time, and it is necessary to go to bed early in order to get
enough sleep, because in very cold weather it is highly advisable to
keep a fire burning all night ; and, as yet, hunters have not evolved
the faculty of putting on logs in their sleep. It would be most
useful if they could do so ; and, according to the law of evolution,
some of them by this time ought to have done it. However, I was
not much troubled ; for Sandie, who slept by the fire, was very wake-
ful. I would generally awake about two or three in the morning to
find the logs blazing and cracking merrily, and Sandie sitting in the
ingle smoking his pipe, plunged in deep thought.

4 Well, Sandie,' I would say, ' what kind of a night is it, and
what are you thinking of ? '

* Oh, well, it's a fine night, just a wee bit cheely outside (ther-
mometer about 25° below zero) ; and I'm thinking we did not make
that stalk after the big stag just right yesterday ; and I'm thinking
where we'll go to-day to find him.' Then we would smoke a little —
haver a little, as Sandie would call it — and discuss the vexed question
of how we made the mistake with the big stag ; and having come to
a satisfactory conclusion, and agreed that the stag had the biggest
antlers that ever were seen — which is always the case with the deer
you don't get — we would put out our pipes, and sleep till daylight
warned us to set about our appointed task, which was to find a deer
somehow, for the larder wanted replenishing.

In those days you had not far to seek for game, and you could
scarcely go wrong in any direction at any season of the year. In
winter and spring the Park still swarms with game ; but it is necessary
in summer to know where to look for it, to understand its manners
and customs, to go further and to work harder than formerly, for
Estes Park is civilised. In summer time beautiful but dangerous
creatures roam the Park. The tracks of tiny little shoes are more
frequent than the less interesting, but harmless, footprints of moun-
tain sheep. You are more likely to catch a glimpse of the flicker
of the hem of a white petticoat in the distance than of the glancing
form of a deer. The marks of carriage wheels are more plentiful
than elk signs, and you are not now so likely to be scared by the
human-like track of a gigantic bear as by the appalling impress of
a number eleven boot. That is as it should be. There is plenty of

1880. A COLORADO SKETCH. 453

room elsewhere for wild beasts, and nature's beauties t should be en-
joyed by man. I well remember the commencement of civilisation.
I was sitting on the stoop of the log-shanty one fine hot summer's
evening, when to me appeared the strange apparition of an aged
gentleman on a diminutive donkey. He was the first stranger I had
ever seen in the Park, After surveying me in silence for some
moments he observed, ' Say, is this a pretty good place to drink
whisky in ? ' I replied ' Yes,' naturally, for I have never heard of
a spot that was not favourable for the consumption of whisky, the
State of Maine not excepted. ' Well, have you any to sell ? ' he
continued. ' No,' I answered, ' got none.' After gazing at me in
melancholy silence for some moments, evidently puzzled at the idea
of a man and a house but no whisky, he went slowly and sadly on
his way, and I saw him no more.

On the morning that Sandie and I went out, it was not necessary
to go far from the house. We had not ridden long before we came
to likely-looking country, got off, unsaddled and tethered our horses,
and started on foot, carefully scanning the ground for fresh sign.
Soon we came upon it — quite recently-formed tracks of three or four
deer. Then we had to decide upon the plan of operations in a long
and whispered conversation ; and finally, having settled where the
deer were likely to be, and how to get at them, we made a long
circuit, so as to be down wind of the game, and went to work. The
ground to which I am referring is very rough. It slopes precipitously
towards the river. Huge masses of rock lie littered about on a
surface pierced by many perpendicular jagged crags, hundreds of feet
high, and long ridges and spurs strike downward from the sheer scarp
that crowns the canon of the river, forming beautiful little glades —
sheltered, sunny, clothed with sweet grass — on which the deer love to
feed.

In such a country there was no chance of seeing game at any
distance ; so we had to go very cautiously, examining every sign,
crawling up to every little ridge, and inch by inch craning oar heads
over and peering into every bush and under every tree. In looking
over a rise of ground it is advisable for the hunter to take off his
head-covering unless he wears a very tight-fitting cap. I have often
laughed to see great hunters (great in their own estimation) raising
their heads most carefully, forgetting that a tall felt hat, some six
inches above their eyes, had already been for some time in view of
the deer. Many hunters seem to think that the deer cannot see
them till they see the deer.

The sportsman cannot go too slowly, and it is better to hunt out
one little gully thoroughly than to cover miles of ground in the day.
If he walks rapidly he will scare heaps of deer, hear lots of crashing
in the trees and scattering of stones, and perhaps see the whisk of
a white tail, or the glance of a dark form, through the trees, but
VOL. VIII.— No. 43. H H

45 1 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

never get a shot for bis pains. We pursued a different plan — took eacb
little gulcb separately, and carefully crept up it, searching every incb
of ground, using redoubled caution towards tbe end where the bush
is thickest, and especially scanning the north side ; for, strange to say,
deer prefer lying on the north side of valleys in the snow, even
during the coldest weather, to resting on the warm sunny grass on
the southern slopes. Patiently we worked ; but our patience was not
well rewarded, for not a sign of anything did we see till our entirely
foodless stomachs and the nearly shadowless trees indicated that it
was past noon. So we sat us down in a nice little sheltered nook,
from whence we commanded a good view of the precipitous cliffs
and gullies that led down to the tortuous and icebound creek, some
thousands of feet below us, as well as of the face of the mountain
that reared itself on the opposite side, and betook ourselves to food
and reflection. It is very pleasant to lie comfortably stretched out
with nothing to do but to gaze with idle pleasure and complete con-
tent upon grand and varied scenery. The eye, now plunging into
the abyss of blue crossed at intervals by swiftly moving clouds, now
lowered and resting on the earth, pauses for a minute on the daz-
zling snow-white summits, then travels down through dark green pine
woods, wanders over little open glades or valleys grey with withered
grass, glances at steep cliffs and great riven masses of rock which
time and weather have detached and hurled down the mountain
side, and falls at last upon the pale green belt of aspens that fringes
the river, white with snow where spanned with ice, but black as ink
where a rapid torrent has defied the frost. Nor is the eye wearied
with its journey ; for mountain, valley, cliff, and glade are so
mingled, and are so constantly changing with light and shade, that
one could look for hours without a wish to move. The mind goes
half asleep, and wonders lazily whether its body is really there in the
heart of the Rocky Mountains leading a hunter's life, or whether it
is not all a dream — a dream of schoolboy days which seemed at one
time so little likely to be realised, and yet which is at length ful-
filled.

It must not be supposed that, because we were half asleep and
wholly dreaming, we were not also keeping a sharp look-out ; for in a
man who is very much accustomed to take note of every unusual
object, of every moving thing, and of the slightest sign of any living
creature — more especially if he has roamed much on the prairies where
hostile redskins lurk and creep — the faculty of observation is so con-
stantly exercised that it becomes a habit unconsciously used, and he
is all the time seeing sights, and hearing sounds, and smelling smells,
and noting them down, and receiving all kinds of impressions from
all external objects, without being the least aware of it himself.
However, none of our senses were gratified by anything that betokened
the presence of game, and, after resting a little while, we picked up

1880. A COLORADO SKETCH. 455

our rifles and stole quietly on again. So we crept and hunted, and
hunted and crept, and peered and whispered, and wondered we saw
nothing, till the pine trees were casting long shadows to the east,
when suddenly Sandie, who was a pace or two in front of me, became
rigid, changed into a man of stone, and then, almost imperceptibly,
a hair's-breadth at a time, stooped his head and sank down. If you
come suddenly in sight of game, you should remain perfectly'motion-
less for a time, and sink out of sight gradually ; for if you drop down
quickly, the movement will startle it. Deer seem to be short-sighted.
They do not notice a man, even close by, unless he moves. I never
saw a man so excited at the sight of game, and yet so quiet, as
Sandie. It seemed as if he would fly to pieces ; he seized my arm
with a grip like a vice, and whispered, ' Oh, a great stag within easy
shot from the big rock yonder ! He has not seen me.' So, prone
upon the earth, I crawled up to the rock, cocked the rifle, drew a long
breath, raised myself into a sitting position, got a good sight 'on the
deer, pulled, and had the satisfaction of seeing him tumbling head-
long down the gulch, till he stopped stone dead jammed between two
trees.

Leaving Sandie to prepare the stag for transportation, I started
off as fast as I could, and brought one of the ponies down to the
carcase. It was pretty bad going for a four-footed animal; but
Colorado horses, if used to the mountains, will go almost anywhere.
The way they will climb up places, and slither down places, and pick
their way through ' wind-falls,' is marvellous. They seem to be
possessed of any number of feet, and to put them down always exactly
at the right moment in the right place. I do not suppose they like
it, for they groan and grunt the while in a most piteous manner. My
pony was sure-footed and willing, and, moreover, was used to pack
game ; so we had little trouble with him, and before long had the
deer firmly secured on the saddle and were well on our way home.
It was well for us that we killed the deer in a comparatively accessible
place, or we should not have got him in that night or the next day.
It was almost dark when we topped the ridge, and could look down
into the Park and see the range beyond, and there were plenty of signs
there to show that a storm was at hand. Eight overhead the stars
were shining, but all the sky to the west was one huge wall of cloud.
Black Cafion, the canon of the river, and all the great rents in the
range were filled with vapour, and all the mountains were wrapped
in cloud.

When we left the ranche that night after a good supper, a game of
euchre, and sundry pipes, it was pitch-dark, and light flakes of snow
were noiselessly floating down to the earth ; and, when we got up the
next morning, behold ! there was not a thing to be seen. Mountains,
ranche-house, and everything else were blotted out by a densely-
falling white, bewildering mass of snow. Towards noon it lightened

H H 2

456 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

up a little, and great grey shapes of mountains loomed out now and
then a shade darker than the white wall that almost hid them ; but
the weather was not fit for hunting, and, as there was nothing else to
be done out of doors, we made a. fete of it, as a French Canadian
would say, and devoted ourselves to gun-cleaning and spinning yarns.
. When deep snow lies upon the higher grounds surrounding Estes
Park, wapiti come down into the Park in considerable numbers. The
wapiti is a splendid beast, the handsomest by far of all the deer tribe.
He is called an elk in the States — why, I do not know ; for the Euro-
pean elk is identical with the American moose, and a moose and a
wapiti are not the least alike. But I presume the wapiti is called by
the Americans an elk for the same reason that they call thrushes
robins, and grouse partridges. The reason, I dare say, is a good one,
but I do not know what it is. The wapiti enjoys a range extending
from the Pacific sea-board to the Mississippi, and from the north-
west territory in British possessions down to Texas, and he formerly
was found all the way across the continent and in the Eastern States.
He is exactly like the European red deer — only about twice as large —
carries magnificent antlers, and is altogether a glorious animal.
Wapiti are very shy. They require quiet and large undisturbed
pastures; and they are hunted with a thoughtless brutality that
must shortly lead to their extermination in civilised districts. They
do not accustom themselves to civilisation as easily as do moose or
antelope, but resent deeply the proximity of man — that is to say,
of civilised man, for Indians do not interfere with them very much.
Indians, as a rule, are not really fond of hunting ; they hunt for sub-
sistence, not for pleasure, and, where buffalo are to be found, never
trouble their heads about smaller game. Elk are plentiful in any
Indian country that suits them ; in fact, as a rule, there is very little
use in hunting wapiti in any country that is not exposed to Indian
incursions, and the more dangerous the country, the better sport
you are likely to have. But this is not an invariable rule. There
are some places where wapiti may be found in quite sufficient
numbers to repay a sportsman's labour, and where he need not incur
the smallest risk to life or limb. I imagine there are more wapiti
to be found in Montana and the adjacent territories than in any
other part of the United States. Wapiti are to be met with in forests
of timber, among the mountains, and on the treeless prairie. They
are, I think, most numerous on the plains, but the finest specimens
are found in timbered districts. One might suppose that branching
antlers would cause inconvenience to an animal running through
the tangle of a primeval forest ; but the contrary appears to be the
case, for in all countries the woodland deer carry far finer heads than
the stags of the same species that range in open country. The size
of the antlers depends entirely on the food which the animal can
procure. Where he is well fed, they will be well developed ; where

1880. A COLORADO SKETCH. 457

food is scarce, they will be small. In a timbered country there is
more shelter than on the plains, the grass is not so deeply covered
with snow in winter, and consequently food is more plentiful at that
time of year, and the animal thrives better. You always find heavier
deer in woodland than in an open country. Early in the fall the
stags gather large herds of hinds about them ; about the end of
October they separate, and the big stags wander off alone for a while,
and then later on join in with the big bands of hinds and small
stags. During the winter they run in great numbers — it is not
unusual to find herds of two or three hundred together, and I have
seen, I believe, as many as a thousand different wapiti within a week.
A large herd of these grand animals is a magnificent sight, and one
not soon to Joe forgotten. They are to be killed either by stalking
them on foot, or partially on foot and partially on horseback, or by
running them on horseback like buffalo. I have been fortunate
enough to kill wapiti by all these methods, and hope to relate some of
my experiences in a future article.

DUNRAVEN.

4o8 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

THE EGYPTIAN LIQUIDATION-.

WHETHER the affairs of nations will ever be settled by international
tribunals in the same way as the affairs of individuals are settled by
the courts of law, is a question which I personally should answer in
the negative. But the school of thinkers who hold that international
arbitration is the one remedy for all disputes and difficulties which
beset nations in their intercourse with one another should pay
more attention than it has yet received to a very curious experi-
ment in international jurisdiction of which Egypt has just been the
scene. My own opinion is that this experiment owes its success —
in as far as it has proved successful — to an exceptional combination
of conditions which could not have occurred in any country but
Egypt, and is not likely to occur again even there. Whether this
be so or not, the story of the Commission of Liquidation which has
recently concluded its labours at Cairo is one full of interest both for
those who are concerned in the welfare of Egypt and for those who
attach importance to what, for lack of a better phrase, I may term
the system of internationally. It is this story which I should like
to make intelligible to those who have not had occasion, either from
political or financial motives, to follow carefully the recent vicissitudes
of Egyptian affairs.

In a former article I have endeavoured to explain the character
of the dual protectorate over Egypt established by the Governments
of France and England on'the initiative of M. Waddington and Lord
Salisbury. It is enough for my present purpose to say that when
M. de Blignieres and Major Baring entered on their duties as Comp-
trollers-General of the administration of Egypt, the first difficulty
they had to contend with was that of the Floating Debt. This debt
differed in character from all the other liabilities of the Egyptian
Government. The international courts which had been substituted —
by agreement between the Khedive and the European Powers — for the
old consular tribunals held that individual creditors of the State, who
had lent specific sums for specific purposes, were entitled to obtain
judgment against the State in the same manner as against an ordinary
debtor, and to seize the property of the State if payment was not

1880. THE EGYPTIAN LIQUIDATION. 459

made in obedience to the judgment of the courts. "Whether this de-
cision was legal or illegal is not a point on which I need enter. Un-
doubtedly independent States, as a rule, do not admit the right of a
private creditor to seize or sequestrate public property in discharge of
a State debt ; but, on the other hand, no independent State has ever
accepted the authority of foreign tribunals as absolutely and irresistibly
supreme. By the convention, however, to which the international tri-
bunals owed their existence, Egypt had been placed under the com-
plete and uncontrolled supremacy of the law, as administered and in-
terpreted by the international judges. It was their duty to decide any
case submitted to them in accordance with a written code ; and if they
failed to decide correctly, there was no possible appeal from their deci-
sion. The whole subject of the Egyptian code is far too wide a one to
discuss in passing ; and all I need remark is that the extraordinary and
exceptional powers conferred upon the international courts were not
the result of accident, but of a deliberate policy, and that these courts
are regarded in Egypt alike by Europeans and natives as the safe-
guards of law and order. Advantageous, however, as the supreme
jurisdiction of these courts has proved upon the whole, it retarded
and obstructed the progress of any financial settlement between the
State and its creditors. By the decision to which I allude all judg-
ment creditors were empowered to attach the property of the State
in liquidation of their claim. The actual execution of these seizures
was not carried out in most instances. But at the time the Comptrol-
lers-General were appointed, the lands, buildings, and properties of the
Egyptian Government were burdened, in addition to their general
liabilities, with any number of attachments obtained by private credi-
tors, whose debts, in virtue of the judgments they had secured, were
accumulating by compound interest at the legal rate of twelve per
cent, per annum.

It was therefore an essential preliminary to any settlement of
the financial difficulties which had brought Egypt under the late
Khedive to the verge of bankruptcy that individual creditors should
be compelled to accept any general arrangements concluded with the
whole body of the creditors. This was impossible unless the inter-
national courts agreed to accept such a settlement as legally binding ;
and this, by virtue of their constitution, they had no power to do
without express authorisation from the Governments in whose name
they exercised their functions. In consequence, the Comptrollers
undertook in the first instance to obtain the sanction required. It
so happened that Austria had made herself the special champion of
the Floating Debt creditors as distinguished from the bondholders.
It was understood that Germany and Italy would in this matter
follow the same policy as Austria, and it was to Vienna that the
Comptrollers betook themselves in person. It would, I think, have
been better if the negotiations had been conducted through the

460 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

regular channels of diplomacy, instead of by gentlemen who had no
official status. Still, though the Austrian Government would have
couched their refusal in more courteous terms if the application had
been made to them by persons of higher political and financial
authority than M. de Blignieres and Major Baring, they would in any
case have refused to confide the settlement of the Floating Debt to the
Comptrollers-General. The Anglo-French protectorate, of which
these gentlemen were the representatives, was and is viewed with ex-
treme disfavour by the other European Powers, especially by those
which, like Austria and Italy, have interests of their own in Egypt.
Austria, as the spokesman of these Powers, insisted that any financial
settlement, which she could consent to acknowledge as possessing
legal validity, must be arrived at not by an understanding between
the Governments of London, Paris, and Cairo, but by an International
Commission, in which the other Powers would be directly represented.
This demand was inacceptable in itself to France and England. M.
Waddington, who was wont to declare that the great triumph of his
administration had been the securing to France of an equal influence
with England in the administration of Egypt, was naturally unwilling
to allow any other Power to share in the Protectorate ; while Lord
Salisbury had tardily made the discovery that, even under the system
of Anglo-French co-operation on which he had prided himself, Eng-
land was losing the supremacy she had hitherto enjoyed in Egypt.
Still, unwelcome as the demand was, it had to be accepted. As
England and France had avoided any direct assertion of their authority
in Egypt, and still shrank from the responsibility attaching to overt
action, it was not in their power to propound any financial settlement
for Egypt of their own authority. The co-operation of Austria was
therefore essential to the effectuation of the desired settlement, and
this co-operation could only be obtained on condition that the whole
question should be submitted to an International Commission.

Having failed in their mission to Vienna, the Comptrollers-
General proceeded to Egypt at the end of last November. Simul-
taneously with their departure, it was announced that a Commission
of Liquidation would shortly be appointed to conclude an arrangement
between Egypt and her creditors. It is matter for regret that the
Commission was not appointed at once, but the truth is that very
strong influences retarded its meeting. The Comptrollers-General
objected, naturally enough, to the establishment of a body whose
authority could hardly fail to interfere with their own supremacy.
The proposed Commission was looked upon coldly by the French
and English Foreign Offices, partly on account of the political
considerations to which I have referred, and partly by reason of
personal considerations on which I need not dwell. If ever the
correspondence exchanged on this subject between the European
chancelleries should be published, it will, I believe, be found that,

1880. THE EGYPTIAN LIQUIDATION. 461

throughout the negotiations which preceded the final appointment
of the Commission, England and France endeavoured to obtain such
a priority for their own representatives as would have reduced the
practical influence of the other Powers to a cipher, while Austria
endeavoured to render their participation a reality.

Be this as it may, the negotiations made little or no progress for
some months, and a general impression gained ground that the Com-
mission would never meet at all. The Comptrollers themselves seem
to have imagined that if they took matters into their own hands they
might obviate the necessity for any Commission of Liquidation. For
the time their authority in Egypt was unquestioned. The young
Khedive had no experience in government. He felt that his own
position was insecure ; he dreaded the possibility of his father's re-
turn ; and he was also much impressed by the resolution with which
the French Government had imposed M. de Blignieres upon him
as Comptroller-General, notwithstanding his urgent protest. The
Prime Minister, Kiaz Pasha, did not fail to realise the fact that, in
view of the personal opposition to which he was exposed in Egypt,
his only chance of retaining office lay in conciliating the support of
the Comptrollers. Moreover, M. de Blignieres himself, whatever his
other defects may be, is undoubtedly a man of singular ability and
energy. Personal qualities of this kind go for a long way in the
East, and the result was that M. de Blignieres not only succeeded in
relegating his English colleague to the background, but he also suc-
ceeded in obtaining for the Comptrollers an authority which may not
unfairly be said to have not been contemplated by their mandate.
During the months that elapsed between the establishment of the
Control and the appointment of the Commission, the Comptrollers
were the virtual rulers of Egypt. Not only was nothing done without
their approval, but their authority was paramount even in questions
which properly lay within the exclusive domain of the Egyptian
ministers. Of their own initiative they prepared and promulgated
a scheme for the settlement of the financial difficulties of Egypt,
which, if it had been accepted, would have removed any necessity for
the meeting of a Commission. The scheme was not in the main
unfair or unreasonable, and many of its most important recommen-
dations have subsequently been embodied in the report of the Com-
mission. The real objections to the scheme were that, coming from
such a source, it was certain to be rejected by the Governments not
represented in the Control, and that its authors had no power to
compel its adoption. My own impression is that M. de Blignieres
laboured under the delusion that he would receive a more active
support from his own Government than they were prepared to render.
In politics, as in dynamics, the strength of a chain must be measured
by its weakest link, and the weakest link in the Anglo-French pro-
tectorate was England. In saying this, I am imputing no blame to

462 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

Lord Salisbury. It was obviously not for t'ne interest of England to
resort to active intervention in Egypt for the sake of perpetuating
a system under which French influence was almost necessarily more
powerful than our own. On the other hand France, though very
powerful in Egypt in conjunction with England, bad no power to act
by herself. It follows, therefore, that the Comptrollers could not
look to home for that staunch and decisive support which alone could
have empowered them to arrange the financial situation of Egypt of
their own authority ; and the error committed by M. de Blignieres
and Major Baring was that they acted as'dictators without having first
ascertained whether their dictatorship rested upon any solid foun-
dation.

Possibly the attempt of the Comptrollers might have been at-
tended with greater success if M. Waddington had remained Prime
Minister of France. But M. de Freycinet, who succeeded to the
premiership upon M. Waddington's fall, was not identified personally
in any way with the French Comptroller-General, and took compara-
tively little interest in Egyptian affairs. Our own Government, as
usual, was anxious above all things not to commit itself to any rer
sponsibility. The result was that the solution proposed by the
Comptrollers met with no response, and that the necessity for a Com-
mission became more and more evident, if any steps were really to
be taken to place the finances of Egypt upon a sound and permanent
footing. The negotiations, which had been interrupted by Lord
Salisbury's illness, were resumed ; the great influence of the house of
Rothschild was brought to the support of those who were anxious to
bring about the assembling of the Commission ; and Sir Rivers Wilson
was appointed to the post of President. The Commission consisted
of two Englishmen, two Frenchmen, one German, one Austrian, and
one Italian. Thus England and France, if their representatives acted
together, commanded a majority of votes ; but incase they disagreed,
the Powers possessing one vote were able to decide the question at
issue. By a curious oversight, no stipulation was made as to the
Commission being bound by the votes of the majority. It is easily
intelligible that the Egyptian Government should have accepted the
appointment of the Commission with great reluctance, and should
have been anxious to confine its functions within the narrowest
limits. In principle, the powers entrusted to the Commission were
of almost a sovereign character. They had the right to decide what
proportion of the revenue should be allotted respectively to the
service of the State and of the Debt, and to decide not only what rate
of interest should be paid to the creditors, but what debts should be
regarded as binding. In fact, Egypt was treated as a bankrupt
estate, the realisation of whose assets and the payment of whose
liabilities had been handed over to liquidators. As I have en-
deavoured to explain, no other process was available by which Egypt

1880. THE EGYPTIAN LIQUIDATION. 463

could obtain relief from the crushing burden of the Unconsolidated
Debt, and therefore the Khedive and his ministers were willing
to accept a Commission as a necessary evil. But they were most
anxious — and, from their own point of view, most rightly anxious —
to curtail the scope and area of its investigations. Towards the at-
tainment of this object they could count upon the support of the
Comptrollers. It was not in human nature that these gentlemen
should look with favour upon a body deputed to set aside their own
schemes, and to override, at any rate for the time, their own au-
thority. Moreover, the force of circumstances had brought about an
odd sort of rapprochement between the Egyptian Government and the
Comptrollers. M. de Blignieres was a man of far too great intelli-
gence not to realise the fact that his position in Egypt was not so
strong as it had been hitherto. There was absolutely no certainty
that, if matters came to an open dispute between the Comptrollers
and the native ministers, the former could rely upon any energetic
support from their own Governments. The instinct, therefore, of
self-preservation rendered the French Comptroller anxious to con-
ciliate the goodwill of the Khedive ; and, as usual, the English Comp-
troller followed the lead of his French colleague. The chief object of
the Egyptian Government was to obtain as large a share as possible
of the national revenue, and to keep the share thus obtained, as com-
pletely as might be, under its own control ; and the Comptrollers set
themselves from the outset to assist the native Government in obtain-
ing the fulfilment of their wishes. From different motives the diplo-
matic representatives both of France and England were inclined to
side with the Cairene Government in its wish to circumscribe the
powers of the Commission. They naturally and properly objected to
any process by which the authority of the Anglo-French protectorate
was likely to be subordinated to that of a Commission possessing an
international as distinguished from an Anglo-French character. More-
over, shortly before the overthrow of the late Government, instructions
were sent from the Foreign Office to our diplomatic agent at Cairo
to the effect that the Commission ought not to go behind the esti-
mates furnished them by the Egyptian Government with the sanction
of the Comptrollers, and ought to provide in the most liberal manner
for the requirements of the native administration. If any contro-
versy should arise on these points, our agent was instructed further
to exert his influence on the side of the Government as against the
Commission. I am not aware how far similar instructions were sent
to the representative of France, but I think that I can state with
confidence that the existence of these instructions was unknown to
the members of the Commission at the time when they entered upon
their labours.

Thus at the very outset the Commission found that their powers,
though theoretically unlimited, were practically very much restricted.

464 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

If the estate they were appointed to liquidate had belonged to a
private bankrupt, their course of procedure would have been simple
enough. Their first duty would have been to ascertain by indepen-
dent investigation what income the bankrupt really derived from his
resources, and what was the net amount of his liabilities. Having
ascertained these facts, they would next have had to decide what was
the least sum for which the revenue could be collected, and the busi-
ness of administration carried on without detriment to the yield of
the property. And having come to a decision on this point, their
duty would have been, after making provision for the necessary
working expenses of the estate and for an allowance to the bankrupt
as manager, to apportion the surplus among the various classes of
creditors. Here, however, they were confronted at once with one of
the difficulties which to my mind are fatal to all international arbitra-
tion. They had no power in the last resort to impose their will upon
the bankrupt whose estate was under liquidation. In the case of an
ordinary insolvent trader, the liquidators, as representing the credi-
tors, may be most friendly disposed towards the bankrupt, and may
hold that it is for the interest of all parties that the business should
still be carried on in his name and under his management. But if
he refuses to disclose the real state of his affairs, or places an exorbi-
tant estimate on the amount required by him for his own support and
the purposes of the business, they can always bring him to reason by
threatening either to sell off the business for what it will fetch, or
to find some other manager who will carry on the concern on more
advantageous terms for the creditors. The Commission could do
nothing of the kind. They had not the power or the will to depose
the Khedive. Any arrangement they could make must of necessity,
therefore, be carried out by him and under his control, and therefore
no arrangement was of any practical value to which he refused to
consent. No doubt if the Powers, by whom the Commission was
appointed, had been prepared to say to the Egyptian Government,
4 The settlement proposed by our Commissioners is of the nature of an
ultimatum, which, if it is not accepted, will be imposed by force,' the
Khedive and his ministers would have given way at once. But the
Powers were not prepared to do this, and, what is more, were known
not to be prepared. There was not even any unity of purpose be-
tween the Powers who composed this court of international arbitra-
tion. Its ostensible object was to protect the interests of the
Egyptian creditors, while at the same time relieving Egypt from
the burden of her pressing liabilities. But in reality the Commission
represented a number of rival and conflicting interests.

From causes familiar to all persons who have studied Egyptian
finance, France was especially anxious to provide for the bond-
holders of the Unified Debt. England was more concerned with the

protection of the Privileged Debt. Austria and Italy had chiefly at

1880. THE EGYPTIAN LIQUIDATION. 465

heart the interests of the Floating Debt. Again, England and France
combined had a personal interest in providing for the payment of
the Tribute Loans. Indeed, the only point on which the Powers were
agreed was that it was not desirable to force Egypt into bankruptcy.
Under these conditions the position of the Commissioners was one of
extreme difficulty. All they could do, or hope to do, was to induce
the Egyptian Government to accept a reasonable compromise, even
if it fell far short of the requirements of abstract equity or practical ex-
pediency. That they succeeded as well as they did is due in the main
to the ability, tact, good sense, and firmness of their President.

Sir Eivers Wilson had been designated from the first for the
Presidency of the Commission of Liquidation. Nobody had had so
large and intimate an experience of the subject under consideration
as the former Minister of Finance in the Anglo-French Ministry.
He had been the practical, though not the nominal, head of the
Commission of Inquiry which compelled the ex-Khedive to dis-
gorge the enormous estates appropriated to his own use, and he was
entrusted with a sort of personal authority which no other financier,
however able, could have exercised in his place. Moreover, Sir
Rivers had a special and individual, as well as a public, claim to
the Presidency of the Commission. Whatever may have been the
errors of the Anglo-French administration, the responsibility for
these errors rested equally on the shoulders of the French and English
ministers. The former, however, had been reinstated in power by
his own Government after the downfall of Ismail Pasha, while the
latter had been left out in the cold, and had been replaced by Major
Baring, a gentleman who, whatever may have been his merits, had
not been identified with the attempt to rule Egypt by nominees of
the English and French Governments. To hava passed over Sir Rivers
Wilson, and to have conferred the Presidency of the Commission on
any one else, would have been to pass an indirect condemnation of the
manner in which the late Minister of Finance had fulfilled his
duties, and thereby to stultify the Government which had originally
appointed him, and which had formally testified to the value of his
services in Egypt. The Comptrollers, however, would have preferred a
President of less marked personality. The French Government felt
that their representatives would have more influence in the Com-
mission if the President was a person of smaller authority. Powerful
official and personal influences were brought to bear against Sir
Rivers's nomination ; and that our Foreign Office finally made up
their mind not to interfere with the selection of the President was
mainly owing to the strong opinion expressed in favour of Sir Rivers
by leading London financiers. I only dwell on this fact to show how
little foundation there is for the charge that the late Government in-
terfered in the affairs of Egypt with the view of promoting the ascen-
dency of England there. The real charge against them is rather that,

466 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

from an exaggerated estimate of the importance of conciliating the
goodwill of France, they sacrificed the substance to the shadow,
and were prepared to loosen our grasp on Egypt for the sake of pur-
chasing a chimerical support against hypothetical dangers on the
Bosphorus.

Aprjl was well advanced before the Commission finally met at
Cairo. Its sittings were secret. But in Egypt everything that
goes on is known to any number of people. Th.e questions on which
the Commission was divided were discussed publicly very shortly
after the sittings were closed for the day ; and, without pretending to
give any exact or detailed report, I believe I can give a substantially
accurate account of the main issues which occupied the attention of
the 'Commission. If, then, I am rightly informed, their chief channel
of communication with the Egyptian Government was not so much
through Eiaz Pasha, the Prime Minister, as through the Comptrollers,
who made themselves to a considerable extent the champions of the
Government as against the Commission. At an early date the Com-
missioners were given to understand that their task need -not be a very
lengthy or a very onerous one ; that in fact all they had to do was to
examine and endorse the financial scheme propounded by the Comp-
trollers, so that this scheme, having received the sanction of the Com-
mission,might be accepted as binding upon the international courts. To
this pretension the Commission not unnaturally demurred. They held
that, while paying every respect to the opinion of the Comptrollers, they
were in nowise bound to accept their conclusions, but were obliged by
the terms of their mandate to go- into the whole question of Egyptian
finances. Both contentions were exaggerated, but the Comptrollers
were the nearer to the truth of the two. The Commission ascertained
that they were expected to base their reports on the estimates prepared
by the Egyptian Government with the approval of the Comptrollers,
and that, whatever their theoretical authority might be, they had no
practical power of going beyond those estimates. The Comptrollers,
too, being assured, as I have already explained, of the support of
their Consuls-General, were virtually in a position to decide what
amount was essential for the administration of the State. The problem
submitted to the Commission really came, therefore, to this : given an
estimated revenue which they had no power to question, and a
permanent charge on this revenue for the public service which they
had no power to reduce, how could the surplus be best divided
amidst the creditors ? The problem thus expounded fell far short of
the conception formed by the Commission of their work. Still, even
thus curtailed and restricted, the solution of the problem was attended
with greater difficulties than the Comptrollers had anticipated.

In round numbers, the estimates upon which the Commission was
called to base their report may be stated as follows. The revenue of
Egypt was, in the first instance, calculated at 8,000,OOOZ., and the

1880. THE EGYPTIAN LIQUIDATION. 467

necessary expenditure of the State at 4,500,OOOL,1 thus leaving only
3,500,000£. available for the service, of the public debt. I shall have
something to say shortly about the justice of these estimates. For the
moment, their correctness may be taken for granted. It will be obvious
to any one who has any knowledge of the finances of Egypt that this
sum of 3,500,000^. was barely sufficient to provide a reasonable rate of
interest on a debt whose total amount wasi not under 80,000,000?.
The Unified Loan, which represented more than tb,ree-fifths of the
total indebtedness of Egypt, was entitled to seven per cent, interest.
The bondholders were ready to submit to a large reduction, but
four per cent. was. the lowest they could be expected to accept;
and as they enjoyed the active protection of the French Govern-
ment, their expectations could not be safely disregarded. It was
necessary therefore to provide four per cent, for the Unified. The
other loans were all guaranteed by special hypothecations of par-
ticular sources of revenue, and could claim priority in respect of the
Unified. It was impossible, therefore, with any show of equity, to
deal more hardly with these loans than with the Unified ; and, as a
fact, the Commission had to provide five per cent, for the Preference
and the Daira loans. There was, therefore, little or no margin avail-
able for meeting the. claims of any creditors not included in the recog-
nised schedule. There were, however, large classes of such creditors.
Ismail Pasha not only borrowed all the money that European capitalists
could be induced to lend, but he appropriated all the savings of his own
people on which he could lay his hands. He contracted in fact a large
number of forced loans, on one pretence or another, and often with
very little pretence at all. In many cases these native creditors had
scarcely any legal or official acknowledgment which they could pro-
duce as proof of their claims. But even if their titles were perfectly
in order they were not much better off. The international courts
have no power to hear cases in which both parties are natives, and
therefore an Egyptian creditor could demand no redress from the
tribunals by which foreign creditors obtained judgment against
the State. The native law courts neither could nor would en-
tertain a suit against the Grovernment, ,and in [ consequence the
debts due to natives were practically treated as non-existent.
There was, however, one of these home loans which stood on a
sort of intermediate footing between the native and the foreign
debts. The loan in question was the Moukabaleh. The story of the
Moukabaleh is far too complicated to tell in detail here. Indeed its
discussion belongs to that category of interminable controversies as
to which you can fairly plead, as a reason for not entering upon them,
that ' that way madness lies.' It is enough to say that the Mouka-
baleh was a loan made by the landowners of -Egypt to the late
Khedive, in response to an offer on his part that, by paying a certain
1 Finally this amount was raised to 4,900,OOOZ.

468 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

number of years' imposts in advance, 'they should have their land
tax reduced in perpetuity. The bargain was a most improvident
one, and, if it had been carried out, would have been ruinous to the
revenue. It is tolerably certain that Ismail Pasha intended to evade
the obligation he had thus undertaken, and it is certain that its
annulment was imperatively demanded by the welfare of Egypt.
Still, in common equity the Moukabaleh bondholders had a claim to
compensation for the non-fulfilment of the contract on the faith of
which they had made their advances. Their titles were indisputable
in law ; and though the amount of the nominal Moukabaleh Debt
(16,000,000?.) was open to discussion, yet, after making every reduc-
tion for irregular or fictitious claims, it was admitted that at least
8,000,000?. was due to the holders of the Moukabaleh bonds for
advances made to the Government in virtue of a solemn contract.
There was no single class of public creditors which had so strong a
moral claim for consideration as the Moukabaleh bondholders, nine-
teen-twentieths of whom were natives, and were therefore deprived
of any means of enforcing their claims by law. The Comptrollers,
however, insisted that the Commission ought not even to take these
claims into consideration, but ought to leave the settlement of the
Moukabaleh Debt to be arranged at some future period between the
Government and its subjects. In so insisting, they were not
actuated by any disregard for native rights, but by considerations to
which I have already alluded. The surplus, according to their cal-
culations, barely sufficed to provide such a composition as the foreign
creditors could be expected to accept. If, therefore, any adequate
provision was to be made for the Moukabaleh bondholders, either
the revenue must be increased or the sum allotted to the public
service must be reduced, and against either of these conclusions the
Comptrollers had set their face.

According to the law that the weakest always go to the wall — a
law which holds good in the East even more than it does in the West
— the creditors under the Moukabaleh would have been left without a
hearing if it had not been for two incidents which had little or nothing
to do with the abstract justice of their claim. The first of these in-
cidents was that a certain number of foreigners, chiefly Greeks, were
indirectly interested in the matter under dispute. These Greeks had
bought lands from landowners who had availed themselves of the
Moukabaleh, and had paid a higher price on account of the supposed
exemption of the estates in question from the land tax. In the event
of no compensation being made for the abolition of the Moukabaleh,
they threatened to appeal to the international courts for redress.
Such an appeal would very probably have been successful. At all
events it must have raised a number of very inconvenient issues. The
second incident was that the case of the Moukabaleh bondholders was
taken up very warmly by Nubar Pasha. By his efforts something
like an organised agitation was got up against the proposed exclusion

1880. THE EGYPTIAN LIQUIDATION. 469

of the Moukabaleh bondholders from any share in the liquidation.
What were the motives which influenced the ex-Premier in thus
putting himself forward as the champion of the native creditors must
of course be matter of opinion. But even if they were as creditable
as I personally believe them to have been, they could not fail to be
misinterpreted. It was asserted that Nubar's object was to strengthen
his popularity with the native population, and thus to prepare the
way for his return to office. The assertion found credence amidst
Nubar's rivals, and the question as to admissibility or inadmissibility
of the Moukabaleh claims was complicated by partisan and personal
jealousies. Sir Rivers Wilson, as President of the Commission, stood
out strongly for the admission of the Moukabaleh claims on the ground
that it would be inexpedient as well as unjust to sacrifice unreser-
vedly the interests of the native creditors. He was supported in this
protest by his German and Italian colleagues ; and, finally, the Comp-
trollers had to give way, and consent to a substantial though very in-
adequate 2 compensation being made for the loss sustained by the
Moukabaleh bondholders owing to the annulment of their contract.

An issue of more interest to the general public was that raised
as to the disposal of the surplus revenue. The Government had, as
I have said, estimated the revenue at eight millions.3 In all the
previous official calculations it had been put down as ten. There
can be no doubt that during Ismail Pasha's reign the actual amount
of money raised by taxation was on an average at least twelve mil-
lions, and probably was considerably in excess of that amount. It is
true that this sum was raised by cruel and costly exactions. But
still the critics of the late regime, including all the men in power,
had persistently asserted that, with orderly administration and
security for property, the revenue would yield a far larger return.
Egypt was now enjoying a better administration and a greater
security than she had known for centuries. The harvest was one of
unexampled richness ; the peasantry were exceptionally prosperous ;
the taxes were being raised without the slightest default and delay ;
and yet the revenue was declared to be two millions short of the
estimate on which all previous calculations had been based. The
Comptrollers alleged, as excuses for this deficiency, that the ex-
Khedive had for his own purposes systematically exaggerated the
revenue of the country ; that in view of a low Nile, or any other
calamity, such as drought or murrain, ife was desirable not to estimate
the revenue by the return of a prosperous season ; and that, even as
it was, eight millions was the utmost amount on which the Egyptian
exchequer could safely rely. There was great force in these argu-
ments. Still it was difficult to avoid the impression that the

2 The sum allotted was 1 50,000/. per annum, thus giving an interest of under two
per cent, on a capital of 8,000,OOOJ.

3 At a later date this estimate was increased by half a million.

VOL. VIII.— No. 43. 1 1

470 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

revenue had been calculated at too low a figure, and the cost of the
public service at too high a one, in order to reduce the amount
available for the service of the debt, and to supply the Government
with additional funds beyond those included in the Civil List. This
impression gained confirmation from the attitude assumed by the
Government in reference to the question of a possible surplus. Sir
Rivers Wilson contended that, if the revenue exceeded eight millions,
the fairest arrangement, alike for Egypt and her creditors, was to
devote this excess to the reduction of the public debt, as thereby,
while the stock would be improved in value, the country would be
relieved from the weight of an enormous debt. But this contention
the Government met with an absolute refusal. Having first declared
that 8,000,000£. represented the full revenue on which they could
count with any confidence, they argued that the surplus, if any, must
be handed over to them, on the plea that they had left no margin for
unforeseen expenditure. A subsequent proposal to devote the surplus
to the extinction of debt up to one per cent, was likewise tabooed,*and
all the Government could finally be induced to promise was, that a
sum equivalent to half per cent, on the amount of the public debt
should, if the surplus would allow, be devoted annually to the redemp-
tion of bonds. At this rate, even supposing the surplus always to
prove adequate for the purpose, it would take about a century and a
lialf to pay off the existing debt.

In itself the controversy about the disposal of an hypothetical
surplus always seemed to me, as knowing Egypt, a doubtful waste of
time. But the noteworthy part of the whole discussion is that the
Comptrollers throughout supported the demands of the Government
as against the Commission. It would be absurd to suppose that the
Comptrollers had any interest in augmenting the funds at the disposal
of the native administration, or that they were not alive to the desir-
ability of making some real provision for the extinction of the debt.
But they felt that the goodwill of the Government was essential to
the maintenance of their own authority, and this goodwill could
only be secured by assisting the Government in '\ delivering itself as
much as possible from the financial fetters which the Commission
desired to impose. After a protracted and at times -an embittered
discussion, the Government got in the main'what it demanded, and
the net result is, that if the revenue, as there is every reason to
expect, should exceed the low estimate of 8,000,OOOL, or even
8,500,OOOZ., the Egyptian administration will have large funds at its
disposal, in addition to the ample provision~made by the Civil List,
for its normal expenditure.

After these two points, the admission of the Moukabaleh claims
and the disposal of the surplus revenue, had been settled by compro-
mises with which the Egyptian Government, at any rate, had no
cause to be discontented, the^liquidation proceeded rapidly enough.

1880. THE EGYPTIAN LIQUIDATION. 471

The truth is, there was very little left to liquidate. The bankrupt
being allowed to estimate his own revenue, to fix his own allowance,
and to appropriate the bulk of any eventual surplus, all the liqui-
dators had to do was to distribute the sum which, with the bankrupt's
consent, was considered available for the payment of a composition
to his creditors. The mode in which this was done is of little
interest to the general public. All that need be said is that the com-
position dealt on the whole fairly with all the various categories of
Egyptian creditors. If, as I deem, the Floating Debt holders received
rather more than their fair share, and the Unified bondholders rather
less, this was only because the former were more clamorous than the
latter, and better able to enforce their claims.

Supposing I have made my meaning clear, it will be obvious that
the liquidation has been a mere compromise, and not in any sense a
comprehensive settlement of the Egyptian financial problem. No
attempt was made, or could be made, by the Commission to consoli-
date the various debts, to do away with the special hypothecations of
different branches of the revenue, or to abolish the heterogeneous
administrations which exist side by side in Egypt. Yet the consoli-
dation of all Egyptian loans into one stock, paying one uniform rate
of interest, and the collection of the revenue by one central adminis-
tration, are the essential conditions of effective and permanent
reform. The simple truth is that the Commissioners themselves, or,
more strictly speaking, the Powers by whom they were nominated,
were not prepared to undertake any such liquidation. All they were
agreed upon was the necessity of making some arrangement by which
the bondholders should secure such a composition as they would be
content to accept ; the dead-lock caused by the pretensions of the
Floating Debt creditors should be removed ; and the authority of the
international courts should be preserved intact. In fact, the measure
of the Commissioners' power was the extent to which they could rely
on the support of the bondholders, and the bondholders were not
disposed to press for more than a moderate and reasonably secure
•composition.

This conclusion brings me to what I regard as the moral of the
whole story of the Commission ; and that is, that the real permanent
force in Egypt is that of the European capital which either directly
or indirectly is interested in its welfare. It is the fashion in certain
quarters to decry the greed of the bondholders, and I have no wish
to represent them as actuated by higher motives than ordinary
humanity. But, as a matter of fact, it is the influence of these much
maligned bondholders, not that of any European concert, which
stopped the late Khedive in his insane expenditure, which brought
about the restitution of the estates appropriated by his greed, which
led to his deposition, and which has secured the establishment of an

II 2

472 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

orderly and honest administration. It is to this influence we have
now to look for the maintenance of the reforms introduced.

That there exists such an influence, independent of party politics
and diplomatic jealousies, must be matter for satisfaction to all who
have at heart the welfare of Egypt. The one fundamental condition
of law and order in Egypt is the presence of a powerful and dominant
European element in the administration. While giving the young
Khedive, Riaz Pasha, and his colleagues, full credit for an honest desire
to administer Egypt with a view to the interests of the country, and not
to their own enrichment or aggrandisement, I cannot conceal from
myself that they cannot hold their own without European supervision
against the permanent forces which tend to reduce Egypt under the
sway of corruption, extravagance, oppression, and maladministration of
all kinds. If ever, in fact, Egypt were left to herself, she would
inevitably fall back into the condition she was in under Ismail Pasha.
Now the Comptrollers do undoubtedly supply the supervision required.
I may, and do, disapprove in many respects of the policy they have
pursued, and especially of the opposition they have offered to the
development of European enterprise in Egypt ; but so long as they
represent the protectorate of England and France, I should regret their
downfall most sincerely. Still it is impossible to shut one's eyes to
the fact that their tenure of power is insecure. Though for the
moment the native administration may work in harmony with the
Comptrollers, yet the Khedive and his ministers, whoever they may be,
are anxious to shake off their tutelage at the earliest moment possible.
The other Powers are always on the look-out for any opportunity of
overthrowing the Anglo-French protectorate ; and the independent
European mercantile community, who might have rendered the Comp-
trollers a most efficient support, have been alienated by their short-
sighted hostility. Moreover, their position is logically a weak one.
As soon as Egypt, thanks to the Commission, has emerged from her
financial embarrassment, and is in a position to meet her engage-
ments, the exceptional state of things which justified the exceptional
powers conceded to the Comptrollers will have ceased to exist. At
no distant period the Egyptian Government will in all probability
demand the abolition, or at any rate the suspension, of the Control,
on the plea that the country could be ruled more economically and
more efficiently by a single native administration than it is at present
by a number of independent and inexperienced European administra-
tions. This demand will be supported by the Powers not represented
in the protectorate. No doubt, if England and France are determined
to insist upon the retention of the Comptrollership, they have the
power to do so. But, in order to do this, they must be ready to
assert distinctly their determination to keep Egypt for themselves, a
thing they have always shrunk from doing,' and they must be'prepared
to pursue a common policy loyally and openly, which they have

1880. THE EGYPTIAN LIQUIDATION. 473

never done as yet. France, who has gained the most by the pro-
tectorate, and has no objection to the charge of intervention, might
be willing to uphold the control system. But France by herself is
powerless in Egypt ; and I doubt greatly whether England will con-
sent to assume any direct responsibility in conjunction with France
for the internal administration of Egypt.

If, therefore, the only guarantee for the new and better order of
things now established in Egypt under the present Khedive con-
sisted in the permanence of the Comptrollership, I should not be over-
sanguine as to its duration. Fortunately the European community,
which is daily increasing in power and influence, has the most direct
and personal interest in preserving Egypt from falling back under
arbitrary rule. The stake is too large to be imperilled with
impunity. All experience shows that when once European traders
have obtained a legal footing in an Oriental country they are not to
be ousted from their tenure. Through the international courts the
Europeans have obtained such a footing in Egypt, and they will in-
sist on the administration of the country remaining, in one form or
another, under European control. But in so insisting they will look
to their own interests, which in many respects are only partially
identical with, and in others are absolutely hostile to, those of
England. However, we had the game in our own hands, and refused
to make ourselves masters of Egypt while it lay within our grasp.
We cannot wonder or complain if other persons accept what we refuse,
and if Egypt passes under the control of a European instead of an
English or even an Anglo-French protectorate. Independent in any
true sense of the word, after all that has come and gone, Egypt can
never be.

EDWARD DICEY.

474 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

HYPNOTISM}

CONSIDERING the length of time that so-called ' animal magnetism/
' mesmerism,' or ' electro-biology ' has been before the world, it is a
matter of surprise that so inviting a field of physiological inquiry
should have been so long allowed to lie fallow. A few scientific men
in France and Germany have indeed, from time to time, made a few
observations on what Preyer has called the ' Kataplectic state ' as
artificially induced in human beings and sundry species of animals ;
but anything resembling a systematic investigation of the remarkable
facts of mesmerism has not hitherto been attempted by any physiolo-
gist in our generation. The scientific world will therefore give a
more than usually hearty welcome to a treatise which has just been
published upon the subject by a man so eminent as Heidenhain. The
research of which this treatise is the outcome is in every way worthy
of its distinguished author ; for it serves not only to present a con-
siderable and systematic body of carefully observed facts, but also to
lead the way for an indefinite amount of further inquiry along the
lines that it has opened up.

Heidenhain conducted his investigations on medical men and
students as his subjects, one of them being his brother. He found
that in the first or least profound stage of hypnotism, the patient,
on being awakened, can remember all that happened during the
state of mesmeric sleep ; on awakening from the second or more
profound stage, the patient can only partially recollect what has
happened ; while in the third, or most profound stage, all power of
subsequent recollection is lost. But during even the most profound
stage, the power of sensory perception remains. The condition of the
patient is then the same, so far as the reception of sensory impres-
sions is concerned, as that of a man whose attention is absorbed or
distracted ; he sees sights, hears sounds, &c., without knowing that he
sees or hears them, and he cannot afterwards recollect the impres-
sions that were made. But the less profound stages of hypnotism
are paralleled by those less profound conditions of reverie in which a

1 Der sogenannte thierixcJie Magnetixmus. Physiologische Beobachtungen, von
Dr. RUDOLF HEIDENHAIJ?, ord. Professor der Physiologic uncl Director der physio-
logischen Institutes zu Breslau. (Breitkopf und Hiirtel, Leipzig, 1880.)

1880. HYPNOTISM. 475

passing sight or sound, although not noticed at the time, may be
subsequently recalled by an effort of the will. Further on in his
treatise Heidenhain tells us that even when all memory of what has
passed during the hypnotic state is absent on awakening, it may
be aroused by giving the patient a clue, just as in the case of a
forgotten dream. This clue may consist only of a single word in a
sentence. Thus, for instance, if a line of poetry is read to a patient
during his sleep, the whole line may sometimes be recalled to his
memory, when awake, by repeating a single word of the line. Again,
we know from daily experience that the most complicated neuro-
muscular actions — such as those required for piano-playing — become
by frequent repetition ' mechanical,' or performed without conscious-
ness of the processes by which the result is achieved. So it is in the
case of hypnotism. Actions which have been previously rendered
mechanical by long habit are, in the state of hypnotism, per-
formed automatically in response to their appropriate stimuli. There
being a strong tendency to imitate movements, these appropriate
stimuli may consist in the operator himself performing the move-
ments. Thus when Heidenhain held his fist before his hypnotised
subject's face, his subject immediately imitated the movement ; when
he opened his hand, his subject did the same, provided that his hand
was visible to his subject at the time. Also, when he clattered his
teeth, the hypnotised patient repeated the movement, even though
the patient could only hear, and not see, the movement ; similarly,
the patient would follow him about the room, provided that in walk-
ing he made sufficient noise to constitute a stimulus to automatic
walking on the part of his patient. In order to constitute stimuli
to such automatic movements, the sounds or gestures must stand in
some such customary relation to the movements, that the occurrence
of the former naturally suggests the latter.

Another characteristic of the hypnotic state is that of an extraor-^
dinary exaltation of sensibility /so that stimuli of various kinds, though
much too feeble to evoke any response in the ordinary condition of
the nervous system, are effective as stimuli in the hypnotic condition.
It is remarkable that this state of exalted sensibility should be accom-
panied by what appears to be a lowered, or even a dormant, state of
consciousness. It is also remarkable that this exaltation of sensibility
does not appear to take place with what may be called a proportional
reference to all kinds of stimuli. Indeed, far from there being any
such proportional reference, the greatly exalted state of sensibility
towards slight stimuli is accompanied by a greatly diminished state
of excitability towards strong stimuli. Thus, deeply hypnotised persons
will allow themselves to be cut, or burnt, or to have pins stuck into
their flesh, without showing the smallest signs of discomfort.
Heidenhain is careful to point out the interesting similarity, if not
identity, between this condition and that which sometimes occurs in

476 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

certain pathological derangements of the central nervous system, as
well as in a certain stage of anaesthesia, wherein the patient is able
to feel the contact of the surgical instruments, while quite insensible
to any pain produced by the cutting of his flesh. Reflex sensibility,
or sensibility conducing to reflex movements, also undergoes a change,
and it does so in the direction of increase, as might be expected from
the consideration that with the temporary abolition of consciousness
the inhibitory influence, which we know the higher nerve-centres to
be capable of exerting upon the lower, is presumably suspended. But
quite unanticipated is the remarkable fact that the state of exalted
reflex excitability may persist for several days — perhaps for a week —
after a man has been aroused from a state of profound hypnotism.
Thus, Dr. Krener, after having been hypnotised by Professor Heiden-
hain, and while asleep made to bend his arm twice, for several days
afterwards was unable again to straighten it, on account of the flexor
muscles continuing in a state of tonic contraction, or cramp. In these
experiments Heidenhain found that a very gentle stimulation of the
skin caused only the muscles lying immediately below the seat of
stimulation to contract, and that on progressively increasing the
strength of the stimulus its effect progressively spread to muscles
and to muscle-groups further and further removed from the seat of
stimulation. It is interesting that this progressive spread of stimu-
lation follows almost exactly Professor Pfliiger s Law of Irradiation.
But the rate at which a reflex excitation is propagated through the
central nerve-organs is very slow, as compared with the rapidity with
which such propagation takes place in ordinary circumstances.
Moreover, the muscles are prone to go into tonic contraction, rather
than to respond to a stimulus in the ordinary way. The whole
hypnotic condition thus so strongly resembles that of catalepsy, that
Heidenhain regards the former as nothing other than the latter arti-
ficially induced. In the case of strong persons this tonic contraction
of the muscles may make the body as stiff as a board, so that, if a
man is supported in a horizontal position by his head and his feet
only, one may stand upon his stomach without causing the body to
yield. The rate of breathing has been seen by Heidenhain to be in-
creased fourfold, and the pulse also to be accelerated, though not in
so considerable a degree.

In a chapter on the conditions which induce the state of hyp-
notism, Heidenhain begins by dismissing all ideas of any special
' force ' as required to produce or to explain any of the phenomena
which he has witnessed. He does not doubt that some persons are
more susceptible than others to the influences which induce the
hypnotic state, and he thinks that this susceptibility is greatest in
persons of high nervous sensibility. These ' influences ' may be of
various kinds ; such as looking continuously at a small bright object,
listening continuously to a monotonous sound, submitting to be

1880. HYPNOTISM. 477

gently and continuously stroked upon the skin, &c. — the common
peculiarity of all the influences which may induce the hypnotic state
being that they are sensory stimuli of a gentle, continuous, and
monotonous kind. Awakening may be produced by suddenly
blowing upon the face, slapping the hand, screaming in the ear, &c.,
and even by the change of stimulus proceeding from the retina
which is caused by a person other than the operator suddenly taking
his place before the patient. On the whole, the hypnotic condition
may be induced in susceptible persons by a feeble, continued, and
regular stimulation of the nerves of touch, sight, or hearing ; and
may be terminated by a strong or sudden change in the stimulation
of these same nerves.

The physiological explanation of the hypnotic state which Hei-
denhain ventures to suggest, is that a stimulus of the kind just
mentioned has the effect of inhibiting the functions of the cerebral
hemispheres, in a manner analogous to that which is known to occur
in several other cases which he quotes of ganglionic action being
inhibited by certain kinds of stimuli operating upon their sensory
nerves.

In a more recent paper, embodying the results of a further
investigation in which he was joined by P. Grrutzner, Heidenhain
gives us the following supplementary information.

The muscles which are earliest affected are those of the eyelids;
the patient is unable to open his closed eyes by any effort of his will.
Next, the affection extends in a similar manner to the muscles of the
jaw, then to the arms, trunk, and legs. But even when so many of
the muscles of the body have passed beyond the control of the will,
consciousness may remain intact. In other cases, however, the
hypnotic sleep comes on earlier.

Imitative movements become more and more certain the more
they are practised, so that at last they may be invariable and
wonderfully precise, extending to the least striking or conspicuous
of the changes of attitude and general movements of the operator.
Professor Berger observed that when pressure is exerted with the hand
at the nape of the neck upon the spinous process of the seventh
cervical vertebra, the patient will begin to imitate spoken words.
It is immaterial whether or not the words make sense, or whether
they belong to a known or to an unknown language. The tone in
which the imitation is made varies greatly in different individuals,
but for the same individual is always constant. In one case it was
a hollow tone, ' like a voice from the grave ; ' in another almost a
whisper, and so on. In all cases, however, the tone is continued in
one kind, i.e. it is monotonous. Further experiments showed that
pressure on the nape of the neck was not the only means whereby
imitative speaking could be induced, but that the latter would
follow with equal certainty and precision if the experimenter spoke

478 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

against the nape of the neck — especially if he directed his words
upon it by means of a sound-funnel. A similar result followed if
the words were directed against the pit of the stomach. It followed
with less certainty when the words were directed against the larynx
or into the open mouth, and the patient remained quite dumb
when the words were directed into his ear, or upon any other part of
his head. If a tuning-fork were substituted for the voice, the note
of the fork would be imitated by the patient when the end of the
fork was placed on any of the situations just mentioned as sensitive.
By exploring the pit of the stomach with a tuning-fork, the sensitive
area was found to begin about an inch below the breast-bone, and
from thence to extend for about two inches downwards and about the
same distance right and left from the middle line, while the navel,
breast-bone, ribs, &c., were quite insensitive. Heidenhain seeks —
though not, we think, very successfully— to explain this curious
distribution of areas sensitive to sound, by considerations as to the
distribution of the vagus nerve.

Next we have a chapter on the subjection cf the intellectual
faculties to the will of the operator which is manifested by persons
when in a state of hypnotism. For the manifestation of these phe-
nomena the sleep must be less profound than that which is required
for producing imitative movements ; in this stage of hypnotism the
experimenter has not only the motor mechanism on which to operate,
but likewise the imagination. ' Artificial hallucinations ' may be
produced to any extent by rehearsing to the patient the scenes or
events which it may be desired to make him imagine. A number of
interesting details of particular cases are given, but we have only
space to repeat one of the most curious. A medical student, when
hypnotised in the morning, had a long and consecutive dream, in
which he imagined that he had gone to the Zoological Ofardens, that
a lion had broken loose, that he was greatly terrified, &c. On the
evening of the same day he was again hypnotised, and again had
exactly the same dream. Lastly, at night, while sleeping normally,
the dream was a third time repeated.

A number of experiments proved that stimulation of certain parts
of the skin of hypnotised persons is followed by certain reflex move-
ments. For instance, when the skin of the neck between the fourth
and seventh cervical vertebrae is gently stroked with the finger, the
patient emits a peculiar sighing sound. The similarity of these
reflex movements to those which occur in the well-known 'croak-
experiment ' of Groltz is pointed out.

A number of other experiments proved that unilateral hypnotism
might be induced by gently and repeatedly stroking one side or other
of the head and forehead. The resulting hypnotism manifested
itself on the side opposite to that which was stroked, and affected
both the face and limbs. When the left side of the head was stroked,

1880. HYPNOTISM. 479

there further resulted all the phenomena of aphasia, which was not
the case when the right side of the head was stroked. When both
sides of the head were stroked, all the limbs were rendered cataleptic,
but aphasia did not result. On placing the arms in Mosso's appa-
ratus for measuring the volume of blood, it was found that when one
arm was hypnotised by the unilateral method, its volume of blood
was much diminished, while that of the other arm was increased, and
that the balance was restored as soon as the cataleptic condition
passed off. In these experiments consciousness remained unaffected,
and there were no disagreeable sensations experienced by the patient.
In some instances, however, the above results were equivocal, cata-
lepsy occurring on the same side as the stroking, or sometimes on
one side and sometimes on the other. In all cases of unilateral hyp-
notism, the side affected as to motion is also affected as to sensation.
Sense of temperature under these circumstances remains intact long-
after sense of touch has been abolished. As regards special sensation,
the eye on the hypnotised side is affected both as to its mechanism
of accommodation and its sense of colour. While colour-blind to
' objective colours,' the hypnotised eye will see ' subjective colours '
when it is gently pressed and the pressure suddenly removed. More-
over, if a dose of atropin be administered to it, and if it be then from
time to time hypnotised while the drug is gradually developing its
influence, the colour-sense will be found to be undergoing a gradual
change. In the first stage yellow appears grey with a bluish tinge,
in the second stage pure blue, in the third blue with a yellowish tinge,
and in the fourth yellow with a light bluish tinge. The research
concludes with some experiments which show that in partly hypno-
tised persons imitative movements take place involuntarily, and per-
sist until interrupted by a direct effort of the will. From this fact
Heidenhain infers that the imitative movements which occur in the
more profound stages of hypnotism are purely automatic, or involun-
tary.

In concluding this brief sketch of Heidenhain's interesting results,
it is desirable to add that in most of them he has been anticipated by
the experiments of Braid. Braid's book is now out of print, and as
it is not once alluded to by Heidenhain, we must fairly suppose that
he has not read it. But we should be doing scant justice to this book
if we said merely that it anticipated nearly all the observations above
mentioned. It has done much more than this. In the vast number
of careful experiments which it records — all undertaken and pro-
secuted in a manner strictly scientific — it carried the inquiry into
various provinces which have not been entered by Heidenhain.
Many of the facts which that inquiry yielded appear, a priori, to be
almost incredible ; but, as their painstaking investigator has had
every one of his results confirmed by Heidenhain so far as the latter
physiologist has prosecuted his researches, it is but fair to conclude

480

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

that the hitherto unconfirmed observations deserve to be repeated.
No one can read Braid's work without being impressed by the care
and candour with which, amid violent opposition from all quarters,
his investigations were pursued ; and now, when, after a lapse of
nearly forty years, his results are beginning to receive the confirma-
tion which they deserve, the physiologists who yield it ought not to
forget the credit that is due to the earliest, the most laborious, and
the hitherto most extensive investigator of the phenomena of what he
called Hypnotism.

Gr. J. ROMANES.

1880. 481

FRANCOIS VILLON.

THERE are few names in the history of literature over which the
shadow has so long and so persistently lain as over that of the father of
French poetry. Up to no more distant period than the early part of
the year 1877, it was not even known what was his real name, nor
were the admirers of his genius in possession of any other facts
relative to his personal history than could be gleaned, by a painful
process of inference and deduction, from those works of the poet that
have been handed down to posterity. The materials that exist for
the biography of Shakespeare or Dante are indeed scanty enough,
but they present a very harvest of fact and suggestion compared
with the pitiable fragments upon which, until the publication of
M. Longnon's Etude, Biographique,1 we had alone to rely for our
personal knowledge of Villon. Even now the facts and dates, that
M. Longnon has so valiantly and so ingeniously rescued for us from
the vast charnel-house of mediaeval history, are in themselves scanty
enough ; and it is necessary to apply to their connection and elucida-
tion no mean amount of goodwill and faithful labour, before anything
like a definite framework of biography can be constructed from them.
Such as they are, however, they enable us for the first time to catch
a glimpse of the strange mad life and dissolute yet attractive
personality of the wild, reckless, unfortunate Parisian poet, whose
splendid if erratic verse flames out like a meteor from the some-
what dim twilight of French fifteenth-century literature.

Francois de Montcorbier, better known as Villon (from the name
of his life-long patron and protector), was born in the year 1431.
It is uncertain what place may claim the honour of his birth, but
the probabilities appear to be in favour of his having been born at
some village near Pontoise, in the diocese of Paris. The only relative
who appears to have had any share in Villon's life was his mother ;
his father he only mentions to tell us he is dead, nor have we any
information as to his condition or the position in which he left his
family. However, the want of living and available family connec-
tions was amply compensated to Villon by the protecting care of a
patron who seems to have taken him under his wing, and perhaps

1 Etude Swgraphiq^uc sur Francois Vill'jn. Par Auguste Longnon. Paris, 1877.

482 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

even adopted him at an early age. Guillaume de Villon, the patron
in question, was a respectable and apparently well-to-do ecclesiastic,
belonging to a family established at a village of the same name, Villon,
near Tonnerre, in the dominions of the ducal house of Burgundy.
We first hear of him as one of the chaplains of the parish church of the
little village of Gentilly, near Paris, during his occupancy of which
cure he probably formed an acquaintance with the poet's family,
which afterwards led to his undertaking the charge of their son.
About the year of Franpois' birth, the priest was appointed to a
stall in the cathedral church of St. Benoit le Betourne or Bientourne
at Paris, a lucrative benefice, involving, besides a handsome residence
called L'Hotel de la Porte Eouge, in the close or cloister of St.
Benoit, a considerable piece of land and a stipend sufficient to enable
him to live at his ease. In this position he remained till his death,
which occurred in 1468 ; and there is every reason to believe that he
survived his protege, towards whom, during the whole of his life, he
appears never to have relaxed from untiring and unobtrusive bene-
volence. Of no other person does Villon speak in the same un-
qualified terms of grateful affection, as of the canon of St. Benoit,
calling him ' his more than father, who had been to him more tender
than mothers to their sucking babes.'

Of the early life of Villon we know nothing whatever, except that
he must have entered at the University of Paris about the year 1446,
when he was fifteen years of age. In March 1450 he was admitted
to the baccalaureate, and became licentiate in theology or ecclesiastical
law and Master of Arts in1! the summer of 1452. The period that
elapsed between his matriculation and the year 1455 is an almost com-
plete blank for us. The only materials we have to enable us to follow
him during this interval are the allusions and references to be gleaned
from a study of his poems. It was certainly during this period
of his life that he contracted the disreputable acquaintances that
exercised so culminating an influence over his future history, and
at the same time became intimate with many persons of a more
worthy class, to whom his merry devil-may-care disposition, and
probably also his wit and genius, made him acceptable whilst
he and they were young. Of these, some were fellow-students
of his own, others apparently people of better rank and position
— those ' gracious gallants ' whom, as he himself tells us, he fre-
quented in his youth. Some of these, says he, afterwards became
' masters and lords, and great of grace ; ' and it was no doubt to the
kindly remembrance that these latter cherished of the jolly, brilliant
companion of their youth that he owed something of his comparative
immunity from punishment for the numberless faults and follies
which he committed at a subsequent and less favoured period. This
early period of Villon's life, extending at least up to his twenty-
fourth year, appears to have been free from crime or misconduct of any

1880. FRANQOIS VILLON. 483

very gross character. At all events it seems certain that, up to the
early part of the year 1455, he committed no act that brought him
under the unfavourable notice of the police ; and we find indeed, by a
subsequent document under the royal seal, that Villon's assertion that
' he had up till then well and honourably governed himself, without
having been attaint, reproved, or convicted of any ill case, blame, or
reproach,' was accepted without question, as certainly would not have
been the case had he been previously unfavourably known to the
police. Yet it is evident, both from his own showing and on the
authority of popular report and especially of the curious collection of
anecdotes in verse known as Les Repues Franches or ' Free Feeds '
(of which he was the hero, not the author), that his life during this
interval, if not trenching upon the limits of strictly punishable
offences, was yet one of sufficiently disreputable character and
marked by such license and misconduct as would assuredly, in more
settled and law-abiding times, have earlier brought his career to a
disgraceful close. He himself tells us that he lived more merrily
than most in his youth ; and we need only refer to the remarkable
list of wineshops, rogues, and women of ill fame, with which he
shows so familiar an acquaintance in his works, to satisfy ourselves
that much of his time must have been spent in debauchery and
wantonness of the most uncompromising character.

It was therefore to provide for the satisfaction of his inclinations
towards debauchery that he became gradually entangled in compli-
cations of bad company and questionable acts, that step by step led
him to that maze of crime and disaster in which his whole after-life
was wrecked. In Les Repues Franches, a work not published till
many years after his probable death and apparently founded upon
popular tradition, we find Villon represented as the head of a band
of scholars, poor clerks and beggars, * learning at others' expense,'
all ' gallants with sleeveless pourpoints, ' ' having perpetual occasion
for gratuitous feeds, both winter and summer,' who are classed under
the generic title of ' Les Sujets Francois Villon,' and into whose
mouths the author puts this admirable dogma of despotic equality,
worthy of that hero of our own times, the British working man
himself, ' He who has nothing, it behoves that he fare better than
any one else.' 'Le bon Maitre Francois Villon' comforts his
' compaignons,' who are described as not being worth two sound
onions, with the assurance that they shall want for nothing, but shall
presently have bread, wine, and roast meat a grant foyson^ and pro-
ceeds to practise a series of tricks, after the manner of Till Eulen-
spiegel, by which, chiefly through the persuasiveness of his honeyed
tongue, he succeeds in procuring them the wherewithal to make
merry and enjoy great good cheer. From tricks of this kind, devoted
to obtaining the materials for those orgies in which his soul delighted,
there is no reason to suppose that he did not easily pass to others

484 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

more serious, or shrank from the employment of more criminal means
of obtaining the money that was equally necessary for the indulgence
of the licentious humours of himself and his companions. In the
words of the anonymous author of Les Repues Franches, i He was
the nursing mother of those who had no money : in swindling behind
and before lie was a most diligent man.' So celebrated was he indeed
as a man of expedients, that he attained the rare honour of becoming
a popular type ; and the word * villonerie ' was long used among the
lower classes of Paris to describe such sharping practices as were
traditionally attributed to Villon as the great master of the art,
even as from the later roguish type of Till Eulenspiegel, Gallice
Ulespiegle (many of the traditional stories of whose rogueries are
founded upon Villon's exploits), was derived the still extant word
' espieglerie.'

At this period, in all probability, came into action another per-
sonage, whose influence seems never to have ceased to affect Villon's
life, and who (if we may trust to his own oft-repeated asseverations)
was mainly responsible for his ill-directed and untimely ended
career. This was a young lady, named Catherine de Vaucelles or
Vaucel, who (according to M. Longnon's plausible conjecture) was
either the niece or cousin of one of the canons of St. Benoit, Pierre
de Vaucel, who occupied a house in the cloister within a door or two
of L'Hotel de la Porte Kouge, and through her connection with the
cloister was afforded to Villon the opportunity of forming an
intimate acquaintance with her, which speedily developed into
courtship. She appears to have been a young lady of good or at
least respectable family, and it would seem also that she was a
finished coquette. Throughout the whole of Villon's verse, the
remembrance of the one chaste and real love of his life is ever
present, and he is fertile in reproaches against the cruelty and
infidelity of his mistress. According to his own account, however,
the love seems to have been entirely on his side. She appears,
indeed, to have taken delight in making a mock of him and playing
with his affections ; but often as he made up his rnind to renounce
his unhappy attachment, to 4 resign and be at peace,' he seems, with
the true temperament of a lover, to have always returned before long
to his vainly caressed hope. No assertion does he more frequently
repeat than that this his early love was the source of all his mis-
fortunes and of his untimely death. 'I die a martyr to love,' he
says, 'enrolled among the saints thereof;' and the expression of his
anguish is often so poignant that we can hardly refuse to put faith
in the reality of his passion.

This early period of comparative innocence, or at least obscurity,
was now drawing to a close, and its conclusion was marked for Villon
by a disaster that in all probability arose from his connection with
Catherine de Vaucelles, and which fell like a thunderbolt on the

1880. FRANCOIS VILLON. 485

careless merriment of his life. On the evening of the 5th of June
1455, the day of the Fete-Dieu, Villon was seated on a stone bench
.under the clock-tower of the church of St. Benoit, in the Eue St.
Jacques, in company with a priest called Gilles and a girl named
Isabeau, with whom he had supped and sallied out at about nine
o'clock to enjoy the coolness of the night air. Whilst they were
sitting talking, there came up to them a priest called Philippe
Chermoye or Sermoise, and a friend of his named Jehan le Merdi.
Chermoye, who was probably a rival of Villon's for the good graces
of Catherine de Vaucelles, appeared in a furious state of exasperation
against the poet, and swaggered up to him, exclaiming, *So, I
have found you at last ! ' Villon rose and courteously offered him
room to sit down ; but the other pushed him rudely back into
his place, saying, ' I warrant I'll anger you ! ' to which Villon replied,
1 Why do you accost me thus angrily, Master Philip ? What harm
have I done you ? What is your will of me ? ' and attempted to
retire into the cloister for safety ; but Chermoye, pursuing him to
the gate of the close, drew a great rapier from under his gown and
.smote him grievously on the lower part of the face, slitting his under-
lip and causing great effusion of blood. Maddened by the pain of
his wound and by the blood with which he felt himself covered, he
drew a tuck or small sword that he carried under his short walking
cloak, and, in endeavouring to defend himself, wounded his aggressor
in the groin, without being aware of what he had done. At this
juncture Jehan le Merdi came up, and, seeing his friend wounded,
crept treacherously behind Villon and caught away his sword. Find-
ing himself defenceless against Chermoye, who persisted in loading
him with abuse and endeavouring to give him the coup de grace
with his long sword, the wretched Franpois looked about him for some
means of defence, and, seeing a big stone at his feet, snatched it up
and flung it in Chermoye's face with such force and precision that
the latter fell to the ground insensible. Villon immediately went off
to get his wounds dressed by a barber named Fouquet, to whom he
related the whole affair, intending on the morrow to procure Chermoye's
arrest for the unprovoked assault. In the meantime some passers-by
found the latter lying unconscious, with his drawn sword in his hand,
and carried him into one of the houses in the cloister, where his
wounds were dressed, and whence he was next day transferred to the
Hospital of L'Hotel-Dieu, where on the Saturday following he died.
Villon was summoned before the Chatelet Court to answer for
Chermoye's death, but (as the record says), ' fearing rigour of justice,'
he had made use of the interval to take to flight, and appears to have
left Paris. He was convicted in his absence and condemned in de
fault to banishment from the kingdom. However, his exile did not
last long. In January 1456. thanks, no doubt, to the assistance of
VOL. VIII.— No. 43. K K

486 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

Villon's powerful friends, letters of grace and remission were accorded
to him by Charles the Seventh, and he presently returned to Paris.

The six months of his banishment, which had in all probability
been passed in the company of the thieves and vagabonds who in-
fested the neighbourhood of Paris, had, however, sufficed hopelessly
to compromise his life. It is impossible to suppose that ne can, in
the interval, have supported himself by any honest means ; and it is
clearly to this period that may be traced his definitive affiliation to
the band or bands of robbers of which Guy Tabarie, Petit Jean,
Colin de Cayeulx and Eegnier de Montigny were the most distin-
guished ornaments. On his return to Paris he appears to have been
badly received by his lady-love, and in despair quickly reverted to
the habits of criminality that had now obtained a firm hold on him.
We have it on undoubted authority that, during the eleven months
that followed his return to Paris, he was concerned in three robberies
, committed or attempted by his band — namely, a burglary perpetrated
on the house of a priest called Guillaume Coiffier, an attempt (frus-
trated by the vigilance of a dog) to steal the sacred vessels from the
Church of St. Maturin, and the breaking open of the treasury of the
College of Navarre, whence they stole 500 or 600 gold crowns, thanks
to the intimate knowledge of the interior acquired by Villon during
his scholastic career, and to the lock-picking talents of Colin de
Cayeulx. The successful attempt upon the College de Navarre
took place shortly before Christmas 1456, and almost immediately
afterwards the poet left Paris for Angers, where an uncle of
his was. a priest residing in a convent, according to Villon's own
account (see the Lesser Testament) in consequence of the despair to
which he was driven by Catherine's unkindness, and which had led
him to exile himself from Paris for the purpose of endeavouring, by
change of scene and occupation, to break away from the 'very
amorous bondage ' in which he felt his heart withering away, but in
reality (as we learn from irrecusable evidence) with the view of
examining into the possibility of a business operation upon the
goods of a rich ecclesiastic of Angers. Whether this scheme was
carried out or not, we have no information ; but it does not appear
that Villon returned to Paris for more than two years afterwards, and
his long sojourn in the provinces is probably to be accounted for by
the fact that he received warning: from some of his comrades of the

discovery of the burglary committed on the College de Navarre, and,
feeling himself inconveniently familiar to the Parisian police, he
thought it best to remain awhile in hiding where he was less known.

The discovery and consequent (at least temporary) break-up of
the band were due to^the drunken folly of -Guy Tabarie, who could not
refrain from boasting, in his cups, of the nefarious exploits of himself
and his comrades. By a curious hazard, a country priest, the Prior
of Patay, a connection of Guillaume Coiffier above mentioned, became

1880. FRANCOIS VILLON. 487

the chance recipient of the drunken confidences of Tabarie whilst
staying in Paris and breakfasting at the Pulpit Tavern on the Petit
Pont, and, by feigning a desire to take part in his burglarious opera-
tions, succeeded in gradually eliciting from him sufficient details
of the affaire Coiffier and that of the College de Navarre to enable
him to procure Tabarie's arrest in the summer of 1458. After
having been put to the question ordinary and extraordinary, Tabarie
made a full confession, denouncing the various members of the band
and naming Villon and Colin de Cayeulx as the acting chiefs. This
happened more than two and a half years after the departure of Villon
from Paris, and it is not known at what period he was arrested in
consequence of the revelations ofGruy Tabarie, but it is probable that
his arrest took place shortly afterwards. It is certain, from his own
showing, that he was again tried and condemned to death, after
having undergone the question by water, and that he made an
appeal (in a poem that has not reached us) to the High Court of
Parliament, which, being probably supported by some of his in-
fluential friends, resulted in the commutation of the capital penalty
into that of perpetual exile from the kingdom. It was in the
interval between the pronunciation of his condemnation to death, and
the allowance of the appeal, that he composed the magnificent
ballad in which he imagines himself and his companions in infamy
hanging dead upon the gibbet of Montfaucon. This poem establishes
the fact that five of his band were condemned with him ; and it is
probable that these unhappy wretches, less fortunate in possessing
influential friends, actually realised the ghastly picture conjured up
by the poet's fantastic imagination.

On receiving notification of the judgment commuting his sentence,
he addressed to the Parliament the curious ballad (called in error his
appeal) requesting a delay of three days for the purpose of providing
himself and bidding his friends adieu before setting out for his place
of exile, and presently left Paris on his wanderings. Of his itinerary
we possess no indications save those to be laboriously collected from
his poems, but by a process of inference we may fairly assume that
he took his way to Orleans and followed the course of the Loire
nearly to its sources, whence he struck off for the town of Roussillon
in Dauphine, a possession of the Duke of Bourbon, who had lately
made gift of it to his bastard brother, Louis de Bourbon, Mareschal
and Seneschal of the Bourbonnais, who is supposed to be the Seneschal
to whom Villon alludes as having once paid his debts. Under the
Aving of this friend, he probably established his head-quarters, during
the term of his exile, at Roussillon, making excursions now and then
to other places, notably to Salins in Burgundy, where it seems he had
managed to establish the three poor orphans of whom he speaks in
the Lesser Testament. To this period of exile (or perhaps rather to
the time of his preceding visit to Angers) must also be assigned his

488 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

stay at St. Generoux in the Marches of Poitou, where he made the
acquaintance of the two pretty Poitevin ladies, ' filles belles et gentes,'
as he calls them, who taught him to speak the Poitou dialect, and
his visit to Blois, where Charles d'Orleans was then residing, and
where Villon took part in a sort of poetical contest established by the
poet-prince, from which resulted the curious ballad ' Je meurs de soif
aupres de la fontaine.' A well-known anecdote of Rabelais attributes
to the poet, at this period of his life, a voyage to England, but the
story carries in itself its own refutation.

During the term of his banishment, Villon does not appear to
have been under any kind of police surveillance, but seems to have
been comparatively free to move about at will ; and there is no doubt
that before long he came again in contact with some of his old comrades
in crime, members of the dispersed band, either exiled like himself or
hiding from justice in the provinces, and was easily led to renew in
their company that career of dishonesty and turbulence that had so
fatal an attraction for him. Among these was notably Colin de
Cayeulx, in whose company he no doubt assisted at some of those
'esbats' for which, in the year 1461, his old master in roguery was
(as he tells us in the Second Ballad of the Jargon) at last subjected
to the extreme penalty of the law, being broken on the wheel, pro-
bably at Montpippeau near Orleans, where the crimes for which he
suffered, and of which rape seems to have been the most venial, were
committed. At this last-named place Villon again appears in the
centre of France, trusting apparently to lapse of time to have voided
his banishment ; and here it was not long before he again came in
collision with the authorities. In the early part of the year 1461 we
find him, in company with others of unknown condition, committing
a crime, said to have been the theft of a silver lamp from the parish
church of Baccon near Orleans, for which he was arrested by the
police of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and brought before the
tribunal of the Bishop of Orleans, that Jacques Thibault d'Aussigny
against whom he so bitterly inveighs in the Greater Testament. We
have no record of his conviction, but it cannot be doubted that he
was again condemned to death. It appears from his own statements
that he was, during the whole summer of 1461, confined in what he
calls a ' fosse ' in the castle of Meung-sur-Loire, a word reserved for
the horrible dens, without light or air, dripping with water and
swarming with rats, toads, and snakes, adjoining the castle moat ; and
here he was (if we may trust to his asseverations) more than once
subjected to the question or torture by water, and (what seems to have
been a more terrible hardship than all the rest to a man of Villon's
passionate devotion to rich and delicate eating and drinking) he was
* passing scurvily fed ' on dry bread and water. Here, it can hardly
be doubted, he composed the curious ballad in which he presents his
heart and body, or soul and sense, arguing one against the other, and

1880. FRANQOI8 VILLON. 489

sets before us, in a pithy and well- sustained dialogue, the sentiments
of remorse and despair, not unrelieved by the inevitable stroke of
covert satire, which seem to have formed the normal state of his mind
during any period of enforced retirement from the light of the sun
and the pursuit of his nefarious profession. To this period also
belongs the beautiful and pathetic ballad in which he calls upon all
to whom fortune has made gift of freedom from other service than that
of Grod in Paradise, all for whom life is light with glad laughter and
pleasant song, to have compassion on him, as he lies on the cold
earth, fasting feast and fast days alike, in the dreary dungeon, where
neither light of levin nor noise of whirlwind can penetrate for the
thickness of the1* walls that enfold him like the cere-cloths of a
corpse. Here, too, he seems to have been chained up in fetters
(enferre\ and gagged to prevent him crying out. To all this were
added the tortures of hunger ; for even the wretched food supplied to
him seems to have been so small in quantity (' une petite miche,' says
he) as barely to stave off starvation — a wretched state of things for a
man who had always, by his own confession, too well nourished his
body — and it is very possible that, had his imprisonment been of long
duration, death by hardship and privation might have put an end
to his sufferings. However, this was not destined to be the case.
In July 1461, the old King Charles VII. died and was succeeded by
the Dauphin, Louis XI. ; and on the 2nd of October following the
new king remitted Villon's penalty, and ordered his release by
letters of grace dated at Meung-sur-Loire.

Immediately upon his release Villon seems 'to have returned to
Paris, and there appears some warrant for the supposition that he
endeavoured to earn his living as an avoue, or in some similar capacity
about the ecclesiastical courts. However this may be, he was speedily
obliged to renounce all efforts of this kind on account of the failing
state of his health, and the exhaustion consequent upon the privations
he had undergone and the irregularity of his debauched and licen-
tious life. It would appear, too, from an allusion in his later verse,
that his goods, little as they were (' even to the bed under me,' says
he), had been seized by three creditors, named Moreau, Provins and
Turgis, in satisfaction apparently of debts due by him to them,
or to reimburse themselves for thefts practised at their expense ;
and as the scanty proceeds of the execution are not likely to have
satisfied any considerable portion of his liabilities, it would seem
that his creditors took further proceedings against him, from the
consequences whereof he was compelled to hide in some place of
concealment where he defies Turgis to follow him.

In this retirement, whatever it was, deserted by all his friends and
accompanied only by his boy-clerk Fremin,2 Villon appears to have at
once addressed himself to the composition of the capital work of his
2 Possibly (and even probably) an imaginary character*.

490 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

life, the Greater Testament. He had now attained the age of thirty,
and, young as he still was, he felt that he had not much longer to
live. The terrible life of debauchery, privation and hardship he had
led, had at last begun to produce its natural effect. To the maladies
contracted in his youth and to the natural exhaustion caused by the
incessant alternation of the wildest debauch and the most cruel pri-
vation, appears now to have been added some disease of the lungs,
probably consumption, contracted in the reeking dungeon of the
castle of Meung, and aggravated by the terrible effects of the question
by water, which he had so often undergone, and from which the
patient rarely entirely recovered. Indeed, he expressly attributes
this latter disorder to his having been forced by the Bishop of Orleans
to drink so much cold water. He tells us, at the commencement of
his Greater Testament, that his youth had left him, how he knew
not, and that, though in reality a cockerel, he had the voice and
appearance of an old rook. Sad, dejected and despairing, with face
blacker, as he says, than a mulberry from stress of weather and pri-
vation, without hair, beard or eyebrows, bare as a turnip from disease,
with body emaciated with hunger (' The worms will have no great
purchase in it,' says he ; ' hunger has made too stern a war on it '),
and every limb one anguish for disease, with empty purse and stomach,
dependent on charity for subsistence, so sick at heart and feeble that
he could hardly speak, his eyes seem at last to have been definitively
opened to the terrible folly of his past life. He renounces at last
those delusive pleasures for which he retains neither hope nor capacity.
1 No more desire in me is hot,' he cries ; ' I've put my lute beneath
the seat.' Travail and misery have sharpened his wit ; he confesses
and repents of his sins, forgives his enemies and turns for comfort to
religion and maternal love, consoling himself with the reflection
that all must die, great and small, and that, after such a life as he
had led, an honest death had nothing that should displease him,
seeing that, in life as in love, ' one pleasure's bought by fifty pains.'
After a long and magnificent prelude, in which he laments the
excesses of his youth and justifies himself by his favourite argument
that necessity compels folk to do evil, as want drives wolves out of
the brake, and sues for the favourable and compassionate considera-
tion of those whose lot in life has placed them above necessity, he
commends his soul to the several persons of the Trinity in language
of the most exalted piety, and proceeds, in view of his approaching
death, to dictate to his clerk what he calls his Testament, being a
long series of huitains or eight-line octosyllabic stanzas, in each of
which he makes some mention, humorous, pathetic or satirical, of one
or more of the numerous personages that had trodden with him the
short but vari-coloured scene of his life. Many are the men, women,
places and things he sets before us in a few keen and incisive words,
from which often spring the swiftest lightnings of humour and the

1880. FRANCOIS VILLON. 491

most poignant flashes of pathos, blending together in inextricable
harmony, with a careless skill worthy of Heine, the maddest laughter
and the most bitter tears. Lamartine or De Musset contains no
tenderer or more plaintive notes than those that break, like a prim-
rose, from the spring ferment of his verse, nor is there to be found
in Vaughan or Tennyson a holier or sweeter strain than the ballad
that bears his mother's name. Among the lighter pieces by which
his more serious efforts are relieved, I may mention the delightfully
humorous orison for the soul of his notary, Master Jehan Cotard, the
brightly coloured ballad called ' Les Contredictz de Franc-Gontier,' in
which, with comic emphasis, he denounces the so-called pleasures of a
country life, and the tripping lilt that he devotes to the praise of the
women of Paris. In the ballad of ' La Grosse Margot,' he gives us a
terrible insight into the degrading expedients to which he was forced
by the frightful necessities of his misguided existence ; and dedicates to
Franpois Perdryer the ballad of ' Slanderous Tongues,' perhaps the most
uncompromising example of pure invective that exists in any known
language. Towards the end of his poem, in verses pregnant with serious
and well-illustrated meaning, he addresses himself to the companions
of his crimes and follies — ' ill souls and bodies well bested,' as he calls
them — and bids them beware of t that ill sun that tans a man when
he is dead,' warning them that all their crimes and extravagances
have brought them nothing but misery and privation, with the pro-
spect of a shameful death at last, that ' ill-gotten goods are nobody's
gain ' and drift away to wanton uses, like chaff before the wind, and
exhorting them to mend their lives and turn to honest labour. When
lie has to his satisfaction exhausted his budget of memories, tears and
laughter, he strikes once more the fatalist keynote of the whole work
in a noble ' meditation ' on the equality of all earthly things before
the inexorable might of Death ; dedicates to the dead a Kondel in
which he deprecates the further rigour of Fate, and expresses a
hope that his repentance may find acceptance at the hands of God ;
and concludes by determining, in view of his approaching death, to
beg forgiveness of all men ; which he does in a magnificent ballad,
bearing the refrain : ' I cry folk mercy, one and all.'

No work of Villon's, posterior to the Greater Testament, is known
to us, nor is there any trace of its existence : indeed, from the date
1461, with which he himself heads his principal work, we entirely
lose sight of him ; and it may be supposed, in view of the condition
of mental and bodily weakness in which we find him at that time,
that he did not long survive its completion.

There can be no doubt that Villon was appreciated at something
like his real literary value by the people of his time. Little as we
know of his life, everything points to the conclusion that his writings
were highly popular during his lifetime, not only among those princes
and gallants whom he had made his friends, but among that Parisian

492 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

public of the lower orders with whom he was so intimately identified.
Allusions here and there lead us to suppose that his ballads and
shorter pieces were known among the people long before they were-
collected into a final form ; and it is probable that they were hawked
about in MS. and afterwards printed on broadsheets in black letter,
as were such early English poems as the Childe of Bristowe and the
History of Tom Thumb. For a hundred years after his death the
ballads were always differentiated from the rest in the colophons or
descriptive headings of the various editions, in which the printers
announce 4 The Testament of Villon and his Ballads] as if the latter
had previously been a separate and well-known speciality of the poet ;
we may even suppose them to have been set to music and sung, as
were the odes of Ronsard a hundred years later ; and, indeed, many
of them seem imperatively to call for such treatment. Who cannot
fancy the Ballad of the Women of Paris, ' II n'est bon bee que de-
Paris,' being sung about the streets by the students and gamins, or
the orison for Master Cotard's soul being trolled out as a drinking-
song by that jolly toper at some jovial reunion of the notaries and
' chicquanous ' of his acquaintance ?

The twenty-seven editions, still extant, that were published before
1542, are sufficient evidence of the demand (probably for the time
unprecedented) that existed for his poems during the seventy or eighty
years that followed his death ; and it is a significant fact that the
greatest poet of the first half of the sixteeenth century should have
applied himself, at the special request of Francis the First (who is
said to have known Villon by heart), to rescue his works from the
labyrinth of corruption and misrepresentation into which they had
fallen through the carelessness of printers and the insouciance of
the public, who seem to have had his verses too well by rote to trouble
themselves to protest against misprints and misreadings. Marot's
own writings bear evident traces of the care and love with which he
had studied the first poet of his time, who, indeed, appears to have
given the tone to all the rhymers, Gringoire, Martial d'Auvergne,
Cretin, Coquillart, Jean Marot, who continued, though with no great
brilliancy, to keep alive the sound and cadence of French song during
the latter part of the fifteenth and the first years of the sixteenth
centuries. The advent of the poets of the Pleiad, and the deluge of
Latin and Greek form and sentiment with which they flooded the
poetic literature of France, seem at once to have arrested the popu-
larity of the older poets. Imitations of Horace, Catullus, Anacreon,
Pindar, took the place of the more spontaneous and original style of
poetry founded upon the innate capacities of the language and that
esprit gaulois that represented the national sentiment and ten-
dencies. The memory of Villon, enfant de Paris, child of the Pa-
risian gutter as he was, went down before the new movement,
characterised at once by its extreme pursuit of refinement at all

1880. FRANCOIS VILLON. 493

hazards and its neglect of those stronger and deeper currents of
sympathy and passion for which one must dive deep into the troubled
waters of popular life and popular movement. For nearly three
centuries the name and fame of the singer of the ladies of old time
remained practically forgotten, buried under wave upon wave of
literary and political movement, all apparently equally hostile to the
tendency and spirit of his work. We find, indeed, the three greatest
spirits of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Rabelais, Regnier
and La Fontaine, evincing by their works and style, if not by any
more explicit declaration, their profound knowledge and sincere
appreciation of Villon ; but their admiration had no influence what-
ever upon the universal consent with which the tastes and tendencies
of their respective times appear to have .agreed upon the complete
oblivion of the early poet. The first half of the eighteenth century,
indeed, produced three several editions of Villon ; but the critics and
readers of the age were little likely to prefer the high-flavoured and
robust food, that Villon set before them, to the whipped creams, the
rose and musk-flavoured confections with which the literary pastry-
cooks of the day so liberally supplied them ; and it was not till the
full development, towards the end of the first half of the present
century, of the Romantic movement (a movement whose causes and
tendencies bore so great an affinity to that of which Villon in his own
time was himself the agent), that he again began to be in some
measure restored to his proper place in the hierarchy of French
literature. Yet even then we can still remember the compassionate
ridicule with which the efforts of Theophile Grautier to revindicate
the memory of the great old poet were received, and how even that
perfect and noble spirit, in whose catholic and unerring appreciation
no spark of true genius or of worthy originality ever failed to light
a corresponding flame of enthusiasm, was fain to dissimulate the
fervour of his admiration under the translucid mask of partial de-
preciation, and to provide for his too bold enterprise of rehabilitation
a kind of apologetic shelter by classing the first great poet of France
with far less worthy writers, under the heading of 'Les Grotesques.'
In the country of his birth Villon is still little read, although the
illustrious poet Theodore de Banville has done much to facilitate the
revival of his fame by regenerating the form in which his greatest
triumphs were achieved ; and it is perhaps, indeed, in England that
his largest public (scanty enough as yet) may be expected to be
found.

The vigorous beauty and reckless independence of Villon's style
and thought, although a great, has been by no means the only ob-
stacle to his enduring popularity.' A hardly less effectual one has
always existed in the evanescent nature of the allusions upon which
so large a part of his work is founded. In his preface to the edition
above referred to, Marot allows it to be inferred that, even at so com-

494 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

paratively early a period as 1533, the greater part of his references to
persons and places of his own day had become obscure, if not alto-
gether undecipherable, to all but those few persons of advanced age
who may be said to have been almost his contemporaries. Never-
theless, when we have made the fullest possible allowance for obscurity
and faded interest, there still remain in Villon's verse treasures of
beauty, wit and wisdom, enough to insure the preservation of his
memory as a poet as long as the remembrance of French poetry
survives.

Villon's spirit and tendency are eminently romantic, in the
sense that he employed modern language and modern resources to
express and individualise the eternal elements of human interest
and human passion as they appeared, moulded into new phases and
invested with new colours and characteristics by the shifting impulses
and tendencies of his time. He had, indeed, in no ordinary degree,
the great qualification of the romantic poet ; he understood the
splendour of modern things, and knew the conjurations that should
compel the coy spirit of contemporary beauty to cast off the rags and
tatters of circumstance, the low and debased seeming in which it was
enchanted, and tower forth, young, glorious and majestic, as the be-
witched princess in the fairy tale puts off the aspect and vesture of
hideous and repulsive eld at the magic touch of perfect love. The
true son of his time, he rejected at once and for ever, with the unerring
judgment of the literary reformer, the quaint formalities of speech,
the rhetorical exaggerations and limitations of expression and the
Chinese swathing of allegory and conceit that dwarfed the thought
and deformed the limbs of the verse of his day and reduced poetry
to a kind of Thibetan prayer-wheel, in which the advent of the
Spring, the conflict of love and honour, the cry of the lover against
the cruelty of his lady and the glorification of the latter by endless
comparison to all things fit and unfit, were ground up again and
again into a series of kaleidoscopic patterns, wearisome in the same-
ness of their mannered beauty, and from whose contemplation one
rises with dazzled eyes and exhausted sense, longing for some cry of
passion, some flower-birth of genuine sentiment, to burst the strangling
sheath of affectation and prescription. Before Villon, the language
of the poets of the time had become almost as pedantic, although not
so restricted and colourless, as that of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. By dint of continual employment in the same grooves and
in the same formal sense, the most forceful and picturesque words of
the language had almost ceased to possess individuality er colour ; for
the phosphorescence that springs from the continual contact of words
with thought and their reconstruction at the stroke of passion was
wanting, not to be supplied or replaced by the aptest ingenuity or the
most untiring wit. Villon did for French poetic speech that which
Kabelais afterwards performed for its prose (and it is a singular

1880. FRANCOIS VILLON. 495

coincidence, which I believe has not before been remarked, that the
father of French poetry and the father of French prose were, as it were,
predestined to the task they accomplished by the name that was
common to both, Francois or French par excellence). He restored
the exhausted literary language of his time to youth and health by
infusing into it the healing poisons, the revivifying acids and bitters
of the popular speech, disdaining no materials that served his purpose,
replacing the defunct forms with new phrases, new shapes wrung from
the heart of the spoken tongue, plunging with audacious hand into
the slang of the tavern and the bordel, the cant of the highway and
the prison, choosing from the wayside heap and the street gutter the
neglected pebbles and nodules in which he alone divined the hidden
diamonds and rubies of picturesque expression, to be polished and
facetted into glory and beauty by the regenerating friction of poetic
employment.

Villon was the first great poet of the people : his love of the life
of common things, the easy familiarity of the streets and highways,
his intimate knowledge of and affection for the home and outdoor
life of the merchant, the hawker, the artisan, the mountebank, nay,
even the thief, the prostitute and the gipsy of his time, stand out in
unmistakable characters from the lineaments of his work. The
cry of the people rings out from his verse — that cry of mingled misery
and humour, sadness and cheerfulness, which, running through
Eabelais and Eegnier, was to pass unheeded till it swelled into the
judgment-thunder of the Revolution. The sufferings, the oppression,
the bonhomie, the gourmandise, the satirical good humour of that
French people that has so often been content to starve upon a jesting
ballad or a mocking epigram, its gallantry, its perspicacity and its
innate lack of reverence for all that symbolises an accepted order of
things — all these stand out in their natural colours, drawn to the life
and harmonised into a national entity, to which the poet gives the
shape and seeming of his own individuality, unconscious that in
relating his own hardships, his own sufferings, regrets and aspira-
tions, he was limning for us the typified and foreshortened image
and presentment of a nation at a cardinal epoch of national regene-
ration. ' He builded better than he knew.' His poems are a very
album of types and figures of the day : as we read, the narrow,
gabled streets, with their graven niches for saint and Virgin and
their monumental fountains and gateways stemming the stream of
traffic, rise before us, gay with endless movement of fur and satin
clad demoiselles, with heart or diamond shaped head-dresses of velvet
or brocade, fringed and broidered with gold and silver, sad-coloured
burghers, gold-laced archers and jaunty clerks, * whistling for lusti-
liead,' with the long-peaked hood or liripipe falling over their
shoulders and the short bright-coloured walking-cloak letting pass
the glittering point of the dirk, shaven down-looking monks, ' breeched

496 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

and booted like oyster-fishers,' and barefooted friars, purple-gilled
with secret and unhallowed debauchery, light o' loves, distinguished
by the tall helm or hennin and the gaudily coloured tight-fitting
surcoat, square-cut to show the breasts, over the sheath-like petticoat,
crossed by the demicinct or chatelaine of silver, followed by their
esquires or bullies armed with sword and buckler, artisans in their
jerkins of green cloth or russet leather, barons and lords in the midst
of their pages and halberdiers, ruffling gallants brave in velvet and
orfevrerie, with their boots of soft tan- coloured cordovan falling
jauntily over the instep, as they press through a motley crowd of
beggars and mountebanks, jugglers with their apes and carpet,
culs-de-jatte, lepers with clap-dish and wallet, mumpers and chanters,
truands and gipsies, jesters, fishfags, cutpurses and swashbucklers,
that rings anon with the shout of l Noel ! ' as Charles the Seventh
rides past, surrounded by his heralds and pursuivants, or Louis passes,
with no attendants save his two dark henchmen, Tristan the Hermit
and Oliver the Fiend, and nothing to distinguish him from the
burghers with whom he rubs elbows save the row of images in his
hat and the eternal menace of his unquiet eye. Anon we see the
interior of the cathedral church at vespers, with its kneeling crowd
of worshippers and its gold-grounded frescoes of heaven and hell, .
martyrdom and apotheosis, glittering vaguely from the swart shadow
of the aisles ; the choir peals out, and the air gathers into a mist with
incense, what while an awe-stricken old woman kneels apart before
the altar in the Virgin's chapel, praying for that scapegrace son wha
has caused her such bitter tears and such poignant terrors. Outside,
on the church steps, sit the gossips, crouched by twos and threes on
the hem of their robes, chattering in that fluent Parisian tongue to-
which the Parisian poet gives precedence over all others. The night
closes in, the dim cressets swing creaking in the wind from the ropes
that stretch across the half-deserted streets, while the belated students
hurry past to their colleges, with hoods drawn closely over their faces
* and thumbs in girdle-gear,' and the "sergeants of the watch pace
solemnly by, lantern-pole in one hand, and in the other the halberd
wherewith they stir up the shivering wretches crouched for shelter
under the deserted stalls of the street-hawkers, or draw across the
entrances of the streets the chains that shall break the escape of the
nocturnal brawler or the stealthy thief. Thence to the Puppet wine-
shop, where truand and light o' love, student and soldier, hold high
revel, amidst the clink of beakers and the ever-recurring sound of
clashing daggers and angry voices ; or the more reputable tavern of
La Pomme de Pin, where sits Master Jacques Eaguyer, swathed in
his warm mantle, with his feet to the blaze and his back resting
against the piles of faggots that tower in the chimney corner ; or the
street in front of the Chatelet where we find Villon gazing upon the
great flaring cressets that give light over the gateway of the prison-

1880. FRANCOIS VILLON. 497

with whose interior he was so well acquainted. Anon we come upon
him watching, with yearning eyes and watering mouth, through some
half- open window or door-chink, the roaring carouses of the debauched
monks and nuns, or listening to the talk of La Belle Heaulmiere and
her companions in old age, as they crouch on the floor, under their
curtains spun by the spiders, telling tales of the good times gone by,
in the scanty, short-lived flicker of their fire of dried hemp-stalks.
Presently Master Jehan Cotard staggers by, stumbling against the
projecting stalls and roaring out some ranting catch or jolly drinking
song, and the bully of La Grrosse Margot hies him, pitcher in hand,
to the Tankard Tavern, to fetch wine and victual for 'his clients.
Presently the moon rises, high and calm, over the still churchyard
of the Innocents, where the quiet dead lie sleeping soundly in the
deserted charnels, ladies and lords, masters and clerks, bishops and
water-carriers, all laid low in undistinguished abasement before the
equality of Death. Once more the scene changes, and we stand by
the thieves' rendezvous in the ruined castle of Bicetre or by the
lonely gibbet of Montfaucon, where the poet wanders in the ' silences
of the moon,' watching with a terrified fascination the shrivelled
corpses or whitened skeletons of his whilom comrades as they creak
sullenly to and fro in the ghastly aureole of the midnight star. All
Paris of the fifteenth century relives in the vivid hurry of his verse :
one hears in his stanzas the very popular cries and watchwords of the
street and the favourite oaths of the gallants and women of the day.
We feel that all the world is centred for him in Paris, and that there
is no landscape that for him can compare with those * paysages de
metal et de pierre ' that he (in common with another ingrain Parisian,
Baudelaire) so deeply loved. Much as he must have wandered over
France, we find in his verse no hint of natural beauty, no syllable of
description of landscape or natural objects. In these things he had
indeed no interest: flowers and stars, sun and moon, spring and
summer unrolled in vain for him their phantasmagoria of splendour
and enchantment over earth and sky : men and women were his
•flowers, and the crowded streets of the great city the woods and
meadows, wherein, after his fashion, he worshipped beauty and did
homage to art. Indeed, he was essentially the man of the crowd :
his heart throbbed ever in unison with the mass in joy or sadness,
crime or passion, lust or patriotism, aspiration or degradation.

It is astonishing, in the midst of the fantastic and artificial
rhymers of the time, how quickly the chord of sensibility in our poet
vibrates to the broad impulses of humanity — how, untainted by the
selfish provincialism of the day, his heart warms towards the great
patriot, Jacques Coeur, and sorrows over his unmerited disgrace — how
he appreciates the heroism of Jeanne d'Arc, and denounces penalty
upon penalty, that remind one of the seventy thousand pains of fire of
the Arabian legend, upon the traitors and rebels that should ' wish ill

498 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

unto the realm of France' — with what largeness of sympathy he
anticipates the modern tenderness over the fallen, and demonstrates
how 'they were once honest verily,' till love, that befools us all,
beguiled them to the first step upon the downward road — with what
observant compassion he notes the silent regrets of the old and the
poignant remembrances of those for whom all things fair have faded
out, — glozing with an iron pathos upon the * nessun maggior dolore '
of Dante, in the terrible stanzas that enshrine, in pearls and rubies of
tears and blood, the passion and the anguish of La Belle Heaulmiere.

The keenness of his pathos and the delicacy of his grace are as
supreme as what one of his commentators magnificently calls l la
sotiveraine rudesse ' of his satire. When he complains to his un-
yielding mistress of her < hypocrite douceur ' and her « felon charms,'
* la mort d'un pauvre coeur,' and warns her of the inevitable approach
of the days when youth and beauty shall no more remain to her,
we seem to hear a robuster Ronsard sighing out his ' Cueillez, cueillez
votre jeunesse ; ' when he laments for the dea,th of Master Ythier's
beloved, * Two were we, having but one heart,' we must turn to
Mariana's wail of wistful yet unreproachful passion for a more perfect
lyric of regretful tenderness, a more pathetic dalliance with the
simpleness of love ; and when he appeals from the dungeon of Meung,
or pictures himself and his companions swinging from the gibbet
of Montfaucon, the tears that murmur through the fantastic fretwork
of the verse are instinct with the salt of blood and the bitterness of
death. Where can we look for a more poignant pathos than in his
lament for his lost youth, or his picture of the whilom gallants of his
early memories that now beg all naked, seeing no crumb of bread
but in some window-place ? or a nobler height of contemplation than
that to which he rises, as he formulates the unalterable laws that
make king and servant, noble and villein, equal in abasement before
the unbending majesty of Death ? or a sweeter purity of religious
exaltation than in the ballad wherein, with the truest instinct of
genius, using that mother's voice that cannot but be the surest
passport to the Divine compassion, he soars to the very gates of
heaven on the star-sown wings of faith and song ? He is one more
instance of the potentiality of grace and pathos that often lurks in
natures distinguished chiefly for strength and passion. 'Out of
the strong cometh sweetness,' and in few poets has the pregnant
fable of the honeycomb in the lion's mouth been more forcibly
illustrated than in Villon.

Humour is with Villon no less pronounced a characteristic than
pathos. Unstrained and genuine, it arises mainly from the continual
contrast between the abasement of his life and the worthlessness of
its possibilities, and the passionate and ardent nature of the man.
He would seem to be always in a state of humorous astonishment at
his own mad career and the perpetual perplexities into which his

1880. FRANCOIS V1LLOX. 499

folly and recklessness have betrayed him ; and this feeling constantly
overpowers his underlying remorse and the anguish which he suffers
under the pressure of the deplorable circumstances wherein he con-
tinually finds himself involved. The Spiel-trieb or sport-impulse,
that has been pronounced the highest attribute of genius, stands out
with a rare prominence from his character, never to be altogether
stifled by the most overwhelming calamities. The most terrible
and ghastly surroundings of circumstance cannot avail wholly to
arrest the ever-springing fountain of wit and bonhomie that wells
up from the inmost nature of the man. In the midst of all his
miseries, with his tears yet undried, he mocks at himself and others
with an astounding good humour. In the dreary dungeon of the
Meung moat, we find him bandying jests with his own personified
remorse, ^nd, even whilst awaiting a shameful death, he seeks con-
solation in the contemplation of the comic aspects of the situation,
as he will presently appear, upright in the air, swinging at the wind's
will, with face like a thimble for bird-pecks and skin blackened by
6 that ill sun that tans a man when he is dead.' It is a foul death
to die, says he, yet we must all die some day, and it matters little
whether we then find ourselves a lord rotting in a splendid sepulchre
or a cutpurse strung up on Montfaucon hill. He laughs at his own
rascality and poverty, amorousness and gluttony, with an unequalled
naivete of candour, singularly free from cynicism, yet always manages
to conciliate our sympathies and induce our pity rather than our
reprobation. 'It is not to poor wretches like us,' he says, 'that
are naked as a snake, sad at heart and empty of paunch, that you
should preach virtue and temperance — as to us, God give us patience.
You would do better to address yourselves to incite great lords and
masters to good deeds, who eat and drink of the best every day, and
are more open to exhortation than beggars like ourselves that cease
never from want.'

His faith in the saving virtues of meat and drink is both
droll and touching. One feels, in all his verse, the distant and
yearning respect with which the starveling poet regards all manner
of victual, as he enumerates its various incarnations in a kind of litany
or psalm of adorations in which they resemble the denominations and
attributes of saints and martyrs to whom he knelt in unceasing and
ineffectual prayer. "Wines, hypocras, roast meats, sauces, soups,
custards, tarts, eggs, pheasants, partridges, plovers, pigeons, capons, fat
geese, pies, cakes, furmenty, creams and pasties and other savoureux
et friands morceaux, defile in long and picturesque procession
through his verse, like a dissolving view of Paradise, before whose
gates he knelt and longed in vain. His ideal of perfect happiness is
to 'break bread with both hands,' a potentiality of ecstatic bliss he
attributes to the friars of the four Mendicant Orders ; no delights
of love or pastoral sweetness, ' not all the birds that singen all the

500 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

way from here to Babylon ' (as he says), could induce him to spend
one day among the hard lying and sober fare of a country life ; and
the only enemy whom he refuses to forgive at his last hour is the
Bishop of Orleans, who fed him so scurvily a whole summer long
upon cold water and dry bread, 'not even manchets,' says he piteously.
If he cannot come at his desire in the possession of the dainties for
which his soul longs, there is still some sad pleasure for him in
caressing in imagination the sacrosanct denominations of that 'bien-
heureux harnois de gueule ' which hovers for him, afar off, in the rosy
mists of an apotheosis. In this respect, as in no few others, he
forcibly reminds one of another strange and noteworthy figure con-
verted by genius into an eternal type, that * Neveu de Eameau,' in
whom the reductio ad absurdum of the whole sensualist philosophy
of the eighteenth century was crystallised by Diderot into so poignant
and curious a personality. Like Jean Eameau, the whole mystery of
life seems to Villon to have resolved itself into the cabalistic science
* de mettre sous la dent,' that noble and abstract art of providing for
1 the reparation of the region below the nose,' of whose alkahest and
hermetic essence he so deplorably fell short ; and as we make this
unavoidable comparison, it is impossible not to be surprised into
regret for the absence of some Diderot who might have rescued for
us the singular individuality of the Bohemian poet of the fifteenth
century.

Looking at the whole course of Villon's life, and the portrait he
himself paints for us in such crude and unsparing colours, we can
hardly doubt that, under different circumstances, had his life been
consecrated by successful love and the hope of those higher things to
whose nobility he was so keenly though unpractically sensitive, he
might have filled a worthier place in the history of his time and
have furnished a more honourable career than that of the careless
Bohemian driven into crime, disgrace and ruin, by the double
influence of his own unchecked desires and the maddening wist-
fulness of an unrequited love. However, to quote the words of
the great estcritic of the nineteenth century:3 'We might perhaps
have lost the poet whilst gaining the honest man ; and good poets are
still rarer than honest folk, although the latter can hardly be said
to be too common.'

JOHN PAYNE.

* ThSophile Gautier.

1880 501

THE

BURIALS BILL AND DISESTABLISHMENT.

ON this subject I desire to contend that the Burials Bill, even if,
going beyond what is at present contemplated, it should grant un-
restricted liberty of funeral rites, subject only to considerations
of decency and order, has in principle no proper bearing whatever
on the question of the Disestablishment of the Church. In advancing
this opinion I know that I contravene statements boldly and authori-
tatively made by both the extreme parties in this controversy — by
the Liberation Society on the one hand, and by the party of Opposi-
tion, as recently represented in the House of Peers by the Bishop of
Lincoln and Lord Cranbrook, on the other. But I believe that on a
careful consideration of the history and the proposed settlement of
the Burials question, and under anything like a clear idea of what is
meant, or ought to be meant, by the ' Establishment ' of the Church,
the thesis which I thus venture to advance will at least show itself
worthy of a not unfavourable consideration.

I do not inquire whether, in relation to the practical strength of
the Church, as affected by public opinion and public sentiment, it is
not infinitely better to settle the controversy on this vexed question,
than, by leaving it open, to preserve a continual irritation, and to
make the Church, rightly or wrongly, appear to be the representative
of intolerance. On this I have indeed a very strong opinion. Ex-
perience has proved that, even in such a case as the abolition of
Church rates — which appears to me to approach much more nearly to
the principle of Disestablishment — the Church has been on the whole
greatly strengthened by the removal of a painful and invidious con-
troversy. The prophecies, both of friends and foes, have been curi-
ously falsified at many repetitions of the cry * The Church in danger.'
So I believe it will be here. But the scope of my argument goes
beyond this, and ventures to assert that in principle as well as in
practice it is an error to suppose that an approach to Disestablish-
ment is made by the Government Burials Bill.

Nor, again, does it fall within the scope of this paper to examine
the merits or demerits of the Burials Bill in itself. I simply take it

VOL. VIII.— No. 43. L L

502 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

for granted that it will be passed, at any rate in its main provisions.
The lay opinion of the whole country, even of the Churchmen of the
country, has, I believe, definitely pronounced upon it ever since the
carrying of Lord Harrowby's resolution two sessions ago in the House
of Lords. Nor is it difficult to see what considerations have guided
that opinion. Just because the grievance felt is ' a sentimental
grievance,' it has been held impossible to meet it by hard force of
reason and of legal consistency. Just because there is plainly a
battle of principle, which must be fought out between the Church
and the Nonconformists, it has been felt unseemly to fight it out over
a grave. Therefore it always appeared to me singularly unfortunate
that so large a body of the clergy set themselves against all concession
under the late Government, prevented that Government (which would,
I believe, gladly have settled the controversy) from making any attempt
to do so, and so left the question to become a party question, and its
settlement to be reckoned as an instalment of the price to be paid
to the Nonconformists for their resolute support of the Liberal party
at the late election. It is, I believe, from this unfortunate policy,
rather than from the essential character of the Bill itself, that the
assumption has arisen which I desire to combat. What has been thus
made an achievement of the party which clamours for Disestablish-
ment has been naturally hailed by them as a step towards that
longed-for consummation; and the Churchmen who represent the
defeated party of sturdy resistance have — as it seems to me, hastily
and unwisely — taken their opponents at their word. Nothing (I
suppose) is more certain than that the measure was carried, in
both Houses of Parliament, mainly by the votes of men who abso-
lutely declined to consider it as having any bearing on Disestablish-
ment. What I desire to inquire is, ' Which contention is right ? '-
the contention in which the extreme Eight and the extreme Left agree,
or the contention of the great party of the Centre, which both ex-
tremes are apt to despise ?

It is impossible to examine the question without venturing on a
well-worn track, by examining what is the exact position of the Burial
question. Yet the inquiry may be excused by prevalent misrepre-
sentations of the subject; and it will only be necessary to touch upon
a few salient points of the subject, and those, moreover, points almost
beyond controversy.

I. The fundamental consideration, which ought to govern the whole
question, is this, that the burial of the dead is the bounden duty of
the secular community, and not of the Church. There must be public
graveyards ; this is a matter of necessity. They must be properly
cared for, and the dead laid reverently in them ; this is a matter of
public decency. The one question is, Where shall these graveyards be
found ?

The ancient practice of England answered that question by

1880. BURIALS BILL AND DISESTABLISHMENT. 503

pointing to the churchyards. These churchyards have never been
(so far as I know) held to be the property of the State. They are
historically the lineal descendants of the ancient Christian cemeteries,
in which, before the conversion of the world to Christianity, the
bodies of the saints who slept were committed to what was held to
be sacred ground, free from all contamination, whether of heathen
ritual or heathen carelessness of the remains, at any rate, of the
poor. In those cemeteries Christians alone were laid, and Chris-
tians were naturally committed to the grave with the words of prayer,
of thanksgiving, and of sure and certain hope. It should, however,
always be remembered that the connection even of Christian
cemeteries with the churches is purely accidental. It did not exist
in the beginning ; 1 in our own country it is commonly said to date
only from the eighth century ; and the modern dissociation of the
cemetery from the Church is in itself, although not in its reasons,
a return to ancient practice.

Now when the country became Christianised, and it was taken
for granted that every Englishman would be a baptised member of
the Church of England, the Christian cemeteries (now by practice
churchyards) became the public graveyards. The property and con-
trol of these churchyards remained with the Church, and were vested
still in the representatives of the Church in each parish. But it
was distinctly recognised that this property was qualified by a civil
right in all who belonged to, or even died in, a parish, to have burial
in the churchyard.2 It is notable and illustrative of the accidental
character of the connection between the church and the churchyard
that there was no such right of burial in the church itself, without
the free consent of the rector or vicar ; 3 but in the churchyard it was
impossible for him without legal penalty to refuse burial to any who
had the parochial right, even in the cases in which the Rubric for-
bade that the funeral service should be read.4 The property, there-
fore, of the Church in her churches differed from her property in

1 The old Roman Law ordered extramural interment. The burial within the
precincts of the church (for the benefit of the prayers of those who came to worship)
is recognised by Gregory the Great. The establishment of churchyards in England
is ordinarily traced to aboiit A.D. 750. See Phillimore 's Ecclesiastical Law, part iii.
c. x. (p. 842 of edition of 1873).

2 ' Burial in the parish churchyard is a common-law right inherent in the
parishioners. The clergyman cannot refuse to bury anybody dying in the parish
in the churchyard, which is, of right, the proper cemetery for their reception.' It
would appear that for the burial of those not dying in the parish the consent both
of the minister and the churchwardens is required. See Phillimore, vol. i. pp. 844,
845, 857.

8 ' In some foreign canons it is said " without consent of Bishop and Incumbent " or
" Bishop or Incumbent." But our common law has given this privilege to the parson
only. . . . Neither the ordinary nor the churchwardens can grant license.' See
Phillimore, rol. i. p. 840.

4 For the case of the unbaptiaed, see Phillimore, vol. i. p. 843. The burial of
suicides under the Coroner's order dates from 4 Qeo. IV. c. 52 (1823) ; see p. 860.

LL 2

504 THE NLM-:TI-I:STII CENTURY. September

her churchyards. I am no lawyer, and speak with diffidence on any
legal subject. But the latter case seems to me not unlike that of a
property qualified by some public rights — such as a right of way
— which is strictly the property of the holder, but not so absolutely
his that he can contravene the public rights over it.

But this is not the whole case. It was, as I have said, taken for
granted that Englishmen, being baptised, would be members of the
Church of England, as I suppose in many points they still are in the
eye of the law. Accordingly this right of burial was associated with
an ecclesiastical condition, which was at the same time an additional
right. A funeral service was provided, evidently presupposing in
the dead a Christian profession, and, in outward appearance at any
rate, a Christian life ; and accordingly presupposing in the Church
a power of discipline, capable in the last resort of expelling from her
communion those who were flagrantly unworthy of the name of
Christian. It was ordered that no person, unless he were unbaptised,
excommunicated, or virtually excommunicated by self-murder, should
be buried without this service, ministered, of course, by the clergy.
So far this was an ecclesiastical condition, qualifying again the civil
right of burial, and recognised by the law of the land. But it wa.-
also an additional right, for (except in the cases above provided
for) the clergy had no power to refuse to read the service, and were
liable to summary suspension if they ventured so to do.5 As Church
discipline died out, and open dissent from the Church came to be
frequent in practice and recognised in law, this obligation constantly
became a scandal, both to the consciences of the clergy and to the
conscience of the community. Still no remedy could be provided
which was not worse than the disease ; and the clergy had no choice,
except, as a rule, to pay obedience to the law, and in exceptionally
flagrant cases of the impropriety to venture on the higher and more
dangerous duty of disobedience to the law, accompanied, of course,
by quiet submission to the legal penalty.

So the course of affairs has gone on for centuries. In the mean-
while individuals or sects have often provided burial-places for them-
selves, free of course, and rightly free, from all public rights and
ecclesiastical conditions. By degrees, in all large towns, and not un-
frequently elsewhere, churchyards were filled up to or beyond their
capacity, and intramural interment was rightly discouraged on
sanitary grounds. Then followed the formation of new cemeteries
under the authority of Parliament by municipal bodies or private
companies. The property in these was vested in those to whom the
various Acts gave authority to form the cemeteries. But it became
the almost universal practice at once to endeavour to reproduce
the old churchyard as far as possible, and at the same time to
recognise the change which, since the old days of identification of
* See Canon 68 of 1603.

1880. BURIALS BILL AND DISESTABLISHMENT. 505

churchyard and graveyard, had produced and legalised dissent from
the Church and even from Christianity itself. In the consecrated
part of the cemetery, the consecration did not, as usual, destroy
private or municipal ownership : but it connected all burial in it
with the service of the Church and ministration of the clergy ; it
placed the bodies of the dead under the same guardianship as of old ;
and in great measure (where the cemeteries belonged to parishes) it
retained the rights of the clergy, and in all cases the control of the
bishop.6 The rest of the cemetery was avowedly nothing but a
public graveyard, with its unconsecrated chapel, free from all limita-
tions as to rights of burial, except those imposed by decency and
order ; and for burials in it the clergy were not only not compelled,
but were ecclesiastically forbidden, to use the service of the Church.
The idea of separation was thus visibly set up; the two chapels,
rivalling each other with jealous care that there should be distinction
indeed, but equality between them, stood there to be a painful token
of such separation even in death from the old Church of our fathers ;
and, curiously enough, the blame of that separation was commonly
thrown upon the Church, instead of being, at the very least, shared
by those who made and maintained the separation. I have never
been able to see that this was fair ; but perhaps we ought not to com-
plain that even in the way of complaint, it is indicated that the
Church should be the witness for unity, while there is no surprise
if sects, as sects, naturally tend to division. But it is a familiar and
undoubted fact, bearing instructively not only on the Burial conflict,
but on other points of the controversy between the Church and Dissent,
that the consecrated ground, with all its restrictions, was still used for
the great mass of interments, in a proportion utterly at variance with
the supposed proportion in any locality, or in the country at large,
between Churchmanship and Nonconformity.7 That ground, like the
churchyard, was happily still open to all, without the requirement of
any profession of faith ; and to it, though it had none of the old
associations or time-honoured beauty of the churchyard, the bodies of
the dead were still mostly brought.

II. Such has been up to the present time the condition of things.
The Government Bill designs seriously to modify it. What does it
propose, and what does it not propose, to do ?

8 See the Consolidating Act (10 & 11 Viet. c. 65), sections 23, 26, 51 ; and the
Burial Ground Act (15 & 16 Viet. c. 85), sect. 32— quoted in Phillimore, vol. i. pp.
845-53.

7 By returns obtained from above 250 cemeteries all over England, it appears
that about 67'5 per cent, were buried in the consecrated, about 32-5 in the uncon-
secrated, ground— the actual figures being, in corresponding periods, 860,588 in the
one, and 433,125 in the other. See a pamphlet, The Burial* Question— a Voice from
the Cemeteriea, by the Rev. John Milner, B.A., F.B.G.S. (1878, Bidgway). In three
great London cemeteries (Highgate, Nunhead, and Xorwood) the proportion was
126,529 to 20,820, or about 6 to 1.

506 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

As to the churchyards, it does not destroy or seriously impair
the property of the Church in them, nor the general right of control
in the clergy as her representatives — as regards, for example, the
monuments to be erected, the times of burial, the provisions for
decency and order, or even the fees to be paid. In the cemeteries it
appears similarly to preserve all the rights, both of control and of
pecuniary claim, over the consecrated ground, which now exist. In
neither case does it restrict the right or duty of the clergy in minis-
tration to those who are professedly Churchmen, or who at any rate
have made no profession of Nonconformity. On the contrary, it
relieves that ministration from all ecclesiastical penalties, if per-
formed in unconsecrated ground, and so may even extend its scope.
All it does, in respect of the action of the clergy, is to protect from
all pains and penalties those who adopt certain modifications of their
duty, proposed by their own two constitutionally recognised assem-
blies, or (in one case) by the larger and more important of the two.
But the serious thing which it does do is to order, not only that
silent burial shall be in all cases allowed, but that what is in the eye
of the law lay ministration shall be sanctioned at the grave, on the
demand of the representatives of the deceased, and shall be, as lay
ministration mostly is, unconfined to any set form of funeral service. It
is notable that in so doing it does not exactly deal with Nonconformity
as such. It simply takes for granted the existence of some persons,
who are, or think that they are, unwilling to accept for their dead,
having the parochial right of burial, the old ecclesiastical conditions.
It should be observed that this privilege (if a privilege it be) is open
to Churchmen ; and, when I see the virulence of the divisions some-
times existing between Churchmen, and the preference which seems
to prevail in some quarters for almost any service over the authorised
services of the Church, I cannot feel sure that no advantage will
be taken of it. Nor does it even in this so recognise the civil
parochial right of burial as to neglect some consideration of the
consecration of the churchyards and cemeteries, and of the proximity
of the churchyards (accidental though it strictly is) to the churches.
For it enacts that all services used at the grave shall be ' religious '
services, and it even lays it down that those services shall be
* Christian.' I have seen without surprise that this last provision is
held to be at variance with the strict logic of impartial recognition
of religious or irreligious liberty. I have seen, with much regret,
depreciation of it under forms of respect from the advocates of the
exclusive rights of the Church, which can hardly fail to be taken by
the Secularists as an encouragement to attempt to strike it out.
But there are other considerations than those of hard logical consist-
ency in framing laws for human nature as it is. Nor does it seem
to me even illogical to make a distinction here between the unconse-
crated ground, which is plainly the property of the community, and

1880. BURIALS BILL AND DISESTABLISHMENT. 507

the consecrated ground, which, though it has to admit the exercise of
a long prescriptive right by the community, is, in the case of church-
yards, the property of the Church, and, in the case of the consecrated
ground of cemeteries, is placed under her guardianship and control.
Recent events have shown us very strikingly, not only a strong sense
of what is seemly and congruous under the shadow of a Christian
church, but a deep-seated antagonism to any phase of open hostility
to faith in God, and to Christianity as its great embodiment. Now,
seeing that silent burial is open to the Secularist or anti-Christian,
with free liberty of oration and ritual elsewhere, it is hard to see that
any serious injustice is done to him ; and, even in the interests of
decency and public peace — to say nothing of the religious senti-
ment of the great mass of the community — there is much to be said
against allowing, in places which have been solemnly consecrated
to Grod in the name of Jesus Christ, any demonstration of Atheistic
or anti-Christian sentiment. For this is what Lord Selborne's
clause is intended to do, and this — whatever vagueness may attach
to the word ' Christian ' — it undoubtedly will do. Beyond this I am
glad that it does not attempt to go ; and it is clear that this will
avoid the grosser scandals with which we have been threatened.
Englishmen are a law-abiding people, and flagrant evasion of a plain
law will always be scouted.

I have spoken of the Government Bill as originally brought in,
not as amended by certain limitations of its application in the House
of Lords. For I do not believe that these amendments will stand.
There is, indeed, much theoretical justice in them, especially in the
contention put forward by the Archbishop of York. It is clear that
to the case of cemeteries the familiar pleas of hardship and sentiment,
and the argument from prescriptive right, hardly apply at all. But
it seems doubtful whether a distinction can rightly be drawn between
the old consecrated graveyards and the new, avowedly framed on them
as models, especially since the new have never been the property of
the Church. It is not likely that, while this distinction is maintained,
the question will be set at rest, and I doubt whether it is worth
fighting for. To my mind, moreover, it would be an unspeakable
comfort if the effect of the Bill tended in any way to rid us of that
perpetual memento of our unhappy divisions and rivalries, which is
now obtruded upon us in the arrangements of our cemeteries and
cemetery chapels. I believe, and I hope, that in the further progress
of the Bill its original scope will be restored.

But the Bill of the Grovemment, with (as I venture to think)
commendable fairness and appropriateness, while it licenses lay
ministration at the grave, endeavours at the same time to mitigate
some part of the legal obligations and restrictions which now press
upon the clergy. No doubt it can do very little to meet the moral
difficulties which arise from the use, in utter abeyance of Church

508 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

discipline, of a service which in every line presumes it. But no law
can possibly do this. The only remedies are either revival of dis-
cipline, or modification (as in the American Church) of the service.
But what can the law do more than recognise the desires of the
clergy, as expressed through the assemblies which constitutionally
represent them, and embody these in the Bill ? I am not surprised
that anti-clerical and anti-ecclesiastical prejudice is shocked by this.
But I do see with surprise and regret that men speaking in the name
of the Church depreciate this wise and honourable provision, and by
such depreciation invite hostility and attack from the extreme
section of our avowed enemies on the one part of the Bill, which ac-
knowledges the desires of the clergy and their claim to consideration.

III. Now this is what the Bill proposes to do. Whether its pro-
posals are wise or unwise, fair or unfair, I do not now inquire. But
what I contend is that they do not in any way involve the principle
of Disestablishment ; and I even venture to add that this principle
is far more truly implied in many proposals which are now made
on the other side.

It is, of course, perfectly obvious that the Bill recognises the
obsoleteness of the old idea of the position of the Church — held when
the burial service was framed, implied in very much of English law,
and enunciated in the well-known theory of Hooker 8 — that in their
composition the State and the Church are identical, all English-
men being, as a matter of course, born into the one and baptised
into the other. But I deny that this relation is properly described
as ' Establishment ' of the Church, or that it is ever dreamt of by
those who argue for or against Establishment. I suppose that it is
hardly necessary in argument to disprove the often-repeated and often-
refuted error, that at the time of the Reformation, or any other period,
there was a formal concordat between the Church and State as separate
bodies, the one undertaking service, the other giving endowment and
establishment. The Church was originally the people of England in
their religious capacity, bound together by spiritual ties, as accepting
the doctrine, the sacraments, the ministry of the Church of Christ,
claiming their place in membership of Him, and, within limits, their
right of independence under Him. Its ministry, as regards its juris-
diction, though not its origin, its endowments, its forms of service and
discipline, might be fairly said to be ' by law established.' But so
long as the old ideas remained, and Nonconformity was thought as
untenable a position as outlawry, to speak of the Church itself as (in
the modern sense of the word) ' established ' is simply an anachronism
and a delusion, which ought to be scouted by all educated men.

If ever the Church of England can be said to have been form-
ally established in the modern sense of the word, that is, recog-
nised as a body within the State, having certain privileges and
8 See Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, B. viii.

1880. BURIALS BILL AND DISESTABLISHMENT. 509

endowments, and yet ministering to all as the representative of
National Christianity, I should be inclined to place such establish-
ment at the time of the Toleration Act in 1688. For that Act, the
first tentative and imperfect precursor of a long series of Acts, re-
cognised the existence, and under certain conditions sanctioned the
religious liberty, of English citizens not professing to belong to the
Church of England ; while yet it acknowledged that Church as the
one privileged and authoritative representative of National Chris-
tianity, and as still having religious duties to the whole of the English
people.9 This is the essential idea of ' Establishment,' not formally
but virtually recognised from that time onward in English legis-
lation. It is a thing accidental to that idea whether it shall be sus-
tained by the imposition on dissentients from it of civil or political
disability, whether its revenues shall or shall not be fed by this or
that impost, whether forms of dissent from it shall be recognised and
tolerated which involve a deadly antagonism to it, accept a foreign
allegiance, or appear to be dangerous to morality or to society. On
all these questions many conflicts have raged ; and the gradual
steady tendency in English legislation — a tendency which Continental
statesmen still hold to be dangerous and infatuated — has been to give,
as far as possible, religious liberty and social and political equality
to dissentients from the Church, from Christianity, and even from
religion itself. But this religious liberty is absolutely consistent
with the principle of Establishment, as consistent as the recogni-
tion of a volunteer force with the maintenance of a standing army. It
may be even contended that by the grant of religious liberty an
Establishment is made practically possible. This is, indeed, so well
understood that the opponents of Establishment in their battle-cry of
attack have substituted for it the name and the idea of ' religious
equality.' For it is one thing to maintain a great machinery for the
spiritual welfare of the whole community, and quite another to insist
that no member of that community shall be allowed to give up his
right to use it, and to invent and maintain a machinery of his own.
We may note that in modern legislation, while individual liberty has
grown in England to a happy completeness, the principle of ' Esta-
blishment,' that is, of maintaining a provision for the good of the
whole community, is increasingly recognised in all points of educa-

9 The nationality of the Church thus remains in all that concerns her duty to
the country, and her recognition of the rights of all to share her worship and to
receive her ministrations. It is OIY the other side that it is infringed, by permission
to individuals to repudiate her doctrines and ritual, and, on the express ground of
such repudiation, to form religious communities, recognised as corporations by the
law, and having religious standards of their own. ' Nonconformity ' to the
established worship has passed into formal ' Dissent ; ' and modern law has been,
perhaps not unnaturally, inconsistent in dealing with the anomalous position of Dis-
senters— as, for example, in the abolition of church-rates and in the Burials Bill.
The existence of such dissent of course weakens the Church ; but the recognition of
it is in no sense inconsistent with Establishment.

VOL. VIII.— No. 43. M M

510 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. September

tion and culture and higher enjoyment — in all the points, indeed, in
which deficiency is unfelt, and therefore the correspondence of demand
and supply does not hold ; and that this tendency increases with the
admixture of democratic ideas in our political system. Hence, what-
ever use may be made against the Church of the principle of In-
dividualism as represented by Nonconformity, it is not, I believe, this
principle (which is, on the whole, rather discredited), but the prin-
ciple of Secularism, which is the main danger of a religious esta-
blishment. The real objection to it in many democratic leaders of
our day seems to be not that it is an Establishment, but that it is
religious.

Now the one question is, Does the Burials Bill provide for re-
ligious liberty in the churchyard, which is perfectly consistent with the
Establishment, or for the taking away of all control and property of
the Church in them, which is a step towards its disestablishment and
disendowment ?

To my mind it seems clear that its whole tendency is in the former
direction. It simply obliges the clergy, if requested so to do, to
stand aside and allow what is legally lay ministration at the grave.
This is not, as it appears to me, a robbery of the Church, or even a
degradation of the Church from her national position. I know that
a parallel has been drawn between this and the obtrusion of lay
ministration and unauthorised services into our churches. But those
who so argue have surely forgotten the fundamental principle that
burial is a duty of the civil community, carried on by long pre-
scription under certain conditions within the precincts of the Church ;
while worship and preaching are ministrations of the Church herself,
with which the civil community as such has, and can have, nothing
to do. To alter the conditions under which, in a wholly different
state of society, that right was exercised, whether it be desirable or
undesirable, is surely a wholly different thing from an interference
with the Church in what is her own religious duty. That the Dis-
senters will ' get into the churches through the churchyards,' I do not
believe. By the rubric the whole of the funeral service may be read
at the grave, so that no ' civil right ' for admission to the churches
can be claimed. The Bill deals with the graveyard and with that
alone ; and the arguments, gravely advanced, that a ' shower of rain,'
if it drive mourners for a few moments under shelter, will achieve an
ecclesiastical revolution, are hardly worth any serious refutation.
Here, again, it is (I think) suicidal to supply our antagonists with an
imposing argument of false logic.

It would have been no doubt a perfectly logical and reasonable
proceeding for the State to say — as I observe that the late Premier
proposes, now that he is free from the responsibilities of office,
although no such policy was adopted by the Government over
which he presided — 'The condition of things has quite changed

1880. BfftfJALS BILL AND DISESTABLISHMENT. 511

since the days when the churchyards became public graveyards.
"NVe will therefore close every churchyard in the kingdom. There
shall be provided, at the public expense, public cemeteries, in which
there shall be perfect liberty of service or no service, religious or non-
religious services, civil or ecclesiastical funerals.' But to my mind
this would be a most unhappy result. I value, when it can be
had without harm to the living, the religious association of the
graves of the dead with all that witnesses, day after day, Sunday
after Sunday, of Him who is the Resurrection and the Life ; and I
fail to see why the idea of ' God's acre,' if ever it had meaning,
should now be sneered at as obsolete. I should be sorry, even for
the sake of the national position of the Church, to see the church-
yard dissociated, after so many centuries, from the performance of a
sacred duty to the whole community. Far less serious to my mind
than these consequences is the acceptance of the claim of the State
for some greater liberty, even license, of unauthorised ministration in
the churchyard, as a fit conclusion of the religious liberty which has
been conceded in life.

But there are certain proposals on this matter which do seem to
me to involve the principle of Disestablishment, by treating the Church
as simply one, the largest and richest, of any sects. Such is the
proposal to demand reciprocity, and to deal with private and dis-
senting graveyards on exactly the same principle as the churchyards.
Such is the proposal to meet this Act by creating churchyards under
private trusts, which shall keep them safe for the members and the
services of the Church alone. Such is the complaint that the clergy
of the Church should have to perform a duty to Englishmen generally,
from which Dissenting ministers are free, and the suggestion that they
should be relieved from this duty whenever the dead man had been
a professed adherent of some other form of Christianity. All these
proposals, put forward by professed champions of the Church, appear
to me to be preparations for Disestablishment, by ignoring the
national duty and position of the Church, and by stamping upon it
the narrow exclusiveness which naturally belongs to a sect.

These proposals, from whatever quarter they come, the main-
tainers of the principle of Establishment ought resolutely to oppose.
As for the Burials Bill, I firmly believe that on the great question of
Disestablishment it will make no difference whatever. Whether in
days gone by, if freely conceded on demand, it might have given
us strength, as a measure of conciliation, I cannot tell. Now it
will have not a particle of influence in diminution of the fury of the
crusade against the Establishment and the Church. But, on the
other hand, it will not strengthen the forces against us, except so far
as, by embarking in a hopeless antagonism, we have discredited the
Church by defeat, unless, indeed (which I cannot believe), the Bill,
if passed, be met by obstruction or evasion.

512 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

For my own part I would venture to deprecate much loose and fre-
quent talk about Disestablishment, as impolitic and suicidal in the
mouths of those who do not desire it. I believe that it will be im-
possible without a revolution, which we can hardly realise, and which
certainly could not touch the Church alone. But if ever it does
come, it will come either from the prevalence (which God forbid!)
of the Secularist principles, which naturally attack a Church Esta-
blishment as a machinery for propagating superstition ; or from a
manifest failure on the part of the Church to do her religious duty
to the country, shown by the alienation from her of the great mass
of the community, by her want of sympathy with the great currents
of popular progress, by her acting as a sect and identifying herself
with this or that class, this or that party ; or from the fatal effect of
divisions within the Church herself, especially that worst of all divi-
sions, the division between the clergy and the mass of the laity; or
from the unchecked manifestation of doctrine, ritual, and ecclesiasti-
cal predilections, to which the mass of English Churchmen are
sturdily opposed. From any of these causes,, or all of these com-
bined, Disestablishment may come. But it will not come, I believe,
a day sooner or later, if it be ruled that in the consecrated ground,
in which there is for all who die in any parish — whatever their reli-
gious belief or condition may be — a civil right of burial, that burial
may be accompanied, under lay ministration, by ' religious services '
other than those of the Church, ' of an orderly and Christian cha-
racter.'

I have only to add in conclusion, that while I have spoken
throughout of the Government Bill as originally conceived, and
while I greatly value in it some of the provisions on which attack has
been made, yet, even if it were to be pared down to a simple provision
for unrestricted liberty of funeral rites, subject only to provisions for
decency and order, the contention which I have ventured to put
forward would not be, in my opinion, seriously affected.

ALFRED BARRT.

THE

NINETEENTH
GEN TUB Y.

No. XLIY.— OCTOBER 1880.

OBSTRUCTION OR < CL6TURE!

WHATEVER else may be said or thought of our method of electing our
Parliaments, no one can deny to the machinery which we employ the
most perfect thoroughness and completeness. The litigants feel that
they are in the hands of a hanging judge. The verdict is sharp, sud-
den, and irrevocable. There is no catastrophe like it. But yesterday
the word of Caesar might have stood against the world. Now he lies
there. In last April the victors were astonished at the magnitude of
their success, the vanquished at the stupendous completeness of their
overthrow. It was natural to expect that in proportion to the magni-
tude and completeness of the triumph the course of action would be
clear and decided. There was little room for doubt and hesita-
tion for the master of twenty legions. But the very first step
which had to be taken showed how little reliance is to be placed
on mere numbers when those numbers have no clear and defined
principle to guide them. In this case every one felt himself at
liberty to talk about what very few had taken the trouble to under-
stand. I allude; of course, to the enormous and utterly profitless
waste of time and trouble, and the endless and most unedifying
debates, which have illustrated the case of Mr. Bradlaugh. The case
was really extremely simple. The oath which he .at first refused and
afterwards was ready to take was no part of the law and custom of
Parliament, over which Parliament has . unquestionable jurisdiction,
but was the creature of a statute, the observance of which was secured
VOL. VIII.— No. 44. N N

514 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

by heavy penalties to be sued for in the courts of law. It is melan-
choly to think that so much precious time, out of a session from which it
could be so ill spared, was utterly lost and squandered because the House
could not be made to see and act on this distinction ; and the waste of
time was the more inexcusable because the true view of it was from
the very first taken by the Prime Minister, whose experience of fifty
years the House might have been expected to follow, especially as he
was well known to have given much attention to the subject. The House,
after the deliberations of two committees, proved quite unequal to
deal with this simple question in a straightforward and business-
like manner, and it was only after having exhausted every species of
error that it was saved from discreditable conflict with the courts
of law by the employment by the Government of the full force of an
intact and unbroken majority.

And yet those who have calmly and dispassionately watched the
present House cannot, I imagine, survey them without disappointment,
and even a considerable degree of uneasiness. An intact majority,
the halo of a splendid victory not yet grown pale, the adhesion, ex-
cept on one occasion, of the whole of their party, have prevailed, and
they have not been defeated with all these things in their favour ;
but at what a price has this success been obtained !

At the end of a laborious session we count up what we have
achieved, but take no account of what we have failed to do. It
would not, I think, be an unprofitable waste of time if some one would
take upon himself the office of awocato di diavolo, and tell us all we
have lost as well as all we have gained. We have passed two measures
of first-rate importance during the late session. How many might we
have passed if we could obtain for the purposes of real business one
half of the time which has been intentionally and deliberately
wasted ? We count what we get, but never reckon what we wantonly
and wastefully allow to be thrown away. The present method of
proceeding renders many branches of legislative duty utterly im-
possible. The codification of the criminal law has been brought to a
point at which it might fairly claim the attention of the House ; but
what Government will be so foolish as to bring forward such a
measure, when the only result must be that it would never pass, and
that in it, even if it were passed, would be buried all the legislation of
the year ? The same observations apply to innumerable other sub-
jects, which, being of a technical nature, must, if they are to be dealt
with at all, be taken in a great degree on the faith of experts. Any
one who watched the debates on the vote for the Irish constabulary
must see how impossible it will be to pass any bill relating to Ire-
land unless it is so fortunate as to obtain the support of some
twenty Home Rulers — that is, unless it is utterly distasteful to the
great majority of the House. There probably never was a stronger
or more respected assembly than the House of Commons. But even

1880. OBSTRUCTION OR 1CLOTURE: 515

the House of Commons cannot afford to pose for ever in the character
of victim, and to sue in forma, pauperis to those whom it has alike
power and duty to command. The charge may fairly be brought
against the House that she is a corrupter of the youth. The laxity
of her discipline holds out what, to a certain class of minds, are
almost irresistible temptations. To obtain fame is granted to few,
but to attain notoriety is in the reach of all who have contrived to
cross the threshold of Parliament.

We ought not to hold out the wreath of real glory with the one
hand, and the shabby and worthless tinsel of mere notoriety in the
other. Mankind are quite vain enough without devising new and
pernicious outlets for their gratification. A perseverance in the
present system must sooner or later have the effect, not only of
lowering respect for the proceedings of the House, for that it has
already to some extent accomplished, but of deteriorating the material
of which the House is composed. Once let it be thoroughly under-
stood that proceedings such as we have been in the habit of witness-
ing lately are not the exception but the rule, and carry with them
neither disgrace nor disqualification, and a visible change in the
material of the House may with the utmost certainty be predicted.
Many people who are willing to bear an honourable burden will
refuse to submit to a wearisome and discreditable servitude. An
institution under such conditions cannot be permanent, and if it has
not the strength to grow better it will assuredly grow worse, donee
ad ecu tempora perventum, est ubi nee vitia nostra nee remedia pati
possumus. The temptation is peculiarly great to a party out of
office. Once let it be understood that talking against time and its
sister arts imply no disgrace, but are even counted good service, and
we are arrived at the point where the ways that lead to honour and
dishonour divide.

Every year of the present deplorable system makes the reform
more arduous, and what even now is a task of no small difficulty may
soon become utterly beyond our power.

Alt era jam teritur "bellis civilibus astas,
Suis et ipsa Roma viribus ruit.

If this is the price which our ministers and our senators are to pay
for a not very startling amount of success in attending to the ordi-
nary business of a session carried on under the most favourable con-
ditions, what are we to expect when the majority has been subjected
to those chances and changes which are sure to wait on the latter
days of every Parliament ? Already the present Housa of Commons
is fairly entitled to the credit of having devised a new method of
obstruction. It has come to this — that the notices of questions to
be asked before the commencement of business begin to assume the
dignity of a portly pamphlet, and that the precious moments which

N H 2

516 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

ought to be devoted to the transaction of real business are wasted to
gratify the vanity of some senator who thus prepares himself by a
preliminary question for the speech of the future, or abuses this oppor-
tunity, which was designed for the promotion of practical business, for
the purpose of publishing a long and vapid lecture at the public ex-
pense. On many occasions two hours of precious public time have been
thus wantonly and wastefully consumed. The truth is that the un-
doubted increase in intellectual power which may be observed in the
present House is at any rate, and must be, a potent cause of obstruction.
Time was when the whole talking of the House was performed by some
forty or fifty members, but that was in the days of mail-coaches timed
to run at the stupendous speed of seven and a half miles an hour, and of
letters that cost eightpence apiece. The telegraph has made the
change complete, and has made the House of Commons much more
like the council of a single city in immediate contact with its con-
stituents than the delegates of remote communities. At any rate
the result is that we must learn to expect for the future not merely
as much speaking as is required to place the subject clearly before the
House, but as much more as may be required by a host of able and
ambitious men, more intent on distinguishing themselves than on
aiding the course of public business. All this, however, may, or
at any rate must, be borne with. The feelings that prompt it are
natural and excusable. Heavy as is the price which we must pay for
it, we should be sorry to see a time when the House of Commons
ceased to be the training-ground for eloquence and the nurse of
genius.

I return to the darker side of the picture, which presents the
House no longer as the noble arena for reason and eloquence, but
as the grave of terse and manly discussion and the fruitful parent of
trickery and evasion. We have noticed nature's frailty; we have now
to consider nature's frailty degraded to an art and reduced to method
and system. The cancer which is eating out the heart of this our
ancient and noble assembly is the unhappy discovery that an instru-
ment which was devised for the promotion of liberty and justice may
be made the means of furthering the ends of faction and sedition.

Of course the art of occasionally speaking against time is not
•unknown to any public debating body, but the honour of reducing the
vice of talking against time to a system must, I believe, be accorded
without dispute to the second-rate members of Opposition during the
latter days of Mr. Gladstone's Government. These gentlemen dis-
covered that language was capable of far more useful purposes
than those of persuading, instructing, or convincing. They put
their trust not in logic or rhetoric, but in time; and Time, who, as
the Greeks tell us, is a good-natured god, smiled on the devotion
of his worshippers. The art of parliamentary warfare was as effec-
tually changed by this discovery as the art of feudal war was by

1880. OBSTRUCTION OR ' CL6TURE: 517

the discovery of gunpowder. Debate was no longer the means
of convincing and refuting, it became the art of preventing the
adversary from arriving at any conclusion at all. The aim of the
rhetorician who formed himself on the new model was the wasting
a session, not of the confuting an antagonist. It had many ad-
vantages. It is a complete leveller. Quality is not to be had for the
asking, but quantity can be supplied by any one on whom Nature
has bestowed lungs and impudence. It used to be thought the pride
of an orator to carry his audience with him, but the new school placed
their delight in lagging as far as possible behind them.

Well, Mr. Gladstone's Government was overthrown, and I am
happy to say that no attempt was made on our part to imitate those
tactics which had been employed against us. Nevertheless, the seed
which had been sown was not by any means wholly lost. The Pro-
methean fire, which had burned so fiercely in the breasts of certain
gentlemen who had obtained office as their reward, burst out with
even greater fervour in a new direction. Home Eule, under the
auspices of Mr. Butt, came on the stage, and it soon appeared that
Home Eule and Obstruction were made for each other. The leader
of the party which professed to aim at the dissolution of the union
between Great Britain and Ireland was Mr. Butt, the ex-contributor to
the Morning Herald, who had for many years sat and voted with the
Tories. It was not convenient to put the intentions of the Home
Eulers into too clear and definite a shape — first, because there was
little or no chance of persuading the Home Eulers themselves to
agree in one clear and definite proposal ; and next, because such an
agreement would have been embarrassing to the Tory Government,
which there was no wish on the part of the leader to disturb. In
such a state of things the art of speaking against time, as the adver-
tisers of steel pens say, ' came as a boon and a blessing to men.' It
is not very unreasonable to suppose that a ministry which sought to
win its laurels in other fields than those of domestic legislation
viewed with a certain degree of complacency the labours of an heroic
band which had contrived to emancipate itself and its hearers from
the necessity of thought first by speeches by which nothing was
meant, and next by a policy which never clothed itself in any tangible
shape. I am very sorry to have to admit that in the discussions on
the Mutiny Bill, and on the question of flogging especially, the evil
and discreditable practice of deliberately wasting the public time was
largely resorted to in quarters from which better things might have been
expected, and that during the first Parliament of the present year there
were no symptoms that the practice had lost any of its attractions.

It remains to speak of the Parliament which has just closed
its sittings. If ever there was an occasion favourable to the era-
dication of this deplorable practice, it was afforded by the present
session. If numbers could avail aught, the majority was the largest

518 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

that has been known for fifty years. If authority was to prevail, we
had a Prime Minister occupying a position of almost unrivalled power
and popularity, utterly opposed to the waste of public time, and
anxious above all things to occupy the House really and usefully with
measures which had been too long delayed.

Nobody can say that we are surfeited with legislation, or that
there are no subjects especially claiming the attention of the House.
It is hardly an exaggeration to say that for the last six years there
has been a cessation from the ordinary duty of making laws. Yet
even under these favourable circumstances we find opposition by
means of gross and obvious obstruction not only not diminished, but
actually on the increase. We see the art deliberately and syste-
matically practised by persons whose position in the House and
in the country would have seemed, but for the* clearest evidence
to the contrary, to render such a charge impossible. We have
the Government and the Opposition, the Irish party and the
fourth party — the difference between the last two apparently be-
ing merely nominal, as they pursue the same object, the obstruction
of business, by the same means. The effect, at any rate, is identical.
The end and aim of those who contrive to monopolise the greater
part of the public time is, that whereas the House is called together
to deliberate on weighty public affairs, to regulate our finances, and
to make our laws, it shall do none of these things, but shall de
liberately allow the time set aside for the purposes of the nation to
be wasted in order to permit the lowest ends of faction to be effected
by the most ignoble and despicable means.

Let no one deceive himself with the notion that this great and
growing evil will, if left alone, wear itself out and disappear like so
many other diseases of the body politic. Even if it were so, we can-
not afford the wearing away of a chronic and lingering disorder. But
there is every reason why it should not wear away. Consider, in the
first place, the extremely small stock in tra.de which is required to
carry on the business. Eloquence would be a positive drawback.
The object of the speaker against time is not to please ; nay, it is
rather to worry and torment. A pleasant voice is no recommendation,
for it tends to impair the success of one whose business is to make
himself as disagreeable as possible. Consider next the delights
which a thoroughly coarse, vulgar, and thick-skinned man may
obtain in exchange for these not very shining qualifications.
There is the gratification of vanity, of such vanity as such a man
is peculiarly capable of feeling. His name is in all the news-
papers, his noble features adorn the weekly press. Everybody
knows about him, and if not a great man he can easily mix him-
self up with great affairs, if only by obstructing them. He does
not require the possession of one single virtue, one single talent, or
one single branch of knowledge. And yet this man, such as I have

1880. OBSTRUCTION OR ' ClOTURE: 519

described him, can often exercise considerable influence. The man
whose name is always on the paper, who has always a motion, a
question, or an amendment, who is always ready to move an adjourn-
ment or that the House be counted, can exercise a control over the
course of public business which it is impossible for men in office
entirely to neglect ; and thus an odious influence is exerted by the
exhibition of those very qualities which prove how unfit its owner is
to use it. Nothing can be more weak than to suppose that a position
of this kind, won without merit, and maintained without ability or
honour, will, after all these advantages have been gained, be surren-
dered so long as it can be retained. It is no exaggeration to say
that there is no chance of things getting better, and every proba-
bility that they will become worse. The dislike to a course of
proceeding so entirely contrary to the maxims and ideas of the
ordinary English gentleman is wearing off by degrees, and so far
from amendment being probable, our prospects are all in the con-
trary direction. The feeling of honour once laid aside, the temp-
tation to annoy and confound an adversary by shabby and unfair
means becomes irresistible. We have also to remember that, little
as a calm observer may be disposed to be satisfied with the way in
which time is wasted in the House of Commons, there are causes at work
which give a reasonable ground for still further anxiety. A very large
majority of the present House are pledged to support the equalisa-
tion of the borough and county franchise. Are they quite certain
that it will be as easy to devise measures for curtailing the almost
boundless liberty of speech and power of obstruction then as it is
now ? We may well expect to hear of many new grievances. Will
the new constituencies be ready, inexperienced as they are, to shut
the door to discursive complaints ? Or can we expect them at once
to appreciate a responsibility which seems so slow in winning its way
to the ears of our present House ? Ten years ago no one could have
supposed that things would have been allowed to reach anything
approaching their present state. Let us but go on in our present
ruinous course, and the mischief, which is fast becoming inveterate,
will have become ineradicable.

The question will appear in a yet more serious aspect when we reflect
that the House of Commons has gradually, but most completely, ac-
quired to itself the powers, the division of which among various bodies
used to be regarded as the distinguishing merit of the British Constitu-
tion. No reasonable man would now apply to it the language of Delolme
or of Blackstone. The theory of checks and balances has been thrown to
the winds. The President of the United States retains a veto which has
departed for generations from the Kings of England. The Senate of
America, elected by separate States, has a power very different from that
which belongs to the English House of Lords. The House of Commons
makes and unmakes ministries, but in America the Ministers are not

520 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

members of Parliament, and cannot be removed except by impeach-
ment for a specific offence. We have but one anchor, the good sense,
the patriotism, and the firm resolution of the House of Commons, and
if that fails us chaos is come again. If we are endowed with the com-
monest instinct of self-preservation, we shall direct our most serious
attention to the things that are passing apparently unnoticed in the
assembly which is the undisputed arbiter of our fate. If we do so,
we shall find that by far the greater part of the time of the House
of Commons is expended in the reiterated and generally irrelevant
discussion of some subject which, if ever so ably discussed, would in
no degree assist the transaction of public business, and which i&
obviously discussed merely for the purposes of delay ; and, what is
most deplorable, every one seems to regard this disgraceful spectacle
as an inevitable evil which cannot be cured, but may be rendered
more endurable by meekness and patience. It never seems to occur
to any one that what would be insupportable in private society ought
not to be tolerated by the representatives of a great and proud nation.
No doubt, as Hudibras says : —

Some have been cudgelled till they know
What wood the cudgel's of by the blow ;
Some have been kicked till they know whether
A shoe's of neat's or Spanish leather.

But such patience is scarcely consistent with the position of the rulers
and leaders of men.

Even while I write, a signal confirmation of the confidence and
presumption which these new tactics inspire is to be found in a
speech just delivered at Ennis by Mr. Parnell : —

For ourselves, in the last Parliament, when we had a Tory Government to face,
I never at the time hid my convictions that with a Liberal Government in power
it would be necessary for us somewhat to change or modify our action. Nothing
was to be gained from the Tories, and it was therefore necessary for the Irish party
to punish them without sparing them. Yet this present Liberal Government has made
great promises. Up to the present it has absolutely given us no one single perform-
ance, but through the mouth of the Chief Secretary of Ireland it was entreated
that it be given one year's time in order to see whether it cannot benefit Ireland,
and we have been willing to give it the time and trial ; but I stand here to-day to
express my conviction that whenever it is necessary for us to resume our ancient
policy, such as we practised against the Tories, whenever we find this Liberal
Government falls short of either its professions or its performances, on that day it
will be the duty of the present strong Irish party to show that it can punish the
Liberal Government as well as the Tory.

Mark the tone of insolent dictation, of almost sovereign command,
which this Triton of the minnows assumes towards the House of Com-
mons. The Tories he found it necessary to punish without sparing
them. They were feres natural, animals to whom no mercy was to be
shown. The Tories are utterly outlawed, but the Liberals have begged
hard for a respite, and we gather, though it is not expressly granted,.

1880. OBSTRUCTION OR 'CL6TURE: 521

that a respite is to be allowed them, to be recalled at once if they
fall short of the tale of bricks which their hard and suspicious task-
masters demand of them. I have quoted this passage in order to
found upon it a question : Whence comes this power over both parties
which seems to place both at the mercy of Mr. Parnell ? Has it been
wrung from us by force or niched from us by fraud ? Neither one nor
the other. This power of punishment, as Mr. Parnell calls it, exists
merely by our permission. It grows out of an abuse which we have
not seen fit to abate. The House of Commons has, by its sufferance,
made this power of obstruction. The House can, if it think proper,
demolish it. Not even an Act of Parliament would be required to sweep
it away ; the simple expression of the will of the majority would be
sufficient. It is like the fly that maketh the ointment of the apothe-
cary to stink : remove the fly, and the nuisance disappears.

At the risk of .being considered wild and visionary I venture to
assert that passive and ignoble endurance is not the cure or a palliative
for this great and growing evil. It is to be met not by patience and
meekness, but by resistance — not by submission as to a hard necessity,
but by a firm stand as against an intolerable insult and degradation.
The House of Commons has an undoubted right, if it only chose to
exercise it, to regulate the course and order of its own proceedings.
Speech is not an end, but a means — the means of the transaction of
public business — and when the right of speech is habitually and
deliberately used for the purpose of impeding the transaction of
business, it becomes a serious and deliberate offence and insult to the
body on which it is practised. Nor can there be the least doubt to
whose hands the power of resisting and punishing this offence ought to be
entrusted. It is against the whole House that the offence has been com-
mitted, and it is by the action of the majority of the House that it must
be repressed. If we consider the matter, we shall see at once that
the liberty of endless speech which we allow to our tormentors is,
in the times in which we live, a gross anomaly. It is quite easy to
understand that what the House stood in awe of in former times
was the power of the Crown, and that for a like reason they for-
bade the printing of their debates. Now we have nothing to fear
from publicity except the opportunity which it gives of turning
asses into lions, and transferring the power of the veto, which has
virtually fallen from the Crown, to any one who has lungs and impu-
dence sufficient to climb to that bad eminence. On the particular
form by which the change may be made there is no occasion to dwell.
The principle is abundantly clear. That principle is that, in all
assemblies which meet together for the purpose of transacting busi-
ness and promoting a common object, the guiding rule shall be the
following the course which appears to the majority to be the best
calculated to attain that object. The House of Commons has alone, I
believe, among deliberative bodies, suffered that power to be usurped

522 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

by individual members, and all that is required is that it be restored
at once to its original possessors. In truth I believe there is scarcely a
civilised country in the world which does not possess some rule to
guard against this preposterous anomaly and intolerable mischief.
America has her previous question, France her cloture, but in all the
substance is the same — the treating the length of the debate or the
speech not as a matter at the disposal of single members, but as a mat-
ter entirely in the disposition of the majority. To persons who have
never considered the matter this may appear at first sight an arbitrary
infraction of the liberty of private members, but a little reflection will
soon dispel the illusion. Individual liberty has its advantages, but it
is bought too dear when it is purchased by the slavery of every one
else. The fallacy is well exposed by Pope : —

Who first taught souls enslaved and realms undone
The enormous faith of many made for one ;
That proud exception to all nature's laws,
To invert the work and counterwork the cause ?

In other words, we wish to maintain the freedom of debate, and in
order to do so we submit tamely to have that freedom taken from us
by any one who, being 'as brave as a total absence of feeling and reflec-
tion can make him,' ventures to appropriate to his own use that time which
is the common property of all. Of course it cannot be denied that the
exercise of such a power is a sad and sorrowful necessity. It is an
admission that the morale of the House has degenerated from the time
when to incur the displeasure of such a body was felt to be a punish-
ment adequate to almost any offence. But matters will not be
amended by tolerating a scarcely disguised mutiny against all legitimate
authority, and rather submitting to a gross and insolent usurpation
than admit that there is anything in the present state of things that
requires a remedy cr threatens a mischief.

It is only when the yoke under which they groan has been taken
off that the members of the House of Commons will come to appre-
ciate the self-imposed slavery under which they have for so many
years been most unaccountably content to live, and which I verily
believe many of them consider to be a system of the most exalted
freedom. They are so thoroughly accustomed to a state of utter
uncertainty as to what will be the business of the day, that they
regard the changes of our capricious climate as sure and steady in
comparison. All this is bad enough when it is bona fide. No man
is altogether a trustworthy judge of the time which he ought to
occupy, or of the relative importance of a question with which he is
and a question with which he is not concerned. The House may take
refuge in talking and groaning ; but talking and groaning are of
small avail against persons who are perfectly persuaded that their
own question is infinitely more important than any other, and still
more when, as too often happens, the very end and object is to talk

1880. OBSTRUCTION OR 1CL6TURE: 523

about one thing in order to prevent the House from giving its atten-
tion to another. Every one who addresses the House is, in posse if
not in esse, the enemy of the transaction of business. He has what
Bentham would call an anti-social interest, and is acting under an
impulse, more or less great, to occupy more of the public time than
a perfectly fair and impartial judge would award to his share. Yet
our rules of proceeding most perversely place this power absolutely
in the hands of the person most likely to abuse it, and, so long as
he does not transgress the bounds of technical order, leave the
other six hundred and fifty-seven members absolutely at his mercy.
Where, I may ask with some confidence, is there so gross and
outrageous an instance of the ' enormous faith of many made for one '
as is exhibited when the whole concerns of a mighty empire, how-
ever important and however urgent, can be postponed indefinitely at
the will of a single man, perhaps too stupid to apprehend the relative
importance of things, perhaps seeking for himself a shameful notoriety,
perhaps actually striving to undermine and overthrow the very
institutions whose overstrained tolerance he is abusing ?

I have pointed out some of the evils of the present system of what
some will call unbridled freedom, but which I should rather designate
as unbounded license. I have not dissembled the loss. Let us now
consider what would be the gain. In the first place, the trade of the
talker against time would be gone ; the House would be consulted if
any attempt to speak against time were made, and the nuisance at
once put down. Another advantage would be that we should hear
our best speakers instead of our worst — the men by whom we should
be guided and instructed, who would really form the opinion of the
House and the country. The men best worth hearing are now unwil-
ling to speak, partly because they are reluctant to prolong a debate
which is sure without their aid to be stretched to the utmost limit
of human patience, partly because they recoil from a debate which is
like an unweeded garden — things rank and gross in nature possess it
merely — partly because they feel keenly the wicked and wanton waste
of public time, and are unwilling to add their sum of more to what
they already feel to be far too much. This, the bringing forward the
best men earlier, would have a great tendency to shorten debates.
The bringing forward the best men earlier in the debate would have
another advantage : it would give the speaker a choice of men which
now, from the causes above mentioned, he does not possess. But the
greatest of all advantages would be that the House would be, what
it is not now, the master of its own time and of its own proceed-
ings. The debates would be proportioned to the relevancy of the
discussion, the importance of the subject, and the wishes of the House,
instead of being, as they too frequently are, employed as mere instru-
ments of procrastination and annoyance. By this means and by this
means only will Parliament ever be able to overtake even a slight
portion of pressing and useful legislation.

524 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

No doubt it may be urged that, by placing the authority of cutting
short a speech or a debate in the hands of the House, we are vesting in
the majority the power of eluding disagreeable questions and of evading
dangerous attacks. But this is only to say that power, place it in
whatever hands you please, and guard it by whatever safeguards you
may impose, is still liable to abuse. The question is, which is the
safer and the wiser course — to trust to the discretion and fairness of a
single man, or to the judgment of a great assembly acting with full
publicity, and exposed to the criticism of a vigilant and hostile oppo-
sition ? Nothing is so fatal to the reputation of a party or a ministry
as the suspicion that it is deceiving the public and abusing its powers
to conceal its mistakes and misfortunes. To create a suspicion that
the power of the majority was employed to conceal facts damaging to
the Government would be worth volumes of mere surmise and de-
clamation, and any attempt of the kind would assuredly fail. For
the purposes of acquiring knowledge, mankind, thanks to telegraphs
and newspapers, are approaching very near to ubiquity. Again, if
it be urged that, though the majority may not be able to conceal
facts, they may, by abusing their power, prevent their opponents
from setting them out in their full light, there is little reason for
apprehension. The ubiquitous press, the extreme facility of holding
public meetings, are sufficient guarantees for publicity. It may also
be assumed that the remedy of the cloture would not be pressed or
applied anywhere except where the disease existed. Whatever charges
may be urged against the House of Lords, it has never yet been accused
of the offence which presses so heavily on the Commons, a boundless and
predetermined loquacity. Some have been so bold as to insinuate
that, if it has a fault, the blame lies somewhat in the other direction,
and that the taciturnity of the one House may fairly be set off against
the garrulity of the other. Supposing, therefore, that the majority
of the House of Commons should abuse the right of the cloturc,
the previous question, or by whatever name it may be called, so as to
deprive the minority of information to which it is justly entitled^
or of a discussion which is considered useful for the public interest,
the House of Lords will be always a place to which the cloture will
not apply, and in which the ministers will be compelled to answer
and to give opportunities for answering just as ample as are
enjoyed at present in the House of Commons.

I must honestly confess that it is with the bitterest regret and
the most extreme reluctance that I, have been able to school my
mind to this conclusion. That England, the proud mother of parlia-
ments, should, in the fulness of her strength and the plenitude of her
glory, feel herself obliged to own that she has so far degenerated that
she can no longer trust her sons with the unbounded right of free
speech which they have hitherto enjoyed, for fear they should abuse
that great and glorious privilege to the destruction of her free

1880. OBSTRUCTION OR ' CL6TURE: 525

course of action, debate, and legislation, is indeed a thought full of
bitterness and humiliation. But one thing would be worse, and
that is, that we should go on crying peace when there is no peace,
and, rather than acknowledge the malady under which we suffer, allow
it to sap the foundations of our freedom and honour.

It is singular to observe how differently the same thing is valued
by different people at different times. We elect a very large assembly
of the choicest spirits of the day, of men honoured by the especial
confidence of our fellow-citizens ; the operation costs some millions.
The body has unquestionable authority over its members. How is
the greater part of the time of this body spent ? It is spent
in scarcely disguised efforts to prevent anything from being done.
Time is the only thing connected with Parliamentary life which is
apparently of no value at all. Let us turn from this miserable and
contemptible waste of the most precious of earthly possessions by a
great and civilised nation to the proceedings of the little republic of
Athens. The rudest clock that is made in the Black Forest would
have been to them a treasure of inestimable value. They measured
time by the period that would be required to empty a large vessel of
water through a small hole pierced at the bottom. We know how to
measure time, but not how to save it. We can determine time to an
instant, but seem curiously ignorant of its value. The noble orations
of Lysias, Isseus, ^Eschines, and Demosthenes, the very dust of which
is as gold, were pronounced within a period measured by the emptying
of a brazen vessel. Thus Demosthenes, when he challenges his
adversary to prove some assertion, offers that it shall be proved out
of his own time as measured by water, and when a document has to
be read the orator is careful that the water shall be stopped, as the
document would else curtail the limits of his own speech. Was time
so valuable in Athens that even Demosthenes was put under restric-
tion ? and is it so worthless in England that every one of 658 members
is at liberty to waste it as he pleases, and that when it is perfectly
well known that the waste is intentional, and occurs as part of a
•deliberate and avowed conspiracy to coerce and wear out the majority ?
We make better clocks than these poor Athenians ' did 2,000 years
ago, but we have not, it should seem, learnt to estimate as well as
they that which the clcck measures, the inestimable value of time.

SHERBEOOKE.

526 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

CREEDS— OLD AND NEW.

THE schemes of religion and of thought which axe offered to mankind
as the guide of life have all this common blot : they rest upon some
partial phase of man's history ; they appeal to one side out of many in
human nature. Some tell us Godliness is the one thing needful,
some say Industry, some Knowledge. They think all will be well, if
the world could only be converted — to devoutness of spirit, cry
these ; to enlightened self-interest, urge others ; to a thirst for
science, say the rest.

No one of these conflicting schools seems concerned witbTmore
than one department of man's composite life ; none undertake to'show
us how we may attain to Devotion, Industry, Science, at the^same
time; how we may bring them all to a living work in harmony to-
gether in the service of one Supreme Good. One scheme there is
which does do this, which looks to every phase of the past, not to
one ; which appeals to all the faculties of man, not to any one
quality, however noble. And by virtue of this truly universal,
truly human spirit that it has, this must in the end secure universal
acceptance.

The scheme of life and of thought, which it is the purpose of these
Lectures to present, is marked off from all its contemporaries and
predecessors by this : — that it addresses itself in the same spirit to all
the facts of human nature : to the facts of devoutness, as mucb/as'the
facts of self-help ; to the truths of beauty as much as the truths of
science ; it treats no part of the past as a blank, and no instinct of
human nature as a stumbling-block. Devoutness, Progress, Evolution,
are all great forces ; but they do not make up human life separately,
and human life cannot be explained or based on any one. Nor will
the great questions of human life ever be laid to rest until the mutual
relations of these three, and of many such forces, are cleared up for us
and reduced to order. Positivism declares that these forces can be
reduced to order, and can be explained by common laws. The truth
of this explanation is a matter of argument ; it is open to proof and
subject of course to inquiry and riper knowledge. Show us that

1880. THE CREEDS— OLD AND NEW. 527

another explanation is complete, more scientific, more available, and
we accept the proof, and welcome the improvement. But in the
meantime acknowledge that the question of questions is at least being
truly stated, and stated indeed for the first time. That question of
questions I mean is this : — Can Eeligion become one with our highest
Science about the World and about Man: and can this religious
science, or (we may say) this scientific religion, directly inspire our
entire activity on earth ?

That is, to-day, man's great problem. Which of the many creeds,
and the many philosophies, has duly solved it ? It is the chief and
precious quality of our modern culture, that it is nothing if not his-
torical, complete, comprehensive. It insists that every age and phase
of man's manifold civilisation shall be sifted, understood, seen at its
best. We will have nothing left out, nothing trampled on. The
bigots, the pedants, the iconoclasts, the levellers shall not rob us of
any single work or quality of man. All shall be saved, studied, cared
for. It is a humanistic age, somewhat eclectic, keenly historical,
sympathetic, many-sided, just. We are sadly endeavouring to undo
the passionate errors of centuries, especially of the last century or
two ; and if we have no very distinct faith of our own, we decline to
commit ourselves irretrievably to any exclusive creed, or to any
militant school. We hold on, obstinate if somewhat hopeless, to
toleration, to a general unwillingness to let go any substantive element
in human nature. We feel that Theology has much that all the
evolutionists and materialists cannot give us ; and that they can never,
in fact, take away. On the other hand, we feel that science has swept
round the intellectual bases of theology till they are crumbling in
mere impotence : useless, solitary relics. So too we feel that our
modern industrial life has a great deal that is very cruel, and yet a
great deal that is quite indispensable. Let us face the facts. Re-
ligion, Industry, Morality, Science, do not work hand in hand to-
gether ; indeed they often work at cross purposes, each ignoring the
other. And yet this age has not lost its faith in any one of these. Is
it not plain that the want of this age is that which can reconcile
them, some common term which can express them all ?

In how different a spirit from this spirit of comprehension and
harmony, do all the old theological creeds address themselves to the
questions of the soul ! Catholic and Protestant, Trinitarian and Uni-
tarian, Calvinist, Jesuit, Patristic, or Evangelical — all these extol and
magnify one epoch of human history : they idealise one personage, use
one book, or parts of one literature : the Bible, Jesus of Nazareth, the
Testament, the Fathers, the great masters of theology ; epochs, books,
and men no doubt of great and rare nobility, but still the outcome
of one corner of the world's history, of one very special type of
spiritual nature. From all the rest of human story, the rich and
glorious roll of man's conquest over nature and his progress in know-

528 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

ledge and worth, from all this they turn with a frown or a sigh. To
all the theological creeds, the earlier systems of life as well as all later
phases of development are naught — vanity, the corruption of nature ;
if not devilish and worldly, full of self-glory and self-indulgence ; at
most, blind stumbling in the dark, wasted life ; so that even to Dante
the sublimest heroes and geniuses were all lost souls, sadly conscious
that the best was not for them. Theology is bound to pass by in
disdain or silence all that was great and beautiful in the vast ages
which believed in many (rods ; the Polytheisms and the Theocracies ;
the heroic growth of Rome, the thought and grace of Hellas, the com-
plex civilisation of Egypt ; all that the Assyrian, Persian, Indian, or
Chinese teachers and prophets ever gave to the countless myriads who
rose into civilised life beneath their care.

All this theology is bound, as theology, to ignore, if not to con-
demn. It stands outside the worship, or the teaching, or the revela-
tion of the one true God of Theology, and it has to be passed by in
silence. Who ever heard a Christian divine preach on the work
of Aristotle, or Confucius, of Pheidias, or Julius Caasar; tell the
great drama of man's moral regeneration as it is rehearsed in the
paintings on Egyptian tombs ; or take, as his text, the high morality
that stands, ' foursquare, without flaw,' in the work of Confucius ?
4 My kingdom is not of this world,' said the head of his Church, and
the modern divine is driven to strange shifts when he is asked, under
what dispensation these great things were done and said. His sacred
books tell him nothing of it. It was no god of his in whose name
they were done !

This onesidedness, this blindness to all but a favourite corner of
human life, are not at all pecidiar to Christian schools, or to theo-
logians ; to the orthodox, and the pietists. All the purely revolutionary
schools, whether they issue from a materialistic or from metaphysical
types of free- thought, are even more onesided, more blind to all but the
one phase of human nature, or of history, that they select. They
speak of modern progress and enlightenment as an all-sufficient and
conclusive ideal. Progress in their mouths does not mean the curve
which is being traced in the entire course of man's civilisation. It
simply means the next step onward in continuation of the last step
taken in the generation preceding. Evolution, as they understand
it, means complete indifference to any distant past, or any past at
all that is not closely akin to the present. In their eyes, the in-
tellectual and moral forces of man that are active amongst us to-day,
stand for the whole of human nature, and the demands of a scientific
and productive age become the whole duty of man. The 'Dark
Ages ' with their genius for beauty, their passionate self-devotion,
their strength in obedience, fellowship, discipline, are to these modern
evolutionists a cause of offence, a shameful blot in man's history,
best quited with disdain.

1880. THE CREEDS— OLD AND NEW. 529

We thus stand, on the one side, with a retrograde theology, which
seeks to force us back upon a petty and partial conception of man's
nature, by the light of one epoch, marvellous indeed, but most ex-
ceptional, in spite of all the facts, against our riper knowledge and
larger hopes ; on the other side, with a revolutionary and self-con-
tained criticism, which is ready to solve every social and every
spiritual problem out of its own head, treating the vast series of
phases in civilisation as waste paper ; and between the two the con-
tinuity in human life, its oneness, is lost sight of.

Positivism is simply the attempt to deal with the great problems
of life, religious and social, intellectual, moral, and practical, by a
scientific use of this continuity ; by the light, that is, of all the
essential characteristics of human civilisation. Whether it makes a
truly scientific use of this continuity is a simple matter of science, or
rather of philosophy. But it certainly recalls us to the true problem.
In talking of devotion, of man's Soul, and God's goodness, and in
ending there, Theology does not put before us the true problem, not
the whole of the problem, or anything like it. Neither does Free-
thought state for us the true problem, when it expatiates on Progress,
Enlightenment, Truth, and stops there. Religion, as understood
by Theology, and Truth, as expounded by Free-thought, are far too
narrow for the purpose we need. What this age wants, what the
deeper hearts are silently and sadly yearning for, is this — a key to
man's whole life, complete being, entire history. Godliness, Truth,
Progress, Science, even if they were all that their apostles boast for
them, after all coincide with but corners of life, fractions of the past
and of the future.

It needs no proof, it is in the air of the age wherein we breathe, that
the Religion, the Philosophy, or system of life we now need (the
only religion or system worth consideration at all), must be a religion
and a philosophy that can give a complete account of the entire Past,
so as to shape the institutions of the Future on a methodical survey
of the whole of man's manifold capacities and forces. Thus a rational
conception of the course of civilisation, as a whole, takes the place
that Revelation used to hold in the fictitious methods. History, a
complete history, of man, whether in times called technically pre-
historic, or in times purely historic, is our Bible ; not that it is
sufficient in itself without Philosophy, without Psychology, without
Religion. But History is the immediate basis on which every real
human Synthesis must be built. And then Religion, instead of
being a hypothesis, vaguely offering itself to one rather undefined
emotion, will be the definite scheme of life, of belief, and feeling,
which concentrates man's nature on man's normal work. The weak
side of the orthodox religion is that it has really very little religion
in it ; just as Free-thought leaves the larger part of the matter
quite untouched. It would be as great a mockery to ask Free-
VOL. VIII.— No. 44. 0 0

530 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

thought how it proposed to make a great statesman or a good
mother, as to ask of Theology its views on political economy, or the
co-ordination of the sciences.

When we said that history is to be regarded as the human Bible,
we do not mean by history such a set arrangement of epochs as may
serve for a college examination. History means the entire story of
the race on this planet, wherever and however traceable. Now, with-
out going back to the vague guesses of geologic fancy, we may say,
in all soberness and certainty, that mankind has lived and advanced
onwards on this earth twenty, thirty, it may be fifty, thousand years ;
to put out of sight the infinite series of pre-human types so precisely
known to some eminent professors of Evolution. At the very lowest
we may take one hundred centuries of distinct history, and we should
not be assuming much if we put it as high as two hundred centuries.
. Even if the planet is destined to collapse or to freeze, in some geologic
period of time (and it makes no real matter to anybody if this be so
or not) we may fairly count on another . hundred or two hundred
centuries in the future. This is, at least, enough for any practical
purpose. To be busy about more is morbid, artificial, and unmanly
dreaming. But we cannot properly confine our view of man to less
than the full range of human history. It is an obvious paradox to
suppose that the one hundred centuries of the Past are- adequately
represented to us by the few ages of Monotheism, some two or three
centuries at its full light, some ten or twelve if we take it at its
utmost over part of Europe. It would be a still greater paradox if
•we thought that these ages of Monotheism, with their absolute creed
and final revelation, could suffice to be the measure of the centuries
yet to follow. Nor were it less narrow to suppose that these untold
-ages yet to come were to be cribbed and cabined within the bounds
of the two or three centuries of modern revolution, of scientific
criticism, free-thought, and general anarchy of ideas. To the larger
vision of the twenty-ninth century the ideas of the nineteenth, or the
ideas of the eighteenth, century will seem as dim and petty as do
those of the eighth or the ninth century to the men of to-day. Man
can only be seen as man when we look at him in the light of one
hundred centuries at least, and as he is found, or as he once existed
in all parts of this planet. In vain would the egoism of Free-
thought, or the Pharisaism of Theology, stunt our race to the limits
of a few generations in one corner of the earth.

The first condition of a rational conception of the whole career of
humanity is to remember that even a great movement or epoch is but
an episode in one continuous life, an episode hardly intelligible by
itself. Looking at man from the earliest germs of his social existence
till to-day, and over all parts of the planet, even Catholicism or
Christianity itself forms but one act in the drama. The great
Revolution of the last hundred years is a crisis. Any of these form

1880. THE CREEDS— OLD AND NEW. 531

but years, memorable years it is true, in the long life of man. In all
soberness we may apply to humanity the lyrical exclamation of the
Psalmist — ' In thy sight a thousand years are but as yesterday ! '

What is commonly called modern history is only the record of
a great disturbance or great upheaval in human history — a compara-
tively brief period of struggle, destruction, experiment. There is
nothing in these later centuries of the systematic and symmetrical
character which we feel to belong to the rational normal type — to
our ideal for the future. We are forbidden from taking the one or
two centuries of the immediate past as the last word of humanity
by their discordant and stormy nature, as completely as the earliest
ages are disqualified by their infantile and rudimentary character.
This argument holds equally good, whether it be addressed to the
older orthodoxy or to the modern Free-thought. But, whilst both
claim the right to direct man by what is a mere fragment of man's
past life and full nature, the last has a special character of the pro-
visional and transitional. It is impossible to found anything perma-
nent and normal on a movement which is marked by combat and
experiment.

In all the preceding epochs the Zeit-Greist showed a more or less
congruous arrangement of human life as a whole. There was a
certain harmony and relation of parts about everything that men did
and thought. Life in each great epoch had its distinct unity, flowing
from definite opinions, fixed types of duty, and dominant objects of
hope and desire. Feudalism and Catholicism in the time of the
Crusades made up a distinct organisation of society and human life.
From the close of the Koman Empire to the close of the Crusades the
whole of Western Europe accepted a type of human life, both religious
and practical, in Church as well as in State, resting on definite prin-
ciples, on certain dogmas, on common habits, the whole forming a
perfectly homogeneous and unique type. There was a definite code
of manners and of duty, a philosophy, a religion ; habits, institutions,
science, education, and industry, all in harmony, resting on the same
central truths and one universal sentiment. There was enormous
variety and infinite individuality, but society made up a clear whole.
Human life was a work of art for some eight or ten centuries.

Under Polytheism this unity of life was quite as visible, even
more visible. The Eoman political scheme in its maturity and
strength was a fixed form of society, with gods and magistrates,
orders, duties, ideas, work, and customs, all of a piece, such as, with
its faults and defects, made the great Eoman so strong and imposing
a figure. The same is true of the Hellenic type, different as that
was. Thought, culture, art, freedom, civic unity, and individual de-
velopment, were all marked in clear lines, and formed a homogeneous
social existence, under the influence of a religion that was really more
pervading than ever was Catholicism. Large parts of Feudalism

o o 2

532 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

always held aloof from Catholicism (as we learn from the Troubadours,
Roger Bacon, the Templars, and others), whilst no Hellene was ever
at war with Hellenic religion, or sought to shake himself free from
its general influences.

The great Theocracies of Egypt and of Asia were obviously types
of society even more complete and definite. They were only too
strictly organised. Life under them became rigid and enslaved. In
the other phases of civilisation a unity of colour was given to society
hardly less distinct, without at all destroying individual energy.

The vast pre-historic ages were not externally so systematic as
any of the great epochs of Polytheism or Monotheism, but they were
quite as much homogeneous. Man under Fetichism in the past, lived,
as we find him living in the savage state to-day, a life that, however
ignoble and rudimentary, was a life of a definite kind, coloured and
moved by a set of ruling ideas, which were easily reconciled with each
other, and with his existence, and which were within certain limits
quite permanent and stable.

Here we have, down to the last two or three hundred years, a
period of some forty or fifty centuries of recorded history : we have at
least enormous periods of ascertainable movement, which was all
parcelled out amongst five or six successive types of civilised life,
every one of them as they succeeded each other presenting an organic
unity ; a system of thought, a code of life, institutions, and religion;
mutually dependent on the one hand ; on the other hand, very pro-
longed, and if not permanent, regarded as permanent.

Pass to the last two or three centuries in the West of Europe — for
we speak of that alone when we think of Modern Progress — and we
have a story of perpetual change, conflict, transformation, and new
growth. No doctrine is treated as final, no institution is accepted
without question ; ideas, governments, churches, manners, are all in
perpetual chaos, dissolution, and struggle.

It is a period of wonderful energy, vital with freedom, of manifold
resource, of knowledge, of hope, of sympathy, of boldness, rich with a
creative power previously undreamed of in human nature. No one
of us would undervalue his birthright as a son of the nineteenth
century, nor will any reasonable man feel any confidence that the
work to be done could have been done otherwise. Still the fact is
not to be got rid of. The last two or three centuries, and certainly
the last century, show us a time of combat, anarchy, experiment.
Nothing rests in acknowledged rule. Parties, churches, creeds,
philosophies, loudly deny each other the very foundation of their
existence. Civilisation seems flung into the melting pot to come out
in some fresh mould. Marriage, Government, Society, Property, are
all treated as open questions. A brilliant man of science tells us that
Christianity has been a physical disease which has afflicted mankind
for many centuries. And women want to turn themselves into weak
men.

1880. THE CREEDS— OLD AND NEW. 533

Can it be that this chaos of ideas is the permanent phase of human
nature ? Can this be the last word of history ? Is it possible even
that this modern era of heterogeneous eS'ort is the natural basis and
measure of man's future? It cannot be so. This is neither the
normal state of man, nor is it the sole state of man that has to be
considered before the normal state is reached.

Now all the schools or parties who with us reject the religious and
the social organisations of the past — Theology, and Feudalism, and all
their survivals and imitations — all assume that this disparate and dis-
gregate condition of modern society, the absence of plan, creed, or
organisation, is the natural and permanent form of human life. And
all their efforts to improve the present are either founded on the
present, or look to the present, or assume that the Europe of to-day
is all that our descendants will have to consider. So far as they pro-
pound any system of religion at all, or any system of society at all, it
is a regime to be started quite de novo, constructed a priori, on
general considerations of human expediency, as understood by a
materialist or a democrat in the nineteenth century. But the far
larger part of such reasoners object to the very name or thought of
Religion or System ; and they ask nothing better than that man in
the future be left to his own good sense, and to the progress of science,
without any scheme of thought or faith whatever, and without any
regard for the past at all.

Here is the point at which Auguste Comte joins issue with all the
revolutionary schools of Free-thought and Materialism. Here is the
point at which the scientific and democratic schools so often break off
from his lead with reproaches. This again is the side on which he so
deeply touches the heart of all true conservatives, and rejoins the
ancient stream of religious tendency. Positivism treats the modern
•condition of things, this energetic disorganisation of life and society —
as a grand and profound revolution — charged with hope, and full of
meaning, the indispensable preparation for the future ; but still as a
revolution, a stage, a transition, not the normal phase of man. To
us, this revolution, in so far as it is a destruction and a conflict, is ab-
normal ; in so far as it is a new birth, it is full of promise. But the
anarchy, the disparity of it, are to us the disease ; not the Christianity,
from the collapse of which it is the inevitable issue. And if we look
on this birth struggle with joy and trust, we recognise the peril of the
hour ; only we make protest against the thought that the travail and
the spasms which attend the new birth of the Man that is to be, are
themselves the life that mankind has looked for so earnestly and so
long.

When this is said, for the most part the reformer, brimful of
what he calls science, or it may be free-thought, or possibly
democracy, will hear no more. That is enough for him, and he goes
forth muttering about reaction, obscurantism, and a return to Papal

534 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

domination of mind. But of those who are more ready to listen with
open minds, one may fairly ask that this far-reaching postulate of all
human society at least be regarded as an open question, whether man
is naturally destined to have no systematic life at all ? What is the
nature of the proof for the dogma, that a synthesis, i.e. an organic
co-ordination of man's general ideas and activities, is an effete and
pernicious superstition ? Why is it so certain that man is organi-
cally constructed to live by Free-thought alone, by the happy-go-lucky
plan, without a system of ideas, or organised institutions, a religion
and a common Eule of Life ?

No fair mind can blind itself to this, that unity of ideas, com-
munity of work, never can result amongst the children of men by
the fortuitous concourse of human minds and wills. It will not come
about spontaneously, by each going his own way, without regard for
his neighbours' actions or his neighbours' opinions. If there is to be a
consolidation of co-operation in the efforts of mankind, that will have
to be prepared by deliberate and conscious agreement. Again, to talk
of science, enlightenment and the like, solving all human difficulties
is an idle sophism. The multitude of detached researches on infinite
physical problems, the encyclopaedia of special inquiries into Nature,
which calls itself science, is as powerless to ensure man a complete
and worthy life, as chemistry would be powerless to guarantee the con-
ditions of a happy nfarriage, or of a great Epic poem. To speak of
leaving human life to Freedom, or to Science, or to Progress, is to
talk of leaving human life to itself. It is conceivable that this may
be right and proper ; but by what law does it follow that this implies
no Eeligion, no Philosophy, no System ? Keligions, philosophies,
systems, such as in ten thousand years Man has attempted, have all
(as we acknowledge) failed. It is more reasonable to suppose, that
they failed because they were incomplete, rather than that nothing of
the kind was ever wanted at all.

When we steadily face the great critical and destructive move-
ment of the last hundred years or so, we see that, so far from its being
a normal state of society, it everywhere leads us, if pushed to its
logical conclusion, on to the confines of a new construction. Negation
disappears in the positive convictions for which negation has given
the room to develope. Political freedom, the growth of Science, and
the rejection of figments, logically issue in a complete reorganisation
of life and thought. The political admission of the people to govern-
ment ought not to stop there. Democracy is not the last word of
political Science. Democracy needs its rational institutions and
competent machinery as much as any monarchy ever did. And- the
enfranchisement of the people is only half accomplished whilst it stops
short at Democracy, whilst it hesitates to take the final step, which is
— a government of personal competence directed by a social and
popular impulse — a true sociocracy — the meaning of which is a skilled

1880. THE CREEDS— OLD AND NEW. 535

government in the highest interest of human society as a whole, pre-
sent and to come.

So too the growth of Science is quite imperfect, almost rudi-
mentary, whilst * Science,' popularly so called, means knowledge of
physical truths, of Nature — not of Man and Man's Society and Soul ;
whilst 'men of science' is supposed to mean physicists and biologists.
Science will not have its true sense, until it implies the entire Science
of Man, man as a moral, intellectual, practical being as well as a
material organism. But the full development of the Science of Man
would necessarily react upon the cosmical Sciences and lead to the
complete reconstitution of the Sciences from the point of view of Man
and of Society.

So, too, the criticism of Theology, of Catholicism, or Protestantism,
or Deism, has not half done its work, whilst it still continues to
criticise, to object, to ridicule. It must be carried out till criticism
disappears in the extinction of all its subjects, and we find ourselves
with minds so free from unreal beliefs, that all the enthusiasm and
the passion that they once inspired can be naturally lavished on the
real beliefs.

That which to-day is the salt of the earth, little as we often know
it, or are willing to acknowledge it ; that profound and all-pervading
regard for humanity, whereby we remain in this chaos of all fixed
beliefs, moral, sympathetic, full of hope, reverential towards all good
things that have been, are, or are to be ; that unconscious dumb re-
gard for Humanity, has yet to be expanded, purified, and kindled into
passion till it grows to be the religious inspiration of the future, and
we see the Humanity so familiar to our daily thoughts swell to the
height of the abiding Providence of mankind.

Carry out the long course of evolution boldly, consistently to its
natural end, and it will issue in a new and full reorganisation of life
and thought. It would be a shallow thought, indeed, to suppose that
the very act of evolution itself is the end towards which it is bearing
us, that the normal and permanent task of man is to labour at
the clearing his domain of debris, to ridicule and destroy his former
hopes and faiths, or to pile up never-ending masses of cosmical obser-
vations. When we compare the brief span of this era of destruction or
this era of specialism with the whole story of Man, how small is it in
actual duration, and how unlovely does much of it look.

What mankind is really looking for and working towards is this :
a Synthesis, i.e. a combining theory applicable to the Past as much
as to the Future — a human synthesis, that is, a theory to explain
whatever belongs to man, and from man's point of view, not the
point of view of an hypothetic Universe, or a possible First Principle.
We want something real, practical, rational, complete, and we have
offered to us only the incomplete.

HUMANISM. — There is a fashion now, towards the close of the

536 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

nineteenth century, as there was a fashion at the close of the fifteenth,
and indeed in part all through the sixteenth century, to fall back on
a vague and rather flimsy Humanism, as a mere spontaneous outlet
from the pressure of defective creeds. This Humanism is indeed far
the most human, and also the most general of all the solutions offered.
Its weakness is that it is cloudy, capricious and impotent ; without
fixed ideas, or moral principles, or power of action. Beautiful, sym-
pathetic, full of genius, full of humanity, as it is in its nobler forms —
this old Humanism (which some now call culture) has the rot in its
heart. In the fifteenth century it began as an artistic and poetic
movement, and we often call it Renaissance. But Renaissance is too
technical a term, limited in common use to art and artistic thought.
We need a general name for that spontaneous falling back on Nature
and on human nature, and on man's pre-Catholic life, which rose out
of the weariness men felt for the Catholicism of the fifteenth century,
so soon as they had got free from the chains of the preceding ages.
The best term for it is Humanism. There was, in truth, a glorious
reaching forth of human nature towards Humanity, which was
heralded by Boccaccio and Chaucer, even by Dante and Giotto, which
became systematic and conscious in Italy in the fifteenth century,
and which took such a world of exquisite forms in France and in
England in the sixteenth century. This uprising of the human spirit
in the joy of its freedom, with its instinctive return towards the
brightness of Hellas, with all the consciousness of its human power,
and its passion for reality, for light, for truth, gave us Brunelleschi
and Alberti, Leonardo and Michael Angelo ; it found an intense type
in Rabelais — with his wild repudiation of all creeds, religious or
social ; it plays with a lambent lightning in Shakspeare and Cervantes,
in Calderon and in Moliere, and even in Milton and Bacon. This
Humanism of the Renascence (of which we see a pale reflection in
the Culture of to-day) was an unsystematic anticipation, a premature
vision of the fully accomplished Humanity that is to be. But even
in its glorious youth, such as Politian, and Leonardo, and Shakspeare
saw it (and still more in its anaemic revival as Culture) it wants solid
backbone. It trifles with Philosophy ; it has an instinctive horror
of Religion ; it dreads discipline ; it has no moral stamina ; it passes
easily by mere sympathetic weakness, or mere cultivated indolence,
into scepticism, impotent incapacity to come to a decision, and thence
on to effeminacy, grossness, unnatural passion or ignoble dreaming.
It always had in its best day a weak side for the beast in man, as well
as for the hero.

This Humanism, with all its breadth, its sympathies, its goodwill,
is a rotten thing, wholly unable to secure for itself even intellectual
emancipation from the dominant superstitions, much less to secure for
society a larger share of social well-being, an end, in truth, for which
it never troubles itself. To-day, as it charmed the poets and artiste

1880. THE CREEDS— OLD AND NEW. 537

at the birth of the modern world, this Humanism charms us, too, for
a moment, by its genius and grace, and many-sided feeling. But
strong men soon weary of it. Its inward hollowness grows
shameful, ludicrous, loathsome to us. And we see to-day Culture,
which began again at the Kevolution with Diderot and Groethe a
hundred years ago, and which has given us some exquisite works of
genius and of feeling, now dying away into mere simpering about
Art, about Philosophy, nay simpering about Religion, with its un-
manly whinings and feminine eagerness about the very fringes of
human life, the furniture of our rooms, or the cut of our clothes.
This toy Humanism as little represents Humanity as the Hermaphro-
dite of the Louvre resembles a man of the heroic type.

PROTESTANTISM. — The failure of Humanism threw men back
in the sixteenth century on Protestantism, on a partial reformation
of the Catholic system. We have no such phenomenon now. Pro-
testantism never returns, never revives. Catholicism, Humanism,
Pantheism, Metaphysics return, and are restored for a while in new
forms. Protestantism falls like Lucifer. It has no after-glow, no
resurrection. We would not dispute the services of the great Pro-
testant leaders, or deny that their work was inevitable, nor decry the
spiritual beauty and the moral grandeur that are associated with the
personal story of the Protestant martyrs and founders. Historically
we can do justice to the great qualities and the terrible needs out of
which the Eeformation issued ; we may study with the deepest sym-
pathy the lives of its heroes. But apart from this we have nothing
to say of Protestantism and Protestants now. In a philosophical
survey of religions Protestantism no longer exists. It is not in the
field ; it is a mere historical expression ; it is no longer one of the
competing creeds any more than Judaism is, or Arianism. Amongst
the religious movements that claim the future of the world it has no
locus standi. It is the parasite of Catholicism, and it must perish
even before the final exhaustion of the system which it has helped
to kill. ' Protestantism has now nothing that Catholicism has not
got in far larger measure, and it has deliberately rejected very much
of value that Catholicism has. Every Protestant hero, or book, or
achievement could be easily matched by ten better from the Catholic
record. Where is the Protestant Imitation, or the Ada Sanctorum
and Ada Conciliorum ? Where are the Protestant St. Bernards and
Bossuets, St. Francis, Fra Angelicos, Fenelons, De Maistres ? Nay,
which is the Protestant Church amidst a thousand querulous sects ?

Our eyes are opened : and we now see that none of those pre-
tensions which are so shocking to us in Catholicism, the Saints and
the Virgin, the infallible authority of the Church, the demands it
makes on our credulity and our servility, are at all more shocking
than much that we find in the Protestant dogmas. Protestantism
has its supernatural powers quite as irrational, its authority of

538 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

Scripture even more idle than the authority of the Church, its
violations of sense, and history, and human nature quite as enormous.
And with all this it has rooted out of Christianity almost everything
that was left to it of beautiful, sympathetic, human, and social —
substituting for it all fierce, dry disputatious formulas.

It is necessary to be a Protestant, actually to believe in the
Protestant doctrines, in order to see anything valuable at all in
Protestantism. A pure materialist will have to admit that the Catholic
Church has had, and even has, a great place in the story of civilisation.
But the moment you abandon the creed of Protestantism it seems to
have no claims, no raison d'etre, hardly any history, certainly no
future. It is nothing but the servile worship of a Book, grotesquely
strained in interpretation. Read the Book like any other book, and
Protestantism becomes nothing but a shapeless pile of commentaries
on the Hebrew literature. It is neither a Church, nor a creed, nor a
religion. It is only a Targum, mechanically repeated by contending
bands of Pharisees and Sadducees.

Socially it is even more powerless than Catholicism. As an in-
fluence to mediate between classes, or races, or institutions, it is
utterly null : it has nothing to offer or to say. It neither controls
the oppressor, nor cheers the oppressed, nor humanises the degraded.
Protestantism has nothing whatever to show at all to be compared
with what Catholicism has done for Poland and for Ireland, for the
peasant of Brittany and Castille, of Tyrol and Savoy. On the other
hand, it is a dividing, anti-social, dehumanising influence. Wherever
it appears the power of the Mother and of the Woman, the perpetuity
of Marriage, generosity towards the weak, diminish. Its triumphs
are towards Divorce, personal lawlessness, industrial selfishness. In
the name of Grod and the blood of Christ it everywhere teaches the
gospel of minding oneself, saving one's own soul, and in the mean-
time making the most of this world, the assimilation of woman to
man, the discarding of social impediments on free life and personal
irresponsibility. Protestantism, Dissent, are in themselves the watch-
words of an insurrection, and of an insurrection which adopts some
of the worst defects of the system it is breaking up. It founds
nothing, teaches nothing, regulates no one, unites none. It is a
school of verbal disputation : when its bible is gone it has nothing.
The Protestant volcano has loner been extinct. Notable as an

upheaval some ages ago, it is now dust and scoriae, and here and
there a few fumes from its buried fire. As a social movement
it is an anachronism. It is accordingly far less enduring, vital,
modifiable than is Catholicism. Can one read Bossuet on Variations
and not share in the scorn with which the Eagle of Meaux tears to
pieces the contradictions innate in the Protestant anarchy ?

It is as a social movement that I speak of Protestantism, viewing
it as related to the general progress of human society, as one of the

1880. THE CREEDS— OLD AND NEW. 539

great religions of the world. I do not forget all the heroism, the
purity, the long suffering, that have been nurtured on the sublime
and touching words of the Bible — how many strong men have drawn
from it the strength that nerved them in the battle of life, how many
loving hearts have rested on it in pain and death, and in pain and
death, in bereavement and in ruin, have found in it ecstatic peace.
But all this is not the exclusive prerogative of Protestantism, or even
of Biblical Christianity ; much less of Calvinism, or Methodism, of
Kirks, or Establishments. It is common to all forms of Christianity ;
to all off-shoots of Catholicism, whether Biblical or not ; nay, it is
common to all forms of Monotheism ; to Judaism, whether old or
new ; to the faith of Islam, which has produced myriads of heroes
and martyrs ; it is common to Deism, to the faith of Spinosa, or
Priestley, or Condorcet — nay, it is found in a yet more vivid type in
followers of Confucius and Bouddha. This intense power to control
the character and to chasten the emotions is found in every faith on
which the whole soul of the believer is passionately set. What egoism,
what feeble narrowness of self-complacency, is that, which can find
these sources of moral and spiritual force in the Protestant Bible alone,
which forgets all the heroism and the faith of the noble children of
the Koran, of the Bouddhist missionary, of the Confucian sage, of the
Hindoo widow — nay, why do we hesitate to speak of that French
Communard who, innocent of any act or thought of evil, was shot with
Vive VHumanite upon his lips ? In a general survey of the faiths
that have advanced civilisation, I speak of Protestantism as a social
and civilising institution. And I ask if England, if Scotland,
Holland, Sweden, Prussia, are to-day the better for their Lutheranism
and their Calvinism ? Are they, by virtue of this cry, ' Every man
his own Bible,' more pure, more sincere, more enlightened, more
happily ordered in their social system, more large-hearted in every
personal grace and duty, are they less arrogant, less grasping, less
tyrannical — more humane in a word — than their non- Protestant
neighbours, are they anything but richer, more ambitious, more
domineering ? And I, for one, say No,!

What answer has Protestantism, in any of its thousand varieties,
to all the terrible problems of our age, to the question of labour, of
destitution, of working classes, of hostile nationalities, of education, of
industry, of government, of social duty, of family duty, the relations
of parent and child, of husband and wife, young and old, employer
and employed. It has none, absolutely nothing, less than Catholicism
itself. It has nothing to offer us but the literature of a small and
peculiar tribe in Asia, artificial interpretations wrung from the words
of these miscellaneous old books, and after that an ecstatic but equally
artificial eagerness after what it calls our Personal Salvation, which
in its hollowness and its vagueness and its purely arbitrary adaptation
to the soul of the person in question, is in other words often a code
of mere selfishness.

540 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

JESUITISM. — If we come to a matter of Reformation, renewal of
Christian spirit, as distinct from Protestantism, which means assailing
the Church, the Catholic Reformation withiii the Church has been on
the whole quite worthy to compare with the Protestant Reformation
outside the Church. In some respects it was greatly superior, and
was constructive, not combative, a social movement, not a metaphysi-
cal dispute. But it soon passed into Jesuitism, and into Jesuitism it
has been almost wholly absorbed. For Jesuitism, in its early forms,
as conceived by the heroic souls and the social devotion of Loyola and
Xavier, there was no doubt much to be said if Christianity were
worth maintaining. The first Jesuits felt that if Catholicism were
to survive the shock of the modern world, the institutions of Catholi-
cism, and especially the Papacy and the hierarchic organisation, must
be preserved. And the ever-deepening difficulties of the task they
had undertaken drove them deeper and deeper to unscrupulous use of
their resources. At last Jesuitism ended in the form wherein we now
know it, one which has awakened abhorrence so general and so
genuine. To save the institutions became the first and soon the only
religious duty. The Church, or rather the Papacy and the hierarchy,
took the place of (rod, Christ, Virgin and heaven. Whatever made
for the Institution was absolutely good ; whatever made against it
utterly evil. Jesuitism, in fact, has not only ceased to be religion,
but even to trouble itself about religion ; it is a faction fight for a
special institution — a fight a outrance, without mercy or scruple.
Now, as Comte has truly said, the Roman Communion has forfeited
the title of Catholic. It ought not to be called any longer Catholi-
cism. Its proper name is Jesuitry. Its whole real force is given to
the task of which Loyola was the apostle, crying day and night, ' Save
the institution and the organisation.' The one thought of Rome now
is to save the Institution. All direct social purpose, every religious
•duty, piety, the imitation of Christ, the improvement of man, are like
to be absorbed in the frantic struggle to preserve the machine.

DEISM. — But both in Catholic and in Protestant nations for two
centuries Christianity has been gradually dwindling down into some
convenient form of Deism. The Deism of Socinus began as a mere
metaphysical variation of Protestantism. Thence it passed through
the philosophical schools of Spinoza and Descartes to the vague and
floating theory of Voltaire and Rousseau, or the hard logical theses of
the English Unitarian, then to the wordy shadow of a creed, the Theism
of our day. Now when Christianity, whether Catholic or Protestant,
begins to explain itself away into a simple Deism, it is ceasing to be
•Christianity, ceasing to be a religion at all. Deism is not religion ;
it is a form of metaphysics. It is no more a religion than the nebular
hypothesis of the universe is a religion, or Mr. Herbert Spencer's
Unknowable. To have a vague hypothesis not easily reduced to words,
a cosmogony, or ttheory of the way the world began, is certainly not

1880. THE CREEDS— OLD AND NEW. 541

to have a religion. Any man now calls himself a Theist who thinks
that on a balance of probabilities, as a philosophical problem, there is
reason to assume that the Universe had some kind of First Cause. A
decided Theist goes so far as to think that this First Cause may be
properly described as a ' Person.' But what then ? Is this to have a
religion, a scheme of life and duty, and supreme end ? In what
sense this First Cause is a ' Person,' with what kind of qualities en-
dowed, how formed, how related to man, demanding what of man, all
this is left perfectly vague. The Theist pressed on this point has
little but hypotheses to offer, mysterious and really unthinkable
epithets, such as Infinite, Omniscient, Incomprehensible, and the like.
Each individual Theist has to determine for himself what sort of at-
tributes this First Cause has ; and he usually keeps his fancies to
himself. He has nothing to go by but shadowy analogies. Every
step he takes is a new analogy, based on a former analogy ; and he~is
conscious that each new hypothesis presents a series of difficulties to
the minds of other men, and often to his own. No reasoning about
these attributes is possible except a priori ; there is no experience,
no datum, no scientific or proved ground of any kind, nothing but
hypotheses based on hypotheses, cloud piled on cloud. And then,
subtle minds, like those of Mr. Matthew Arnold or of Mr. Mark
Pattison, frankly acknowledging the difficulties which beset any
given type of Personality, retire into remote regions of impalpable
phrases, and talk about ' the Eternal (not ourselves) that makes for
righteousness,' and the idea of God being ' defecated to a pure trans-
parency.' All this is mere words. It will hallow no life, and en-
lighten no spirit. Let who will, be it in piety or utter bewilderment,
or mere wish to say something, erect altars to the Unknown (rod. It
may be a graceful thing to do ; it may be a soothing relief to the
feelings. But let no man imagine that it is in any sense to have a
religion. To have a religion resting on the belief in Grod, you must
have a deep sense of the reality of His being, an inward consciousness
that you can understand His will, and can rest in peace and love upon
His heart. A grand Perhaps is not Grod ; to dogmatise about the
Infinite, to guess, to doubt, to fear, to hope there is a future life —
this is not to have a religion whereby to live and die.

I am not maintaining the contrary to any theistic hypothesis^
I will not deny that this is a plausible hypothesis, if hypothesis there
is to be. But I insist that, true or false, it is a mere problem in
metaphysics — a suggestion in cosmogony, not a religion. It is an
answer to a certain philosophical puzzle ; but what follows then ?
The first and last business of religion is to inspire men and women
with a desire to do their duty, to show them what their duty is, to
hold out a common end, which harmonises and sanctifies their efforts
towards duty, and knits them together in close bonds as they struggle
onwards towards it. That is religion. It explains Man to himself and

542 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

to the World, and on that explanation it inculcates his duty. Does the
mere idea that a First Cause is more probable than not inspire men
and women with a sense of duty, teach them their duty, sustain their
flagging hearts in the search for it ? How are they to know what
the First Cause would have them do ? By what sacrifices is he
gratified ? What is worship to be ? They think that He (if He be
a term they may use) — they think He must be good and must intend
good. But ask them what the First Cause would have them do in
the education of their children, in the matter of the relative functions
of men and women, as to prayer, as to social duty. Ask them as to
the origin of moral evil, the sense of sin in man's heart, the conflict
of self and notself within us ; what is the relation of the First Cause
to these things, its ordinance thereon ? Ah ! there all is mystery ;
mere hypotheses, perplexity, infinite disputes, pious hopes, optimist
ejaculations, or sensible worldly morality that we could equally well
work out with or without a First Cause. But these middle axioms
or lower generalisations are what we need in order to see how to live.
Polytheism, Christianity, Confucianism, Bouddhism, the Koran, have
all definite rules to give about these things, and by virtue thereof
they are forms of religion. Theism, which has nothing to say about
them, is merely a metaphysical dogma. That it is a metaphysical
dogma about the origin of the world may give it some point of
contact with religion ; but a great deal more is necessary before this
dogma can itself be called a religion.

I have been speaking of Theism in that intangible, impalpable,
hypothetical form in which we watch it in so many theological and
philosophical controversies, where it is found competing with the
dogma of Evolution and the like. But the theory of evolution is not
a religion, any more than the molecular theory of matter is a religion,
or the volcanic theory in geology, or the undulatory theory of light.
These are alVhypotheses about certain material phenomena, more or
less'scientific, more or less plausible ; but they are not religion, nor
the beginning of religion. An evolutionist is not one who necessarily
has any religion. Why need a Theist, as such, be one who has a
religion ? All that he does, qua Theist, is to answer a certain
cosmical problem in a certain way. Whether he can build a religion
on that answer, and what sort of religion it is that he builds, is a
totally different matter ; and this he very often keeps to himself.

NEO-THEISM. — No doubt there is a much more religious form
of Theism, such as we see it in the various neo-Christian schools,
whether in the adroit adaptations of Dr. Jowett and the eloquence
of Dr. Martineau, or in the non-Christian schools of New Theism
preached by Mr. Francis Newman and Mr. Charles Voysey. With all
of these, no doubt, their Theism stands for a positive belief in a
really active and guiding Providence ; and so far their Theism may
be said to enter into the confines of religion. But, since every one

1880. THE CREEDS— OLD AND NEW. 543

of these teachers distinctly discards anything in the shape of a special
revelation through any particular Church or any canonical books, their
Theism has only carried them to the confines of religion. For the
ways of their Providence (and it is this which constitutes the sub-
stance of religion) they are forced to resort to logic, history, analogy,
and probable moral reasoning. In other words, the Theism is not
their religion ; their views on religion, like their views on politics or
on art, are constructed out of mundane and rational materials.

So far as these teachers, in the collapse of orthodox dogma,
churches, and creeds, keep alive the idea of a spiritual faith under-
lying every act of our lives, so far as they maintain the great current
of religious tradition amongst mankind, we can look on them with
cordial sympathy and hearty respect. "We who can look on the
faiths which the world has outgrown without any irritation or
hostility are ever ready to acknowledge how great is the need of this.
For my part, I recognise to the full all that the world would have
lost had it never risen to what I am free to call the magnificent
conception of an Almighty, All Good, All Loving God. I have
known too well the fruits of that faith to speak of it with indifference
or coldness, much less with contempt. The dilemma which I seek
to emphasise is this : how is that conception to be made the basis of
a purely human and rational religion ? And, revelation apart, what
other religion are we to have, and whence is it to be found ?

This conception in itself is not religion : it is at most the
basis of the religion. To one of these schools or theologians, the
practical creed of human duty which they teach and profess is a per-
fectly human creed, built up out of observations of human nature,
just as Political Economy is built up. Ask them, how do they know
the will of God ? Ask them, how do they learn their duty to their
neighbour ? We are now speaking of the Theists who have practi-
cally abandoned Christianity, and have no revelation, Church, or
Bible, other than the revelations, Churches, and Bibles common to
the whole human race. When we ask them these questions, we find
that these so-called Theists get their real religion, i.e. their views about
duty as a personal and social problem, from mundane sources equally
open to us all, from history, from poetry, from science, from philo-
sophy, from the moralists. But these are exactly the sources from
which any Positivist draws his views of duty, or indeed any materi-
alist, or any atheist.

When Mr. Francis Newman addresses his fellow believers, he
takes a passage of Goethe, or of Shelley, or of Theodore Parker, or
of Mr. Carlyle, and he expatiates on that ; his appeal to duty rests
on human teachers, and on human grounds. But this is exactly
what we do, that is the course we follow. We declare in distinct
words that human religion must rest on human morality, and rational
philosophy and science. Now here comes in the great difference

544 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

between us. We say that this cannot be rationally and honestly con-
structed on any supernatural and hypothetical basis, or by limiting your
views to Theistic ideas and teaching. We frankly and consistently
accept all the great teachers of mankind — Theist, Polytheist, Fetichist,
or Atheist. We put our whole religious edifice on one uniform basis
of history and philosophy in the entire range of each. We adopt
the great heathen as well as the best Christian moralists ; we accept
not only the Bible, and David and Paul, but Aristotle and Antoninus,
Mahomet and Confucius, Hume and Diderot. We do not narrow
down our view of the great Past, nor of the great spiritual and reli-
gious movements of the Past, to the theological eras alone. We
take the whole of Man, the entire range of history, all the great
spirits and great brains of the race, all sides of life, the humour,
the fancy, the practical skill of Man, his power of thought and his
genius for command quite as much as his emotion of veneration and
devotion. We do not make a saint of St. Peter and St. Jude, and
leave out Shakspeare, Cervantes, Moli£re, and Mozart ; no, nor
Aristotle and Caesar, Gutenberg and Watt, Descartes and Bichat.
We take Man as he is, and history as we find it, and we seek to inter-
pret the whole on one uniform scientific method, as converging towards
one great result of human progress.

It seems to us that we should cruelly narrow and distort our con-
ceptions of human greatness and virtue, if we tried to do all this on
a theological basis, reducing it all to a simply devotional test. This
is no argument, it is true, to any sincere Christian, to any orthodox
theologian. He says at once that God has sent his servants and
finally his Son to tell us what to do,' and has written it down in cer-
tain books ; our business is to do that, and all the rest is naught.
The non-Christian Theist is in a very different position. He knows
nothing definite about God, not even his existence, except from his
own speculations, and from what is probable reasoning from analogy,
&c. His assertions about the will of God and the duty of Man, the
Divine purposes and the Future of the Soul, are avowedly derived
from rational and earthly logic. He is thus in 'this position, that
the entire scheme of religious doctrine has to be fitted on to a
bottom of a priori speculation, in fact on to an arbitrary assump-
tion that science can neither verify nor support, which is really the
product of each individual mind. Hence it is that we get that stamp
of perpetual flux and reflux, hesitation and contradiction, with want
of all scientific and positive character, which we find in the various
types of Theism.

Our objection to build up religion on this Theological postulate
is not that we reject it as demonstrably false — far from it ; but that
any creed of human duty which is interwoven with this, or any other
simple hypothesis, is necessarily deprived of any scientific and sys-
tematic character, and is necessarily imbued with an arbitrary and

1880. THE CREEDS— OLD AND NEW. 545

hypothetical nature. And such we see Theism to have ever been in
its long shifting history ; such we trace it in its phases from a Gospel
Deism into a mere light-of-nature Theism of assumptions and ana-
logies, a varied story beginning with the Protestant Unitarianism of
Socinus, and ending with the Eternal Not-ourselves of the nine-
teenth century, changing by a series of dissolving views from strict
Unitarianism to syllogistic Deism, and so on to moral and senti-
mental Theism, and all the cloudy metaphysics of its present ultimate
retreat. The history of Deism, or Theism, or Natural Religion, call
it what we will, has for three centuries been a story of surrender and
retreat. What has it settled, what has it taught, what fixed doctrines
has it ever established ?

ATHEISM. — The Deism of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-
turies led by an inevitable consequence to the Atheism of the eigh-
teenth century. It had, no doubt, been more or less latent far earlier.
It is difficult to believe that Boccaccio and Machiavelli, Montaigne
and Rabelais, Hobbes and Spinoza, had been Theists in any practical
sense. Beyond doubt some of the more daring intellects of the
Middle Ages, and certainly many in the Humanistic Eevival, were to
all intents and purposes silent or unconscious Atheists ; but Atheism
hardly took a distinct form until we come to the philosophers and
insurgents of the eighteenth century, in the persons of Diderot,
D'Holbach, Hebert, Chaumette, Desmoulins, and Danton.

Nothing ought to be called Atheism except the systematic attempt

first to disprove the existence of God, and then to take that disproof

s the basis of a theory of life. Where the main thing is taken to

be the denial, and not anything positive at all, there, unquestionably,

real Atheism exists.

But that a system of life, a philosophy, or a religion, has a basis
of its own, that basis not being theological, does not constitute such
a system Atheism. Bouddhism is Bouddhism, not Atheism ; Con-
fucianism is Confucianism, it is not Atheism; though to neither
system is any God known. All the kinds of religion of Fetichism,
ail forms of Nature-worship, Sun-worship, Star-worship, are entirely
without the idea of God ; but it would be ludicrous to call any of
these systems Atheism. The religion of Homer has nothing in it
remotely akin to our idea of God ; but how absurd would it be to
call Homer an Atheist ! And yet how absurd to call him a Theist,
because he believed in a capricious Zeus, a jealous Hera, and a frail
Aphrodite ?

Atheism is, obviously, not a form of religion. What confusion of
thought, then, does it imply to speak of any form of religion as
Atheism. Atheism is a particular phase of metaphysics, one solution
to a metaphysical problem. Just as the dogmatic assertion of a First
Cause is one phase of metaphysical logic, so the dogmatic assertion
that there is not, and never was, a First Cause, is another form of
VOL. VIII.— No. 44. P P

546 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

metaphysical logic. A certain school in the French Revolution,
Chaumette and Clootz, made this assertion. But it is only in the
present century that schools have appeared which take this assertion,
or rather this denial, as the basis and guarantee of rational thought,
and social independence. The Nihilists of Russia, the Social Demo-
crats of Germany, some of the French revolutionists of the ' red '
type, and many of our own schools of Free-thought do contain men
who honestly put forward ' the denial of God ' as the corner-stone of
rational human thought and activity.

What is the relation of Positivism to this form of belief ? It is
very plain. It is one of complete and uncompromising opposition.

Positivism entirely declines to accept the philosophical dogma in
question ; and it still more emphatically declines to sanction the
social consequences which are deduced from it, and for which it is used,
and it vehemently repudiates all the associations and consequences of
the doctrine.

Comte says that Atheism is the most illogical form of metaphysics,
by which he means, that Atheism first busies itself about a perfectly
undefinable and insoluble problem, and then gives us the least plausible
solution of that problem.

If we are to have a hypothesis of the origin of things, he says, the
hypothesis of Creation is somewhat less violently inconceivable than
the hypothesis of Chance. He says, that we can have no sound
hypothesis about any kind of origin, just as we can have no sound
hypothesis about the moral and intellectual nature of angels (if there
be angels). Evolution, it is obvious, gives no sort of answer to the
question of ultimate beginning, which it leaves entirely untouched.
Who ordained Evolution ; or who made the substance of which Evolu-
tion is the product ? If we must give some answer, we had better fall
back on some kind of human analogy, on anthropomorphism, however
imaginary, rather than on arithmetical formulae or molecular crudities.
When we come to the social uses in aid of which Atheism is
asserted, Positivism condemns, with a reprobation amounting almost
to horror, the scheme of men who seek to base their system of human
life on a logical puzzle, and a logical puzzle which would root out
sentiments and hopes that have so long held together and ennobled
human life. The complaint that Positivism brings against Theology
in its later forms is this — that Theology has starved Religion into a
corner of life, and reduced it to little more than a dogma and a hope.
The complaint that Positivism makes against Atheism is a far more
serious one. It is that it seeks systematically to uproot the very
notion of religion, to make religion impossible, whilst trying to base
human life, not on a dogma and a hope, but on a denial and a
sneer.

Nothing positive, nothing that seeks to enlarge the sphere of Re-
ligion, no system that extends to indefinite regions the horizon of

1880. THE CREEDS— OLD AND NEW. 547

Veneration, Devotion, Belief, Worship, can by any reasonable and
candid person be held to partake of the nature of Atheism. Atheism
is to Theology, what Protestantism is to Catholicism. Just as it would
be irrational to call Positivists Protestants, because they do not accept
the Catholic doctrines, so it would be irrational to call them Atheists,
because they do not accept the philosophical basis of Theology. And,
as it would be extravagant to speak of Positivism as Protestant, inas-
much as whilst rejecting the dogmas it perpetuates much of the moral
and social spirit of Catholicism, and at the same time repudiates the
social and personal spirit of Protestantism, so it would be even more
witless to speak of Positivism as Atheism, inasmuch as whilst reject-
ing the dogmas of Theology, Positivists seek to develop so much of
the religious temper of Theology, and so emphatically repudiate the
anti-religious temper of Atheism.

POSITIVE SCIENCE. — Thus, one after another, the orthodoxies
and the heterodoxies alike all fail by being partial. They do not ex-
plain the Past as a whole ; they do not appeal to all sides of human
nature. In the midst of this long era of failure and decay of all the
creeds, the one thing that has been steadily advancing and conquering
new realms is science and positive knowledge. But does this vast
body of solid result itself pretend to take the place of the creeds which
it silently undermines — is science religion, or as good as religion, or
even a patent substitute for religion ?

As we said at the outset, the whole history of the Past, the deepest
aspirations of our nature reject such a thought. Man has never been
great and strong, save when he has had a synthesis, a systematic re-
ligion or code of life within his soul, and man never will be great or
strong without it. Modern science, with all its achievements, is an
inorganic mass of discoveries mainly about things physical, standing
aloof from any devotional character or moral aim. The void which
the theologies and the metaphysics have in vain attempted to fill, is
not supplied by science in its actual form ; nor indeed does science
pretend to such a function.

Modern Science, even modern philosophy, has everywhere had a
specialist, dispersive, critical character ; it has limited itself to mental
enlightenment and has repudiated alike all social authority and social
discipline. As the old theological bonds grew weaker and weaker, as
the idea of a Central Power to which human thought and activity
could be referred, faded out of men's minds, the thirst for special
research grew stronger, the abhorrence of synthesis, of social purpose,
or central unity, grew deeper. The result was dispersion, individual
caprice, narrowness in scientific inquiry, until modern Science showed
signs of losing even its vitality and its usefulness, and in danger of
ending some day in a confused mass of physical details and grandiose
futilities about the origin of all things. Science in fact had never
entered on its true duty, till it undertook the practical science of

p r 2

548 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

human life. The claims to supremacy it made as the guide of our
mental progress were ridiculous till it fulfilled this duty. And the
very claims it advanced revolt the great social and religious spirits
who know what society and religion are.

The real function of Science is to explain and guide human life.
But this is a function which Science has yet to perform. The con-
ception of Sociology, or the scientific treatment of the laws of man's
nature and history, dawned upon the intelligence of the eighteenth
century; it was faintly outlined by Condorcet, loosely planned by Montes-
quieu, and exactly, but very partially worked out by Kant, Hume, and
Adam Smith. At length it was thrown into a systematic form, and
its full importance was realised, by the genius of Comte. Whether
the new Science will ultimately assume, in all its forms, the precise
shape which he gave it, the future alone can decide. But no rational
mind can doubt, few serious thinkers now do doubt, that the real
problem before the intelligence of man is the problem which he has
put — how to secure man's moral and social life on a scientific
synthesis of demonstrable knowledge ? The physical speculations
usually called Science, Materialism, Evolution, Agnosticism, Free-
thought, and all the other purely physical, purely critical, or purely
mental schemes in fashion to-day, do not touch this problem at all.
They pass by on the other side.

Why is it that in the hundred years which have elapsed from
Diderot to Darwin positive thought and experimental science have
gone on from triumph to triumph, winning new realms, and opening
unbounded regions to knowledge, always showing law, never showing
God, always resting on observation, never trusting to mere imagina-
tion and fictitious hopes — and yet, in spite of it all, Theology and
spiritual hypotheses of every sort hold so large a place as they do ?
Why do so many energetic and learned men, so many acute and
lofty-minded women cling to the old Gods and to new figments with
a passionate devotion, in its mere rally of despair, such as was never
surpassed in the history of religion ? Why is it, that in spite of
philosophy from Hume to Spencer, the old theology maintains its
social authority, if not its mental sway, alike in materialised England,
in a Voltairean France, and in a sceptical Germany ?

We say it is because the new Philosophy and Science, in spite of all
their positive results, have hitherto neglected the deepest, purest,
most powerful of all the human instincts — the devotional ; and the
most abiding and most fruitful of all the social forces — Religion.
Philosophy and the Science of Experience have given us methods of
thought, logical truths, schemes of analysis, schemes of classification,
canons of comparison. Science has given us a world of observation,
a vast body of useful realities, insight into the world about us, insight
into ourselves. But science has practically taken away God, and has
found nothing else. Philosophy has reduced religion to a phrase, and

1880. THE CREEDS—OLD AND NEW. 549

has left things so. Science gives no unity to life, no rule of life, no
support to the soul. Together modern Science and Philosophy,
stopping helplessly where they do, have chilled, paralysed, and almost
killed, the spirit of Devotion, of Veneration, of Self-abasement, of
Self-surrender to a great over-ruling Power.

Philosophy and science have given us priceless things, but, we say,
they have given us no religion, no Providence, no Supreme Centre of
our thoughts and of our lives. They answer that they have never
assumed so high a mission, that it is no part of their function.
Unworthy answer, in which their present impotence is written!
Inasmuch as, year by year for centuries, they have been taking away
this supreme basis of all human life, they were bound to supply the
true basis when they took away the false. Inasmuch as it is within the
scope of Philosophy and Science to build up a far grander edifice than
they destroyed, their work is not half done, till the building up is
complete.

It was the mission of Auguste Comte to teach us that Philosophy
and Science truly understood, and carried to their real conclusion,
could and would do this, — that in the consciousness of our human
fellowship and our share in the glorious destiny of Humanity, man
can ultimately find a faith richer and more solid than all the creeds
of Theology. This faith will restore and immensely expand religion,
it opens to us anew the clear vision of an over-ruling Providence ; it
binds up thought and life into one centre of all ideas and all activities,
by presenting to us the image of a great whole towards which all
thoughts can turn, and in serving whom all faculties can work.

FREDERIC HARRISON.

550 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

THE CHASE— ITS HISTORY AND LAWS.

AT a time when Parliament has recently been occupied with an
important modification of a portion of the law relating to game,
it may not be uninteresting to pass in review the leading incidents
in the history of the chase, and the laws which have regulated its
exercise, or determined the extent to which property could be asserted
or acquired in the wild animals which it is beyond the art or foreign
to the purpose of man to domesticate.

From the earliest ages of man's history, the chase has been one of
the favourite as well as one of the necessary occupations of mankind.
Man has been a hunter from the beginning. The state of the
hunter must have preceded that of the shepherd ; it must equally
have preceded that of the tiller of the soil, which was probably of
still later date than that of the shepherd. In the early stages of his
existence, man must in a great degree have depended for food on the
animals he was able to capture ; and though the facility with which
certain kinds of animals could be brought under his dominion might
give rise to the pastoral state at a comparatively early period of
human existence, yet he would have to wage war with the beasts of
prey for the protection of himself and his belongings. In the lan-
guage of Lucretius —

Illud erat curse, quod saecla ferarum
Infestam miseris faciebant saepe quietem.

How, in the beginning, without weapons, or such only as modern
discoveries have shown him to have possessed for ages, man can have suc-
ceeded in defending himself against the fiercer animals, or in capturing
even the least active of those which served him for food, while in their
wild and undomesticated state, it is difficult to imagine. Yet his earli-
est implements have been found in connection with the bones of the lion
and bear and other beasts of prey, as well as with the remains of the
animals which had served him for food. It was not till after the lapse
of ages that, in addition to or superseding those of stone, implements
of wood and bone — the harpoon, the lance, and lastly the arrow — the
sinews of the slaughtered animals serving for the bowstring — enabled
man the better to supply his wants or to cope with his natural enemies.
The domestication of the dog — the animal the most readily attaching

1880. THE CHASE. 551

itself to man, and in all ages the willing instrument and ally of the
hunter — which most probably preceded that of any other animal —
would tend materially to improve the position of man with reference
to his power over the animals by which he was surrounded. The
instinctive habit of the dog, and other animals of the canine race, to
hunt in packs, would be observed by man, and after a time would be
made available for his purposes.

The domestication of the animals capable of being tamed, and
thus rendered subservient to the purposes of man, would be the next
step in the onward march of human progress. The cultivation of the
soil, and the systematic raising of the cereal products which form so
essential a part of man's nourishment, would be an equally important
incident in the history of mankind. But neither the pastoral nor the
agricultural condition would supersede the calling of the hunter,
though it might diminish its importance. The flesh of the wild
animals fit for the nourishment of man, would still form a valu-
able article of food — not the less so on account of its savoury charac-
ter— and their skins would be useful for clothing. Above all it would
be necessary for the protection of the domesticated animals, as well
as for that of man himself, that the number of the beasts of prey
should be kept down as much as possible. Happily, the discovery
of the metals, and their use in the fabrication of weapons, which
doubtless had its origin in the East, as well as the manufacture of the
net, perfected by the invention of twine and cord now substituted for
ruder materials, placed the hunter in a more favourable position for
warring with his four-footed enemies. The paramount importance of
this warfare could not fail to be appreciated. It is in the primitive
period of the world's history that so much admiration and respect
attaches to the character of hunter. It was the duty of the chieftain
of the tribe — or, when tribes had grown into a people or nation, of the
king — second only to that of heading his warriors and defending his
subjects against their foes, to hunt down the wild beasts, which, next to
the external enemy, were the terror of the peaceable and industrious
inhabitant. Hence, in the legendary hero the character of hunter is
commonly associated with that of warrior. The legendary Nimrod is
not only a ' mighty one in the earth,' but also a ' mighty hunter before
the Lord.' The fabulous Mnus was as renowned as a destroyer of wild
beasts as he was as a conqueror. The legendary heroes of Greece, of
whom Xenophon gives a long list, were all renowned as hunters. He
suggests that their merit as such may have contributed as much to
procure for them the character of heroes and the admiration of man-
kind as their other exploits or virtues. ' A conqueror and founder of
an empire,' says Mr. Layard — herein correctly expressing the sentiments
of the ancient world — ' was at the same time a great hunter. His
courage, wisdom, and dexterity were as much shown in encounters
with wild animals as in martial exploits. He rendered equal set-

552 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

vice to his subjects, whether he cleared the country of beasts of prey,
or repulsed an enemy.'

The keeping down the number of the beasts of prey, as one of
the duties of kings and rulers, appears to have been fully recognised
from an early period, at least in the Eastern world, where the fiercer
and more destructive forms of animal life were unhappily far too
abundant to be consistent with the welfare or safety of man.
The frequent representations in the Assyrian sculptures of hunting
scenes, in which the king is the principal actor, is very justly referred
to by Mr. Layard as a proof not only of the chase being deemed the fit-
ting occupation of a king, but also of the high estimation in which it
was held by the primitive inhabitants of Assyria. The sculptures of the
palaces of Nineveh and Babylon, made known to us by Messrs. Layard
and Botta, exhibit, in all its energy, the royal sport of some thirty
centuries ago, when a king of Assyria or of Babylon went forth to
give battle to the monsters of the forest or the plain. In the Assyrian
bas-reliefs the king is represented, when hunting, as in his war-
chariot, well furnished with arrows, darts, and spears, and as accom-
panied by warriors fully equipped for fighting. The same thing took
place in the neighbouring kingdoms. We are told by the Greek
writers that in Persia the kings went out on such occasions at the
head of a large force, as on a military expedition, the march spreading
over a considerable extent of country, and sometimes occupying several
days. Xenophon describes a Persian king, when going forth on such an
expedition, as accompanied by half his guard, each man fully armed as
if he were going into battle. Kings and great men were proud to
have the fact that they had been hunters and slayers of lions and
wild beasts inscribed on their monuments. Darius is said to have
desired to have it stated on his tomb that he had been an excellent
hunter, as well as a steadfast friend and good horseman, and one to
whom nothing had been impossible.

But hunting was not confined in these countries to kings or their
attendants, or to the pursuit of the more ferocious animals alone.
Game was abundant, and the love of the chase universal. Mr. Layard is
disposed to ascribe to the Assyrians the first establishment of the in-
closed parks, or paradeisoi, which at a later period were maintained OB
so extensive a scale by the Persian kings and great men. In these
parks game of every description was preserved for the purpose of sport —
according to Greek writers, lions, tigers, and other beasts of prey, as
well as ordinary game. But this may well be doubted, as the destruc-
tion of the other animals, if shut up with the beasts of prey, would
have been such as in a very short time to leave nothing but the latter.
When, therefore, lions and tigers are represented as being hunted in
these inclosures, the probability is that, if this took place in fact, the
animals had been captured and purposely introduced, with a view to
their being forthwith hunted and killed. In a series of bas-reliefs,

1880. THE CHASE. 553

discovered at Kouyunjik, and now in the British Museum, the king
is exhibited hunting lions, which are turned out of cages in which
they have been brought to the hunting ground. That at a later
period wild beasts were taken alive for the purpose of being afterwards
killed is, of course, a well-known fact.

The Babylonians appear to have been as keen sportsmen as the
Assyrians. We now know from the modern discoveries that the
walls of their temples and palaces were ornamented with pictures and
sculptures representing the chase ; and similar subjects were even
embroidered on their garments.

As appears from the bas-reliefs!, the animals hunted were, besides
the beasts of prey, the wild bull, the wild ass, the boar, the different
kinds of antelope and deer, the wild goat and the hare. The game, if it
escaped the arrow of the hunter, was caught with the lasso, or driven
into nets and so taken, or was run down by large and powerful hounds.

Like their Asiatic neighbours and congeners, the Egyptians were
ardent followers of the chase. Lion-hunting, we are told by Sir Gardner
Wilkinson, speaking from the representations on the tombs, was a
frequent occupation of the kings, who were proud to have their suc-
cess on such occasions recorded. Amunoph the Third boasts of
having destroyed no less than 102 head in one battue. Ethiopia, in
which lions abounded, was the principal scene of this sport, but lions
were also to be found in the deserts of Egypt. Athenaeus mentions
one having been killed by the Emperor Hadrian when hunting in
the neighbourhood of Alexandria. According to Sir Gardner
Wilkinson, the kings sometimes went far to the south in pursuit of
elephants. He does not mention whether any representation of an
elephant hunt is to be found on the monuments. The taste for
hunting, Sir Gardner tells us, was general with all classes. The aristo-
cracy had their parks for preserving game in the valley of the Nile,
which, though on a less extensive scale than those of their Asiatic neigh-
bours, were still sufficiently large to enable them fully to enjoy the sport.

The animals they chiefly hunted were the hare, the gazelle, the
stag and other deer, the wild goat or ibex, the oryx, the wild ox, the
kebsh or wild sheep, and the porcupine. The ostrich, too, was pursued
for the sake of its plumes, which were highly valued by the Egyptians.

One form of sport in which they indulged was that of pursuing
the game with dogs, which, however, do not appear to have been
used on such occasions for the purpose of finding the game, but were
kept in slips, ready to be let go as soon as the game was started. If
the dogs succeeded in catching the animal, well and good. But
generally their speed was not trusted to alone, though this might
sometimes be done. Usually the sportsman followed in his chariot,
and, urging his horses to their utmost speed, endeavoured to intercept
the object of pursuit, or to get sufficiently near to it to be enabled
to use his bow with effect. When the nature of the locality pre-

554 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

vented the use of the chariot, the hunter, taking advantage of the
sinuosities of the ground, endeavoured to get within reach of the
game as it doubled, and to bring it down with an arrow. The horned
animals of the larger kind, such as the ibex, oryx, or wild ox, if
wounded only, sometimes turned on the hounds, and required the spear
of the hunter to despatch them.

Sometimes, especially when they wished to take the animals
alive for the purpose of placing them in the parks, they caught them
with the lasso or noose, in the use of which the Egyptian huntsmen
appear to have been extremely skilful, throwing the noose round the
neck of the gazelle or deer or over the horns of the wild ox.

It may not be uninteresting to observe that while the Egyptians
had several varieties of dogs — some of them chosen, Sir Gardner
Wilkinson slily observes, ' as at the present day, for their pecu-
liar ugliness ' — probably the pet dogs of the Egyptian ladies — the
hound, as, e.g., exhibited in drawing 236 of Sir Gardner Wilkinson's
work, has, as with us, its peculiar and unmistakable characteristics.
The hounds in the Egyptian painting would give one the idea of a
cross between the English harrier and foxhound, though perhaps a
little taller and longer than the former and lighter than the latter.
The head is unmistakably that of the hound. The kings and great
men sometimes hunted with lions tamed and trained, as the cheetahs
are in India, expressly for hunting. In No. 240 of Sir Gardner
Wilkinson's drawings is the representation of a lion, with which the
chasseur is hunting, and which has just seized an ibex.

When sport was desired on a larger scale than could be had in
the immediate vicinity of the Nile, where the land was cultivated
and thickly peopled, it was sought in the neighbouring deserts.
When this was to be done, a considerable extent of ground was in-
closed by nets, into which the animals were driven by beaters, the
place chosen for fixing the nets being, if possible, across narrow valleys,
or torrent beds, lying between rocky hills. In the Egyptian paintings
these long nets are represented as surrounding the space in which the
hunt is to be carried on. The net used for this purpose is thus
described by Sir Gardner Wilkinson ; and the description, corre-
sponding as it does with that given by Xenophon, may be taken as
correctly describing the nets in universal use in the ancient world.
* The long net was furnished with several ropes, and was supported
on forked poles, varying in length to correspond with the inequalities
of the ground, and was so contrived as to enclose any space, by
crossing hills, valleys, or streams, and encircling woods, or whatever
might present itself. Smaller nets for stopping gaps were also used ;
and a circular snare, set round with wooden or metal nails, and
attached by a rope to a log of wood, and used for catching deer,
resembled one still made by the Arabs.' Being thus inclosed, the
game was started by beaters with dogs, the sportsmen being so placed

1880. THE CHASE. 555

as to waylay the animals or to get within reach of them with the bow.
A spirited sketch of a chase in the desert of Thebaid, copied by
Sir Gardner Wilkinson from a tomb at Thebes, gives a vivid re-
presentation of such a hunting scene. Hares, deer, gazelles, wild oxen,
the ibex, the oryx, and ostriches, together with foxes and hysenas,
pursued by hounds, are dashing at full speed across the plain,
while in the midst of them is a porcupine who is taking things very
coolly, as if conscious that his rate of speed was by no means equal
to that of his nimbler associates, and that any attempt to keep up
with them would be vain. The slaughter on such occasions would
appear to have been very great.

In one respect the Egyptians were sportsmen in the sense in
which we should use that term. Except in these battues in the desert,
they appear to have killed and taken the animals which could pro-
perly be called game only in open pursuit. They employed no snares
or traps for the purpose. The noxious animals, on the other hand, such
as leopards, hyaenas, wolves, jackals, foxes, were not only hunted for
amusement,but might be destroyed by the peasant, to whose herds or
farmyards they were standing enemies, in any way by which they could
be taken. The poacher appears to have been unknown,

Not less striking than their hunting was the fowling of the
Egyptians. The lakes and marsh-land of the .Delta, and the reedy
marshes which in many places line the banks of the Nile, have ever
been the resort of innumerable wild fowl. Hence fowling appears to
have been a general pursuit. The professional fowler, who -followed
it for his livelihood, used nets and traps ; but the sportsman brought
the birds down with the throw- stick — a stick made of heavy wood,
from a foot and a quarter to two feet in length, and about an inch
and a half in breadth, slightly curved at the upper end, and
which, being flat, and thus encountering but little resistance from the
air in its flight, could be thrown to a distance, and, when thrown by a
dexterous hand, with considerable accuracy of aim. The method of pro-
ceeding appears to have been to creep, in punts made of the papyrus,
as noiselessly as possible, into the reeds, the height of which con-
cealed their approach, till, the birds rising, the sportsman was en-
abled to use the throw-stick, an attendant being at hand, who, as
fast as one stick was thrown, supplied another. Three of the most
spirited sketches in Sir Gardner Wilkinson's collection are representa-
tions of such fowling parties. Strange to say, in two of them there
appears a cat, employed to act the part of a retriever in getting the
fallen birds out of the thicket.

No trace of hawking is to be found in the Egyptian paintings.
The use of the hawk species for the purpose of fowling appears to
have been unknown to the Egyptians, as also to the Asiatics.

From their early contact with the Egyptians it might have been
expected that the Jews would have acquired a taste for hunting.

556 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

But this does not appear to have been the case. They had, no doubt,
occasion to destroy the beasts of prey for the protection of their
flocks and herds. From the legend of Samson, and the statement
ascribed to David that he had slain a lion and a bear, and the story
of Benaiah, who is said to have slain a lion in a pit in time of snow,
it would appear that lions, though there is no reason to suppose them
to have been numerous, were occasionally troublesome in Judaea.
Several allusions in the Bible also show that the various devices for
taking both ground and winged game were not unknown to the Jews ;
and the express enumeration of harts, roebucks, and fallow deer, among
the provisions daily supplied for the household and table of Solomon,
shows that game of this description was not wanting in Judaea, and
that its capture was not neglected. But there is nothing to lead us
to suppose that hunting or fowling was generally pursued as an amuse-
ment, or on an extensive scale, as in Egypt or Assyria. The prohibition
as to eating the flesh of certain animals, as the wild swine, the hare
and the coney, elsewhere the objects of pursuit, but forbidden by the
Jewish law, no doubt on the supposition that their flesh was unwhole-
some to man — though we are at a loss to see why. the flesh of an
animal which chews the cud but does not divide the hoof should
necessarily be unfit for man, and still more so to account for the
lawgiver having fallen into the mistake of supposing that the hare
and coney were animals which chewed the cud — may have tended to
check the practice of hunting, the pursuit of the hare and the wild
boar, especially the former, forming generally so large a portion
of the hunter's occupation. It does not appear from the Bible that
the Jews availed themselves of the service of the dog in the pursuit
of game. Possibly the prohibition contained in the seventeenth
chapter of Leviticus against eating the flesh of any animal that had
been torn, may have led to the non-use of the dog, a serious draw-
back to the success of the hunter, and which would necessitate the
use of the snare, the trap, and the pitfall in substitution for the chase.
The paintings on the Egyptian tombs and the bas-reliefs of Nine-
veh and Babylon, which, after the long lapse of ages, have in recent
times been brought to light, and the Jewish history, which, though
•we may not be certain as to the precise date at which it was com-
posed, still undoubtedly carries us back into a remote antiquity,
have afforded us some insight into the habits of these nations as
regards the sports of the field. It is only at a much later period
that we become acquainted with the sporting habits of other nations
of the ancient world. Our first knowledge of the Persians and Medes,
as hunters, is derived from the Greeks, who in Asia Minor became the
subjects of the Persian empire, or, as regards Greece itself, were brought
into contact with the Persian court or rulers after the Persian wars.
But a long interval separates the Egyptian or Assyrian monuments from
the writings of Herodotus or Xenophon, and we are therefore unable

1880. THE CHASE. 557

to say at how early a period the passionate love of the chase, which
in the days of these writers had acquired such large dimensions, and
had become a national characteristic of the Persians, had its first
commencement. In its existence, as a national institution materially
influencing the national character, ancient writers, both Greek and
Roman, are agreed.

The paradeisoi, or hunting parks, of the Persians and Medes
were, if we may trust the Greek writers, on a still grander scale
than those of the Assyrians. Curtius, the historian of Alexander's
campaigns, who of course could personally have known nothing of the
matter, but who is said to have drawn his materials from early and
reliable writers, speaking of these inclosed parks, writes : — ' Barbaras
opulentiae in illis locis haud ulla sunt majora indicia quam magnis
nemoribus saltibusque nobilium ferarum greges clausi. Spatiosas
ad hoc eligunt silvas, crebris perennium aquarum fontibus amcenas.
Muris nemora cinguntur, turresque habent venantium receptacula.'
The author tells us that the conqueror having entered with his army
into one of these parks, in which the game had not been disturbed for
a long time, a slaughter of four thousand head ensued, after which
the king feasted the whole army in the park. Of course the story
would not have been complete if the narrator had not made his
hero slay a lion with his own hand. He accordingly does so, and
represents the king as disdainfully rejecting the assistance of Lysi-
machus, one of his generals, who came up while he was engaged with
the lion, and peremptorily ordering him to retire. Out of this in-
cident, adds Curtius, arose the story of Alexander having ordered
Lysimachus to be thrown into a pit with a lion, whom, however,
Lymachus succeeded in killing. More reliable is the statement of
Xenophen, as showing the extent of these inclosures, when he tells
us that the whole of the Greek army of Cyrus, then amounting to
13,000 men, and in which Xenophon was himself serving, was
reviewed in one of them. On another occasion the Greeks received
private information that a large army of the enemy was stationed in a
neighbouring park. An instance of the extensive scale on which
the royal hunting establishments were organised is to be found in
the statement of Herodotus, that the tax imposed on four large
Mesopotamian villages was that of maintaining the royal hounds in the
Babylonian satrapy, in consideration of which these villages were
exempted from all other tribute.

We are informed by the Greeks that the Persian youth, in the
earlier period of the monarchy, were regularly trained to the chase,
as well as to horsemanship and other martial exercises, as the means
of developing their physical powers and preparing them for the hard-
ships and fatigues of war and the business of arms. At the later
period at which Xenophon wrote, these habits are said by him to have
fallen into desuetude — to which, as one of its causes, in his enthu-

558 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

siastic love of the cbase, he goes so far as to ascribe the decline of
the Persian power ; the more rational view of the matter perhaps being
that the downfall of the nation and its easy subjection by tbe Mace-
donian conqueror were to be ascribed, not to the disuse of hunting
and other active exercises, but to the growing effeminacy and luxu-
rious habits which led, amongst other evils, to the abandonment of
the chase and the other manly and warlike pursuits of their fathers.

Of the other Eastern nations of the period we are treating of we
know little or nothing, though at a later period we read of some of
them — for instance, the Parthians — as being passionately devoted to
hunting. Tacitus states that, in the time of Augustus, a king of
Parthia named Yonones, one of the Arsacidaj, who having been a
hostage at Rome, had been sought by the Parthians for their
king, was afterwards deposed by his subjects, partly on account of
his prior connection with Eome, but also by reason of his effemi-
nacy, principally as manifested by his neglecting the chase, " diversus
a majorum institutis ; " from which it may be presumed not only that
the Parthians were a people devoted to hunting at the time in ques-
tion, but that they considered themselves as therein following the
example of their ancestors. All we are acquainted with as regards
India in this respect is that the Indian hounds were acknowledged
to be the finest then known, from which we may infer that the chase
had been energetically cultivated in that country. It may be as-
sumed that the other nations of the East had not been behind their
Assyrian, Egyptian, or Persian brethren in following what seems to
be the common, and as it were instinctive, propensity of man, more
especially as in these countries wild animals were abundant, and the
facilities for hunting great.

The mention of Greek historians brings us to the Greeks them-
selves. But here the beginning of history is lost in the obscurity and
mist of fable. Even Xenophon, in his treatise on hunting, has nothing
better to tell us of its origin than the legendary story that hunting
and the training of hounds were the invention of Apollo and Artemis,
who imparted the discovery to Chiron, who in his turn instructed the
long list of heroes whom the writer enumerates. But, as has already
been observed, the existence of the legend itself shows how deep was
the sense of the benefit resulting to mankind from the services of the
hunter in the destruction of wild beasts. It shows, too, that the
Greeks were from the earliest times a nation of hunters. Nor could
it well be otherwise. A country intersected in all directions by
mountain ranges, covered with forests, would be prolific of wild
animals, of which an active and energetic population would not fail
to take advantage. When we come to the historical times, we are
told an idle story, for which there seems to be no sufficient authority,
of Solon having forbidden hunting to the Athenians. It is certain that,
if any such law was ever pronounced, it never was enforced or obeyed.

1880. THE CHASE. 559

In Sparta hunting is said to have been enjoined to the young and
active by public authority, and hounds were maintained at the public
expense. Hounds of the Spartan breed were much esteemed, as were
also those of Crete, which probably differed but little, if at all, from
those of Sparta. We have to thank the recorded excellence of the
Spartan hounds for the exciting and vivid description of a pack of
hounds which Shakespeare, who had probably been reading some old
work on hunting, gives us in the Midsummer Nights Dream.
Hippolyta begins : —

I -was with. Hercules and Cadmus once,
When in a wood of Crete they bayed the bear
With hounds of Sparta : never did I hear
Such gallant chiding ; for besides the groves,
The skies, the fountains, every region near
Seemed all one mutual cry : I never heard
So musical a discord, suoh sweet thunder.

To which Theseus answers : —

My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind ;
So flewed, so sanded ; and their heads are hung
With ears that sweep away the morning dew ;
Crook-kneed and dew-lapped like Thessalian bulls ;
Slow in pursuit, but matched in mouth like bells,
Each under each. A cry more, tuneable
Was never holla'd to, nor cheered with horn,
In Crete, in Sparta, nor in Thessaly.

Whether hounds were used by the early Greeks, for the purpose
of running down the game, or only for that of finding and bringing
the fiercer animals, such as lions and boars, to bay, for the purpose
of their being speared by the hunter, and of driving the smaller
sort, such as hares and deer, into the net, and so capturing them,
appears to be doubtful. From several passages in the Iliad,
especially the spirited description of the Calydonian boar-hunt, as
also from that of the boar hunt mentioned in the Odyssey, at
which Ulysses is represented as having been wounded by the boar,
by the scar of which wound he was first recognised on his return to
Ithaca, it is clear that in the Homeric age hounds were used for the
first of the purposes above mentioned. But in these instances no
mention is made of their employment for the sole purpose of
catching the hunted animal. On the other hand, in what is said in
the Odyssey by Eumaus, of the old hound Argos, it would seem
that hounds were sometimes used for the purpose of pursuit. For
Eumaus says of Argos that no animal, if he once caught sight of it,
could escape from him, while at the same time his power of scent
was perfect : —

Ou pfv yap TI <£vyecr/ce fiadeitjs fievQecriv V\TJS
Kfco&uAoi/ o TTI ifiotro, KOI l^vtcri yap irepiybr].

Which certainly looks like hunting by the pursuit of the hound alone.

560 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

Be this as it may, as regards the Homeric age, the use of the
hound for this purpose solely was unknown in later times, as may be
inferred from what Xenophon says on the subject.

It is to this accomplished Athenian, the general, the philosopher,
the friend of Socrates and Plato, and at the same time ardent
sportsman, that we are indebted for the earliest treatise on hunting —
a treatise equally interesting to the sportsman and the scholar.
Banished from Athens, Xenophon settled himself at Scillon, in the
neighbourhood of Olympia, where, having religiously applied the fund
devoted to that purpose by the retreating army, out of the money
made by the sale of their prisoners, in dedicating and endowing a
temple to Artemis, antl appointing an annual festival in honour of
the goddess, he diverted himself with hunting as well as literature,
and composed this treatise, known by the name of the Kune-
getikos. It treats of three kinds of hunting — hare-hunting, stag-
hunting, and boar-hunting ; but the work is principally devoted to
hare-hunting, which was plainly the favourite sport of the author,
who evidently would not have agreed with the poet Thomson, when
he says : —

Poor is the triumph o'er the timid hare.

The work in question gives the fullest account of this form of hunt-
ing; but the sport is certainly not such as, according to our
ideas, would be deemed sportsmanlike. It consists not in the fairly
running down the hare by the hounds assisted by the skill of the
huntsman — a result which, according to Xenophon, seldom occurs,
and which he seems to think it too much to expect — but in driving
the hare, by means of the hounds, into nets placed to receive her,
where, when entangled in the net, she is to be knocked on the head
by an attendant stationed there for the purpose. But though this
mode of hunting may be repugnant to an English sportsman, it is
impossible to read this treatise otherwise than with interest and plea-
sure. An account is given of the nature and habits of the hare,
which even a naturalist might study with advantage, and in the
course of which the author appears to be worked up to an enthusi-
astic admiration of the creature, the destruction of which is the very
subject of his work. Ovrco 8s sTri^api e<m TO dtjpiov, OHTTS ovBsls
o<ms OVK av, IScov fyvevofjievov, svpicrfcopsvov, fjbSTaOeofjLSVov,
akia-Ko/jisvov, iTn\ddoiT av si rov sp(j>t]. ' So charming an animal is
it, that no one, who sees it either tracked, found, followed, or caught,
but must lose all thought of all else he cares for.' Elaborate direc-
tions are given for the construction and use of the different nets, and
for the breeding, choice, and training of the hounds, which he divides
into two sorts, one of which he ascribes to a cross between the dog and
the fox, and of which he speaks with contempt ; the other, which he
•calls the Castor hound — as being the breed with which Castor himself

1880. THE CHASE. 561

used to hunt — and of which a detailed description is given — probably
the Spartan or Cretan hound, which would seem to have been of
the same or a very similar species. We have then full directions to the
hunter for finding and pursuing the hare, and a most animated de-
scription of the chase. We all but see and hear the hunter, on start-
ing the hare, or when the hounds are on the scent, cheering and catt-
ing out to them — lot KVVSS, lw KaKas, <ra<£<wy <ys <w KVVSS, /cd\atf ye
S) tews?, svjs, si»ys, a> KVVZS, £7re<r0£ a> KVVSS. He is especially
warned not to head the hare, as being a sure way to spoil the sport.
He is to call to his hounds by name, in tones of encouragement or
reproof, as the occasion may require. The whole scene is portrayed
with a degree of vivacity equalled only by the elegant simplicity of the
diction.

Xenophon next treats of stag-hunting, for which he recommends
the employment of Indian hounds, as being large, strong, swift, and
high-couraged, and so best suited for work. But he proposes to
pursue the sport in a way which we should deem highly unsportsman-
like. He recommends the use of a foot-snare (TroSocrrpa/:???) — a sort
of wooden trap, the construction of which it is not very easy to un-
derstand or explain, but which the Egyptians appear to have used"
centuries before, and which Sir Gardner Wilkinson tells us the Arabs:
use to this day : to this contrivance a noose is to be attached. Wherr.
complete, the trap is to be placed in the track of the deer, below the
surface of the ground, and carefully covered over with earth and leaves,
so that, stepping on it, the foot of the deer may be caught, and the
animal, unable to disengage it, may be compelled to drag the wooden
log after it. Coming afterwards with his dogs and finding the trap-
gone, the hunter is to follow the track it will have left on the stones
and ground, and with the aid of his hounds will soon come up with the
deer, which, its progress being thus impeded, will fall an easy prey..
Not but what, if it proves to be a stag, Xenophon advises that it
should be approached with caution, as the animal can strike furiously
both with horns and feet. It should therefore be killed from a dis-
tance with darts and javelins.

It is remarkable that Xenophon makes no mention of the use of
the bow. With him Artemis would no longer be io%£aipa. Nor in
treating of hare-hunting does he speak of the throw-stick (the
A,a7<w/3oXoi>), which, as we know from other sources, the Greek hunter
used with effect to knock over the hare when he could get within,
reach of her.

The third form of hunting treated of by our author is that of the
wild boar, which, as described by him, was of a formidable nature, and"
the preparations for which required to be of a corresponding character.
The nets must be of greater strength. The heads of the javelins used
by the hunter must be broad, and sharp as razors, the shafts must be
of hard wood. The spears should have an iron head, five palms long,,
VOL. VIII.— No. 44. Q Q

562 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

strongly guarded by cross-bars. And the prudent advice is given
not to hunt alone, but always in company. The hounds should be,
not of a common sort, but Indian, Locrian, Cretan, or Spartan. A
Spartan hound, these hounds having apparently been remarkable for
keen scent, is to be first employed to find the boar, the rest being
carefully kept back. Generally speaking, when found by a single
hound, the boar, Xenophon tells us, does not condescend to rise
from his lair. The hunters are then to take advantage of this
to spread the nets around him ; having done which they are to
set the hounds on him, but, if possible, at sufficient intervals to
allow him to pass between them, so that he may not kill or
injure more hounds than can be helped, the object being to
get him entangled in the nets, in executing which the hunters are to
assist by shouting and throwing darts and stones at him. When he
is well entangled in the net, one of the boldest and most skilful of the
hunters is to attack him with his boar-spear — an operation, however,
which requires great dexterity and care. The blow is to be struck with
the right hand, while the spear is supported by the left. But in this
dangerous sport hunters, as well as hounds, sometimes perished. Woe
betide the hunter if the boar, by turning his head, should succeed in
averting the stroke, and should knock the spear out of the hunter's
hand. Great and imminent is then the danger. The only resource of
the hunter is said to be to fall flat on his face. .The boar will en-
deavour to raise him with his tusks, in order to rend him therewith,
and, if he fails in this, will trample on him, and possibly trample
him to death. The wild sow, being without tusks, will always, under
such circumstances, endeavour to trample on the prostrate hunter.
The peril can only be averted by some brother sportsman coming to
the rescue, and attacking the beast with his spear, and so diverting
its fury from the fallen man. But this must be done with caution,
lest the spear thrust at the boar should injure the man whom it is
intended to protect. Many hunters as well as hounds, Xenophon
tells us, found their death in this perilous amusement.

Lions and other beasts of prey are beyond the scope of our
author's treatise. He disposes of them, therefore, in a few words.
Lions, panthers, lynxes, bears, and the like, he tells us, are not to be
found in Greece, but in foreign parts ; some in Nysa, which is above
•Syria ; some on the Mysian Olympus, and Pindus, and the mountain
ranges between Thessaly and Epirus ; some on the Pangean range
of mountains between Macedonia and Thrace.

The mountainous districts of Thessaly and Thrace, in which, as
.also in Macedonia and Epirus, the abundance of wild animals made the
inhabitants of these countries hunters par excellence, were especially
productive of bears. Ovid makes mention of the * Haemonii ursi ' as
a savage species. The known fierceness of the Thracian bear gave
occasion to the spirited lines of our Chaucer : —

1880. THE CHASE. 563

Right as the hunter in the regne of Thrace,
That stondeth in a gappe with a spere
When hunted is the lion or the bere ;
And heareth him come rushing in the greves,
And breking both the boughes and the leves,
And thinkes here comes my mortal enemy,
"Withouten faille he must be ded, or I.

Or, as finely paraphrased by Dryden : —

So stands the Thracian herdsman with his spear,
Full in the gap, and hopes the hunted bear ;
And hears him rustling in the wood, and sees
His course at distance by the bending trees ;
And thinks, ' Here comes my mortal enemy,
And either he must fall in fight, or I.'

Lions and the other beasts of prey were destroyed, Xenophon pro-
ceeds to tell us, as they could not well be hunted in these mountainous
districts owing to the roughness of the country, by means of aconite,
as poison, mixed with the food they liked, and placed near the water
or other places they were in the habit of frequenting. Sometimes
they were caught in pitfalls, a she-goat being tied to the spot over
which the beast had to pass, to attract him by her cries. Sometimes
the animals, coming down into the open country by night, were then
surrounded by men and horses, and taken, not without danger to the
hunters.

Xenophon concludes his interesting treatise by an eloquent but
somewhat exaggerated eulogy of hunting. According to him, the chase
is the source of health to the mind as well as the body. It makes men
strong, hardy, active, fit for labour, manly, bold, courageous ; it pre-
pares and fits them for war and for their country's service ; it diverts
them from mischievous and demoralising habits and pursuits, and,
giving a healthy tone to the mind, tends to make men virtuous and
happy.

So much for the hunting of the Eastern world in ancient times.
We pass on to the West ; and here the Komans claim our first atten-
tion. Not indeed as hunters — for the Romans cannot be said to have
ever taken to the sports of the field in the spirit of the East. It is —
strange to say — as jurists, rather than as hunters, that the Eomans
have a claim to our attention in connection with the present subject.
It is with the Romans that we first find any question raised as to
the relative rights and obligations of the hunter and the owner of the
soil, inter se, a matter fully discussed and settled by the Roman jurists,
and as to which their views have been accepted by the nations who
have adopted the Roman law.

But we must reserve the consideration of this not altogether unim-
portant topic, as well as of the view of the subject taken by our own
jurists, to a future occasion.

A. E. COCKJJURN.
- QQ2

564 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

THE UNSTABLE EQUILIBRIUM OF
PARTIES.

THE political bewilderment which followed the General Election was
primarily the effect of surprise. The victors were profoundly as-
tonished at their own success, though most of them speedily convinced
themselves that they had anticipated and predicted it all along.
The most confident — and they were very few — found their anticipa-
tions so far exceeded by the event that they could not in decency
claim the credit of soothsayers. Like the hero of the Arabian tale
who spurred his enchanted steed to leap the brook and was suddenly
lifted far above the moon, the triumphant party hardly knew
whether to exult in the magnitude of their majority or to look upon
it with inward misgiving. Four months have since passed away ;
the new Parliament has been worked hard, and at the end of its first
session the main result of its toils is that it has inspired the public
mind with a vague sense of disquietude, and an apprehension of
coming change. Men cast about to discover the causes of the
barrenness and the instability of politics, and they fasten, according
to their temper or their partisan feelings, upon different political
phenomena. Some find the disturbing influence in the blunders of
the Government, others in the obstructiveness of the opposition ;
others, again, in the indiscipline of parties, or in their subjection to
external dictation, in the excessive accumulation of public business,
in the recklessness of one school of politicians, in the timidity of a
second, in the obstinacy of a third, in the perversity of a fourth. There
is a leaven of truth in all these criticisms ; but they touch the effects,
or, at most, the secondary causes, which operating at the same time,
though in different directions and degrees, are combined in the con-
fused and unsatisfying result. It is necessary, however, to search
deeper for the root of the evil. Parliament has not now for the first
time to contend with the difficulties which have nullified the force
of a great majority in its opening session. Can any one suppose that
if Mr. Gladstone's Government had been strong with the strength
which carried through the legislation of 1869 and 1870 the history
of the past four months would have been what it was? The ministry
would have overborne all obstacles, even those created by their own

1880. THE UNSTABLE EQUILIBRIUM OF PARTIES. 565

errors, without resort to the ' forcible-feeble ' expedient of ' keeping
in ' Parliament until its set tasks were done.

The Liberal majority in the present House of Commons is ap-
parently stronger even than that returned to support Mr. Gladstone
in 1868. At any rate the Conservative opposition is decidedly
weaker in numbers.1 Yet this comparison of visible forces does not
harmonise with the practical conclusions to be drawn from the record
of the session. The ministry cannot pretend to the same triumphant
superiority which the former Gladstone Government possessed beyond
dispute, or at least the pretension, if made, is contested not in-
effectually. There are unexampled delays and unusually embittered
contentions in the House of Commons : there are murmurings and
schisms, some of which are suppressed or smoothed over before the
public get wind of them, but which, nevertheless, exist and spread.
The revolt of a large body of Whig members in both Houses of Par-
liament against the Irish Disturbance Bill was a most significant fact
which was not diminished in importance by the unmannerly jeers
levelled by Radical organs at such poor creatures as mere ' lords-in-
waiting.' During the political struggle of last spring those very
organs boasted that the heads of the chief Whig families were in the
van of the Liberal battle. It is to be presumed that a peer whose
position gives him political influence accepts a subordinate office
such as an under-secretaryship, or a place in the household, with a
view to strengthen his party by officially identifying himself with it ;
but this is not likely to be the case in the future, supposing peers to
have the same spirit as other men, if, whenever they chance to differ
from the Government of the day and show an honourable independence
by resignation, they are to be treated as though they were on the
same political level with the junior clerks in the Eed Tape and Seal-
ing Wax Office, or with the Yeomen of the Guard.

It is not without a struggle that Whigs inheriting some of the
greatest names in the annals of English politics can have broken away
from the ties of party. But the secession was not simply a Whig move-
ment. Those who abstained from voting for the Disturbance Bill in
the House of Commons, and still more in the House of Lords, as well as
those who voted against it in both Houses, were many of them — Lord
Sherbrooke, for example— politicians whom it is impossible to describe
without an abuse of language as Whigs. It is, moreover, perfectly well
known that the amount of opposition to the Bill, and of the disquietude
engendered by this and other parts of the ministerial policy, was not
at all to be measured by the division lists. This is not the place,
however, to discuss the Disturbance Bill, or the Ground Game Bill,
or the Vaccination Bill, or the course taken by the ministry on the
question of ' local option,' the convenient mask for the Permissive

1 At the general election of 1868, the Conservatives returned were 265 ; at the
general election of 1880, they were only 236.

566 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

Bill. But it will hardly be disputed that the controversies upon
these subjects have revealed a deep-seated discontent among a large
section of Liberals. Moderate men do not contemplate without alarm
the tendencies which are supposed to predominate in the new party
majority, and to assert an increasing influence over the Cabinet.

Every expression of this widespread feeling has been met either
with menaces or with jibes. If some Liberals resist or decline to sup-
port a measure which they consider unnecessary and dangerous, they
are told that if they were wise they would keep quiet, that something
much more formidable is in store for them next year, and so on. If
the House of Commons spends time — ' wastes time,' as the favourite
phrase runs — in criticising a Grovernment Bill, it is admonished that
its duty is not to legislate, but to sanction the legislation proposed
by ministers. It is openly asserted in certain quarters that no satis-
factory treatment of political questions can be expected from an as-
sembly in which ' plutocrats ' prevail, and that immediate steps must
be taken to purge Parliament of this corrupting element. The pre-
sumption of the House of Lords in venturing to throw out a Bill
passed by the Lower House is made the text for stirring dissertations
upon the expediency of abolishing or reforming away the political
power -of the Peers. Liberal organisations are encouraged to chastise
and bring to order any audacious members who may have ventured
to differ from the party chiefs — a task which they have no disinclina-
tion to perform. Yet one cannot help suspecting that all this noise
and passion is inspired by a sense of weakness. The ministry, confi-
dent in their strength and remembering their former achievements,
have boldly made their spring, and are as much astonished as disap-
pointed by their failure ; for, as Bacon says, ' he that is used to go
forward and fmdeth a stop falleth out of his own favour and is not
the thing he was.'

It is perceived that if Liberalism is to triumph in policy, as
was anticipated when the Liberal victory was won, the union of the
party must be restored. There is no apparent disposition to attempt
its restoration by reassuring the moderate section, and the reason,
it is to be feared, is obvious. The Radical section, who have been
immensely strengthened not only in numbers but in spirit and
discipline by the l Caucus ' system, have declared that they will not
be content if their views are thrust into the background to avoid
alarming the Whigs. They are within their right, whatever may be
thought of their prudence, in urging this demand ; but, on the other
hand, the Whigs, the moderate members of the Liberal party, are
equally justified in refusing to take part in proceedings which they
condemn, and in holding to their own ground even at the risk of a
breach with the Radicals. Thus a dead-lock has been caused, out of
which the Government may not be able easily to extricate itself.
Threats, insults, and mockery may possibly, though not very probably,

1880. THE UNSTABLE EQUILIBRIUM OF PARTIES. 567

reduce the murmurers to silence and re-establish an appearance of
well-drilled union. But the causes of divergence will not cease to
operate ; new schisms will be developed, and next year there will be
the same difficulty to be faced, with no better hope of discovering a
permanent and satisfactory solution.

Party government was never perhaps in a less wholesome condi-
tion. The sudden swing of the electoral pendulum from the Con-
servative to the Liberal side naturally produced a disturbance which,
if political forces, to use the language of elementary mechanics, had
been in stable equilibrium, would soon have redressed itself. But it
is evident that the present relations of parties are those of unstable
equilibrium. There is no tendency to the recovery of the balance.
If it be asked why this is so, the answer is not easy to state in a form
which will be agreeable to partisans on the one side or the other.
Nor even if the solution were obvious would the method present less
difficulties. Still prudens qucestio dimidium scientice. It is not
the part of wisdom to close our eyes to unpleasant truths and to wait
until we are forced to deal with them in a concrete form, in presence,
perhaps, of agitating passions.

The ' unstable equilibrium ' of parties is the result of an un-
natural distribution of political forces. It is now for the first time
clearly visible that this is so, because, for the first time at the last
General Election, the Eadical section of the Liberal party became
strong enough to mould the measures and inspire the policy of the
Executive Government in England. It is not possible to compare
the present state of political opinion with that which prevailed a
quarter of a century or even a dozen years ago. There have always
been Eadicals in the ranks of English Liberalism, men of stainless
integrity and eminent powers, who nevertheless were compelled in
practice to subordinate their individual convictions to the prevailing
doctrines of their political associates. Nine out of ten Liberals were
until a quite recent period at one with their Conservative opponents
in professing a desire to maintain the general framework of English
institutions and English society. Liberalism aimed at the removal
of restrictions upon individual and social freedom in action and discus-
sion, while Conservatism was slow to recognise the necessity for such
emancipation. But both parties were agreed that the government of
the country was to be carried on substantially with the same
machinery and upon the same principles. The difference between
the one party and the other was rather in spirit than in aim and in
activity. This was so not only during the premierships of Lord Palmer-
ston and Lord Russell, but during Mr. Gladstone's former administra-
tion. Projects of organic change were then disavowed as well by the
whole of the Liberal party, excepting a few well-known Radicals, as
by the Liberal ministry. The Irish legislation of the Government
was distinctly justified as exceptional, and especially as affording no

5C8 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

precedent for application to Great Britain. While Liberals and
•Conservatives both stood upon this common ground, it was reasonable
that the lines of partition between them should be drawn with re-
ference to minor issues.

But the situation is now altogether changed. At the General
Election a large number of Liberal members were returned, chiefly
through the agency of the Caucus system, who were deeply committed
to schemes of organic change. They avow a determination to recon-
struct almost the whole of the institutions, political and social, of the
country. They have a powerful representative in the Cabinet, and,
though it would not be fair to say that the ministry have yet cast in
their lot with them, it is plain that the tendency of the ministerial
policy is in this direction. It was to be expected that this change
would come to pass sooner or later. The Radical minority which was
powerless to shape and colour Liberalism even ten years ago has
turned itself into a majority within the party, and has organised that
majority, whether real or factitious, by the adoption of the machinery
of the American Convention-system. It would be idle and unfair to
blame the Radicals for striving to give effect to their opinions by all
the means in their power ; they are as fully entitled to pursue a
policy of energetic destruction and reconstruction in England as the
advanced Republicans in France. But it must be remembered that
this is not the policy hitherto associated with English Liberalism.
To impose it in a dictatorial temper upon those Liberals who remain
attached to the main body of Liberal doctrine as it was approved by
almost all Liberal statesmen down to the last General Election, is
possibly unjust, but it is more distinctly unwise. It must bring those
Liberals to consider the question how far they are politically united
except by formal and traditional connections with what Lord Derby
a few years ago called ' the New Radicalism.'

Idem sentire de Republlcd is the recognised key-note of political
party. The phrase must be liberally interpreted, of course ; but it
cannot with impunity be emptied of all meaning. It is the duty,
however painful it may be, of Liberals who are not Radicals to ask
themselves whether, upon a fair review of all the circumstances and
tendencies of the time, their political sentiments do not approach more
closely to agreement with those of the main body of the Conservatives
than with those of the Birmingham school. Men, are so ruled by names
that, even when the divergence between the two types of Liberalism
is admitted, any alliance between moderate Liberals and Conservatives
may still be regarded with repugnance. Charges of disloyalty and
apostasy, and the social penalties with which they are accompanied —

The taunt which stings the honour to the core,

The look which says ' False friend, -we trust no more ! '

— these are consequences of which no high-minded man can make light,

1880. THE UNSTABLE EQUILIBRIUM OF PARTIES. 569

but which must sometimes be courageously encountered in politics ;
and it is a question whether the time is not approaching when many
of the most eminent Liberal statesmen will be forced to make their
choice between submission to ideas they dislike and fear, or a deter-
mined effort to bring party names and lines of demarcation into
harmony with the actual ' cleavage ' of principles and tendencies.

The legislative changes of the past generation have simplified the
conditions of English politics. They have almost obliterated the
landmarks which separated the Conservatism from the Liberalism of
the past. The vast majority of Conservatives in the present day
cannot be distinguished in any general terms of description from those
Liberals who have not adopted ' the New Kadicalism.' Both these
sections of politicians profess the same object ; which is, to administer
with the most widely beneficial results the existing machinery of
government and legislation, to maintain existing institutions and
principles, with such developments of them as are natural and season-
able, to give free play to a healthy individualism, and to strike off
the fetters from every manifestation of the national energies. There
may be differences as to the means, but these are the ends avowed
by moderate and reasonable members alike, to use the nomenclature
of French politics, of the Right Centre and the Left Centre. Tories
of the old uncompromising, intractable, unteachable sort are growing
every day fewer, and have been for a long time politically power-
less. On the other hand, this great * party of moderation ' stands
opposed in fact, if not in form, to a ' party of movement ' of the
Continental type. The Radicals who have created the latter party
are resolute and able men, wielding a power the weight of which
has been felt for the first time at the General Election, and earnestly
bent on carrying out their policy of reconstruction. It is the more
indispensable that those who are no less convinced that the Radical
policy is full of danger for the country should not be weakened in
their resistance to it by artificial divisions.

At present the party of movement is strong in its cohesion and
unity, while the party of moderation is broken up. The moderate Con-
servatives and the moderate Liberals who agree in all their general
objects are placed by force of circumstance in hostile camps. But the
mischief of the traditional demarcation of parties does not end here.
The moderate Liberals, by their conjunction for party purposes with
the Radicals, give the latter the advantage of their influence and
their character. For the purpose of overthrowing the late Con-
servative Government, the Whigs put their pretensions into a
common stock with the Radicals ; but it is clear that the policy of
the Government cannot reconcile them. Those who belong to the
party of moderation, whether they call themselves Liberals or Con-
servatives, cannot join in the enterprises which the Radical party avow,
and to which the ministry are apparently tending. According to

570 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

existing arrangements, however, fully one half of them are paraded in
the front rank of Radicalism to cover the real character of enterprises
which, if nakedly presented, might shock or alarm public feeling.
When Mr. Gladstone advocated the Irish Disturbance Bill, on the
ground that its provisions were identical with a clause in the Irish
Land Bill of 1870, which, he said, had been approved by Lord Card-
well and Lord Carlingford,2 he furnished an example of the manner in
which moderate names may be employed to give an air of respectability
to extravagant purposes.

It is, of course, possible that Whigs and Radicals may find for a
time a modus vivendL especially if the latter are willing to delay
or disguise the enterprises on which their hearts are chiefly set. But
even should a rupture be thus postponed, the evils of an unnatural
distribution of political forces will not be materially abated. The
bisection of the party of moderation not only annuls the normal force
of this power in the State, but limits and diminishes the separate
energies of each fragment. Although, as I have said, modern Con-
servatism has little in common with the Toryism of former genera-
tions, although there is no more reason why men like Sir Stafford
Northcote and Sir Richard Cross should be unable to co-operate in
politics with moderate Liberals than Lord Derby, who was asked to
enter Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet, it is inevitable that the withdrawal of
all the more Liberal elements of the party of moderation and the
segregation of the rest in the Conservative camp must impoverish the
Parliamentary opposition and deprive it of elasticity, variety, and
vigour. Conservatism is needlessly and injuriously hide-bound ; a
factitious importance is given to the driest, barrenest, and least
mobile part of it. No one can doubt that if parties were divided
by a line coincident with the vital divergence of opinion between
Radicalism and anti-Radicalism, between those who desire to make
the best of our existing political institutions and principles and
those who would make a clean sweep of all that we at present
identify with English Constitutionalism, almost the whole of the
Whig peers and nearly one-half the Liberal majority in the House
of Commons would find themselves acting with the main body
of the Conservatives ; nor can any one suppose that if this amal-
gamation were possible the convictions of the Conservatives would not
be gradually enlarged and liberalised.

While the two sections of the moderate party are kept apart by a
traditional separation to the impoverishment of Conservatism, the
non-Radical Liberals suffer in another way. Their alliance with

2 Lord Cairns in his speech on the second reading of the Bill showed that Mr
Gladstone's statement at this point was misleading. The clause was objected to as
vague, and the interpretation put upon it by Lord O'Hagan was, in fact, embodied
without change in the Act. It is noteworthy that neither Lord Cardwell nor Lord
Carlingford voted for the Disturbance Bill, in spite of the inference suggested that
they had approved ten years before of similar legislation.

1880. THE UNSTABLE EQUILIBRIUM OF PARTIES. 571

Radicalism, from which, on the hypothesis indicated, they are di-
vided in spirit and aim, compels them to a certain insincerity in
dealing with practical questions. Kadicals press, as they are justified
from their own point of view in pressing, for measures striking directly
at existing institutions or introducing novel doctrines designed ulti-
mately to transform the whole Liberal policy. What are moderate
Liberals to do ? Their credit, their position, their known moderation
are turned to purposes with which they can have no sympathy. If the
Grovernment yields, as it is likely to do, to the urgency of the most
energetic section of its supporters, the discontented moderates can do
no more than sullenly protest or openly oppose what is then described
as the ministerial policy. In the former case, as a matter of course,
their protests are unheeded or noticed only with contemptuous and
threatening comment by Radical writers and speakers. In the latter
case, the odium to be incurred is formidable, and the opposition, unless
in very exceptional circumstances, must be futile. The bonds of
Parliamentary discipline are too strong for individual movements of
impatience. Even in the most peculiar case of the Irish Disturbance
Bill, which was repugnant to at least one half of the non-Conservative
members of the House of Commons, scarcely more than twenty were
found to vote with the Conservatives against it on any critical division.
Of the rest a large number abstained from voting ; a still larger
number ruefully put their objections in their pockets and trusted to
the chapter of accidents and the intervention of the House of Lords.
This attitude is consistent neither with dignity nor with safety. The
reluctant concessions and the timorous neutrality of those who recoil
from a Radical policy, form a part of the calculations of those who
are determined upon enterprises to which they know moderate Liberals
will not freely assent. It is rightly conjectured that if the voice of
conscience can be silenced by appeals to party allegiance or to popular
sentiment, if protests can be overborne by dictation and persuasion, the
protesting section will have much more difficulty in renewing the resist-
ance at a later stage. They will be committed to the extreme view,
and they will not be allowed easily to escape from the consequences of
their illogical position. So they run the risk of being pushed down
a steep slope till their movements have got beyond their own control.
Meanwhile they leave those who by their political antagonism to the
Grovernment of the day, or their personal independence of character,
are willing to accept the responsibility of opposing dangerous measures
not only weakened in Parliamentary force, but embarrassed by the
appearance on the other side of men esteemed to be as moderate and
constitutional as themselves.

The Radicals, though they secure most important and practical
advantages by the alliance with the non-Radical Liberals, have also
to pay a certain price for the gain. This party is, as a rule, suffi-
ciently outspoken and never more so than at the present time.

572 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

There can be no serious controversy as to the nature and dinct'on of
the Kadical policy on its main lines : to modify our representative
system in a purely democratic sense, to give social as well as political
supremacy to the will of the majority — as shown, for example, in the
demand for what is called, with unconscious irony, ' local option ' — to
break down the existing system of large landed estates, not alone by
rendering the transfer of land easy and cheap — on this point there is
now little difference of opinion — but by measures of a more positive
and, to use a word much favoured by Radical politicians when in a
minatory mood, of a more c drastic' kind, to still go further, if not yet
the whole way, towards satisfying the demands of the ' popular party '
in Ireland, to limit freedom of contract in various ways for the pro-
tection of the supposed interests of the working classes — these are the
objects at which Radical policy aims, and which the measures advo-
cated by Radicals are intended to accomplish. But when these
measures are under discussion, and when Liberals who are not Radicals
take alarm at their possible consequences, the alliance in the same
party combination of two sections holding irreconcilable views
induces the dominant section to minimise the effect and to isolate
the results of every legislative proposal. Thsre is an almost irre-
sistible temptation to practise the 'economy' of some theological
writers, and to allow a part only of the truth to be seen until the minds
of the recipients have been prepared for the revelation of the whole.
As Hudibras has it :

Truth is precious and divine,
Too rich a pearl for carnal swine.

But this is not a state of things which tends to cultivation of
intellectual honesty and self-respect. It must in justice be added
that it prevails rather within the House of Commons than elsewhere.
The organs of the Radical party explain what Parliamentary
Radicalism is occasionally disposed to leave undefined.

It may be urged that although the present division of party forces
is not coincident with the cleavage of political opinion on the most
vital questions, it has many countervailing advantages. The union
of moderate and advanced Liberals in the same party and in the same
administration is conceived to afford a guarantee for the adoption and
execution of a policy founded upon reasonable compromise. This
would, doubtless, be the result were the matter of difference between
the two sections concerned only with measure and degree. But it is
otherwise when there is a divergence in point of principle like that
which separates Whigs and Radicals on the most important political
questions of the day. If two men are travelling in the same direction,
it is quite possible for them to travel together a great part of the way,
though one may intend to go much further than the other. But when
one is bent on going north and the other on going south, it is puerile
to talk of a compromise. A man who is going from London to York

1880. THE UNSTABLE EQUILIBRIUM OF PARTIES. 573

may take the same carriage with others who may be going to Newcastle,
Edinburgh, or Aberdeen. But if he is going to Brighton he will have
to part company with the northern travellers. It is quite certain
that moderate Liberals are, or ought to be, unwilling to go even a
single inch in the direction of the avowed objects of Radicalism.
They cannot * regulate ' the pace, because if they are true to themselves
and to the best and soundest principles of Liberalism, they are bound
peremptorily to call a halt.

Have they the power of doing this by influence exerted within
the party ? Take the question of the liquor traffic ; the new school
of Kadicals are, with a very few exceptions, committed to various
schemes for imposing the will of local majorities upon minorities.
Twenty years ago, and even ten years ago, a policy of that kind was
firmly repudiated by an overwhelming majority of Liberals and by the
Kadicals of the old school who still had faith in the healthy principles
of individual liberty, and distrusted what Sir William Harcourt, in his
' salad days ' before he grew up to the level of his present anile
dignity, mocked at as * grandmotherly legislation.' It is plain that
the policy of which the Permissive Bill is the type cannot be effectu-
ally withstood by feeble efforts to keep it back, here a little and there a
little, while its vicious principle is to be accepted ' for the sake of peace.'
The feebleness of such resistance must be exhibited not only in its hu-
miliating collapse, but in its disheartening influence upon more direct
and manly opposition. Again, take the reopening of the Irish Land
question ; the Duke of Argyll in his speech on the second reading of the
Disturbance Bill in the House of Lords declared in the strongest and
most explicit language that he would not sanction any such breach of
the solemn public engagements entered into when the Act of 1870
was passed, and Lord Hartington repeated the same assurance hardly
less strongly on a subsequent occasion in the House of Commons. But
advanced Liberal journals have treated these assurances with contemp-
tuous disregard. The Daily News of the 19th of August admonishes
the Peers that it will be the duty of the Government to bring forward
next year * a comprehensive measure for the reform of the Irish law of
land ' — which is precisely what the Duke of Argyll repudiated ;
and the prediction that the Lords ' may sulk but will submit ' is
perhaps addressed to Whigs, and even Whig ministers, as much as to
Tories. But if a measure of this kind be produced, it can only be
resisted in one way, and that way is not by a new compromise having
no character of finality. It will be impossible for the Whig peers,
and for others like Lord Derby, to assent to a comprehensive scheme
for altering once more the conditions under which land is held in
Ireland without a complete surrender to those from whose ideas and
purposes they recoil.3

* The project of developing peasant proprietorship in Ireland is in quite a differ-
ent category. It has already been partially adopted in the Church Act and the Land
Act, and it is not, whatever may be thought of its expediency, open to the charge of

574 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

It is obvious that upon such issues as these the union of Radicals
and of non-Radicals in the Liberal party and in a Liberal administra-
tion cannot lead to reasonable compromise. The one section or the
other must succumb. The Radicals are determined that they will not
sacrifice their demands to their allies. It is natural enough that a
party so confident and so convinced should be unwilling, after the
victories achieved by their ' organisation ' and their activity less than
half a year ago, to assume the attitude of

St. George that swinged the dragon and e'er since
Sits on his horse' back at mine hostess' door.

It would be folly to reckon upon the readiness of these zealots to
acquiesce in the pleading of the Whigs that the ancient institutions,
traditions, and principles of English politics should be respected.
The Radicals are now the stronger of the two sections, and, although
their strength is out of proportion to the popular support really given
to their opinions in the late political struggle, owing to the paralysis
through divisions of the party of moderation, they are from their
own point of view justified in making the most of their opportunities.
They are persuaded, perhaps wrongly, that the moderate Liberals can
be made by judicious pressure to swallow anything presented to them
with the official stamp of Liberalism upon it, however inconsistent it may
be with the doctrines accepted by almost all Liberals until the other
day. The Radical alliance in fact was comparatively harmless when
Radicals were few, and had little influence in Parliament, and next to
none over the Government. But it must bo looked at very differently
when one half of the Liberal majority profess Radical opinions, when
the Caucus system is sifting out every other variety of Liberalism from
the ranks of the party, and when ministers not only adopt Radical mea-
sures but scoff at the fears of those who point out their dangerous
tendency. Mr. Mill, in dealing with another question, has a passage
which bears upon this subject. 'The opinions,' he says, 'supposed to
be entertained by Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright on resistance to foreign
aggression might be overlooked during the Crimean war, when there
was an overwhelming national feeling on the contrary side, and
might yet very properly lead to their rejection by the electors at the
time of the Chinese quarrel, though in itself a more doubtful ques-
tion, because it was then for some time a moot point whether their
view of the case might not prevail.' In the same way the objections
to the association of Radicals and non-Radicals as members of the
same party might have been overlooked when the former were insig-
nificant and almost powerless, as was the case in 1860 and even in
1870; but they cannot safely be disregarded now when Radicalism
is strong, enterprising, and confident of success.

confiscation. The economical and political objections to this policy have been stated
with greater force by some Liberals than ' by any Conservatives, especially by Mr.
Fawcett in a speech to his constituents at Hackney a few months ago.

1880. THE UNSTABLE EQUILIBRIUM OF PARTIES. 575

Some trusting souls may find consolation in the disclaimer by
ministers of any extreme designs. Upon this point it is enough to
cite the deliberate opinion of one of the most illustrious of Radicals,
looking at the matter, of course, from his own point of view : ' We
are quite accustomed to a minister continuing to profess unqualified
hostility to an improvement, almost to the very day when his con-
science or his interest induces him to take it up as a public mea-
sure and carry it.'

The spirit of Radicalism informs a type of character which has
its admirable side, but which cannot safely be left without a check.
The existing unnatural distribution of political forces appears to leave
practically uncontrolled in politics

The restless will
That hurries to and fro,
. Seeking for some great thing to do
Or secret thing to know.

It is not without cause that statesmen like Lord Derby and Lord
Sherbrooke, not to name mere Whigs and Tories, are apprehensive
of the results of the gradual and subtle change which is being wrought
in our polity by the substitution of new Radicalism for old Liberalism.
There are others, even among Liberals whom it has not been the
custom to call moderate, to whom the curious compound which is
beginning to be accepted by the majority of politicians as Liberal
doctrine must be strange and disquieting. There are still men,
among the very ablest on the Liberal side of the House of Commons,
who have not lost their belief in the healthy Liberalism of former
days, to whom the incessant and unwholesome craving for ' organic
legislation ' is deeply repugnant, who continue to acknowledge that
the essence of Parliamentary Government consists in freedom of dis-
cussion, that political and social activity is of little worth if it is
purchased at a sacrifice of individuality, and who are not yet prepared,
like some eminent persons on the Treasury Bench, to tickle the ears
of the groundlings in Parliament with sneers at political economy.

Yet it is not only the historical continuity of British institutions
that is assailed by modern Radicalism, but all the elements of which
the Liberal party was proud a quarter of a century ago. The
' machine -man ' of politics, imported from America and newly var-
nished at Birmingham, is allied with the Positivist doctrinaire,
inheriting Comte's bitter dislike of Parliamentary Government, of
social and political individualism, and of the economical doctrines
identified with the labours of Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Mill. It is
not difficult to trace these currents of interest and passion, mingled
with the more familiar prejudices of political Nonconformity, in the
Radical creed of the day. Whether these forces, which are, it must
be acknowledged, powerful, are ultimately to triumph in England,
rests jyith the leaders of the moderate Liberals as much as with any

576 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

set of individuals. If they have not convinced themselves by this
time that they cannot overrule the Radical policy in the Liberal
party and the Liberal ministry, the conviction is sure to be borne in
upon their minds at no very distant date, when, perhaps, it may be
difficult to repair the ill consequences of present hesitation. Of
course I speak only of those who are sincere in their repugnance to
Radicalism ; if there are others who are not sincere or are even indif-
ferent, nan ragionam di lor. The typical placeman or adventurer,
whatever his station, will be able to solace himself in any event with
the wisdom of ^Esop's fox that lost his tail. But the majority of the
Liberals who have not swallowed Radicalism in the lump would, I
am sure, be deeply grieved if their sloth or weakness were to give
occasion for an attack upon the institutions of the country and
upon the accepted principles of English politics and social organisa-
tion with the whole force of the Liberal party.

There is no prospect whatever of guarding against these mischiefs
by the absorption of individual Liberals in the Conservative ranks.
Comparatively few have the courage to face the odium of desertion
from the party with which they have long acted. Moreover, moder-
ate Liberals do not admit, as they would be in some measure forced
to do by going over to the Conservative camp, that they have ceased
to be Liberals because they cannot reconcile their old Liberalism
Avith the new Radicalism. Conservatism, in a party sense, though
not the mass of wickedness and folly which Mr. Bright represents it
to be, is somewhat narrow and unyielding. It is not in itself attractive
to Liberals, though some of them, on the compulsion of plain duty,
may feel at length called upon to fight under the Conservative
banner. It is also to be remembered that the secession of a number
of Whig peers and commoners, even if they were followed by a large
body of independent politicians, would not materially affect the dis-
tribution of power in the electorate.

The reconstitution of the party of moderation must be accom-
plished, if it is to be achieved at all, by an alliance, not a secession.
Is it impossible to form a new party on so broad a basis as to include
all Liberals who do not accept Radicalism and all Conservatives who
admit that it is practicable and desirable to administer existing
institutions in a generous and reasonably progressive spirit? If,
through hesitation on the side of the moderate Liberals, or through
reluctance to make concessions on the part of the Conservatives, no
arrangement of this nature should be found attainable, the triumph
of Radicalism cannot be long delayed. Its results will be irreversible.
The policy of reconstruction will be carried out with boldness and
determination ; English principles and English institutions will give
place to imitations of American or Continental Radicalism. Nor
will the Radical policy affect only abstract questions. It will, if
successful, permanently alter the conditions of political life in

1880. THE UNSTABLE EQUILIBRIUM OF PARTIES. 577

these kingdoms. It will involve the degradation and extinction
of the Whigs as a party, the humiliation and proscription of the
moderate independent Liberals, and the reduction of the Conser-
vative opposition to helpless inferiority in Parliament. Then, per-
haps, when the mischief is done, noble lords and right honourable
gentlemen will strive in a feeble and discredited manner to do what
they have now the chance of doing honourably and hopefully. The
task can only be performed by men of high rank and acknowledged
influence ; and if these are willing to l drift ' rather than to take
trouble and face inconvenience in order to amend a dangerous defect
in our political condition, it can only be said with sorrow that they
are unworthy to be called statesmen, and that the country which
trusts in them is justly punished by the worst that can befall it.

EDWARD D. J. WILSON.

VOL, VIII.— Xo. 44. E R

578 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

PETTY ROMANY.

IT is now just about a century since Heinricb Grellmann and J. C.
Kiidiger, working independently of each other, were led, from a
comparison of a large number of words common to the Hindustani
tongue and tbe language of the gipsies of Europe, to infer the Indian
origin of this widely-scattered people. So deeply rooted, however^
was the notion — bound up in the name Egyptian or Gipsy — that
they came from Egypt, that their most ingeniously worked-out ex-
planation of their history and origin did not meet with general ac-
ceptance. Even intelligent writers within these forty years endeavour
to urge that the problem of their origin still remains unsolved. It
is true that Grellmann's own list of words taken by itself is not strong-
enough to settle a point of so much historic interest, and he affords no-
proof for the satisfaction of his readers that anything like a thousand
words of proved identity existed in the two languages under compari-
son. This explanation, though the best that has been advanced,
while removing many difficulties, leaves others that have been seized
upon by his opponents, but it is doubtful whether any one would now
be found so hardy as to dispute an explanation that is supported by
so great a mass of concurrent evidence.

The first of the gipsy race to come to Europe were the Kunjuras
(Conjurers or Jugglers), who arrived in the thirteenth century. Kan-
jar or Kunjura is the Hindustani name for a tribe in the Upper
Provinces of Hindustan, whence Captain Eichardson derived our
name. They only came in small parties, and attracted little atten-
tion ; but the great migration of the gipsy race began later.'

It is only necessary to premise that the Indian nation is divided
into four grades, called by the Portuguese castes, the lowest of which
is that of the Suders, also called Parias in Malabar, before proceeding
to relate that in the years 1408 and 1409, Timur Beg ravaged India
for the purpose of disseminating Mohammedanism. All who resisted
were destroyed, and those who • submitted were first made slaves, but
afterwards butchered in cold blood, to the number, it is said, of

1 Bataillard states that from two charts discovered lately among the archives of
the monastery of Tismana in Little "\Vallachia, it appears that they were in Wallachia
in the middle of the fourteenth century, and were then, as till lately, in a state of
slavery. (Paspati, p. 148.)

1880. PETTY ROMANY. 579

100,000 defenceless people. Every part of the north and east was
beset by the conqueror, and it is therefore probable that the country
near the mouth of the Indus below Multan, which is called the
country of Zinganen, was the first asylum of the fugitives, who,
Grellman thinks, were exclusively Sliders. Here they would be safe
till Timur s return from the victory of the Ganges, when they pro-
bably quitted the country, carrying the natives and the name Zinganen
with them.

Historically all is blank regarding them before the year 1414.
Their Indian origin is inferred principally from their language, but
there are not wanting materials for stopping part at least of the gap
between 1409 and 1414. First, all English gipsies call their lan-
guage the Romani ; secondly, the gipsy numerals as far as six are
Hindustani, but those for eight and nine are octo, ennea, and must
have been picked up during a prolonged residence in a country
where Greek was the spoken language. Now Romani, or Romania,
lies north of the Danube, "Wallachia taking up the principal and
southern part, and Moldavia the northern. The Wallachian lan-
guage is derived from the Latin, and that of Moldavia consists of
Latin and Slavonic. It is supposed that the bulk of the inhabitants
are descended from Roman colonists sent by Trajan ; be that as it
may, they call themselves to this day no other name than Romani,
Rumani, or Romans. The name Wallachs belonged to some people
in Thrace, Macedonia, and Thessaly, the Vlachi (fi^a^oi) of the
Byzantine historians, who lived chiefly in the country round Mount
Pindus. In the twelfth century part of the Vlachi, to escape the
persecutions of the Emperor Manuel, left Thrace under two brothers,
Asan and Peter, and settled north of the Danube. Now besides the
Romany the English gipsies have a dialect which they call ' the
Fly Language ' or simply ' Fly.'' This name is so strikingly like
Vlach that I was led to suspect that they might be the same word,,
long before hearing from some gipsies that the same cant is also
called the Flash. The name Vloch or Wloch is said to be Slavonic
for Roman, and if so Wallach is equivalent to the native name
Romani. Wallachian shows a considerable admixture of Greek and
Slavonic ; indeed, a writer in BlacJtivood remarks that Greek is more
spoken in Wallachia than in Greece itself. It was during their
residence here that they probably learned the Greek numbers,
salovardo, ( a bridle ' (Mod. Gr. salibam}, drom, l a road ' (Gr. Sp6/*os),
and others. Wallachia is the centre of a tract that is now famous-
for its gipsies, and has, from their first settlement there, been their
great stronghold in Europe. In 1844 Turkey in Europe contained
214,000 gipsies, of which number Wallachia and Moldavia alone
contained in 1826 more than 150,000. Of these all were slaves,
in Wallachia till 1837, and in Moldavia till 1844. Now it is
probable that it was here the gipsies picked up the name of

E K 2

5&0 THE N1XETEEXTII CENTURY. October

Romani? and a good many words besides, among which may be
noticed Lat. f/ranum, ' corn,' pedes, ' feet,' calceus, a ' stocking-shoe '
(Gipsy, colshi*, ' trousers '), tZ«, ' give,' &c. It is to be presumed that
they remained here till they were pushed on, either by the Government
or by the arrival of fresh swarms from Asia. Certain it is that when
they arrived in Hungary and Bohemia — from which latter country
the French called them Bohemiens — they came from the East. In
Romania they cast otf their Eastern guise, emerged from slavedom
into irresponsible vagabondism, and, on leaving, assumed European
titles, names, and dress, and picked up a little language from every
country they passed through, still calling the mixture Romani. It
is probable that they would have tried to palm themselves off as
Romani too, if they could have done so, but their black skins rendered
that imposition impossible. Their residence here affords a point
of departure in their history not as Hindoos, but as gipsies — a
mixed race, a scattered nation, split up into many petty ' kingdoms '
tmder petty kings ; but still, however divided, members of one and
the same stock, all speaking one language which they have carried
about among the nations for nearly five centuries, unwritten, save
for the scraps of words and sentences gleaned from them by strangers
in the last hundred years.

The earliest mention of the appearance in Europe of the people
whom we call the Gipsies, is in the Hessian Chronicle of Will. Dilick,
which relates their arrival in Hessian territory in the year 1414.
They are not mentioned in the public prints, however, as being in Ger-
many till 1417, when they appeared in the neighbourhood of the North
Sea. Calvisius corrects the statement of Fabricius in the Annals of
Meissen that they were driven thence in 1416 by making it 1418.
By this date they were so widely spread in Germany that their names
appear in the annals of various parts of the country. Among German
words still in use we find Morgen, morning, and Esd, donkey. They
travelled in parties, under leaders who took the title of Count, Dulce,
or Lord of Lesser Egypt. In the same year, 1418, they appeared in
"Switzerland and the country of the Grisons. Now wherever they
appeared they carried the name Zinganen, which bore a certain resem-
blance to an old German word, meaning wanderers. ' For the word
Zigeuner signifies to wander up and down, for which reason it is said
our German ancestors denominated every strolling vagrant Ziehegan.'
' That all the various forms of the name in Europe are but so many
modifications of the Indian name, is evident from a comparison of the
'Indian Zinyanen, Turkish Tschingencs, Russian Tziggany, Hunga-
rian, German, and Italian Tziganes or Tzif/anys, Transylvanian,
"Wallachian, and Moldavian Cyganis, also Moldavian Tchinganea,
modern Italian Zingani and Zingdri, and Portuguese Ziganos.

1 Colonel Harriot gives two suggestions of Dr. Wilkins, and Paspati two others
of his own, all differing from the above.

1880. PETTY ROMANY. 581

They were also, on their own representation?, called by the French
Egyptians, corrupted in Spanish into Gitanos (Egyptiani), and in
English into Gipsy. Besides these they were called by the French
at first Bohemiens, the Dutch Heydens, heathens, and the Arabs
Chararm, robbers. Ludolphus (Commentarius, 1691, p. 214) cites
Achilles Gassarus in Augustan Annals, that first in the year 1419
fifty of them came to Augst,3 having two leaders, who said they
came from Lesser Egypt. On the 18th of July, 1422, they arrived
at Bologna, under a Duke, Andreas by name, on their way to visit the
Pope. Among the Italian words used by the English gipsies may be
noticed strame, straw ; Gip. praste, run, Ital. presto ; sapone, soap
(Gip. sapni) ; che ! che ! (meaning in Gipsy 'have done ! '), grangia,
a barn (Gipsy, gransi, a barn). ' On the 17th of August, 1427,' says
Pasquier in his Recherches de la France, 'came to Paris twelve
Penanciers, as they called themselves, a Duke, an Earl, and ten men,
all on horseback, and calling themselves good Christians. They were of
Lower Egypt, and gave out that " the Christians had not long before
conquered their country and forcibly converted them. They were
great lords in their own country, and had a king and queen there.
But the Saracens overran their country, and obliged them to re-
nounce Christianity." The Emperor of Germany, the King of
Poland, and other Christian princes, hearing this, obliged them to go
to the Pope at Rome, " who enjoined them seven years' penance to
wander over the world without lying in a bed." They had been
wandering five years when they came to Paris.' Pasquier copied
this from the journal of a Doctor of Divinity at Paris, with the
remark that the story of a penance savoured of a trick. The fact
was, doubtless, that the Zinganes, anxious to conceal who they were
and whence they came, for fear of Timur Eeg, eagerly made the
most of the opportunities for screening themselves which occurred
in different forms in the various countries to . which they came.
Their principal aim and object was to pass for Europeans, or any-
thing in fact but Asiatics, and especially Indians. This accounts for
the avidity with which they seized upon European titles, King and
Queen, Duke, Count, and Earl, adopted European names in place
of their own, concealed their language, and fell in with the ideas
which conceived them to be in one place pilgrims, in another peni-
tents, and in a third Egyptians. Nothing came amiss to them that
lay sufficiently far from the truth.

But generally, according to the German historians, on their first
appearance in Europe the gipsies chose to be considered as pilgrims,
which appears to prove that that was the prevalent infatuation of the
times. For, finding that they were on that account not only suffered
to pass unmolested, but were fed and helped on their way by gifts of

3 Angst, a village occupied by the ancient Augusta Rauracorum, six miles S.E. of
Basle.

582 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

alms, they gave out in all succeeding places that they were pilgrims
and holy persons. By this means they procured saferconducts
wherever they required them. Aventinus (Annals, lib. viii.) states
that they came to Germany in the time of the Emperor Sigismund,
adding the same fable of their having wandered for seven years in
exile from Egypt. Munster says that they carried passports and seals
from the German Emperor Sigismund, who reigned 1386-1437, and
other princes, and that he was shown an attested copy of one of
these by some gipsies at Eberbach. The gipsies at Bologna also
showed one from Sigismund, and others a pass from Uladislaus
the Second. They had similar protection from the House of Bathory
in Transylvania, and from the kings in France, according to Webner,
who saw the latter quoted. They had the art to obtain from
the Pope a free pass for all Christian countries as long as their
pilgrimage lasted, which they said was seven years. At the end of
that time they represented that soldiers were stationed to prevent
them from returning home. This course of deception could not go
on for ever, but they managed to maintain their position more or
less for fifty years, when their impositions were detected, and they
were reduced to falling back on their ancient and favourite occupation
of working in iron. After their persecution had begun on the Con-
tinent this art stood them in good stead, for the Hungarian King
Uladislaus, in 1496, ordered ' that every officer and subject of whatever
rank and condition do allow to Thomas Polgar, leader of twenty-five
tents of wandering gipsies, free residence everywhere, and on no
account to molest him or his people, because they had prepared
military stores for Bishop Sigismund at Fiinfkiichen.' (Grellmann.)

Their early leaders, as we have remarked, assumed high European
titles, as might have been expected from a people now for the first
time free to develope qualities to which they could give no vent in
the degraded state in which they had lived in India. "Wiessenburch,
translated by Sir Walter Scott in Blackivood, January, 1818, cites
some epitaphs. One from a convent at Steinbach says, on St. Sebastian's
Eve, 1445, ' died the Lord Panuel, Duke of Little Egypt, and Baron
of Hirschhorn in the same land.' At Bautmer another monument
records the death of the ' noble Earl Peter of Lesser Egypt in 1453 ;'
and at Pferz, ' the high-born Lord John, Earl of Little Egypt, to
whose soul God be gracious and merciful,' died 1498. In addition
to these Crucius mentions a Duke Michael ; Muratorio a Duke
Andreas ; and Arentinus a King Zindelo, as cited by Hoyland, who
adds a monumental inscription to Count Johannis and Knight Petrus
in the fifteenth century. These leaders assumed consequence, travel-
ling well equipped, on horseback, with hawks and hounds in their train,
which latter, however, was wretched enough.

But a long-continued course of deception, combined with absolute
license as regards pilfering and systematic robbery, brought the brief

1880. PETTY ROMANY. 583

period of the ascendency of the gipsies in Europe to an end. A
reaction against them, set in towards the end of the fifteenth
century, after which time, for nearly 300 years, we find a succession
of edicts for their expulsion from various continental countries. The
first of these appears to have been that of King Ferdinand of
Spain, in 1492, followed by that of Maximilian the First at the
Augsburg Diet in 1500. It is certain that these two edicts were to
a great extent enforced, as it is not till after this date that the
gipsies found it worth their while to cross to these islands. They
came to Scotland in 1505 or 1506, as appears from a letter of James
the Fourth of Scotland to the King of Denmark, dated 1506, in
favour of ' Anthonius Grawino, ex parva Egypto comes,' Earl of Little
Egypt. This letter says he 4et csetera ejus comitatus gens afflicta et
miseranda . . . fines nostri regni dudum advenerat,' ' had lately
arrived on the frontiers of our kingdom.' There is some reason to
suppose that these gipsies, expelled from Spain under the edict of
1492, found their way through Ireland to Scotland, as there is no
mention of gipsies in England so early as this, and many of their
names given below are Spanish in form. We may properly assume
that those mentioned six years later as being in the south of England
came through France by reason of the Augsburg edict of 1500.
Among the French words used by the English gipsies may be noticed
lodge, a watch (Fr. horloge). About 1512 the first comers ' beganne
to gather an head about the southern parts ' of England under a
King Giles Hather and a Queen Calot. ' These riding through the
country on horseback and in strange attire, had a prettie traine after
them,' according to the account of S. E., written 1512, probably
after an eye-witness. Though the Continent was somewhat relieved
for a time, we find the Diet making fresh edicts in 1530, 1544, 1548,
and 1551. In the meantime in England they had so increased
by 1531 that an Act of Banishment was passed against them by
Henry the Eighth in that year. The Augsburg Edict of the same
date may have been a set-off against this, to prevent the English
gipsies from returning thither. The difficulty of carrying these
expulsory acts into effect again appears from the fact that five years
later it was found necessary to repeat the order in more severe terms.
This (1536) was the year of the dissolution of the 376 lesser monas-
teries. From this Act, 27 Hen. VIII., it appears that encourage-
ment was given by some parties to the gipsies to remain contrary to
law, and that certain persons had actually imported them ; as it says,
4 it is hereby ordered that the said vagrants, commonly called Egyp-
tians, in case they remain one month in the kingdom, shall be pro-
ceeded against as thieves and rascals ; and on the importation of
any such Egyptian he (the importer) shall forfeit 40£. for every
trespass.'

While the true character of the gipsies, as recited in the Act

584 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

of 1530, was early apparent to the English court, those in Scotland
found an easy prey in the superstitious simplicity of the Scotch
people. What with the number and strength of the gipsies, the
weakness and insecurity of the Scotch King, James the Fifth, his
frequent habit of mixing with the gipsies, or travelling disguised as
a tinker, and the English border wars, in which the gipsies were
valuable allies, the king concluded a treaty, the 15th of February,
1540, with ' cure louit Johnne Faa, Lord and Erie of Litill Egipt.'
and a writ passed the Privy Seal in the same year in his favour as
Rajah of the gipsies. The object of the treaty was to support John
Faa in bringing back to their allegiance l Sebastian Lalow, Egyptian,
Anteane Donea, Satona Fingo, Nona Finco, Phillip Hatseggaw,
Towla Bailyow, Grasta Neyn, Geleyr Bailyow, Bernard Beige, Demes
Matskalla (or Macskalla), Notfaw Lawlowr, Martyn Femine, rebels
and conspirators against the said John Faw : ' but there is reason to
suppose that the whole story of the revolt was only a ruse to enable
the gipsies to evade the king's request that they would retire, as the
period of their pilgrimage was over. One of the most interesting
features of this curious document is the preservation of the old gipsy
names, all of which were dropped at a subsequent date except Faa
and Baillie. The very next year after this, however, the Scottish
gipsies were commanded by a sharp order in council, on the 6th of
June, ' to depart furth of this realme, with their wifis, barnis, and
companeis, within xxx dayis efter thai be charjit therto, under the
pane of deid.' But the king, whom, according to tradition, they had
personally deeply offended while he was travelling disguised as a
gaberlunzie man, or tinker, died the following year, and, the order
falling to the ground, the gipsies obtained a new lease of life. There
can be no doubt that the lines of the royal libertine —

' My dear,' quo' be, ' yeere yet owre yonge,
And hae na learnt the beggars' tonge '-

in his ballad of * The Graberlunzie Man,' refer to the language of the
gipsies, with which James the Fifth was probably well acquainted, as he
expressly says it was impossible to travel ' frae toun to toun and
carry the gaberlunzie on ' without it. The fact that he was in the
habit of doing so is in itself sufficient to account for the position
which John Faw held in the estimation of the king.

Though the Scottish gipsies managed thus to secure a compara-
tively good position in that country throughout this period, Scotland
was the only kingdom in which any gipsies were able to do so. For
in the Book of Keceipts and Payments, of 35 Henry VIII., 1543, are
entries relating to the shipment of certain Egupeians to Callis at
the public expense. This was followed by a counter-provision in the
expulsory edict of the Augsburg Diet in 1544, renewed 1548 and
1551. In Scotland, however, another writ in favour of ' John Faw,

1880. PETTY ROMANY. 585

Lord and Earl of Upper Egypt,' was issued by Mary Queen of Scots
in 1553. This John Faw seems to have died soon after, for the very
next year, 1554, one Andro Faa, captain of the Egyptians, procured
for himself and twelve of his gang a pardon for ' the slauchter of
Niniane Smaill, comittit within the toune of Lyntoune.' There were
with him his sons George, Kobert, and Anthony Faw, and another
Johnne Faw, with others.

The persecution of the gipsies in England went on through the
reign of Philip and Mary ; and in the reign of Elizabeth, after the
Italian edict of 1560, and the French of 1 561, an act was passed in 1563,
under which it was ' felony without benefit of clergy ' for any one over
fourteen years of age to be seen in company with gipsies for a month
together. At this time the gipsies in England were reckoned to exceed
ten thousand. On the Continent fresh efforts were made to rout
them from Italy 1569, Parma and Milan 1572, and Frankfort
1577, while they were hunted from the Netherlands by Charles the
Fifth, and by the Eepublic of the United Provinces 1582. Many of
these last must have crossed to England ; for we find that they so
abounded in the county of Suffolk after this, that in 1586 the justices
of the county established a House of Correction under the Acts 14th
and 28th Elizabeth, entitled, respectively, ' for the punishment of
vacabonds,' &c., and ' for setting of the poore to work, and for the
avoydinge of idleness.' This was especially for * all idle persons
goinge aboute usinge subtiltie and unlawfull games or plaie — all such
as faynt themselves to have knowledge in physiognomic, palmestrie
or other abused sciences — all tellers of destinies, deaths or fortunes,
and such lyke fantasticall imaginations.' This doubtless gives too
true a picture of the principal occupation of the gipsies at this
period, and, coupled with their habits of robbery, a reason for the
severity of the measures that were now growing up against them.
Their power in Scotland had begun to wane. In 1579, the year in
which James the Sixth took the government into his own hands, all
the legislative provisions respecting vagrants in Scotland were com-
bined into one strong measure, by which they were to be imprisoned
' sa lang as they have ony gudes of their awin to live on,' after which
their l eares ' were to be ' nay led to the trone or to an uther tree, and
their eares cutted off and banished the countrie, and gif thereafter
they be found againe, that they be hanged.' Notwithstanding that
this statute expressly mentioned ' the idle peopil calling themselves
Egyptians^ and was ratified and confirmed in 1592, James the
Sixth, by a writ of Privy Seal dated 1594, supports ' John Faw, Lord
and Earl of Little Egypt ' — a grandson, perhaps, of that * Johnne
Faw ' who had cozened his (the king's) grandfather fifty-four years
before this date. Another Act was passed in 1597, entitled, ' Strong
beggars, vagabonds, and Egyptians should be punished ; ' but as the
said Acts had ' received little or no effect or execution, by the over-

586 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

sight and negligence of the persons who were nominated justices and
commissioners for putting of the said Acts to full and due execution,'
another act to consolidate and enforce all the foregoing laws was
passed in 1GOO. James the Sixth was no friend to the gipsii-s.
During the reign of anarchy and weak rule that marked the years
preceding the assumption of the reins of government by James him-
self in 1579, the swarms of roving banditti had grown into incredible
numbers. It is not, therefore, to be wondered at that all the fore-
going means 'proved insufficient to restrain so numerous and so
sturdy a crew,' as Baron Hume remarks, especially if Fletcher of
Saltoun be correct when he says that, about a century later, there
were two hundred thousand people in Scotland begging from door to
door. As this act also failed, the Privy Council in 1 603 ordered the
whole race to leave the kingdom by a certain day, and never to return
under pain of death. This order was made a permanent law by the
statute of 1609, cap. 13, ' Act anent the Egyptians,' by which, after
the 1st of August, any of ' his Majesty's good subjects ' might ' take,
apprehend, imprison, and execute to death the said Egyptians, either
men or women, as common, notorious, and condemned theiffis.' But
from a passage quoted in Blackwood for 1817 from the Kegistruru
Secreti Sigilli, it appears that Scotchmen were in the habit of pro-
tecting the gipsies. In February 1615, "VY. Auchterlony, of Cayrine,
was pardoned for harbouring ' Joannis Fall, Ethiopis, lie Egiptian,' and
bis train, upon his estate of Belmadie ' contra acta nostri Parliament!
vel secreti concilii,' while, in 1616, the Sheriff of Forfar was repri-
manded for delaying to execute some gipsies, and for troubling the
Council with petitions in their behalf. This was followed by fresh
proclamations against gipsies and their protectors in 1616, 1619, and
1620, and a commission against the latter in July 1620 with
severe penalties.

The sanguinary statute of 1609 was not suffered to remain a dead
letter. Four Faas were condemned to be hanged July 31, 1611 ; in
July 1616, two Faas and a Baillie ; and in January 1624, Captain
John Faa and five other Faas were hanged, while Helen Faa, wife
of the Captain, Lucretia Faa, and eleven other women were con-
demned to be drowned, for no other crime than that of being gipsies.
The sentence on the women, however, was commuted to banishment
under pain of death, with all their race. On the 10th of November,
1636, some gipsies having been apprehended, the Privy Council ordered
' the men to be hangit, and the weomen to be drowned,' except ' such
weomen as hes children,' who were ' scourgit throw the burgh of
Hadinton and brunt in the cheeke,' as appears by the order in Council
quoted in Blackwood. The foregoing executions were enforced upon
the victims under the act of 1609, simply on the ground ' that they
are callit knawin, repute, and haldin Egyptianis.' It is probable that
after the example made of the Faas in the execution of July 1611,

1880. PETTY ROMANY. 587

numbers of gipsies sought refuge in France, for in 1612 a new
order came out for their extermination in that country.

After 1636, the rigour of the law began to relax; at all trials
subsequent to that date, some evidence of guilt, however slight, was
required, in addition to the fact of their being gipsies, before sentence
of death was pronounced.

Their leaders all through kept up a style and appearance equal
to that of the nobility. They always had plenty of money, as the
proceeds of all robberies were brought to them. They were in the
habit of giving tokens, as safe-conducts, to such of their friends
among the nobility, or others, as had occasion to travel with money,
and chose to apply for them. With such an appearance we may
credit the ' Gripsy Laddie,' Jockie Faa, who in 1 643 carried off the
lady of the Earl of Cassilis during his absence at Westminster to ratify
the Solemn League and Covenant. Mr. Walter Simson well observed :
4 If a handsome person, elegant apparel, a lively disposition, much mirth
and glee, and a constant boasting of extraordinary prowess would in
any way contribute to make an impression on the heart of the frail
countess, these qualities, I am disposed to think, would not be wanting
in the " Gipsy Laddie." And moreover, John Faa bore, on paper at
least, as high a title as her husband, Lord Cassilis, from whom she
absconded.' But the earl took his revenge, for the ballad says:

They were fifteen valiant men,

Black, but very bonny;
And they all lost their lives for one,

The Earl of Caasilis' Ranee.

This incident affords an example of the daring spirit of the inextin-
guishable Faas, who, notwithstanding the many wholesale executions
of which their family was the subject, survived, maintained their
leadership, and ended by calling themselves ' kings ' instead of lords
and earls, a title borne by their male descendants at Yetholm till the
year 1847, when the last of the name died. The title, however,
descends in the female line, and is now borne by the queen, Esther
Faa-Blythe, who is in her eighty-fourth year. But notwithstanding
the apparent tranquillity, it was miserable work for the gipsies.
Hunted from every country, they attempted to find new resting-
places in more northern climes. They were not allowed to wander in
Denmark, for Hoyland quotes, without date, a law of this period
that they * shall be taken into custody by every magistrate,' and a
very sharp order for their expulsion was issued in Sweden in 1662.

A dreadful battle took place at Romanno in Tweeddale in 1677
between the Faas and theShaws, who fell out as they were journeying
together to repel some Irish invaders. In this conflict old Sandy
Faa and his wife were killed. All the Shaws were hung at Edin-
burgh on the 6th of February, 1678. This affray illustrates the
tenacity with which the gipsies defended the fundamental prin-

588 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

ciples of their polity. The two clans whose * rights ' were aggrieved
by the inroads of Irish l travellers ' on their ' domains,' were journeying
together with the avowed object of fighting them, when the expedi-
tion ended as related.

Another sharp order for their expulsion was published in Sweden
in 1723, which was repeated, after the fearful executions at Ofiessen
November 1726, in which four gipsies were broken on the wheel
and thirteen others hanged, with additional severity in 1727. In
this year, 1727, Geordie Faa, the husband of Jean Gordon — the ' Meg
Merrilies ' of Sir Walter Scott — was slain at Huntlywood by Kobert
Johnstone, who after breaking prison once was recaptured and hanged
at Jedburgh, on the 28th of August, 1728. But the worst period
was now over for the gipsies in all European countries. The san-
guinary laws had relaxed their rigour, at least in practice, before the
middle of the seventeenth century, never to resume it. In 1727 the
Vagrant Act (17 Geo. II. c. 5) was passed, which is still in force, as
far as regards cases in which ' the line and manner of their punish-
ment is not by law expressly directed ' when vagabonds may be put
to hard labour ' until the next general or quarter sessions, or until
discharged by due course of law.'

Another dreadful fight occurred at Hawick at the winter fair in
1730. The dispute arose out of a quarrel between two of them as to
the right to a frail sister who had been conferring her favours on
both. Two gipsies were killed, while the whole of the two tribes — one
being from Yetholm and the other from Lochmaben — joined in the
fight. A somewhat similar occurrence happened in 1772, near
Falnash. The real cause of these furious encounters seems to have
been the invading propensities of the West Country gipsies.

The last three of Jean Gordon's sons and two of their wives were
found guilty of sheepstealing, May 1730, when a juryman who had
been asleep during the trial, awaking suddenly found his brethren
equally divided on the case, upon which he cried out emphatically,
' Hang 'em a' ! ' So they were hung on the 5th of June. In 1746
poor Jean Gordon was ducked to death in the Eden at Carlisle, for
having expressed her partiality to the Stuarts. As often as she got
her head above water she cried out ' Charlie yet ! Charlie yet ! ' and
died like a true Faa.

It was not till 1783 that the severe statute of 5 Eliz. c. 20, which
had not been put in force, according to Blackstone, since the time
when, as Hale says, ' at one Suffolk assize no less than thirteen gipsies
were executed upon these statutes a few years before the Restoration,'
was repealed by 23 Geo. III. c. 51. Up to the passing of the Vagrant
Act, 5 Geo. IV. c. 83, 'for the punishment of idle and disorderly
persons, rogues and vagabonds,' gipsies could only be proceeded
against under 17 Geo. II. c. 5.

Old « Wull Faa ' of Kirk Yetholm, King of the Gipsies, died 1784

1880. PETTY ROMANY. 589

at a great age at Coldingham, when his corpse was escorted to Yet-
holm by a train in which were 300 asses. He was succeeded by his
son 'Will Faa,' who died 1847, after a reign of sixty- three years.
In his youth he was a great football player. Kirk Yetholm Ball on
' Eastern's E'en ' is one of the keenest that can be played. It is
perhaps the only place where females engage in the game of foot-
ball, and they still play as eagerly as any man. For a short time
during the latter years of old Wull Faa, who seems to have maintained
the respect accorded to his ancestors, the gipsy chiefs held the
positions of constables, peace-officers, or country-keepers. But events
were passing in a distant quarter of the globe that did more than all
the philanthropic efforts of the Austrian Government, and more than
all the cruel and savage domestic legislation of Scotland and England,
to thin the ranks and break up the power of the gipsies.

In 1775 the American War of Independence broke out. The
Government was in need of soldiers, and the tinklers were appre-
hended all over the country and forced into the American service.
This kidnapping system was, according to the testimony of persons
of intelligence living at the time (quoted by Mr. Simson), the means
of greatly breaking up and dispersing the gipsy bands in Scotland.
From this blow they never recovered. The war in America had been con-
cluded only a few years when that with France broke out. The gipsies
were again pressed into the service, being everywhere apprehended
as ' idle and disorderly persons and vagabonds.' But large numbers
mutilated themselves to escape service, and adopted a fixed habit of
life, so that it is notorious that in Scotland gipsies now fill many
honourable posts in the legal and medical professions, as well as
creditable positions in a lower station.

From these events in the West, we must now pass to the East of
Europe, but first take a brief review of the history of the gipsies up
to this date. The fifteenth century is distinguished by their appear-
ance and toleration in Europe, the sixteenth by the persecution and
expulsory edicts against them on the Continent, the same with san-
guinary acts in England, and their comparative immunity from
molestation till the end of the century in Scotland ; the seventeenth
by the relaxation of the severity of the laws. Otherwise these three
centuries have the same feature in common in all countries, the ex-
termination or expulsion of the gipsies. But in the eighteenth
century, after a period of comparative rest, their history enters upon
a new phase. By the enlightened philanthropy of the Empress
Theresa, now, for the first time in any country, measures for the
improvement of their condition in Hungary, and for converting them
into good subjects and useful members of the state, were devised and
put into operation. In 1768, the third year of Joseph the Second,
orders were issued to the following effect. They were to give up
dwelling in tents, wandering, horse-dealing, eating carrion, and

590 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

electing their own W<iyda (or Judge) Waywode, or, as the name still
exists among the Yetholm gipsies, Wadler, a Duke. They were to
give up the name Tziganes, or gipsies, and take that of Uj Magyar,
New Boors, forget their language, and use only that of the country.
They were allowed some months to settle in towns and villages/ build
houses, and follow businesses, and dress like Boors. These ' orders,
which were calculated for their redemption, were repeated^in J1773,
and made more rigid, but for obvious reasons they failed, and it was
thought necessary to use compulsion. Wherefore it was ordered that
no gipsy might marry who could not prove his position to support a
wife and family ; that their children should be taken from them by
force and removed from all intercourse with the race. At Fahlendorf,
in Schiilt, all the children of the gipsies above five years old were
stolen during the night of the 21st of December, 1773, and placed
with Boors who were paid eighteen guilders yearly by Government.
Again, on the 24th of April, 1774, another set, who had in the mean-
time attained five years of age, were taken from the same place, and
placed under the same discipline. The decrees were however, on the
whole, but little obeyed — a fact which Hoyland thinks must have
escaped the Emperor Joseph, or he would have included Hungary in
his decree of 1782, which provided for the reformation of those in
Transylvania. This order contained five points under the head of
religion, and nine respecting temporal affairs. The people proposed
to be benefited amounted to some ' eighty thousand miserable
wretches, ignorant of God and of virtue ' (Grellmann), and these are
the regulations by which they were to be benefited. They were to
learn the principles of religion, send their children early to school,
prevent them running about naked, sleeping together promiscuously ;
attend church, and listen to spiritual teachers. Secondly, they were
to conform to the customs of the country in diet, dress, and language,
abandon wearing large cloaks, give up keeping horses (except the
gold washers). No go id washer to barter at annual fairs : to avoid
idleness, to keep to agriculture, and every territorial lord who takes
them to allot them pieces of land. Those who neglected husbandry
were to be beaten, and the use of music was only to be permitted
when they had no field work to do. In addition to this, according to
M. Tissot,4 ' Joseph the Second had cottages built for them, and dis-
tributed agricultural implements among them, telling them to culti-
vate their ground. Instead of inhabiting the commodious buildings
that had been constructed for them, they placed their cattle in them,
and themselves lived under their tents. To prevent their corn-from
ripening, they cooked it. ... When the young Tziganes grew up
(who had been placed with the Boors), they had lost none of the
instincts of their race, and took the first opportunity of escaping to
rejoin their relations.' The attempt appears to have been given up
4 The Country of the Tziganes. Bj Victor Tissot. Paris, Benin.

1880. PETTY ROMANY. 591

after this, though it is evident that a sufficient length of time was
not allowed to effect such a reformation, perhaps I should say trans-
formation, as that aimed at, for it was evidently idle to expect so
great a change in the nature of the individual subjects experimented
Tipon. Had these well-meaning but loosely conducted experiments
been carried on over the second generation, there is no reason to
suppose they would have failed. As it was, they were given up
before success could reasonably have been expected. The same
authority states that there are now 1 1,500 Tziganes in Hungary, who
still preserve all the exterior marks of their Hindoo origin. In the
year 1867 it is said that 40,000 gipsies were encamped on the plain
near Belgrade.

The above forms a light historical study of the history of Petty
Eomany — that is, of all the various petty kingdoms, dukedoms, and
clans scattered among the nations of Europe up to the beginning of
the nineteenth century, as opposed to those that remained in or around
Romania. The causes that had begun to work in the direction of the
reformation of the gipsies towards the end of the last century were
followed by others in this. Some time after the close of the French
war, when scarcity was severely felt in Ireland, a stream of emigration
set in from that unfortunate country. Among other results a large
number of Irish gipsies and travellers invaded England and Scotland.
Inasmuch as ' the road ' can only support a certain number, several of
' the old stock,' who were ashamed of the predatory habits of the
' travellers,' as they called them, were forced to take to other means
of making a living. In 1816 Hoyland the Quaker, who had himself
married a gipsy, published his powerfully written work on the subject
of their reclamation. This was followed by the celebrated articles
in Blackwood, in 1817 et seq., written by Walter Simson and Sir
Walter Scott, and the train thus lighted did not die out for half a
century. In March 1827, a gipsy was condemned to death at Win-
chester under very distressing circumstances, of which the Eev. Jas.
Crabbe, brother of the poet, happened to be a witness. This resulted
in his establishment of the ' Southampton Committee,' whose labours
for a time met with considerable success, and he personally was much
beloved by the gipsies, many of whom are still living, and still speak
of him With affection. It is said that in five years forty-six families
were induced to settle in Southampton and follow trades. In 1832
Mr. Crabbe published his ' Gipsy's Advocate,' and enlisted the sym-
pathies, among others, of the Rev. John Baird, minister of Kirk
Yetholm, who in 1838-9 succeeded in forming a l Society for the
Reformation of the Gipsies in Scotland.' This Society published
annual reports till 1847, when they gave up printing them. The
committee was broken up in 1859. Mr. Crabbe also interested the
Rev. John West, Rector of Chettle, Dorset, who, by the liberality of
F. A. Stuart, in 1 845 built the ' Gipsy Asylum ' at Farnham, Bland-

592 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

ford. The annual meetings of Mr. Crabbe were continued till 1847
by himself, and the last anniversary was held at Farnham in 1848.
For a few years after this a missionary was employed, but virtually
the fire had burned out, and the movement came to an end. On the
whole, the subject had fallen into the hands of Pharisees of the old
school, as all their writings show. But their efforts were by no means
failures. They succeeded in civilising and settling large numbers of
gipsies, who are now added to the wealth-producing portion of the
•community. But all the old poetry of the subject has for ever dis-
appeared. A gipsy camp is a miserable sight, and it is wretched
enough to know that the number of people living under these condi-
tions in England and Wales alone is over 8,000, and is on the in-
crease. In 1851 there were 7,659 persons living in 'caravans, tents,
and the open air ;' in 1861, 7,130 ; and in 1871, 8,025.

The principle followed all along from the beginning — on the
large scale among the nations, and on the small scale among the
parishes — in respect of the gipsies, viz., that of ' routing ' them from
place to place, has been radically a wrong one. Fix them, and in a
short time they will grow to the spot like other people ; but as long
as they are pushed on, they have neither time to form local con-
nections, nor spirit to care about improvement. Settled gipsies are
the rule, and roving ones the exception, in Scotland, and no doubt in
both countries the infusion of gipsy blood is larger than has been gene-
rally imagined, for once mingled with the English race they are lost
sight of. The ' routing ' policy is still followed in England as well as
in France, where a colony has just been broken up by the mayor of
Chantille. The English gipsies have provided against any incon-
venience arising out of this practice near the metropolis by the
purchase of some land at Battersea, on which all gipsies may encamp
by paying one shilling.

It is curious to find among the gipsies of Mitcham Common to-
day that the general name for shoes, ' CHORKAS,' is a corruption of one
of the many Hindustani names for particular kinds of shoes, ' CHAR
M. \SHIYA ; ' and that the name for a coat, at Yetholm SCHOCHIE, and
at Mitcham CHUCKLE, is Hind. CHAPKAN or CIIOPKAN, a particular kind
of coat. — points for the consideration of those who dispute Grellmann's
theory of their Indian origin. ' JUKEL,' their name for 'dog,' Hind.
' SHIGHAL ' i.e. JACKAL, points back to a time when that Cants was a
domesticated animal in the East, as it is represented to be on the
Egyptian monuments. Manishi, a woman (Yetholm), is Sanscrit
Manushi, woman, wife. The ' cosht,' or bent boughs that form the
biipport of their tents, is Sanscrit KASIIT,'/ wood,' and Hebrew * CUSHET,'
a ' bow ' — of which latter language there are said to be some forty
words in the Romany language.

JOSEPH LUCAS.

1880. o93

WAPITI-RUNNING ON THE PLAINS.

THE first time I ever saw the head of a Wapiti (Cervus canadensis] was
at Chicago. I happened to be talking one day with General Sheridan,
when a magnificent specimen arrived from one of the frontier forts as
a present from the officer in command there. I had heard of these
animals, but had looked upon them as mythological beasts. I had
been so much disappointed in America in my search for large game,
had heard so many rumours which turned out to be without the
smallest foundation in fact, and had listened to so many stories of
abundance of game which proved to be entirely illusory — the animals
existing only in the vivid imagination of the story-tellers — that I
had begun seriously to doubt whether any Wapiti existed on the
continent. The sight, however, of the pair of horns reassured me
considerably, for obviously where one Wapiti stag was to be found
there was a reasonable chance of killing others, and my enthusiasm
rising to fever heat on a closer inspection of the antlers, nothing
would satisfy me but I must be off at once to the fort.

It would be useless to enter into any description of the journey.
The comfort of the Pullman cars, the discomfort of the heat and dust,
the occasional bands of buffalo, the herds of antelope, the prairie dogs,
the vast droves of Texan cattle and the picturesque cattle boys that
drive them, the long dreary stretches of prairie where the melancholy
solitude is broken only by occasional little stations at which the train
stops — are all familiar to everybody who has crossed the plains, and
have been written about ad nauseam. Very curious are these small
settlements, some of them consisting only of two or three mud, or
rather adobe, houses, or of a few wooden shanties and a pumping-engine
to supply water ; others being large villages or small towns. They
look as if Providence had been carrying a box of toy houses, and had
dropped the lid and spilt out the contents on the earth. The houses
have all come down right end uppermost, it is true, but otherwise
they show no evidence of design : they are scattered about in every
conceivable direction, dumped down anywhere, apparently without any
particular motive or reason for being so situated. The chief pecu-
liarity noticeable about these little settlements and their inhabitants
is that on the approach of a train everybody rushes to the front of his
VOL. VII I.— No. 44. S S

594 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

house and rings an enormous bell. I received quite an erroneous
impression from this ceremony the first time I crossed the plains. I
had read somewhere that the Chinese on the occasion of an eclipse or
some natural phenomenon of that kind, which they attribute to the
action of a malignant being, endeavour to drive away the evil influence
by ringing bells, beating gongs, and making other hideous noises ; and
I thought that the unsophisticated inhabitants of these frontier towns,
not having become accustomed to the passage of a train, looked upon
it as some huge, horrible, and dangerous beast, and sought to drive it
away by employing the same means as the Chinese. I found out
afterwards, however, that the object of the bell-ringing was to induce
travellers to descend and partake of hash.

At one of these lonely little stations I was deposited one fine
evening in the early fall just before sundown. For a few moments
only the place was all alive with bustle and confusion. The train
represented everything that was civilised, all the luxuries that could
be carried in a train were to be found on board of it, the people were
all clothed in fashionable dresses, it was like a slice cut out of one of
the Eastern cities set down bodily in the midst of a perfect wilderness.
In a few seconds it was gone, civilisation vanished with it, the
station relapsed into its normal condition of desolation, and I found
myself almost alone in the heart of the desert.

The day had been hot, and the air was resonant with the noise of
crickets and cicali. The almost level prairie stretched out around
me, fading away towards the east in interminable distances, while in
the west the sun was just sinking behind a range of low sand-hills and
bluffs. The air was still and calm, the sky perfectly cloudless, and
the setting sun cast a faint delicate rosy hue over the sand and burnt
sun-scorched herbage of the prairie, giving it the general tint and
appearance of the Egyptian desert. It was very beautiful but some-
what melancholy, and I confess I felt rather blue and dismal as I
watched the train vanishing in the distance ; nor were my spirits
roused by learning from the station-master that Buffalo Bill and
Texas Jaek had left the fort that very morning on a hunting expedi-
tion. I had counted upon one or both of those famous scouts accom-
panying me, for General Sheridan had with characteristic kindness
written to the officer commanding at the fort, requesting him to give
me any assistance in his power, and if possible to let me have the
valuable services of Mr. "William Cody, otherwise Buffalo Bill, the
government scout at the fort ; and I began to inveigh against the bad
luck that had arranged that he should go out hunting the very day I
arrived. However, I had to ' take it all back,' for just as I was stepping
into the ambulance waggon that was waiting to take us to the fort,
two horsemen appeared in sight, galloping towards us, and the station-
master sang out, ' Say ! hold on a minute, here are the very men you
want, I guess.' In another minute or two they cantered up, swung

1880. WAPITI-RUNNING. 595

themselves out of the saddle, threw their bridles over a post, caught
up their rifles, and stepped on to the platform. I thought I had
never seen two finer looking specimens of humanity, or two more
picturesque figures. Both were tall, well-built, active-looking men,
with singularly handsome features. Bill was dressed in a pair of
corduroys tucked into his high boots, and a blue flannel shirt. He wore
a broad-brimmed felt hat, or sombrero, and had a white handkerchief
folded like a little shawl loosely fastened round his neck, to keep off
the fierce rays of the afternoon sun. Jack's costume was similar, with
the exception that he wore moccasins, and had his lower limbs encased
in a pair of comfortably greasy deer-skin trousers, ornamented with a
fringe along the seams. Round his waist was a belt supporting a re-
volver, two butcher knives, and a steel, and in his hand he carried his
trusty rifle the * Widow.' Jack, tall and lithe, with light brown
close-cropped hair, clear laughing honest blue eyes, and a soft and
winning smile, might have sat as a model for a typical modern
Anglo-Saxon — if ethnologists will excuse the term. Bill was darkr
with quick searching eyes, aquiline nose, and delicately cut features,
and he wore his hair falling in long ringlets over his shoulders, in
true Western style. As he cantered up, with his flowing locks and
broad-brimmed hat, he looked like a picture of a Cavalier of olden
times. Ah, well ! it is years ago now since the day I first shook
hands with Jack and Bill, and many changes have taken place since
then. At that time neither of them had visited the States, or been
anywhere east of the Mississippi : they knew scarcely more of civiliza-
tion and the life of great cities than the Indians around them.
Afterwards they both went East and made money. Cody has, I believe,
settled down on a ranche somewhere in Wyoming, and John Omo-
kondro, better known as Texas Jack, has gone to other and better
hunting grounds. Peace be with him ; he was a good and kind
friend to me, a cheery companion, as brave as a lion, as gentle as a
woman, always ready for anything, always willing to work, cutting
down mountains of difficulties into mole hills, always in good humour,
never quarrelling — a better hunting companion than Jack was in those
days, or a more reliable friend, it would be hard to find. There was
nothing mean about Jack ; he was — to use one of his own Western
phrases — a real white man. ' Well,' says Cody, 'after the ceremony of
introduction had been got through, and we had made known our
wishes and aspirations, ' I guess we will both go along with you gents,
if you like, and if I can get leave, and I don't know as there will be
any trouble about that. You see Jack and I just started out this
morning to get a load of meat, but there has been considerable of a
fire down towards the forks, and scared all the game off; and as we
had not got no stores with us for more than a day or two, we concluded
to come right back.' ' Oh, Lord,' I said ; < the game all scared off, is
it ? what an infernal nuisance ! it does not look a very cheerful country

s s 2

596 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

to ride about in without plenty of game to Tliven one up.' ' Never
you mind about deer and elk,' cried Jack ; * you have no call to worry
about that ; we will find game enough if you can hit them ; you think
the prairie don't look cheerful, eh ! Well it does seem kind of dismal,
don't it, this time of year.' .' Ah ! ' he added enthusiastically, ' but you
should see it in the summer, when the grass is all green, and the
flowers is all ablowing, and the little birdies is a building of their
nesties and boohooing around, and the deer are that fat they will
scarcely trouble to get out of the way ; and as to eating, they are
just splendid, immense ! I tell you ; ain't they, Bill ? ' * Yes, sir, you
bet your boots they are. But come on, Jack ; let's fork our ponies and
skin out for the fort ; we don't want to stop here all night, anyhow.
Good night, gentlemen ; we will see you in the morning and fix that
hunt all right, I guess.' And so Buffalo Bill and Texas Jack ' fork their
ponies and skin out,' while we bundle ourselves into the wagon and
rattle off as fast as six seventeen hands high mules can tear to the fort,
where we were most kindly and hospitably received.

Buffalo Bill and Texas Jack were as fine specimens of their race
and class as could anywhere be found ; and that is saying a good deal,
for honest hearts and stalwart frames and handsome features are not
rare among the pioneers of Western civilization. It might be supposed
that these hunters, Indian trailers, cattle boys, and miners, are dis-
agreeable people to come across. That is not the case at all. There
are, of course, some rough characters, regular desperadoes, among
them, and they occasionally shoot each other pretty freely in gam-
bling quarrels and drunken sprees ; but to a stranger who knows
how to behave himself they are, as far as my experience goes, most
civil and obliging. If a man is civil to them they will be civil to him,
and if he does not interfere about their affairs they won't bother
about his, unless he wants their assistance, and then they will be ready
and willing to give it. The manly sense of independence, the self-
respect, and that feeling of respect for others engendered by it, which
so strongly characterize the American people, are as deeply marked
and have as good an effect among the nomads of the West as in
any other class of the population. Of course if a man gives himself
airs he must expect to pay for it. I remember rather an amusing
instance of this. I had engaged a hunter and guide, a first-rate
man, to accompany a friend of mine. The day before they were to
start the guide came to me and said, ' Now look here, Mr. Earl. I
ain't agoing to back out of this bargain, because I told you I'd go;
but I ain't sweet upon the job, I tell you. I never come across a chap
with such a lot of side on in my life, and I don't like it. However, I
said I'd go, and I'm a going ; but I ain't agoing at the price I told you.
I am going to charge him a dollar a day more.' And so my friend
enjoyed his expedition in blissful ignorance that he was paying four
shillings and twopence a day extra for ' side.'

1880. WAPITI-RUNNING. 597

The next morning, after paying some visits and making some pre-
liminary arrangements for a hunt, I wandered off a little distance and
sat down on the trunk of a fallen cottonwood tree, and tried to realize
that I was in the middle of those prairies that, thanks to Captain
Mayne Reid, had haunted my boyish dreams. I cannot say thac the
realization of my hopes fulfilled my expectation. I was oppressed
with the vastness of the country, the stillness and the boundlessness
of the plains seemed to press like a weight upon my spirits, and I
was not sorry to get back into the bustle and busy life of the fort.
After a while, though, when I became accustomed to the plains, the
feeling of depression of spirits which was at first occasioned by the
monotony and quiet colouring of everything faded away, and the
limitlessness of the prairie only impressed me with a feeling of freedom,
and created rather an exhilaration of spirits than otherwise.

It was difficult in those days, and I suppose it is so now in most
places, to enjoy much hunting on the plains without the assistance of
the military. That assistance was never withheld if it could be given;
for among no class of people in any country in the world are the rites
of hospitality better understood or more gracefully administered than
among the officers of Uncle Sam's army. I have always found them
most courteous, kind, and obliging, ready to do anything in their
power to help a stranger to see something of the country or to indulge
in the pleasures of a hunt. I had no great difficulty therefore in
obtaining permission to attach myself to a scouting party that was to
leave the fort in a short time.

The next two or three days were spent in making preparations,
buying stores, &c. I thought the days interminable. I was crazy to
get out on the plains and see one of these great Wapiti, and it appeared
to me that everything could have been ready in half an hour's time.
However, it was no use hurrying ; one has to be philosophically patient
and let things take their natural course. There is a regular routine
to be observed in all these cases. At some places it takes you two
days to fit out, at others three ; sometimes you may strike a man ac-
customed to do things on short notice, and able to get everything
ready in two or three hours. Then there are endless delays on the
day of starting. Something is sure to be forgotten; girths or buckles
break ; perhaps one of the drivers has had a birthday, and is suffering
a little from the effects of it, and cannot be induced to pull himself
together and get started at all. In fact, you must make up your
mind to be quite content if the first day's march consists only of a few
miles, just enough to get beyond the radius of the last whiskey shop,
so as to be certain of making a clear, fair-and-square move on the
succeeding day.

We got off pretty well, sent the wagons, escort, tents, and things
away shortly after noon, and started ourselves a couple of hours later.
It was with a feeling almost of exultation that I at last found myself

.598 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

riding on the boundless prairie, the tall flag-staff, and the wooden
houses of the fort fading in the distance, and before me nothing but
the illimitable wilderness. After a short gallop, we overtook the
outfit on the banks of the Platte, an extraordinary river, which con-
sists at all seasons, except when in full flood, of a broad band of
shifting, soft, and dangerous sand, with a little water trickling about
in it. It is in some places miles in breadth. There was a kind of
bridge, composed of numerous holes, with a few wattles and planks
and trunks of rotten trees thrown across them, the whole structure
being supported on rickety trestles ; but it was in such a dangerous
condition that we did not attempt to cross it, but preferred to ford the
river, though the bed of it was strewn with wheels, axles, and frag-
ments of wagons, a sight not very encouraging to the traveller. How-
ever, by dint of much hard swearing we got across, travelled a few
miles on the other side, and camped close to the source of a little
stream. Next morning shortly after daylight two or three of us
started on ahead on the route that the wagons were to follow, and
an event occurred — we saw our first Wapiti. Almost immediately after
leaving camp I spied two or three gigantic objects, with horns like
branching trees, surveying us from a sand-hill at a little distance. I
was nearly frightened to death at the sight, they looked so enor-
mous in the dim light, and although I had absolutely seen the head
of an elk at Chicago, I still had lingering doubts as to their existence.
We tried to ride round them, but it was no use : they had seen the
camp, and made off before we could get anywhere within range. We
travelled all the rest of that day without seeing anything more : it
was intensely hot, and altogether the journey was not a very pleasant
one. The heat was most oppressive, although it was late in October,
for there was not a breath of wind, and the treeless prairie does not
afford a particle of shade of any kind ; being quite a green hand on
the prairies, I was afraid to wander any distance from the wagons,
lest I might lose myself; and I found riding behind a wagon all day
in the broiling sun on a rough-paced Broncho so tiresome that I was-
well pleased when the camping-place for the night hove in sight.

The country we traversed is peculiar ; the soil is of light sand, and
the whole region is a vast series of sand-heaps. It looks as if the
ocean in a violent gale — the height of the waves being exaggerated to
some fifty or a hundred feet — had suddenly been arrested, solidified,
and turned into sand. There are occasional level places, low bottoms,
in which the water supplied by the winter snows and rains collects
and remains some time after the great heats and droughts of summer
have set in. These places are covered with a rank vegetation of tall
grass, in which it is sometimes very difficult to force one's way on horse-
back ; but generally the surface of the country is sand, either devoid of
vegetation or covered with patches of coarse grass ; and here and there are
level tracts clothed with short, succulent, curling buffalo grass. The

1880. WAPITI-RUNNING. 599

wind has a great effect on the soft surface of the sand, and most of the
hills have one side blown or scooped out, which makes the country some-
what dangerous to ride over, for one is apt, in galloping after some
animal, to come suddenly upon a perpendicular cliff twenty or thirty
feet high, the descent down which would result in broken bones for man
and horse. The native horses are pretty well accustomed to this 'pecu-
liarity of the country, and will stop suddenly, a proceeding which,
though excellent and wise as regards themselves, is apt to result in the
discomfiture of the rider if he is new to the plains, and to cause him -to
describe a graceful parabola in the air, and fall down head foremost in
the soft substance of the sand beneath. It is the easiest thing in the
world to lose yourself in this broken sand-heapy country, for you will lose
sight of the wagons when not a hundred yards from them, and not see
them until you are right on the top of them again. There is of course
no kind of road or track of any sort ; you simply travel in the direction
which you wish to go, choosing the best line of country you can find.
We camped that night on Little Sandy Creek, the south branch of
the east fork of the western arm of one of the larger tributaries of the
North Platte. It was on the next day's march that the first elk was
killed. I was riding alone a little to the left of the wagons, much
alarmed at not having them constantly in view, but still so anxious to1
get a shot that I ventured to keep off a little way. I had adopted by
this time the manners and customs of the native hunter, which consist
in going up cautiously to the crest of a sand-hill, looking over inch by
inch, and occasionally going to the top of the highest point in the
neighbourhood and taking a good survey round with a pair of field
glasses. At last I was rewarded. Quietly craning my head over a
sand ridge, I saw lying at the bottom, not more than a couple of
hundred yards from me, what looked at first like a great tangled mass
of dry white sticks. It turned out to be the heads of three Wapiti
stags lying down close together. I managed without much difficulty
to get a little nearer to them, left my horse, crawled up to the brow
of the nearest ridge, got a fine shot,' and fired. I hate taking a lying
shot, and it would have been better in this case if I had roused the
animals up; however, I fired at one as he lay, and struck him, but
not fatally, and they all got up and made off. Noticing that one
was wounded, I jumped on my horse and followed him. I speedily
came up to him, for he was severely hit, dismounted, fired another
shot, and laid him on the sand. He was not a very large stag, in fact
he had a small head, but I thought him the most magnificent animal
I had ever seen in my life. Fortunately for me, Buffalo Bill, who
heard the shots and saw the Wapiti making off, followed them and
came to my assistance, helped me to cut him up, and after taking
some meat on our saddles, brought me safely and speedily back to the
wagons. The river we camped on is a good-sized stream. It flows
through a generally flat country, but partially composed, as I have

600 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

already said, of sand-hills and steep bluffs. Its course is the most
peculiar I have ever seen in any river, it twists and twines in a most
miraculous manner, forming loops and figures of eight, and every kind
of geometrical figure that can be made by curves. Two bends of the
river will approach each other till they are separated only by a little
neck of land a few yards in width, and then go away for ever so far,
sweeping back again in such a manner that I should think a man in a
canoe might have to travel twenty miles to accomplish a distance of
perhaps two or three miles in a straight line by land.

Where the stream has cut through high sand-hills or bluffs the
banks are of course precipitous, almost perpendicular, but as a general
rule there is a margin some hundred yards or so in width between the
edge of the stream and the high steep hills which form the banks of
the river. Through these hills, composed of loose sand and other soft
materials, winter rains have worn deep gullies, large enough to be
termed canons, precipitous valleys leading up from the river, at right
angles to its general course, to the level of the plain, and from these
valleys other and smaller canons branch off in all directions, forming
a labyrinth of steep precipitous gullies.

These canons, and indeed every crack and cranny below the level
of the prairie, are thickly timbered with cypress ; in other words, the
natural wood grows everywhere where it is not subjected to the con-
tinually recurring prairie fires which desolate the region, and wherever
it is sheltered from the cutting blast of wintry winds, almost as de-
structive in their effects as fire. The river is fordable in most places
as far as depth of water is concerned, but the bottom is very treacherous,
consisting generally of soft shifting quicksand. We pitched our camp
in a nice sheltered situation, not far from the head of one of the
canons leading down to the river, near enough to the stream to
be able to water our horses without inconvenience, and sufficiently
close to the plain to be able to get a good look out over the sur-
rounding country without having to go too far.

It was a pleasant and convenient camp, and we should have been
very comfortable if we had not suffered so much from cold at night ;
but unfortunately for us summer turned suddenly into winter, a vio-
lent snowstorm came on, and for a few days after it we felt the cold
very severely. We had plenty of buffalo rugs and blankets, it is
true, but there is a limit to the number of blankets that are
useful; a dozen will not keep a man any warmer than half-a-dozen,
or half-a-dozen than two or three. I do not like sleeping in great
cold ; it necessitates lying so still. The only chance is to get into
bed, roll yourself well up in your blankets and buffalo robes while
the tent is warm, see that there is no cranny or hole anywhere by
which the air can penetrate, and then lie perfectly quiet. You will
experience a most oppressive and inconvenient amount of heat at first,
which it is very difficult to put up with, for it is almost impossible to

1880. WAPITI-RUNNING. 601

resist the desire to kick off the clothes and get cool, but the tempta-
tion must be resisted, and you must lie perfectly still — even if you
boil — otherwise your chance of a comfortable night is gone. If you
succeed in going to sleep, you will find, when you wake after three
or four hours, that though the cold is intense your body still contains
a considerable amount of caloric ; you must then pull the blankets
completely over your head, just leaving a little hole through which
to obtain a scanty supply of fresh air, and remain in that position
till you get up in the morning. It makes an enormous difference to
your bodily heat having your head inside the blankets, but it is not
pleasant. In the morning you will find your air-hole encriisted with
a thick coating of ice, and your body by that time thoroughly cold
and stiff, from lying so long in one position. However, that is one
of the discomforts of hunting that has to be put up with.

We scoured the country for the first couple of days in vain, seeing
nothing, not even a fresh sign. On the third afternoon we — that is,
myself and a friend and Buffalo Bill — were riding along, somewhat
dispirited, a little in the rear of Texas Jack, who had gone on ahead
and had disappeared round a hill. Presently we caught sight of
him again on a little bluff at some distance from us. He had
dismounted, and was running round and round on all fours, making
such extraordinary antics that I imagined he had gone suddenly
insane, till Buffalo Bill explained that he was merely indicating to
us in the language of the plain that there were some Wapiti in sight
and pretty near. So we approached him very cautiously, and look-
ing over the edge of the bluff saw a sight which I shall never forget
— a herd of at least 120 or 130 Wapiti on the little plain below close
to the edge of the river. They looked magnificent, so many of these
huge deer together. There were not many good heads among them,
however, the herd consisting chiefly of hinds and young stags. They
were in such a position that we could not make a good stalk upon
them, and as it was getting late in the afternoon we determined to
try and drive them, and so, after posting Jack and my friend in two
favourable positions, Buffalo Bill and I went round to try and creep
as near the Wapiti as we could. I did get two or three unfavourable
shots, and missed, but the other two men were more fortunate, for
they shot three elk out of the herd as they ran by.

Next morning, a little before sunrise, I was awaked as usual by
hearing scratch, scratch, against the canvas of my tent door. ' Come
in,' I said, with a sleepy and somewhat sulky voice at being disturbed,
for I could feel by the stiffened and frozen condition of the blankets
about my mouth that it was a very cold morning, and I was still tole-
rably warm. My ' come in ' was answered by the appearance of Jack's
jolly cheerful face as he undid the strings that tied the tent door, and
came in, rubbing his hands and stamping his feet. * Good morning,'
says Jack; 'it's about time to getup,it's a fine large morning, and going

602 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

to be a great day for hunting.' ' All right, Jack, I will be up in a
minute. In the meantime there is the panikin, and there is the
keg.' Jack, like most prairie men, invariably introduced himself to
the Sun-God with a copious libation of whiskey. To take a big
drink of raw whiskey in the morning, and to touch nothing more during
the rest of the day, appears to me a most extraordinary perversion of
principle. However, it is a part of the manners and customs of the
country, and may be adapted to that peculiar region. I have often tried
to acquire the habit, but have never succeeded. It is true that to take
one drink of whiskey in the morning induces modified intoxication
for the whole of the day, and it is therefore an economical habit ; but it
makes a man so unpleasantly drunk that he is apt to become a nuisance
to himself and a terror to his friends. After Jack had tossed off his
tot of whiskey with the customary salutation, ' How,' to which we re-
plied with the polite rejoinder, ' Drink hearty,' we crawled out of our
blankets and began to dress ourselves ; that is to say, to undress ourselves,
for we slept with more clothes on than we wore in the daytime ; and
then, having taken our drams in the shape of coffee, and gone through
the slight ceremonial that answers to the getting-up of civilized life,
we turned out, watered our horses, and started, accompanied by the
captain in command of the scouting party. The captain, however,
had a mishap, which necessitated his returning to camp, for in crossing
a stream his horse took fright, reared, and fell back in the water. The
result was that on emerging from the river the gallant captain took
upon himself the appearance of a knight of old clad in a complete
and glittering armour of ice. In a few moments his clothes were
frozen and stiff as a board, and he had to gallop home, get himself
wrapped up in blankets, and the circulation restored by external
friction and internal applications of hot whiskey and water.

We rode for a long time, keeping a general direction down stream,
but on the high ground on the banks of the river, without seeing
anything or a sign of anything.

About noon I at last caught a glimpse of some objects a long way off,
on the side of a steep bluff. It is very hard to take- a good view of a
distant object on a cold winter's day from the top of an exposed hill,
with the wind blowing through and through one, and one's eyes water-
ing and one's benumbed hands shaking the glasses in a most incon-
venient manner. And we were unable for some time to determine
the nature of the animals, but at length made out that they were elk,
and not what we feared at first they might be, Indians. As soon as
we had made the joyful discovery we mounted our horses, and
galloped off, making a long circuit down wind, so as to come upon the
game from the proper direction. Jack's instinct as a hunter stood us
in good stead on this occasion. He brought us round beautifully to the
exact spot where the deer lay, which was an exceedingly difficult thing
to do, considering that when we first saw them, they were four or five

1880. WAPITI-RUNNING. 603

miles off, and were lying on a sand-hill exactly like hundreds and thou-
sands of other sand-hills that surrounded us in every direction. There
was not even the slightest landmark to point out the position of the
elk, and having once got on our horses we never saw them till Jack
brought us within a few hundred yards of the herd.

I had no idea where we were, when Jack said, ' Now be mighty care-
ful in going up this hill, and keep your eyes skinned : we ought to be
able to see elk from the top.' Accordingly we rode our horses up
inch by inch, stooping down on their necks whenever we moved, and
halting every two or three steps, and gradually raising our heads, so
as to be sure of catching sight of the game before they saw us.
When we discovered the deer, we found they were lying on the oppo-
site hill side, out of shot, and we had to make another detour in order
to get closer up; and finally, having reached a place from whence we
expected to be within easy range, we dismounted, gave our horses in
charge to two soldiers who had accompanied us, and prepared to make
a start on foot. It was not pleasant ground for crawling, covered
as it was in patches with dwarf cacti, horrible little vegetable nui-
sances about the size of a cricket ball, covered with spikes that pene-
trate through moccasins into the soles of your feet, and fill your
hands and knees till they look like pincushions. They go in easily
enough, but being barbed at the end, they won't come out again.
They are a great trouble to dogs. I had a colley with me that
became so disgusted with these cacti, that if he found himself among
patches of them, he would howl and yell with terror before he was
hurt at all. They are very detrimental also to the human hunter,
but of course it is better to be as covered with prickles as is the
fretful porcupine than to miss a chance at a big stag ; and so, in spite
of cacti, we crawled on our hands and knees, and after a while
flat upon our waistcoats, till we got to the crest of the hill, and there
found ourselves within two hundred yards of the game. We could
not tell how large the herd was, for not more than twenty Wapiti
were in sight. Having mutually settled what we were to do, in
a few hurried whispers, we selected each man his deer, fired all
together, and loaded and fired again as fast as we could. Wapiti are
so stupid that when they do not get your wind, or see you, they will
bunch up together and stand, poor things, some little time in a state
of complete terror, uncertain which way to run or what to do, and
we got several shots into them before they started, and when at
length they did set off they went in such a direction that we were able
to cut them off again by running across at an angle. We did so, and,
making another careful stalk upon them, found them all gathered to-
gether, looking about in all directions, and quite bewildered at being
unable to see or smell the danger to which they were exposed. Signal-
ling our horses to come up, we got three or four more shots at the
elk before they made up their minds to start, and when at last they

604 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

did get under way, we rushed to meet the horses, threw ourselves into
the saddle, and started full gallop after them.

Fortune again befriended us, for the deer ran round a steep bluff,
and, by taking the other side of the hill, we succeeded in cutting them
off again, and rode in right on the top of the herd, yelling and shout-
ing to frighten them. In running Wapiti on horseback, the great
thing is to get among them suddenly at great speed, and to scare
them as much as possible. If you succeed in doing that, they get
winded, and with a good horse you will be able to keep up witli
them for some little distance ; but if you let them get started gradu-
ally at their own pace, you have no more chance of coming up with
them than with the man in the moon. However, this time we charged
in among the herd, and kept up with them a long way. What became
of the others I don't know, for I was too fully occupied with myself
to take any notice of them. I rode in upon fifty or sixty of the huge
beasts, kept my horse galloping right along with them, and loaded and
fired as fast as I could, occasionally rolling over a deer. Presently, I
singled out a big stag, the best I could see, and devoted myself to
him. With the usual cowardice of his sex, he thrust himself in
among the hinds, and I had great difficulty in getting at him at all.
Finally, I got a good broadside shot at him, but missed, for it is not
an easy thing to hit a deer at full gallop with your own horse at full
gallop also ; in fact it is about as hard a thing to do as a man can
attempt in the way of shooting, particularly as, owing to the pecu-
liarly dangerous nature of the ground, a man has to keep his eyes
open, and cannot devote his entire attention to the animal he is
pursuing, or even to his own horse. However, I stuck to my deer,
though he doubled and turned in all directions, and at last by a
lucky shot rolled him over like a rabbit, a fact which I announced by
a yell which I should think must have been heard in settlements.

As soon as I had done for him, I took after the rest of the herd, or
rather the largest portion of the herd, for the main body of deer had
broken up into several parties, and followed a little bunch of perhaps
twenty or thirty, loading and firing, loading and firing, and every now
and then bowling over a Wapiti. I went on till my rifle fell from my
hands through sheer exhaustion, and stuck in the sand, muzzle down-
wards. That of course stopped my wild career. Then I got off my
horse, which was completely blown and stood with his legs wide apart,
his nostrils quivering, his flanks heaving, pouring with sweat, and
loosened his girths. I felt in pretty much the same condition, for it is
hard work running elk on horseback ; so, having first extracted my rifle
from its position in the sand, I led my horse slowly up to the top of a
sand-hill, turned his head to the fresh vivifying wind, and sat down. I
had not the remotest idea of where I was, how long I had been running
the elk, how many I had killed, or anything else ; the excitement I
had been in for the last half-hour or so was so great, that I felt quite

188C. WAPITI-RUNNING. 605

bewildered, and scarcely knew what had happened. It was natural
that I should not know where I was, for the oldest hand will get
turned round after running even buffalo on the prairie ; and elk are
much worse than buffalo, for the latter will generally run tolerably
straight, but the former go in circles, and double, and turn back on
their tracks, and go in any direction it suits them. I was utterly and
completely lost as far as rinding my way back to camp was concerned,
and I began all at once to feel a sense of dismalness creep over
me. A sudden reaction set in after the great excitement I had en-
joyed. Only a few seconds before I had been careering at full gallop
over the prairie, shouting from sheer exuberance of spirits, every
nerve in a state of intense excitation, the blood coursing madly
through every artery and vein, every muscle and sinew strained to
the uttermost, bestriding an animal in an equal state of excitement,
and pursuing a herd of flying creatures, all instinct with life and
violent movement. In a second it was all gone. Like a flash the
scene changed. The Wapiti disappeared as if by magic. There was
not a living creature of any kind to be seen, and the oppressive
silence was unbroken by the faintest sound. I looked all around the
horizon ; not a sign of life ; everything seemed dull, dead, quiet,
unutterably sad and melancholy. The change was very strange, the
revulsion of feeling very violent and not agreeable. I experienced a
most extraordinary feeling of loneliness, and so having stopped a few
minutes to let my horse get his wind, and to recover my faculties a
little, I got on my exhausted steed, cleaned the sand out of my rifle,
slowly rode up to the top of the highest sand-hill in the neighbour-
hood, and there sat down again to look about me. I daresay the
reader will ask, ' Why did not you take your back track, and so find
your way ? ' I should have tried that of course in time, but it is not
an easy matter to follow one's footmarks when the whole country is
ploughed up and tracked over with the feet of flying animals, and I
had in all probability been describing curves, crossing my trail many
times ; so I sat me down on the top of my sand-hill and waited.

After what seemed to me an intolerable time, probably nearly
half-an-hour, I saw, in the distance, a little black spot crawling up a
high sand-hill and remaining stationary at the top, and by the aid of
my glass I made out a man and a horse. The man and horse re-
mained where they were ; I also did not stir ; and in a few minutes
more I had the pleasure of seeing in another direction another man
and horse climbing to the top of a sand-hill. I felt sure they were
my friends, for we had always settled among ourselves that if we got
separated in running elk or buffalo, or anything, each man should get
to the top of the highest point he could find, wait there some little
time, and in this way we should be sure to get together again ; and
so after fixing well in my eye the position of the first man I had
seen, I got on my horse and started in that direction. After a bit, I

606 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

rode up another high sand-hill to take an observation, and finding my
friend still in the same place, continued my way towards him. In
about an hour we had all got together again, and after briefly giving
each other an account of our success, we struck out for the end of
the track where I had left my stag, and took the trail back. Such a
scene of slaughter I had never viewed before ; for two or three milr-
the dead elk lay thick upon the ground ; it was like a small battle-
field ; a ca^e of prairie murder, as the captain said. By Jove, how we
did work that afternoon, gralloching the deer ! It was dark by the
time we had got through our task, and with bent and aching backs
and blunted knives had returned to camp, about the dirtiest, most
blood-stained, hungriest, happiest, most contented, and most dis-
reputable-looking crowd to be found anywhere in the great territories
of the West. I shall never participate in such a day's sport as that
again. It was wonderful, because it partook of the double nature
of stalking and running on horseback, for we had our stalk first, and
killed five or six Wapiti on foot, and then we had our run and
killed a lot more. The next two days we were busily engaged in
cutting up the meat with axes and taking it into camp, for it must
not be supposed that an ounce of all that meat was wasted; we
hauled every bit of it out to the fort, where the demand for fresh
venison greatly exceeded our supply.

The worst of killing so much game in a short time is that it brings
one's hunt to a premature end. We had got all the meat we could
carry, and there was nothing for us to do but hitch up our teams and
drive back to settlements. Two or three days after our return, the
fort had a narrow escape of being burned up in the night by a prairie
fire of unusual magnitude. The fire originated a long way off, down
on the Kepublican river, but there was a stiff breeze blowing at the
time, and it travelled with most amazing swiftness towards us. While
it was still miles and miles away, the whole sky was lit up with a fierce
lurid glare, and as it soon became evident that it was coming in our
direction, energetic measures were at once taken to fight the foe. All the
troops, consisting, if I remember right, of eight companies of infantry
and two or three troops of cavalry, were ordered out, and every other
able-bodied man in the fort was requisitioned. The fire bore down upon
us from the south with awful speed and overwhelming power. It
was terrifying but grand to see it coming. The country to the south
is very hilly, with long valleys leading down towards the fort. The
fire would work its way comparatively slowly up a hill, and then
pausing as it were for a moment on the brink, would be caught by
the wind and hurled down the slope with a roar that could be heard
miles away. It poured down the valleys with a rush, tossing a spray
of flames twenty or thirty feet high into the air, like as if a vast pent-
up flood of molten metal had suddenly burst its barriers and spread
over the plain. Xo living creature that walks the earth, however

1880. WAPITI-RUNNING. 607

fleet of foot, could have escaped the fierce onslaught of those flames.
The approach of the fire was not uniform and regular, but was affected
by every change and flaw of wind ; sometimes it would move slowly,
with a loud crackling noise like that made by a bundle of dry sticks
burning ; then it would come tearing on in leaps and bounds, devour-
ing the earth and roaring like a huge furnace. Occasionally a great
body of fire advanced steadily in one direction for some time, till
checked by some change of wind, it would die down altogether, or
move on in some other course; but, in spite of occasional deflections
of this kind, the general drift of. the fire was straight towards
us, and it soon became painfully evident that unless- the enemy
could be checked or turned aside the fort was doomed. Fire is an
awful foe, but the men met it gallantly — advancing iu line, com-
.manded by their officers, as if moving against a living enemy, only
instead of being armed with sabre and rifle, they carried water-buckets
and blankets. As soon as they got as near as the intense heat would
allow them, they set to work burning broad strips of grass before
the advancing flames. It is of course impossible to cope with the
fire itself, no creature could stand near it for a moment and live ; the
only way to deal with it is to burn the ground in front of the object
you want to save, so that when the fire comes down to the burned
and bare place it shall be forced, from want of fuel, to turn aside.
That sounds simple enough, but in the case I am thinking of it wag
difficult and dangerous work. The grass was very high, dry as
tinder, and with a strong gale blowing it was no easy matter to keep
in check the flames that were lit on purpose. The men had to
keep on firing the grass and beating down the flames with blankets,
and firing it further on and beating it down again, until a strip of
burned ground, so broad that it could not be overleaped by the
flames, was interposed between the fire and the fort. It is hard to
imagine anything more hellish than that scene. The heat was
intense, the sky glowed lurid, red with the reflection of the flames,
the fire poured down towards us as if -it would devour everything
in its way, and between us and the flames, standing out clear and
distinct against the intense bright light, was the fighting line,
wild-looking figures waving coats and blankets as they furiously beat
the flames, men rushing to and fro and mounted officers galloping
up and down the rank. After some hours' incessant hard work, they
beat the fire, thrust it on one side, and saved the fort ; but it was a
very, very narrow escape, for the flames passed awfully close to the
hay-yard, where a whole winter's supply of forage was stacked. A few
yards nearer, and the hay must have ignited, and if that had once
caught fire, nothing could have saved the stables and all the other
buildings in the place. There was no actual danger to life, for the
barrack square of hard bare earth was sufficiently large to have afforded
shelter and safety to all the human beings in the fort ; but the horse?

608 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

would probably have perished, and the stores, and barracks, and
officers' quarters, and in fact the whole settlement, would have been
burned to ashes. The fire travelled some 200 miles that night, de-
stroyed a lot of cattle, leaped over two or three good-sized streams,
and was finally arrested in its devastating course by a large river.

We remained some time in that country, made several expeditions
from the fort, had many little adventures, and enjoyed much good
sport, but never again had such a run after Wapiti as that which I
have endeavoured to describe. Circumstances must be very favourable
to ensure a good run after elk : the ground must be tolerably hard, or
else there is no chance whatever, and you must be able to get near
enough to the game unseen to enable you to burst in upon them at
the first spurt, otherwise you will never get up with them at all. I
remember once chasing a wounded stag nearly all day along with a
friend who was hunting with me and a government scout. It was
most ludicrous : we got within about 300 yards of him, and do
what we would we could get no nearer. We followed in this way
for hours, till our horses were completely blown, and eventually killed
him, because the deer himself became exhausted through loss of blood,
just as our horses were giving out. The scout had got within a
hundred yards or so, and was just pulling up his completely played-
out horse, when the deer stood still for a moment, which gave the
man time to slip out of the saddle and finish him with a lucky shot.
He was a fine stag, with a good pair of horns. A nice chase he gave
us, and a nice job we had to get back to camp that night. We were
completely lost, had been running round and round, up and down, in
and out, for hours, and it was more by good luck than good manage-
ment that we hit upon the river and got safe home.

The prairie is the place to go to if you want to make a big bag,
but for true sport commend me to the forest and the hills. To me at
least there is infinitely more charm in stalking Wapiti among the
mountains, in the magnificent scenery to be found there, than in run-
ning them on the plains. The plains, although they give one a sense
of freedom and a certain exaltation from their immensity, yet are
dismal and melancholy, and running elk, although intensely exciting,
is scarcely a legitimate and sportsmanlike way of hunting such a noble
beast. But in the mountains, stalking elk, picking out a good stag
and creeping up to him, is as fine a sport as can be obtained anywhere
in the world ; in fact, it is like deerstalking in Scotland, with every-
thing in grand proportions, mountains many thousand feet in height
instead of hills of a few hundred, and a magnificent animal weighing
600 or 800 pounds instead of a comparatively small deer which would
not turn the scale at twenty stone.

Wapiti used to be, and I suppose still are, plentiful in all the
mountainous regions of the Western Territories. They were very
numerous formerly in that portion of Colorado with which I am best

1880. WAPITI-RUNNING. 609

acquainted, namely Estes Park and the mountains and valleys
surrounding it ; but now that the Park is settled up their visits are
comparatively rare. The flat country used to be full of them in
autumn, they would run among the cattle, and apparently take little
notice of them ; but chasing them with hounds has made them very
shy, and now they do not often come down except in winter, when deep
snow upon the range compels them to seek pasturage on the lower
grounds. Still, there are even now plenty of them in the neighbour-
hood, and Wapiti can always be found with a little trouble at any
season of the year.

A few years ago Estes Park was a hunter's paradise. Not only were
all the wild beasts of the continent plentiful, but the streams also
were alive with trout, as for the matter of that they are still ; and we
often devoted a day to fishing, by way -of varying our sport and
obtaining a little change of diet. In summer there was nothing
peculiar about the method of fishing ; we used artificial flies, or
live grasshoppers, and caught multitudes of trout, for they generally
took the fly so well that I never remember finding myself in the
position of the gentleman who was heard complaining to a friend
that he had been ( slinging a five and twenty cent bug,1 with a
twenty foot pole, all day, and had not had nary bite ; ' and on the
rare occasions on which they did not rise freely at the artificial insect,
you were pretty sure to get them with a live ' hopper.' There is
another advantage also in using the last-mentioned bait, namely, that
it insures a double amount of sport and labour, for catching grass-
hoppers is a great deal harder work than hooking trout. But in winter
we had to fish through holes in the ice, and that is a somewhat
peculiar proceeding. The first time I ever fished trout through the
ice was in the Park. Three of us started off one fine bright winter's
morning, and rode about ten or twelve miles up the main creek, to
a place near some beaver dams, where trout was said to be plentiful,
carrying with us an axe, a sack, some twine and hooks, a bit of raw
pork, and of course our rifles. Having dismounted, tied up my horse,
and selected what I thought was a likely-looking spot, I set to work
to cut through the ice, while my companions rode some way further
up the stream.

I cut and chopped and got pretty warm, for it is no joke
cutting through two feet of solid ice, and, after some labour,
struck down upon an almost dry gravel bed. I repeated the same
operation the second time to my great disgust; but on the third attempt
the axe went suddenly through into deep water. Let me advise any

1 The Americans have retained the original meaning of the word ' bug,' and apply
it to various insects : for instance, a daddy-long-legs, fire-fly, or lady-bird would be
called a straddle bug, a lightning bug, or a lady bug. The peculiar reptile which
has monopolized the term among us is distinguished in the States by prefixing the
name of that article of furniture in which he loves to lurk, and where his presence
murders sweet repose.

VOL. VIII.— No. 44. T T

610 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

of my readers who propose fishing through the ice by way of cooling

their youthful ardour in the winter, to be careful how they set to

work. The proper way is to chop a square hole, taking pains to cut

down very evenly ; the improper way is to do as I did the first time

— cut carelessly, get down deeper on one side of the square than on

the other, suddenly strike the axe through, and get the hole full of

water, while yet there are several inches of ice to be cut through. If

anyone will try chopping ice in a hole two feet deep and full of water,

he will discover that the splashing, though graceful to look at, is not

comfortable to feel in cold weather. Fishing through the ice is

chilly and depressing work. I mean such fishing as I am thinking

of when you are exposed to all the keen airs of heaven, a solitary

shivering mortal out all alone in the wilderness. Of course if two

young persons go out fishing for Tommy-cods, as they occasionally do

on the St. Lawrence, through a hole in the ice, with a nice little hut

built over it, and a nice little stove inside, why things are quite

different.

I cannot say that fishing through the ice under ordinary cir-
cumstances is very exciting sport, but there is something comical
about it, and it affords a certain amount of innocent enjoyment.
When I rejoined my pals that evening, I could not forbear laughing
at the peculiar appearance of the winter trout-fisher as represented
by a staid, respectable member of society, who looked as if he ought
to be engaged in some learned or scientific pursuit or dressed in
good broadcloth, and poring over his books in some well-filled library.
His costume was remarkable. His feet were protected by voluminous
moccasins stuffed with many woollen socks ; his legs encased in dingy
and somewhat greasy corduroys ; his body in an ancient, blood-stained,
weather-beaten jacket, with two or three pieces of old sacking or
gunny bags hung on the shoulders, and strapped round the waist to
keep off the wind ; an ordinary deerstalking cap, with pieces filched
from a buffalo robe sewn on the ear-flaps, pulled over the brows and
tied under the chin, and a long and tattered woollen muffler wound
round and round the neck, allowed little of the fisherman's face to be
seen, except a nose, purple with cold, from which hung a little icicle,
and a pair of eyes gazing intently at the hole in the ice over which he
stooped. Patiently he crouched over his fishing hole, occasionally stir-
ring up the water to keep it from freezing, holding in his hand a fishing-
rod in the shape of a stick about a foot long, from which depended a
piece of thick twine attached to a hook armed with the eye of a de-
ceased trout as a bait. At intervals he would twitch out a fish, pull him
violently off the hook — a man cannot employ much delicacy of mani-
pulation when his hands are encased in thick fingerless mittens — and
throw him on a heap of his forerunners in misfortune, where he
speedily froze solid in the very act of protesting by vigorous contor-
tions against his cruel fate. "We caught, I should be ashamed to say

1880. WAPITI-RUNNING. 611

how many dozen trout on that occasion. I know we had the best part
of a sack full, but as to the exact size of the sack I propose to retain
a strict reserve, lest I should be accused of taking a mean advantage
of that noble little fish the trout.

On the way home we shot a mountain sheep. "We came suddenly
and unexpectedly upon three of them, started our host of the Eanche
Griff Evan's huge hound Plunk after them, jumped off our horses,
and put out up the mountain on foot after the dog. What a pace
those sheep went up that mountain, and what a pace old Plunk
went up after them, and what a ludicrously long way behind- we were
left ! It made one quite ashamed of being a man to see the manner
in which the sheep and the dog got away up the mountain and out of
sight before we had panted and perspired up a few hundred feet. "We
might have saved ourselves the trouble of climbing, for presently down
came one of the sheep, followed closely by Plunk and preceded by a
small avalanche of rattling gravel and bounding stones, in such a
hurry that he as nearly as possible ran between the legs of one of the
sportsmen. The animal passed literally within two yards of him
with such startling effect that he had no time to do anything but fire
his rifle off in the air in a kind of vague and general way. Plunk
stuck to the sheep gallantly, and pressed him so hard that he went to
bay in the bed of the river, at a place where the water rushes foaming
down a steep descent among a mass of huge boulders, and there he
met his fate. The mere word ' mountain sheep ' evokes such recol-
lections of the emotions I felt on being first introduced to that strange
animal, that I will endeavour to relieve my mind by trying to jot
down in a future article some reminiscences of sheep.

DUNRAVEN.

T I 2

612 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

DIARY OF LIU TA-JEN'S MISSION TO
ENGLAND^

I. EAILWAYS, MINES, &c.

THE first time I met Sir Thomas Wade, the British Minister at
Peking, he began the conversation by remarking that the end of
government was the preservation of the people, and that the subject
which required the most urgent attention of China's rulers at present,
was the opening of coal and iron mines, and the construction of rail-
ways. On my journey from Tientsin to Shanghai also, the foreigners
on board the steamer all dwelt upon the same subject. I made them
understand that our doctrine held material profit to be of small
account compared with moral right [i.e. that in China civilisation is
moral, not material] ; and that our aim was to benefit the people, not
to embarrass them. But they were never weary of arguing the
question backwards and forwards : and at first I could not make out
why they were so zealous in pressing a measure which, as they said,
would add greatly to the wealth and power of China [since it is not
to be supposed they have either much at heart]. But, after reaching
Shanghai, I made a visit to the Polytechnic Institution there with
Feng Taotai, who showed me a plan, which had been sent by a
foreigner, of a projected railway to connect India and Peking by one
line of rails running the whole length of the empire and crossing the
border I I then understood that this railway question was not one
merely of acquiring places of trade [but that its end was conquest].
If our rulers are not resolute in resistance, the authorities in the

1 The following translations are from the Diary of His Excellency Liu, who went
to England as joint Minister with Kuo Ta-jen in the autumn of 1876, after the
conclusion of the Chefoo Convention. The Diary was written in obedience to
instructions issued by the Office of Foreign Affairs at Peking to all China's repre-
sentatives abroad, directing them to keep a record of what they saw and heard in
foreign countries for the information of the home Government, and it has been printed
and circulated amongst the high officers of the empire only. By far the greater part
of the book describes more or less accurately facts which came under the author's
observation in England — more interesting, of course, to his fellow countrymen than
to foreigners, who know what Liu Ta-jen saw, but want to know what he thought.
Those passages only in which the Minister expresses his inferences and opinions
have been translated.

Liu Ta-jen is probably a fair representative of the literary, and therefore] ruling,
class in China, and his opinions on European civilisation are interesting on that
account. He shall speak for himself. — F. S. A. BOURNE.

1880. LIU T A- JEN'S MISSION TO ENGLAND. 613

maritime provinces, in their delight at what is new and strange, will
find themselves playing into the hands of the foreigners before they
know where they are. Merchants may spread reports of the desira-
bility of these changes in the hope of gain, and delude the officials ;
officials may take up the cry in the hope of reward to ensue and de-
ceive the throne ; until the evil is too great to be stopped. But, in
truth, can anyone be deceived by such reports ? ' The empire cannot
be governed by the yard measure of the merchant : first principles
cannot be reached by those who excel only in the use of their hands.'
Does not the old saying hold good yet ?

With such a railway completed, a few days would be sufficient to
involve the safety of the whole empire — in truth, no small matter.
I think the views of the Chinese Government on this question should
be stated with no uncertain sound. Such a railway would be dan-
gerous not only to China, but to England also. For even now the
ill-feeling against foreigners has by no means died out amongst the
people. If a railway is made, and graves, houses, and land again de-
stroyed, the people's resentment will become stronger than ever, and
ruffians will take advantage of the state of popular feeling to murder
the English. And when once disturbance reigns, the foreign com-
munities in China will not alone suffer : the new railway will be
ready at hand to convey the rabble into India, and the tables will be
turned upon the English. A whole people of one mind is not easily
withstood. They resemble a mighty stream that sweeps all before it :
something more is needed to oppose them than machinery and fire-
arms. There are the examples of Washington and the War of Inde-
pendence in former times, and of the San Yuan Li case in recent
times, to show how things would go. Let not the English forget that
if they light a fire, the wind may change, and the flame kindled for
others may cause their own destruction. When the sun has reached
the centre of the heaven, it declines ; when the moon is full, its wane
begins. . . . The great emperors and statesmen of China were by no
means inferior in ability or wisdom to the men of the West ; and they
never engaged in this riving of heaven and splitting of earth, nor
rashly put their trust in mechanics and brute force, nor entered into
rivalry with the powers of Nature, in the pursuit of wealth and power.
For their mental vision could reach to first principles of right, and
they discerned calamity afar off ; but the English are ignorant of
everything but the road to wealth, rushing madly on with never a
look behind. If we tell them all this in so many words, can we hope
that they will see their error ?

II. INSIGNIFICANT NUMBER OF TROOPS STATIONED AT SINGAPORE, &c.

In amount of shipping, the Straits Settlements hardly yield to
Hongkong. But the number of troops does not exceed two or three

614 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

hundred men at each of the three stations (Singapore, Penang, and
Malacca). Even at Ceylon, an island by no means insignificant in
size, only four hundred men are stationed. It would seem that to get
possession of trading stations all over the world, for the advantage of
her commerce, is a principle of British policy ; but, being unwilling to
face the expenditure which the maintenance of large garrisons at
many points would involve, the British at last hit upon the expedient
of telegraph lines and steam-vessels. The French invented steam-
vessels, but the English brought them to their present state of perfec-
tion. Thus, by means of rapid communication, the English effect
a great saving of military expenditure — an excellent device. But
Russia intends to extend her sea-board to the south at the expense of
Turkey, and, should the latter Power succumb, the Russians will come
down the Red Sea, like water from an upturned jar, and England will
not only have to watch over the safety of India, but to maintain large
military garrisons at Aden and all the stations on the South-East.
England will then have to be on the qui vive in every direction ; she
will not be able to secure the safety of so many stations ; and she will
be in the position of the crouching wolf who, if he moves forward,
treads on his dewlap, and, if back, on his tail.

III. JOINT-STOCK ENTERPRISE.

In China, whenever a great work is undertaken, the necessary ex-
pense has to be defrayed from the State Exchequer ; and this is no
doubt a great bar to improvement. But although we might wish the
people to learn the foreign custom in this particular, (joint-stock
enterprise,) we cannot force them to do so. Habits of fraud and
deceit are common in China, and are becoming every day more so.
When two or three persons put a hundred or so together for purposes
of trade, unless each one of them gives his most careful personal atten-
tion to the affair, he will be robbed by absconding partners and shop-
men. If, then, it were a question of hundreds of thousands, who would
be confiding enough to risk his money ?

IV. RAILWAYS.

But if railways were laid down in China, the large class engaged
in the transport of men and goods — carters, boatmen, trackers, &c. —
would find their occupation gone. Now for hundreds of years it has
been a principle of Chinese rule that no measure likely to injure the
people should be entertained.

In the number of tourists, rich merchants, and those who go to
•reside in foreign countries for purposes of trade, China cannot com-
.pare with the States of Europe. But the capital required for railway
, enterprise is considerable, and, if high freight is not charged, financial

1880. LIU TA-JEN'S ^MISSION TO ENGLAND. 615

failure must result, Now the Chinese are habitually frugal, and the
goods transported from place to place are chiefly the common neces-
saries of every-day life, the profit on which is very inconsiderable.
Suppose five tons of common produce had to be conveyed 350 miles,
the freight by railway might be about 300L (?), and, although the
time taken in transit would be very short, who would be inclined to
support a railway at such a price ?

For this reason — excepting, perhaps, a few of the richest commer-
cial houses in each province — merchants would not transport their
goods by railway. Thanks to the tender care which the Government
has for the common people, they live at home in peace and plenty,
and would certainly not wish to leave their native village, unless for
strong reasons. Kich men might occasionally indulge in excursions
to places of interest in their own neighbourhood, but they would not
need to go far to satisfy, their curiosity : certainly they would not
travel five or ten thousand miles, as foreigners seem to think they
must do if they wish to escape the charge of provincialism. Granted
that a railway were constructed in China, at first crowds of people, in
wonder at so strange and ingenious a contrivance, would rush to try
the new sensation : I believe that in half a year's time the number of
passengers would be so small that the daily receipts would scarcely
pay the daily expenses for coal, wages, &c., to say nothing of interest
on capital. But economy of the State's resources and care for the
preservation of the people are fixed principles of China's polity ; and
she will never be willing to disturb the peaceful existence of her
subjects, or fruitlessly lavish her riches on a measure adapted to the
ends of those who wish to become wealthy^too fast. In short, rail-
ways are no more practicable in China than Buddhism is in Europe :
different systems are not to be forced into the same groove. And, as
I told the interpreter whom Sir T. Wade sent with me to England,
if foreigners press their arguments in favour of railways, we must tell
them outright that this is a matter of internal administration, with
which foreigners can have no right to meddle, since China is an inde-
pendent State. Thus we can close their argument by bringing
against them a principle of their own international law, and they
can have no more to say.

V. THE JAPANESE.

Japan has made her administrative ^ystem accord with that of
European States ; and she has copied Western dress, ceremony, and
customs. Accordingly Europeans despise the Japanese, as having
sacrificed their own natural tastes and habits in the desire to accord
with those of another race. Ts'ai Kuo-hsiang, commander of a
Chinese gun- vessel, said to me : ' When we meet foreigners at dinner
we should eat in the Chinese fashion ; when a foreigner takes off his

616 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

hat to us, we should bow with our hands raised in return. If we give
up our own customs and learn theirs, they will surely laugh at us.'
Jung Hung, a Chinese official, wears foreign clothes, and on this
account Dr. Macartney said that he had reason to be ashamed of
himself. Chinese officials, who are serving in foreign countries,
should take warning from this.

VI. SUITS OF ARMOUR AT MALTA.

1 noticed that this armour would fit a man of about four feet odd
high ; and I was told that a hundred years ago this was the average
height of an Englishman. At the present day the English are all
above five feet high, and some reach six feet. Can there be any
other reason for this than the escape from the ground [and effect on
the race] of the earth's spirit ? 2

VII. THE LONDON STREETS, &c.

After this interview with the Earl of Derby, Sir Thomas Wade
invited us to drive round, and see the streets and great centres of
trade. The width and cleanness of the streets, the height and mag-
nificence of the houses, the number and handsome appearance of the
hotels and shops, certainly exceed anything that I have seen in my
life. By the road side there were men on horses in armour, wearing
red clothes, who, we were told, belonged to the Queen's Life Guards,
and were there to keep the peace. From their eyes fixed on the
distance, and their motionless rigidity, one might think they were
cast in iron. At night the streets are in such a blaze of artificial
light, that a mountain of fire or a sea of stars could not be brighter.

VIII. ASSAULT ON LEGATION SERVANT. UNEXPECTED CIVILITY
OF THE ENGLISH.

One of the Legation servants was walking out to make purchases,
when he met a drunken Londoner, who began to brandish his arms,
and catching hold of our man, knocked off his hat. He was taken
into custody by the police, and brought before the Lord Mayor for
trial and punishment. The office of Lord Mayor is the same as that
of Village Elder in China. In England the local business of govern-
ment is all performed by such persons. The Lord Mayor considered

2 Western readers may be astonished to hear that among the theories by which
the educated classes in China account for the material superiority of Western
nations, not the least important attributes it to the opening of iron and coal mines,
not because of the iron and coal that come out of them, but because of the spirit of
the earth which is thereby let loose. Such being their opinion, why do they not
adopt the same easy means of prosperity themselves ? Because they believe that
this spirit of the earth is soon exhausted with fatal results to the race concerned.

1880. LIU TA-JEN'S MISSION TO ENGLAND. 617

this man's offence, in molesting a member of the Chinese Mission
before it had been many days in England, a grave one, and sentenced
him to two months' imprisonment with hard labour, that others
might take warning. The people were, moreover, requested, by a
notice printed in the newspapers, to unite in protecting the members
of the Mission. All official notifications are made known in England
by means of the newspapers. The Minister Kuo wrote to the Earl of
Derby asking that the man might be pardoned ; but no reply was
received.

On our way to England also a passenger on the steamer insulted
my servant, upon which the captain put the former on land at Aden,
and it was only through my intercession that the man was taken on
board again.

I had always regarded the English as a people living in small and
contemptible islands, of unbridled violence, and without an idea of
deference or politeness. I was therefore surprised at the way in
which high and low united to treat us with careful civility, to carry
out to its full extent the national duty in this respect.

IX. EAILWATS IN LONDON.

London has no wall around it, but the railway viaducts have
somewhat the appearance of a city wall. The houses are so close
together that in many places there is no room for a railway to pass,
when recourse is had to a bridge made of huge stones, which soars, as
it were, over the houses. The framework of these bridges is of iron
planked with wood, on which are spread earth and sand. People who
are lying on their beds down below in houses 100 feet high, are almost
always conscious of a noise above them, and know when a train is
passing over head by its low continuous rumble, as of thunder ; while
to one seated in the train the people below look like the warp and
woof of some texture, and the streets, lanes, and market-places like
deep interstices in a mountain side ; or one is inclined to believe
that they are channels cut out of the ground, and to forget that one
is on a bridge far up above them. It is as if one were on a level
with the topmost point of a pagoda, and able, by stooping, to touch
the mast-heads of tall ships as they passed. When I first reached
London everything that I saw frightened and astonished me.

X. A EECEPTION AT BUCKINGHAM PALACE.

. . . The women were nude about the arms and neck, and did
not seem to avoid coming in contact with the men. They held
flowers in their hands. Their caps and dresses were of several colours ;
the latter are folded into many pleats behind, having the appearance
of a wasps' nest, and end in a train which drags on the ground for

618 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

five or six feet behind them. All who know one another shake hands
without distinction of sex. The officers in waiting hold up the
trains of the ladies who advance to be introduced, lest by stepping on
them they should fall over and lose countenance.

XI. DOCTORS AND MIDWIVES.

At the birth of children medical men always act as accoucheurs.
The Government, in its desire for the increase of population, regards
the birth of children as a matter of the first importance to the State.
When an infant dies inquiry is made as to the cause of death, and
the parents, if they are to blame, are punished. In England officials
and people alike regard a numerous progeny as a nuisance, and a
small one as a blessing. This is why the State ordains inquiry as to
the cause of death. The attendance of medical men at birth is
caused by the desire on the part of the Government to preserve as
many children as possible : it is feared that midwives, in their igno-
rance, may cause injury to the child that may result in its early
death, and the doctor attends that the child may be brought into the
world under the most favourable conditions possible, the end in view
being the increase of population. With this object Europeans dis-
regard the separation that should exist between the sexes (i.e. allow
men to act as accoucheurs). In China our sacred religion would
require that women should be taught surgery, for in this way beth
ends might be attained — skill in the accoucheur, and respect for
decency.

XII. CAPITAL AND LABOUR.

[After a description of what he saw at the Tiines office, Liu
Ta-jen says] : Although a good many men are employed in the Times
office and in delivering the paper at the houses of subscribers, the
number engaged in attending to the machinery is very small. If
two men look after the type and five or six regulate the machinery,
that is enough. It seems to me that if no machinery were used in
printing the Times, but hand labour alone, there would be no diffi-
culty in turning out the necessary number of copies. Each workman
might be ordered to prepare a separate type, and, as soon as the
composition of the paper was concluded, a time might be fixed by
which each man should produce 100 copies. If this plan were
followed, 2,800 men would be employed to produce the 280,000
copies required ; and if the daily receipts — #4,375 (?) — were divided
amongst these 2,800 men, each man would get rather over $1'50 a
day ; and, although living is dear in England, this sum would suffice
to support a family of eight persons, and thus a population of more
than 20,000 souls would live by this industry alone. Why, then, use
machinery and rob these 20,000 men of their means of existence ?

1880. LIU TA-JEN'S MISSION TO ENGLAND. 619

But this is the very reason why England is so rich. The English are
a hardworking race, and they have millions of devices for getting
money. If one man invents a machine and makes a fortune, his
neighbours immediately set to work to invent another that shall
excel it and carry off the coveted gains. Power in design and skill
in execution advance hand in hand towards the end in view. The
more the faculty of invention is used, the sharper it becomes ; the
more goods manufactured, the more there are for consumption ; the
more wealth amassed, the greater the number of rich families able to
purchase. Thus all sorts of goods find an easy market, the lower
classes a means of subsistence, and the national exchequer a source of
wealth. In London, in making purchases or presents, one uses gold,
and not copper. To buy the commonest article or reward the smallest
service is an expensive matter ; it is not often that a shilling will
suffice. Money is so easily obtained that there is no scruple in
spending it freely. The yearly expenditure of the English nation
amounts to over 100,000,000^. Money is liberally voted for the
education of the people, and the large sums thus expended are not
grudged in consideration of the number of the population. For
suppose a Government contentedly leaving tens of thousands of its
people to be supported by a single industry : they might settle quietly
down to the drudgery of their work without a gleam of ambition or
hope of better fortune in the future ; and, although they might be
saved the prospect of death from starvation, would there not be a
great waste of power and intelligence, a great obstruction of the very
source of wealth ? In England there is strong competition in every-
thing connected with the mechanical arts. When there is a pos-
sibility of making money, no inquiry is too insignificant or too
laborious for an Englishman, no journey too long or too dangerous.
All children of both sexes are sent early to school, where they are
thoroughly taught reading, arithmetic, astronomy, geography, and
many other subjects. When they reach twelve years of age all are
able to assist in some manufacture to the best of their knowledge and
ability.

XIII. EUKOPEAN CIVILISATION COMPARED WITH CHINESE.

[After giving an account of a visit to the Polytechnic Institution
in London, and the wonders he saw there, Liu Ta-jen says :] This
(mechanical contrivance) is what Englishmen call true knowledge ;
and in their view our holy doctrine (Confucianism) is mere empty
and useless talk. Lest educated Chinese should be deceived into
agreement with this opinion, I beg to offer the following explanation.
Well, then, this ' true knowledge ' of theirs simply consists in various
feats of deft manipulation — knowledge that can turn out a machine,
and nothing more. Is not this what Tzu Hsia means when he says :
* Something may be learnt by inquiry into the most insignificant

620 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

doctrine (lit. road) ; but the wise man will not follow it far, lest he
find himself in the mire of its follies and absurdities.' The doctrine
handed down to us from our holy men of old may be summed up in
two words, humanity and justice. Humanity springs from the pure
and good disposition inherent in the heart of man ; justice is con-
formity to right in one's dealings. A man who follows the precepts
of humanity and justice is beautiful in his speech and admirable in
his actions. The great object of these two virtues is conformity to
the principles which should rule the relations between prince and
officer, father and son, older and younger brothers, husband and wife,
and friend and friend . . . [Here follows a long disquisition on
the results of the due observance of the duties entailed by the above
five relationships] . . . And, fearing the results that might follow
from the opposition of the wicked to the sacred doctrine, our holy
men supported it by the institution of an armed force and of punish-
ments ; but these forces were only brought into use when absolutely
required to put down those who violated the principles of humanity
and justice, never were they used to compass the ends of violence
and aggression : thus even our army and our penal laws wore the ex-
pression of humanity and justice. The Chinese people from the time
of the Ch'in (B.C. 255) and the Han (B.C. 206) dynasties to that of
the Yuan (A.D. 1206) and the Ming (1368-1644), were peaceful and
prosperous or disorderly and rebellious according as the sacred doc-
trine was respected or ignored. . . . All creatures that live and
breathe under heaven have ears and eyes, claws and teeth, and each
endeavours to procure for itself as much as possible to eat and drink,
and to seize and carry off more than its fellows ; man alone is able
to set a bound to his greed. Man can claim to be considered superior
to the beasts only because he has a distinct conception of time and
of duty, because he knows of virtue and abstract right, and can see
that material strength and self-advantage are not everything. At
present the nations of Europe think it praiseworthy to relieve the
poor and to help the distressed, and are therefore humane in this one
respect ; they think it important to be fair and truthful, and are
therefore just in this one respect. If Europeans, in truth, understood
the duties resulting from the five relationships, then we should discern
the effects in their lives. Love between prince and minister, father
and son, elder and younger brothers, husband and wife, friend and
friend would bring due subordination and careful fulfilment of relative
duties ; peace and order would reign supreme ; there would be no
angry rivalry or unrestrained greed, making use of deadly weapons
to bring destruction on mankind. But do we see these results in
Western countries ? No, indeed ! Their whole energy is centred in
the manufacture of different kinds of machines — steam-vessels and
locomotives to bring rapid returns of profit, guns and rifles to slay
their fellow-men. They rival one another in greed, and in cunning

1880. LIU TA-JEN'S MISSION TO ENGLAND. 621

methods of acquiring wealth ; they say they are rich and mighty ;
and put it all down to their true knowledge, forsooth !

But from the time when the heavens were spread out and the
earth came into existence, China can boast a continuous line of great
men ; so that man's wants have been better supplied each day than
the one before it, and our language immeasurably excels those of
Europe in strength and depth. Property is wealth to the foreigner ;
moderation in his desires to the Chinese : material power is might to
the foreigner ; to live and let live is might to the Chinese. But the
heaping up of words will not explain these principles. China forbids
strange devices (machinery) in order to prevent confusion; she en-
courages humanity and justice as the very foundation of good
government ; and this will be her policy for ever. Yet foreigners
say that such principles are profitless. Profitless, indeed ! Profitable,
rath er, beyond expression !

F. S. A. BOURNE

(Translator).

622 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

THE PHILOSOPHY OF CRAYFISHES.

THE publication of Professor Huxley's interesting volume on the l Cray-
fish' has probably been the means of making many persons much more
intimately acquainted with a creature, best known to most of us as
an adjunct to a French dinner, than they ever expected to be. I
doubt not that I speak the experience of a multitude of readers when
I testify to the pleasure which I have received from the study of the
volume. The clearness of description, the excellence of the illustra-
tions, the intelligibility of the whole, leave nothing to be desired.
Even the etymology of the name is not neglected, and we find that a
crayfish is no fish at all, as in fact even the most ignorant probably
suspected, but that crayfish is only a corruption of ecrevisse, and
that amongst the functions of this humble crustacean there is possibly
to be reckoned the responsibility of keeping in mind the results
of the Norman conquest. It is a striking evidence of the extent and
minuteness of modern science that the bibliographical list subjoined
to this work contains the titles of some eighty books or memoirs,
which may be advantageously consulted by any one who wishes to
study more fully the biology of crayfishes ' after reading all that
Professor Huxley's volume contains.1

Professor Huxley has written his book on the crayfish as an * In-
troduction to the Study of Zoology.' He says in the preface : —

In writing this book about crayfishes, it has not been my intention to compose
a zoological monograph on that group of animals. . . . What 1 have had in view
is a much humbler, though perhaps, in the present state of science, not less useful
object. I have desired, in fact, to show how the careful study of one of the com-
monest and most insignificant of animals leads us, step by step, from every-day
knowledge to the widest generalisations and the most difficult problems of zoology ;
and, indeed, of biological science in general.

I cannot doubt, though I do not speak as an expert, that as an
introduction to zoology Professor Huxley's book will be found to be all
that he desires that it should be. If it was merely that, however, I
should not have thought it necessary to write any remarks upon it.

1 While writing this article, I observe a notice of Professor Huxley's book in the
August number of the Nineteenth Century. I quite agree with the remark contained
in that notice : ' It is astonishing what an amount of information may be extracted
from the commonest of natural objects under the guidance of a skilful master."

1880. THE PHILOSOPHY OF CRAYFISHES. 623

Zoology is not among my studies : I take only that amount of interest
in it which every thoughtful man is sure to take in a subject so compre-
hensive, and so full of wonder and of beauty. But Professor Huxley does
in reality suggest thoughts which run beyond the limits of zoological
science. His mode of treating his subject leads the mind of the
reader, and, as it would seem, intentionally, beyond the region of
natural history into the domain of philosophy and even of divinity ;
and I have been tempted by the study of his book to follow him into
this domain, in which I trust he will not regard me as an intruder.
I listen with the simple delight of a child to his teaching, so long as
it is confined to that which I should describe as his own subject ; I
venture to doubt and question and criticise, and to suggest thoughts
and conclusions of my own, when I find him passing into a region
which belongs to me not less than to himself. In fact it is evident
that a crayfish may have a place in philosophy, and even in natural
theology, quite as assured and as important as that which it holds
in science. Those characteristics which have led Professor Huxley to
choose this humble living creature beyond all others as a suitable
exponent of zoological principles, may also fit it to become suggestive
of important thoughts beyond the region of zoology. A crayfish is a
more hopeful subject for a philosophical discussion than tar- water.
I would that I had Berkeley's power and pen, to enable me to weave
4 a chain of philosophical reflections and inquiries,' such as he could
have woven, out of the zoological material which Professor Huxley's
book supplies. Nay, I should like to get beyond mere philosophy, as
Bishop Berkeley did when he had only tar-water for his text, into
the region of divinity. This may be possible. ' In this mass of
nature,' says Sir Thomas Browne, ' there is a set of things ' — why
should not the crayfish be one of them ? — ' that carry in their front,
though not in capital letters, yet in stereography and short characters,
something of divinity, which to wiser reasons serve as luminaries in the
abyss of knowledge, and to judicious beliefs as scales and roundles to
mount the pinnacles and highest pieces of divinity. The severe
schools shall never laugh me out of the philosophy of Hermes, that
this visible world is but a picture of the invisible, wherein, as in a
portrait, things are not truly, but in equivocal shapes, and as they
counterfeit some more real substance in that invisible fabric.' 2

The reader will now sufficiently perceive the motive of this essay.
In following me through it I should be glad to regard him as having
made himself acquainted with Professor Huxley's book ; I shall en-
deavour to make my remarks so far independent as to be intelligible
by themselves, but will not be responsible for the result if they are
thus isolated.

The limits of the book extend from ' The Natural History of the
Common Crayfish,' which constitutes the first chapter, to 'The Dis-
- Religw Medici, part i. sect, 12.

624 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

tribution and Etiology of the Crayfishes,' which constitutes the last.
I will make a short extract from each of these chapters in order to
define more exactly the beginning and end of our subject.

In Chapter I. we are introduced to the crayfish family thus : —

It is a matter of common information that a number of our streams and rivulets
harbour small animals, rarely more than three or four inches long, which are very
similar to little lobsters, except that they are usually of a dull, greenish, or brownish
colour, generally diversified with pale yellow on the under side of the body, and
sometimes with red on the limbs. In rare cases their general hue may be red or
blue. These are crayfishes, and they cannot possibly be mistaken for any other
inhabitants of our fresh waters.

And the following is the penultimate paragraph of the last
chapter : —

Thus, with respect to the aetiology of the crayfishes, all the known facts are in
harmony with the requirements of the hypothesis that they have been gradually-
evolved in the course of the mesozoic and subsequent epochs of the world's history
from a primitive astacomorphous form.

These two paragraphs sufficiently define, as I have said, the
beginning and the end of our subject ; but I will subjoin the conclud-
ing paragraph of the book, as it should be read in conjunction with
that just quoted, and because I shall have occasion to refer to it
hereafter.

And it is well to reflect that the only alternative supposition is, that these
numerous successive and coexistent forms of insignificant animals, the differences
of which require careful study for their discrimination, have been separately and
independently fabricated, and put into the localities in which we find them. By
whatever verbal fog the question at issue may be hidden, this is the real nature of
the dilemma presented to us not only by the crayfish, but by every animal and by
every plant ; from man to the humblest animalcule ; from the spreading beech and
towering pine to the Micrococci which lie at the limit of microscopic visibility.

Let us now examine some of the characteristics of the crayfish,
choosing those which will subserve the general purpose of this essay.

The animals may be seen walking along the bottom of the shallow waters which
they prefer, by means of four pairs of jointed legs; but, if alarmed, they swim
backwards with rapid jerks, propelled by the strokes of a broad, fanshaped flapper,
which terminates the hinder end of the body.

They are intolerant of great heat, and of much sunshine ; they are therefore
most active towards the evening, while they shelter themselves under the shade of
stones and banks during the day.

So long as the weather is open, the crayfish lies at the mouth of his burrow,
barring the entrance with his great claws, and with protruded feelers keeps careful
watch on the passers-by. Larvae of insects, water-snails, tadpoles, or frogs, which
come within reach, are suddenly seized and devoured, and it is averred that the
water-rat is liable to the same fate.

These facts would seem to indicate that the crayfish has his likes
and dislikes in a manner similar to that observable in creatures of a
higher type. They do not prove, of course, that the sense and

1880. THE PHILOSOPHY OF CRAYFISHES. 625

sensibility of a crayfish are equal to those of a human creature ; but
they are capable of the simplest explanation upon the hypothesis,
that the lower animal possesses in a rudimentary form that which is
more completely possessed by the animal of higher organisation.
Indeed, the language used by Professor Huxley, taken in its ordinary
meaning, plainly implies an explanation of this kind : he speaks of
the crayfish prefem*ing shallow waters, being alarmed, being in-
tolerant of heat, keeping careful ivatch when hunting for its prey.
It will be seen, however, from a subsequent and more careful state-
ment, that the reader is not intended to draw the conclusion that
the outward demeanour of the crayfish does in reality represent con-
duct conditioned by the same kind of motives as those which are
implied by the popular language above quoted.

If the hand is brought near a vigorous crayfish (we are told) free to move in
a large vessel of water, it will generally give a vigorous flap with its tail, and dart
backward out of reach ; but if a piece of meat is gently lowered into the vessel,
the crayfish will sooner or later approach and devour it. If we ask why the cray-
fish behaves in this fashion, every one has an answer ready. In the first case, it ia
said that the animal is aware of danger, and therefore hastens away ; in the second,
that it knows that meat is good to eat, and therefore walks towards it, and makes
a meal. And nothing can seem to be simpler or more satisfactory than these re-
plies, until we attempt to conceive clearly what they mean ; and then the explana-
tion, however simple it may be admitted to be, hardly retains its satisfactory
character. 3

Professor Huxley then argues that the crayfish cannot say to
himself ' This is dangerous,' ' That is nice,' being devoid of language ;
that the crayfish cannot frame a syllogism ; that experiments upon
animals have proved that consciousness is wholly unnecessary to the
carrying out of many of those combined movements, by which the
body is adjusted to varying external conditions. Hence the conclu-
sion is reached that ' it is really quite an open question whether a
crayfish has a mind or not.' It is added that ' the problem is an
absolutely insoluble one, inasmuch as nothing short of being a cray-
fish would give us positive assurance that such an animal possesses
consciousness.'

This may be all in a certain sense true, but it seems to me to
involve not a little mystification. If nothing short of being a cray-
fish can give us positive assurance that such an animal possesses
consciousness, the same proposition must be true of a dog or a horse;
and yet, in the case of animals of such organisation as those just
mentioned, I think it would be hypersceptical to question the posses-
sion of consciousness analogous to our own ; and few persons would be
found who would be content to regard the existence of mind in a dog
as ' an open question.' Is it not somewhat unfair to the crayfish to
bring his actions and habits, without any intermediate steps, into
comparison with those of man, and so reduce his mind (as it were) to

* Chapter vii.

VOL. VIII.— No. 44. U U

626 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

zero by comparison ? Would it not be more philosophical to begin
with man, from whose constitution we first derive the conception
of mind, and then proceed from him gradually downward in the
scale of being ? It is difficult to say which creature is nearest to man.
If we regard physical form only, doubtless apes and monkeys are our
closest neighbours, and I presume that no one will deny these cunning
animals the possession of mind ; but it is equally difficult to deny
this in the case of such animals as elephants, horses, dogs. There
is scarcely any creature that cannot be tamed, and which does not in
its tamed condition exhibit sympathy with man. Does not this indi-
cate a mental tie between us? And the same remark applies to
birds, apparently to snakes and reptiles. I have neither knowledge
nor space to follow this line of thought into all the region into which
it might lead us ; but the general conclusion which I wish to suggest
is this, that if we begin with the creatures nearest to man and observe
how mental qualifications shade off gradually from them as we pass
to those which are lower down in the scale, it is difficult and perhaps
impossible to say where mind ceases and where life without mind
begins. Consequently, if I find a crayfish doing things which a
human creature would do under similar conditions, I think that he
may be credited with doing those things for similar reasons. You
cannot prove that it is so, but the crayfish seems to be entitled to the
benefit of the doubt. If he exhibits signs of fear, pleasure, preference,
and the like, why should he not be concluded to possess those feelings
of which he exhibits the signs ?

The crayfish has the more right to this liberal treatment, because
he possesses the physical organ of mind — that is, a brain. Professor
Huxley tells us not only that he has brain, but that he behaves
himself in a very abnormal manner when his brain is removed ; 4 he
becomes in fact deranged. He does not cease to live, as I suppose a
brainless man would, but he is as evidently dependent upon his brain
for the orderly regulation of his conduct as the higher animals or
as man himself. Having therefore the physical organ of mind,
and comporting himself as creatures do which confessedly are possessed
of mind, I see no good reason to doubt the existence in the crayfish,
in a very humble form of development, of a power which may rightly
be described as mind.

This conclusion having been reached, I think it is highly interest-
ing to reverse the process of the study of mind, and regard the
early developments of mental power as types and foreshadowings of
the grand development of the powers of thought, which was to crown
the natural history of the world in the appearance of man upon the
globe. Time was, I suppose, when the crayfish, instead of being the
humble creature which he now is, was high up in the organic scale ;
conceivably he might be amongst the highest creatures ; and if so, it

4 The Crayfith, p. 110.

1880. THE PHILOSOPHY OF CRAYFISHES. 627

is curious to think of the manner in which his habits and tastes fore-
shadowed those of far higher creatures still, which were to be
developed in the fulness of time. The crayfish lying in ambush for his
prey, and apparently finding his chief pleasure in this occupation,
might seem to indicate the existence, even in the earlier forms of life,
of that love of sport which belonged to our rude forefathers, and
which few Englishmen have sloughed off even in these days of books
and physical science.

A whole volume of curious speculation is bound up in the thought,
that the habits and tastes of the early inhabitants of the globe may
be found developed in the human epoch and connected with the laws
of civilised men. Certainly the catching of prey, which occupies the
crayfish, and which is evidently not only a necessity of existence but
a positive source of delight to higher animals (witness dogs and cats),
has had much to do with the course of h,uman history, as it has now
with the pleasure and occupation of multitudes. The same remark
may be made concerning the bellicose character of many among the
lower creatures ; this finds itself repeated in the love of war, which
certainly is a great feature of the human character and has had more
to do with the history of nations than almost anything else. And, to
take quite a different example, we find in the natural history of sex,
even among such humble creatures as the crayfish, the type of that
which is the very basis of human society and the spring of civilisation.
It requires a long stride of the imagination, but it is a possible stride,
to carry us from the thought of what may be called in a humble
sense the family life of crayfishes to that of the consecrated tie of man
and woman, and the corollaries which follow from it in the compli-
cated machinery of human life and society.

I have spoken of the habits and tastes of the earlier creatures as
typifying and foreshadowing that which should come to pass later on;
but I do not perceive how the latter could be evolved out of the
former by any necessary process, nor do I see any reason to conclude
that such evolution actually took place. I mean that a crayfish, in
those days in which he was at the head of creation, would seem to be
the same thing that a crayfish is now. If a fossil crayfish could be
brought to life again, he would presumably be as highly endowed as
a crayfish of the present day. The crayfish was ' gradually evolved in
the course of the mesozoic and subsequent epochs of the world's history
from a primitive astacomorphous form,' but when so evolved he became
a crayfish, and nothing more ; and if the world lasts for a hundred
million years longer, I presume he will be a crayfish still. There is
what I will venture to call a mysterious unity connecting him with
ourselves. He has true blood, a real heart, machinery of digestion,
even eyes, ears, and the sense of smell, like ourselves ; but he has
radiated from the primitive protoplasm, if that be a correct phrase,
in a different direction from that assumed (for example) by mammals

u u 2

628 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

or by man, and his path of life must for ever remain distinct. Unity
with mammals and diversity from them may be predicated of the
crayfish, one as distinctly and as truly as the other.

"Which remark may be illustrated by reference to one of the most
obvious characteristics of the crayfish and of the class to which he
belongs. He is a crustacean : that is to say, he is enclosed by a hard
shell, which protects his muscles and all his softer parts at every
point, and serves him as a coat of armour. It seems to me impos-
sible to conceive of any natural process by which a creature of this
kind could ever be transformed into a mammal or a fish. I do not
imagine that any really scientific man would allege such possibility ;
though I suspect that the doctrine of evolution, to the minds of many
persons, means that anything can become anything else, if you only give
it time enough. Anyhow, the development of a crustacean into a fish
or a mammal may, I think, be regarded as an impossibility. And
yet, if the difference between the two be scientifically considered, it
may be made to assume very small dimensions indeed. It is simply
a question of a skeleton inside or a skeleton outside.

Probably the most conspicuous peculiarity of the crayfish (writes Professor
Huxley) to any one who is familiar only with the higher animals, is the fact that
the hard parts of the body are outside and the soft parts inside ; whereas in our-
selves, and in the ordinary domestic animals, the hard parts, or bones, which
constitute the skeleton, are inside, and the soft parts clothe them. Hence, while
our hard framework is said to be an endoskeleton, or internal skeleton, that of the
crayfish is termed an exoskdeton, or external skeleton.5

How simple the difference seems ! It gives rise, no doubt, to an
entirely different set of habits, an utterly different external appear-
ance, and a different set of kinematical and mechanical problems in
the construction of the animal ; but, looking upon the various con-
stituent elements of creation as bound together in unity by some
quasi- mathematical formula, we may say that the difference between
an exo-skeleton and an endo-skeleton is merely the difference of a
mathematical sign, the substitution of a minus for a plus. Every
mathematician knows the marvellous changes which result from a
change of sign : the substitution of a minus for a plus in a differen-
tial equation will introduce exponential forms instead of sines and
•cosines into the integral, and so produce quite as great a difference
as that which separates crustaceans from mammals. Creatures which
in human observation are widely, almost infinitely, divided, may in
divine geometry be one. I may add that a similar mathematical unity
with phenomenal diversity exists in the case of exogenous and endo-
genous plants ; nay, it may be a question whether the distinction of
sex may not be regarded from the same point of view.

The external position of the skeleton of crayfishes leads to a distinc-
tion between them and animals of the endo-skeleton type of a very

* The Crayfi»lt. p. 17.

1880. THE PHILOSOPHY OF CRAYFISHES. 629

marked kind. The crayfish casts its shell, or skeleton, from time to
time, and generates a new one ; the skeleton will not grow, as in the
case of the higher animals ; consequently the whole of the old coat of
the body is thrown off at once, and the new coat which has been
forming under the old one is exposed, and hardens, while the body of
the crayfish rapidly increases in size. The process is a curious one,
involving great exertion on the part of the crayfish, which, after the
work is completed, lies in a prostrate condition, exhausted by its vio-
lent struggles. The effort of exuviation, Professor Huxley tells us,
is ' not unfrequently fatal.' One scarcely knows whether to wonder
more at the strange law which compels a creature to undergo at intervals
such a process of regeneration, or at the remarkable arrangement by
means of which the universal principle of growth is enabled to assert
itself under the difficult conditions of a body contained in a rigid
envelope. My chief reason, however, for laying stress upon exuviation
as one of the phenomena of crayfish life, is that it seems to emphasise
the difference between creatures with exoskeletons and those with
endoskeletons, while at the same time it does not obliterate the unity
which joins one class with the other. The unity is more and more
pronounced the more carefully we examine and discuss it, but also it
becomes more and more inconceivable that there should not be a radi-
cal and aboriginal diversity which cannot be obliterated by any natu-
ral process, evolutionary or otherwise.

The crayfish is endowed with organs corresponding to the senses
of sight, hearing, taste, and smell. The eye is in fact an instrument of
a very complicated character, and, though strikingly different from
the eyes of mammals, has nevertheless that same kind of unity in
diversity which we have noted in the matter of the skeleton.

It is -wonderfully interesting to observe (writes Professor Huxley after an
elaborate description of the eye of the crayfish and the theory of what is called
mosaic vision) that, when the so-called compound eye is interpreted in this manner,
the apparent wide difference between it and the vertebrate eye gives place to a
fundamental resemblance.

The ear is a somewhat simpler piece of machinery, but apparently -well
adapted for its purpose.

Sonorous vibrations are enabled to act as the stimulants of a special nerve con-
nected with the brain, by means of the very curious auditory sacs which are lodged
in the basal joints of the antennules.

And again : —

The sonorous vibrations transmitted through the water in which the crayfish
lives to the fluid and solid contents of the auditory sac are taken up by the delicate
hairs of the ridge, and give rise to molecular changes which traverse the auditory
nerves, and reach the cerebral ganglia.

Granting the crayfish the existence of organs for seeing and
hearing, such as here described, we may assume, so far as my purpose

630 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

is concerned, that it possesses those which are connected with the less
exalted senses of taste and smell.

The question arises, what conclusions can be fairly drawn from
the existence of eyes and ears, and from, the conduct of crayfishes as
depending upon the senses of seeing and hearing ? Professor Huxley
writes as follows : —

Thus the crayfish has, at any rate, two of the higher sense organs, the ear and
the eye, which we possess ourselves ; and it may seem a superfluous, not to say a
frivolous question, if any one should ask whether it can hear or see.

But, in truth, the inquiry, if properly limited, is a very pertinent one. That
the crayfish is led by the use of its eyes and ears to approach some objects and
avoid others is beyond all doubt ; and, in this sense, most indubitably it can both
hear and see. But if the question means, do luminous vibrations give it the sen-
sations of light and darkness, of colour, and form, and distance, which they give to
us ? and do sonorous vibrations produce the feelings of noise and tone, of melody
and of harmony, as in us ? it is by no means to be answered hastily, perhaps cannot
"be answered at all, except in a tentative, probable way.

And again : —

At the most, we may be justified in supposing the existence of something ap-
proaching dull feeling in ourselves ; and, to return to the problem stated in the be-
ginning of this chapter, so far as such obscure consciousness accompanies the mole-
cular changes of its nervous substance, it will be right to speak of the mind of a
crayfish. But it will be obvious that it is merely putting the cart before the horse,
to speak of such a mind as a factor in the work done by the organism, when it is
merely a dim symbol of a part of such work in the doing.6

I venture to question the philosophy which is here propounded.
The conclusion which, we are asked to accept is that all the actions
and behaviour of a crayfish are the necessary results of the material
organisation of the animal, or of the action of external causes upon
that organisation. Of course it will be allowed at once, that the
organs of the crayfish perform only in a very humble and limited
manner and degree the offices performed by the corresponding or-
gans in ourselves. The crayfish's eye has, as we may well believe,
no sense of the beauty of the objects by which it is surrounded, and
his ear has no musical pleasure in the sounds which it transmits ;
and, therefore, if by seeing and hearing we mean the enjoyment of
the higher functions of the eye and ear, we may deny seeing and
hearing to crayfishes, as we may in fact, though in a less degree, to
horses and dogs. But when I am led from this obvious admission to
the conclusion that the mind of a crayfish, in the sense in which mind
can be predicated of such an animal, may not be admitted as a factor
in the work done by the organism, I rebel against my leader. If
I grant this conclusion, it seems to me that I grant a more completely
materialistic theory of the crayfish than I am justified in granting.
I see no reason to suppose that the crayfish does not, for example,
take pleasure in what he does : a low and simple pleasure doubtless,

• TJte CrarfisTi, p. 127.

1880. THE PHILOSOPHY OF CRAYFISHES. 631

but still a true and real pleasure, such as bis organisation renders
possible. When he lies at the entrance of his house watching for his
prey, I see no reason to suppose that he does not take delight in his
occupation. But pleasure in doing this or that is something quite
distinct from i work done by an organism ; ' and if pleasure of some
kind be denied to the crayfish, contrary to all appearances, I do not
know at what point in the scale of animal life pleasure is to be ad-
mitted as a factor. If to speak of mind as a factor in work done be
an absurdity in the case of a crayfish, is it not an absurdity in the
case of a dog, or even in the case of a man ?

It seems to me that the question thus raised is of fundamental
importance. Is mind a cause or an effect ? Is there something con-
nected with life which actuates the physical organisation, or is mind
merely a word which expresses the results to which the physical
organisation gives rise ? The two hypotheses are the exact opposite of
each other. Both cannot be true : the former is that which we should
infer from our own experience, and I think from general reasoning ;
the latter has some appearances in its favour, but is destructive of all
the highest conceptions of mind to which the mind's reflection upon
itself has given rise. Tua res agitur, paries cum proximus ardet.
There are not so many partition walls between ourselves and the
crayfishes. I cannot afford to regard the doings of my humble
neighbour as merely mechanical. He has his likes and his dislikes,
his pleasures and his pains, his fancies and his fears ; and though the
distinction between him and a moral responsible being like man be
wellnigh infinite, still his little rudimentary mind must not be
regarded as a mere result of physical organisation (unless of course
demonstrative proof can be given), lest the concession made in re-
spect of our humble neighbour should be found to compromise our
own most precious possessions.

While accepting therefore thankfully Professor Huxley's physical
investigation of the eyes and ears of crayfishes, I venture to question his
philosophical conclusions concerning mind and matter, as to which
is cart and which horse. I demur in like manner to the view given as to
the teleology of the crayfish, and by implication as to teleology in
general. The late Professor Willis was wont to devote one of a course
of lectures on practical mechanics to the description and discussion of
the claw of a lobster : he used to demonstrate, with reference to an
actual claw, various geometrical and mechanical problems which were
solved by natural mechanics. I do not remember that he used to
' improve the occasion,' but he certainly left upon the minds of his
pupils the impression, that the lobster's claw had been devised by a
high intelligence with marvellous skill, for the purpose of performing
certain functions for the benefit of the creature to whom the claw
belonged. There are many passages in Professor Huxley's book
which indicate, as we might have anticipated, that he also is keenly

632 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

alive to the beauty of the mechanical arrangements in the crustacean
organisation. For example, after describing one such arrangement in
what he calls ' the gastric mill ' of the crayfish, he writes thus : —

AVorks on mechanics are full of contrivances for the conversion of motion ; but
it would, perhaps, be difficult to discover among these a prettier solution of the pro-
blem : Given a straight pull, how to convert it into three simultaneous convergent
movements of as many points.

This is language of high appreciation ; it seems almost to force
the mind of the reader to some such conclusion as that which Paley
would have appended to it ; and in proportion to the pleasure with
which I listen to such language is the disappointment which I feel
in reading such a passage as the following : —

In the two preceding chapters the crayfish has been studied from the point of
view of the physiologist, who, regarding the animal as a mechanism, endeavours to
discover how it does that -which it does. And, practically, this way of looking at
the matter is the same as that of the teleologist. For, if all that we know con-
cerning the purpose of a mechanism is derived from observation of the manner in
which it acts, it is all one, whether we say that the properties and the connections
of its parts account for its actions, or that its structure is adapted to the performance
of those actions.

Hence it necessarily follows that physiological phenomena can be expressed in
the language of teleology. On the assumption that the preservation of the in-
dividual and the continuance of the species are the final causes of the organisation
of an animal, the existence of that organisation is, in a certain sense, explained,
when it is shown that it is fitted for the attainment of those ends, although, perhaps,
the importance of demonstrating the proposition that a thing is fitted to do that
which it does is not very great.7

The effect of this passage would seem to be to do away with
teleology altogether ; and to do away with teleology is to banish the
ultimate conception of a creating mind. Hence I must demur to the
conclusion, that there is not much importance in demonstrating that
a thing is fitted to do that which it does. The truth or falsehood of
this conclusion depends upon the purpose proposed in the demonstra-
tion. You come down some morning and you find that your house has
been robbed ; searching about you find an instrument which is strange
to you ; the police inspector at once recognises it as a house-breaking
implement ; he explains to you how it works, and shows you precisely
what the action of the thieves has been. . What would the inspector
think if you should say, ; Perhaps the importance of demonstrating
the proposition that this thing is fitted to do that which to my
cost I know it has done, is not very great ' ? The discovery of the
tool adapted to its purpose is manifestly a revelation as to the mind
which contrived the robbery; it tells you something at least as to the
person who did it ; it shows that the robbery was not the result of the
organisation of your own household, that the loss of your money was
not accidental, and so forth.

' The Crayfish, p. 137.

1880. THE PHILOSOPHY OF CRAYFISHES, 633

The fact is that ' the importance of demonstrating a proposition '
depends upon the point of view from which the proposition is
regarded. If I am a passenger in a steamer and I cross the Atlantic
in twelve hours' less time than it has ever been crossed before, it may
be of little importance to me to demonstrate that my passage is the
shortest on record. I have kept my appointment, done my business,
had my pleasure, or what not, and there is an end of it. But how with
regard to the man who built the ship? Is it nothing to him to
demonstrate that the ship was fitted to do that which she did —
that it was not the result of accident, or even the will of the captain
and crew, but the necessary consequence of some ingenious improve-
ment in machinery which he (the builder) had cunningly devised
and had introduced for the first time ?

And so in the case of the crayfish. If the animal be regarded
merely as an organism, it may be useless to demonstrate that its
parts are fitted to do the things which they do ; but if I wish to look
beyond the mere organism — which I have a good right to do, and as
a philosopher am bound to do — then the adaptation of means to ends,
the ingenuity of mechanical contrivances, the whole life and organi-
sation of the animal, are worthy of deepest consideration, as indicating
the action of the mind from which the conception of living material or-
ganisation originally sprang : just as a steam-engine may lead a man's
thoughts to the genius of James Watt, or a picture may fill the mind
with wonder at the power of Eaffaelle, or St. Paul's may suggest the
greatness of Sir Christopher Wren.

Nor can I pass away from the remarks which I have quoted on
the subject of teleology, without objecting to the suggestion that the
rs\os of an animal is ' the preservation of the individual and the
continuance of the species.' That these are things for which, in the
economy of nature, provision is made, will of course be granted ; but
to assume them to be * the final causes of the organisation of an
animal ' is, I think, to go beyond anything that we are in a condition
to prove. Are these the final causes of human organisation ? I am at
this moment using my right hand for the purpose of guiding my
pen, my left for holding my paper, my eyes for watching what I am
doing, my brain for considering what I shall indite ; what have all
these things to do either with the preservation of an individual or
the continuance of a species ? But if this account of the final causes
of organisation utterly breaks down in the case of a man, why should
we assume its truth in the case of a lower animal ? Even in the
example of the crayfish I should demur to such a view of his final
cause. I see nothing irrational in supposing that the pleasure which
the crayfish seems to find in his existence, his habits of hunting, the
society of his kind, and the like, may be regarded as truly in the light
of ends as analogous things may be in the case of higher animals.
I should be sorry, however, to dogmatise upon a point of this kind.

634 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

I have great doubt as to whether we can properly speak of final ends
at all, unless we embrace in our conception the whole cosmos. Cray-
fishes may be a necessary link in the order of creation ; it may be
that their raison d'etre cannot be explained apart from the existence
of the whole creation of which they form a humble part ; but if we
are to speak of final causes, I think we are bound not to limit the
conception of cause simply to that of preservation of individuals or
species — we should go at least one step further, and consider for what
end they are preserved.

And here I would venture to offer a few speculative thoughts con-
cerning this end. I imagine that if it be possible to present a com-
plete and satisfactory theory of the re \os of the material universe, it
can only be done from the standpoint of Eevelation ; and to deal with
the subject in that sense would be entirely alien to the character and
purpose of this essay. But, without attempting a complete theory, I
think it may well be urged that one considerable portion of the end
for which living things may be conceived to exist is to be sought
in the amount of enjoyment of which those living things are suscep-
tible.8 It has often suggested itself to my mind, that the mere exist-
ence of life may be a source of almost unlimited delight. It is
difficult from an analysis of our own sensations to arrive at any very
distinct conclusion as to what are the sensations of the lower crea-
tures. Man is in every sense so exceptional a being, so infinitely
removed from all other living things both in his power of doing and
enjoying and suffering, that it is difficult to argue from him to any-
thing below. Nevertheless it may be possible to bridge over the gap
to some extent, and guess at least at the inner life of our humbler
fellows. For example, when a young man is in full health and
strength, and when he is in active exercise, climbing a hill or
engaged in some athletic sport, is not his mere existence a source of
pleasure ? The blood leaps in his veins, his lungs swallow in the fresh
air, every function goes on without effort or friction, and life itself
becomes a joy. May it not be thus constantly with creatures which
are always in perfect health and are absolutely free from care ? May
there not be, as certainly there seems to be, an indefinite amount of
joy in life itself to beasts and birds and fishes, and may not the sum
of this joy be one of the ends for which they exist ? May we not also
be assisted in speculating upon the possible pleasure in life enjoyed
by creatures inferior to ourselves, by reflection upon a condition which
I suppose we have all experienced ? I refer to the half-asleep half-
awake state of consciousness in which we sometimes find ourselves
after a night's rest : the mind has not reassumed its activity, cares
have not begun to press, the whole situation is one of dreamy comfort

8 On the subject of pleasure experienced by living organisms, as part of the
economy of nature, I would refer to the characteristic and striking remarks of Paley,
contained in chapter xxvi. of the Natural Theology.

1880. THE PHILOSOPHY OF CRAYFISHES. 635

and passivity. May not this condition more or less correspond to the
normal condition of some at least of the inferior animals ? A horse
stands in a stall, tied by the head, in a manner which would be
intolerable if his mind were capable of high action, and which would
drive a human being crazy; and yet he seems placidly happy. May
it not be that his mind is sufficiently developed to enable him to
enjoy the same kind of dreamy existence, which a man enjoys when
half asleep ? and may we not gain from the lower levels of our own
experience guesses concerning the pleasures, which may be possibly
found in the normal condition of creatures infinitely inferior to our-
selves ? Anyhow, it seems to me that there is abundant ground for
a more or less confident persuasion that, upon the whole, enjoyment
of life is the rule of animal existence, and that the fact of this enjoy-
ment should be taken into account in any teleological speculation.

But I must pass on to consider the subject with which Professor
Huxley deals in his concluding chapter, and which, from the point of
view of this essay, is a most important one — the aetiology of cray-
fishes.

JEtiology is a word concerning the meaning of which as applied
to crayfishes or other animals there might be some doubt. The mean-
ing assigned to it by Professor Huxley may be gathered in general
from a paragraph in which he speaks of the final problem of biology
as being that of ' finding out luhy animals of such structure and active
powers [as crayfishes], and so localised, exist.'9

Passing from the general to the particular, we find the question
of the why represented as lying between two hypotheses, that of crea-
tion and that of evolution. From a scientific point of view the adop-
tion of the speculation of creation is regarded as ' the same thing as
an admission that the problem is not susceptible of solution.' More-
over, ' apart from the philosophical worthlessness of the hypothesis
of creation, it would be a waste of time to discuss a view which no
one upholds.' ' Our only refuge, therefore, appears to be the hypo-
thesis of evolution.'

Now I am not intending to say a word in favour of creation as
against evolution ; but I should like to ask, are they in any way al-
ternative hypotheses ? are they even inpari materie? Undoubtedly
no reference to creation or creative fiats can occur in a scientific
treatise ; but this does not prove that in its proper place a reference
to creation may not be a very proper thing. A child is taught in its
first catechism, in answer to the question, ' Who made you ? ' to say
' God.' Does the answer present itself as either unphilosophical or
false, when in due time the child learns the process of evolution by
which it came into the world ?

Hence, while willing to follow a scientific teacher in the pursuit
of such knowledge as he can give me with regard to the past history

• TJie Crayfish, p. 317.

636 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

of living things, I reserve the right of believing in creation as well
as evolution, if I find sufficient grounds for such belief. And indeed
I am utterly unable to perceive how the necessity of belief in some-
thing, which I trust I may without offence call creation, is dispensed
with by Professor Huxley's ultimate conclusion on the subject of the
{Etiology of crayfishes. I have already quoted the last two passages
of the book ;10 let the reader bear these passages in mind. The solu-
tion of the crayfish problem is found in ' the hypothesis that they
have been gradually evolved in the course of the mesozoic and
subsequent epochs of the world's history from a primitive astaco-
morphous form.' And then we read that 4 the only alternative sup-
position is, that these numerous successive and co-existent forms of
insignificant animals, the differences of which require careful study for
their discrimination, have been separately and independently fabri-
cated, and put into the localities in which we find them.' Surely
this statement is a little unfair. Who talks of independent fabrica-
tion and of putting animals into localities ? And even if a speculator
should be convicted of such language, might he not very well ask,
what of the ' primitive astacomorphous form ' ? how did that form get
into its locality ? whence and how did it acquire its power of evolu-
tion, from which such wonderful results have followed ? Professor
Huxley speaks of a ' verbal fog by which the question at issue may be
hidden : ' is there no verbal fog in the statement that the aetiology of
crayfishes resolves itself into a gradual evolution in the course of
the mesozoic and subsequent epochs of the world's histoi'y of these
animals from a primitive astacomorphous form ? Would it be fog
or light that would envelope the history of man, if we said that the
existence of man was explained by the hypothesis of his gradual evo-
lution from a primitive anthropomorphous form ? I should call this
fog, not light.

It seems to me that sound philosophy demands that the questions
of evolution and creation should be kept quite distinct the one from the
other. The former is obviously a legitimate subject for scientific
investigation. If evolution be a fact, and I am not denying that it is,
it brings us one step nearer to the origin of things than we were before ;
but it no more reveals the origin of things, than the discovery of uni-
versal gravitation solves the problem of the existence and motion of
the heavenly bodies. Indeed it is perhaps incorrect to say that either
evolution or gravitation or any of the great discoveries made in phy-
sics really brings us nearer to the origin of things : these steps in
human knowledge rather bring us into successive positions, from
which we can obtain profounder views of the mystery in which the
origin of the universe is hidden. It is certain that we can appreciate
that mystery more completely than our forefathers did : I think
there is no good ground for asserting that it is any less really a

."> See p. 624.

1880. THE PHILOSOPHY OF CRAYFISHES. 637

mystery, or that science has yet done, or in the nature of things can
do, anything towards causing the mystery of existence to cease to
exist.

Therefore the philosophy of crayfishes, like all other philosophy,
when fairly followed out, seems to me to transcend the material uni-
verse, to carry the human mind into regions in which physical science
does not find itself, to point to the cloud which hides the Creator
from our view, and to indicate an almighty hand of mystery behind
the cloud which is the maker and the doer of all.

HAKVEY CARLISLE.

638 October

POLITICAL FATALISM.

IN an article l which appeared in the August number of this Review,
I endeavoured to combat a certain form of superstition which lies at
the root of a good deal of the political speculation of the day. But
akin to this superstition there is another of even greater popularity to
which occasional reference was made. Political optimism is closely
allied to political fatalism, and the politician who professes the former
creed is only a more sanguine variety of the adherent to the latter.
Upon the latter creed and its adherents it did not come within the
purpose of my article, except incidentally, to touch ; and it was of
course necessary to deal with both in a more or less abstract way.
I must therefore account it a fortunate chance to have been able
to find a perfect example of political fatalism in the paper 2 which
immediately followed my own. Still more fortunate is it — as prov-
ing the singular prevalence of the tendency I complain of — that
the author of that paper should have been a writer so accomplished
and generally judicious as Mr. Justin McCarthy, and that its stu-
diously persuasive tone should warrant the assumption that he has
there brought forward the argument which he deems most effective.

I desire as far as possible to avoid reviving the already half-
forgotten controversy on the Irish Disturbance Bill. The question
which it raises has been argued and re-argued to exhaustion ; and
apart from all personal preferences in the matter I should certainly
in this instance perceive the hopelessness of re-opening it. For Mr.
McCarthy's very mode of stating the case for that Bill is almost
enough to make one despair of the efficacy of every mental faculty,
every moral quality, and every expedient of discussion which are
supposed to assist men of different opinions to arrive at agreement.
4 The question raised,' says Mr. McCarthy, ' by the Compensation for
Disturbance Bill, was whether it is fair that a man who would pay
his rent if he could, but whose crop had failed, should, on being evicted
from his holding, forfeit all claim to the compensation to which he
would have been entitled if Providence had not decreed that his field
should be barren.' That, he says, is the question in dispute ; and

1 ' Political Optimism : a Dialogue. ' Nineteenth Century, August 1880.
* ' The Landowners' Panic.' Ibid.

1880. POLITICAL FATALISM. 639

thereupon he, an undoubtedly ' reasonable man,' and a writer whose
manner of writing testifies to his ' calmness,' appeals to every ' reason-
able man,' who 'looks at the question calmly,' to admit that 'justice
and equity and feeling of right, and every other consideration that can
influence a statesman, were on the side of Mr. Gladstone when he in-
troduced the measure to allow the evicted tenant in such a case some
claim for compensation.' Such is the appeal which Mr. McCarthy
makes ; and I, who believe myself to be reasonable, and who am
certainly looking at the question calmly at this moment, feel utterly at
a loss to understand how reason and calmness can discover 'justice or
equity or feeling of right,' or any other statesmanlike consideration,
on the side of Mr. Gladstone when he introduced the particular mea-
sure of compensation which was rejected by the House of Lords. I
can see the operation of the benevolent impulses in Mr. Gladstone's
desire to indemnify the evicted tenant against loss occasioned by the
' act of God ; ' having regard to the political results of a multipli-
cation of such cases of hardship, I can admit the possible wisdom of
indemnifying him in fact ; what I cannot see or admit is the wisdom
and justice of indemnifying him at the expense of his landlord. I can
conceive circumstances in which, when a certain class of contractors are
in danger of forfeiting a prospective benefit of their contracts, through
a temporary inability to execute their own parts therein, the State
might wisely and justly interpose to make good their loss by the for-
feiture ; but I can conceive no circumstances which would make it
wise and just for the State to prevent that forfeiture by forcibly vary-
ing the contract without compensation to the other contracting party.
However, since Mr. McCarthy not only can see this, but cannot see
the possibility of any other view presenting itself to the eye of reason
and calmness ; and since, after all that has been said and written on
the matter, his view still appears to him self-evident, it would be pre-
sumptuous on my part to attempt to alter it. A theory of right and
wrong which must have resisted so many and so much more powerful
efforts to overthrow it is not likely to succumb to any attack of mine.
My only reason for setting forth the view opposed to Mr. McCarthy's
is that it happens to be the view taken by the ' panic '-stricken land-
owners whose ' scare ' he deprecates, and that this fact ought to be
borne in mind in examining the arguments by which he seeks to
convince them that they were wrong in opposing the Disturbance Bill.
Considering the light in which they themselves regarded it, they
might even question the propriety of the title of Mr. McCarthy's
article. It is true that the Lords are mostly landowners, and that
the Bill which alarmed them related to contracts for the hire of
land ; but the principles which it offended are of uniform applica-
tion to all contracts whatever. The landowners who opposed the Bill
in either House of Parliament are quite entitled to insist that their
' panic ' had no connection with their own interest in the subject-

640 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

matter of the contracts so arbitrarily treated, and that they would
have been just as much startled by any other proposal of a Govern-
ment to annul a number of lawful subsisting agreements, and to suspend
valuable rights, to the uncompensated loss of their owners, — no matter
to what form of property, real or personal, such contracts and such
rights might have related.

Let it be assumed, however, as Mr. McCarthy's article throughout
assumes, that the opposition was purely a landowners' opposition,
and the alarm an alarm of self-interest — that, as he puts it, 'it was
not the poor little Compensation Bill which caused so much stir,' but
the fact, perceived by Whigs and Conservatives alike, ' that Mr.
Gladstone has evidently resolved to deal with the whole land question
at the first opportunity, and their conviction that this little measure
for the relief of temporary distress embodied a principle which could
never be got rid of, and was only an indication of the direction which
future legislation is sure to take.' And having assumed that this was
the fear which determined the opposition to the Bill, let us see how
Mr. McCarthy endeavours to convince its opponents that their resist-
ance was unwise. It is here that his whole argument appears to
me to be so perfect an illustration of the form of political reason-
ing against which I had protested in the article which preceded
his own.

' The landowners' panic was hardly better,' says Mr. McCarthy,

* than what some critics described it — a mere scare.' The reason why it
was a mere scare is, as I gather, because there are several changes in
the land laws which * must come,' which landowners ought to see
must come, which will really benefit landowners when they do come,
and of which (for the charge of ' panic ' seems to imply this) the
Disturbance Bill gave only a very mild foretaste. It is not easy to
see the connection of resemblance or analogy between the majority of
the legislative changes which Mr. McCarthy predicts and the par-
ticular measure to which Parliament has lately been asked to assent.
' The artificial restrictions which cling round and clog the settlement
and the transfer of land are undoubtedly destined to be removed before
long.' The law of primogeniture will unquestionably before long
have to be abolished. The same fate awaits ' the law which makes
the possessor of an estate not its owner, but simply its occupant, and
hands the ownership over his head to a yet unborn heir.' In Ireland

* it is certain that legislation will take the direction of the Ulster
tenant custom all over, the country.' It is also certain that 'the. ex-
periment of founding a peasant proprietary ' will have to be tried
there. And so, upon due consideration of this curious 'melange of
' inevitable changes,' among which little reforms and great reforms,
reforms of principle and reforms of detail, reforms which hardly raise
any disputed question at all and reforms to mention which is to
awaken a storm of controversy, are so strangely jumbled together,

1880. POLITICAL FATALISM. 641

the landowner is invited to conclude that he ought to have supported,
or at any rate accepted, the Disturbance Bill, instead of opposing it.

Now it would be a quite legitimate answer to this appeal to say
that even the most questionable of the legislative projects which Mr.
McCarthy enumerates might be more readily accepted than the Bill
for which he claims acceptance in their name. That Bill was not
i the thin ' but ' the thick end ' of the wedge ; and the simplest reply
of the landowner to the charge of 'panic ' would be to reject Mr.
McCarthy's minimising description of the measure which has given the
landowners alarm. But as my own purpose is to examine the internal
character of Mr. McCarthy's argument, I must of course provisionally
admit its external antecedent assumptions. I have to assume with
him that the Disturbance Bill was a proposal of the same nature as
those other measures which he says ' must ' come ; and I shall thus
be enabled to survey from his own standpoint the argument that
the Disturbance Bill should have been accepted by a wise politi-
cian in right of its relation to those other measures which ' manifest
destiny ' is preparing for us. And what I shall then venture to say of
that argument is this : that, stated as Mr. McCarthy sometimes
states it, it is an argument of naked fatalism ; that, stated as he
states it at other times, it is an appeal to an utterly irrational form
of optimism ; that, in either shape, it is an argument which, if it were
ever to become generally successful, would produce complete paralysis
of the deliberative function in politics ; and that the increasing success
which, even as it is, attends its employment, is exercising a sensibly
enervating effect on our whole public life.

The temper of mind which inspires it is noticeable throughout
the whole of Mr. McCarthy's article ; but the most candid avowal of
it is perhaps to be found in the sentences relating to the establishment
of a peasant proprietary in Ireland which I shall presently quote. I
do not wish to criticise Mr. McCarthy's ' musts ' too rigidly. When
he says of certain of his predicted reforms that ' such alterations in
the law must be made,' his ' must ' may very likely stand for ' ought ; '
and since he goes on to argue that these changes will be beneficial to
the public and to landowners themselves, he has a right to say that
' must ' here does mean ' ought ' — that it has the secondary not the
primary force of the Greek %p^. But when he says of the ' experi-
ment of founding a peasant proprietary ' in Ireland that ' it must be
tried,' the word is open to no such interpretation. For he proceeds
to observe that, ' if it be tried under the guidance of statesmen and
with the wise co-operation of landlords, it will have infinitely greater
chances of success than it might have under other conditions ; but the
man who believes that the experiment will not be made ought to
believe that the sun will not rise the day after to-morrow.' This shows
the ' must ' to be fatalistic indeed.

I do not of course mean to say that it is either as an optimist or
VOL. VIII.— No. 44. X X

642 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

as a fatalist that Mr.' McCarthy himself supports this experiment.
He does not support it himself for the mere reason that he believes it
' fated ' to be tried, or for this and the further reason that anything
which appears to be fated must be a blessing and not a calamity. He,
I doubt not, has convinced himself that the experiment is a hopeful
one, or, at the very least, that even its trial and failure could not make
matters worse in Ireland than they are at present ; and it is on these,
to him, excellent grounds that he \vill strive to substitute the
peasant proprietor for the tenant farmer upon as many Irish hold-
ings as possible. But though his own political action on this ques-
tion is doubtless determined by something better than the fatalist
argument, it is by the fatalist argument alone that he attempts to
influence the action of others. Let us suppose a reader of his recent
article to say, as many of us would say : ' I do not believe that the
experiment you speak of is a hopeful one. I do not even believe
that it is a harmless one, or that, if it were tried and failed, it would
make matters in Ireland " no worse than they are at present." On the
contrary, I am most strongly of opinion that it would make them very
much worse. For I believe that the introduction of peasant pro-
prietorship in a country unsuited, alike by the nature of the soil and
the habits of the people, to such a system, would inevitably lead to
the more and more minute subdivision of holdings, and to a rapid
multiplication in the number of cultivators who will be at the mercy
of a single bad season in a climate in which bad seasons must con-
stantly recur. I believe, in a word, that the establishment of a
peasant proprietary in Ireland must tend to the hopeless pauperisation
of the country ; and I hold this to be a result which " the guidance of
, statesmen " and " the wise co-operation of landlords," powerless as both
must be to alter fixed conditions of national character and climatic in-
fluence, can do just nothing to avert.' What sort of answer does
Mr. McCarthy's argument afford to such an objector as this? Mr.
McCarthy simply says to him : ' I, for my part, am persuaded of the
contrary of all the propositions you have just laid down, and am
only sorry that you cannot attain to the same convictions. I trust
you may succeed in doing so hereafter ; but in the meantime I counsel
you, as a wise and practical politician, to give your support to the
proposals which you regard as so mischievous, and this for the
simple reason that their adoption is inevitable. You can no more
prevent it than you can prevent the sun rising the day after to-
morrow.'

I suppose that nobody but an Oriental has ever heard this sort of
argument addressed by one man to another with reference to the
private concerns of life ; and it is worth while to inquire how the
argument has won its way to so much credit and popularity in the
sphere of public affairs. There is no doubt, I think, that though in
its most common form it is purely fatalistic, it has its concealed root

1880. POLITICAL FATALISM. 643

in optimism, and that most of those who call upon us to yield to
Destiny cherish the belief at heart that Destiny knows better what is
good for us than we do ourselves. In proof of this singular considera-
tion on the part of Destiny, appeal is usually made to the political
history of the last fifty years ; and the proof is one of great simplicity.
For fifty years past, it is said, the tendency of things has been uniformly in
•a democratic direction ; and the nation has thriven under it. Each
successive change in our institutions has been resisted by a party who
predicted that it would lead to the ruin of the country ; but ihe
country has obstinately refused to be ruined, and has grown richer,
happier, and more enlightened after each catastrophe. Thus — to take
only the three most important instances- — the Eeform Act of 1832,
the Repeal of the Corn Laws, and the Reform Act of 1867, were each
of them denounced in turn as destructive, the first and third to the
good government, and the second to the prosperity, of the country ;
but every one of these denunciations has been turned to foolishness
by the event. Which things being so, it is safe, the argument runs, to
predict a similar falsification of the fears of Conservatives and timid
Liberals at this, that, or the other measure of innovating legislation.

I will not stop to criticise the logical defects of an argument which,
while simulating the inductive form, is wanting in the essential ele-
ments pf a sound induction. It is shorter and simpler to challenge as
unproven the facts upon which the argument is based. It is not true
to say that the fears expressed with regard to all the great legislative
•changes of the last fifty years have been falsified by events ; for it is
much too soon to affirm this of the latest and greatest of these changes.
The full effects of the last extension of the franchise have not yet had
time to declare themselves, but it is surely impossible to maintain
that the experience of the past twelve years — with its revelations of
popular fickleness and popular excitability, of decline in the authority
and repute of Parliament, of platform dictation of Ministerial policy,
and of Ministerial gropings for the opinion of the platform — has in
any degree refuted, if indeed it has not amply confirmed, the gloomy
forebodings of such political prophets as Lord Sherbrooke.

Since, then, the optimistic basis of the argument for general
surrender will not bear the test of examination, it remains to corr-
sider it in its purely fatalistic form, and to inquire how much atten-
tion it ought in this form to receive from the * practical politician,'
to whom it is supposed especially to appeal. It is singular, I may
here remark, that the practical politician should be deemed so
peculiarly accessible to it, since nothing could be more fatal to
politics as a practical science than the acceptance of such an argu-
ment as conclusive of the apparently unlimited number of questions
upon which it is brought to bear. There is scarcely any Radical
nostrum for which its advocates hesitate to claim the support of the
* irresistible forces of the future ; ' and it is as astonishing as it is

xx 2

(544 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

deplorable to note the increasing readiness of independent judgment
to capitulate to the untested assertion of such support. Never since
the fall of Jericho has simple trumpeting produced so potent an
effect. The citadels of conviction surrender nowadays to the mere
assaults of sound.

I quite agree that there are cases in which the argument from
1 manifest destiny ' is entitled to consideration — cases in which a
politician, foreseeing the inevitable success of an impending assault
upon his position, would do well to make terms with the assailant
betimes, and to buy him off by compromise. But two conditions
must be present in order to justify such a course, and they are con-
ditions much more rarely fulfilled than those who reason like Mr.
McCarthy would have us believe. One is that the ultimate success
of the assault should be really certain ; and the other is that there
should be a possibility of real compromise. Now the ultimate success
of the assault is not to be taken on trust from the vaunts of the
assailant ; and compromise does not include the surrender of a
principle on condition that it shall be only partially applied. A
garrison which evacuates its outer line of defences, with the certainty
that the besiegers will renew the assault the next day from the new
position of vantage, and with new and much enhanced chances of
complete success, may describe the step as ' compromise,' but its true
description is 'capitulation by instalments.'

And, except in the rare cases in which, while defeat is certain,
there is a possibility of saving principle, it seems to me to be the
duty of the politician to turn a deaf ear to the fatalist argument in
every shape. There is no reason to fear that counsels of this kind
will encourage blind political obstinacy, or unwise tenacity of theo-
retical conviction, in cases where the practical ends of legislation
may be better served by a surrender of theory. English politicians
do not stand in need of homilies on the virtue of compromise. The
danger of the time is that compromise should be caught at too
hastily and carried too far, and that defensible positions should be
abandoned in premature despair of defending them against merely
noisy assailants. It is far more to the purpose, I think, to exhort all
men of definite political convictions to remain true to them, and,
when they hear, as almost daily they do hear, the fatalist argument
advanced in support of every rash and ill-considered project of so-called
* reform,' to recollect that there are two excellent reasons for refusing
to listen to it.

The first is that they themselves, — their own will and their
own resolution in striving to assert it, their own opinions and
their vigour in expressing them, are so many components in the
sum of those forces of which the balance is, truly or falsely, alleged
to ba against them ; and that the surest way to convert that
allegation from possible falsehood into certain truth, — the surest way

1880. POLITICAL FATALISM. 645

to turn that doubtful balance of forces undoubtedly against them,
is to relax the pressure of their own opposing wills. A move-
ment which they regard as misguided is said to be irresistible. It
may be so in fact, or it may not be so. But beyond question it will
become so if they cease to resist it.

The second reason for refusing a hearing to the fatalist argu-
ment as applied to the greater political questions now impending is
this : that, whether the assumption be true or false, it is (in all but
the few cases above excepted) irrelevant. It may be — and in all
but these rare instances in which real compromise is possible it is —
the duty of the politician to disregard it. We have gone so far in
these days in our laudation of the virtue of compromise as exem-
plified by Englishmen, that we seem to believe that it is impossible
to push it, like other virtues, to the vice of excess. We have become
so accustomed to deride and denounce the vice of political obstinacy
and impracticability among foreigners, that we seem to forget that
it is only the exaggeration of a virtue. We have apparently got to
think that it never can be wise or right to fight out a losing poli-
tical battle to the end, knowing it to be a losing battle. We assume
that those who do so must in every case diminish their future influ-
ence with the people by sticking to what the people think a mistaken
view ; and we take no account of any increase of influence which
they may attract to themselves in right of their display of the moral
qualities of honesty and resolution. And yet we know who wields
the most influence in private life — the man who weakly surrenders
his own convictions to the majority of the company in which he finds
himself, or he who, though we may sometimes think him mistaken,
stands sturdily to his guns. I know not how Demos is likely to be
influenced in this or in other matters, and I vehemently doubt
whether many of our politicians . are much better informed on the
point. But of this at least we may be sure — that if the way to lose
influence over Demos is to withstand him firmly and honestly where
we think him mistaken, and the way to gain influence over him is
to bow weakly and dishonestly to what we think his errors, as to an
irresistible decree, then indeed are we drawing near the ' end of an
auld sang.' For in that case our many-headed ruler must be already
possessed by a spirit which has never shown itself in democratic
States except as the forerunner of decline.

H. D. TRAILL.

646 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

DEMONIACAL POSSESSION IN INDIA.

M. KICHET, in his ' Demoniaques d'aujourd'hui,' and Dr. Carpenter,
in his * Mental Physiology,' have given some startling instances of
mental derangement, the result of hysteria. In the East such cases
would be believed to be examples of demoniacal possession. It is
chiefly amongst women that these cases of derangement occur, not
invariably of course, but, as it chiefly concerns women, it would be
well to draw the attention of those concerned in the education of
women in the East to this subject. Hysteria itself is a malady so
diversified in its manifestations that it has justly been called a Protean
disorder. It takes as many shapes, undergoes as many changes, ex-
hibits itself in as many forms as ' old Proteus ' and his three
daughters.

Preternatural abstinence from food, the seeing of miraculous
visions, the appearance of the stigmata, and the utterance of cabalistic
and prophetic words, are all manifestations of hysteria common in the
middle ages ; and all of them, except the appearance of the stigmata,
are to be witnessed in India at the present day by those who interest
themselves in the social condition of the people. Those who are sus-
ceptible of these manifestations are liable to have them intensified by
mingling with others similarly afflicted. The sympathy of numbers
develops the malady. Convulsive fits are common with them, bearing
a striking resemblance to epilepsy. They constitute the great
majority of the cataleptic, or sleep-walkers, and no doubt many self-
deceived mediums are of the same category. Some, of course, are
impostors, who make a trade of imposing upon the credulity of the
ignorant, but many are themselves deceived.

In hysteria there is always a preternatural excitability of the
nervous system, and its manifestations appear to be the effects of re-
pressed or exaggerated emotion. In complicated forms of society,
emotions alone are no sufficient guides of conduct, but the ruder the
condition, and the more uncultivated the people, the greater the force
of these emotions ; and the more unrestricted their manifestations.
The will acquires, by training, control over the emotions, and is
enabled, by practice and habit, to direct them into fresh channels,
where they may be used up, as it were, or exhausted harmlessly. If
this power has not been acquired, still the will may cause the emotion

1880. DEMONIACAL POSSESSION IN INDIA. 647

to be restrained, concealed, pent up. If the nervous energy excited
is not directed into new channels, it is apt to be discharged irregularly,
like an electric shock, so as to weaken or dissolve the tie by which
the centres of activity of the nervous system are united into a har-
monious whole.

Thus it often happens that there is morbid exaltation of some one
sense, of sight or hearing, for instance, at the expense of absolute'un-
consciousness of all other sensation. The function of respiration may
be suspended, combined motive power may be paralysed, so as to pre-
vent walking or running. All is irregular and abnormal. The mere
influence of expectant attention, the anticipation of a hysterical attack
is often sufficient to bring it on. Persons obliged to look fixedly at
a small object held in the hand will often lose consciousness to all
impressions save those of hearing. They believe all that is said to
them. They feel and realise everything said with marvellous em-
phasis and energy. Hence the phenomena of electro-biology. If they
are told they are cold, they will begin to shiver. If they are [told
it is very hot, they will try and divest themselves of superfluous
clothing.

Attacks of convulsions, total or partial loss of sensation, hallucina-
tions or delirium are all hysterical manifestations common, according
to M. Kichet, when several hysterical people are brought together.
And so it is in schools. One hysterical patient will produce many. In
the severer attacks, there is first ordinary epilepsy, falling, loss of
consciousness, lividity of the face, distortion of the features, flexion
of the arms, clenching of the fists, and convulsive tremors. This first
period usually ends in sleep or stupor, of uncertain duration. It is
followed in the second stage by extravagant contortions, shrieking,
barking, the execution of strange grimaces. In the third period,
there are hallucinations, consciousness is no longer suspended, the
hallucinations are sometimes pleasurable, but, more frequently, fright-
ful. The features and figure assume the expression and attitude of
the dominant emotion, and this with a fidelity which actors might
envy, and artists study.

It is useless to reason with the subjects of these attacks. They
are utterly untruthful, take a pleasure in deceiving, are often shame-
less, burst into causeless laughter, or uncalled-for tears. They are
quick in catching the smallest suggestion from without, but, though
extravagant and wild, they never travel beyond the region of their
own knowledge, belief, or superstition.

These are precisely the exhibitions of irregular emotions on
diseased minds, which in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
were believed in Europe to result from Satanic or demoniacal posses-
sion, witchcraft, and such like. And so they are still regarded in
India. Nor can we expect to see these foul superstitions eradicated
till education has become more general.

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

In conversation with an intelligent Talukdar, Abd-ul-Kurim by
name, when I was a magistrate in Oudh, I learned that this Satanic
or demoniacal possession was commonly believed in, not only by the
peasantry of Hindustan proper, but also by the higher classes, the
nobility and landed proprietors.

* Amongst my own cultivators,' said he, ' is an Ahir, whose wife
was thus afflicted a few years ago. But the devil was driven out of
her, and she is now well. She was barren before. She has children
now.'

I was naturally anxious to see this case, and took an early oppor-
tunity of visiting the village in which the woman and her husband
lived. Gunganarain Naigy, the husband, had little to distinguish
him from hundreds of other cultivators who lived around. He was
evidently pleased to be the object of attention on the part of the
Sahib.

' Yes,' said he, ' protector of the poor ! it is quite true. My wife
was possessed by a devil for a long time. It was about the time
that her father and mother died, six years ago, that I first observed
it. She was bewitched by an old fiend that lived in that cottage
over there, a wicked old hag, who died when the devil was driven
out of my wife.'

I saw the wife, a well-formed, active, intelligent woman, with
large lustrous black eyes. When her father and mother died she
sank into melancholy. She had no children. Then it was that she
became possessed. Nor she nor her husband had any doubt of the
fact. She became morbid, sullen, taciturn. At length her disease
culminated in dumbness. She would not speak, nay, she avers that she
could not, and all believed this to be a fact. Gunganarain Naigy
was wretched. The village sages held meetings about his case, and
gave their advice, but all to no purpose.

4 1 was near going mad myself,' said he, describing that time to
me. ' I was poor. I could not afford another wife, and I had no
children. What was I to do ? At length I heard of the Loorgah
(or shrine of the saint) at Ghouspore. The Talukdar, my master,
good Abd-ul-Kurim, knew my wife and pitied us. He let me go,
and gave me a fee for the priests. I took my wife with me, sullen,
stolid, dumb, taking no interest in anything, devil-possessed. I
brought her back sound in health, cured of the disease, in her right
mind, talking intelligently.'

I was naturally anxious to know how this had been accomplished.
All agreed — for I conversed with several of the villagers on the sub-
ject— that when Gunganarain Naigy took his wife Melata to Ghous-
pore, she was a well-formed, strong, attractive young woman, but
sullen and dumb, taking no interest in anything. Possession by an
evil spirit was plain to all of them ; and the old hag, her enemy, who
lived opposite to her, was accused as the cause.

1880. DEMONIACAL POSSESSION IN INDIA. 649

Arrived at Ghouspore and admitted to the court-yard of the
Doorgah, Gunganarain told me an ojah, or exorcist, began to operate
on Melata, but on the first day all in vain. Gunganarain Naigy
was present, and saw it all. She was exorcised and beaten, questioned,
addressed with words of enchantment, beaten again, but all in vain.
Next day severer measures were taken. Exorcism, at first, in vain.

* By the ojaJCs command,' said Gunganarain, ' I tied her hands
behind her. I tied her feet. Cotton wicks steeped in oil were pre-
pared. They were lighted, and stuffed up her nostrils, and into her
ears.'

' What fearful cruelty ! ' said I.

' Yes ; but it cured her. It drove out the devil. She shrieked
and spoke. She was convulsed, and became insensible. She is well
now, said the ojah ; the devil has left her — and it was true. In three
days she returned with me, and the old hag died : and she has been
weirever since, and is now the mother of children. The darkness of
hell was in our house before ; now we have the light of heaven.'
And all the villagers confirmed this — none more readily than Melata
herself.

And now to turn to Ghouspore and the Doorgah.

About four hundred years ago an ancestor of one of the priests
attendant at the shrine of Ghouspore in the district of Jounpore,
Sayud Umur by name, had a great reputation for sanctity. He had
been to Mecca, had visited the usual holy places in the grand pil-
grimage of Moslemism. In the course of his pilgrimage his own
peculiar saint, Ghousul Arim, had appeared to him, ordering him to
take a stone from the saint's tomb at Bagdad, and over it to
erect a shrine in his own country, which should be endowed with
miraculous virtues. It was at Ghouspore that Sayud Umur erected
the shrine. A merchant, who owed his fortune, as he believed, to
the favour of Ghousul Arim, subsequently enriched it with elaborate
work, and erected substantial walls round it. Every year since, on
the anniversary of the completion of the shrine, a fair or mela is
held, in which evil spirits are plentifully cast out. No one can tell
whether Ghousul Arim himself, or his devout adorer, Sayud Umur, was
a caster out of devils, but certain it is that from all the country round,
during the month of September, all those possessed in this way, whose
friends can afford it and feel interest enough in them to do it, are
collected at this great mela ; and marvellous is the result.

There are, of course, connected with the shrine professional ex-
orcists, called ojahs, who make it their business to attend to those cases
in which the relatives or friends are willing to pay liberally for their
services. They have their own method of procedure ; but violence
and the infliction of pain to cast out the devils are the most common.
When the cure is not effected almost immediately, the devil is said
to be vicious and obstinate. Then severe beating is resorted to ;

o '

650 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

:m<l, in some instances, cotton wicks soaked in oil, and lighted, are
stuffed up the nostrils, &c.

The Doorgahj or shrine, at which the fair is held, is outside the
village. The demoniacs are collected in the court-yard attached
to it ; and in front of this court-yard is a raised platform, on which
stands the officiating priest. He receives a present, in the first
instance, from the friends of the demoniacs admitted into the court-
yard— women for the most part. None are admitted without some
fee, although the amount varies with the ability of the friends-^-from
a pice to a gold mohur; that is, from a farthing to thirty-two
shillings. This constitutes the larger portion of the revenue of the
Doorgah, and is quite distinct from the professional fees paid to the
ojah or exorcist. A miraculous influence is supposed to pervade the
court-yard at the period of the mela, and hence the anxiety of the
friends to have their afflicted relatives admitted to the holy precincts.
Each particular ojah must be feed before he will undertake his incan-
tation, and his fees are determined, as to their amount, by the ability
of the friends of the sufferer.

It is a pitiable sight to see that mass of afflicted humanity
collected in the court-yard ; old men and old women, young men
and young women, youths and maidens, even little children, too, are
there. But the women are vastly more numerous than the men,
usually three times as many. Some of them are fixed and immovable
in gaze, taking no interest in anything around them, their eyes set
in a glazed stare, without intelligence or change. They will gaze at
a portion of the building, or at some distant object, as if entranced.
Others are violent and noisy, screaming, howling, hooting, or hissing,
or imprecating terribly by all their gods ; some, in the madness of
maniacal aberration, tearing their hair, beating their breasts, crying,
kneeling on the ground, bowing their heads with monotonous itera-
tion, sometimes with extraordinary swiftness. Some are tied with
ropes, they will not allow any clothing to remain on them if not
restrained, whilst others are dangerous in their phrenzy.

Idiots, maniacs, and hysterical patients are all mixed together in
this terrible court-yard, and it is a fearful scene. A ceaseless beating
of gongs is kept up, bells are frantically rung. The ojahs, or
exorcists, seem to delight in making it as terrible as possible. The
whole place resounds with the shrieks of the supposed demoniacs,
and the prayers or objurgations of their friends and attendants. In
such a scene it is no wonder if the simple spectators become possessed.
The nerves are abnormally acted upon. Women lose their modesty.
Men become furies.

4 During the mela that has recently taken place at Ghouspore,'
writes an intelligent correspondent of the Pioneer, ' a very pretty
and interesting looking young woman was kneeling by the side of
her husband. He was duly instructed by an ojah, or exorcist* He

1880. DEMONIACAL POSSESSION IN INDIA. 651

grasped her firmly with one hand by the hair ; in the other hand he
held a stout stick. Under the instructions he received he forced her
head down, in repeated bowings, almost to the earth. After every
third or fourth obeisance, he asked a question at the suggestion of
the ojah. If the answer was satisfactory he said, ' good, good.' If
otherwise, he beat her unmercifully with the stick. It was supposed
to be an obstinate devil, and could be removed only by beating.
But some of the poor wretches operated upon were simply idiots.'

A woman named Sidooe had two brothers-in-law, Kublass and
Jugroo. Kublass had a child ill with spleen. He sent for a wise
man, or soothsayer, named Jerbundhun, to prescribe for the child.
Jerbundhun pronounced the child to be possessed of a devil, with
which Sidooe, the aunt, who was also a widow, had bewitched it.
Sidooe was asked to withdraw the demon. She protested her inno-
cence and ignorance, but, as Kublass was importunate with her, she
naturally felt indignant, and took out of his hands the management
of her property, and gave it to his brother Jugroo. The child of
Kublass became worse. Jerbundhun, the mischief-maker, was again
called in. What the nature of his secret conference with Kublass
was, may be inferred from the fact that Sidooe and Jugroo both died
soon after. The police heard of the suspicious circumstances attend-
ing their death, and a trial ensued. But there was no proof against
either of the prisoners, and they were acquitted. Yet there can be
little doubt that they compassed the deaths, both of the widow and
the brother, probably by poison. So baneful is this superstition
about evil spirits! Nor did the deaths of Sidooe and Jugroo save
the child of Kublass, for it died too.

The educated Bengali is more than a match for the pretended
exorcist and the ignorant priest of the Ghouspore Doorgah. The
educated Bengali is the Athenian of India. Although often defi-
cient in physical stamina, he is almost invariably intellectually
acute.

Ghouspore is north-east of Benares, and an intelligent member of
the household of the Maharajah of Benares, Sanut Kumara by name,
who had been educated at the College, happening to be in the neigh-
bourhood, got into conversation with one of the ojahs attached to the
Doorgah. Sanut Kumara did not believe the professions of the cjah,
or his wonderful tales of Demon exorcism, but, professing credulity,
he told him one of his servants was mysteriously afflicted, and pro-
mised to bring him to the Doorgah. When the servant was brought,
the ojah, after a hasty examination, declared that he was afflicted
with a devil, and offered to cure him. A day was fixed for the
encounter with the demon, and, in the meantime, a certain diet and
regimen were prescribed for the sufferer, a poor and meagre diet.

On the appointed day the servant appeared before the exorcist,
dumb and stolid as before, apparently senseless. Evidently a very

652 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

obstinate devil had got hold of him. The ojah demanded his fee of
twelve rupees before operating. The amount was paid. Then the
ojah commenced his incantations, which were apparently useless.
Failing by words, the ojah began to have recourse to blows. These
the unruly patient resented. The ojah called on Sanut Kumara to
help him in binding the unhappy possessed, so that he might
operate on him without hindrance. Sanut Kumara demurred at
first, but at length consented, in order that the ojah might treat him
completely at his ease. Sanut Kumara pretended to comply, but so
inefficiently was the athletic young man bound, that after a question
or two had been demanded of him, to which there was no reply, and a
blow or two struck, he shook off his bonds and seizing the stick from
the ojah, he belaboured him soundly, Sanut Kumara in vain acting as
mediator.

4 You want to know who was my father,' said the youth ; ' take that,
son of a vile mother ! and let honest men alone for the future,' and,
so saying, he brought down the stick upon the ojah's back. Sanut
Kumara lifted his hands imploringly, beseeching his servant to have
mercy.

' He wants to know how long the devil has been in me,' said the
servant again ; * let him discover his own devil first, and cast him out, a
lying devil, a cheating devil, a robber,' and with every epithet down
came a blow.

' 0 pray, pray, desist,' said Sanut Kumara, now raising himself in
earnest, for he saw that the cries of the ojah were attracting the at-
tention of the priests and servants of the Doorgah.

With some difficulty peace was restored, and that ojah escaped
from the hands of Sanut Kumara and his servant, a wiser, but a sorer,
man. He subsequently denounced both master and servant to the
authorities of the Doorgah, but nothing came of it.

Both Hindus and Mahommedans resort to the Doorgah at
Ghouspore, bringing with them their afflicted relatives to be ex-
orcised— idiots, lunatics, hysterical patients, all are brought, for the
ignorant villagers class them all in the same category ; they are all
equally possessed with devils, and Ghouspore is the place to have
the demons cast out. Cures must of course be sometimes effected,
or the superstition could not survive ; cures doubtless the result of the
action of pain or unwonted excitement on diseased nerves. Faith in
Ghouspore, and its efficacy in the cure of those possessed with devils,
is spread all over the adjoining country.

W. KNIGHTON.

1880. 653

ALEXANDRE DUMAS.

ALEXANDRE DUMAS — the elder and greater bearer of that name— has
perhaps been more persistently underrated, in England at least, than
any; modern writer of his calibre. There is, so far as I know, only
one English biography of him in existence ; and this biography seems
to be devoted to the task of belittling in every possible way the name
and fame of one of the greatest figures of modern European litera-
ture. The compiler appears to have believed all the malevolent
stories collected, exaggerated and invented by a pseudonymous libeller
and pamphleteer of a past time concerning Dumas. Surely Alfred
de Musset must have had some such person as this libeller in his
mind's eye when, in one of his beautiful dialogues between the Muse
and the Poet, he introduced these lines of satire addressed to the
Poet by the Muse. The Muse is urging the Poet, borne down by
stress of real or fancied grief, to new exertions. ' Shall we,' she cries
to him, ' compose some pastoral elegy? ' or

Shall he of Waterloo recount his deeds

And tell how many lives his sword mowed down

Before Death's angel struck him with his wing

And crossed his hands upon his iron breast ?

' Or on a satire's gibbet shall we hang

The thrice-sold name of some pale pamphleteer

Who, urged by avarice, from his haunts obscure

Came shivering with envy's impotence

To stab at genius and its lofty hopes,

And bite the laurel that his breath had fouled ? '

The thrice-sold name of the pamphleteer who stabbed at Dumas
as at many others of his great contemporaries was Jacquot. He,
who was among those who sneered at Dumas for sometimes re-
minding people that he had a genuine claim to a noble title,
proved how much he would have liked himself to have such a claim
by dropping the name of Jacquot and assuming the more brilliant
designation of Eugene de Mirecourt, under which title he wrote
some of the basest, most venomous, and least trustworthy accounts of
the distinguished writers of his time that it is possible to conceive.
Jacquot has long been known for what he is worth — and mighty little

654 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

that is — in France ; and his efforts at detraction might have obtained
scarcely any attention in England but for the unfortunate industry with
which they have been raked out of their native mire. This has made
it necessary to refer to them ; but I do not propose now to dwell upon
this matter further than to say that like most slanders which attain
some success, Jacquot's relations are ingenious examples of malicious
exaggeration and invention built upon one brick of truth. Apart
from the imputations made in this way upon Dumas's private cha-
racter in his literary dealings, his literary works have, it seems to me,
very seldom been- rated at their true merit by English people. One
great English writer did indeed leave his appreciation of the great
French writer on record. That was Thackeray ; and in this connec-
tion I cannot do better than refer to a singularly appreciative study
of Dumas which Mr. Saintsbury published some time ago in the
Fortnightly Revieiu. Mr. Saintsbury has been dwelling as I have
dwelt upon the curious notions current about Dumas's place in litera-
ture. He finds in what he says is a deservedly popular book of
reference that Dumas's ' crisp hair and thick lips bear testimony to
hi? African origin, a testimony confirmed by the savage voluptuous-
ness and barbaric taste of his innumerable compositions.' He finds
in this book of reference that Dumas's ' works are for the most part
worthless, and for the most part not his own ' (mark the wonderful
logic of this passage)— and he finds Thackeray's Roundabout Papers
' full of complimentary expressions to Dumas, while On a Peal of
Bells contains a formal panegyric devoted to the creator of Chicot
and Dante's D'Artagnan and Coconnas.' I have myself lately come
across just such an account as Mr. Saintsbury quotes, in another and
an equally popular book of reference. Here Dumas is spoken of as
the author of many frivolous works, the low moral tone of which
does not appeal to an English mind. The writer of this last account
has, however, the grace to add, 'Dumas also wrote a treatise on
cookery.' Mr. Saintsbury in his article quotes a passage from
Thackeray which bears particularly upon the many invectives levelled
at Dumas on the ground that he was in the habit of putting his
name to work which was not executed by himself : —

' Of your heroic heroes,' writes Thackeray, ' I think our friend Monseigneur
Athos, Count de la Fere, is my favourite. I have read about him' from sunrise to
sunset with the utmost contentment of mind. He has passed through how many
volumes? Forty P Fifty ? I wish for my part there were a hundred more, and
would never tire of him rescuing prisoners, punishing ruffians, and running
scoundrels through the midriff with his most graceful rapier. Ah ! Athos,
Porthos, and Aramis, you are a most magnificent trio. I think I like D'Artagnan
in his own memoirs best ; I bought him years and years ago, price fivepence, in a
little parchment-covered, Cologne-printed volume, at a stall in Gray's Inn Lane.
Dumas glorifies him, and makes a marshal of him if I remember rightly. The
original D'Artagnan was a needy adventurer who died in exile very early in
Louis XIV.'s reign. Did you ever read the Chevalier <? Harmenthal f Did you

1880. ALEXANDRE DUMAS. 655

ever read the Tulip? Noire — as modest as a story by Miss Edgeworth. I think of
the prodigal banquets to which this Lucullus of a man has invited me with thanks
and wonder. To what a series of splendid entertainments he has treated me ! Where
does he find the money for these prodigious feasts ?

' They say that all the works bearing Dumas's name are not written by him.
Well ? does not the chief cook have aides under him ? Did not Rubens's pupils
paint on his canvasses ? Had not Lawrence assistants for his back-grounds ? '

This was what Thackeray thought and wrote. Hundreds of lesser
writers have decried Dumas as ' a scene-painter,' as ' an arranger of
other people's ideas,' as ' a literary manufacturer,' and so on. Most
of such writers know Dumas only as the author of Monte Cristo, of
the Three Musketeers, and of other novels which have given delight to
thousands. There are happily not many writers who with fuller
knowledge have deliberately kept Dumas's great qualities out of
sight and brought forward all the petty qualities which they could
manage by hook or crook to attribute to him. Let it be noted in
passing that not one of Dumas's popular novels is a work to be lightly
dismissed ; there is not one indeed which does not bear at least in
some parts of it the easily recognised mark of the master's genius,
though no doubt in some the lasiness of the master or the inefficiency
of the pupil is here and there visible. But let it be noted- also that
Dumas did not first make his mark as a writer of novels. Later on
he became famous all over Europe as the archimage of the style of
fiction which he introduced in France. In this fiction he gave a
vivid picture of men and manners ; he showed various types of human
character and human events ; every page wag alive with gaiety and
bravery and adventure. The characters lived before the reader's eye,
and he was left to draw his own conclusion from their action in the
stirring events that they took part in. Now all this is out of fashion,
and instead of a moving story of wildly splendid deeds and wildly
intricate plots controlled or thwarted by one master mind, we look
either for detailed analysis of some character, which, if the analysis is
carefully made, turns out to be only saved from being commonplace
by its morbidness, or else for a flippant record of flippant flirtation
described with a Vesuvian eruption of big and incongruous words.
But, as has been said, it was not in the realms of now old-fashioned
fiction that Dumas first distinguished himself. From what seemed a
hopelessly obscure position he came to the front as the first practical
representative of the great romantic school on the stage of the great
classical theatre — the Franpais. His play, Henri III. et sa Cour,
opened a path for the subsequent battles and triumphs of Victor-
Hugo's Hernani and all the plays that followed it. Probably no one
will dispute the fact that in the band of young and ardent writers
who from 1830 onwards worked for and created a salutary revolution
in French literature and drama one figure towers supreme over all
the rest — that of Victor Hugo. And I think few people of literary

656 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

taste will deny, after studying the story and works of that revolu-
tionary time, that, viewed from all points, the figure of Dumas comes
next to that of Victor Hugo.

The story of the production of Henri III. et sa Cour has many
points of interest, and Dumas has left two records of it, one in
his Souvenirs Dramatiques and one in his Memoires, the ten
volumes of which have scarcely a dull page, except sometimes when
they deal with politics. Dumas fancied himself a politician just as
many people who have gained distinction in one way of life have felt
themselves to be born for quite a different sort of success. Perhaps
some excerpts from the shorter of the records may be enough for our
purpose.

It may be well to state that Dumas, who came of a distinguished
and noble family — he had Creole blood in him, and his enemies said
that he had only a left-handed right at best to the title, which he
never used, of Marquis de la Pailleterie — it may be well to state
that when he first devoted himself successfully to dramatic work he
was a clerk in a public office at an extremely modest salary, and
enduring a more than fair share of the insolence of office from his
superiors. Under these trying circumstances he betook himself to
the task, more congenial to him than office-work, of writing plays,
and the first play he wrote belonged to the Romantic School. This
school, it must be remembered, had at this time, that is before 1830,
no recognised position. The classicists, the people who believed
that the narrowing of great men's talents to a servile imitation of the
Greek drama was the Alpha and Omega of art, were still com-
pletely or almost completely in the ascendant. At any rate they
were strong enough to bar the door of the stage against their rising
opponents. Dumas, however, had his own ideas, and he has recorded
these ideas in an eloquent passage. A company of English actors,
including players of such different calibre as Charles Kemble and
Liston, came over to Paris in 1828, and Dumas practised the economy,
which later in his life he exchanged for extravagance, in order to see
their performances.

' They announced Hamlet,' he writes. ' The only Hamlet I knew was the
Hamlet of Duels, and I saw the Hamlet of Shakespeare. Then I found what I
had longed for. I found actors who forgot themselves in their parts. I found
art giving life to invention, i found on the stage human beings in all their
grandeur and all their weakness, instead of those heroes of our classical drama who
were so impassive, stilted, and sententious. I read, I devoured the library of foreign
theatres, and I saw that as in the living world all springs from the sun, so in the
world of the drama all springs from Shakespeare. I saw that none could be
compared to him. He had the dramatic power of Corneille, the comic force of
Moliere, the invention of Calderon, the thought of Goethe, the passion of Schiller.
I saw in fact that in power of creation Shakespeare came next to God.'

This was the impression produced upon Dumas by Shakespeare,
and this it was that spurred him to see what he could do in the way

1880. ALEXANDRE DUMAS. 657

of opposing such apparently natural art as Shakespeare was a master
of, to such obviously artificial art as then in various forms possessed
the French theatre. There are too many who would have us believe
of the man who could feel and act upon this impression — received in
spite of all the narrow prejudices which were then rampant — that
he was at best a second-rate joker and manipulator of manuscripts,
a boaster without any true courage, a successful playwright without
any true genius. History tells and will tell, when feeble and
venomous attacks are forgotten, a different tale.

Before Henri III. et so, Cour was accepted and played at the
Theatre Francais, Dumas had offered another piece called Christine,
which had for its culminating point of interest the murder of Monal-
deschi by Queen Christina. This piece, after various difficulties
which Dumas has described in his own inimitable manner, was
accepted and put into rehearsal. At the first reading of the piece the
author received an extraordinary compliment in being asked to read
two of the scenes over again. When the reading was over, Firmin,
the great actor of the day, Talma's successor, came to him and told
him that the committee of decision was much embarrassed.

' Why ? ' said Dumas.

4 Because,' replied Firmin, ' the committee really doesn't know
whether the piece is classic or romantic.'

4 What does that matter ? ' said Dumas. ' Is the piece good or
bad ? '

* Well ! ' answered Firmin, i the fact is the committee doesn't
know that either.'

Finally Firmin took Dumas to visit a certain M. Picard, a fana-
tical classicist who was supposed by some people in the theatre to
be an infallible judge.

When Dumas and Firmin went to him he took snuff with a proud
air, and received the MS. with an equally proud air, and with various
depreciatory remarks. A week later Dumas and Firmin went to ask
for his opinion.

' Ah ! ' said Picard, with a wicked smile ; ' I expected you.'

* Well ! ' said Firmin.

' Well ! ' repeated Dumas.

Picard took up the MS. of the play, and rolled it in his fingers
with a malevolent joy ; then assuming a caressing tone, he said to
Dumas: ' Have you any means of living apart from literature ? '

' I have,' said Dumas, ' an official post under the Due d'Orleans,
which gives me 1,500 francs a year.'

'Ah ! well,' replied Picard, giving him the MS., 'go back to your
office — go back to your office.'

This was discouraging enough, but in spite of this and other dis-
couragements the play was, as has been said, accepted, and actually
put in rehearsal. A propos of these difficulties, Dumas in his account
VOL. VIII.— No. 44. Y Y

658 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

of his connection with the Theatre Francais, tells a story of a great
actor of that day, M. Lafon. Lafon came to him asking for a part
to be written into the play. The part could not be written in; but
at the mention of Lafon's name Dumas goes off in his discursive
way to tell how there was a certain actor at the Francais who was
bad at acting, but uncommonly good at imitating Lafon. One
evening in the green-room he cut short an imitation on Lafon's un-
expected appearance. * Ah ! ' said Lafon as he came in, ' you all seem
amused, and I think your imitation of me is the cause of this
amusement.'

< Oh, M. Lafon ! '

' My good soul, I don't mind ; you cannot do better than copy a
good model ! '

'Oh, M. Lafon!'

* Well, no denial — let us hear how you do it.'

' If it must be so,' said the mimic, and gave his celebrated imita-
tion with unusual success. Lafon listened most attentively —
applauded frequently ; and said at the end, t Well, why don't you act
as well as that on your own account ? You would escape a certain
amount of hissing if you did ! '

Unfortunately for Dumas, Mdlle. Mars was then the reigning
actress at the Theatre Francais, and the result of her influence goes
with many later instances to prove that a State theatre is not
necessarily a perfect affair. Mdlle. Mars was no longer young ; indeed
she was something like sixty years old, and perhaps for that very
reason she was petulantly anxious to assert her supremacy. Mdlle.
Mars, who was to play the heroine's part in Christine, was enough
interested in the play to pay a special visit to the author. She paid
him many compliments and was bent upon being amiable. What she
wanted, as she said, was to have a certain passage cut out. The
passage was this :

Oh ! lorsqu'il est e"crit sur le livre du sort

Qu'un homme vient de naitre au front large, au cceur fort,

Et quo Dieu, sur so front qu'il a pris pour victinie,

A mis du bout du doigt une flamme sublime,

Au-dessous de ces mots la meme main e"crit :

Tu seras malheureux, si tu n'es pas proscrit !

Car a ses premiers pas sur la terre oil nous sommes,

Son regard de"daigneux prend en rne'pris les hommes.

Comrne il est plus grand qu'eux, il voit avec ennui

Qu'il faut vers eux descendre, ou les hausser vera lui ;

Alors, dans son sentier profond et solitaire,

Passant sans se meler aux enfants de la terre,

II dit aux vents, aux flots, aux ctoiles, aux bois

Les chants de sa grande ame avec sa forte voix.

La foule entend ces chants, elle crie au delire,

Et, ne coraprenant point, elle se prend a rire

Mais a pas de ge"ant, sur un pic eleve",

Apres de longs efforts, lorsqu'il eat arrive",

1880. ALEXANDRE DUMAS. 659

Reconnaissant sa sphere en ces zones nouvelles,
Et sentant assez d'air pour ses puissantes ailes,
II part inajestueux ; et qui le voit d'en bas,
Qui tente de Is suivre et qui ne le pent pas,
Le voyant a ses yeux echapper comme un reve,
Pense qu'il diminue a cause qu'il s'eleve,
Croit qu'il doit s'arreter ou le perd son adieu,
Le cherche dans la nuit — il est aux pieds de Dieu. !

On these fine lines Dumas, whose vanity has always been the point
most easily assailed and worried to death by his detractors, makes
what seem to me some curiously modest remarks : ' I have read
again, after an interval of twenty-eight or twenty-nine years, these
verses. No doubt better have been made, but also far worse have
been made. When I wrote them I thought them the greatest of
great achievements, and this was on my part a homage paid half to
Corneille, half to Hugo. ... I was astounded that these verses of all
others were those that Mdlle. Mars disliked.'

Dumas stuck to his verses — Mars stuck to her objection. She
was not accustomed to be opposed, but she seemed to yield. Gamier,
the prompter of the Theatre Franpais, when he heard what had
happened, told Dumas to give up all hope of having his piece played,
and, to cut a long story short, his prophecy turned out to be true.,
Mars had convenient attacks of nerves, and the piece was put off
sine die. Dumas, however, with the extraordinary energy which was a
chief part of his nature, instead of being discouraged, set to work to
find another subject, and found one by making a most ingenious
collocation of passages which he found by chance in Anquetil, in the
'Memoires de L'Estoile,' and in Walter Scott's Abbot', and of this
collocation came the striking play of Henri III. et sa GOUT, the
first play, as has been said, of the real Romantic School which made
its way to the boards of the Theatre Francais.

It may be here again noted in passing, that Dumas' account of
his difficulties concerning this play shows that the State theatre of
France has from an author's point of view few, if any, advantages over
a well-managed theatre belonging to a private manager in England,
and it may also be not uninteresting to give some account of what
this play was.

The nucleus of the play is a possible and suspected, but not an
actual intrigue between the Duchess de Guise and St. Megrin, one of
the favourites of Henry the Third of France. I wish to mark this
point, because both in his own day people who knew his writings,
and now people who do not know his writings, impugn Dumas with
having demoralised literature — especially the literature of the theatre.
Let these people deliberately compare any of the stage works of
Dumas pere, who never posed as a moralist, with any of the stage
works of Dumas fils, who does pose as a moralist, and let them then
say which of the two is the more corrupt.

Y T 2

660 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

Of the literary merit of the two writers I can say little, because it
appears to me to be a matter beyond argument, but I think if
Mademoiselle de Belle-Isle is compared with the Demi-Monde or
L'Etrangere, the question will decide itself.

But to return to Henri III. et sa Cour. The suspected intrigue
which has been referred to between the Duchess de Guise and St.
Megrin is the kernel of the play, but the political events of the time
are brought in, and from a dramatic point of view admirably brought
in, to give it substance and reality.

In the first act we have an interview between Catherine de Medicis,
Henry the Third's mother, and Ruggieri, the great astrologer of the
time. This takes place in Ruggieri's retreat. With singular natural-
ness and striking effect the various characters of the piece and their
various motives are unfolded to us in this scene. In the course of
it Catherine de Medicis expounds to Ruggieri why she wishes St.
Megrin to be supposed the lover of the Duchess de Guise, and gives
him weighty reasons for supporting this supposition. The scene is
throughout striking and exciting, and at the end of it the Duke de
Guise, who has come on affairs of his own to Ruggieri, finds by a chance
the handkerchief of his wife the Duchess left in a room which he knows
St. Megrin has just quitted. He jumps to a conclusion already art-
fully suggested, and calls to one of his followers : ' Seek out the man
who stabbed Du Gast,' another of the King's favourites. On this the
curtain falls.

Of the rest of the play till the last act it may be said briefly that
the curtain always falls upon a striking situation led up to by the
taking dialogue of which Dumas had the secret. In his plays, as in
his novels, he had the art of making people interchange words, some-
times for two or three pages together, which never seemed forced
and which are never dull. For political as well as for personal
motives, St. Megrin seeks a quarrel with the Duke de Guise, and
from the political point of view, the only one which he knows of, the
King approves and gives his sanction to the proposed duel. But
meanwhile Guise has laid his plans. He compels his wife, whose
hand he grasps and bruises with his iron gauntlet, to write and pro-
pose an assignation to St. Megrin, and the third act closes with the
Duchess sending this letter to St. Megrin by the hands of her favour-
ite page, while the Duke, concealed, watches her to see that she
sends no word of warning with it. In the fourth act the letter is
delivered, and the excitement is kept up by its seeming likely that
St. Megrin will be detained by orders from the King, and prevented
from keeping his fatal appointment. In the fifth act, however, he
goes, following the directions of the letter, to the Duchess's apart-
ments ; the doors are shut upon him, and he learns from her that he
has come into a trap. There is a scene of much power between them,
and when escape seems hopeless, a coil of rope is thrown into the

1880. ALEX ANDRE DUMAS. 661

•window with a note from the Duchess's page, who has discovered the
plot, and thinks thus to thwart it. The Duke's voice is heard at the
door, the Duchess bars it with the arm which he has already injured,
while St. Megrin attaches his rope to the window and descends it.
When he is out of sight the Duchess gives a cry of joy, ' He is saved ! '
Then the clash of steel and the noise of firing are heard in the street ;
she rushes to the window followed by the Duke. From the rapid
•words which they interchange the spectators learn what is passing
below. St. Megrin is surrounded, covered with wounds, but he dies
hard. One of the assassins cries out that he must have a charm
against steel and lead, and in fact such a charm has been given to
him by Ruggieri. The Duke leans out and flings down the hand-
kerchief on the finding of which he has based his mistaken distrust
of his wife. 'Eh bien! Serre-lui la gorge avec ce mouchoir,' he
cries, ' la rnort lui sera plus douce ; il est aux armes de la Duchesse
de Guise ! '

The play, which was produced when Dumas was only twenty-six
years old, had an immense success, and, as has been said, it opened
the way for those other plays with which the Romantic School fought
and conquered the Classical School. The first and fiercest pitched
battle between the two took place on the production of Victor Hugo's
HernanL Among other vices and crimes of which Dumas has
been accused by his biographers, it has been often said that his
literary judgment was warped by the inordinate admiration which he
had for one writer — M. Alexandre Dumas. Possibly the people who
have recorded this were thinking of the story, which if not vero is
ben trovato, of the answer made on one occasion by Dumas the son
to Dumas the father. The young man, it is said, had just brought
out a successful play, and his father wrote to him as if to a stranger,
proposing that they should become collaborators. To this the son
replied that he disliked the system of collaboration, but added, ' I
am the more sorry to refuse what you ask me because my sympathies
are naturally enlisted by the great admiration which you have
always expressed for my father's works.'

To show, however, how much ground there is for the supposition
that Dumas was incapable of any generous admiration of a rival, it
may be mentioned that in one part of his Memoires he devotes a great
deal of space to an elaborate panegyric of Victor Hugo cast in the
form of an answer to a stupid criticism, and that this panegyric was
written at a time when he was not on good terms with Hugo.
Moreover, in another part of the same Memoires, he gives an account
of how he first received the news of the production of Hugo's great
play Marion Delorme. He was leaving Trouville, which was then a
delightfully quiet little fishing village, and in the diligence with him
there was one of the contributors to a well-known Paris paper.
Thinking to please Hugo's rival, this man told him that the

C62 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

reception of Marion Delorme had been cold, and began to abuse the
play. Dumas defended it, and quoted a whole scene from it.

1 What ! you know all that by heart ! ' said the critic.

' As you see, I know all that by heart. I know nearly all the play
by heart.'

1 Ah ! how odd ! '

* Not at all odd. I think Marion Delorme one of the finest
things ever written. I had the MS. in my hands for some time, and
I have quoted the first scene I can remember to support my opinion
of its merits.'

' Well,' said the critic presently, 'kthis is a good joke ! '

' What is a good joke ? '

4 Your defending Hugo.'

1 Why not ? I like him and admire him.'

' Un confrere ! ' said the critic, in a tone of pity and amazement.

Dumas goes on to give an admirably appreciative summary of
the play, speaks again of his immense admiration for it, and sums
up by writing down what came into his mind after his conversation
with the critic. 4 Ah ! if with my knowledge of the playwright's
craft I could only write such poetry as Hugo's ! '

No criticism could well be juster. Dumas possessed to perfection
the one quality which is wanting to Hugo's splendid dramas, and he
was as conscious of this as he was of his inferiority, as a poet, to his
great rival. No playwriters of that time, and very few playwriters
since, have shown such complete mastery of all the resources of the
stage as Dumas displayed ; and it seems to me that no one who
devotes a moderate attention to his dramatic works can reasonably
doubt that in the celebrated quarrel about the play called the Tour
de Nesle right was on the side of Dumas. This quarrel is worth
some attention. The story takes up some four chapters of Dumas'
Memoires ; but briefly the main facts were these. Harel, the great
theatrical manager, had received a play in MS. from a young author
named Graillardet. He thought there was capital stuff in it, but as it
was written it was quite unfitted for stage representation, on account
of the author's inexperience. Jules Janin had tried to do something
with it, and had failed. Harel then came to Dumas, who, according
to his own account, which I for one believe, entirely remodelled it,
and made of it one of the most impressive melodramas ever put on
the stage. He had previously written a somewhat imprudently self-
effacing letter to the young author, who, instead of being grateful, was
furious at having, as he said, a collaborator thrust upon him, and
ended by writing to the papers to assert that he was the sole author
of the piece. The matter went through all kinds of intricacies into
which it would be tedious to go ; but the last word which ought to
be said about it is found in a letter written by Graillardet in 1861 to
the manager of the Porte St. Martin theatre. The letter runs thus :—

1880. ALEX ANDRE DUMAS. 663

A judgment of the courts in 1832 decreed that the Tour do Ncsle should be
printed and announced under my name alone ; and this was clone up to the date
of its being1 forbidden by the censorship in 1851.

Now that you are going to put it on the stage again, I give you per-
mission— nay more, I beg you to join to my name that of Alexandre Dumas my
collaborator. I wish to prove to him that I have forgotten our old quarrel, and
that I remember only our later pleasant relations and the great share which his
incomparable talent had in the success of the Tour de Nesle.

At the time, however, the quarrel made an immense stir, cul-
minating in a duel between Dumas and Gaillarclet, which Dumas
relates in his best manner. One or two touches in the narration are
intensely characteristic. He begins by saying that as he started for
the place of the combat Bonnaire, a friend of his, came up to him
with an album in his hand. 4 Ah ! ' he said, 4 you are going out.
Are you in a hurry ? '

4 Why do you ask ? '

4 Because, if you are not, I should like you so much to write some-
thing in this album.'

4 Well, leave it in my room, and when I come back I will write
something in it.'

4 You can't now ? '

4 No, I am in a hurry to keep an appointment, and would not be
late for any consideration.'

4 Where are you going ? '

4 To fight a duel with Gaillardet.'

4 Oh, then please write something now. Think how delightful it
would be for my wife to possess the last lines you ever wrote.'

4 Ah!' said Dumas, 'you are right. I will not deprive Mdme.
Bonnaire of that pleasure,' and so saying he went back and wrote a
few lines in the album.

Then, when they were on the ground, Bixio, a friend of Dumas,
who was a doctor, said to him, ' Shall you hit him ? '

4 I don't know,' said Dumas.

4 Try to.'

* I shall certainly try ; but do you dislike him ? '

4 Not at all, I don't know him.'

4 Then why so anxious ? '

4 Well, have you read Merimee's Etruscan Vase ? '

4 Yes.'

4 Then don't you remember that he says every man killed by a
bullet turns round before he drops ? I want to see if it's true.'

He had no opportunity of seeing on this occasion, for the duel
was fortunately harmless ; but the pendant to this odd story is that
Bixio himself was shot some years afterwards at a Paris barricade
— shot to death — and as he fell, turning, he cried, 4 Ah ! one does
turn then!'

Dumas was quite unable to resist embellishing any story which

664 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

he told with things of this kind ; and it is no doubt his marvellous
fertility of inventing light dialogue which gives a never-fading charm
to his stories and sketches. Oddly enough it was by a mere chance
that he discovered himself to be capable of light writing. In a pas-
sage of his Memoires he tells us with his charming naivete that in
his earlier years, in the days of his first successful drama, he used to
pose as a melancholy genius, after the then prevalent fashion set
by Lord Byron. One day he wrote a letter of introduction or recom-
mendation for a friend of his, who on reading it said with surprise,
* Why, you have wit ! '

He certainly had wit, both for himself and for the dashing and
delightfully impossible characters of his romances. There are plenty
of stories which illustrate his readiness in conversation. Before telling
one of the best of these it is necessary to remember that Pierre
Corneille, the great dramatist, had a younger brother named Thomas,
who had a considerable talent which was completely overshadowed
by the greater genius of his brother. There was also in the height
of Dumas success another playwright — no relation of his — who
bore the name of Dumas. This writer produced a play which is
forgotten now, but which on the night of its production had enough
success to intoxicate the author with joy. After the curtain had
fallen the obscure Dumas came into the box of the great Dumas and
said, ' Ah ! after to-night people will talk of the two Dumas as they
talk of the two Corneilles ! ' * Ah ! ' said the great man, looking at
him from head to foot, ' adieu, Thomas ! '

There are also plenty of passages in Dumas' novels which illus-
trate the extraordinary ease and fluency with which, whether in
stirring or comic scenes, he heaped one extravagant detail upon
another until the reader was lost in admiration at his fertility of
invention. But it would be very difficult to pick out any such scene
which would not lose by being separated from its surroundings. We
can, however, find a tolerably good instance in a story founded no
doubt on fact, and equally no doubt dressed up by him, which he
tells a propos of George Sand's play Francois le Champi.

It begins at a supper given just after Francois le Champi had
been produced in Paris with complete success. George Sand was
far away at her country house at Nohant. The actors and their
friends wondered how the good news could be conveyed to George
Sand. There was no telegraph, and it was too late to post a
letter. Paul Bocage, nephew of the great actor, offered to convey
the news himself.

4 How will you get there ? ' said his uncle. * By rail. There
must be some night train to Chateau-Koux.'

* I believe,' said a voice, « there is one at about four in the
morning.'

1880. ALEX ANDRE DUMAS. 665

' I must start at once, then,' said Paul. ' Have you any money,
uncle ? '

The uncle emptied his pockets, and produced 103 francs, armed
with which Paul set out.

It was impossible to get a cab ; the pavement was covered with
frozen rain, and heavy snow was falling. Paul had nothing to
protect him against the weather but a light overcoat. He ran,
slipping constantly, to the Orleans Station.

There was just such a sharp breeze as made Hamlet say ' The air
bites shrewdly,' but Hamlet had a cloak to keep him warm, and a
friend to console him. Paul had neither. He arrived bitterly cold
at the station at four o'clock. There was no sign of a train. He
knocked furiously at a little tavern door. The tavern-keeper came
down grumbling, and asked what he wanted. Paul reflected that if
he asked what he really wanted to know — when there was a train —
and called for what he really wanted to have, a fire to warm himself,
the tavern-keeper would grumble still more. He asked then for
an omelette and a glass of rum. He calculated that to make an
omelette it was necessary to light a fire, and that while the omelette
was being made he could ask about the trains. There was no train
till six, so he had plenty of time to warm himself. He had just had
supper, and had no intention of eating his omelette ; but he was
very cold, and had every intention of drinking his rum. The tavern-
keeper thought he had asked for an omelette au rhum, and presented
him accordingly with an omelette swimming in blazing spirit — -a
sort of Delos floating on a sea of flame. This was not what Bocage
wanted at all. He called for his glass of rum. It was not to be had.
All the rum in the house had been devoted to his omelette. He
emptied the blazing spirit into a glass and swallowed it straight off,
thinking that the hotter it was the better it would warm him. In
five minutes he was so warm that he walked about mopping his
forehead. But for economy's sake he was obliged to travel third-
class, and was very soon frozen again. A nurse whom he met in the
carriage gave him half of her flask full of brandy. At six o'clock he
arrived shivering again at Chateau-Koux. It was colder than ever,
and he had eight leagues to go to Nohant. With infinite difficulty,
having got hold of a friend of his who lived in Chateau-Boux, he
procured a kind of country vehicle to take him. He had no time
to make a regular meal, so he devoured some bread, and asked his
friend what kind of thing he had better drink.

' A glass of rum,' said the friend.

' I swallowed a plateful this morning.'

* A glass of brandy, then.'

' I drank half a flask in the train.'
' A glass of kirsch then.'

* Not a bad idea,' said Paul, and drank his kirsch and started.

666 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

They had a horrible journey — once he had to drag his driver and
the horse out of a snowdrift, and they did not get to George Sand's
house till three in the morning. The house was shut up and dark.
The driver cursed, a dog barked, and Paul rang the bell furiously.
Amid this Babel of noises a light at length appeared. Paul want«d
to let go the bell ; but the bell did not want to let go Paul. His
hand was frozen to it, and he had to sacrifice some of his skin.

An old woman appeared at the gate and said, ' Who are you ? '

' A friend of Madame Sand.'

* Where do you come from ? '
1 Paris.'

' You think we shall wake up Madame at this time of night ? '
' I don't want you to.'
' What do you want, then ? '
' I want you to open the gate.'
' And supposing I do open it ? '

1 Then you will take me to a room, the horse to the stable, and
the driver to the kitchen.'

' You think that is how things will be done ? '
' That is how I should like them to be done.'

* Well, wait here, and I'll send some one to talk to you.'

She went away, and in ten minutes came back with a strong man
and a bludgeon. The man kept guard over Paul while the horse
and cart went in, and then led the way to the house. Paul was so
cold that if a sword had been thrust through his body it would have
come out colder than it went in. The man took him to an ante-
room lighted by a candle standing on the ground. * Stay here,' said
the man.

' You are going to tell Maurice that I am here, I suppose,' said
Paul.

' I am going,' said the man threateningly, c to send some one who
will talk to you.'

Paul knelt down and tried to warm himself at the candle. While
he was doing this he heard footsteps — looked up — and saw the devil,
in his traditional costume of red and black. He began to wonder
what had befallen him.

« What do you want ? ' said the devil.

* To see Madame Sand.'

' I am not Madame Sand.'

* So I see,' said Paul.

* What do you want with Madame Sand ? '

* To give her a message.'
' What is it 3 '

* I will tell her to-morrow/

* If,' said the devil, * you are in no greater hurry than that, you
need hardly have come here at three o'clock in the morning.'

1880. ALEX ANDRE DUMAS. 667

'I am in a hurry, but what I have to say to Madame Sand
regards herself alone. You I do not know.'

4 Nor I you,' said the devil, and turning on his heel disappeared.

Paul wondered whether the rum, the hrandy, and the kirsch had
made him drunk. No — he felt perfectly sober, and could only
suppose that his driver, instead of taking him to Madame Sand's,
had taken him to quite a different place.

The man with the bludgeon now came back, and said to Paul,
4 Follow me.'

He then led him into an extraordinary room, about twenty-five
feet long and four feet wide. On one side of it were an immense
looking-glass and a vast number of candles. The other was hung
with tapestry. Paul knew that there was no such room in Madame
Sand's house. However, all he could do was to make the best of
things. He caught sight of himself in the glass, and found his
moustache and beard a mass of icicles. While he was trying to
disentangle them, the tapestry suddenly disappeared, and he saw
reflected in the glass a charming landscape, with a summer-house
occupied by various persons in mediaeval costume — among them the
devil whom he had just seen and a student draped in black. The
student advanced, and cried, ' Ha ! Senor Pablo ! is it thou ? '

i Ah ! ' cried Paul, ' it's Madame Sand.'

Then, in spite of his bewilderment, he began to tell her his news,
but she stopped him by saying, ' No — no — I'll hear all that after-
wards. At present you are greatly wanted here.'

4 How so ? '

4 We have no alcade.'

4 No alcade ? '

* Isabella's father. Without a father to give his consent there
can be no fifth act. Gro and dress at once; and remember that
your daughter has run away with a young student — you pursue them
— you catch them, and are at the point of killing the student, when
Mascarille so touches your heart by his prayers that you relent.'

4 But I wanted to tell you '

4 Make haste — go and dress — catch the fugitives first — pardon
them afterwards — and then, if you like, tell me your news.'
4 But what in heaven's name are you doing ? '

* Acting a play.'

* Without an audience ? '

4 Of course — we act for ourselves.'

4 But you can't see yourselves ? '

4 Yes we can — in the looking-glass.'

4 Oh ! I see,' said Paul, who was immediately hurried off to the
wardrobe, and given his choice of costumes. He was still shivering,
and he put on a Polish dress with heavy furs.

668 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

' What are you doing ? ' said one of the company ; ' you mustn't
wear a Polish dress.'

* Oh, yes,' said Paul, * it's quite simple. The fugitives have fled
to Poland, and, so as to be unobserved, I have assumed the dress of
the country. It makes the situation more natural.' Paul pursued
and pardoned his fugitives, and tried again to give George Sand his
news, but was again stopped, and it was not until they were at
supper that she said, * Now for your news, Paul ! '

He replied by raising his glass and saying, ' To the hundredth
night of Fran9ois le Champi, which was produced yesterday with
immense success ! '

The band of writers who in the 1830 period formed the nucleus
of the Romantic School, delighted in practical jokes of the wildest
and generally the most harmless kind. There was one of them who
gravely dragged a live lobster, which he said he had tamed, through
the streets of Paris at his heels. It was painted red, so as to look,
as they said, more natural, and was harnessed with a blue ribbon.
Two others of the band, Eousseau and Romieu, are hardly known,
even by name, except to people who have made a special study ot
the time. Rousseau it was who helped Dumas to get his first piece
— a little farce — put on the stage, and he was a man who had con-
siderable talent. Unfortunately he had also a considerable habit of
getting drunk. He and Romieu were a kind of Damon and Pinthias,
but Romieu managed at least to appear sober, and was rewarded by
being made prefect of some country place. Rousseau, when he
heard of this, immediately concluded that he would be made Romieu's
secretary, and enjoy a comfortable sinecure. When he stated this
idea to his friend, Romieu replied that he didn't know if he had
power to appoint a secretary. Would Rousseau come back in a day
or two ? He came back, and Romieu said gravely, * I have been
making inquiries.'

4 About what ? '

* About you. They tell me that you drink. I cannot take you
with me.'

This story may possibly be an invention of Dumas'; but one
which he tells of one of Rousseau's jokes bears the stamp of truth.
Rousseau went into a grocer's shop and said, * Have you any eight
candles ? '

' Yes, sir — we sell a good many of them. You see there are
more poor people than rich in the world.'

* Ah ! ' said Rousseau, * I see you are more than a grocer — you
are an observer.'

' Oh, sir ! ' said the grocer, flattered, l then you want, sir

* An eight candle, please.'
1 Only one, sir ? '

* One to begin with — I'll see about more afterwards.'

1880. ALEXANDRE DUMAS. 669

The candle was produced, and Eousseau said, ' Will you kindly
cut it in two ? ' This was done, and he then said, ' Now would you
kindly cut the two halves into four ? '

* Into four, sir ; '

* Yes — for my purpose I want eight small pieces of candle.'

* There they are, sir.'

* One moment ; would you kindly make a wick to each piece ?
And now can you oblige me with a match ? '

This being done, Rousseau stuck the eight pieces in a line on the
counter and lighted them.

1 May I ask what you are doing ? ' said the grocer.

1 Oh ! ' said Rousseau, * it's a joke.'

4 A joke ? '

1 Yes — and having made it I wish you good day.'

As he left the shop the grocer ran after him crying, ' But you
haven't paid me for the candle ! '

* If I did,' replied Rousseau, ' where would be the joke ? '
Dumas excelled in telling and embellishing stories of this kind ;

and readers of the Three Musketeers will remember many passages in
which the heroes of that immortal work are concerned in equally childish
escapades. It may be noted in passing that amongst the accusations
brought against Dumas by his detractors is one to the effect that the
whole of the Three Musketeers was written by somebody else. It need
hardly be said that the notion is on the face of it absurd, and
carries with it its own condemnation. But if Dumas excelled in
light dialogue and in the description of wild adventure, there are
on the other hand few writers who can touch him in scenes of
dramatic passion. There are to my mind few finer things in fiction
than the scenes in the sequel to the Three Musketeers — Twenty
Years Later it is called — which deal with the trial and execution of
Charles I. However sure we may feel that they are not true to
history, while we read we are compelled to believe in them, and
to follow them with breathless interest. And that, after all, has
something to say to the question of art, whether in a novelist, a
painter, or an actor. I remember a conversation between the
greatest living French tragedian and an English critic concerning
the performance of Hamlet by the greatest living English tragedian.
The critic pointed out this and that defect which he had discovered
in the Englishman's rendering. M. Mounet-Sully heard him out
and replied, ' It may be all as you say, but what does that matter ?
I can only tell you that Mr. Irving moved me as no other actor has
moved me — and that is all I care about.' There is, it seems to me, in
this speech a great truth, to be accepted of course, like most genera-
lities, with certain reservations. If no fault were to be found with
any performance which stirs our feelings, the occupation of criticism
would be gone. The crudest means might be employed to harrow

670 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

up the emotions and might pass for exquisite art. But when
a true and artistic effort is made to move us, and succeeds in moving
us, then surely — though we need not be blind to the short -comings of
the attempt — it is better to dwell more on its successful than on
its insufficient results. This, it seems to me, is much the case with
Dumas pere. We have seen that he has been constantly accused of
immoral writing, but it is not too much to say that not one of his
books could be the cause of immorality to any reasonable grown-up
person. As to whether Dumas succeeded in moving his readers, that of
course must be a matter of individual opinion and experience. We
live in a free country, and no one is forced to admire or like Dumas'
writing. But those who do not are, I think, deprived of a considerable
pleasure. As to the literary sins which have been before referred to,
it may not be amiss to say a few words about them.

Dumas was born in 1802 at Villers-Cotterets, a small country town
between Paris and Eheims, and he died in 1870. Consequently, as
he himself would have said, he lived for sixty-eight years. He began
writing when he was between twenty and thirty, and in the course of
his life he produced rather more than three hundred romances and
eighty dramas, besides ephemeral articles. One of his detractors
went through an elaborate calculation to prove that no one man
could have written every word that appeared with Dumas' name
attached to it. It would be absurd to argue that he did write every
such word, and his admirers would perhaps be sorry to think, from a
literary point of view, that he was the author of everything that was
put forth under his name. The third volume of Les Quarante-Cinq^
for instance, is most obviously by an alien hand. From a moral
point of view it is not perhaps desirable to defend the practice of
adopting other people's work as one's own. Only let it be observed
that the work which Dumas did so adopt is never equal to his own,
and can be recognised as not being his own just as the pupils' work in
what are called the studio-pictures of the old masters can be recog-
nised.

As to his being merely an arranger of other people's ideas, that
is a charge which might as easily and as justly be brought against
many writers of genius and fame. He never concealed the sources
of his inspiration ; he has recorded how his first successful drama
was founded on a passage in an old French chronicler and on a
chapter in Walter Scott. Is there anything more disgraceful in thus
putting two and two together than in Shakespeare's going for his
plots to Holinshed ? If taking suggestions from history and fiction
is criminal, then almost every writer of mark is worthy of the hulks.
But the fact is that the meanest reptile, if it has a sting, is capable
of doing damage out of all proportion to its apparent power. The
artfully concocted slanders of Jacquot — self-styled De Mirecourt—
have left their mark. They have been eagerly seized on by all the

1880. ALEXANDRE DUMAS. 671

tribe of writers to whose nature the key-note is envy ; and they have
spread so far that unhappily one cannot say of them what Pierre
Clement said of a libellous pamphlet on Colbert, published just after
the great minister's death, 4 History takes no notice of these anony-
mous insults.' All one can do is to raise up one's voice against
them.

To sum up, Dumas was born, as has been said, in 1802, and died
in 1870. When as a very young man he occupied a somewhat
dreary position as a clerk in a public office, he was fired by a noble
ambition which first assumed a definite shape under the influence of
Shakespeare. He rose — and quickly — to the very height of success.
It was his fault that he bore himself with less dignity after than
before he had attained success, and that he adopted the system of
unacknowledged collaboration. But even if the greater part of the
charges brought against him in this respect were admitted, it would
still be seen that his industry was no less extraordinary than his
imagination. He acquired and kept a position in the first rank as
a playwriter, as a novelist, and as a writer of that kind of discursive
essay of which Mr. Sala is in England at the present day the master.
He had immense wit, not a little poetical feeling, a perfect command
of dramatic resource, and unflagging gaiety. If his writing is not
intended for boys and maidens, that is one quality which he has in
common with such playwriters as, for instance, Shakespeare, Eacine,
and Moli&re, and such novelists as Goethe, Fielding, and Le Sage.
His method was at any rate like that of the playwriter quoted by
Hamlet, l an honest method ' — he did not palter, as the modern
French school of playwriting does, with vice and virtue, keeping
one foot in the domain of each, and casting a false glamour of
splendour around corruption. He made immense sums, and un-
happily spent them more easily than he got them. He was open-
handed to a fault. He had a childlike vanity and a childlike sim-
plicity mixed with a curious astuteness. His name, I think, will live,
and his work be rated at its proper value, long after the efforts of
his detractors are forgotten.

WALTER HERRIES POLLOCK.

672 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

THE 'PORTSMOUTH CUSTOM:

THE object of this article is to comply with the request of some
persons who desire a clear and concise account of the system of
management on Lord Portsmouth's (agricultural holdings) estates in
the county of Wexford.

Attention has been directed to this system, when at different
times in Parliament, or in the newspapers, Irish land questions have
been brought forward. This therefore must be regarded as a supple-
ment to such occasional notices, rather to explain and throw light
upon them than to enlarge them.

It would be unwise as it would be fruitless to pretend that any
system is faultless in itself, or is in all cases certain of success. In
Ireland there are conscientious landlords, who consult the interests
of their tenants, and heartily wish for the welfare of those who live
upon their property. There are tenants in Ireland who do not forget
what is fair to their landlords, and who appreciate generous treatment
as keenly as any Englishman can do. There are agents in Ireland
who have sympathy for the tenant as well as fidelity to the landlord,
and to pretend that any one system must be adopted by all such
landlords, tenants, and agents would reasonably appear an act of pre-
sumption which this sketch of a plan successfully tried for fifty-eight
years (on an estate in the county of Wexford) must not be supposed
to meditate.

The different points of resemblance and dissimilarity from Ulster
tenant right need not be dwelt upon here, because this system was
started independently in a county and province where tenant right
was untried, and is not now the general custom. The mass of the
population in Wexford consists of Catholics, while there is a con-
siderable portion among the richer classes of Protestants, members of
the Irish Church, Presbyterians, Methodists, and Quakers.

The Portsmouth tenant right was introduced in the year 1822 by
the late Lord Portsmouth, with the able assistance of Mr. Nicholas
Ellis, who was at that time agent, and whose thorough acquaintance
with Irish character and requirements enabled him to co-operate
with success in the establishment of a new form of administration
considerably in advance of public opinion.

1880. THE 'PORTSMOUTH CUSTOM: 673

From that time up to the present mutual confidence, respect, and
kindliness have steadily grown in the relationship between landlord
and tenant.

No doubt a large allowance must be made for special advantages.

The first and greatest is in the person, of the resident agent at
Enniscorthy. He has found it possible while serving faithfully an
English landlord to remember that he is an Irishman, and to
combine in a remarkable degree the Irish qualities of shrewdness
and amiability.

His willing and intelligent co-operation as a Protestant, with the
agent, who occasionally visits the estates during the year, an English
Catholic gentleman, has largely increased the sense of union among
a tenantry of divers creeds, and succeeded in eliminating the differ-
ences of religious faith from all business transactions. Further, it is
a happy incident that this experiment has been tried in a county that
illustrates generally the existence of good relations between landlord
and tenant.

These advantages cannot be overlooked when estimating the
prosperity or welfare of the estate. They are greatly to be accounted
of. But when these happy coincidences are duly weighed I believe
there will be found in this system one preponderating principle of
excellence in which is contained the secret of its success. I think it
may be said to exist in the acknowledgment by different means, and
especially by the free right of sale, of a proprietorship in the farm
by the occupier — an acknowledgment that encourages him to take a
substantial interest in the improvements on a farm of which he
thereby becomes an owner as well as a holder.

The agricultural property (for the town property is managed
differently in some respects; consists of about 11,000 statute acres,
held by farmers whose holdings vary from twenty to two hundred
acres. The tenure is for whichever lasts longest, a lease for a life or
thirty-one years. The landlord has the raw material on which he
has spent nothing. The tenant or his predecessors have alone
expended money and energy upon it.

The landlord's interest is consulted on a reletting at the expira-
tion of the lease, when from one eighth to one fourth is added to
G-riffith's valuation of the land only — treating Griffith's valuations of
the building as the valuation of the tenant's property only. The
variations in the valuation from one eighth to one fourth are decided
by the nature of the soil, and by the contiguity of the farm in ques-
tion to the town of Enniscorthy, which in- spite of the higher rates
increases its value.

The tenant's right is to the improvement on the raw material — the
house — the farm buildings— the fences — and trees planted and re-
gistered by him. Therefore if a tenant wishes to renew a lease on the
VOL. VIIL— No. 44. Z Z

674 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. October

expiration of an old one, all such improvements are treated as abso-
lutely his own.

It is quite possible for a landlord to regret that he could not
under this system introduce newer, better, or a more convenient style
of building, that he could not carry out for his tenants such reforms
as he might deem advantageous and useful ; but, on the other hand,
this plan benefits him largely, as it assures an unanswerable security
for the contentment and satisfaction of the tenant. At his own con-
venience, in his own manner, consulting his own fancy, be can
execute improvements, which, whatever their character, are the result
of his own personal wishes, thoughts, and energy. We all know
how very far this goes to make a home, its surroundings, and all its
associations endeared to us. It has gone very far to make the tenantry
of which I write conscious of a just pride themselves, and of the
respect of others. This however is but the first instalment of success
which a system based on this principle obtains.

The second, the right of free sale by the tenant of all his own
improvements, is even a larger and a more important benefit to both
landlord and tenant. Let us suppose a tenant wishes to dispose of
his holding before the expiration of his lease. By private treaty or
public auction he offers for sale the goodwill or interest of his farm,
asking of the incoming tenant or purchaser a price in proportion to
his expenditure on improvements, and the length of the unexpired time
of the lease ; for which he may get from ten to fourteen years' pur-
chase of his annual rent. The tenant thus obtains all the advantage
of his own industry and enterprise, and can gauge the worth of all the
additions and improvements he has made by the success of his sale,
and the prices it realises.

As a rule the outgoing tenant nominates the incoming one. To
prevent fraud the landlord has the right of veto, but it is hardly
necessary to add that such a right would be exercised only for very
rare and special reasons, for it is obvious that this system, by procur-
ing a ready successor to a vacant farm, signifies the new man's ap-
proval of what he finds upon it, and his power to satisfy the outgoing
man who is unwilling or unable to continue in the place.

Of this ' free right of sale ' an advanced Liberal politician on the
estate once remarked ' that it was sufficient to enable a tenant to
make, as well as to compensate him for, his outlay.' By this ngnt of
sale also a tenant can by private treaty get rid of debt, while a public
auction is a fair test to him and others of the state of the farm ; and as
it is the outgoing tenant himself who thus treats with his successor, it
may be easily understood how many subjects of discomfort and questions
of petty annoyance are entirely removed from the common ground
occupied by landlord and tenant. In a very material manner we find
the landlord a gainer also by this practice — for if an outgoing tenant
te in arrear for rent, that arrear is paid to him as a first charge out

1880. THE ' PORTSMOUTH CUSTOM: 675

of the purchase money ; while the balance has often enabled the out-
going tenant to emigrate or start afresh on a smaller farm, or in
another business.

Lastly, on this estate where the above-mentioned system has been
tried, for thirty-seven years there has been no case of eviction from
an agricultural holding, in the sense of the tenant being removed and
the farm passing to the landlord.

There have been three cases of ejectment in twelve years, in the
sense of a tenant being unable to pay rent and declining to sell ; but
in each of these cases the tenant was allowed a free sale after the
sheriff had taken possession, the incoming tenant was accepted, the
arrear paid to the landlord, and the tenant received a handsome
balance.

It may be summed up, therefore, that this experiment of fifty-
eight years' trial has been proved just and equal because it has resulted
in general contentment and material advantage to landlord and
tenant. The landlord can with justice feel proud of an independent
and prosperous tenantry.

A successful tenant farmer looks upon his tenure almost as an
hereditary one, and may feel with increasing confidence that he holds
in his own hands the fruit of his labours, while an unsuccessful man
may yet hope to save in the wreck what he ventured in the enterprise.
This system, which establishes to the tenant a sense of proprietorship,
entails also an assured religious and political freedom, and thus
forges additional links in the chain of mutual trust and respect. Nor
can so large a portion of independence to the tenant be looked upon
as any restriction of good to the landlord, as it is by the growth of
that independence that the progress and prosperity of Irish Agri-
culture may be reasonably measured. As Mr. Smyth wrote in his
able letter on the land commission, the Irish land question is not
one of title or race or confiscation ; all that is past and can never
be revived. But it is no less true that much of the unpleasantness
that exists between landlords and their tenants is due to the experience
of the past. A history of confiscation and bloodshed, the unfortunate
manner in which religion has separated in politics and otherwise the
wealthy from the poorer classes, and the previous attitude of the
Irish aristocracy and landed classes who have clung for support to
those institutions and measures which were the symbols as they
formed the support of a semi-political, semi-religious domination, are
deplorable facts which have worked out their own retribution by
inducing the Irish peasant and the Irish occupier to appeal for
sympathy and advice to other than their natural counsellors.
Happily the great monuments of religious and political injustice are
now removed.

The Irish Church has been disestablished. All religious qualifi-
cations have been abolished.

676

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

The rights of the occupiers of the soil still remain to be adjusted.

The fertility of Ireland has never been fully developed, because
confidence, the parent of all development, has been absent. Nor can
the hopes of those who desire a peasant proprietorship be realised
unless the occupier is secured the fruits of his own labour and
capital. No man can obtain land except by honest purchase, and to
do so he must save, and to save he must be protected in his industry.

Whatever scheme the Government may propose as the outcome
of the Irish Land Commission, although it would be idle to imagine
that any single scheme can be devised which would satisfy the case
of each individual property, it will perform an incalculable service to
Ireland if, by conferring upon the occupier security and confidence,
he is encouraged to do justice to those natural advantages which the
Almighty has so largely bestowed upon his country, and gains con-
tentment and self-respect through the enjoyment of independence
and the unhampered and free exercise of his industrial occupation.
The object of this article will have been accomplished if it affords a
practical proof of the success of a system which embodies security of
tenure, moderate rents, and free sale.

LYMINGTON.

THE

NINETEENTH
CENTURY.

No. XLV.— -NOVEMBER 1880.

LEGISLATION FOR IRELAND.

ONCE more the Government is called upon to address itself to the
ever-recurring duty of fresh legislation for Ireland. It is a task of
stupendous difficulty, and those who undertake it have a right to
expect from their future critics the largest measure of candour and
consideration. We must leave those on whom the duty devolves to
the inspirations of their own genius, and when we come to criticise
their work we must never lose sight of the conditions of the
problem which they have to solve. They must please pit, boxes,
and gallery, and each of these without displeasing the other. The
landowner, the farmer, the cottier, will all expect to receive full
justice from them, and each without injury to their peculiar in-
terest. The man must be indeed actuated by an adventurous
spirit who presumes in the absence of full information to offer
crude and half-thought-out suggestions on such a subject. But
though the affirmative answer to the question, What shall we do for
Ireland ? be quite beyond the grasp of the ordinary thinker, the domain
of negative thought is all his own. In other words, a person who
feels himself quite unequal to answer the question, What shall we do
for Ireland ? may be quite competent to offer solid advice as to what
we had better not do. Something will be gained if we can in any
degree narrow the range of controversy, and every successful attempt
to narrow a controversy is so much aid towards its solution. We
VOL. VIII.— No. 45. 3 A

678 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

are about to interfere with a state of things which we can trace back
through a long and melancholy history. If, as seems to be suggested,
we are to take a new departure, let us at any rate be sure that we
stand on perfectly sound and solid foundations, and that even if we do
little or suggest little, that little shall not have to be remodelled or
recalled.

I know not how it may appear to others, but to me I confess
it appears that the expedient which is of all the likeliest to be
pressed upon the Government is the very worst that can be devised.
I allude to the suspension of the ordinary liberties of unoffending
citizens, and the confession which it involves that the law under which
we live is not sufficient, if patiently and firmly applied, to preserve the
peace in Ireland. It is the remark of Blackstone that whatever dis-
orders have arisen in England the common law of the land has sooner
or later worn them out. The ordinary law of the land loses its weight
and dignity when we are taught to regard it not as the code by
which we are to govern our actions, but as, by the confession of
those who administer it, a brutum fulmen in times of crisis and
emergency. It is a feeble and self-condemnatory policy which in a
moment of pressure betrays its own alarm and weakness by an attack
upon its own institutions.

The same thing is, I think, true with regard to inflicting punish-
ment on particular districts for offences committed within them by
persons who have escaped detection. Such penalties are unjust, for
they obviously and intentionally punish the innocent for the crime of
the guilty ; inefficient, because they assume that by this pressure a
man will be induced to give information which will put his own life
in the most imminent peril ; and unwise, because they are so many
confessions on the part of authority that the hand of every one is
against it, and that the duty of protecting crime is in the eyes of a
large community more sacred than that of obeying the law. Who
does not honour the poor Highlanders whom the offer of thirty
thousand pounds could not induce to betray Charles Edward ? And
who would wish to invest the associates of a band of men com-
mitting mutilation, arson, and murder from the basest motives with
a similar distinction ? Nothing is more dangerous, nothing more
demoralising, than to invest great crimes with some of the attri-
butes of heroism and virtue; and by making a large number of
persons participants in the punishment of a crime which they have
not committed, to identify them with the real criminals. The
poor have their point of honour as well as the rich, and are less
repelled by what they suffer in a common cause than attracted to
it by being made the victims of what they consider to be a common
oppression and injustice. That a whole district should be heavily
amerced for a crime of which all but a very few are ignorant and
innocent, is far more likely, as experience has often proved, to make

1880. LEGISLATION FOR IRELAND. 679

the sufferers co-conspirators than delators, to create sympathy with
the oppressed than indignation at the crime.

I shall not attempt to answer or even to comment on the out-of-
door oratory which seems to pass current in Ireland instead of truth
and justice. It can deceive and mislead no one who is not deter-
mined to hug his strong delusion to the last, and the answer to it
must, I fear, ultimately be sought in the assertion of the law by other
means than those of argument and discussion. The language which
is now used points to a recourse to violence, intimidation, and
plunder. I have learnt from Pascal's Provincial Letters,, that since
violence and reason have no common point of contact, and cannot with
any useful result be opposed to each other, force should be met by
force and argument with argument. What I desire to do is to examine
with all candour and fairness the arguments of reasonable and
moderate persons whom I can respect even when I am forced to
differ from them, and whom I believe to be honestly and earnestly in
search of the truth.

Of all the writings and speeches which this Irish question has
produced, there is none which has made so deep an impression on
the English mind as the pamphlet of Mr. Tuke. The humanity
and sympathy with distress which he displays, his own practical exer-
tions in the cause, his desire to go to the root of so much real and
undeniable wretchedness, entitle him to respect and conciliate our
adhesion. What I want to ascertain is whether the views which he
puts forth are as true as they are persuasive, or whether the scenes
of misery which he has witnessed have not drawn even him aside
from the clear and hard path of calm reason and sound policy.

Mr. Tuke objects to the working of the Encumbered Estates Court
because it fell into the fatal error of ignoring too much the interests
of the tenants in their holdings. It was, he says, notorious that the
rights of the tenants were disregarded ; and this disregard was the
occasion for grievous wrong in numerous instances, sometimes when
the tenants were evicted w'thout compensation to make room for new
comers, and sometimes when rents were raised by the new purchasers
with entire disregard of the peculiar position of the Irish tenant.

The first comment that occurs to me on this passage is the very
strange idea which the writer seems to form of the rights and duties
of an Irish or of any other tenant. Tenants are always spoken
of in these discussions as if they were a peculiar class like lawyers,
doctors, clergymen, or soldiers, recognised by the law and placed by
it under certain immunities and disabilities. But what is a land-
lord or a tenant ? They are persons who have entered into contracts
with each other, and they are nothing more. The one has contracted
to hire land, the other has contracted to let it, on such terms as may
be agreed upon between them, and embodied in the contract ; that
is all. So little real distinction is there between them that the

3 A 2

680 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

same man very frequently holds both positions, and if he is a land-
lord in one place, is a tenant in another. They are the parties to a
sinp^e contract, and they are nothing more. Whatever the lease into
which they have entered binds them to do, they are bound to do, and
they are b mud to nothing else. Their rights are in their lease ; and
beyond that lease they have none, either at law or in equity, except
so far as those rights are modified by the custom of the country
which is considered as included in the contract. It would be just as
reasonable to classify mankind into buyers and sellers, lenders and
borrowers, as if they were distinct classes of beings, as to seek to
engraft all manner of subordinate duties and relations on the simple
act of hiring or letting land. The fact that they have omitted to
specify a number of things which might with advantage to them
have been inserted in their contract, does not authorise either party
to treat the other as if those things had been inserted. ' De non
apparentibus et non existentibus eadem est ratio.' These things are so
plain that they sound like truisms, and yet it is only by assuming the
truth to be the other way that much of the outcry of tenants against
landlords can be supported.

We are now able to appreciate the complaint of Mr. Tuke against
the proceedings of the Encumbered Estates Court. That Court, he
truly says, was established to effect, and effected, a useful purpose in
liberating a large amount of property from insolvent owners. That,
I agree, was the purpose for which it was established. But Mr.
Tuke blames the Court because it fell into what he calls the error of
ignoring too much the tenants' interest in their holdings ; that is,
for not doing what it was not set or meant to do. It is notorious,
he says, that the rights of the tenants were disregarded, and that
this disregard was the occasion for grievous wrong in numerous
instances ; sometimes when the tenants were evicted, without com-
pensation, to make room for new comers, and sometimes when the
rents were raised by the new purchasers, with entire disregard
to the peculiar position of the Irish tenant. It has generally
t>een noticed, he says, that the rack-rented estates were not the
estates of old Irish proprietors, in which the rents are for the
most part moderate in amount, but estates purchased under the Act
'by speculators who have resold them after increasing the rental
enormously.

All this, of course, assumes that the tenancy was from year to
jear, or for other short periods. The owners of these estates
were by the supposition hopelessly involved by jointures, mort-
gages, and every conceivable kind of incumbrance. The creditors
who had legal charges on the property were fortunate indeed if the
purchase-money of the estate approached the legal charges upon it.
If there was any surplus, that surplus was the property of the im-
poverished ex-proprietor ; and no one but a man with a mind entirely

1880. LEGISLATION FOR IRELAND. 681

preoccupied with one grievance to the exclusion of all others would
think of depriving the lawful owner of the miserable relics of a lost
estate, in order to improve the position of the tenants by giving them
advantages to which they have no legal right, and for which they
might have stipulated when they made their contract as tenants,
had they thought it proper to do so. Of course we have nothing to
do witli resales. It is out of the residue of the ruined proprietor
that the tenants are to be indemnified, according to Mr. Tuke, for
the loss of rights which they never possessed.

But even had what appears to me this flagrant injustice been
committed by confiscating the property of ruined landowners or
their creditors for the good of the tenants who had no legal claim,
Mr. Tuke would not have been satisfied. He regrets that the land
was not withdrawn from the wholesale market and sold in detail
to small purchasers, the purchase-money of course being found by
the Government. In such a case, there could be no competition ;
Government would have to fix the price. If it fixed it high, it
would be cried out against by the purchasing tenants ; if it fixed
it low, it would be accused of defrauding the insolvent proprietor
or his creditors. There is but one way of excluding charges of this
kind ; that is, perfectly free and open competition.

I have dwelt on the 'criticisms of Mr. Tuke on these proceedings
not so much for the sake of any practical importance which now
attaches to them, as in order to show how easy it is for the clearest
mind and the best intention to be misled when sentiment usurps
the place of reason. Let us see now what legislation can do towards
settling the antagonism between landlord and tenant ; that is, between
two people who have no other connection with each other than a
contract which they, being of legal age and thoroughly aware of what
they are doing, have seen fit to make for their mutual advantage.
One would have thought the answer would have been plain enough t
Let them alone. They have all the security that the law requires in
any case. They thoroughly understand the relations into which they
are about to enter. The law is no respecter of persons. In its eyes
rich and poor are alike. It does not give the rich man any advantage
because he is rich, nor the poor man any leniency because he is poor*
It utterly excludes all considerations, except whether the parties are
of sound mind, legal age, and not contracting to do anything unlaw-
ful. The language of our law is that of the most unlimited freedom.
Every man is free to do as he will, subject to two restrictions only ; the
one that he shall do nothing against the law of the land, the other
that he shall do nothing against the law that he has laid down for
himself by his own contracts.

Mr. Tuke does not concern himself with these things, but bases
his case on the dicta of the Devon Commission ; a great authority
certainly, but one scarcely to be put in comparison with the authority
which I have cited. The Devon Commission says: —

682 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

The landlord has the undoubted right to the inherent qualities of the land, as
well those that are latent and not yet called into productive activity, as those
that are already developed and made profitable, and this right must extend up to
the highest state of production of which the land ia capable. Thus, then, the
inherent qualities of the land are the distinctive property of the landlord.

The tenant's equitable right to a remuneration for his judiciously invested labour
and capital is not likely to be disputed in the abstract. This property w undoubtedly
hit own. If it be employed on the estate of another person, and vrith that person's
concurrence, it ought still to be respected and preserved to him ; and if their
intercourse or joint co-operation should for any reason terminate, it ought not to
be without a just settlement of the account between them. Thus, then, the labour
and capital which a tenant may employ to call these qualities into activity are the
equally distinct property of the tenant.

With every respect for the high authority of the Devon Com-
mission, I have seldom read a less convincing and satisfactory docu-
ment. It is to me utterly impossible to put any clear or consistent
construction upon it.

There are obviously two questions in the mind of the Commission
—first, What is the law ? and, second, What ought to be the law ?
Nothing would have been easier than to keep these two ideas asunder,
seeing that they are in this debate directly opposed to each other —
Instead of this, every effort is made to confuse them with each other.
And this is not a mere inaccuracy and slovenliness of style. It is
obviously calculated to produce an effect on the minds of careless or
ill-informed readers, which is the very reverse of the truth. Over
and over again, one word is deliberately substituted for another, that
is to say, * what is ' is put in the place of 4 what ought to be.' So
that the impression is produced, that the present law is right and is
only mal-administered. Thus the tenants of Ireland are told without
qualification that their judiciously invested labour and capital (and
who does not believe that he invests judiciously ?) are undoubtedly
their own — a statement unquestionably false. Then we are told that
the labour and capital whicli a tenant may employ to call these quali-
ties into existence are equally the distinct property of the tenant
— which they certainly are not. Then we read that the equitable right
of the tenant is not likely to be disputed in the abstract. It is at
least unfortunate that a word which implies a complete legal obliga-
tion is employed to express a case where no such obligation exists.

It is said that the land of the owner is distinctively his own, thus
implying that the rest is either not his at all, or only in common with
some one else — a statement quite untrue. WThat a pity that the Commis-
sion could not have been content to state that, though the land belongs
to one person, certain rights in it ought to belong to another, instead
of carefully picking out all the words that state what is, and applying
them to what is not, but in their view ought to be. This may be fine
writing, but is very inaccurate statement, and furnishes a number of
catch-words, which may be used to create false impressions and excite
delusive hopes. The duty of those who undertake to instruct the poor,

1880. LEGISLATION FOR IRELAND. 683

the ignorant, and the excited as to their rights, is to avoid exaggera-
tion and to lay before their audience the bare and simple truth. A
not uninteresting or uninstructive book might be written on the
abuse of metaphors and similes. For my purpose it is sufficient
to say, that there is no distinction known to the law between the in-
herent and the other qualities of the land. And that whether such a
distinction should exist or no, is not a matter of sentiment, but of the
construction of a contract.

We have done with definitions, and now we pass to the flowery
region of similes. We are asked triumphantly, * Is not the Irish
landowner in a great measure in the position of the merchant with the
raw article to sell, and the tenant in that of the manufacturer or
the owner of materials who leases his mines ? ' I should have thought
that these cases illustrated the difference which it seems to be the
object of the writer to confuse and obliterate. The difference is just
this : The merchant sells his raw produce to the manufacturer, to be
delivered at a particular place at a particular time, a certain quantity,
and to be paid for as arranged between them. The owner of mines
leases them for a fixed royalty or tribute ; everything is fixed and
determined with the utmost care and precision. The contracts are
clear and specific, and nothing remains but to fulfil them. Everything
is decided beforehand, everything is seen and provided for. And this,
we ar.e told, except as to rent, is exactly like a case where there is no
contract at all. Mr. Tuke asks triumphantly, * Can it be supposed that
if a similarly unsettled position existed in any -branch of either the
mining or manufacturing interest in England, means would not soon be
adopted to secure arrangements more to the benefit of both ? ' Of course
they would. But what does he suppose those arrangements would be ?
Does he suppose that the merchant or the manufacturer, the coal
owner or the lessee, would call meetings, commit murders, make
speeches, and go back to the reign of Henry the Second or William
the Third, to persuade Parliament to force those with whom they
have entered into contracts to pay something which they say is just,
but which those with whom they made their contract never undertook
to pay ?

In England, and everywhere else except in Ireland, people make
the bargain before they begin business. Having done so, they take
the chance of profit or loss, and, if the speculation miscarry, they do
not seek to mend matters by making speeches or even by shooting
those who have got the best of the bargain. No doubt we have in
England and Scotland remedies for ill-treatment. Our remedy is, if
we are ill-used by one man, to seek for some one else who will treat
us better. The unfair dealer finds this, and mends his ways ; or, if he
does not, he gets a bad name, and is shunned accordingly. But I
never heard before that the dealings between two traders in different
lines of business were in the nature of partnership.

684 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

Having, I hope, shown that the attempt of the Devon Commission
to base the claim to compenpation for improvement on legal or
equitable principles, as those words are understood in England,
utterly fails, it remains for me to attempt in my turn to explain as
well as I can the true position of the Irish tenant and landlord with
regard to each other. There is in my view no fraud or deceit in the
matter on either side. Both landlord and tenant are perfectly
cognisant of their true position, and both have chosen it for what
appeared to them to be good reasons. Notwithstanding all that the
Devon Commission may say, the Irish tenant knows perfectly well
that he has no claim in equity or otherwise to payment for the cabin
he may build, the bog he may drain, or the stones he may roll away.
So far from putting forward any such claim, he carefully avoids the
subject. That which is in all probability uppermost in the mind of
both landlord and tenant, is not mentioned by either. The landlord
has no inducement to say anything at all. He knows that it is always
in his power to give his tenant any relief or compensation that he
pleases ; and he naturally enough prefers, when the choice is offered
to him, rather to grant a favour than merely to fulfil a strict legal
obligation or to go to law with his tenant, well knowing that he
cannot receive and may have to pay costs. The tenant, on the other
hand, has equally good reasons to be silent on the subject. The kind
of tenant of whom we are speaking is generally utterly without
capital, and by no means deeply versed in the mysteries of agricul-
ture. He has no qualification, mental or pecuniary, for the trade he
has chosen. He ought to be employed at some handicraft trade or
to occupy some humble position in the ranks of industry. But he
follows the innate tendency of his race, and determines to be on the
land and to have no master. He is well aware that if he were to
ask his landlord to promise to secure to him the value of his im-
provements, he would be met with a corresponding demand that the
tenant should, while they were on the subject, inform his landlord
what security he was to have for the payment of the rent. The
tenant in these cases has generally no credit, no stock in trade, no
money, no peculiar skill in agriculture, and, as he can offer no
security himself, carefully avoids so thorny and unpromising a dis-
cussion. Thus it comes to pass that by a kind of mutual consent
that which is probably the uppermost thought in the mind of each
of the contracting parties remains unspoken, and that the tenant
enters on his occupation with nothing to rely on as to compensation
for his improvements except the generosity or good feeling of his
landlord. Each knows well that he has to run a risk — the land-
lord, the risk that bad seasons, bad cultivation, bad health, or idle-
ness, or unsteadiness in the tenant may very possibly deprive him
of his rent in a case where there is no property to distrain on ; the
tenant being equally well aware that it lies entirely in the fairness

1880. LEGISLATION FOR IRELAND. 680

and good feeling of his landlord, whether he shall in case of eviction
receive a single farthing as compensation for his labour.

Mr. Tuke says that the state of things I have been describing
is the cause of poverty. I think it would be more justly described
as its effect. Why does the tenant ask for no security for improve-
ments ? Simply because he is without capital, and cannot afford to
broach the subject while it is a mere speculation whether he can
pay any rent at all. If we will look the matter fairly in the face,
the truth is that the small Irish tenant is too poor to enter into
a contract which presupposes equality between the two contracting
parties. In England the tenant can afford to bargain with his
landlord ; they both possess property. In Ireland, as far as the con-
tract goes, and speaking about small farms, the landlord lays down
the rule and the tenant submits to it. The tenant really places
himself at the mercy of his landlord, not because he has not the
natural desire to be assured in his holding and compensated for his
improvements, but because, if he asks for security from his landlord
for his improvements, he has no security of his own to offer in
return for his rent. The very idea of equality is banished from such
a proceeding. There is no real bargain when one side cannot afford
to refuse whatever terms the other sees fit to impose.

What is the remedy for such a state of things ? It is, we are
told, that what the would-be tenant dare not ask because, as I think
I have shown, he is not in a position to give any security for his rent,
should be given to him by an ex post facto law. Such a proceeding
seems to me the very height of injustice and folly. The business
of the law is to give effect to lawful contracts where there is a con-
currence of wills, not to force upon people under the name of con-
tracts what one side never asked and the other never would have
o-ranted. We really must elect whether we mean to consider the
Irish peasant as a responsible being or not. If he be so, we must
leave him to manage his affairs for himself like any other rational
and responsible being of full age ; if not, we ought to appoint a
guardian for him and take from him the power of contracting for
himself. He cannot be allowed to take the advantages of both
suppositions.

Let us, however, suppose that we adopt the plan which Mr. Tuke
suggests, and pass a law assuring to all present and future tenants
compensation, in case of eviction, for all permanent improvements.
As to existing tenancies the effect would probably be that the power
of inflicting this loss having been once keenly felt, the landlord,
being much surer of the payment he has to make than of the rent
he has to receive, would lose no time in dissolving the tenancy. The
power of charging another man's estate to an indefinite amount is
a very serious one, and few people who have the option will elect
to place themselves under it. I cannot believe that landlords will

686 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

voluntarily submit themselves to such an infliction. If this opinion
should turn out to be true, as I firmly believe it will, all that we
shall reap by the measure will be that we shall have forced the
landlords to give up letting land at all to small tenants, and that
the measure designed for their benefit will end in their extermina-
tion.

As regards future tenancies, the operation of the supposed law
may best be expressed by a new aphorism which has in it rather a
larcenous sound. We must no longer say * Sic utere tuo alienum
ne laedas;' but 'Sic utere alieno ut tuum facias,' a much more
questionable aphorism. Supposing this to be done, we shall then be
furnished with a precedent which will leave advocates of sweeping
and violent change nothing to desire. Thenceforth the principle
will be firmly established that there is one law for the rich and
another for the poor ; in other words, that when a rich man enters
into a contract with a poor man, he will have to consider not what
would be the law between equals, but what allowance is to be made
for the preference which juries, acting in the spirit of the new juris-
prudence, will be asked and instructed to give to the poor man as
against the rich. The principle is popular and plausible, and many
people besides Carlyle's ' Teufelsdrockh ' will be disposed to give their
voice for Die Sache der Armen in Gott und TeufeVa Namen. But
it is nevertheless certain that the intrusion of such a principle
into our jurisprudence will be fatal to sound and enlightened legisla-
tion, and will introduce an uncertainty into the construction and a
looseness into the administration of the law which will deprive it of
its principal use and value as a safeguard of life and conduct.
' Misera est servitus ubi jus est vagum aut incertum.'

It seems to be assumed as a matter too clear for argument that
when from any cause the public mind is greatly excited, when man-
kind are frightened or forced into the extremes of violence, sedition,
or lawlessness, a case is made out for immediate and headlong change,
for strong and even revolutionary measures of legislation. To me it
appears that no idea can be more erroneous. The time for consider-
ing great and drastic changes is not well chosen amid scenes of heat
and violence. Then is the time to stand by the laws as they are, and
to see, as far as the power of Government goes, that they are respected
and obeyed. Laws enacted under such pressure are more likely to be
made to suit the needs of a Government in difficulties than to uphold
sound principles or to check preposterous and overweening pretensions
and aspirations.

The business of Government at times of sedition and disturbance
is not to add to the confusion by rash and violent changes, but to
make the existing laws sharply felt and implicitly respected. If it is
proverbially unwise to swap horses in a ford, it is at least as unwise
to change laws and institutions at the very moment when we are

1880. LEGISLATION FOR IRELAND. 687

compelled to appeal to them on behalf of the highest and best
interests of society. To alter laws in a time of tumult and threatened
violence is to encourage the very spirit of lawlessness and encroach-
ment which it is our duty to repress.

The contentment and pacification of Ireland are of such enormous
consequence, not only to our interest, but to our honour and estimation
in the world, that there are few sacrifices that we might not be tempted
to make to secure such an object. But even this feeling will not
stand the test of calm and dispassionate reason. A considerable
portion of Irish discontent is traditionary and sentimental. As far as
the present generation of Englishmen is concerned, we have not done,
we are not accused of having done or attempted to do, anything of
•which Ireland has a right to complain, or indeed, to do her justice, does
complain. We desire from Irishmen nothing for ourselves. We have
no interest either apparently or really opposed to their interest or
prosperity. Ireland cannot possibly do us a greater favour than by
following the course which leads the most directly to her own
wealth and happiness. Her quarrel is not with us, but with herself.
She has the same laws as we, and those laws and institutions have
been for centuries the admiration of the world. This is no reason
why we should not do Ireland all the good in our power, but it is a
reason, and a very cogent one, why we should not break down institu-
tions the value of which we have proved for centuries, and substitute
for them principles untried in practice and unsupported by theory. I
trust, for instance, that if it shall be thought advisable to compensate
tenants for the loss of improvements which they have made, but which
they have through their own omission no right to be paid for,
Government will not, by an ex post facto law, exact this payment
from the landlord. Whether he has acted liberally or not, he has
done nothing contrary to law, and, being within his right, he is
entitled to its protection. If a man is not safe in directing his
course by the law of the land, where is he to look for safety ? What
bounds can you put to .the contrary principle if once admitted?
* I acted,' the landlord might say, < according to the law as it then
stood, but the legislature disapproved its own law, and not only re-
pealed it, but sentenced me to pay what everybody knew I was not bound
to pay, and which if I had been bound to pay, I should never have
made the contract at all.' What is the answer to such an appeal ?

There are two uses of law. One is to do justice as far as the in-
firmity of human reason will permit. The other, and I consider by far
the more important, use is to give mankind a rule by which they may
guide and order their conduct, and, having done so, may be able to
count with confidence on the future. Change the law if you will. If
you think that injustice has been done under your law, repeal it for
the future, but beware of teaching the lesson that our law is not a guide,
but a snare — not a light to direct, but an ignis fatuus to mislead.

688 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

Of the two it is more important that the law should be certain
than that it should be strictly just. A bad law may deprive you of
some rights, but an uncertain and unstable law takes away from you
the rule and guide of your conduct and actions, and leaves you to
drift without chart or compass. If the Government is ashamed of its
own law, it is from the Government itself, and not from those who
have acted under it, that compensation is to be expected. To admit
such a claim would be a loss, a disgrace, and a folly ; but it is allowed
to all people to indulge in the luxury of self-abasement, and it is more
honest to pay for our own faults than to cast the burden on others.

I have submitted what appear to me to be very strong reasons
for believing that if the desire of those who demand that the law
should be altered in favour of the poor be granted, the result will be
a bitter disappointment. Is it likely that this disappointment will
be acquiesced in, or is it not quite certain that the fault will be laid
on the fact that the measures do not go far enough ? People who
have made one false step will generally venture further, rather than
admit that they are in error. What cannot be done by mere com-
pulsory additions to contracts will be attempted by harsher and more
violent means. When you can neither recede nor stand still, the only
alternative is to go forward. The public revenue will be largely
drawn upon to assist in placing what is now the property of wealth
and education in the hands of the poor and uneducated. If the
barrier of sound principle by which the present ownership of land
in Ireland is supported, is broken down, what will be the result ?
Simply this, that those who have been made owners of land by the
revolution which we are perhaps about to inaugurate, will become
odious to those to whose share no part of the spoils has fallen.
All that is now said about landlords will be said with much greater
truth with regard to those who, merely to satisfy an unreasoning
outcry, have been raised to the position of peasant proprietors. The
tendency already far too strong in Ireland to look to the land as the
only source of wealth and well-being will have received a violent, I
may say irresistible, stimulus. Instead of the dream of a peasant
Arcadia, where all is content and happiness, there will arise the
bitterest heartburning and jealousies. The terrible speculation
which even now sets the lives of thousands on the lottery of a good
harvest, will become infinitely more dangerous in proportion to the
larger number of small owners and the greater division of properties.
People have hitherto submitted to the inequality which accompanies
wealth and a higher social position ; but when all are on an equality,
how long will it be endured that of two men equal in all other
respects, one is and the other is not the possessor of land ? The result
must be the cultivation of the very worst quality of land, and the
increase to an incalculable extent of the already fearful frequency of
famine. And after subdivision has done its worst there will remain

1880. LEGISLATION FOR IRELAND. 689

a continually increasing class who are shut out from the miserable
resource of cultivating land that would barely maintain them, and
who will look on those who have anticipated them in its acquisition
with all the bitterer hatred and envy, because they are in every other
respect than the possession of land the equals of its possessors. Such
a policy would tend to reduce Ireland to the state of a beleaguered city
whose only hope of safety lies in relief from foreign States, and would
cause all that she has already endured to be forgotten in the presence of
the calamities which she will, if her demands are granted, bring upon
herself. The land in cultivation is already, in many places, miserably
poor. It is proposed to take steps which will lead to the cultivation
of land still poorer. The country is over-peopled. It is proposed to
stimulate the increase of a still more wretched population. The Irish
mind is far too extensively given to the cultivation of land to the
neglect of safer and more profitable industries. It is proposed
to stimulate this most unfortunate tendency. Absenteeism is a
great evil. It is proposed to increase it by making the position of
resident proprietors intolerable. Capital is scarce. Every effort is being
made to drive it away. It may not be in the power of the Govern-
ment to arrest this suicidal mania, but at least we have a right to
expect from them that they will do nothing that has the remotest
tendency to increase it.

SHERBROOKE.

690 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

THE SABBATHS

IN the opening words of, a Lecture delivered in this city four years
ago, I spoke of the desire and tendency of the present age to con-
nect itself organically with preceding ages. The expression of this
desire is not limited to the connection of the material organisms of
to-day with those of the geologic past. It is equally manifested
in the domain of mind. To this source, for example, may be traced
the philosophical writings of Mr. Herbert Spencer. To it we are
indebted for the series of learned works on The Sources of Christi-
anity, by M. Renan. To it we owe the researches of Professor Max
Miiller in comparative philology and mythology, and the endeavour
to found on these researches a 'science of religion.' In this relation,
moreover, the recent work of Principal Caird 2 is highly character-
istic of the tendencies of the age. He has no words of vituperation
for the older phases of faith. Throughout the ages he discerns a
purpose and a growth, wherein the earlier and more imperfect religions
constitute the natural and necessary precursors of the later and more
perfect ones. Eve a in the slough of ancient paganism, Principal
Caird detects a power ever tending towards amelioration, ever
working towards the advent of a better state, and finally emerging
in the purer life of Christianity.3

These changes in religious conceptions and practices correspond
to the changes wrought by augmented experience in the texture and
contents of the human mind. Acquainted as we now are with this
immeasurable universe, and with the energies operant therein, the
guises under which the sages of old presented the Maker and
Builder thereof seem to us to belong to the utter infancy of things.
To point to illustrations drawn from the heathen world would be
superfluous. We may mount higher, and still find our assertion
true. When, for example, Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu,
and seventy Elders of Israel are represented as climbing Mount
Sinai, and actually seeing there the God of Israel, we listen to

1 Presidential Address to the Glasgow Sunday Society, delivered in St. Andrew's
Hall, October 25, 1880.

* Introduction to the Pftilosop7iy of Religion.

z In Prof. Max Mullet's Introduction to the Science of Religion some excellent pas-
sages occur, embodying the above view of the continuity of religious development.

1880. THE SABBATH. 691

language to which we can attach no significance. ' There is in
all this,' says Principal Caird, ' much which, even when religious
feeling is absorbing the latent nutriment contained in it, is per-
ceived [by the philosophic Christian of to-day] to belong to the
domain of materialistic and figurative conception.' The children of
Israel received without idealisation the statements of their great law-
giver. To them the tables of the law were true tablets of stone,
prepared, engraved, broken, and re -engraved ; while the graving tool
which inscribed the law, was held undoubtingly to be the finger
of Grod. To us such conceptions are impossible. \\re may by habit
use the words, but we attach to them no definite meaning. ' As
the religious education of the world advances,' says Principal Caird,
' it becomes impossible to attach any literal meaning to those repre-
sentations of Grod and his relations to mankind, which ascribe to
Him human senses, appetites, passions, and the actions and experi-
ences proper to man's lower and finite nature.'

Principal Caird, nevertheless, ascribes to this imaging of the
Unseen a special value and significance, regarding it as furnishing
an objective counterpart to religious emotion, permanent but plastic
— capable of indefinite change and purification in response to the
changing moods and aspirations of mankind. It is solely on this
mutable element that he fixes his attention in estimating the reli-
gious character of individuals or nations. ' Here,' he says, ' the
fundamental inquiry is as to the objective character of their
religious ideas or beliefs. The first question is, not how they
feel, but what they think and believe ; not whether their religion
manifests itself in emotions more or less vehement or enthu-
siastic, but what are the conceptions of God and divine things by
which these emotions are called forth?' These conceptions 'of
Grod and divine things ' were, it is admitted, once ' materialistic and
figurative,' and therefore objectively untrue. Nor is their purer
essence yet distilled ; for the religioiis education of the world still
* advances,' and is, therefore, incomplete. Hence the essentially
fluxional character of that objective counterpart to religious emotion
to which Principal Caird attaches most importance. He, moreover,
assumes that the emotion is called forth by the conception. We
have doubtless action and reaction here ; but it may be questioned
whether the conception, which is a construction of the human un-
derstanding, could be at all put together without materials drawn
from the experience of the human heart/

4 While reading the volume of Principal Caird I was reminded more than once of
the following passage in Kenan's Antichrist : — 'Et d'ailleurs, qucl est I'homme
vrairnent religious qui repuclie completement I'enseignement traditionnel a 1'ombre
duquel il sentit d'abord 1'ideal, qni ne cherche pas les conciliations, souvent im-
possibles, entre sa vioille foi et celle it laquelle il est arrive par le progres de sa
pensee ? '

692 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

The changes of conception here adverted to have not always been
peacefully brought about. The ' transmutation ' of the old beliefs was
often accompanied by conflict and suffering. It was conspicuously
so during the passage from paganism to Christianity. In his work
entitled UEgliae Chretienne, Renan describes the sufferings of a
group of Christians at Smyrna which may be taken as typical. The
victims were cut up by the lash till the inner tissues of their bodies
were laid bare. They were dragged naked over pointed shells.
They were torn by lions ; and finally, while still alive, were committed
to the flames. But all these tortures failed to extort from them a
murmur or a cry. The fortitude of the early Christians gained many
converts to their cause ; still, when the evidential value of fortitude
is considered, it must not be forgotten that almost every faith can point
to its rejoicing martyrs. Even these Smyrna murderers had a faith
of their own, the imperilling of which by Christianity spurred them
on to murder. From faith they extracted the diabolical energy which
animated them. The strength of faith is, therefore, no proof of the
objective truth of faith. Indeed, at the very time here referred to we
find two classes of Christians equally strong — Jewish Christians and
Gentile Christians — who, while dying for the same Master, turned
their backs upon each other, mutually declining all fellowship and
communion.

Thus early the forces which had differentiated Christianity
from paganism, made themselves manifest in details, producing dis-
union among those whose creeds and interests were in great part
identical. Struggles for priority were not uncommon. Jesus himself
had to quell such contentions. His exhortations to humility were
frequent. 'He that is least among you shall be greatest of all.'
There were also conflicts upon points of doctrine. The difference
which concerns us most had reference to the binding power of the
Jewish law. Here dissensions broke out among the apostles them-
selves. Nobody who reads with due attention the epistles of Paul
can fail to see that this mighty propagandist had to carry on a
lifelong struggle to maintain his authority as a preacher of Christ.
There were not wanting those who denied him all vocation. James
was the head of the Church at Jerusalem, and Judeo-Christians held
that the ordination of James was alone valid. Paul, therefore, having
no mission from James, was deemed by some a criminal intruder.
The real fault of Paul was his love of freedom, and his uncompromising
rejection, on behalf of his Gentile converts, of the chains of Judaism.
He proudly calls himself ' the Apostle of the Gentiles.' He says to the
Corinthians, ' I suppose I was not a whit behind the very chiefest
apostles. Are they Hebrews ? So am I. Are they Israelites ? So
am I. Are they of the seed of Abraham? So am I. Are they
ministers of Christ ? I am more ; in labours more abundant, in
stripes above measure, in deaths oft.' He then establishes his right

18 SO. TEE SABBATH. 693

to the position which he claimed by recounting in detail the sufferings
he had endured. I leave it to you to compare this Christian hero
with some of the ' freethinkers ' of our own day, who flaunt in public
their cheap and trumpery theories of the great Apostle and the Master
whom he served.

Paul was too outspoken to escape assault. All insincerity and
double-facedness — all humbug, in short — were hateful to him ; and
even among his colleagues he found scope for this feeling. Judged by
our standard of manliness, Peter, in moral stature, fell far short of Paul.
In that supreme moment when his Master required of him ' the durance
of a granite ledge ' Peter proved ' unstable as water.' He ate with the
Gentiles, when no Judeo-Christian was present to observe him ; but
when such appeared he withdrew himself, fearing those which were
of the circumcision. Paul charged him openly with dissimulation.
But Paul's quarrel with Peter was more than personal. Paul con-
tended for a principle, determined to shield his Gentile children in
the Lord from the yoke which their Jewish co-religionists would have
imposed upon them. ' If thou,' he says to Peter, ' being a Jew, livest
after the manner of the Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why com-
pellest thou the Gentiles to live as the Jews ? ' In the spirit of a true
liberal he overthrew the Judaic preferences for days, deferring at the
same time to the claims of conscience. ' Let him who desires a
Sabbath,' he virtually says, * enjoy it ; but let him not impose it on
his brother who does not.' The rift thus revealed in the apostolic
lute widened with time, and Christian love was not the feeling which
long animated the respective followers of Peter and Paul.

We who have been born into a settled state of things can hardly
realise the primitive commotions out of which this tranquillity has
emerged. We have, for example, the canon of Scripture already
arranged for us. But to sift and select these writings from the mass
of spurious documents afloat at the time of compilation was a work
of vast labour, difficulty, and responsibility. The age was rife with
forgeries. Even good men lent themselves to these pious frauds,
believing that true Christian doctrine, which of course was their
doctrine, would be thereby quickened and promoted. There were
gospels and counter-gospels ; epistles and counter-epistles — some
frivolous, some dull, some speculative and romantic, and some so rich
and penetrating, so saturated with the Master's spirit, that, though
not included in the canon, they enjoyed an authority almost equal
to that of the canonical books. The end being held to sanctify
the mean?, there was no lack of manufactured testimony. The
Christian world seethed not only with apocryphal writings, but with
hostile interpretations of writings not apocryphal. Then arose the
sect of the Gnostics — men who know — who laid claim to the pos-
session of a perfect science, and who, if they were to be believed, had
discovered the true formula for what philosophers called ' the absolute.'
VOL. VIII.— No. 45. 3 B

694 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

But these speculative Gnostics were rejected by the conservative and
orthodox Christians of their day as fiercely as their successors the
Agnostics — men who don't know — are rejected by the orthodox in
our own. The martyr Polycarp one day met Marcion, an ultra-Paul ite,
and a celebrated member of the Gnostic sect. On being asked by
Marcion whether he, Polycarp, did not know him, Polycarp replied,

* Yes, I know you very well ; you are the first-born of the devil.' *
This is a sample of the bitterness then common. It was a time of
travail — of throes and whirlwinds. Men at length began to yearn
for peace and unity, and out of the embroilment was slowly con-
solidated that great organisation the Church of Eome. The Church
of Eome had its precursor in the Church at Eome. But Eome was
then the capital of the world ; and, in the end, that great city
gave the Christian Church established in her midst such a decided
preponderance, that it eventually laid claim to the proud title ot

* Mother and Matrix of all other Churches.'

With jolts and oscillations, resulting at times in overthrow, the
religious life of the world has spun down ' the ringing grooves of
change.' A smoother route may have been undiscoverable. At all
events it was undiscovered. Many years ago I found myself in dis-
cussion with a friend who entertained the notion that the general
tendency of things in this world is towards an equilibrium of peace
and blessedness to the human race. My notion was that equilibrium
meant not peace and blessedness, but death. No motive power is to
be got from heat, save during its fall from a higher to a lower tem-
perature, as no power is to be got from water save during its descent
from a higher to a lower level. Thus also life consists, not in equilibrium
but in the passage towards equilibrium. In man it is the leap from
the potential, through the actual, to repose. The passage often
involves a fight. Every natural growth is more or less of a struggle
with other growths, in which, in the long run, the fittest survives.
Some are, and must be, wiser than the rest ; and the enunciation of
a thought in advance of the moment provokes dissent and thus
promotes action. The thought may be unwise ; but it is only by
discussion, checked by experience, that its value can be determined.
Discussion, therefore, is one of the motive powers of life, and, as such,
is not to be deprecated. Still one can hardly look without despair on
the passions excited, and the energies wasted, over questions which,
after ages of strife, are shown to be mere foolishness. Thus the theses
which shook the world during the first centuries of the Christian era
have, for the most part, shrunk into nothingness. It may, however,
be that the human mind could not become fitted to pronounce
judgment on a controversy otherwise than by wading through it.
We get clear of the jungle by traversing it. Thus even the errors,

8 UEglise Chretienne, p. 460.

1880. THE SABBATH. 695

conflicts, and sufferings of bygone times may have been necessary
factors in the education of the world. Let nobody, however, say that
it has not been a hard education. The yoke of religion has not
always been easy, nor its burden light — a result arising, in part,
from the ignorance of the world at large, but more especially
from the mistakes of those who had the charge and guidance of a
great spiritual force, and who guided it blindly. Looking over the
literature of the Sabbath question, as catalogued and illustrated in
the laborious, able, and temperate work of the late Mr. Eobert Cox,
we can hardly repress a sigh in thinking of the gifts and labours of
intellect which this question has absorbed, and the amount of bad
blood it has generated. Further reflection, however, reconciles us to
the fact that waste in intellect may be as much an incident of growth
as waste in nature.

When the various passages of the Pentateuch which relate to
the observance of the Sabbath are brought together, as they are in
the excellent work of Mr. Cox, and when we pass from them to the
similarly collected utterances of the New Testament, we are imme-
diately exhilarated by a freer atmosphere and a vaster sky. Christ
found the religions of the world oppressed almost to suffocation by
the load of formulas piled upon them by the priesthood. He removed
the load, and rendered respiration free. He cared little for forms and
ceremonies, which had ceased to be the raiment of man's spiritual
life. To that life he looked, and it he sought to restore. It was
remarked by Martin Luther that Jesus broke the Sabbath deliberately,
and even ostentatiously, for a purpose. He walked in the fields ; he
plucked, shelled, and ate the corn ; he treated the sick, and his spirit
may be detected in the alleged imposition upon the restored cripple
of the labour of carrying his bed on the Sabbath day. He crowned
his protest against a sterile formalism by the enunciation of a principle
which applies to us to-day as much as to the world in the time of
Christ. 'The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the
Sabbath.'

Though the Jews, to their detriment, kept themselves as a nation
intellectually isolated, the minds of individuals were frequently
coloured by Greek thought and culture. The learned and celebrated
Philo, who was contemporary with Josephus, was thus influenced.
Philo expanded the uses of the seventh day by including in its
proper observance studies which might be called secular. * Moreover/
he says, ' the seventh day is also an example from which you may
learn the propriety of studying philosophy. As on that day it is said
God beheld the works that He had made, so you also may yourself con-
template the works of Nature.' Permission to do this is exactly what
the members of the Sunday Society humbly claim. The Jew, Philo,
would grant them this permission, but our straiter Christians will
not. Where shall we find such samples of those works of Nature which

3 B 2

696 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

Pbilo commended to the Sunday contemplation of his countrymen
as in the British Museum ? Within those walls we have, as it were,
epochs disentombed — ages of divine energy illustrated. But the effi-
cient authorities — among whom I would include a short-sighted
portion of the public — resolutely close the doors, and exclude from
the contemplation of these things the multitudes who have only
Sunday to devote to them. Taking them on their own ground, we ask,
are the authorities logical in doing so? Do they who thus stand be-
tween them and us really believe those treasures to be the work of
God ? Do they or do they not hold, with Paul, that ' the eternal
power and Godhead ' may be clearly seen from ' the things that are
made ' ? If they do — and they dare not affirm that they do not —
I fear that Paul, in his customary language, would pronounce their
conduct to be * without excuse.' 6

Science, which is the logic of nature, demands proportion between
the house and its foundation. Theology sometimes builds weighty
structures on a doubtful base. The tenet of Sabbath observance is an
illustration. With regard to the time when the obligation to keep
the Sabbath was imposed, and the reasons for its imposition, there
are grave differences of opinion between learned and pious men.
Some affirm that it was instituted at the Creation in remembrance
of the rest of God. Others allege that it was imposed after . the .
departure of the Israelites from Egypt, and in memory of that de-
parture. The Bible countenances both interpretations. In Exodus
we find the origin of the Sabbath described with unmistakable clear-
ness, thus : — ' For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day. Where-
fore the Lord blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it.' In
Deuteronomy this reason is suppressed and another is assigned.
Israel being a servant in Egypt, God, it is stated, brought them
out of it through a mighty hand and by a stretched-out arm.
' Therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the
Sabbath day.' After repeating the Ten Commandments, and as-
signing the foregoing origin to the Sabbath, the writer in Deu-
teronomy proceeds thus : — * These words the Lord spake unto all
your assembly in the mount, out of the midst of the fire, of the
cloud and the thick darkness, with a loud voice ; and he added no
'more.' But in Exodus God not only added more, but something
entirely different. This has been a difficulty with commentators —
not formidable, if the Bible be treated as any other ancient book,
•but extremely formidable on the theory of plenary inspiration. I
remember in the days of my youth being shocked and perplexed

• I refer, of course, to those who object to the opening of the Museums on
religious grounds. The administrative difficult/ stands on a different footing. But
surely it ought to ranish in ^ressncc of the public benefits which in all probability
would accrue.

1880. THE SABBATH. 697

by an admission made by Bishop Watson in his celebrated Apology
for the Bible, written in answer to Tom Paine. * You have,'
says the bishop, ' disclosed a few weeds which good men would have
covered up from view.' That there were ' weeds ' in the Bible re-
quiring to be kept out of sight was to me, at that time, a new
revelation. I take little pleasure in dwelling upon the errors and
blemishes of a book, rendered venerable to me by intrinsic wisdom
and imperishable associations. But when that book is wrested to
our detriment, when its passages are invoked to justify the imposition
of a yoke, irksome because unnatural, we are driven in self-defence
to be critical. In self-defence, therefore, we plead these two dis-
cordant accounts of the origin of the Sabbath, one of which makes it
a purely Jewish institution, while the other, unless regarded as a
mere myth and figure, is in violent antagonism to the facts of
geology.

With regard to the alleged 4 proofs ' that Sunday was introduced
as a substitute for Saturday, and that its observance is as binding
upon Christians as their Sabbath was upon the Jews, I can only say
that those which I have seen are of the flimsiest and vaguest character.
' If,' says Milton, ' on the plea of a divine command, they impose upon
us the observances of a particular day, how do they presume, without
the authority of a divine command, to substitute another day in its
place?' Outside the bounds of theology no one would think of
applying the term ' proofs ' to the evidence adduced for the change ;
and yet on this pivot, it has been alleged, turns the eternal fate
of human souls.7 Were such a doctrine not actual it would be in-
credible. It has been truly said that the man who accepts it sinks,
in doing so, to the lowest depth of Atheism. It is perfectly reason-
able for a religious community to set apart one day in seven for rest
and devotion. Most of those who object to the Judaic observance
of the Sabbath recognise not only the wisdom but the necessity of
some such institution, not on the ground of a divine edict, but of
common sense.8 They contend, however, that it ought to be as far
as possible a day of cheerful renovation both of body and spirit,
and not a day of penal gloom. There is nothing that I should with-
stand more strenuously than the conversion of the first day of the

7 In 1785 the first mail-coach reached Edinburgh from London, and in 1788 it
was continued to Glasgow. The innovation was denounced by a minister of the
Secession Church of Scotland as ' contrary to the laws both of Church and State ;
contrary to the laws of God ; contrary to the most conclusive and constraining
reasons assigned by God ; and calculated not only to promote the hurt and ruin of
the nation, but also the eternal damnation of multitudes.' — Cox, vol. ii. p. 248.
Even in our own day there are clergymen foolish enough to indulge in this dealing
out of damnation.

8 'That public worship,' says Milton, 'is commended and inculcated as a
voluntary duty, even under the Gospel, I allow ; but that it is a matter of com-
pulsory enactment, binding on believers from the authority of this commandment,
or of any Sinaitical precept whatever, I deny.'

698 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

week into a common working day. Quite as strenuously, however,
should I oppose its being employed as a day for the exercise of sacer-
dotal rigour.

The early reformers emphatically asserted the freedom of Chris-
tians from Sabbatical bonds ; indeed Puritan writers have reproached
them with dimness of vision regarding the observance of the Lord's
Day. ' The fourth Commandment,' says Luther, ' literally understood,
does not apply to us Christians ; for it is entirely outward, like other
ordinances of the Old Testament, all of which are now left free by
Christ. If a preacher,' he continues, * wishes to force you back to
Moses, ask him whether you were brought by Moses out of Egypt?
If he says no ; then say, How, then, does Moses concern me, since he
speaks to the people that have been brought out of Egypt ? In the
New Testament Moses comes to an end, and his laws lose their force.
He must bow in the presence of Christ.' 'The Scripture,' says
Melanchthon, ' allows that we are not bound to keep the Sabbath ;
for it teaches that the ceremonies of the law of Moses are not neces-
sary after the revelation of the Gospel. And yet,' he adds, ' because
it was requisite to appoint a certain day that the people might
know when to assemble together, it appeared that the Church
appointed for this purpose the Lord's Day.' I am glad to find my
grand old namesake on the side of freedom in this matter. ' As for
the Sabbath,' says the martyr Tyndale, * we are lords over it, and
may yet change it into Monday, or into any other day, as we see need ;
or may make every tenth day holy day, only if we see cause why.
Neither need we any holy day at all if the people might be taught
without it.' Calvin repudiated ' the frivolities of false prophets who,
in later times, have instilled Jewish ideas into the people. Those,'
he continues, * who thus adhere to the Jewish institution go thrice
as far as the Jews themselves in the gross and carnal superstition of
Sabbatism.' Even John Knox, who has had so much Puritan strict-
ness unjustly laid to his charge, knew how to fulfil on the Lord's
Day the duties of a generous, hospitable host. His Master feasted
on the Sabbath day, and he did not fear to do the same on Sunday.

Towards the end of the sixteenth century, demands for a stricter
observance of the Sabbath began to be made — probably in the first
instance with some reason, and certainly with good intent. The
manners of the time were coarse, and Sunday was often chosen for
their offensive exhibition. But if there was coarseness on the one
side, there was ignorance both of Nature and human nature on the
other. Contemporaneously with the demands for stricter Sabbath
rules, God's judgments on Sabbath-breakers began to be pointed out.
Then and afterwards ' God's Judgments ' were much in vogue, and
man, their interpreter, frequently behaved as a fiend in the supposed
execution of them. But of this subsequently. A Suffolk clergyman
named Bownd, who, according to Cox, was the first to set forth at

1880. THE SABBATH. 699

large the views afterwards embodied in the Westminster Confession,
adduces many such judgments. One was the case of a nobleman

* who for hunting on the holy day was punished by having a child
with a head like a dog's.' Though he cites this instance, Bownd, in
the matter of Sabbath observance, was very lenient towards noble-
men. With courtier-like pliancy, which is not without its counter-
part at the present time, he makes an exception in their favour :

* Concerning the feasts of noblemen and great personages or their
ordinary diet upon this day, because they represent in some measure
the majesty of God on the earth, in carrying the image as it were
of the magnificence and puissance of the Lord, much is to be granted
to them.'

Imagination once started in this direction was sure to be
prolific. Instances accordingly grew apace in number and magni-
tude. Memorable examples of God's judgments upon Sabbath-
breakers, and other like libertines, in their unlawful sports happening
within this realm of England, were collected. Innumerable cases
of drowning while bathing on Sunday were adduced, without the
slightest attention to the logical requirements of the question.
Week-day drownings were not dwelt upon, and nobody knew or
cared how the question of proportion stood between the two classes
of bathers. The Civil War was regarded as a punishment for Sun-
day desecration. The fire of London, and a subsequent great fire
in Edinburgh, were ascribed to this cause ; while the fishermen of Ber-
wick lost their trade through catching salmon on Sunday. A Noncon-
formist minister named John Wells, whose huge volume is described
by Cox as ' the most tedious of all the Puritan productions about
the Sabbath,' is specially copious in illustration. A drunken pedlar,
4 fraught with commodities ' on Sunday, drops into a river : God's
retributive justice is seen in the fact. Wells travelled far in search of
instances. One Utrich Schroetorus, a Swiss, while playing at dice on
the Lord's Day, lost heavily, and apparently to gain the devil to his
side broke out into this horrid blasphemy : ' If fortune deceive me
now I will thrust my dagger into the body of God.' Whereupon he
threw the dagger upwards. It disappeared, and five drops of blood,
which afterwards proved indelible, fell upon the gaming table. The
devil then appeared, and with a hideous noise carried off the vile
blasphemer. His two companions fared no better. One was struck
dead and turned into worms, the other was executed. A vintner
who on the Lord's Day tempted the passers-by with a pot of wine
was carried into the air by a whirlwind and never seen more. ' Let
us read and tremble,' adds Mr. Wells. At Tidworth a man broke
his leg on Sunday while playing at football. By a secret judgment
of the Lord the wound turned into a gangrene, and in pain and terror
the criminal gave up the ghost.

You may smile at these recitals, but is there not a survival of

700 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

John Wells still extant among us ? Are there not people in our midst
so well informed regarding] * the secret judgments of the Lord ' as
to be able to tell you their exact value and import, from the
damaging of the share market through the running of Sunday
trains to the calamitous overthrow of a railway bridge ? Alphonso
of Castile boasted that if he had been consulted at the beginning of
things he could have saved the Creator some worlds of trouble. It
would not be difficult to give the God of our more rigid Sabbatarians
a lesson in justice and mercy ; for his alleged judgments savour
but little of either. How are calamities to be classified ? Almost
within earshot of those who note these Sunday judgments, the poor
miners of Blantyre are blown to pieces, while engaged in their
sinless week-day toil. A little further off the bodies of two hundred
and sixty workers, equally innocent of Sabbath-breaking, are en-
tombed at Abercarne. Dinas holds its sixty bodies, while the
present year has furnished its fearful tale of similar disasters.
Whence comes the vision which differentiates the Sunday calamity
from the week-day calamity, seeing in the one a judgment of
heaven, and in the other a natural event ? We may wink at the
ignorance of John Wells, for he lived in a pre-scientific age ; but it is
not pleasant to see his features reproduced, on however small a scale,
before an educated nation in the latter half of the nineteenth century.
Notwithstanding their strictness about the Sabbath, which
possibly carried with it the usual excess of a reaction, some of the
straitest of the Puritan sect saw clearly that unremitting attention
to business, whether religious or secular, was unhealthy. Con-
sidering recreation to be as necessary to health as daily food,
they exhorted parents and masters, if they would avoid the de-
secration of the Sabbath, to allow to children and servants time for
honest recreation on other days. They might have done well to
inquire whether even Sunday devotions might not, without ' moral
culpability ' on their part, keep the minds of children and servants too
long upon the stretch. I fear many of the good men who insist
on a Judaic observance of the Sabbath, and who dwell upon the
peace and blessedness to be derived from a proper use of the Lord's
Day, generalise beyond their data, applying the experience of the
individual to the case of mankind. What is a conscious joy and
blessing to themselves they cannot dream of as being a possible
misery, or even a curse, to others. It is right that your most
spiritually minded men — men who, to use a devotional phrase,
enjoy the closest walk with God — should be your pastors. But they
ought also to be practical men, able to look not only on their per-
sonal feelings, but on the capacities of humanity at large, and willing
to make their rules and teachings square with these capacities.
There is in some minds a natural bias towards religion, as there is
in others towards poetry, art, or mathematics ; but the poet, artist,

1880. THE SABBATH. 701

or mathematician who would seek to impose upon others not
possessing his tastes the studies which give him delight, would be
deemed an intolerable despot. The philosopher Fichte was wont to
contrast his mode of rising into the atmosphere of faith with the ex-
perience of others. In his case the process, he said, was purely in-
tellectual. Through reason he reached religion ; while in the case
of many whom he knew this process was both unnecessary and unused,
the bias of their minds sufficing to render faith, without logic, clear
and strong. In making rules for the community these natural differ-
ences must be taken into account. The yoke which is easy to the
few may be intolerable to the many, not only defeating its own
immediate purpose, but frequently introducing recklessness or hypo-
crisy into minds which a franker and more liberal treatment would
have kept free from both.9

The moods of the times — the l climates of opinion,' as Orlanvil
calls them — have also to be considered in imposing disciplines which
affect the public. For the ages, like the individual, have their periods
of mirth and earnestness, of cheerfulness and gloom. From this
point of view a better case might be made out for the early Sabba-
tarians than for their survivals at the present day. Sunday sports
had grown barbarous ; bull- and bear-baiting, interludes, and bowling
were reckoned amongst them, and the more earnest spirits longed not
only to promote edification but to curb excess. Sabbatarianism, there-
fore, though opposed, made rapid progress. Its opponents did what
religious parties, when in power, always do — exercised that power
tyrannically. They invoked the arm of the flesh to suppress or
change conviction. In 1618 James the First published a declara-
tion, known afterwards as The Book of Sports, because it had
reference to Sunday recreations. Puritan magistrates had interfered
with the innocent amusements of the people, and the King wished to
insure their being permitted after divine service to those who desired
them ; but not enjoined upon those who did not. Coarser sports, and
sports tending to immorality, were prohibited. Charles the First
renewed the declaration of his father. Not content, however, with
expressing his royal pleasure — not content with restraining the
arbitrary civil magistrate — the King decreed that the declaration
should be published ' through all the parish churches,' the bishops in
their respective dioceses being made the vehicles of the royal command.
Defensible in itself, the declaration thus became an instrument of

9 ' When our Puritan friends,' says Mr. Frederick Robertson, ' talk of the blessings
of the Sabbath, we may ask them to remember some of its curses.' Other and more
serious evils than those recounted by Mr. Robertson may, I fear, be traced to the
system of Sabbath observance pursued in many of our schools. At the risk of
shocking some worthy persons, I would say that the invention of an invigorating
game for fine Sunday afternoons, and healthy indoor amusement for wet ones,
would prove infinitely more effectual as an aid to moral purity than most of our
plans of religious meditation.

702 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

oppression. The High Church party, headed by Archbishop Laud,
forced the reading of the documents on men whose consciences recoiled
from the act. * The precise clergy,' as Hallam calls them, refused in
general to comply, and were suspended or deprived in consequence.
1 But,' adds Hallam, ' mankind loves sport as little as prayer by com-
pulsion ; and the immediate effect of the King's declaration was to
produce a far more scrupulous abstinence from diversions on Sundays
than had been practised before.'

The Puritans, when they came into power, followed the evil
example of their predecessors. They, the champions of religious
freedom, showed that they could, in their turn, deprive their an-
tagonists of their benefices, fine them, burn their books by the
common hangman, and compel them to read from the pulpit things
of which they disapproved. On this point Bishop Heber makes
some excellent remarks. 'Much,' he says, 'as each religious party
in its turn had suffered from persecution, and loudly and bitterly as
each had, in its own particular instance, complained of the severities ex-
ercised against its members, no party had yet been found to perceive
the great wickedness of persecution in the abstract, or the moral un-
fitness of temporal punishment as an engine of religious contro-
versy.' In a very different strain writes the Dr. Bownd who has
been already referred to as a precursor of Puritanism. He is so sure
of his ' doxy ' that he will unflinchingly make others bow to it. ' It
behoveth,' he says, ' all kings, princes, and rulers, that profess the
true religion to enact such laws and to see them diligently executed,
whereby the honour of God in hallowing these days might be main-
tained. And, indeed, this is the chiefest end of all government, that
men might not profess what religion they list, and serve God after
what manner it pleaseth them best, but that the parts of God's true
worship [Bowndean worship] might be set up everywhere, and all
men compelled to stoop unto it.'

There is, it must be admitted, a sad logical consistency in the
mode of action advocated by Dr. Bownd, and deprecated by Bishop
Heber. As long as men hold that there is a hell to be shunned, they
seem logically warranted in treating lightly the claims of religious
liberty upon earth. They dare not tolerate a freedom whose end
they believe to be eternal perdition. Cruel they may be for the
moment, but a passing pang vanishes when compared with an eternity
of pain. Unreligious men might call it hallucination, but if I
accept undoubtingly the doctrine of eternal punishment, then, what-
ever society may think of my act, I am self-justified not only in
« letting ' but in destroying that which I hold dearest, if I believe it
to be thereby stopped in its progress to the fires of hell. Hence,
granting the assumptions common to both, the persecution of Puritans
by High Churchmen, and of High Churchmen by Puritans, had a
basis in reason. I do not think the question can be decided on a

1880. THE SABBATH. 703

priori grounds, as Bishop ITeber seemed to suppose. It is not the
abstract wickedness of persecution, so much as our experience of its
results, that causes us to set our faces against it. It has been tried,
and found the most ghastly of failures. This experimental fact over-
whelms the plausibilities of logic, and renders persecution, save in its
meaner and stealthier aspects, in our day impossible.

The combat over Sunday continued, the Sabbatarians continually
gaining ground. In 1 643 the divines who drew up the famous docu-
ment known as the Westminster Confession began their sittings in
Henry the Seventh's Chapel. Milton thought lightly of these divines,
who, he said, were sometimes chosen by the whim of members of
Parliament ; but the famous Puritan, Baxter, extolled them for
their learning, godliness, and ministerial abilities. A journal of
their earlier proceedings was kept by one of their members.
On the 13th of November 1644 he records the occurrence of 'a
large debate' on the sanctification of the Lord's Day. After fixing
the introductory phraseology, the assembly proceeded to consider
the second proposition: 'To abstain from all unnecessary labours,
worldly sports, and recreations.' It was debated whether 'worldly
thoughts ' should not be added. ' This was scrupulous,' says the
naive journalist, ' whether we should not be a scorn to go about to
bind men's thoughts, but at last it was concluded upon to be added,
both for the more piety and for that the Fourth Command includes
it.' The question of Sunday cookery was then discussed and settled ;
and, as regards public worship, it was decreed 'that all the people
meet so timely that the whole congregation be present at the begin-
ning, and not depart until after the blessing. That what time is vacant
between or after the solemn meetings of the congregation be spent
in reading, meditation, repetition of sermons,' &c. These holy men
were full of that strength already referred to as imparted by faith.
They needed no natural joy to brighten their lives, mirth being dis-
placed by religious exaltation. They erred, however, in making
themselves a measure for the world at large, and insured the over-
throw of their cause by drawing too heavily upon average human
nature. ' This much,' says Hallam, ' is certain, that when the Puri-
tan party employed their authority in proscribing all diversions, and
enforcing all the Jewish rigour about the Sabbath, they rendered
their own yoke intolerable to the young and gay ; nor did any other
cause, perhaps, so materially contribute to bring about the Restora-
tion.'

In 1 646, the i Confession ' being agreed upon, it was presented to
Parliament, which, in 1648, accepted and published its doctrinal
portion. There was no lack of definiteness in the Assembly's state-
ments. They spoke as confidently of the divine enactments as if
each member had been personally privy to the counsels of the Most
High. When Luther in the Castle of Marburg had had enough of

704 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

the arguments of Zuinglius on the * real presence,' he is said to have
ended the controversy by taking up a bit of chalk and writing firmly
and finally upon the table ' Hoc est corpus meum.' Equally down-
right and definite were the divines at Westminster. They were
modest in offering their conclusions to Parliament as ' humble
advice,' but there was no flicker of doubt either in their theology
or their cosmology. * From the beginning of the world,' they s;i y,
4 to the Kesurrection of Christ the last day of the week was kept holy
as a Sabbath ; ' while from the Kesurrection it ' was changed into
the first day of the week, which in Scripture is called the Lord's
Day, and is to be continued to the end of the world as the Christian
Sabbath.' The notions of the divines, regarding the ' beginning and
the end' of the world, were primitive, but decided. An ancient
philosopher was once mobbed for venturing the extravagant opinion
that the sun, which appeared to be a circle less than a yard in
diameter, might really be as large as the whole country of Greece.
Imagine a man with the knowledge of a modern geologist uttering
his blasphemies among these Westminster divines! 'It pleased
God,' they continue, * at the beginning, to create, or make of no-
thing, the world and all things therein, whether visible or in-
visible, in the space of six days, and all very good.' Judged from
our present scientific standpoint, this, of course, is mere nonsense.
But the calling of it by this name does not exhaust the question.
The real point of interest to me, I confess, is not the cosmological
errors of the Assembly, but the hold which theology has taken of the
human mind, and which enables it to survive the ruin of what was
long deemed essential to its stability. On this question of * essen-
tials ' the gravest mistakes are constantly made. Save as a passing
form no part of objective religion is essential. Religion lives not by
the force and aid of dogma, but because it is ingrained in the nature
of man. To draw a metaphor from metallurgy, the moulds have been
broken and reconstructed over and over again, but the molten ore
abides in the ladle of humanity. An influence so deep and permanent
is not likely soon to disappear ; but of the future form of religion
little can be predicted. Its main concern may possibly be to purify,
elevate, and brighten the life that now is, instead of treating it as
the more or less dismal vestibule of a life that is to come.

The term * nonsense,' which has been just applied to the views
of creation enunciated by the Westminster Assembly, was used, as
already stated, in reference to our present knowledge and not to the
knowledge of three or four centuries ago. To most people the earth
was at that time all in all ; the sun and moon and stars being set in
heaven merely to furnish lamplight to our planet. But though in
relation to the heavenly bodies the earth's position and importance
were thus exaggerated, very inadequate and erroneous notions were
entertained regarding the shape and magnitude of the earth it-

1880. THE SABBATH. 705

self. Theologians were horrified when first informed that our planet
was a sphere. The question of antipodes exercised them for a long
time, most of them pouring ridicule on the idea that men could exist
with their feet turned towards us, and with their heads pointing
downwards. I think it is Sir George Airy who refers to the case of
an over-curious individual asking what we should see if we went to
the edge of the world and looked over. That the earth was a flat
surface on which the sky rested was the belief entertained by the
founders of all our great religious systems. Even liberal Protestant
theologians stigmatised the Copernican theory as being 'built on
fallible phenomena and advanced by many arbitrary assumptions
against evident testimonies of Scripture.' 10 Newton finally placed
his intellectual crowbar beneath these ancient notions, and heaved
them into irretrievable ruin.

Then it was that penetrating minds, seeing the nature of the
change wrought by the new astronomy in our conceptions of the
universe, also discerned the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of
accepting literally the Mosaic account of creation. They did not
reject it, but they assigned to it a meaning entirely new. Dr.
Samuel Clarke, who was the personal friend of Newton and a sup-
porter of his theory, threw out the idea that l possibly the six days
of creation might be a typical representation of some greater periods.'
Clarke's contemporary, Dr. Thomas Burnet, wrote with greater de-
cision in the same strain. The Sabbath being regarded as a shadow
or type of that heavenly repose which the righteous will enjoy when
this world has passed away, ' so these six days of creation are so many
periods or millenniums for which the world and the toils and labours
of our present state are destined to endure.' u The Mosaic account
was thus reduced to a poetic myth — a view which afterwards found
expression in the vast reveries of Hugh Miller. But if this symbolic
interpretation, which is now generally accepted, be the true one, what
becomes of the Sabbath day ? It is absolutely without ecclesiastical
meaning ; and the man who was executed for gathering sticks on that
day must be regarded as the victim of a rude legal rendering of a
religious epic.

There were many minor offshoots of discussion from the great
central controversy. Bishop Horsley had defined a day ' as consist-
ing of one evening and one morning, or, as the Hebrew words literally
import, of the decay of light and the return of it.' But what then, it
was asked, becomes of the Sabbath in the Arctic regions, where
light takes six months to * decay,' and as long to ' return ' ? Differ-
ences of longitude, moreover, render the observance of the Sabbath
at the same hours impossible. To some people such questions might

'• Such was the view of Dr. John Owen, who is described by Cox as ' the most
eminent of the Independent divines.'
11 Cox, Tol. ii. p. 211, note.

706 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

appear trifling ; to others they were of the gravest import. Whether
tin- Sabbath should stretch from sunset to sunset, or from midnight
to midnight, was also a subject of discussion. Voices moreover were
heard refusing to acknowledge the propriety of the change from
Saturday to Sunday, and the doctrine of Seventh Day observance
was afterwards represented by a sect.12 The earth's sphericity and
rotation, which had at first been received with such affright, came
eventually to the aid of those afflicted with qualms and difficulties
regarding the respective claims of Saturday and Sunday. The sun
apparently moves from east to west. Suppose then we start on a
voyage round the world in a westerly direction. In doing so we sail
away, as it were, from the sun, which follows and periodically over-
takes us, reaching the meridian of our ship each succeeding day some-
what later than if we stood still. For every 15° of longitude
traversed by the vessel the sun will be exactly an hour late ; and
after the ship has traversed twenty-four times 15°, or 360°, that is
to say, the entire circle of the earth, the sun will be exactly a
day behind. Here, then, is the expedient suggested by Dr. Wallis,
F.R.S., Savilian Professor of Geometry in the University of Oxford,
to quiet the minds of those in doubt regarding Saturday observance.
He recommends them to make a voyage round the world, as Sir
Francis Drake did, ' going out of the Atlantic Ocean westward by
the Straits of Magellan to the East Indies, and then from the
east, returning by the Cape of Good Hope homeward, and let them
keep their Saturday-Sabbath all the way. When they come home
to England they will find their Saturday to fall upon our Sunday,
and they may thenceforth continue to observe their Saturday-Sabbath
on the same day with us ! '

Large and liberal minds were drawn into this Sabbatarian con-
flict, but they were not the majority. Between the booming of the
bigger guns we have an incessant clatter of small arms. We ought
not to judge superior men without reference to the spirit of their
age. This is an influence from which they cannot escape, and so far
as it extenuates their errors it ought to be pleaded in their favour.
Even the atrocities of the individual excite less abhorrence when
they are seen-to be the outgrowth of his time. But the most fatal
error that could be committed by the leaders of religious thought is

12 Theophilua Brabourne, a sturdy Puritaryninister of Norfolk, whom Cox regards
as the founder of this sect, thus argued the question in 1628 : 'And now let me pro-
pound unto your choice these two days : the Sabbath-day on Saturday or the Lord's
Day on Sunday ; and keep whether of the twain you shall in conscience find the more
safe. If you keep the Lord's Day, but profane the Sabbath Day, you walk in great
danger and peril (to say the least) of transgressing one of God's eternal and inviolable
laws — the Fourth Commandment. But, on the other side, if you keep the Sabbath
Day, though you profane the Lord's Daj', you are out of all gun-shot and danger,
for so you transgress no law at all, since neither Christ nor his apostles did ever
leave any law for it.'

1880. THE SABBATH. 707

the attempt to force into their own age conceptions which have lived
their life, and come to their natural end, in preceding ages. History
is the record of a vast experimental investigation — of a search by man
after the best -conditions of existence. The Puritan attempt was a
grand experiment. It had to be made. Sooner or later the question
must have forced itself upon earnest believers possessed of power,
Is it not possible to rule the world in accordance with the wishes of
God as revealed in the Bible ? — Is it not possible to make human life
the copy of a divine pattern ? The question could only have occurred
in the first instance to the more exalted minds. But instead of
working upon the inner forces and convictions of men, legislation
presented itself as a speedier way to the attainment of the desired
end. To legislation, therefore, the Puritans resorted. Instead of
guiding, they repressed, and thus pitted themselves against the un-
conquerable impulses of human nature. Believing that nature to be
depraved, they felt themselves logically warranted in putting it in
irons. But they failed ; and their failure ought to be a warning to
their successors.

Another error, of a far graver character than that just noticed,
may receive a passing mention here. At the time when the Sabbath
controversy was hottest, and the arm of the law enforcing the claims
of the Sabbath strongest and most unsparing, another subject pro-
foundly stirred the religious mind of Scotland. A grave and serious
nation, believing intensely in its Bible, found therein recorded the
edicts of the Almighty against witches, wizards, and familiar spirits,
and were taught by their clergy that such edicts still held good.
The same belief had overspread the rest of Christendom, but in
Scotland it was intensified by the rule of Puritanism and the
natural earnestness of the people. I have given you a sample of the
devilish cruelties practised on the Christians at Smyrna. These
tortures were far less shocking than those inflicted upon witches in
Scotland. I say less shocking because the victims at Smyrna courted
martyrdom. They counted the sufferings of this present time as not
worthy to be compared with the glory to be revealed ; while the
sufferers for witchcraft, in the midst of all their agonies, felt them-
selves God-forsaken, and saw before them instead of the glories of
heaven the infinite tortures of hell. Not to the fall of Sarmatia, but
to the treatment of Avitches in the seventeenth century, ought to be
applied the words of your poet Campbell : —

Oh ! bloodiest picture in the took of time !

The mind sits in sackcloth and ashes while contemplating the scenes
so powerfully described by Mr. Lecky in his chapter on Magic
and Witchcraft. But I will dwell no further upon these tragedies
than to point out how terrible are the errors which our clergy may
commit after they have once subscribed to the creed and laws of

7os THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

Judaism, and constituted themselves the legal exponents and inter-
preters of those laws.13

Turning over the leaves of the Pentateuch, where God's alleged
dealings with the Israelites are recorded, it strikes one with amaze-
ment that such writings should be considered binding upon us. The
overmastering strength of habit, the power of early education —
possibly a de6ance of the claims of reason involved in the very
constitution of the mental organ — are illustrated by the fact, that
learned men are still to be found willing to devote their time and
endowments to these writings, under the assumption that they are
not human but divine. As an ancient book, claiming the same
origin as other books, the Old Testament is without a rival, but
its unnatural exaltation provokes recoil and rejection. Leviticus,
for example, when read in the light of its own age, is full of
interest and instruction. We see there described the efforts of
the best men then existing to civilise the rude society around
them. Violence is restrained by violence medicinally applied.
Passion is checked, truth and justice are extolled, and all in a
manner suited to the needs of a barbarian host. But read in
the light of our age, its conceptions of the deity are seen to be
shockingly mean, and many of its ordinances brutal. Foolishness
is far too weak a word to apply to any attempt to force upon a
scientific age the edicts of a Jewish lawgiver. The doom of such
an attempt is sure ; and if the destruction of things really precious
should be involved in its failure, the blame will justly be ascribed
to those who obstinately persisted in the attempt. Let us then
cherish our Sunday as an inheritance derived from the wisdom of
the past ; but let it be understood that we cherish it because it
is in principle reasonable, and in practice salutary. Let us uphold it,
because it commends itself to that ' light of nature ' which, despite
the catastrophe in Eden, the most famous theologians mention with
respect, and not because it is enjoined by the thunders of Sinai.
"NVe have surely heard enough of divine sanctions founded upon myths,
which, however beautiful and touching when regarded from the proper
point of view, are seen, when cited for our guidance as matters of
fact, to offer warrant and condonation for the greatest crimes, or to
sink to the level of the most palpable absurdities.14

11 The sufferings of reputed witches in the seventeenth century, as well as those
of the early Christians, might be traced to panics and passions similar in kind to
those which produced the atrocities of the Reign of Terror in France.

14 llelanchthon writes finely thus : ' Wherefore our decision is this : that those
precepts which learned men have committed to writing, transcribing them from the
common reason and common feelings of human nature, are to be accounted as no
less divine than those contained in the tables of Moses.' — Dugald Stewart's trans-
lation. Hengstenberg quotes from the same reformer as follows : ' The law of
Moses is not binding upon us, though some things which the law contains are
binding, because they coincide with the law of nature.' — See Cox, vol. i. p. 389.
The Catechism of the Council of Trent expresses a similar view. There are, theu
' data of ethics ' over and above the revealed ones.

1880. THE SABBATH. 709

In this, as in all other theological discussions, it is interesting to
note how character colours religious feeling and conduct. The
reception into Christ's kingdom has been emphatically described as
being born again. A certain likeness of feature among Christians
ought, one would think, to result from a common spiritual parentage.
But the likeness is not observed. Christian communities embrace some
of the loftiest and many of the lowest of mankind. It may be urged
that the lofty ones only are truly religious. To this it is to be replied,
that the others are often as religious as their natures permit them to be.
Character is here the overmastering force. That religion should in-
fluence life in a high way implies the pre-existence of natural dignity.
This is the mordant which fixes the religious dye. He who is capable
of feeling the finer glow of religion would possess a substratum avail-
able for all the relations of life, even if his religion were taken away.
Religion, on the other hand, does not charm away malice, or make
good defects of character. I have already spoken of persecution in
its meaner forms. On the lower levels of theological warfare such
are commonly resorted to. If you reject a dogma on intellectual
grounds, it is because there is a screw loose in your morality ; some
personal sin besets and blinds you ; the intellect is captive to a
corrupt heart. Thus good men have been often calumniated by
others who were not good ; thus frequently have the noble become
a target for the wicked and the mean. With the advance of public
intelligence the day of such assailants is happily drawing to a close.

These reflections, which connect themselves with reminiscences
outside the Sabbath controversy, have been more immediately
prompted by the aspersions cast by certain Sabbatarians upon those
who differ from them. Mr. Cox notices and reproves some of these.
According to the Scottish Sabbath Alliance, for example, all who
say that the Sabbath was an exclusively Jewish institution, including,
be it noted, such men as Jeremy Taylor and Milton, 4 clearly prove
either their dishonesty or ignorance, or inability to comprehend a
very plain and simple subject.' This becomes real humour when we
compare the speakers with the persons spoken of. A distinguished
English dissenter, who deals in a lustrous but rather cloudy logic,,
declares that whoever asks demonstration of the divine appoint--
ment of the Christian Sabbath 'is blinded by a moral cause to
those exquisite pencillings, to those unobtruded vestiges, which,
furnish their clearest testimony to this Institute.' A third writer
charitably professes his readiness ' to admit, in reference to this and
many other duties, that it is quite a possible thing for a mind that
is desirous of evading the evidence regarding it to succeed in doing
so.' A fourth luminary, whose knowledge obviously extends to the
mind and methods of the Almighty, exclaims, ' Is it not a principle of
God's Word in many cases to give enough and no more — to satisfy
the devout, not to overpower the uncandid ? ' It is of course as ea&y
VOL. VIII.— No. 45. 3 C

710 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

as it is immoral to argue thus; but the day is fast approaching
when the most atrabilious presbyter will not venture to use such
language. Let us contrast with it the utterance of a naturally sweet
and wholesome mind. ' Since all Jewish festivals, new moons, and
Sabbaths,' says the celebrated Dr. Isaac Watts, 'are abolished by
St. Paul's authority ; since the religious observation of days in the
14th chapter to the Romans, in general, is represented as a matter
of doubtful disputation ; since the observation of the Lord's Day is
not built upon any express or plain institution by Christ or his
apostles in the New Testament, but rather on examples and probable
inferences, and on the reasons and relations of things ; I can never
pronounce anything hard or severe upon any fellow Christian who
maintains real piety in heart and life, though his opinion on this
subject may be very different from mine.' Thus through the theo-
logian radiates the gentleman.

Up to the end of the eighteenth century the catalogue of Mr. Cox
embraces 320 volumes and publications. It is a monument of patient
labour ; while the remarks of the writer, which are distributed through-
out the catalogue, illustrate both his intellectual penetration and his
reverent cast of mind. He wrought hard and worthily with a pure
and noble aim. I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Cox at Dundee
in 1867, when the British Association met there, and I could then
discern the earnestness with which he desired to see his countrymen
relieved from the Sabbath incubus, and at the same time the
moderation and care for the feelings of others with which he advo-
cated his views. He has also given us a rapid ' Sketch of the Chief
Controversies about the Sabbath in the Nineteenth Century.' The
.sketch is more compressed than the catalogue, and the changes of
thought in passing from author to author, being more rapid, are
more bewildering. It is to a great extent what I have already called
a clatter of small arms, mingled with the occasional discharges of
-mightier guns. One thing is noticeable and regrettable in these
discussions, namely, the unwise and undiscriminating way in which
different Sunday occupations are classed together and condemned.
Bishop Blomfield, for example, seriously injures his case when he
places drinking in gin-shops and sailing in steamboats in the same
category. I remember some years ago standing by the Thames at
Putney with my lamented friend, Dr. Bence Jones, when a steam-
boat on the river, with its living freight, passed us. Practically
^acquainted with the moral and physical influence of pure oxygen,
any friend exclaimed, * What a blessing for these people to be able
thus to escape from London into the fresh air of the country ! ' I
hold the physician to have been right and, with all respect, the
Bishop to have been wrong.

Bishop Blomfield also condemns resorting to tea-gardens on
Sunday. But we may be sure that it is not the gardens, but the

1880. THE SABBATH. 711

minds which the people bring to them, which produce disorder.
These minds possess the culture of the city, to which the Bishop
seems disposed to confine them. Wisely and soberly conducted- —
and it is perfectly possible to conduct them wisely and soberly
— such places might be converted into aids towards a life which
the Bishop would commend. Purification and improvement are
often possible, where extinction is neither possible nor desirable.
I have spent many a Sunday afternoon in the public gardens
of the little university town of Marburg, in the company of
intellectual men and cultivated women, without observing a single
occurrence which, as regards morality, might not be permitted
in the Bishop's drawing-room. I will add to this another obser-
vation made at Dresden on a Sunday, after the suppression of
the insurrection by the Prussian soldiery in 1849. The victorious
troops were encamped on the banks of the Elbe, and this is how they
occupied themselves. Some were engaged in physical games and
exercises which in England would be considered innocent in the ex-
treme ; some were conversing sociably ; some singing the songs of
Uhland, while others, from elevated platforms, recited to listening
groups poems and passages from Groethe and Schiller. Through this
crowd of military men passed and repassed the girls of the city,
linked together with their arms round each other's necks. During
hours of observation, I heard no word which was unfit for a modest
ear ; while from beginning to end I failed to notice a single case of
intoxication.15

Here we touch the core of the whole matter — the appeal to
experience. Sabbatical rigour has been tried, and the question is :
Have its results been so conducive to good morals and national
happiness, as to render criminal every attempt to modify it ? The
advances made in all kinds of knowledge in this our age are known
to be enormous ; and the public desire for instruction, which the
intellectual triumphs of the time naturally and inevitably arouse, is
commensurate with the growth of knowledge. Must this desire,
which ^ is the motive power of all real and healthy progress, be
quenched or left unsatisfied, lest Sunday observances, unknown to
the early Christians, repudiated by the heroes of the Eeformation,
and insisted upon for the first time during a period of national gloom
and suffering in the seventeenth century, should be interfered with ?
To justify this position the demonstration of the success of Sab-
batarianism must be complete. Is it so ? Are we so much better
than other nations who have neglected to adopt our rules, that we
can point to the working of these rules in the past as a conclusive
reason for maintaining them immovable in the future ? The answer

1S The late Mr. Joseph Kay, as Travelling Bachelor of the University of Cam-
bridge, has borne strong and earnest testimony to the ' humanising and
influence ' of the Sunday recreations of the German people.

3 C2

712 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

must be, No. My Sabbatarian friends, you have no ground to stand
upon. I say friends, for I would far rather have you as friends than
as enemies — far rather see you converted than annihilated. You
possess a strength and earnestness with which the world cannot
dispense ; but to be productive of anything permanently good, that
strength and earnestness must build upon the sure foundation of human
nature. This is that law of the universe spoken of so frequently by
your illustrious countryman, Mr. Carlyle, to quarrel with which is to
provoke and precipitate ruin. Join with us then in our endeavours
to turn our Sundays to better account. Back with your support the
moderate and considerate demands of the Sunday Society, which
scrupulously avoids interfering with the hours devoted by common
consent to public worship. Offer the museum, the picture gallery,
and the public garden as competitors to the public house. By so
doing you will fall in with the spirit of your time, and row with,
instead of against, the resistless current along which man is borne to
his'destiny.

Most of you here are Liberals ; perhaps Radicals, perhaps even
Democrats or Republicans. I am a Conservative. The first re-
quisite of true conservatism is foresight. Humanity grows, and
foresight secures room for future expansion. In your walks in the
country you sometimes see a wall built round a growing tree. So
much the worse for the wall, which is sure to be rent and ruined by
the energy which it opposes. We have here represented not a true,
but a false and ignorant conservatism. The real conservative looks
ahead and prepares for the inevitable. He forestalls revolution by
securing, in due time, sufficient amplitude for the national vibrations.
He is a wrong-headed statesman who imposes his notions, however
right in the abstract, on a nation unprepared for them. He is no
statesman at all who, without seeking to interpret and guide it in
advance, merely waits for the more or less coarse expression of the
popular will, and then constitutes himself its vehicle. Untimeliness
is sure to be the characteristic of the work of such a statesman. In
virtue of the position which he occupies, his knowledge and insight
ought to be in advance of the public knowledge and insight ; and his
action, in like degree, ought to precede and inform public action. This
is what I want my Sabbatarian friends to bear in mind. If they look
abroad from the vantage-ground which they occupy, they can hardly
fail to discern that the intellect of this country is gradually rang-
ing itself upon our side. Statesmen, clergymen, philosophers, and
moralists are joining our standard. Whether, therefore, those to
whom I appeal hear, or whether they forbear, we are sure to unlock,
for the public good, the doors of the museums and galleries which
we have purchased, and for the maintenance of which we pay. But
I would have them not only prepare for the coming change, but
to aid and further it by anticipation. They will thus, in a new

1580. THE SABBATH. 713

fashion, 'dish the Whigs,' prove themselves men of foresight and
common sense, and obtain a fresh lease of the respect of the com-
munity.

As the years roll by, the term ' materialist ' will lose more and
more of its evil connotation ; for it will be more and more seen and
acknowledged, that the true spiritual nature of man is bound up with
his material condition. Wholesome food, pure air, cleanliness — hard
work if you will, but also fair rest and recreation — these are necessary
not only to physical but to spiritual well-being. The seed of the
spirit is cast in vain amid stones and thorns, and thus your best
utterances become idle words when addressed to the acclimatised
inhabitants of our slums and alleys. Drunkenness ruins the substratum
of resolution. The physics of the drunkard's brain are incompatible
with moral strength. Here your first care ought to be to cleanse
and improve the organ. Break the sot's associations ; change his
environment ; alter his nutrition ; displace his base imaginations by
thoughts drawn from the purer sources which we seek to render
accessible to him. For two centuries, I am told, the Scottish
clergy have proclaimed walking on Sunday to be an act of ' heaven-
daring profaneness — an impious encroachment on the inalienable pre-
rogative of the Lord Grod.' Such language is now out of date. If
we could establish Sunday tramways between our dens of filth and
iniquity and the nearest green fields, we should, in so doing, be
preaching a true gospel. And not only the denizens of our slums,
but the proprietors of our factories and counting-houses, might,
perhaps, be none the worse for an occasional excursion in the com-
pany of those whom they employ. A most blessed influence would
also be shed upon the clergy if they were enabled from time
to time to change their ' sloth urbane ' for healthy action on heath
or mountain. Baxter was well aware of the soothing influence
of fields, and countries, and walks and gardens, on a fretted
brain. Jeremy Taylor showed a profound knowledge of human
nature when he wrote thus : — * It is certain that all which can
innocently make a man cheerful, does also make him charitable.
For grief, and age, and sickness, and weariness, these are peevish
and troublesome ; but mirth and cheerfulness are content, and
civil, and compliant, and communicative, and love to do good,
and swell up to felicity only upon the wings of charity. Upon this
account, here is pleasure enough for a Christian at present ; and if
a facete discourse, and an amicable friendly mirth, can refresh the
spirit and take it off from the vile temptation of peevish, despairing,
uncomplying melancholy, it must needs be innocent and commend-
able.' I do not know whether you ever read Thomas Hood's * Ode to
Rae Wilson,' with an extract from which I will close this address.
Hood was a humorist, and to some of our graver theologians might
appear a mere feather-head. But those who have read his more

714 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

serious works will have discerned in him a vein of deep poetic pathos.
I hardly know anything finer than the apostrophe in which he turns
from those

That bid you baulk
A Sunday walk,
And shun God's work as you should shun your own ;

to the description of what Sunday might be, and is, to him who is
competent to enjoy it aright.

Thrice blessed, rather, is the man, with whom
The gracious prodigality of nature,
The balm, the bliss, the beauty, and the bloom,
The bounteous providence in ev'ry feature,
Recall the good Creator to his creature,
Making all earth a fane, all heav'n its dome !
To his tuned spirit the wild heather-bells

Ring Sabbath knells ;
The jubilate of the soaring lark

Is chant of clerk ;

For choir, the thrush and the gregarious linnet ;
The sod's a cushion for his pious want ;
And, consecrated by the heav'n withiH it,

The sky-blue pool, a font.
Each cloud-capp'd mountain is a holy altar ;

An organ breathes in every grove ;

And the full heart's a Psalter,
Rich in deep hymns of gratitude and love !

JOHN TTNDALL.

1880. 715

EVILS OF COMPETITIVE EXAMINATIONS.

FOR several years past education has been a leading subject of dis-
cussion ; thrust out of its place now and then by a war or a treaty,
but always coming again to the front when the superseding excite-
ment has subsided. By this time, it might be thought, every
question connected with education ought to be settled, and the whole
subject exhausted ; but, so far from this being the case, a great deal
has been unsettled, and what has been already done requires a great
deal more to complete it. Old systems have been broken up, and
order has not yet been elicited from their elements.

The great motive power by which recent changes have been
effected is the action of Grovernment : which, till of late years, exercised
no influence on education, except through universities and other
learned bodies, whose degrees or other testimonials were essential to
certain offices. Now, however, Grovernment acts directly on elemeii-
tary education, and indirectly on higher education. In the former,
it has created a system of great magnitude, administered by a class
of teachers called forth by it. On the latter, it has acted by creating
standards as qualifications for various offices in its gift. The great
engine by which it works is examination, which is of two kinds, high
pressure or competitive, and low pressure or qualifying. The develop-
ment of this engine in power has been one of the most remarkable
features of our time. It began, no doubt, as a humble attendant on
teaching, to test the soundness of the instruction and the diligence of
the disciple, but it has grown to giving laws both to the teacher
and the taught. There can be little doubt that Cambridge was the
scene of its first departure from its original humble functions.
There, about the middle of the last century, the system of com-
petition for mathematical honours began. The competition, how-
ever, at first, was not by examination as at present conducted, but by
disputation in the schools, a method the memory of which survives
in the names ' Wrangler ' and * Moderator.' By degrees, however,
questions to be solved on paper were introduced, and gradually
superseded the disputations ; which, being reduced to a mere form,
were abolished in 1838. By this time the examination system had
been applied to classics as well as mathematics, and, in fact, had

716 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

become the chief factor in the distributing of all the prizes of the
university and the sole dispenser of its testimonials. Examination,
in fact, had developed into a power. It gave a stimulus of the
strongest kind to study, and gave a character and direction to
teaching. It enlisted ambition in the service of learning, and made
students for love — not of knowledge but distinction. The benefit to
learning was not unmixed. The crowd who flocked to the shrine
were not all true worshippers ; and the love of learning for its own
sake was often overpowered in the few who had it, by the superior
force of the secondary motive. Moreover, the teacher was subjected
to the same influence as the student. He was tempted to teach, not
in order that his pupil might know, but that he might get marks :
not that his knowledge might be sound and deep, but that it might
be producible on demand. And the teacher soon found that know-
ledge need not be deep or even sound in order to be readily producible,
nay, even that thorough teaching was often pains thrown away for
examination purposes. Hence originated ' cram ' — i.e. teaching with
a view to a specific examination alone, of various degrees of literary
dishonesty, but in all cases aiming at passing off a counterfeit instead
of real knowledge. Nor was this the only evil of the ascendency of
examinations. The stimulus to learning, though powerful, was very
unequal in its action. It urged the willing to work beyond their
strength, to the injury of health and brain, but scarcely influenced
the dull and idle at all, except when the ordeal was just impending.
Thus its power was so distributed as to be too great in one case and
too small in another. It killed or disabled promising students, but
would only make dunces work by the imminence of disgrace. It thus
proved to be an instrument of indisputable power, but with the very
serious drawback that it could not be relied on to do the work that
was wanted, while it was apt to do much that was not wanted and was
positively mischievous. While, however, its use was restricted to
the universities, its range was comparatively small, and the ease of its
application made it popular with teachers, while the brilliancy of its
results shut men's eyes to its failures and to the mischief which it
was doing. Lists of successful candidates for honours supplied a
tangible testimonial of efficiency ; while no record appeared of brains
or energy exhausted, of all the zest taken out of learning by its forced
acquirement, of intellectual indigestion of knowledge acquired for
distinction, but perfectly useless in after-life : effects to one or other
of which it is due that the place in the honour list is often the
last distinction acquired in life. And there was no list of those who
had perished by the way, or had dropped out of the running, more or
less damaged by the killing pace.

Things being so, it is not wonderful that the range of examina-
tions should have been extended. The first great extension was, I
believe, to the Indian Civil Service. That service was at the time

1880. COMPETITIVE EXAMINATIONS. 717

the most highly paid ,in the world, and, to men of enterprise, one of
the most attractive. In it a young man began with an income much
larger than the average income of clergymen, and might attain to
the post of proconsul over a territory larger than Great Britain. The
service was a close one. The appointments were in the gift of the
Directors of the East India Company, and of the Government for
the time being. They were as much out of the reach of the general
public as partnerships in the great mercantile houses. Much the
greatest number of them were bestowed on the sons, nephews, cousins,
and political friends of the Directors. There were two objections to
this system : first, that it narrowed the selection for offices for which
it was important to secure the best ability of the country ; secondly,
that offices essentially public in their character were disposed of as if
they belonged to private firms; so that both the service suffered, and
the public were aggrieved at being shut out. Lord Macaulay, there-
fore, found willing listeners when he proposed to throw open this
great service to public competition ; nor were there any material
objections to the mode of competition by examination which he pro-
posed, supported as the proposal was by his usual brilliant style of
reasoning. If, he argued, the prizes offered by the universities in
the shape of honours and fellowships attract all the best ability of the
country to contest them, how much more will places with incomes of
thousands for hundreds at the universities, and dignities with which
none but the highest in this country can compete, tempt the flower of
English youth ? And so the change was made. The pleasant family
arrangement was put an end to. Haileybury disappeared. The com-
petition wallah came on the stage. In one point Lord Macaulay's
anticipations were not realised. The first rank of university men
were not tempted away from Alma Mater by the dazzle of oriental
wealth and grandeur. The competence which, at the least, such men
could reckon upon at home outweighed the promise of riches in the
torrid zone. But, with this exception, things happened exactly
according to expectation. Candidates eagerly came forward, and
great competition made a high standard attainable. Of the result,
as far as regards India, different opinions have been put forth. The
laudator temporis acti accuses the wallah of being no gentleman, of
not being able to ride, of being fussy and bumptious, but I do not
know that any fault has been found with his work. On the other
hand, officials of the old school who have had wallahs under them
have cordially acknowledged their ability and usefulness ; ' and it is
certain that the competition has put an end to a class of civilians
who used to be called ' Company's hard bargains.'

On the whole, it is not to be wondered at that the plan of selec-
tion for offices by competitive examination has been extended, as it
now has, to all branches of the public service. It has some very
powerful recommendations, the simplicity and ease of its application,

718 TUE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

the exemption it offers from the difficulties of patronage and the evils
of jobbery, the fairness with which it throws open the public service
to the whole country, and the wide area from which it is able to
select. With this strong list of advantages, the position of the ex-
amination system might well be supposed to be impregnable, and it
might be thought to savour of presumption even to hint at doubts of
its perfection ; but it must be remembered that the desideratum in
appointing to public offices is not primarily to extinguish nepotism
and jobbery, or to be fair to all classes, still less to make the selection
as easy as possible, but to get the best men for the services to be per-
formed. The real inquiry, then, is how far the examination system
accomplishes this, and this inquiry I shall venture to make.

There is a tacit assumption, and a very natural one, that the
numerical results obtained by marks are evidence of scientific accuracy.
Hence it is inferred that,, given a place to be filled up, you have only
to institute a competitive examination, and you will get, with the
certainty of Euclid, a list of candidates in exact order of fitness. No
one, perhaps, would seriously argue for absolute certainty, but I feel
sure that the idea of mathematical exactness does to an unsuspected
extent influence public opinion in the matter, whereas, in fact,
mathematical processes extend no farther than the correct adding up
of the marks and producing an exact total. That total is only the
summing up of a number of decisions, to no one of which can absolute
certainty be attributed. A stream cannot rise higher than its source
The aggregate judgment cannot be more reliable than the individual
judgments. Fifty worthless judgments cannot make up one sound
one, and yet, in the form of a numerical result, they may count as
one. In practice, so fnr from any given total of marks representing
absolute merit, I believe that no one who knows anything practically
about examinations will deny that, in a dozen different examinations
of the same candidates by the same examiners, and in the same sub-
jects, it is highly improbable that any two lists should give exactly
the same order. I think, therefore, that examinations are generally
taken for more than they are worth. They have their value, but it
obviously depends on the right interpretation and correct apprecia-
tion of their results. It ought to be clearly ascertained what their
province is, what qualifications they are capable of eliciting, what
are the sources of error to which they are liable, and what is the limit
of such errors.

An investigation of this kind would show the causes of many
disappointments occasioned by a blind reliance on examinations, and
which have sometimes induced an equally unfounded depreciation of
them. People meet a senior wrangler in society, wonder he is not a
brilliant talker, or a man of universal accomplishment, and straight-
way conclude that there is- nothing in being senior wrangler at all.
They might as well find fault with him for not being able to talk

1880. COMPETITIVE EXAMINATIONS. 719

Chinese. A high classman makes a bad schoolmaster or a bad man
of business, and people set down a university class as a sham. That
is simply because they are ignorant of what a university class repre-
sents. If I may venture to express my own opinion on a subject of
such extent and difficulty, I should say that the province of examina-
tions is restricted to testing knowledge, and the ready producing of
knowledge, that they have comparatively small means of eliciting
original ability, still less of appraising capacity of mind ; and no
means at all of ascertaining the balance of the mental powers or the
soundness of the judgment. Bacon says, in a well-known passage,
4 Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an
exact man.' I think examinations test all these qualifications with
regard to the subjects examined in. The man who succeeds in ex-
aminations has quickness in acquiring, memory for retaining, and
readiness in producing knowledge ; but he may be altogether deficient
in reflection, in grasp of mind, in judgment, in weight of character.
The man he outstrips may be one whose faculties are not so flexible,
and therefore will not take training so well, who thinks too much to
acquire knowledge rapidly, who refuses to accept other men's views
without verifying them for himself, who, when he has acquired know-
ledge, is awkward at producing it, and has none of the tact which
makes the most of what it possesses, and instinctively avoids exposure
of ignorance ; who, in fact, is too truthful and straightforward to
write what he is not sure of, and is above making random shots.
The first man has probably reached his highest point. The second
may have a long period of development before him. In that case,
the former is like a small vessel full, the latter like a large vessel
with much space still to be occupied. The examination test gives
only the amount, not the capacity. In such a case, after-life will
almost certainly reverse the verdict. It appears to me that the ex-
amination system tends to select minds acute rather than deep,
active rather than powerful, and the worst is that the heavier metal,
being generally more slow in development, is apt to be left in the
background. I believe that, under a competitive system, some of
our best Indian administrators not only might not, but could not,
have been selected.

. I bring, therefore, this very serious charge against the system ;
that, though it undoubtedly gives a high average of talent and
attainment, yet it has a direct tendency to exclude an important and
valuable class of minds — powerful, capacious, and capable of great
after- development .

Another charge is that it tends to exclude candidates who may
have special qualifications for the service required, but whose minds,
often on that very account, are not correspondingly developed in
other subjects of instruction. The very merits of such candidates
stand in their way. Again, an examination is quite incapable of

720 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

detecting a disqualification in other than the subjects with which it
deals. It is unable to report on temper, courage, energy, decision,
influence over others. It can only pronounce on the intellect, and,
as I have tried to show, by no means perfectly on that. It is quite a
possible case -that the rigid rule of marks may compel the rejection
of a man who is exactly what is wanted, in favour of one who has
neither aptitude nor moral fitness for the service required.

If I am right in what I have said, I have shown that competitive
examinations fail directly, to a serious extent, in the functions which
they are credited with fulfilling. I bring another charge against
them — that they have an indirect and very injurious effect on those
who come under their influence. I have already given an outline of
this evil, affecting both the mind of the student and the character of
his studies. The mind is improperly treated. Instead of being
trained by a course calculated to draw out and develop its powers, it is
charged with instruction designed for an immediate purpose. It is
as if you gave boys regular athletic training, such as is given to men
before a boat-race ; or a more exact analogy would-be that of fattening
animals for a show. You sacrifice the permanent condition for an
immediate object. And this is the case even when the instruction is
judiciously given. But there is every temptation to give it in-
judiciously. The object is to put into the mind as much as it will
hold for a time. Whether it holds all or any afterwards, does not
signify. But it is no more a good thing to put into the mind as
much as it can hold than to put into the body as much as it can eat.
Knowledge requires to be digested just as food does ; and the power
of digestion is limited. But with the prize of a competitive exami-
nation in view, both teacher and pupil are tempted to transgress this
limit. And the effect is analogous on the mind to what it is on the
body. The mental powers become impaired. The effect is not
obvious, because mental health is not tested at once by sensation like
bodily health ; but a result is apt to ensue which was thus enunciated
by an experienced Cambridge tutor. * If a man works ten hours a
day, when he has only the capacity to work eight, he will soon
require ten hours to do what he ought to do in eight.' And the
work done is affected as well as the mind. The knowledge acquired
is apt to be crude, ill-understood, retained mostly by force of
memory, and, in nine cases out of ten, regarded by its possessor with
disgust, like a burden borne with difficulty, which he only longs to lay
down. If he had original taste for the subjects of instruction, the
forcing system has destroyed it, and one of the happiest images
presented to his mind is that of making a bonfire of his books.
But the temptation to overdo study is by no means the worst to
which he and his teacher are exposed. The attempt to do too much,
if not wise, is honest ; but, with examination instead of education in
riew, the transition is easy to getting up only those parts of a
subject which are likely to pay, and leaving out the rest. This is

1880. COMPETITIVE EXAMINATIONS. 721

the first downward step — the first deviation from strict literary
honesty. 'Facilis descensus Averni.' First, the book marked by
the coach E (read) and 0 (omit), then speculation as to the
questions likely to be set, then getting up such questions just before
the examination, and, lastly, learning by heart answers to questions
in subjects unread. Such is the course from slight obliquity to gross
fraud, and the descent is so gradual that it is to be feared its lowest
stage is not uncommonly reached, and, what is worse, justified. The
honesty of it, however, is much the same as if, in a competition of
gardens, cultivators were to stick in flowers without roots, just before
the inspection, in the hope that the judges would not detect the
cheat.

The code of the examination system is too much like that which
is found in bad schools, where the authorities are regarded as natural
enemies, and everything considered fair against them. To give an
examiner an unduly favourable impression is considered not only
venial but meritorious — a feat to be proud of. Perhaps it might be
thought a little too strong to get up answers in subjects which had
not been studied at all, but to speculate so successfully on the idio-
syncrasies of an examiner as to make a much better show than if
another person had examined, is regarded as a great accomplishment.
A tutor who enables his pupils to do this is sure of a reputation. How-
ever, I pass by the moral aspect. My point is that the character of
the instruction is deteriorated. A subject got up to suit a particular
examiner is still worse than one got up for examination purposes
generally. The knowledge must be still more partial and ill-assorted.
And to work for a low aim degrades the intellect as much as working
for a high aim exalts it.

The above remarks apply to competitive examinations generally.
But there is another evil belonging to them as at present conducted,
and that is, the dislocation of the higher education of the country.
The old course was through the Public School to the University. The
University gave the standard towards which all tuition worked,
whether public or private. Now a different standard is set up for
the Army, the Navy, the Civil Service at home and in India. You
send your son to a public school, at great expense, and when you wish
him to compete for any of these appointments you find he is quite
unqualified, and that you have to send him to a special instructor at
still greater cost. The natural tendency is to induce parents to send
their sons to the special instructor from the first. Now the public-
school system may or may not be the best ; but, if it is set aside, it
ought to be on the merits of the case, not by a side wind, through
bringing in the interest of parents as an inducement. The public
school offers not instruction only, but training for the mind, the
character, and it may be added for the body also. It undertakes to
educate, in the full sense of the word. The majority of Englishmen
believe it does educate. The special instructor, not to use the odious

722 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

name * crammer,' does not undertake to educate, only to prepare for
certain examinations. In one well-known case, certainly, he disclaims
all moral charge of his pupils. In no case can the parent have the
kind of guarantee that he has in the known high character of a public
school. . Therefore, a system which takes away pupils from public
schools and consigns them to special instructors, substitutes particu-
lar teaching for education, and does this in opposition to all the
established ideas on the subject, without any new principle to justify
such a proceeding. It supersedes the whole existing machinery of
education by a new system which does not even attempt to cover the
whole ground, or even the most important part of it. If the competitive
system is to continue, it ought at least to be brought into harmony
with the educational system of the country, or that system ought to
be brought into harmony with it. The discrepancy between the two
is an intolerable evil. I remember an example of the same kind of
difficulty in elementary education. There was a national school near
one of our large dockyards, in which were appointments much sought
after, to which boys were admitted by competitive examination. For
a long time this caused the withdrawal of boys from the school, just
as they were beginning to get on, in order to be sent to crammers for
the dockyard examination. The school, consequently, never made
progress. It was enough to break the master's heart. He was not
daunted, however. He determined to compete with the crammers,
and succeeded so well that, in time, the appointments were all gained
by his boys. In this case it was obviously necessary for the school to
adapt itself to the examinations, but, in the case of higher education,
there could not be so simple a solution of the difficulty, as the whole
body of public schools and universities could hardly be expected to
bend to the judgment of the persons, however able, who are charged
with the competitive examinations. It would be strange, indeed,
however, if a conference of the best authorities could not lay down a
regular and uniform scheme of first-grade education. I know that
some of the;, public schools have what they call a ' modern side,' in
which the studies are arranged with a view to the various examina-
tions ; but, as far as I have seen, this department occupies an inferior
rank, and I cannot see that it has, in any degree, superseded special
instructors. If the examinations were of a professional character, it
might be impossible to dispense with special teaching, but they are
mainly on subjects of general education, professional teaching being
left to" be given after selection. There is no kind of reason, therefore,
why the public schools should not do all that is required.

This, however, would only mitigate the evils of the competitive
system, not remove them. There would still be the excessire and
unhealthy stimulus of the unripe intellect, the constant worry and
(excitement on the nerves, and, after all, the selection liable to serious
error. These are evils inherent in competition, and therefore it is in
competitive examinations mainly that they are found. They do not

1880. COMPETITIVE EXAMINATIONS. 723

belong at all to the same extent to examinations which are not com-
petitive, but are only tests of a certain standard of knowledge. The
object, then, is to get rid of the competitive element as far as possible.
It cannot be eliminated altogether, if selection is to be made by ex-
amination, because the number of candidates attaining a fixed stan-
dard is always likely to be greater than that of the vacancies for
which they apply, unless the standard is unreasonably and injuriously
high. It is to be feared that the office of selection, even from quali-
fied candidates, cannot be trusted to patronage, however closely
guarded, for in this bad world, private interests can never be kept in
due subordination to the public welfare.

But there is no reason why the competitive element should not be
reduced into a much smaller compass than it occupies at present,
keeping it entirely to the office of selection. Let a qualifying exam-
ination first determine all who have reached the required standard.
Then let there be a competition between the qualified candidates, not
in the same subjects over again, or in book knowledge at all, but in
some exercise which tests power and originality as well as readiness.
There are several tests one or more of which I should myself apply if
I wanted to make a selection for an important post : a paper of
mathematical problems, an abstract from memory of a narrative, a
viva voce translation of an easy passage of Latin or French, an original
essay on some subject suitable to the post in question. Other tests
would suggest themselves to experienced examiners. Such a mode
of proceeding would reduce competition to a minimum, and would
produce better results than those of the examinations now in use.

As to qualifying examinations, in order to take them completely
out of the hands of special trainers, I would extend the practice
already established for elementary schools, of standards fixed by
authority. This would, in fact, be filling up the interval between
the highest standard of the elementary school and the university
degree. A certain standard should be fixed as a qualification for
each office, and then the selection made by a competition such as I
have sketched out. The education of the country would imme-
diately fall into regular lines, and schools would adapt themselves to
the authorised requirements. We should not — nor do I wish we
should — arrive at the synchronism of the French Lycees, so that a
watch regulated to Greenwich time would at once indicate the
study in which at that moment all the higher youth of the country
was engaged, but we should gain tests by which parents would be
enabled to judge of their sons' educational progress — an advantage
the want of which is now sorely felt. We should have education a
steady process, instead of a fever. We should have the brains of the
rising generation judiciously cultivated, instead of being forced into
premature development and used up before the work of life begins.

A. R. GRANT.

724 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

THE PHILOSOPHY OF CONSERVATISM.

MODERN sociology is never weary of teaching us how like is the body
politic to the body of the individual ; it insists even that such like-
ness means a real sameness in character. With the truth of this last
doctrine we are not concerned here ; but whether or no it expresses a
literal fact, it points out, at all events, a very suggestive analogy.
Life is in each case a process of constant change. In each case, when
the body is healthy, this process is more or less an unconscious one ;
it calls attention to itself when its working is uneasy or hindered.
Then the head aches ; then the heart palpitates. Applying the same
metaphor to the England of this year, we may say that it has been
suffering from a fit of political palpitation. It has heard its heart
beating ; it has been fluttered, breathless, nervous, and has been
divided pretty equally between fear and hope. Such symptoms as
these need not of necessity portend any great crisis ; but they at least
suggest anxiety, even if they do not inspire it. They bring to the
surface some of the deepest questions as to society and civilisation —
on what basis they rest, and of what developments they are capable.
Unfortunately, however, the very circumstances that give these
questions their interest tend to hinder their being discussed fruit-
fully. In the heat of party warfare, when men are perforce busy with
details, they have little time to be mindful of what seem to be ab-
stract principles. It is true indeed that they have to make constant
appeals to these ; but they make them in haste, without leisure for
calm reflection, and the more eager they grow in their arguments, the
less clear they grow as to the final points they are arguing for.

Rarely, I think, has this been so clearly shown as it has in certain
quarters since the meeting of the present Parliament. All parties
perhaps have been to some degrees examples of it ; but there is one in
particular which has been so most conspicuously. The party I speak
of is that of the advanced Radicals. I am writing now in no sec-
tarian spirit, and I wish to say nothing that may seem offensive to any
one ; but, so far as the bare facts go that I am alluding to, the advanced
Radicals will be the last people to deny them. It is not only a matter
of notoriety with the public, it is a matter of pride with themselves,
that they have broached certain doctrines, proposed certain measures,

1880. THE PHILOSOPHY OF CONSERVATISM. 725

and tried to excite certain hopes in the people, which have seemed to
more moderate men to be little short of revolutionary, and not only
to threaten the present constitution of England, but also the struc-
ture of all human civilisation.

Such alarm as this may very likely be excessive, and that for two
reasons. In the first place, the proposals in question may be less wild
than they are supposed to be ; in the second place, they may be more
Impracticable. But in any case the alarms are real ; they are felt
by many people, and they have received loud public utterance. This
alone would make it worth our while to consider them ; but they have
another claim on our notice besides their inherent weightiness. If
they are not in themselves a very profitable consideration, they may
at least serve to force on us considerations that are profitable.
Because our house trembles, it need not be about to fall ; yet it may
be good that we are led by its trembling to examine what ground it
stands upon, what its structure is, what strains it will bear, and what
strains are at all likely to be put upon it. It is well sometimes to
dwell at length upon facts which in a common way we suppose that
we take for granted. There are circumstances in the lives of nations,
as in the lives of men, which suddenly give to platitudes all the sting of
truths ; and there are such circumstances in the life of England now.
They consist in the present fortunes of the advanced Eadical party.

The importance of that party I have no wish to exaggerate — a
thing very often and very easily done — but its importance is still
considerable, though not of the kind perhaps that its sanguine mem-
bers think. Locally it maybe scattered, numerically it maybe weak,
and intellectually it may not be wise ; but for all this it has acquired
a great prestige for itself, and to a certain extent it has caught the
popular ear. It has done this, too, in a somewhat singular way. It
has enlisted in its behalf a number of the vague superstitions which
have been gathering during the present century on the ground left
vacant by religion ; and these, though originating with those who
wished them true, are not without power over many who wish them
false. Embodying at first but the hopes of their ardent apostles, they
now embody the fears of many reluctant proselytes. The nature of
these superstitions is not very definite, but in a general way it is
familiar enough to all of us. It consists in a belief, more or less
hazy, that the process of social change is surely and irresistibly ad-
vancing us to some democratic consummation. It is being expressed
•constantly with the aid of certain wellborn antitheses, of which the
favourite perhaps is that of the few, and the many ; a day of sure
abasement being predicted for the former, and a day of exultation of
eome sort for the latter. And all this is being offered and accepted
as though it were a scientific statement and could be verified by
scientific methods. We hear of laws, of forces, and of tendencies,
working, like fate or nature, in the direction spoken of; and the
VOL. VIII.— No. 45. 3 D

726 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

prophets of the movement at once solace themselves, and seek to
dispirit their adversaries by presenting these forces as certain, inex-
orable, and irresistible. ' It will come,' they delight to say oracu-
larly ; or ( It may be delayed, but it cannot be prevented ; ' or, still
more impressively, ' Time is on our side.'

Now there are doubtless a number of facts in the present condition
of things which may seem to justify some such language as this,
and to warrant, as the case may be, our being inspired or frightened
by it. Doubtless too, apart from seeming, such language really d<x s
mean something. The important question is, what ? and how much ?
Things, we all know, are changing ; changing they always have been;
and we all know that they can never be kept stationary. What we
do not know is, if change in the democratic direction is more inevi-
table than in any other ; we do not know definitely what the democratic
ideal is ; we do not know the side results that would follow on our
near approach to it.

Questions like these may seem too vague and abstract to have any
immediate or any practical import ; but this is not so. They only
sound vague when they are being briefly stated. If we examine them
more closely, they resolve themselves into definite problems; and
these, though so far abstract that they deal with human nature in
general, not with the details of any special portion of history, have
yet an application instant and obvious to the present condition
of England and the events of the present year. My meaning in
another moment will be sufficiently unambiguous, as I shall begin with
mentioning some of the special events in question, and go on from
these to the general principles that are involved in them. But let me
first say a word or two as to what the relation is between the know-
ledge of such general principles and the practical skill and judg-
ment that deals with the concrete cases.

To men brought up amongst politics, and who approach them from
their practical side, there are few sights so ridiculous as the professor
turned politician. Carefully thought-out theories, and quick practical
sagacity, the insight that comes of thought, and the insight that
comes of action, are apt to seem to the common sense of many of us
not to be really each other's proper complements, but to be mutually
exclusive, and in a kind of bizarre contrast. To call a man a
theorist or an academic politician is, with many people, to call him
incapable or dangerous — to dismiss him as an imbecile, or to assail
him as an incendiary. And in this view of the matter there is a
certain amount of truth. For a successful politician two things are
needed — one a general knowledge of the human character and the
laws of human society ; the other a special knowledge of certain
times and places, and of the special characters of special bodies of men.
Now a certain amount of the general knowledge needed comes by
education, we might almost say by instinct, to all of us ; but prac-

1880. THE PHILOSOPHY OF CONSERVATISM. 727

tical sagacity, and a power to manage others, come only to few, and
that through a special training. Now it is precisely this training that
the academic politician lacks, and he is therefore at complete dis-
advantage when compared with practical men. For he at his best
does but excel the others in a knowledge which they too are to some
extent masters of, whereas they excel him in being masters of what
he is wanting in altogether. But though to generalise upon human
nature and politics, and to formulate the logic of common sense and
experience, does not fit a man, by itself, to become in his own person
a politician, it is none the less important that this common sense
should be organised. Political philosophy has the same relation to
politics that political economy has to business ; and there are crises
when the general truths of the thinker may have instant and incal-
culable effect on the conduct of men of action. The politicians who
assimilate them may themselves become thinkers, though the
thinkers who discovered them may not become politicians ; and it is
not too much to say of the England of the present moment that
there are certain general truths with regard to human nature and
civilisation which, if once fully recognised by politicians and the
public, would make each of our moderate parties better understand
the other, and prevent our extreme parties being listened to any
longer by any one.

Three special questions are at present before the public, and are
still matters of keen popular interest, which will at once lead us to the
general truths I speak of. The first of these questions is the relation
of landlord to tenant ; the second is the relation of the constituen-
cies to the members elected by them ; the third is the raison d'etre of
a class of hereditary legislators. With regard to all three opposite
sides have been taken; and with regard to all three we are still
hearing doctrines of the most radical if not of the most revolu-
tionary kind. The Irish Disturbance Bill still finds defenders, who,
even if they think that it was faulty in its details, are unable to
see that it was the least unsound in principle. The House of Lords,
though not practically threatened, is still audibly hissed and cackled
against ; and a new theory has been broached as to the House of
Commons, that its function is not to make laws for the people, but to
register and to formulate the laws that the people make.

I propose to take for a text the above three questions, and,
noting the various views that our rival parties hold [about them,
to inquire how these are related to general facts and principles,
what it is in the long run that each party is contending for, what
is the strength that each party relies upon, what part each plays in
the structure of society and civilisation.

The typical character of the questions must be at once apparent.
They are concrete examples of the oldest of social paradoxes — in-
equality of wealth, inequality of rank, and the obedience to the few

3D2

728 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

of the many ; and they are bringing them all before us in a distinct
and ' questionable shape.' In these three inequalities is the sum and
substance of all that modern Eadicalism is supposed to war against ;
and its call to arms seems at once just and irresistible. Why should
the many toil for and obey the few ? On what grounds is such an
arrangement defensible ? and why do the mass of men any longer
tolerate it? What the few have to defend is only the cause of selfish-
ness, and they have only weakness to defend it with. What the
many have to win is the welfare of all mankind, and it is surely self-
evident that they have enough strength for winning it. Such argu-
ments are old and obvious. They stare us in the face each time we
look at society ; they have been stated on every side of us, and in
every kind of way — in prose and in verse, and with every degree of

emphasis.

Men of England, wherefore plough
For the lords who lay you low ?
Wherefore weave with toil and care
The rich robes your tyrants wear ?

Wherefore, bees of England, forge
Many a weapon, chain, and scourge,
That these stingless drones may spoil
The forced produce of your toil ?

The seed ye sow another reaps ;
The wealth ye find another keeps ;
The robes ye weave another wears ;
The arms ye forge another bears.

In these lines of Shelley we have the whole case before us. We
have an eloquent epitome of the whole appeal of Kadicalism. And
yet, obvious and moving as it may well seem to be, it is still not
responded to in any effective way.

This inevitably leads us to certain further considerations. Since
the Radical cause has apparently so much strength and so much
reason on its side, and yet, in spite of this, is still baffled and power-
less, we cannot but suspect that the state of things assailed by it has
some secret fitness, if not some secret necessity, which our current
Radicalism has neither seen nor reckoned with. No moderate
man, indeed, can doubt that such is the case ; and to reaffirm it as a
generality would be nothing but a useless truism. What I am about to
attempt is something more than generalities. I propose to examine,
with what accuracy may be possible, the chief facts in the constitution
of human nature which cause inequalities apparently so unjust and so
precarious, or which insure their again appearing should they be for
a time obliterated. I propose to examine how far these inequalities
are permanent, and what depends upon their permanence ; and how
much of what men fear or value will be gained or lost by any possible
modifications of them.

1880. THE PHILOSOPHY OF CONSERVATISM. 729

First, then, it will be well to remember this — that whatever insti-
tutions exist at any given time, exist only because the national
strength supports them. Let them be never so unjust or unpopular,
this is still the truth. My meaning can be illustrated by a very near
example. It was said not long since by one of our Liberal news-
papers that the House of Lords existed only on sufferance. Now, if
the writer meant that the House of Lords was a cipher — that, except in
name, it had ceased to exist already — from his own point of view this
would doubtless be true enough. But the exact reverse was the case.
He was attacking the Lords because they used their authority, not
sneering at them because they had lost it ; and what he meant to
convey was, that in their present unpopular use of it they were borne
with only out of a species of good nature or apathy. The people, he
implied, could at any moment make them powerless, and were ready
at any moment to do so. The idea at the back of this language is a
very simple and a very striking one. It is the physical strength of
the millions of the people, and the physical weakness of the few hun-
dreds of the peerage. But this appeal in imagination to the physical
strength of numbers is altogether misleading, and leaves out of count
the most important part of the question. Such strength is only
strong in proportion as it is rightly organised, and in proportion as
circumstances sting men into making use of it. ' I could write,'
said Tom Hood, ' as fine plays as Shakespeare's, if I only had the mind ;
but the worst of it is, I never have the mind.' And precisely the same
thing may be said at any time of the people. They can always do
anything if they only have the mind to do it. But in that if is con-
tained all the difficulty. The fact is that they rarely have the mind,
and there are only rare circumstances under which they possibly can
have it. A certain amount of fierce excitement is necessary, and
such excitement cannot be produced at will. It needs for producing
it some strong external stimulus, such as want or insult, which can
never be self-applied. The physical strength of the individual, still
more the strength of the multitude, depends practically on a number
of alien causes. Strength, even in the individual, depends on
conditions that are not physical. It depends on the presence or the
absence of motive ; it depends on knowledge and on ignorance. Let
me be never so much stronger than another man, I cannot knock him
down unless he gives me sufficient reason for doing so. It is not
that I will not ; it is literally that I cannot. If I imagine ignorant ly
that by some great exertion on my part I can gain some great advan-
tage, my ignorance gives me a strength that would else be absolutely
wanting to me. If I imagine death is behind me, I become physically
more capable of running. A strong man may be ready to fight when
he is angry ; but if there is nothing to make him angry, he is as inca-
pable as a coward. Strength that is not available is strength that is non-
existent. In the case of the multitude this is still more apparent. To

730 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

make the multitude strong against existing institutions, we need,
boides motive, organisation and leadership; and to make these latter
possible, the motive must be of some given intensity. For a rebellion
or revolution, whichever we please to call it, the first requisite is univer-
sal discontent, and discontent of a given temperature. If it falls short
of that temperature, it will no more generate the force required than
water, though nearly boiling, will work a steam-engine. There is,
further, this great fact to remember. Such discontent cannot be had
for the asking. We must all know many men who are discontented
enough to be miserable, and to wish all their lives they could better
their own condition ; and yet, in spite of all this, they make no effort
to do so. They long for energy, but no energy comes to them.
They possess discontent, but they do not possess enough of it. And
the same is the case with the people. Their discontent must be
intensified by certain definite causes, and up to a certain point.

Now here is a subject which, though never yet treated scientifically,
is yet plainly capable of regular scientific treatment. What are those
causes which such discontent is excited by, and what are the laws
which regulate it ? We can only glance at the matter very briefly
here, but a few rough truths may be readily laid down about it.
Popular discontent is excited by two causes, and it can no more exist
without one or other of these than water can boil without a fire to
boil it. One of these causes is physical suffering, and the other is
imaginative ambition. We may observe further that between these
there is this great difference. The latter is more or less under the
control of rulers ; the former is not so. Physical suffering, when past
a certain point, gives the strength of despair or madness to those who
are the victims of it. We cannot so influence men that this shall
not be so. If a man is dying with thirst, he will rave for drink as a
wild beast does ; no education of ours can ever alter that. But, on
the other hand, though we cannot suppress this physical longing to
drink, we can prevent men who have beer from being wretched that it
is not champagne. Such wretchedness as this last is in no way
natural or necessary. Its source would be not the physical want
which we cannot modify, but the imaginative ambition which we can.
Let us presume then in a people so much of well-being, that their
natural wants and appetites are fairly satisfied — that life, if no great
pleasure, is at least no pain to them. Their strength in this case, as
against the existing order of things, depends altogether on their
imaginative ambition, and the various ways in which it is excited,
checked, or modified.

Now the laws by which this ambition acts are, within certain
limits, very easily ascertainable. Its operation is much the same in
the multitude as in the individual ; only in the former case the am-
bition needs to be stronger. Now every individual is more or less
ambitious ; it is one of the commonest of proverbs that no one is quite

1880. THE PHILOSOPHY OF CONSERVATISM. 731

content. But the ambition that makes discontent a really active
stimulus has certain strict limitations. It is limited to something
that is more or less near at hand, or that is at any rate thought to be
so. And it may be laid down as an axiom in the dynamics of human
action, that things desirable excite a working wish for them, not in
proportion to their desirableness, but in proportion to the ease with
which they seem attainable. Macbeth, at any time of his life, would
have liked to be a king if he could ; but his wish never moved him
to action till kingship seemed in his grasp. Most country gentle-
men would be pleased at being made peers ; but their way to getting
the honour must be more or less plain to them before the want of the
honour gives them the least uneasiness. Precisely the same thing
holds good of classes. Their ambition is limited to what seems to be
near at hand to them. It is no exception to the great law of nature :
it neither does nor can do anything per saltum. What thus far has
•excited our discontented workmen has been the wish to be better
paid labourers, not to be capitalists. What is exciting the classes
who are at present without the franchise is not the wish to legislate,
but the wish to vote for legislators. And in all like cases exactly the
same is true. Even in the wildest revolutions the changes aimed at
have been gradual : they have only come to be aimed at because they
have been, or seemed to have been, things not hard to accomplish.
Eemote hopes will no more excite masses than a remote magnet will
attract steel.

The power of discontent is thus strictly conditioned through the
existence of a power its exact opposite — the power of content. Con-
tent, as a power, is just as real as discontent. It is just as permanent
a factor in human nature and society. It belongs to each man just
as surely as does its opposite, and, let him do what he will, he cannot
escape its influence. It is the tendency of all men and of all bodies
of men to acquiesce in the larger part of the conditions they are born
and grow up under, so long as these conditions are at all physically
tolerable. Nor is this vast force of content really in opposition to the
force of discontent. It is its complement rather than its antithesis.
Both of them are equally needful for human welfare ; and in so far as
human welfare has advanced, the two have been fellow-workers, not
antagonists. Were we all entirely contented, society would be in a
lethargy ; were we all entirely discontented, it would be in a delirium.
Withoutcontenttherecould.be no order; without discontent there
could be no progress ; and not only would there be no progress, there
would be constant retrogression.

The existence, the well-being, and the upward growth of society
depend altogether on the proportion between these two forces. Now
this proportion is by no means constant; on the contrary, it is always
fluctuating, and is capable of all kinds of modifications. These modi-
fications depend upon two things — one is the instinctive common sense

732 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

of the masses ; the other is the influence of the few whom the masses
accept for leaders. The common sense in question is a restraint rather
than a stimulus. It rarely initiates movements ; its function is to
check or to modify them. What initiates movements is the insight
or the ambition of the leaders, and these leaders become powerful
in proportion as the ends they contemplate can be exhibited or dis-
guised in a form that shall seem desirable to the masses. The power of
all leaders, and of all rulers, is derived from the masses and the
masses only. This is no theoretical opinion ; this is no party symbol.
It is a simple fact, and it can be denied by no one. Everything is
literally ' broad-based upon the people's will.' Only there is this to
be added, which is too often forgotten — that the will of the people
is not free.

An illustration of this may be found at the present moment in
Ireland. There we see the working of both the above forces, and the
method of their working. We see content and discontent each
equally operative, and each assisting the other. We see the power of
content in the fact that the Irish peasant, let him be never so desperate,
is desperate for an ideal state that is in most respects like his real
one. He is content with squalor and with ignorance, and, within
limits, with poverty. He has no longing to be able to buy a palace.
All he wants is to pay no rent for his hovel. On the other hand, we
see the power of discontent in the fact that, small as in itself this
desire may seem to be, he is ready to risk his life for the sake of
gratifying it. Now such discontent is due to two causes, partly to
physical privation, partly to imaginative ambition ; and it is well to
note the parts that each of these two plays. The latter would pro-
bably be powerless without the former; but the former would be easily
manageable if it were not for the latter. Had the Irish peasantry
no real distresses to stimulate them, it would be hard for agitators to
excite them to any agrarian sedition ; but had their distress, on the
other hand, had no agitators to manipulate it, the discontent it has
given rise to would have lost more than half its persistency. Be it
for good or for bad, the political passion of the Irish is due, at the
present moment, partly indeed to the physical want of the many, but
far more to the advice and teaching of the few. It is only by this
latter agency that the natural murmurs caused by a temporary
calamity have been turned into a fierce demand for a certain per-
manent change. Such a change is what the people have come to
ivill ; but they would not have willed it except under certain con-
ditions, of which a large part is determined not by themselves, but
by their leaders.

The process by which the popular will is thus directed to change
is the same in all cases. It consists in presenting the change as a
picture that shall excite the popular imagination ; and the picture, to
do this, must have two characteristics of which I have already spokea.

1880. THE PHILOSOPHY OF CONSERVATISM. 733

It must be in itself desirable, and it must be, or it must seem to be,
near and easy to realise.

Now, just as the people are contented because their imagination
is controlled by their instinctive reason, so their reason, when they
are discontented, is controlled by their imagination. Let them once be
excited by some vivid ideal, let some improved condition once seem
really near to them, and their critical common sense for the time
being leaves them. Thus with the leaders of all great popular move-
ments there rests an enormous and very special responsibility.
Changes that to the imagination seem easy to accomplish, and if
accomplished full of nothing but benefits, may be seen by reason to be
the exact reverse of this — to be impossible to finish and ruinous to
attempt. We may indeed say something much stronger than this.
It may be laid down as a universal truth in politics, that social
changes are impracticable in proportion as the imagination finds
them complete and satisfactory. Failure after failure has warned us
how hopeless it is to realise any Utopia. Attempt after attempt has
been made, and each has ended in sad or absurd failure. The reason
of all this lies deep in the nature of things. It lies in the fact that
the most obvious imperfections in all human societies, or, to speak
more truly, in all human society, are imperfections inherent naturally
in the whole social structure. They are like a number of props or
pillars in a large ball-room, which evidently spoil the dancing, but
which, if taken away, will let down the ceiling. The first duty, then,
of the progressive politician is to distinguish, in the social fabric,
between the defects that are an essential part of its structure and the
defects that are not, and, however great in themselves the former may
seem to be, to forbear exciting in the people any hopes of their
removal. To make this distinction is certainly a very difficult thing ;
and, with the best intentions, men are continually mistaken about it,
going too far either one way or the other. We have in this difficulty
the logical justification of party government. The required judgment
which it is so hard for one set of men to arrive at, is obtained, with a
rough accuracy, from the antagonistic judgments of two. The
function of the Conservatives is to guard the necessary imperfections
in the social structure, the function of the Liberals to attack the
curable imperfections. The former have to check the ardour of the
latter ; the latter has to conquer the jealousy of the former.

But besides these two parties there is yet a third, which we in
England now call the Eadical. What is the logical function of this,
and in what relation does it stand to the others ? The word Kadical-
ism is used commonly to denote a sort of ardent Liberalism, or else as
an offensive synonym for Liberalism of any sort. It is not seen generally
that between the two there is any essential difference — a difference
not in degree, but in kind and principle. Such, however, is most
emphatically the case. Whereas the logical function of Liberalism is

734 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

to improve society, the logical function of Radicalism is to destroy it.
Both parties equally aim at imperfections ; but whereas Liberalism
aims only at removing rubbish and lumber, Radicalism puts its crowbar
to props and pillars as well.

It may be said perhaps that this use of the word Radical is an
entirely arbitrary one. But it is not so, and for this reason. The
Radical party in England is distinguished by certain marks — by its
inculcation of certain principles and its advocacy of certain measures :
and these have all of them one common tendency — the tendency just
described. They tend not to ameliorate but to destroy society.

We have had lately one of the clearest illustrations that were ever
given of where Liberalism ends and Radicalism begins, and how
easy it is, through ignorance or trepidation, to be hurried over the
Rubicon that divides the two. I refer to the Irish Disturbance Bill
of the present Government. The present Government, with all
honesty of intention, is a strictly Liberal, and in no way a Radical
one ; and yet the measure in question, though not designed to be so,
was one of the most radical that it is possible to imagine. This,
however, though discerned by many, was not by any means self-evident
upon the surface ; on the contrary, a staunch Conservative might quite
conceivably have found much to say for it. Let us briefly consider
it, and the difficulty it was designed to meet. Property in land is of
all questions the one in which the imperfections necessary to all human
civilisation become most apparently imperfect and least apparently
necessary. Let us suppose the case of a poor family who have
occupied a farm for generations, held of an absentee landlord. Their
cottage, the hills and fields about them, cannot but seem in a very
deep sense their property. The cottage is the work of their own
hands ; it is their industry that has made the fields fertile ; and the
whole spot is, by countless memories, made a part of their very lives.
The fact that they occupy this at the pleasure of another — that
another can tear them, if he pleases, from what is almost one half of
themselves — seems, at first sight, to be monstrous even in theory. The
fact that he actually will do this, if, through no fault of their own,
they are unable to pay their rent, seems more monstrous still. Rent,
under such circumstances, comes to seem an extortion — an evil easily
remediable, and one that ought instantly to be remedied. This is how
the case appears to the eye of the imagination. The landlord
assumes the aspect of an oppressor. He is the chief, as Shelley says in
the lines before quoted,

Of those stingless drones that spoil
The forced produce of your toil ;

and any measure that stops short of the abolition of rent altogether
may well seem moderate — we might almost say conservative.

But if we turn from imagination, and examine the case by reason,

1880. THE PHILOSOPHY OF CONSERVATISM. 735

its entire aspect changes. It is true, indeed, that nothing can
change our view of the piteousness of the lot of the poor peasant
who, through the badness of the seasons, or even through his own im-
providence, is unable to pay his rent, and is therefore driven homeless
from his home. But we shall see that his misfortune is in no way to
be laid at the landlord's door, and that, if the latter does anything to
avert or to relieve it, his act is one of generosity, not of justice ; it is
an act we may expect of the man, not one that we can demand of
the landlord. We shall see that the misfortune of the impoverished
tenant does not differ essentially from any other misfortune — does
not differ from those that are caused by pestilences, or shipwreck, or
any unforeseen a"nd impersonal visitation ; and that to require the
landlord, more than the rest of the community, to relieve it, is as
unjust as to require a seaside village to make good the loss to the
owners of the vessels wrecked upon its coast.

If we turn from a rural to a town tenantry, we can see this more
clearly, and also if we turn from a poor tenant to a rich one ; yet it
will be plain that in matter of principle all cases are the same. I
am the owner, let us suppose, of a large house in London. For
various reasons I cannot live in London myself, and I let my house
to a rich merchant. Some remote and sudden calamity — some storm
or earthquake, say, in the West Indies — destroys a large part of this
merchant's property, and his income is reduced to a tithe of what it
was. It is plainly not to be expected that if my tenant becomes too
poor to continue his tenancy, I am bound out of my own purse to
make him again rich enough to do so. Or let me suppose myself the
owner, not of one house, but a street, which I let to any occupants who
will pay me the rent I ask them. My tenants, we will say, are a
hundred skilled workmen, all in the employment of some one capi-
talist. The whole hundred go for a day's holiday down the Thames
on a steamer. The steamer founders, all the men are drowned, and
their families are left without any means of livelihood. Now that
all these families should be turned out of house and home seems
doubtless a cruel thing ; but the cruelty, were they so turned out,
would not lie with me. It would lie partly with nature — with the
events, probably quite impersonal, which caused the steamer's founder-
ing ; and still more with the people, who might, but who would
not, neutralise this cruelty. But who would these people be ? I
should be amongst them doubtless ; but I should be only one amongst
many. They would comprise the whole general public ; and the
sufferers would be objects of assistance, not because calamity in any
way cancelled their debt to me, but because in spite of their calamity
they were still my debtors. Suppose the people are starving. The
right way to relieve them is not to force the bakers to give them
bread gratis, but to raise a subscription that shall enable them to
buy bread. So too, in the case of rent, what we should aim at is to

730 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

enable the impoverished to pay it, not to assist them in any way to
avoid paying it. Debt for the occupation of land differs in no
essential point from debt of other kinds — from debt for food or
clothing. It differs only in the fact that its real nature is more liable to
be mistaken. It is not only easier for the imagination to misrepresent
it, but the imagination, in certain cases, almost inevitably tends to
do so. Nor is it only the imagination that does this. Reason, by
only a very slight confusion, will do the same thing. The value of
land depends of course on its productiveness, and its productiveness
depends largely on certain conditions of climate. Now, should change
of climate permanently lessen this productiveness, rent, as a matter of
necessity, must eventually be lessened also. -Such' a change, however,
would involve no new principle ; its amount and its necessity could
only be determined by the price that the land would fetch in open
auction, and the same law that might at one time make this fall
would at another force it to rise. Such fluctuations as these would
alter in no degree the percentage on the land's value that the tenant
was to pay. His position, as regards his landlord, would not be even
modified. But the above simple and obvious fact may easily be
taken to support an altogether false theory. The fact that rent
must fall as the value of land falls, so that the percentage paid upon
it may always remain the same, is distorted into the precisely opposite
view, that as the value falls the percentage in question must not be
the same, but diminish, and when once diminished must be never in-
creased again.

All these misconceptions with regard to land-tenure were apparent
in the memorable Disturbance Bill of the present Government. The
Bill was meant to be Liberal, and it was profoundly Radical. Instead
of taxing the public it would have been robbing a class. Instead of
raising money to buy bread, it would have been ordering the bakers to
supply bread gratis.

That the Government itself has any such intentions as this, no one
thinks for a moment. There are men, however, amongst the professed
friends of the Government, who have, and who would be glad to make
us believe that the Government has also. In many quarters out of
Parliament, and unfortunately not out of Parliament only, landlords
have been held up to odium merely because they are landlords ; the
possession of land has been treated as though it were a thing in itself
criminal like the possession of slaves ; and strong endeavours have
been made to excite the popular passion against it.

These endeavours are quite important enough to demand careful
attention. Here indeed it is impossible to do more than glance at
them ; but we can examine briefly the chief arguments they are
supported by, and see what these imply, and what is the end they
lead to. The idea, or rather the image, that all these arguments rest
upon, is one I have already indicated. It is that of the idle owner

1880. THE PHILOSOPHY OF CONSERVATISM. 737

of the soil being; supported, for no useful purpose, by the industrious
occupier ; and, as I have before admitted, it is easy to make out of
this a very pretty picture for the purpose of agitation. But let us
examine the matter more calmly. Let us ask first for the definition
of this wicked thing, a landlord. Certainly the agitators of the
present day do not mean by a landlord a man merely who owns land ;
for it seems one of the chief parts of their programme that the owners
of land shall be multiplied. To become owners is the ideal bait that
they are always holding out to the people. It seems then that to be
a landlord — that is, to own land wickedly — cannot be to own land
merely, but to own it without occupying it. But what then is the
meaning of occupation ? Does one only occupy land when one tills
the whole of it with one's own hands or with the hands of one's own
family ? Or is one allowed also to have hired labourers ? If so, where
will these labourers live ? Will each of them have a freehold of his
own ? It would seem so ; for if not, he must be the tenant of the
man he works for, or of some one else, and the ideal owner will be
turned into the wicked landlord. If we push to their logical outcome
the opinions on land which the Eadical school of to-day are trying to
make popular, to this favour they must come. The doctrines to which
they reduce themseves are indeed startling. They may be briefly
stated as follows. For all men who are not enemies of humanity, and
are not to be treated as criminals, two kinds of status are, in this
connection, allowable, and two only. A man may be either the free-
holder of a house without any land at all, or he may be the freeholder
of a house with as much land in addition to it as he shall farm him-
self. And these last words, ' as he shall farm, himself,' are to be
understood in the narrowest sense possible. Whatever may be the
details of the exact license allowed by them, they shut out, at all
events, every kind of arrangement by which an owner can free himself
from personal supervision of some rural industry. Let his land pro-
duce what it will, he must have some direct share himself in making
it productive. He may not pay another to do his work for him. Not
only may he let his land to no farmer ; he may not even employ any
kind of agent. The employment of an agent would place him in
the position of a landlord. Those who worked for him would
practically be his tenants ; and the profits of the land, less the
labourer's wages and the agent's salary, would be but our old enemy
rent, called by another name. Every proprietor, then, must belong
to some species of working farmer ; and this implies indirectly that
he must be a farmer of a very small kind. This limitation, indeed, is
not only implied, but is expressly stated, in the Eadical programme,
since no measure could be so bitterly opposed as the eviction by the
landlords of all the tenant farmers, and the resumption of all the land
into their own hands. The ultimate principles, then, of the modern
Radical school must, if that school is consistent, amount to this : that

738 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

the only inhabitants of a country which should be tolerated are working
farmers of the smallest possible kind ; and that for any one to rise above
this condition is a crime against society, and should be prevented
strictly by the laws. The ideal landowner of Radicalism is literally
adscriptus glebes. If he is unfit for rural labour, or is fit for some-
thing higher, he must let his land lie idle, or else part with it
altogether. Though it might suit him and might suit his neighbour
too, he must not let his neighbour rent it. Tom and Harry, we will
say, have two adjoining potato-patches. Tom has an accident which
will prevent his working for some years. Harry, on the contrary, is a
man of unusual strength. Harry wants to be allowed to dig Tom's
potato-patch on condition that he shall have one half of the produce,
giving Tom the other. By this arrangement they would both be
benefited ; but the law of Radicalism intervenes and forbids it. In
the eye of such law, Tom, instead of accommodating Harry, would be
injuring and oppressing him ; and Harry would be a party to the
crime in allowing himself to be oppressed. Tom would be turning
himself into a * stingless drone,' spoiling the forced produce of Harry's
toil. The old relation of landlord and tenant — the tyrannous land-
lord and the oppressed tenant — would be again introduced.

That any rational man really holds such views as these, or that
even the most discontented and seditious populace would see any-
thing in them very attractive, is indeed not to be expected. But if
the Radicals do not mean this, what is it that they do mean ? They
cannot mean, we see, that to own land and allow another to occupy
it is in all cases and of itself criminal. They must mean, then, that
it is only criminal when done on a certain scale, and what is really
wrong in our present system is not the existence of landlords, but the
existence of large landlords. But this position, whatever be its truth or
falsehood, is of a totally distinct kind from the one we have been just
considering, and the current Radical rhetoric is entirely inapplicable
to it. The size to which it might be desirable that landed estates
should be limited is an exceedingly complex question ; but let this
limit be fixed where it will, the apparent injustice that inheres in
the present system is in no way lessened. If a man finds it hard to
pay his rent, and is in danger of losing his house if he does not pay
it, his case is made no better by his being his landlord's only tenant.
The only difference is that where a landlord has many tenants, it is
easier to distort the situation, and to represent as a piece of oppres-
sion what is really in its essence a piece of simple justice. The
starving industrious tenant and the full-fed idle landlord do indeed
make a very effective contrast, and all our sympathies are enlisted by
it on behalf of the sufferer, whose sufferings seem plainly to be due
to the heartless cruelty of the other. But let us, instead of picturing
a rich landlord and a poor tenant, picture tenant and landlord as
both equally poor, and all this false contrast, all this unreal pathos,

1880. THE PHILOSOPHY OF CONSERVATISM. 739

ceases. The tenant, we then see, may be unfortunate, but he is cer-
tainly not oppressed, and the other's demand for rent is nothing but
a right and just one. And yet the tenant's case is no whit bettered.
It is no easier for him to pay five pounds to a pauper than to a plu-
tocrat, nor is it a less hardship to be driven out of one's house by
the one than by the other. And the peasant landlord who receives
rent for two acres is, in relation to his tenant, as much a * stingless
drone ' living by the toil of another as is the ducal landlord who
receives the rent of two hundred thousand, and would deserve as
much or as little to be called an enemy of the people. Reason and
common sense can make no distinction between the two cases.

Let us picture to ourselves another situation that is j ust analo-
gous— that of a poor curate and his tailor. If the tailor is but the
simple artist of the village, we shall see nothing to excite our feelings
in his pressing for the payment of his account. There will be no
tyranny, no injustice in that. But if, on the contrary, he is the fat,
vulgar, prosperous owner of some great town establishment, demand-
ing money from his pale careworn debtor, what a painful scene we
may conjure up to ourselves! Yet we can only maintain the tailor to
be not strictly in the right by maintaining that curates ought to be
clothed at the expense of tailors ; or, in other words, that if the vicar
pays the curate too little the tailor must increase this payment out of
his own pocket. Between the poor and the rich tailor it is plain
that there is here no difference, so far as their relation to the curate
goes. And the same is the case with poor and rich landlords. We
are not justified in defrauding a man of his due because he is fat, or
idle, or vulgar, or insolent, or proud, or prosperous. Whatever may
be his relations to others, or whatever may be his own character, that
makes no difference to us. If I hire a piece of land for a given sum
from him, I am not licensed to break my contract because a number
of other people have made a like contract with him, or because he
has a fine house in London, and prefers a town life to a country one.
I am not licensed to rob him because his manners are more polished
than mine, nor am I freed from every obligation of an honest man
or a citizen because he keeps a French cook and I live upon
porridge.

Let us only consider the question carefully and dispassionately,
and it will become more and more clear to us how misleading a thing
in politics the imagination may be, and how utterly opposed to every
dictate of reason. And it is to the political imagination, not to the
political reason, that the -Radical school among us are now busy
appealing. Well indeed in philosophy has the imagination been
called ' that false and froward faculty ; ' but it may with even greater
propriety be so called in politics. Like fire, it may be a good ser-
vant, though it is a bad master ; and at times it may be well for the
masses that their leaders should stimulate it. But it should be
stimulated only with the utmost care and caution, or any moment it

740 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

may play us false. It is as cunning and as full of shifts as Satan.
It can make truths seem lies ; it can make justice look like tyranny ;
it can make robbery look like justice. And these are the tricks that,
if not watched incessantly, it is sure to play us. If watched, it will
show us the path of progress ; but if not watched, it will lead us to
destruction. There is one constant sorcery which it is always ready to
practise on us — that of making the impossible seem possible. It is
always ready to mock us with the mirage of a land of promise, so fair
that by comparison our present home seems a wilderness, but which,
when we approach it, is found to conceal a wilderness so hideous that
by comparison our present home will seem a Paradise.

The land question, as I have said already, is the easiest of all
questions for the imagination to thus manipulate ; but if we once
allow it to guide us there, it will by no means let go its hold on us.
The attack on landlords as a class of unjust proprietors is, as we have
seen, to the eye of reason nothing more or less than an attack upon
all property, or at least upon all property beyond a certain magni-
tude. This fact the political imagination at first conceals from us ;
but what is at first a concealed implication may very soon be turned
by it into an explicit doctrine. Indeed, as a fact, we see this to be
the case about us. The Radicalism that begins with land does go on
to attack all property, or at least all those gradations of property by
which society is made to have a base and a summit, with the many
poor below and the rich few above. And a striking piece of injustice
this certainly seems to be, and a fit thing for all friends of mankind
to war against. It will be impossible to avoid such a view if the
political imagination is to be the thing that guides us. But let us
seek counsel of the cold critical reason, and our state of mind will
suffer a very singular change. Much of what the imagination tells
us, reason will admit fully. It will allow to the full that the present
structure of society is not ideally perfect ; it may perhaps admit even
that, in all its essential points, it is the very opposite of perfection —
that it is the embodied negation of all the imagination asks for. But
reason does not stop here. Admitting that what is is bad, it goes on
to inquire how far this can be bettered ; and it discerns that, so far
as the deeper imperfections go, no alteration is possible, and that
the ideal societies, by which the imagination condemns the actual, are
impracticable and delusive in exact proportion as their deeper imper-
fections disappear from them.

This is not evident on the surface; it takes some trouble to
discern it, and, when once discerned, it may be very easily forgotten.
But this is no more than saying that the structure of society is to be
understood only by cool thought and reason, not by the imagination.
The great underlying social truths appeal as little to the feelings, or
can be as little unravelled by them, as a problem of Euclid ; and they
are as little self-evident as other complex problems.

1880. THE PHILOSOPHY OF CONSERVATISM. 741

Let us now consider this question of property and its inequali-
ties, and the part played by inequality in the building of the social
structure, or, if we like better to say so, in the life of the social or-
ganism. The chief materials for the inquiry are not far to seek.
In the first place, there is one broad fact written in monster charac-
ters across the races that make up mankind, and written with equal
clearness both in past and present ; and that fact is, that, up to the
present moment, equality in property has meant the same thing as
savagery, and that inequality in property has always coexisted witli
what we mean by civilisation. It has always, that is, coexisted with
every kind of progress — with progress in the arts, with progress in
the sciences, with progress in the conquest by mind of matter.
Every heritage of thought, or beauty, or legal wisdom, that has come
down to us from the past, has come down to us from societies built up
by inequality, and divided into rich and poor, privileged and unpri-
vileged. There is not one of the great civilisations of the past but
tells with a solemn plainness this hard truth. Babylon and Egypt,
Athens and Rome, and modern Europe through all its changes, are
all unanimous and unequivocal in their witness. All this can be
denied by nobody ; but how is the fact treated by modern Radical-
ism ? Admitting that hitherto inequality and civilisation have gone
togther, modern Radicalism teaches that their connection is acci-
dental, not necessary ; and its dream for the future is to unite what
have hitherto seemed incompatible, the amenities of progressive
civilisation with the equalities of stagnant savagery.

Now this union I conceive to be demonstrably impossible ; and
though the science of human action can never be properly an exact
science, I conceive that it can be made quite exact enough to prove
the truth of this. The general outline of the argument will be as
follows. All material and all intellectual progress have been only
possible through the agency of the few. I do not say that the
few have been the authors of progress, but that they have been
the necessary agents of it. The most exceptional genius that has
ever lived may perhaps have been the creature of his age, only made
possible by the exact conditions surrounding him. But though he is
in the first case the creature of his surroundings, he becomes in his
turn the modifier or the creator of them also. He is the means by
which the age reacts upon itself, and in one way or another transmutes
its own character ; and if it is true to say that the masses really
make the character of their leaders, it is equally true to say that the
leaders make the character of the masses. Granting then the neces-
sity for progress of individual leadership, let us inquire by what
motives individuals are stimulated to lead. These motives I believe
to be quite capable of scientific treatment. I believe that perAfectly
safe generalisations may be made about them — so safe, indeed, that,
in their most general form, they will seem but a single truism. The

VOL. VIII.— No. 45. 3 E

742 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

first, then, and the chief motive — the only motive that may be
always counted on — by which any one man is moved to lead or direct
others, is the desire that in some way or other he may signalise him-
self— in other words, that he may acquire a special and unequal
share of some kind of property. I use the word property here in a
wider sense than usual, meaning by it not only material possessions,
but power and consideration also. Power and consideration, however,
are almost always associated with material possessions — with property,
that is, in the common sense of the word ; and the exceptions to this
rule are so few, and of such a nature, that material property may be
said, in a general way, to be the measure and the symbol of property
altogether. Almost the only cases l where ambition does not imply an
increase of material wealth are cases where the material wealth is
exceptionally great to start with, so that its presence even here is
really as much required as elsewhere. It may be laid down, therefore,
that all human action that tends to progress and civilisation is pri-
marily motived by one desire — the desire to acquire property ; and
conversely, that without this desire, and without the means of grati-
fying it, no progress of any kind is possible. Poverty and riches,
obscurity and dignity, are, in other words, the positive and negative
poles of all social energy ; and from one to the other of these the
currents of action flow. There is one great example that will show
us the truth of this — I mean commerce. In the case of commerce
the truth of what has just been said is self-evident ; and commerce is
in this respect the image of all progressive, of all civilising activi-
ties. It is the image of invention, and of manufacture and the
practical application of science. Progress in all these branches
would have been impossible — if we only saw the matter completely,
it would have been unthinkable — without the desire in individuals
to acquire property, and without the certain prospect before them of
being able to do so.

In so far, then, as the Radical scheme tends to equalise property,
it tends^to paralyse civilisation in the very act of diffusing it, and to
debase the coin in the very act of distributing it. But it has a far
deeper defect in it than this. Let the ideal state it aims at have
never so many things to recommend it, it contains in itself the ele-
ments of its own dissolution. For not only is the constant struggle

1 It is true that there is a small class of philosophers, of men of letters, and of men
of science, to whom this seems not to apply. Their labours seem to be motived princi-
pally^by taste or by curiosity. But about this class of men there are several facts to
be noticed. In the first place, it is a small class ; secondlj-, ambition of some sort
lias neverjjeen really wanting to it. Let a great thinker or discoverer be never so
disinterested, he will feel himself neglected if the rewards, to which he seems in-
different, are not given him. And lastly the class in question is composed of men
who are agents in progress indirectly only. They may discover truths, but they do
not apply them. They give others the means of leading men, but they do not lead
men themselves.

1880. THE PHILOSOPHY OF CONSERVATISM. 743

and ambition of the individual needed to advance civilisation ; it is
needed also if we would keep civilisation from retrograding.

Sic omnia fatis

In pejus mere, ac retro sublapsa reforri :
Non aliter quam qui adverse vix flumine lemoum
Hemigiis subigit, si brachia forte remisit,
Atque ilium in prseceps prono rapit alveus amni.

This surely is patent upon the very face of things. To preserve our
material civilisation even in its present state, there is a vast amount of
skill and knowledge requisite, which men will only take the, trouble
to master for the sake of some adequate reward, and which, in the
absence of any incentive to master it, might readily become lost to
mankind altogether. But this is not all. If it is thus evident that there
must be a minority to direct labour, it is still more evident that there
must be labour to direct. There must be the delicate labour of the
skilled operative ; there must be the brute labour of the born and bred
toiler. It is only through such agencies that railways, telegraphs,
steamers, the diffusion of knowledge through printing, and the acquire-
ment of knowledge through travel, can be still preserved among us; and
all these agencies are extinguished by equality. Equality, then, can
mean nothing more than ruin. It can mean no process of levelling up —
no levelling up to the higher conditions, no levelling up even to the
middle ones, but a general levelling down to a level below the lowest.
Presently, too, it would be seen to mean something beyond this. It is
conceivable that, through the appliances of civilisation, the people
might unite so as to destroy civilisation ; but they would be parting
with their strength in the very act of using it. The appliances
through which they could unite, either physically or in sentiment, are
appliances that would go to ruin if they ceased to labour to maintain
them ; and with the falling to pieces of this vast material tissue, the
proletariate would be once more disunited, once more broken into
fragments, torn asunder by local ignorance and by local interest, and
would consequently once more fall under the dominion of the stronger
few. Inequality would be seen to be a Phoenix, which not only, if it
died, would die amidst flame and ashes, but which out of those very
ashes would be sure to redevelope itself.

These facts and arguments can only be briefly stated here, or
rather they can be indicated only, not stated at all. What I have
said, however, will be enough to suggest my meaning, if not to de-
scribe it — to illustrate that great distinction that I most wish to
insist on between the political imagination and the political reason,
and to show how the former, if not controlled by the latter, must in-
evitably lead to destruction and not to progress. It remains, however,
to apply my observations to two more inequalities besides that and
property — those, namely, of rank and of political power. These two
inequalities differ from that of property, not in being less necessary to

SE 2

744 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

the structure of civilisation, but in being less uniform in the shape
they take ; they are not indeed altogether the same in any two countries.
The principle, however, that is involved in them, and the needs they
meet, are the same everywhere ; and though in their various forms
they may be national, in their raison d'etre they are human. The
only forms of them I am now concerned with are those assumed by
them in our own country, and the underlying principles are in this case
more plain perhaps and better embodied than in any other. I refer
to the powers and the position of the two Houses of Parliament, and
to the attacks which our current Radicalism is at this moment making
on them.

Let me speak of the House of Lords first. In this House we
have embodied a principle which is of all the most repugnant to the
untutored political imagination. Nothing certainly can at first sight
seem at once more unjust and more irrational than that great legislative
powers should be vested in a body of men who are not required as
individuals to have one special talent for government or legislation.
This apparent anomaly is so great and so striking that there is no
need for me here to dwell at length upon it. But let us apply
reason to this question, and it will soon appear that this apparent
anomaly is but the visible embodiment of a law and a necessity
that is as old as human nature itself. We have seen already that
the desire of acquiring property is the one universal stimulus to all
progressive action ; and that, in the case of material progress, the
property in question is nearly always material. In politics, however,
this need not be the case. It is notorious that the stimulus here
may be of two kinds — it may be either power and consideration, or
else it may be material fortune. Now these two kinds of stimulus
have, from the popular stand-point, two very different tendencies.
In so far as a politician is stimulated by the desire of making a
fortune, the public can have no security that he will consider the
public welfare ; but in so far as he aims at power and consideration,
they have such a security of the very strongest kind. The army-
contractor who wishes to make money out of a war may supply bad
provisions to even his own country ; but the general who wishes to
become famous by a war will do all he can to make his soldiery
efficient. The ideal politician, then, would be a man incapable of
being seduced by ambitions of the lower kind. Human nature, how-
ever, being what it is, there is but one way by which a man becomes
thus incapable, and that is by having such ambitions more or less
gratified to start with. Now a class to whom power, wealth, and
consideration come by birth, and without any exertion of its own, is
a class that supplies us with a type of man like this. It can of course
only do so imperfectly ; nor will any one maintain literally that the
average English peer is a man insensible to the lower forms of
ambition. But take the English peers as a class, and it may be

1880. THE PHILOSOPHY OF CONSERVATISM. 745

said without exaggeration that there not only is not in England, but
that we cannot conceive there being, any body of men, so necessarily
and so permanently exempt, in all their public action, from any
temptations to dishonourable and fraudulent conduct. And that
this exemption is due not to their personal characters, but to their
position, is what gives the peerage its chief political value. For on
personal character by itself we cannot count, but on position we can ;
and personal character, through all its uncertain variations, is modified
by position in a certain calculable way. Politically, therefore, the
right way to regard the peerage is not to regard it as a number of
individuals who by the accident of birth are invested with arbitrary
privileges, but to regard it as a permanent force and principle — as
hereditary prudence, hereditary honesty, and, despite much that
might doubtless be said to the contrary, as hereditary ambition of
the most useful and the most disinterested kind. The very fact
then about the peerage, which to the Eadical imagination is an
anomaly and an injustice, is a fact that by reason and by prudence is
seen to be in the fullest accordance at once with justice and with
wisdom.

And now finally let us glance at another Eadical doctrine, which
has startled us this year, with regard to the House of Commons. It
has been asserted, as I have before noticed, that the function of this
House is not to make laws for the people, but to register the laws
that the people make. No doctrine certainly could seem more
flattering to the masses, or more likely to stimulate them in their
attempts to control Parliament ; and no doctrine to the imagination
could seem more just and satisfactory. But here again is the
same story. Let reason step in, and the froward imagination is at
once abashed and rebuked by it, and what at first seemed calm and
noble wisdom is revealed in its true form as malignant madness. The
very aim and essence of all government is to free the people from
themselves, not to enslave them to themselves, or, if we prefer to put
it in this way, to make the wiser part of themselves control the less
wise. The people, as controlling Parliament, represent not the
national will, but the national passions and the national temper ; and
Parliament really fulfils its true function in proportion as it modifies
or gives pause to these, not in proportion as from session to session it
yields to them. Modern Radicalism, in regard to this matter, as in
regard to others, is an appeal to the political imagination of the
many, in defiance of what might be developed into the political reason
of all.

What then is the genesis of modern Eadicalism ? The people as
a mass are evidently not responsible for it, though the masses supply
the material in which it works. Those who are responsible for it are
those individuals, or those cliques of men, who, rising from the
masses, or at all events appealing to them, manipulate or arouse

746 THE S1SETEENTH CENTURY. November

discontent into certain dangerous forms. The question follows,
why do such men act thus ? And the answers to this question will
be various. It cannot be denied that there is such a thing as the
malignant democrat, who, having full sagacity to see, or at least to
suspect, that the measures he proposes maybe either ruinous or delusive,
is yet prepared to do and dare anything by which he personally may
contrive to raise himself ; and again there are others who, in appealing
to the people, have the faith, that comes of ignorance, in all kinds of
impossible reformations. Again there are others of more sober kind,
and perhaps in more responsible situations, who become accidental
Radicals on this or on that occasion, though not seeing fully the true
nature and consequences of this or of that line of action. Of these
last I need not speak here. All I need here speak of are not the acci-
dental, but the systematic Radicals ; and with regard to these there are
two cautions to be given, one of which may be supposed to be addressed
to the people, the other to themselves. To the people I would say,
when any of their more vehement champions address them : * Consider
this man's character, his birth, his history, and his motives. Use
your own shrewdness to see if, when he is preaching equality to you,
he is not secretly desirous of rising himself ; and if your shrewdness
leads you to suspect this, then suspect every word he utters to you,
every doctrine he formulates.' Whilst to such Radical leaders them-
selves I should say : ' Your wish to rise is no crime : it may be used
so as to become a virtue : but in trying to gain power by exciting
the popular imagination you are playing with edge-tools ; and if
you dare to excite it without most careful and dispassionate con-
sideration of the means employed by you — if you suffer your views to
be distorted by vulgar envy of those above you, and disguise your
own desire to be in a higher place than you are in the anarchic doc-
trine that there should be no high places at all — then you merit every
epithet of contempt, of hatred, and condemnation, both from the
people whom you are trying to lead, and the rulers against whom
you are trying to lead them. Some of you,' I should say, ' are fond of
declaring that Parliament, as the voice of the nation, is in all political
matters omnipotent and irresponsible, and that no form of property
is held but at its will. It might, for instance, you say, expropriate
the landlords, and redistribute their land. And it is conceivable
that it might do this, and much more than this. But though it
made laws and unmade them, it would still be not omnipotent.
There would all the time be a greater law-giver than it, whose laws it
might indeed break, but not long with impunity. That law-giver is
human nature itself, and its laws are those by which all human civi-
lisation is compelled to construct itself — the laws of property, of
inequality, and of obedience. These laws, it is true, may seem hard ;
but under some of her aspects is not Nature hard everywhere, and is not
she more hard on us the more we disregard her ? And this social law

1880. THE PHILOSOPHY OF CONSERVATISM. 747

of hers is indeed a stone which, if it fall on us, will grind us all to
powder. It may seem doubtless that at present progress is setting
in the direction you dream of — that one by one the hard laws are
being eluded and replaced by others. But what you call progress is
really something quite different. It is not progress, but dissolution.
Our civilisation is not the first that the world has known ; in some
ways it is not the greatest ; and there is no reason whatever to suppose
that it is exceptionally stable. If it has stronger forces to defend it,
it has also stronger forces to menace it — forces which are at present
quite manageable, but which the delusive teaching of Eadicalism
might in time rouse to fury, and might at any moment render mis-
chievous. The Radical politician cannot be too strongly reminded
that there are two prospects open to men — advance and retrogression ;
and that the latter is as possible as the former has been taught us
terribly many times by history. It will be well for him if he re-
member that the surest retrogressions are attempts at impossible
progress ; and that, if ever he be inclined to doubt this, he remember
the sober warning of Sainte-Beuve : " Rien de plus prompt a baisser
que la civilisation dans les crises comme celle-ci : on perd en trois
semaines le resultat de plusieurs siecles. ... La sauvagerie est
toujours la a deux pas, et des qu'on lache pied, elle recommence." '

W. H. MALLOCK.

748

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

November

FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL.

IV.

I FEAR the editor of the Nineteenth Centin~y will get little thanks
from his readers for allowing so much space in closely successive
numbers to my talk of old-fashioned men and things. I have never-
theless asked his indulgence, this time, for a note or two concerning
yet older fashions, in order to bring into sharper clearness the leading
outlines of literary fact, which I ventured only in my last paper to
secure in silhouette, obscurely asserting itself against the limelight
of recent moral creed, and fiction manufacture.

The Bishop of Manchester, on the occasion of the great Words-
worthian movement in that city for the enlargement, adornment, and
sale of Thirlmere, observed, in his advocacy of these operations, that
very few people, he supposed, had ever seen Thirlmere. His Lord-
ship might have supposed, with greater felicity, that very few people
had ever read Wordsworth. My own experience in that matter is
that the amiable persons who call themselves ' Wordsworthian ' have
read — usually a long time ago — ' Lucy Gray,' ' The April Mornings,'
a picked sonnet or two, and the ' Ode on the Intimations,' which
last they seem generally to be under the impression that nobody else
has ever met with : and my further experience of these sentimental
students is, that they are seldom inclined to put in practice a
single syllable of the advice tendered them by their model poet.

Now, as I happen myself to have used Wordsworth as a daily
text-book from youth to age, and have lived, moreover, in all essential
points according to the tenor of his teaching, it was matter of some
mortification to me, when, at Oxford, I tried to get the memory of
Mr. Wilkinson's spade honoured by some practical spadework at
Ferry Hincksey, to find that no other tutor in Oxford could see the
slightest good or meaning in what I was about ; and that although
my friend Professor Rolleston occasionally sought the shades of our
Rydalian laurels with expressions of admiration, his professorial
manner of ' from pastoral graves extracting thoughts divine ' was
to fill the Oxford Museum with the scabbed skulls of plague- struck
cretins.

I therefore respectfully venture to intimate to my bucolic friends,
that I know, more vitally by far than they, what is in Wordsworth,

1880. FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 749

and what is not. Any man who chooses to live by his precepts will
thankfully find in them a beauty and Tightness, (exquisite Tightness
I called it, in ' Sesame and Lilies ' ) which will preserve him alike from
mean pleasure, vain hope, and guilty deed : so that he will neither
mourn at the gate of the fields which with covetous spirit he sold,
nor drink of the waters which with yet more covetous spirit he stole,
nor devour the bread of the poor in secret, nor set on his guest-table
the poor man's lamb : — in all these homely virtues and assured
justices let him be Wordsworth's true disciple; and he will then.be
able with equanimity to hear it said, when there is need to say so,
that his excellent master often wrote verses that were not musical,
and sometimes expressed opinions that were not profound.

And the need to say so becomes imperative, when the unfinished
verse, and uncorrected fancy, are advanced by the affection of his
disciples into places of authority where they give countenance to the
popular national prejudices from the infection of which, in most cases,
they themselves sprang.

Take, for example, the following three and a half lines of the 38th
Ecclesiastical Sonnet : —

1 Amazement strikes the crowd ; while many turn
Their eyes away in sorrow, others burn
With scorn, invoking a vindictive ban
From outraged Nature.'

The first quite evident character of these lines is that they are
extremely bad iambics, — as ill-constructed as they are unmelodious ;
the turning and burning being at the wrong ends of them, and the
ends themselves put just when the sentence is in its middle.

But a graver fault of these three and a half lines is that the
amazement, the turning, the burning, and the banning, are all alike
fictitious ; and foul-fictitious, calumniously conceived no less than
falsely. Not one of the spectators of the scene referred to was in
reality amazed — not one contemptuous, not one maledictory. It is
only our gentle minstrel of the meres who sits in the seat of the
scornful — only the hermit of Eydal Mount who invokes the malison
of Nature.

What the scene verily was, and how witnessed, it will not take
long to tell ; nor will the tale be useless : but I must first refer the
reader to a period preceding, by nearly a century, the great symbolic
action under the porch of St. Mark's.

The Protestant ecclesiastic, and infidel historian, who delight to
prop their pride, or edge their malice, in unveiling the corruption
through which Christianity has passed, should study in every frag-
ment of authentic record which the f ury of their age has left, the lives
of the three queens of the Priesthood, Theodora, Marozia, and
Matilda, and the foundation of the merciless power of the Popes, by

7.50 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

the monk Hildebrand. And if there be any of us who would satisfy
with nobler food than the catastrophes of the stage, the awe at what
is marvellous in human sorrow which makes sacred the fountain of
tears in authentic tragedy, let them follow, pace by pace, and pang
by pang, the humiliation of the fourth Henry at Canossa, and his
death in the church he had built to the Virgin at Spire.

His antagonist, Hildebrand, died twenty years before him ; captive
to the Normans in Salerno, having seen the Rome in which he had
proclaimed his princedom over all the earth, laid in her last ruin ;
and for ever. Rome herself, since her desolation by Guiscard, has
been only a grave and a wilderness l — what we call Rome, is a mere
colony of the stranger in her * Field of Mars.' This destruction of
Rome by the Normans is accurately and utterly the end of her
Capitoline and wolf-suckled power ; and from that day her Leonine
or Christian power takes its throne in the Leonine city, sanctified in
tradition by its prayer of safety for the Saxon Borgo, in which the
childhood of our own Alfred had been trained.

And from this date forward, (recollected broadly as 1090, the
year of the birth of St. Bernard,) no longer oppressed by the
remnants of Roman death, — Christian faith, chivalry, and art possess
the world, and recreate it, through the space of four hundred years —
the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries.

And, necessarily, in the first of these centuries comes the main
debate between the powers of Monk and Knight which was reconciled
in this scene under the porch of St. Mark's.

That debate was brought to its crisis and issue by the birth of
the new third elemental force of the State — the Citizen. Sismondi's
republican enthusiasm does not permit him to recognise the essential
character of this power. He speaks always of the Republics and the
liberties of Italy, as if a craftsman differed from a knight only in
political privileges, and as if his special virtue consisted in rendering
obedience to no master. But the strength of the great cities of Italy
was no more republican than that of her monasteries, or fortresses.
The Craftsman of Milan, Sailor of Pisa, and Merchant of Venice are
all of them essentially different persons from the soldier and the
anchorite : — but the city, under the banner of its caroccio, and the
command of its podesta, was disciplined far more strictly than any
wandering military squadron by its leader, or any lower order of
monks under their abbot. In the founding of civic constitutions,
the Lord of the city is usually its Bishop : — and it is curious to hear
the republican historian — who, however in judgment blind, is never
in heart uncandid, prepare to close his record of the ten years' war of
Como with Milan, with this summary of distress to the heroic
mountaineers — that ' they had lost their Bishop Guido, who was
their soul.'

1 Chllde Harold, iv. 79 ; compare Adonais, and Sismondi, TO!, i. p. 1 48.'

1880. FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 751

I perceive for quite one of the most hopeless of the many diffi-
culties which Modernism finds, and will find, insuperable either by
steam or dynamite, that of either wedging or welding into its own
cast-iron head, any conception of a king, monk, or townsman of the
twelfth and two succeeding centuries. And yet no syllable of the
utterance, no fragment of the arts of the middle ages, far less any
motive of their deeds, can be read even in the letter — how much less
judged in spirit — unless, first of all, we can somewhat imagine all
these three Living souls.

First, a king who was the best knight in his kingdom, and on Avhose
own swordstrokes hung the fate of Christendom. A king such as
Henry the Fowler, the first and third Edwards of England, the Bruce
of Scotland, and this Frederic the First of Germany.

Secondly, a monk who had been trained from youth in greater
hardship than any soldier, and had learned at last to desire
no other life than one of hardship ; — a man believing in his own and
his fellows' immortality, in the aiding powers of angels, and the
eternal presence of God; versed in all the science, graceful in all
the literature, cognisant of all the policy of his age ; and fearless of
any created thing, on the earth or under it.

And, lastly, a craftsman absolutely master of his craft, and
taking such pride in the exercise of it as all healthy souls take in
putting forth their personal powers : proud also of his city and his
people ; enriching, year by year, their streets with loftier buildings,
their treasuries with rarer possession ; and bequeathing his heredi-
tary art to a line of successive masters, by whose tact of race, and
honour of effort, the essential skills of metal-work in gold and steel,
of pottery, glass-painting, woodwork, and weaving, were carried to a
perfectness never to be surpassed ; and of which our utmost modern
hope is to produce a not instantly detected imitation.

These three kinds of persons, I repeat, we have to conceive
before we can understand any single event of the Middle Ages. For
all that is enduring in them was done by men such as these. History,
indeed, records twenty undoings for one deed, twenty desolations for
one redemption ; and thinks the fool and villain potent as the wise
and true. But Nature and her laws recognise only the noble :
generations of the cruel pass like the darkness of locust plagues ;
while one loving and brave heart establishes a nation.

I give the character of Barbarossa in the words of Sismondi, a
man sparing in the praise of emperors : —

' The death of Frederic was mourned even by the cities which so
long had been the objects of his hostility, and the victims of his
vengeance. All the Lombards — even the Milanese — acknowledged his
rare courage, his constancy in misfortune — his generosity in conquest.

' An intimate conviction of the justice of his cause had often
rendered him cruel, even to ferocity, against those who still resisted ;

752 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

but after victory he took vengeance only on "senseless walls; and,
irritated :is he liad been by the people of Milan, Crema. and Tortona,
and whatever blood he had shed during battle, he never sullied his
triumph by odious punishments. In spite of the treason which he on
one occasion used against Alessandria, his promises were in general
respected; and when, after the peace of Constance, the towns which
had been most inveterately hostile to him received him within their
walls, they had no need to guard against any attempt on his part to
suppress the privileges he had once recognised.'

My own estimate of Frederic's character would be scarcely so
favourable ; it is the only point of history on which I have doubted
the authority even of my own master, Carlyle. But I am concerned
here only with the actualities of his wars in Italy, with the people of
her cities, and the head of her religion.

Frederic of Suabia, direct heir of the Ghibelline rights, while
nearly related by blood to the Gruelph houses of Bavaria and Saxony,
was elected Emperor almost in the exact middle of the twelfth century
(1152). He was called into Italy by the voices of Italians. The
then Pope, Eugenius III., invoked his aid against the Eoman people
under Arnold of Brescia. The people of Lodi prayed his protection
against the tyrannies of Milan.

Frederic entered the plain of Verona in 1154, by the valley of the
Adige, — ravaged the territory of Milan, — pillaged and burned Tortona,
Asti, and Chieri, — kept his Christmas at Novara ; marched on Rome,
— delivered up Arnold to the Pope2 (who, instantly killing him,
ended fof that time Protestant reforms in Italy) — destroyed Spoleto ;
and returned by Verona, having scorched his path through Italy like
a level thunderbolt along the ground.

Three years afterwards, Adrian died ; and, chiefly by the love and
will of the Roman people, Roland of Siena was raised to the Papal
throne, under the name of Alexander III. The conclave of cardinals
chose another Pope, Victor III. ; Frederic on his second invasion of
Italy (1158) summoned both elected heads of the Church to receive
judgment of their claims before him.

The Cardinals' Pope, Victor, obeyed. The people's, Alexander,
refused ; answering that the successor of St. Peter submitted him-
self to the judgment neither of emperors nor councils.

The spirit of modern prelacy may perhaps have rendered it
impossible for an English churchman to conceive this answer as other
than that of insolence and hypocrisy. But a faithful Pope, and worthy
of his throne, could answer no otherwise. Frederic of course at once
confirmed the claims of his rival ; the German bishops and Italian
cardinals in council at Pa via joined their powers to the Emperor's, and
Alexander, driven from Rome, wandered — unsubdued in soul — from
city to city, taking refuge at last in France.

* Adrian the Fourth. Eugenius died in the previous year.

1880. FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 753

Meantime, in 1159, Frederic took and destroyed Crema, having-
first bound its hostages to his machines of war. In 1161, Milan
submitted to his mercy, and he decreed that her name : ho aid perish.
Only a few pillars of a Eoman temple, and the church of St. Ambrose,
remain to us of the ancient city. "Warned by her destruction,
Verona, Vicenza, Padua, Treviso, and Venice, joined in the vow —
called of the Lombard League — to reduce the emperor's power within
its just limits. And, in 1164, Alexander, under the protection of
Louis VII. of France and Henry II. of England, returned to Rome,
and was received at Ostia by its senate, clergy, and people.

Three years afterwards, Frederic again swept down on the Cam-
pagna ; attacked the Leonine city, where the basilica of the Vatican,
changed into a fortress, and held by the Pope's guard, resisted his
assault until, by the Emperor's order, fire was set to the Church of
St. Mary of Pity.

The Leonine city was taken ; the Pope retired to the Coliseum,
whence, uttering once again his fixed defiance of the Emperor, but
fearing treachery, he fled in disguise down the Tiber to the sea, and
sought asylum at Benevento.

The German army encamped round Rome in August of 1166,
with the sign before their eyes of the ruins of the church of Our
Lady of Pity. The marsh-fever struck them — killed the Emperor's
cousin, Frederic of Rothenburg, the Duke of Bavaria, the Archbishop
of Cologne, the Bishops of Liege, Spire, Ratisbonne, and Verden, and
two thousand knights : the common dead were uncounted. The
Emperor gathered the wreck of his army together, retreated on
Lombardy, quartered his soldiery at Pavia, and escaped in secret over
the Mont Cenis with thirty knights.

No places of strength remained to him south of the Alps but
Pavia and Montferrat ; and to hold these in check, and command
the plains of Piedmont, the Lombard League built the fortress city,
which, from the Pope who had maintained through all adversity the
authority of his throne, and the cause of the Italian people, they
named ' Alessandria.'

Against this bulwark the Emperor, still indomitable, dashed with
his utmost regathered strength after eight years of pause, and in the
temper in which men set their souls on a single stake. All had been
lost in his last war, except his honour — in this, he lost his honour
also. Whatever may be the just estimate of the other elements of
his character, he is unquestionably, among the knights of his time,
notable in impiety. In the battle of Cassano, he broke through
the Milanese vanguard to their caroccio, and struck down with his
own hand its golden crucifix ; — two years afterwards its cross and stan-
dard were bowed before him— and in vain.3 He fearlessly claims for

* ' All the multitude threw themselves on their knees, praying mercy in the name
of the crosses they bore : the Count of Blanclrata took a cross from the enemies with

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

himself right of decision between contending popes, and camps
against the rightful one on the ashes of the Church of the Virgin.

Foiled in his first assault on Alessandria, detained before it
through the inundations of the winter, and threatened by the army
of the League in the spring, he announced a truce to the besieged,
that they might keep Good Friday. Then violating alike the
day's sanctity and his own oath, he attacked the trusting city
through a secretly completed mine. And, for a second time, the
verdict of God went forth against him. Every man who had
obtained entrance within the city was slain or cast from its ramparts ;
— the Alessandrines threw all their gates open — fell, with the broken
fugitives, on the investing troops, scattered them in disorder, and
burned their towers of attack. The Emperor gathered their remains
into Pavia on Easter Sunday, — spared in his defeat by the army of
the League.

And yet, once more, he brought his cause to combat-trial.
Temporising at Lodi with the Pope's legates, he assembled, under
the Archbishops of Magdebourg and Cologne, and the chief prelates
and princes of Germany, a seventh army ; brought it down to Como
across the Spliigen, put himself there at its head, and in the early
spring of 1176, the fifteenth year since he had decreed the effacing
of the name of Milan, was met at Legnano by the spectre of Milan.

Risen from her grave, she led the Lombard League in this final
battle. Three hundred of her nobles guarded her caroccio ; nine
hundred of her knights bound themselves — under the name of the
Cohort of Death — to win for her, or to die.

The field of battle is in the midst of the plain, now covered with
maize and mulberry trees, from which the traveller, entering Italy
by the Lago Maggiore, sees first the unbroken snows of the Rosa
behind him, and the white pinnacles of Milan Cathedral in the south.
The Emperor, as was his wont, himself led his charging chivalry.
The Milanese knelt as it came ; — prayed aloud to God, St. Peter, and
St. Ambrose — then advanced round their caroccio on foot. The
Emperor's charge broke through their ranks nearly up to their stan-
dard— then the Cohort of Death rode against him.

And all his battle changed before them into flight. For the first
time in stricken field, the imperial standard fell, and was taken. The
Milanese followed the broken host until their swords were weary ;
and the Emperor, struck fighting from his horse, was left, lost among
the dead. The Empress, whose mercy to Milan he had forbidden,
already wore mourning for him in Pavia, when her husband came,
solitary and suppliant, to its gate.

whom he had served, and fell at the foot of the throne, praying for mercy to them.
All the court and the witnessing army were in tears — the Emperor alone showed no
sign of emotion. Distrusting his wife's sensibility, he had forbidden her presence at
the ceremony ; the Milanese, unable to approach her, threw towards her windows
the crosses they carried, to plead for them.' — Sismondi (French edition), vol. i. p. 37^.

1880. FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 755

The lesson at last sufficed; and Barbarossa sent his heretic
bishops to ask forgiveness of the Pope, and peace from the
Lombards.

Pardon and peace were granted — without conditions. * Csesar's
successor ' had been the blight of Italy for a quarter of a century ;
lie had ravaged her harvests, burnt her cities, decimated her children
with famine, her young men with the sword ; and, seven times over,
in renewed invasion, sought to establish dominion over her, from the
Alps to the rock of Scylla.

She asked of him no restitution ; — coveted no province — demanded
no fortress, of his land. Neither coward nor robber, she disdained
alike guard and gain upon her frontiers : she counted no compensa-
tion for her sorrow ; and set no price upon the souls of her dead. She
stood in the porch of her brightest temple — between the blue plains
of her earth and sea, and, in the person of her spiritual father, gave
her enemy pardon.

' Black demons hovering o'er his mitred head,' think you, gentle
sonnetteer of the daffodil-marsh ? And have Barbarossa's race been
taught of better angels how to bear themselves to a conquered
emperor, — or England, or by braver and more generous impulses, how
to protect his exiled son ?

The fall of Venice, since that day, was measured by Byron in a
single line :

i An Emperor tramples, where an emperor knelt.'

But what words shall measure the darker humiliation of the German
pillaging his helpless enemy, and England leaving her ally under the
savage's spear ?

With the clues now given, and an hour or two's additional
reading of any standard historian he pleases, the reader may judge
on secure grounds whether the truce of Venice and peace of Con-
stance were of the Devil's making : whereof whatever he may ulti-
mately feel or affirm, this at least he will please note for positive, that
Mr. Wordsworth, having no shadow of doubt of the complete wisdom
of every idea that comes into his own head, writes down in dogmatic
sonnet his first impression of black instrumentality in the business ;
so that his innocent readers, taking him for their sole master, far from
caring to inquire into the thing more deeply, may remain even un-
conscious that it is disputable, and for ever incapable of conceiving
either a Catholic's feeling, or a careful historian's hesitation, touching
the centrally momentous crisis of power in all the Middle Ages !
Whereas Byron, knowing the history thoroughly, and judging of
Catholicism with an honest and open heart, ventures to assert nothing
that admits of debate, either concerning human motives or angelic
presences ; but binds into one line of massive melody the unerringly
counted sum of Venetian majesty and shame.

756 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

In a future paper, I propose examining his method of dealing
•with the debate, itself on a higher issue : and v/ill therefore close the
present one by trampling a few of the briars and thorns of popular
offence out of our way.

The common counts against Byron are in the main, three.

I. That he confessed — in some sort, even proclaimed defiantly,
(which is a proud man's natural manner of confession) 4 — the naughti-
ness of his life.

The hypocrisy 5 even of Pall Mall and Petit Trianon does not, I
assume, and dares not, go so far as to condemn the naughtiness
itself? And that he did confess it, is precisely the reason for reading
him by his own motto ' Trust Byron.' You always may ; and the
common smooth-countenanced man of the world is guiltier in the
precise measure of your higher esteem for him.

II. That he wrote about pretty things which ought never to be
heard of.

In the presence of the exact proprieties of modern Fiction, Art,
and Drama, I am shy of touching on the question of what should be
mentioned, and seen — and should not. All that I care to say, here,
is that Byron tells you of realities, and that their being pretty ones
is, to my mind, — at the first (literally) blush, of the matter, rather in
his favour. If however you have imagined that he means you to
think Dudu as pretty as Myrrha,6 or even Haidee, whether in full
dress or none, as pretty as Marina, it is your fault, not his.

III. That he blasphemed God and the King.

Before replying to this count, I must ask the reader's patience
in a piece of very serious work, the ascertainment of the real
and full meaning of the word Blasphemy. It signifies simply
4 Harmful speaking ' — Male-diction — or shortly * Blame ; ' and may
be committed as much against a child or a dog, if you desire to hurt
them, as against the Deity. And it is, in its original use, accurately

4 The most noble and tender confession is in Allegro's epitaph, ' I shall go to her,
but she shall not return to me.'

4 Hypocrisy is too good a word for either Pall Mall or Trianon, being justly applied
(as always in the New Testament), only to men whose false religion has become
earnest, and a part of their being : so that they compass heaven and earth to make
a proselyte. There is no relation between minds of this order and those of common
rogues. Neither Tartuffe nor Joseph Surface are hypocrites — they are simply
impostors : but many of the most earnest preachers in all existing churches arc
hypocrites in the highest ; and the Tartuffe-Squiredom and Joseph Surface-Master-
hood of our virtuous England, which build churches and pay priests to keep their
peasants and hands peaceable, so that rents and per cents may be spent, unnoticed,
in the debaucheries of the metropolis, are darker forms of imposture than either
heaven or earth have yet been compassed by ; and what they are to end in, heaven
and earth only know. Compare again, Island, ii. 4, ' the prayers of Abel linked to
deeds of Cain,' and Juan, viii. 25, 26.

• Perhaps some even of the attentive readers of Byron may not have observed
the choice of the three names — Myrrba (bitter incense), Marina (sea lady), Angiolina
(little angel)— in relation to the plots of the three plays.

1880. FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 757

opposed to another Greek word, ' Euphemy,' which means a re-
verent and loving manner of benediction — fallen entirely into disuse
in modern sentiment and language.

Now the compass and character of essential Malediction, so-
called in Latin, or Blasphemy, so-called in Greek, may, I think, be
best explained to the general reader by an instance in a very little
thing, first translating the short pieces of Plato which best show the
meaning of the word in codes of Greek morality.

' These are the things then ' (the true order of the Sun, Moon,
and Planets), 'oh my friends, of which I desire that all our citizens
and youths should learn at least so much concerning the Gods of
Heaven, as not to blaspheme concerning them, but to eupheme
reverently, both in sacrificing, and in every prayer they pray.'— Laws,
VII. Steph. 821.

' And through the whole of life, beyond all other need for it, there
is need of Euphemy from a man to his parents, for there is no
heavier punishment than that of light and winged words,' (to them) ?
' for Nemesis, the angel of Divine Recompense, has been throned
Bishop over all men who sin in such manner.' — IV. Steph. 717.

The word which I have translated * recompense ' is more strictly
that ' heavenly Justice ' — the proper Light of the World, from
which nothing can be hidden, and by which all who will may walk
securely ; whence the mystic answer of Ulysses to his son, as Athena,
herself invisible, walks with them, filling the chamber of the house
with light, ' This is the justice of the Gods who possess Olympus.'
See the context in reference to which Plato quotes the line. — Laws,
X. Steph. 904. The little story that I have to tell is significant
chiefly in connection with the second passage of Plato above quoted. •

I have elsewhere mentioned that I was a homebred boy, and that as
my mother diligently and scrupulously taught me my Bible and
Latin Grammar, so my father fondly and devotedly taught me my
Scott, my Pope, and my Byron.7 The Latin grammar out of
which my mother taught me was the llth edition of Alexander
Adam's — (Edinb. : Bell and Bradfute, 1823) — namely, that Alex-
ander Adam, Eector of Edinburgh High School, into whose upper
class Scott passed in October 1782, and who — previous masters
having found nothing noticeable in the heavy-looking lad — did find
sterling qualities in him, and ' would constantly refer to him
for dates, and particulars of battles, and other remarkable events
alluded to in Horace, or whatever other authors the boys were
reading', and called him the historian of his class' (L. i. 126).
That Alex. Adam, also, who, himself a loving historian, remembered

7 I shall have lost my wits very finally when I forget the first time that I pleased
my father with a couplet of English verse (after many a year of trials) ; and the
radiant joy on his face as he declared, reading it aloud to my mother with emphasis
half choked by tears, — that ' it was as fine as anything that Pope or Byron ever wrote ! '

VOL. VIII.— No. 45. 3 F

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

the fate of every boy at his school during the fifty years he had
headed it, and whose last words — 'It grows dark, the boys may dis-
miss,' gave to Scott's heart the vision and the audit of the death of
Elspeth of the Craigburn-foot.

Strangely, in opening the old volume at this moment (I would
not give it for an illuminated missal) I find, in its article on Prosody,
some things extremely useful to me, which I have been hunting for
in vain though Zumpt and Matthias. In all rational respects I
believe it to be the best Latin Grammar that has yet been written.

When my mother had carried me through it as far as the syntax,
it was thought desirable that I should be put under a master : and
the master chosen was a deeply and deservedly honoured clergyman,
the Rev. Thomas Dale, mentioned in Mr. Holbeach's article, ' The
New Fiction ' (Contemporary Review for February of this year),
together with Mr. Melville, who was our pastor after Mr. Dale went
to St. Pancras.

On the first day when I went to take my seat in Mr. Dale's school-
room, I carried my old grammar to him, in a modest pride, expecting
some encouragement and honour for the accuracy with which I could
repeat, on demand, some hundred and sixty close-printed pages of it.

But Mr. Dale threw it back to me with a fierce bang upon his
desk, saying (with accent and look of seven-times-heated scorn),
4 That's a Scotch thing.'

Now, my father being Scotch, and an Edinburgh High School boy,
and my mother having laboured in that book with me since I could
read, and all my happiest holiday time having been spent on the
North Inch of Perth, these four words, with the action accompanying
them, contained as much insult, pain, and loosening of my respect
for my parents, love of my father's country, and honour for its
worthies, as it was possible to compress into four syllables and an ill-
mannered gesture. Which were therefore pure, double-edged and
point-envenomed blasphemy. For to make a boy despise his mother's
care, is the straightest way to make him also despise his Redeemer's
voice ; and to make him scorn his father and his father's house, the
straightest way to make him deny his God, and his God's Heaven.

I speak, observe, in this instance, only of the actual words and
their effect ; not of the feeling in the speaker's mind, which was almost
playful, though his words, tainted with extremity of pride, were such
light ones as men shall give account of at the Day of Judgment.
The real sin of blasphemy is not in the saying, nor even in the
thinking ; but in the wishing which is father to thought and word : and
the nature of it is simply in wishing evil to anything ; for as the
quality of Mercy is not strained, so neither that of Blasphemy, the
one distilling from the clouds of Heaven, the other from the steam
of the Pit. He that is unjust in little is unjust in much, he that
is malignant to the least is to the greatest, he who hates the earth
which is God's footstool, hates yet more Heaven which is God's

1880. FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 759

throne, and Him that sitteth thereon. Finally, therefore, blasphemy
is wishing ill to any thing ; and its outcome is in Vanni Fucci's ex-
treme 'ill manners ' — wishing ill to (rod.

On the contrary, Euphemy is wishing well to every thing, and
its outcome is in Burns' extreme ' good manners,' wishing well to —

4 Ah ! wad ye tak a thought, and men ' ! '

That is the supreme of Euphemy.

Fix then, first in your minds, that the sin of malediction,
whether Shimei's individual, or John Bull's national, is in the vulgar
malignity, not in the vulgar diction, and then note further ,that the
' phemy ' or ' fame ' of the two words, blasphemy and euphemy, sig-
nifies broadly the bearing of false witness against one's neighbour
in the one case, and of true witness for him in the other : so that
while the peculiar province of the blasphemer is to throw firelight on
the evil in good persons, the province of the euphuist (I must use the
word inaccurately for want of a better) is to throw sunlight on the
good in bad ones ; such, for instance, as Bertram, Meg Merrilies, Bob
Koy, Eobin Hood, and the general run of Corsairs, Giaours, Turks,
Jews, Infidels, and Heretics ; nay, even sisters of Eahab, and
daughters of Moab and Ammon ; and at last the whole spiritual
race of him to whom it was said, ' If thou doest well, shalt thou not
be accepted ? '

And being thus brought back to our actual subject, I purpose,
after a few more summary notes on the lustre of the electrotype lan-
guage of modern passion, to examine what facts or probabilities
lie at the root both of Goethe's and Byron's imagination of
that contest between the powers of Good and Evil, of which the
Scriptural account appears to Mr. Huxley so inconsistent with the
recognised laws of political economy ; and has been, by the cowardice
of our old translators, so maimed of its vitality, that the frank Greek
assertion of St. Michael's not daring to blaspheme the devil,8 is ten-
fold more mischievously deadened and caricatured by their periphrasis
of ' durst not bring against him a railing accusation,' than by
Byron's apparently — and only apparently — less reverent description of
the manner of angelic encounter for an inferior ruler of the people.

4 Between His Darkness and His Brightness
There passed a mutual glance of great politeness.'

J. KUSKIN.

Paris : September 20, 1880.

8 Of our tingle-tangle-titmoiise disputes in Parliament like Robins in a bush, but
not a Eobin in all the house knowing his great A, hear again Plato : < But they, for
ever so little a quarrel, uttering much voice, blaspheming, speak evil one of another
— and it is not becoming that in a city of well-ordered persons, such things should

be — no ; nothing of them nohow nowhere,— and let this be the one law for all let

nobody speak mischief of anybody (M7?5eVa /ca/cTj-yopeiVw MT?8«/s).' — Laws, book ii.
s. 935 5 and compare Book iv. 117.

3i2

760 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

POSTSCRIPT.

I am myself extremely grateful, nor doubt a like feeling in most of
my readers, both for the information contained in the first of the two
following letters ; and the correction of references in the second, of
which, however, I have omitted some closing sentences which the
writer will, I think, see to have been unnecessary.

I find press correction always irksome work, and in my last paper,
trust the reader's kindness to insert the words * of metre ' after
* necessity' in page 402, line 20; with commas after * passion' and
'exactly' in lines 32, 33 of the same page; and correct * rest '
to 'nest' in page 406, line 5, and 'emotion' to 'oblation' page
408, line 2.

North Street, Wirksworth : August 2, 1880.

Dear Sir, — When reading your interesting article in the June number of the
2fineteenth Century, and your quotation from Walter Scott, I was struck with the
great similarity between some of the Scotch words and my native tongue (Nor-
wegian). Whigmaleerie, as to the derivation of which you seem to be in some
perplexity, is in Norwegian V&gmaleri. Vteg, pronounced ' Vegg,' signifying wall,
and Maleri ' picture,' pronounced almost the same as in Scotch, and derived from
at male, to paint. Siccan is in Danish pikken, used more about something comical
than great, and scarcely belonging to the written language, in which dig, such, and
dig en, such a one, would be the equivalent. I need not remark that as to the
written language Danish and Norwegian is the same, only the dialects differ.

Having been told by some English friends that this explanation would perhaps
not be without interest to yourself, I take the liberty of writing this letter. I
remain yours respectfully,

THEA BERG.

Inner Temple : September 9, 1880.

Sir, — In your last article on Fiction, Foul and Fair (Nineteenth Century,
September 1 880) you have the following note :

' Juan viii 5 ' (it ought to be 9) ' but by your Lordship's quotation, Wordsworth
says " instrument " not " daughter." '

Now in Murray's edition of Byron, 1837, octavo, his Lordship's quotation is as
follows :

' But thy most dreaded instrument
In working out a pure intent
Is man arranged for mutual slaughter ;
Yea, Carnage is thy daughter.'

And his lordship refers you to * Wordsworth's Thanksgiving Ode.'

I have no early edition of Wordsworth. In Moxon's, 1844, no such lines
appear in the Thanksgiving Ode, but in the ode dated 1815, and printed immediately
before it, the following lines occur.

' But man is thy most awful instrument
In working out a pure intent.'

It is hardly possible to avoid the conclusion that Wordsworth altered the lines
after ' Don Juan ' was written. I am, with great respect, your obedient sen-ant,

RALPH THICKXESSE.
John Buskin, Esq.

1880. 761

OUR NEW WHEAT-FIELDS AT HOME.

THE description of ' Our New Wheat-Fields in the North-West ' in
the Nineteenth Century for July 1879 is, from an imperial point of
view, eminently satisfactory as rendering us, so long as we retain the
command of the seas, independent of foreign supply.

It is, nevertheless, the startling announcement to our wheat-
growers at home of a competition for many years to come of a far
more formidable character than any with which they have hitherto
had to cope.

The cost at which an acre of wheat can be put on shipboard at a
port nearer to Liverpool than New York is, will, with freight added,
be so low that, under the present system of cultivation in this country,
it could not be profitably grown here.

Moreover, the wonderful facilities for inland water-carriage will
for a long period enable the cultivator of even the more remote of
the prairies to maintain a competition almost as fierce as that which
threatens us in the immediate future.

It does not admit of doubt that, if the produce of Great Britain
has already reached its limit in its present average of about thirty
bushels of wheat per acre (if, indeed, it is really so much), the
position of the English farmer with regard to that cereal is a truly
hopeless one.

What, then, is to be done ? is there, in fact, no hope for us ?
After all the boasted progress of English agriculture — and it has,
indeed, been great — are we now to succumb with the humiliating
confession than we can do no more ?

Had a similar competition threatened the farmer of Arthur
Young's day, when the land of this country produced but some sixteen
or seventeen bushels of wheat per acre, what would have been thought
of the man who then suggested to the farmer that his produce might
be increased — nay, even doubled ? Would he have been regarded as
anything but, to use the mildest term, the merest visionary ? And
yet since that time the crop has been nearly doubled! Is there any
more real reason now for assuming that we have reached the limit of
production ? Can it be said with any degree of truth that all
possible means of increasing the crop have been already tried in vain ?

762

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

November

Let us consider of what the wheat crop consists. It is not a
mystery, a lost art, or anything beyond our comprehension. On the
contrary, it is a very simple affair indeed — so many ears of wheat
filled, or partly filled (according to the season), with grains. To
obtain a larger crop, then, it is plain that we must have more ears,
or ears with more grains in them, or both.

'Impossible,' exclaims the ever-ready agricultural obstructionist ;
* quite impossible — at least to any important extent.' There is no
want of confidence of assertion here. And (although quite un-
knowingly) he is right too, as to one part of the question — the
obtaining of more ears of wheat upon an acre of land.

It is a very singular fact, indeed, that, no matter what the quantity
of seed sown, the number of ears of wheat produced per acre is, in
the absence of injurious circumstances, virtually the same — about
1£ million, the different quantities of seed having been sown each
under the best conditions of time and space.

DBILLED.

1873

Quantity per Acre

Ears on a
Square Yard

Ears on an Acre

Counted 1874

Oct. 11

End of
Nov. 3

1 bushel
2 „
2 „
3 „
2 „

263
283
265
269
270

1,272,920 \
1,369,720 1
1,282,600 (
1, 301,960 )
1,306,800

June 4
At harvest

5) 1350

5)6,534,000

Aver. 270

1,306,800

PLANTED.

September

( % bushel in }
- single grains r
( 9 in. x 9 )

276

1,335,840

June 4

In one sense it is most fortunate that this is so with the chief food
of man, for, sow it how he may, some amount of crop will still result.
In another sense, however, this property of producing something of a
crop under an almost infinite variation of soils, methods, and times
of sowing (from August to April) has been a direct bar to improve-
ment, because, until now, not absolutely necessary or pressing.

In the case of mangolds, turnips, &c., the farmer knows full well
that there is a proper time for sowing, although differing slightly
with the locality, and that, if he has no regard to how thickly the
plants are left to stand, he will simply have no crop at all. But in
the case of wheat no such penalty of forfeiture of crop exists, and, it
being of great convenience to the farmer in other respects, the time
of sowing is allowed to depend mainly upon the consumption or

1880. OUR NEW WHEAT-FIELDS AT HOME. 763

removal of preceding crops, thus extending over many months, as if
for sowing wheat there is no proper time at all.

But our friend's ' impossible ' meant also that we cannot obtain
ears with more grains in them. Here he is just as wrong as in the
former case he was right.

The practical question, then, is simply — What does the ear of
wheat as now grown contain on the average, and what might it
contain ? The first part of this question admits of an easy solution.
In a bushel of ordinary wheat there are some 700,000 grains, or in a
crop of 40 bushels 28 millions, which upon the number of ears pro-
duced per acre (see table) gives about 22 grains as the average con-
tents of the present ear.

' Oh, but,' exclaims our critic, 4 that won't do at all ; I have seen
lots of ears with 50, or 60, or more grains.'

* Very true ; but how were these fine ears produced ? '

' What can that possibly matter ? ' he asks.

That, however, is just the very thing that does matter, and con-
tains the germ of all possible improvement, for we only require such
ears in general as are those occasional ones in order to more than
double our present crops.

It will be seen by the table ' that grains planted singly in
September and nine inches apart every way produced as many
ears per acre as twelve times the number of grains sown in the
ordinary way.

Here our critic again strikes in with ' How can that be ; how
can one grain produce as many ears as twelve ? '

By the process of ' tillering ' we reply. By the exercise of that
wonderful power which is the great characteristic of all the cereals.
It may be described as follows.

A plant of wheat consists of three principal parts, viz., the roots,
the stems, and the ears. The seed-grain having been planted in a
proper manner, these are produced thus: shortly after the plant
appears above ground it commences to put forth new and distinct
stems, upon the first appearance of each of which a corresponding
root-bud is developed for its support ; and while the new stems grow
out flat over the surface of the soil, their respective roots are corre-
spondingly developed beneath it. A plant of wheat has been known
in this way to cover in May a circle 5 feet 6 inches in diameter, mea-
sured from the extremities of the opposite leaves as they lay out flat
upon the ground.

This mode of growth is called * tillering,' and will continue until
the season arrives for the stems to assume an upright growth, when
tillering ceases and the whole vital power of the plant is concen-
trated upon the development of the ears. These will be the finest
the plant is capable of producing, unless the growth of its roots has
been in any way impeded, as, for instance, by those of adjoining

764 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

plants, when the size and development of the ears will be found to
be proportionately diminished.

At the Exeter meeting of the British Association for the Advance-
meat of Science of 1869 there were exhibited three plants of wheat,
barley, and oats, each from a single grain, with 94, 110, and 87 ears
respectively ; and even these examples do not represent the maxima
obtainable.

But our friend is by no means silenced, and returns to the charge
with ' Oh, yes, of course ; but do you mean seriously to say that the
wheat plant does not tiller under the present system ? '

We are again able to meet his attack with unanswerable figures
representing absolute facts.

Two bushels of wheat, the quantity ordinarily sown per acre,
contain l-,-4^ million of grains, while the ears produced amount to
only l/o million, or not equal in number to that of the grains
sown I

No tillering can possibly take place, unless, as is the fact, many
of the grains sown perish utterly, or, at least, fail to produce any ear
at all.

* Ah,' be says, ' I never looked at it quite in that light ; it cer-
tainly does seem a very odd way to cultivate a plant possessed of such
powers. But tell me the practical bearing of it all.'

Simply this ; that ears produced from grains planted singly and
early in September 9 inches apart every way, will (by means of selec-
tion) contain on the average upwards of 50 grains instead of 22, as
at present.

'Yes,' and this time he comes down triumphantly; 'but, you
know, you could not upon a large scale plant corn in any way at all
approaching this ; and even if you could do so, the land would not be
ready in September.'

As a matter of fact, any ordinary corn-drill may easily be so
arranged as to plant practically and without unusual expense in the
manner described : and as to the land not being ready, it is sufficient
to say that there were last year in Great Britain of ' bare fallow,
beans, peas, potatoes, vetches, &c.,' 2£ millions ; of 6 clover and grass
under rotation ' 4^ millions ; in all 6| millions of acres to furnish
the 3£ millions required for wheat. Within the present century it
was the practice both in England and Scotland to commence wheat-
sowing the first wet weather in August, this work being performed
during the harvest when stopped by weather from carrying the corn.
Besides the developed ears containing more than double the number
of grains, the mere comparative size of the grain thus grown is such
as alone to give 40 per cent, increase of crop.

Under this system, too, the improvement obtainable by selection
would tell enormously.

1880. OUR NEW WHEAT-FIELDS AT HOME. 765

' This, then, is what you mean by " new wheat-fields at home " ? '
he remarks, much more humbly.

' Precisely ; ' and this time it is we who speak triumphantly.
The saving of seed effected will more than compensate for any
additional labour required ; and, therefore, no further expenses being
incurred for labour, rent, rates, or taxes, there is in fact a second
crop for nothing, — * Xew wheat-fields at home ' on the tops of our
old ones.

FKEDERIC F. HALLETT.

766 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

THE GOVERNMENT OF LONDON.

AUTHENTIC history furnishes no parallel to the increase of wealth and
population in the valley of the Thames during the present century.
The metropolis has never been recognised in law as one town, and its
boundaries have never been fixed by enactment or custom. In every
direction outside the City gates, dwellings at first sparsely, then
thickly, and at last densely, have risen up, until the parishes ' without
the walls ' and ' in the fields ' have become as fully peopled as Bishops-
gate or Eastcheap.

In 1831 the metropolis of the census comprised 78,029 acres from
Hampstead to Wandsworth, and from Stepney to Fulham — fifteen
miles by twelve. In 1851, civic and suburban London contained
305,933 dwellings, and more than two millions of people with rate-
able property assessed at 9,964,343£. a year. Since then the number
of habitations has not, indeed, kept pace with that of property or
population, but has increased twenty-five per cent., while these have
more than doubled. Such an aggregation of intelligent and active
communities, possessed of so much opulence, yet restless with so
many wants, nowhere else exists in Christendom. How comes it, then,
that nowhere else is urban life so inorganic, that nowhere else are the
thews and sinews of local rule developed so imperfectly ? A quarter of
a century has elapsed since the first attempt was made to reduce to
anything like uniformity of system the local institutions of London.
Without the semblance of ground-plan, unity of design, or bond of
cohesion, several great towns had grown up contiguously on either
bank of the Thames between Battersea and Blackwall. Westminster
and Southwark had defined boundaries, having time out of mind sent
representatives to Parliament. By the Reform Act of 1832 five new
boroughs were formed out of the remainder, and two representatives
were assigned to each. The City alone possessed corporate privileges
and civic organisation, while outside its ambit was a confused and
anomalous wilderness of parochial jurisdictions and extra-parochial
liberties, whimsically unequal in their scope and tenour, and fre-
quently irreconcilable in their pretensions and powers. The attempt
to describe the chaos that prevailed reads now like an incredible
fiction. Three hundred different bodies under various appellations

1880. THE GOVERNMENT OF LONDON. 767

and with the utmost diversity of functions, claimed the right by pre-
scriptive usage, or by modern acts passed from time to time, to impose
local rates for various purposes-. No fewer than 10,448 individuals
as vestrymen, commissioners, guardians, members of manorial courts,
and magistrates of quarter sessions were engaged in daily contention,
carried on at the public cost, about the right to do all that required
to be locally done, and how not to do it. Streets lay unpaved, rights
of way were disputed, whole regions lay in darkness by night,
unswept and unwatered by day.

Commissioners of Sewers, many of them named ex ofjicio, possessed
but ill-defined jurisdiction, which they exercised in general so negli-
gently and at times so arbitrarily that as a desperate remedy their
number was reduced from upwards of a thousand to twenty -three, and
subsequently to eleven. Their character for efficiency, however, did
not mend, and parochial wags affected to believe that their real
function was that of accumulation — not dispersion — of nuisances,
especially in the article of debt.

Diversities in the mode of choosing vestrymen and requiting
parochial officers naturally arose from the wide discrepancies of
situation, ways of life, and other special circumstances in busy com-
munities, practically remote from one another from want of leisure,
curiosity, and facilities of cheap locomotion ; and within reasonable
bounds these disparities would have mattered little. In Hackney
no one was qualified who dwelt not in a house valued at 40l. a year ;
and Bloomsbury was so genteel that no man, however good his trade,
was allowed to serve if he let any part of his house in lodgings.
Shadwell, more dependent upon weekly wages, thought 101. a quali-
fication high enough ; while Poplar distrusted any whose respectability
fell short of 301. ; but Mile End had confidence in the proof that
121. rental gave of integrity, and St. George's in the East had faith
in a rating of II. 4s. How far these amounts might be qualified or
accounted for by dissimilarity in the standard of valuation which each
parish formed for itself, it would puzzle an antiquary now to dis-
cover. More serious was the mischief arising from the multiplica-
tion of paving and lighting boards, especially in parishes whose
confines inter-lapped from ecclesiastical causes long forgotten. Seven
different bodies belonging to St. Clement's, St. Mary's, the Savoy, and
St. Martin's, divided among them the duty of keeping open the
highway from Charing Cross to Temple Bar, and by their neighbourly
jealousies added in no slight degree to the impediments of the jour-
ney. In Westminster, the line of delimitation was generally drawn
down the centre of the street, an infallible receipt for partial stoppage
twice as often in the year as would otherwise have been avoidable.
Sometimes the roadway belonged to one board, the pathway to
another, and the lighting to a third, while as a climax the watering
on the right hand was always done in the morning, and on the left

768 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

hand after sunset, insuring to the inhabitants of both the benefit of
dust throughout the day. It fared even worse with the inhabitants
of large growing parishes in the suburbs. As each additional estate
was let on long lease for building, a local act was promoted by the
influential vendor, which nobody took the trouble to oppose ; and its
clauses invariably provided for the full autonomy of the new district,
utterly regardless of how it might affect those that lay contiguous,
or the luckless portions lying between. In St. Pancras, sixteen
independent boards ' did the paving and lighting under, and by,
virtue of the enactments in such cases duly made and provided ; '
and forasmuch as the said enactments took no cognisance of the
adjacent or intervening localities, and conferred no right of taxing
them, their inhabitants were left wholly unprovided for. Combining
in revolt, they made three attempts to obtain a general act for the
parish, but private rights and privileges proved too strong for them ;
and after paying their costs, they succumbed in despair.

The aged and infirm poor were driven from the parish their
labour had helped to enrich, to some other that knew them not,
forthwith to be bundled out again. To the generation that has come
to maturity under a different state of things, that which some of us
are old enough to remember seems almost inconceivable.

In June 1852 a Koyal Commission, consisting of Mr. Labouchere,
Mr. Justice Patteson, and Sir Gr. Cornewall Lewis, was appointed to
inquire into the state of the Corporation of the City, and to collect
information respecting its constitution and government, and regard-
ing the property, revenues, and expenditure of the same.

By far the weightiest opinions given in evidence before the
Commissioners were against a Metropolitan Council for the aggregate
towns of the Thames, and < in favour of reforming the old Corporation
of the City, and giving a new corporation to each of the surrounding
boroughs.' To expand the existing central jurisdiction so as to em-
brace the whole of the urban and suburban area would, in the judg-
ment of Mr. Samuel Morley, be very undesirable. ' It would be too
large a body a great deal. Each corporation should be confined to
the duties of its own locality.' Mr. Thomson Hankey gave similar
advice as to the need of distributing the duties and localising the
functions of municipal rule ; while both advocated the establishment
by delegation of a board of works, carrying into effect improvements
of exceptional nature and cost. The Commissioners, after duly con-
sidering all that could be urged upon the subject, reported unequivo-
cally in confirmation of these views.

To advance the boundaries of the City so as to include the whole
of the metropolis

•would entirely alter the character of the Corporation of London, and would create
a municipal body of unmanageable dimensions. We therefore advise that this
course should not be adopted. If it were held that municipal institutions were not

1880. TIJE GOVERNMENT OF LONDON. 769

suited to a metropolitan city, no reason could be found except its antiquity and
existence for maintaining the Corporation of London, even with its present limited
area. A metropolitan city, however, requires for its own local purposes municipal
institutions not less than other towns. Their utility is indeed greater, and their
want more felt, in a large, populous, opulent, and crowded metropolis, than in a
country town of less size, population, and wealth. Each of the seven parliamentary
boroughs contains a larger number of inhabited houses and a larger population
than the City ; and as the legislature has enfranchised them (by giving them repre-
sentatives in Parliament), it ought to complete the work by enfranchising them for
municipal purposes also. We see no reason why the benefit of municipal institu-
tions should not be extended to the rest of the metropolis, by its division iuto
districts, each possessing a municipal government of its own. We further suggest
the creation of a Metropolitan Board of Works, to be composed of a very limited
number of members, deputed to it from the council of each metropolitan municipal
body, including that of the City ; and that the management of the public works in
which all have a common interest should be conducted by this body ; and we
recommend the proceeds of the coal tax be transferred to its administration : that
the Board of Works should be empowered to levy a rate upon the entire metropolis
for any improvement of general utility, within a certain poundage, to be fixed by
Act of Parliament.

Regarding the great circumjacent expanse of urban life, the
Commissioners were careful to avoid the lazy error of treating it as a
single town. More correctly, as they say —

London may be called a province covered with houses. Its diameter is so
great that the persons living at its extremities have few interests in common. The
inhabitants of opposite extremities are in general acquainted only with their own
quarter, and have no minute knowledge of other parts of the town. Hence, the
two first conditions for municipal government would be wanting if the whole of
London were placed under a single corporation. The enormous population and
the magnitude of the interests under the care of the municipal body would likewise
render its administration a work of great difficulty. These considerations appear
to us decisive against the expediency of placing the whole of the metropolis under
a single corporation, without adverting to those more general questions of public
policy which naturally suggest themselves in connection with the subject.

But they saw no reason why the benefit of municipal institutions
should not be extended to the rest of the metropolis by its division
into districts, each possessing a corporate government of its own.

Here then is the impartial and deliberate judgment of a Com-
mission consisting of one of the best judges who ever sat on the
common law bench, and two of the most respected ministers who ever
held the seals of Secretary of State ; men thoroughly read in the
constitutional history of their country and thoroughly versed in the
administration of its affairs. Given habitually to deal with facts and
necessities as they presented themselves, and deeply impressed with
the conviction that the soundest legislation is that which recognises
the natural developments of society and promotes its spontaneous
tendencies to organisation, they put aside with judicial gravity
fantastical suggestions for erecting an unwieldy and ill-proportioned
system, which they clearly saw would be unmunicipal in its very

770 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY^ November

conception, and unmanageable (save by external influence) should it
ever be set in motion. They saw nothing to apprehend in the erec-
tion of as many corporations as there were boroughs in the valley of
the Thames ; they saw everything to \varn us against making the
experiment of one. In 1853 two millions of people seemed to them
palpably too many to be fitly or safely represented in a single town
council. What would they say were they with us now and heard the
proposition made of one municipality for four millions ? To them
rateable property to the extent of 9,964,318£., diverse in every con-
ceivable form and character, seemed infinitely too wide a field for
corporate taxation. What would they think of giving over 25,055,674^.
of rateable property for an assembly in Guildhall or Whitehall to
experimentalise upon ?

Their Keport was duly presented to both Houses, and met with
general approval. Hopes of reviving the project of expansion and
inclusion were not altogether laid aside ; and out of doors its advo-
cates kept up a desultory attention, but at Westminster it was
crowded out of remembrance by rumours of coming war. Next year
there was no time to think of internal reforms of any kind, and it was
not until the spring of 1855 that Government decided on carrying
into effect some of the recommendations of the Commissioners. The
City with its chartered privileges, antique forms, rich endowments,
and curious anomalies fiscal and judicial, was respited till a more
convenient season ; and the jocose veteran then at the head of affairs
continued to be the most favoured guest of the Sheriffs and Lord Mayor.
Neither was anything done to create new corporations where con-
fessedly they were so much wanted, but six-and-thirty parishes and
unions were deemed worthy instead to elect triennial vestries on a
uniform plan, to whom were to be committed the care of paving and
lighting, removing nuisances, and, when they chose, watering the
streets. No magisterial authority was to be conferred upon them, nor
even a superintending control over gas and water supply. The most
important privilege with which they were to be endowed was that of
choosing members of a Metropolitan Board who should regulate in
future the main drainage and the making of great thoroughfares in
the metropolis. But the evils of neglect had been suffered to exist
so long, and the inorganic helplessness of dissociated communities
was so paralytic, that neither Government nor Opposition would
attempt the difficult, and in a party sense the thankless, task of
trying to inform them with the higher spirit of municipal life.

Had the framing of a measure for municipalising London
been confided in 1855 to a statesman imbued with constitutional
learning and feeling, the materials lay ready to his hand ; and im-
pediments there were really none. The Keport of the Commission
had cleared the site and given the ground plan for a great and suitable
design in harmony with the best traditions of the realm, and capable

1880. THE GOVERNMENT OF LONDON. 771

alike of local expansion and of federal adaptation. The patient and
pondering mind of Sir Gr. C. Lewis, full of the wisdom that comes of
youth spent in study, and of manhood disciplined by experience in
administrative life, would have set about methodically building up
municipalities on either side of the Thames, fitted to satisfy all that
was best in middle-class ambition, and to save so many great and
growing communities from liability to the alternate reproach of un-
patriotic apathy and fitful yielding to the passion or delusion of the
hour. His was emphatically a mind given to organisation ; but by
temper and conviction he was averse from the introduction of more of
novelty than could be helped, having regard to the progress of society
and the growth of the time. He thought the duty of a loyal and
liberal legislator was to follow a good precedent wherever he could
find it, and to restore what had been lost by decay or lapse ; content
to improve rather than eager to invent, to consolidate and elevate
rather than startle by some new device, to underpin, enlarge, and
copy with improvement rather than subvert to make room for the
transcript of some foreign design. When he had to build anew, he
preferred to build upon old English lines, and to construct so that his
legislative work should be in keeping as far as possible with what had
gone before. Municipal corporations independent and powerful, were,
he saw, peculiarly wanted to redeem from political incontinuity and
social nervelessness the communities around the seat of government: and
the fact that they were passive and dumb for the most part was to him
the strongest proof of all that they needed institutions whose working
would impart the sense of healthful and active citizenship. But he had
not the drawing of the Bill, and the opportunity was lost. Sir Benjamin
Hall, whose constituents had for some time been urging him to obtain
for them some remedy for the anomalies and inequalities of their local
condition, readily undertook to play the part of godfather to a scheme
modelled on that of Paris,1 and which probably would never have been
proposed, and certainly would not have been carried, but for an un-
anticipated nuisance which had rapidly grown intolerable in West-
minster, not in Marylebone ; in the City, not in Mayfair.

Notwithstanding the rapid increase of building for domestic and
manufacturing purposes on both sides of the river, it had long
preserved its early character for clearness and salubrity. Little heed
was taken by its easy-going Conservators of the gradual substitution
of steamboats for tardier means of transport, or of the increasing refuse
from noxious trades, and the outfall from deleterious factories. The
quickness of the current when the tide went down, and its supposed
cleansing power when it rose, served for an answer to the fastidious
who grumbled, or the hypochondriacal who refused to be comforted
when told that the fish were as lively as yesterday and yet more

1 Mr. Mackinnon, debate on Bill May. 14, 1855.

772 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

abundant. I3ut when science began to be practically applied to the
health of dwellings, and to the development of husbandry, unfair ad-
vantage was taken of the accommodating stream.

Every year agricultural drainage and urban drainage more and
more troubled its flow, until at last, during the hot summer of 1854,
the members of both Houses grew personally alarmed at the stench
that invaded their halls of conference whenever the tide happened to
rise during the afternoon. How long the unhappy dwellers from
Lambeth to Wapping Old Stairs might have sniffed and sickened
without a remedy for the mischief, or without measures being taken
to cleanse the polluted current, had it not been for the consternation
which providentially fell on the three estates of the realm, in Parliament
assembled, Heaven only knows. But day after day, when Tory peers
and Eadical commoners grew equally uncomfortable, when committees
found it difficult to make up a quorum, and advocates declared that if
the windows were not kept shut they could not go on ; when squires
once rubicund showed the white feather, and dyspeptic officials muffled
their nostrils with handkerchiefs steeped in eau de Cologne, there
came about a general agreement that the Thames must be somehow
•washed clean, and that the quicker the method the better, whatever
the cost or form. Arterial drains for the whole metropolis, whereby all
sewage should be diverted from the river and carried underground to
the sea, were declared to be indispensable, and a metropolitan autho-
rity must be constituted to carry into effect the operation. Nothing
short of a general rate would suffice for an undertaking so vast ; but
statistics were not wanting to convince Bloomsbury and Tyburnia
that they too were interested in its completion. Not only in ill- built
suburbs and overcrowded quarters of the town, but in many whose
high rents guaranteed their gentility, numberless dwellings were to
be found without any description of sewage. An instance was given
by the President of the Board of Health of a street containing seventy
first-class houses of which but two had any communication with the
main sewer : and out of three hundred and six thousand inhabited
dwellings, nearly one half were said to be similarly circumstanced.

As every district was thus supposed to be equally interested, all
should be equally represented ; and as the difficulty and costliness of
the enterprise demanded that men of known probity and judgment
should compose the new Council, resort was had to the method of
indirect or double election. A vestry or board should be elected by
the rated householders for each large parish or union of small
parishes, and when elected the thirty-six vestries should nominate
respectively members of the central or executive board. It saved
trouble to take the poor-law divisions as they then existed ; and the
minister in an offhand way put aside the alternative of incorporating
parliamentary boroughs upon the unarguable plea that they were too
large. Size must be always a question of comparison ; and it was

1880. THE GOVERNMENT OF LONDON. 773

obvious to the least informed of those who listened to the objection
that it would apply as well to the great cities of Yorkshire and
Lancashire as to those of Middlesex and Surrey ; and this whether
population or rateable property were taken as the test, or the two
combined.

Lord Ebrington, Mr. Pellatt, and Mr. Williams, on behalf of their
constituents in Southwark, Lambeth, and Marylebone, expressed their
disapproval of cutting up the town into thirty-six divisions, termed
in a passing way municipal, but which were really invested with no
adequate municipal functions. The aggregate expenditure of such a
system, they argued, would inevitably prove greater than that of
seven or eight corporate bodies entrusted with plenary local autho-
rity; and against the correlative institution of a central board with
a jurisdiction too wide for practical responsibility either to vestries
or ratepayers, they entered more than one energetic protest. Nor
were they wholly without support from members unconnected with the
metropolis. Lord Barington, Sir H. Willoughby, Sir F. Thesiger,
and Mr. Mackinnon, looking ^at the matter impartially, discerned
in the proposed measure the elements of weakness and evil likely
to result from an abandonment of the time-honoured principle of
local self-rule. Indirect election was an outlandish novelty, they said,
which implied lack of faith in the spirit of native institutions ; still
worse was the jealous stipulation embodied in a clause giving to the
Crown the right to name a chairman at 2,0001. a year, to which Sir
W. Jolliffe • shrewdly objected that its certain effect would be to
enfeeble if not extinguish the sense of responsibility in the un-
paid members of the board. The closest friends of Government
staggered at this overweening effort to create another permanent
and lucrative place, and at the instance of Lord E. Grosvenor it was
struck out of the Bill. It is not unworthy of note that Sir G. C.
Lewis, his wiser judgment being overruled by his colleagues in the
Cabinet, remained throughout obdurately mute, and that during the
oft-renewed discussion of details not a sentence of approval is re-
corded from the lips of Sir J. Graham, Mr. Cobden, Mr. Bright, Mr.
Disraeli, or Mr. Gladstone. In the Lords, more than one grave mis-
giving found utterance, but no division took place. Lord Derby
objected to a compulsory rule of uniformity in the mode of electing
members of the central board, preferring that the traditional usages
of each district should be allowed a salutary freedom of choice ; he
cited as an example the senate of the American Union, each of whose
states was guaranteed by the Federal pact the right to nominate its
two representatives in the way it thought best, and not according to
any arbitrary method to which it had been unaccustomed. Practi-
cally there was true wisdom in permitting a diversity which would
enable them to try by the experience of comparison what was the
VOL. VIII.— No. 45. 3 G

774 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

best method of selection. But grinding to a level was the order of
the day, and without further alteration the measure became law.

The central Board of Works, called into existence by the Act of
1855, was destined to falsify many of the predictions hazarded
regarding it. Allowed to choose its own chairman, and to make by-
laws for its own procedure, it wisely eschewed from the outset every
pretension to guide or govern public opinion in questions not
strictly within its province. The fewness of its members contributed
greatly to form and to confirm the habit of adhering closely to
matters of business, and treating every proposed deviation from the
plain track of duty, not only as a waste of time to be reprehended,
but a breach of order to be resisted peremptorily and without debate.
A numerous assembly, however chosen, would have been more easily
beguiled into philanthropic platitude, suggestive illustration, plausible
digression, and at length undisguised rhetoric. In its exemplary
abstinence, tinder all temptations to sin in these respects, the
Metropolitan Board has consistently proved itself worthy of all
praise. Breaking with the traditions of failure that encompassed
its immediate predecessor, the Commission of Sewers, it set about
the great work of arterial drainage specifically assigned to it, and
carried the enterprise to completion within a reasonable time.
That done, it undertook the northern embankment of the Thames,
beyond compare the noblest improvement in the realm accomplished
during the present century. Diligent, persevering, and ambitious, it
has gained a position amongst us more influential, undoubtedly, than
any other institution of our time. The formation of great thorough-
fares, and the widening of overcrowded streets, proceeded more tardily
than impatience could be made to understand ; for it is not so easy
to do great good as those may imagine who have never had the
opportunity to try.

Compulsory expropriation of property in towns is about the
most invidious and expensive duty which a public body can be set
to perform. It is morally impossible to guard it effectually from
being made conducive to personal gain in a subordinate degree ;
hopeless to save it from the imputation of furtive and base motives
in those who are concerned in promoting it. Berkeley House has
not been proof against the pitiless gusts of scandal that intermit-
tently sweep over society, maiming reputations that seemed to have
strength of stem and depth of root enough to withstand them while
passing harmlessly over the willows that offer no resistance to their
rage. Additional powers have from time to time been conceded by
Parliament, which, far from satisfying, seem only to have stimulated
the Board's desire for more : until the conviction has become sreneral

that it has already quite as much on h,and as it can well do. Hence
the signal unanimity in rejecting an elaborate scheme two years
ao°5 by which it expected confidently to be enabled to buy out or

1880. THE GOVERNMENT OF LONDON. 775

supersede the existing water companies, and thus enormously to in-
crease its authority and patronage.

Mutual jealousies at first existed between it and the City. But
the sagacity of youth and the shrewdness of age gradually came
to understand each other. Eeciprocal hospitalities and courtesies led.
by degrees to interchange of confidence, and at length good under-
standing. Each has found more than enough to do advantageously,
without infringing the domain of the other. Occasionally it still
happens that their pretensions clash ; and in the newspapers, or the
lobby, there are now and then passages of arms, that to the un-
initiated look like the outbreak of repressed hostility : but next day
the credulous of quarrel learn that all has been arranged, and that
the prospect of civic war ' is barren all from Dan to Beersheba.' As
contrasted with the aggregate power and work of the vestries, it is
perhaps enough to note that while the total outlay by the latter is
about two millions and a half, the expenditure of the Board last year
was 3,341,592^., of which above two millions was supplied by loan
chargeable on future rates. The funded debt of the metropolis, after
deducting assets, is now 11,665,047L, which has been raised on easy
terms, and without which, or an intolerable increase of present taxation,
it would have been impossible to attempt works so varied and so vast
as those we have seen completed. The true check upon indefinite and
improvident expansion of the funded debt will be found in adherence
to the legitimate limits originally assigned to the Board ; and which
its best friends will ever deprecate any temptation to overpass. It was.
not set tip to compete with public money in speculative or commercial
undertakings with joint-stock companies, still less to agglomerate
such as already exist for the making of gas, the supply of water, the
organisation of traffic, or the dealing in any other want or commodity
for the public at large. Once entered on the illimitable field of money-
making enterprise, the temptation to mortgage the resources of the
future would be irresistible, whenever plausible invention or the
glittering promise of unprecedented profit should happen to mislead
the majority for the time being. For public trustees it is bad enough
to compete with private capitalists ; to take over their investment
and goodwill and risk, without the preservative check of direct self-
interest, is infinitely worse. The great body of metropolitan rate-
payers, though they watch jealously the augmentation of liabilities
incurred in their name, do not grudge what they recognise as fairly
within the proper province of the Board. In May 1879 there was
a further issue of consolidated stock to the extent of 2,150,000£.,
which, owing to the credit at which it stood in the market, realised
2,181,451^; and why ? Because it was understood that ' this money
was applicable only to special improvements and other purposes^sanc-
tioned by Parliament ; toll bridges, 500,OOOZ. ; Artisans' Dwellings
Act, 300,000?. ; street improvements, 787,000£. ; loans to local autho-

3 G 2

776 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

rities, 538,000/. ; and the remainder for the fire brigade and open
spaces.' *

The central authority has in fact become the banker of the local
boards, as well as the arbiter between them and any of their constitu-
ents who may think themselves aggrieved. Its other administrative
functions are diversified and important, and their discharge, notwith-
standing the activity of an efficient statf, is oftentimes extremely
onerous. It would be vain to expect that eligible and independent
men would be found to perform the executive duties now laid upon
them in the way they ought to be fulfilled, if in addition thereto
were superadded those of daily municipal government, or the far less
compatible cares of any great commercial enterprise. Representative
centralism, thus expanded beyond its natural bounds and proportions,
would degenerate into a clumsy and dangerous motive power of func-
tionaryism which it must keep in motion, but which it could have
no power to direct or control. The same objection to a great extent
applied to any hybrid board formed of delegates from Berkeley
House and Guildhall to superintend, for they could not administer, in
the true sense of the term, any of the great concerns in which the in-
habitants of the metropolis at large are interested.

Upon the vestries and district boards devolved, under the Act of
1855 and successive statutes, the paving, cleansing, and lighting
of streets, house drainage, repression of nuisances, intra-parochial
improvements, inspection of bake-houses, dairies, drinking-fountain?,
common lodging-houses, free libraries, artisans' dwellings, baths and
wash-houses, mortuaries, places for disinfection of furniture or clothing,
analysis of food, and the care of gardens and open spaces ; and for
the carrying out of these manifold duties, powers of borrowing from
public or private sources subject to the veto of the Metropolitan
Board were legally conferred. It would have been miraculous, con-
sidering tLe wide disparity of condition in the communities out of
which the^e primary schools of self-government were formed, and
the utterly dissimilar proportion which their varied duties bore to
one another in different places, if they had been found equally
efficient or blameless. In the mere rate of expenditure and pay of
necessary &taff there has been, as was to be expected, great diversity,
and in some instances startling contrasts. Some vestries availed
themselves largely of their borrowing powers, applied the money to
incontestably useful purposes, and steadily took measures for promptly
and punctually defraying their obligations. A few with fainter hearts
and a heavier burthen of decent indigence to weigh them down
have been unable financially to follow in their footsteps, a^nd have
been afraid to face the difficulties that beset every effort to clear
away the decaying haunts of misery, and the substitution of healthful
and more civilised habitations. The wear and tear of highways in

* Ani.u^l Report of the Metropolitan Board of Works for 1879, p. 98.

1880. THE GOVERNMENT OF LONDON. 777

places of through traffic has proved intolerably expensive : in others
it gives nobody a serious thought ; and then some blockhead, smitten
with the mania for doing sums and statistics, takes out the mileage,
population, and rateable property in two metropolitan antipodes, and
by a rule of three works out a solemn balance of condemnation against
the hard-driven and specious praise of the happy-go-lucky subjects
of his contrast. One of the first obligations laid upon each vestry
and district board was the inspection of nuisances, and the question of
staff for the purpose was disposed of by bureaucratic cynicism with
the flippant sarcasm that where nuisances abounded inspectors, it was
to be hoped, would especially abound. There was little hesitation
in wealthier localities about appointing inspectors at a hundred a
year to keep a look out, as they walked abroad upon their ordinary
callings, for any infringement of sanitary rules ; and five-sixths of
the neighbourhood being occupied with mansions, shrubberies, public
institutions, parks, and dwellings of the well-to-do classes, there could
not have been much danger of the gentlemen inspectors having too
much to do. But not far off, though in a different square of the
statutable chess-board where few of these dainty items of rateable
property were to be found, the suspicion and savour of nuisance being
rife, difficulties arose in getting the right sort of man to be an in-
spector, and greater difficulties in getting him voted adequate pay.
Instances might be named of but one inspector at five-and-twenty
shillings a week in a work-a-day district where two or three
would have ample occupation, but where the circumstances that
rendered more surveillance needful were exactly those that rendered
the local authorities unwillingly parsimonious, prompting them con-
tinually to recur to the sad and shabby text of ' what is the lowest
possible to get the work done for.' Whereupon philosophistry curls its
official lip, scornful at the inefficiency of local inspection in the vulgar
regions —

Where men must work and women must weep,

For there's little to earn and many to keep,

And the heart of toil is moaning'.

In general the vestries have been fortunate in the chief clerks
whom they have relied on for the management and direction of their
business. Many of them have proved themselves to be men of real
administrative ability ; their office, in no case a sinecure, and some-
times requiring an exemplary degree of temper, integrity, and skill,
can in no case be said to be over-paid. It is highly creditable to
them that the most prominent amongst them have retained their
arduous position for many years, without growing weary of well-
doing, or losing the confidence of their variable and varying masters ;
and without having the stimulus of promotion, which in the civil
service of the Crown tends to preserve men past their prime from
yielding to the torpor of routine. Such men cannot keep out incur-

HOB THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

sions of unworthy faction or keep down displays of personal hostility
and spite, or prevent the perpetration of jobs now and then in
small matters, and sometimes in considerable affairs. But Parlia-
ment itself has not always escaped the imputation of having been
made the instrument of men actuated by selfish motives ; and just now
it does not behove • an assembly chosen by ballot and household suffrage,
to have its heart too haughty, or its eyes too lofty, when judging of
the subordinate bodies to whom has been committed the management
of local affairs. Upon the whole they have not neglected their duty ;
- very rarely can it be said that their prominent members have made
merchandise of their functions. In five- and -twenty years society has
materially and mentally undergone many changes, and their position
has without any fault of theirs been modified thereby. New powers
and influences have risen up or been created by direct intervention of
law, all of them contributing to divert public attention, more or less,
from parochial assemblies not too strong at the beginning, and now
perceptibly less so than they were. In 1855 there was no school-
board and no penny press, no tramways and no preservation of open
spaces for the recreation of the peoples ; and these are but some of the
universally operative changes that have taken place in metropolitan
existence. The tide of life has swollen and shrunk alternately in
many ways — what Avonder if popular institutions have drifted some-
what from their original moorings ? London vestries have for a
quarter of a century done an infinity of useful work, and for the most
part done it innocuously and unpretentiously. :3 Is it not time that
wrth the training and experience thus acquired a higher degree of
duty and responsibility should be set before the worthy and capable
men who take the chief part in local business ?

After considerable experience of the working of the twofold system,
a select committee was appointed, on the motion of Mr. Ayrton, to
inquire into the local government and taxation of London. Its re-
port recommended that the name of the Metropolitan Board should
be changed to that of Municipal Council ; that the members should
be chosen by direct election ; that it should have control over the
supply of gas and water, and generally exercise the authority of a
civic corporation. Meanwhile Mr. J. S. Mill introduced a bill to
incorporate the parliamentary boroughs ; but before it obtained a
second reading it was withdrawn, to make way for a more comprehen-
sive measure, which the member for Westminster laid upon the table
at the end of the session. It proposed to create a county of London
with a common council of 171 members and fifty-two aldermen, in
whose jurisdiction the separate authorities of Berkeley House and
Guildhall should disappear ; while subordinate municipalities in the
ten cities and boroughs should divide with this new central power the
business of local government. Many of its provisions when discussed
out of doors provoked opposition ; and many vested interests prepared

1880. THE GOVERNMENT OF LONDON. 779

to resist its enactment. When reintroduced in 1868, the represen-
tatives of the City succeeded in preventing, by reference to standing
orders, the consideration of the clauses that peculiarly affected the
privileges of their constituents ; and the debate on second reading for
the most part related consequently to the other features of the scheme.
Mr. Mill argued that the great danger of democratic institutions
was the want of skilled administration, and the great problem of the
future was to obtain the combination of the two.

All the defects of democratic institutions are great in proportion as their area
is small, and if you wish them to work well you should never have a representative
assembly for a small area, for if you do, it will be impossible to have skilled admin-
istration. There will be much less choice of persons, and those less competent for
the task will be willing to undertake the conduct of public affairs. A popular
assembly that has only a little work to do tries to transact public business by
making speeches, the most ineffective way in which public business can be done.
The parochial area is too small for the public to take an interest in what is being
done. There is a good deal to be said for having only one municipality for the
whole metropolis. But the business to be entrusted to their management would
be too great, and it would give them the control of too large an amount of revenue,
and it would be useless to attempt to obtain the consent of the House to such a
measure. It is better to have local municipal bodies for the different boroughs,
and that the central board should not be troubled with any business but such as is
common to the whole. The boroughs offer a medium between the small size of
an ordinary parish and the inordinate size of the whole metropolis. I therefore
ask you to create municipalities for the parliamentary districts which shall
exercise their powers under the Municipal Corporation Act, and concentrate the
powers of the vestries. 3

Mr. C. Bentinck and others averred that the preponderance of
opinion was adverse to the measure. Some thought it too com-
plicated, some too crude, ministers declined the responsibility of
giving it their support, and the second reading was not pressed to a
division. At the dissolution, which soon after ensued, Mr. Mill lost
his seat, and in 1869 Mr. C. Buxton undertook the charge of the
bill. Further modifications, which had been made to propitiate the
City, were not generally regarded as amendments ; and a new Home
Secretary, engrossed with legislative cares more urgent, prayed for a
more convenient season, and promised in the interim a careful re-
consideration of the subject. But Parliament is seldom in the
mood to undertake laborious changes in existing institutions without
some pressing necessity or importunate demand. Theoretic proof of
anomalies, however clear, and promises of future benefits, however
sanguine, go but a short way towards making a House on a spring
afternoon when the weather is fair, or keeping a House during a
summer night when the temperature is high. Neither Mr. Buxton,
nor after him Lord Elcho, could induce the Government of the day to
take up the question ; and so it remained in abeyance, and might
still have remained there, but for the threatening of a storm of dis-
content regarding the supply of water, which, being essentially a
3 J. S. Mill in moving Second Beading, June 17, 1868.

780 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

practical matter, universally intelligible, people have at length been
set thinking how it may best be regulated. In addition to poor rate,
local government rate, police rate, school rate, the towns on Thames-
side complain that they pay a heavy rate for gas, and an increasing
rate, which they feel to be unjust, for water ; and they have come by
degrees to comprehend that without some permanent local autho-
rity responsible to them and armed with power, if not to control at
least sufficient to arbitrate between them and the water companies, im-
provement in quality or reduction of price they must look for in vain.
For several years discontent had found desultory utterance at the
arbitrary increase of charge made by some of the water companies
to individual consumers without even a semblance of affording
increased supply. The Act for assimilating the parochial standards
of valuation was in itself expedient and just, where a common poor
fund and other rates had been made permanently chargeable through-
out the metropolitan cluster of towns ; but its authors had overlooked
the technical sanction it would give to elude the check imposed by
existing statute upon augmentation of water rent in a great number
of districts, unless new and special provision against it were made :
and no such provision seems to have been thought of or at least
proposed. Isolated remonstrance proving vain, recourse was had here
and there to resistance by way of appeal to quarter sessions ; but in
a majority of instances the magistrates found themselves helpless to
afford redress against the literal interpretation of the law which
limited the company's charge to a maximum percentage. Confluent
murmurs swelled into a volume of popular reproach, which at length
it was impossible to disregard. Public meetings passed indignant
resolutions, and numerous petitions were presented to Parliament
praying that a summary end should be put to further exaction. On
sanitary grounds a stir was likewise made for more constant service
and a purer supply : and with a view to economy of wholesale cost
and management in detail, various schemes were put about for buy-
ing out the companies and centralising water administration.
Towards the close of the session of 1879 Mr. Fawcett moved a
resolution pledging the House of Commons to deal effectually with
these questions ; and on the part of the Government the Home
Secretary accepted the duty, acknowledged its urgency, and undertook
in the recess to mature a measure that would give Parliament the
opportunity without further delay of conferring the control if not the
ownership of metropolitan water works upon some competent and
responsible public authority. What the nature of that authority
should be in each metropolitan city, or whether there should be one
only having jurisdiction over all The Ten, the minister did not say.
Possibly the Government had not come to any definite conclusion on
the matter ; and in the absence of popular opinion strongly pro-
nounced on the various alternatives that presented themselves, the
mind of a Home Secretary is liable to be swayed more or less

1880. THE GOVERNMENT OF LONDON. 781

unconsciously by the tendencies of bureaucracy which encompass him
on every side and that are always in favour of centralisation. Mr. E.
J. Smith, for many years Receiver for the Northern Estates of the
Crown, and one of the permanent surveyors for the Ecclesiastical
Commission, a man of great ability and experience, undertook to
negotiate the simultaneous purchase of the stock, effects, and tenant
right of the eight water companies and the * unification of future
supply under Government management.' 4 A report upon the state
of the various works made by Colonel Bolton 5 as water examiner
under the act of 1871 declared it to be

essential that an abundant supply of water of good quality should be given to the
metropolis at the lowest possible cost. The advantages of the service and control
of such a supply being vested in one authority only instead of in many were
numerous ; it being of course intended that this authority should be one that
would represent the Government and be responsible to Parliament alone. There
was nothing in the character of such an organisation that a public authority
invested with stringent powers could not administer more efficiently and more
economically than it was possible for private associations to do. It being assumed
that it was the intention to make the best of the present sources of supply, and to
improve them as much as possible, without contemplating any of the projects for
a supply from other channels, the immediate results of the transfer would be
a considerable reduction of proposed expenditure for new works ; an increase of net
income from the consolidation of establishments ; the better collection of rates at. a
lower percentage ; and the new rates to be received from owners of houses who do
not now take water from the companies.6

Here is the stark naked theory of central absorption, as opposed to
municipal self-rule, according to the latest version. The consuming
(and non-consuming) public were to be alike taken in and done for
without consent or opportunity to object, like the ignorant natives of
a Polynesian island, or the abject ryots of some newly annexed jaghire
of Hindostan. What signify the rights, prejudices, wants, or capa-
cities of four millions of people inhabiting the ' province covered
with houses ' that Sir George Lewis thought it was high time to
endue with corporate privileges many years ago ? True, they were
citizens of no mean cities, that in the last fifty years have sent to
Parliament a greater number of eminent men than any twenty towns
municipally enfranchised 7 — true they possess fixed property liable
to yearly local taxation greater than all the corporate cities of York-
shire and Lancashire taken together. True, they include in their
muster-roll during more than half the year a large majority of the
eminent physicians, advocates, jurists, men of letters, opulent mer-
chants, eminent artists, rich bankers, landed gentry, and hereditary
nobles of the realm. The insatiable greed of centralism desires to

4 Evidence before Select Committee, July 9, 1880.

5 In a confidential letter'to E. J. Smith, December 15, 1879.

6 Colonel Bolton to E. J.' Smith, December 15, 1879.

7 Of those who have passed away it is hardly necessary to recall the names of
Mr. Grote, Lord Russell, Sir J. Hobhouse, General Evans, Sir F. Burdett, Mr. J. S.
Mill, Sir Robert Grant, Dr. Lushington, Sir W. Molesworth, Lord Dudley Stuart,
Sir W. Home, Sir Henry Bulwer, and Admiral Napier.

782 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

oust them from the management of their own affairs. What can
they know about water or gas compared with half a dozen deputy-
assistant commissaries, sitting in big back rooms in Whitehall, with
ten times more to do than there are hours in the day to enable a
hundred of them to understand it, or days enough in the year to
enable them to dispose of it patiently or properly ?

Economies in management are the ever-ready pretexts for unifica-
tion ; and they seldom fail of producing a superficial effect for the
time being on the public mind, generally engrossed with other
topics more attractive, and therefore more willingly discussed. One
may admit, were it only to save time and inconclusive controversy,
that many specious schemes for bungling together, and chopping to a
given length undertakings previously distinct, have the merit of im-
mediate saving in some form or other. If all the coal-wharves on the
river were taken over by the Home Office, or all the private banks
bought up by the Exchequer, or all the bakeries by the Local
Government Board, it may be clearly shown that the stupid and
brutish inhabitants of London would be benefited by a dead saving of
two shillings and a penny a chaldron, half a farthing a loaf, and a
sixteenth per cent, gain on discount or deposit. Why not have
Government bakeries, coal-wharves, and banks ? or why should not
the Admiralty take to penny steamers, reducing the fares as could
be clearly done to three-farthings, with return tickets to Kosherville
Gardens at three halfpence each ? or why should the Committee of
Privy Council not go into drugs and patent medicines, beggaring all
independent chemists, and guaranteeing a helpless public against
adulteration of tonics, and the blundering of apothecaries' boys ? If
amalgamation and monopoly did not bait their hook with savings,
grubs, and other cheap attractions, foolish gudgeons would never be
caught thereby : but how reasoning and reflective creatures of a
higher grade of being can be duped is simply astonishing. In the
project conceived last year for establishing a Government monopoly
of water supply to the metropolis, calculations were duly made of all
the economies to be effected in stationery, messengers, board room
chairs, wear and tear of bell-pulls, and pensions to decayed clerks by
the substitution of three nominees of the Crown for the several
boards of directors named by the companies. More edifying still
were the portentous calculations of existing reservoirs and filter beds
which might be abolished, and similar works in contemplation, the
outlay whereon might be spared, with a view to show immediate
retrenchment, and a balance in favour of unification in the first two
or three years. But what a prospect in the dim perspective ! It is
the old story of selling surplus naval or military stores in order to
eke out a popular budget, reckless of the certainly enhanced expendi-
ture when growing exigencies have to be met at no distant day. The
select committee to inquire into negotiations for purchase were
assured that if the companies were bought out, their disposable

1880. THE GOVERNMENT OF LONDON. 783

property would amount to many hundred thousand pounds, all to
the good in the unification balance of profit and loss in the first year
or two. And by way of answer to the obvious consideration that
steadily extending wants would soon require the repurchase of land
at a higher price, and the replacement, at greater cost, of extra
filtering beds, we have the cynical suggestion that when all compe-
tition is extinguished, and all sense of joint-stock prudence removed,
and the whole community left to the experimental discretion of an
official bureau, water rental may be raised, by levying the charge
indiscriminately on those who consume and those who do not consume
the article in which Government is invited to do a retail trade.

It is sometimes said in an .offhand way, as an excuse for unifica-
tion, that since the metropolitan area was distributed by Parliament
among the water companies, competition has ceased ; and that
although a new association might to-morrow ask legislative leave
to introduce in Marylebone or Chelsea a fresh source of supply, it
would be refused, or the intruding would sooner or later amalgamate
with the older company ; and therefore, it is argued that to all
intents and purposes competition is out of the question. But this is
not wholly true ; competition is good for a great deal more than at
first sight appears. As between rival vendors offering to lay con-
necting pipes from rival mains in the same street, competition may
not be probable and certainly cannot be profitable ; but is there no
competition working, without noise or haste or failure, between
separate companies renting as tenants at will, contiguous water
farms within the metropolitan ambit ? Is there no worth in example ;
is there no force in comparison ; is there no pressure upon evil or
negligent doers accruing from the praise of them that do well ? In
a civilised community progressive improvements of the greatest and
noblest kind are not carried by jostling, underselling, out-bragging, or
countermining. All the finders and sellers of water did not at once,
or by concert, begin, far less complete, their costly contrivances for
storage and purification ; still less did they simultaneously under-
take to raise new capital for the purpose of sinking artesian wells in
remote hills on the chance of deriving therefrom, chemically, un-
taintable sources of supply. The efforts spontaneously made by the
New River, East Kent, and Chelsea companies at different times and
in different ways to vindicate their respective positions as purveyors
of a great necessary of life were not the mere result of stringent
terms imposed upon them by the legislature, or suggested by the
sheer expectation of any immediate gain. Hundreds of thousands of
pounds have recently been laid out by these and other companies,
not with a view of supplanting or injuring one another j but in an
honourable spirit of provoking one another to jealousy by good deeds
done. It is admitted on all hands that much of this expenditure
realised no additional profit in rates, but must be set down to the
tentative improvements of the condition and character of each under-

784 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

taking. What is this but the highest and best species of com-
petition, that sort of competition which, untrammelled by any centra-
lised yoke, has been the spirit and nerve and life of all the great
self-reliant enterprises that have made England what she is ? Crush
out this spirit, buy up competition, trust to royal commissions to
discover new fountains, and deputy inspectors to find out flaws in
old pipes ; sell off reserves of land, and make one filter bed do the
work of two (as if it would not get dirty in half the time) ; make
a show, or at least a fuss, about economy to justify expropriation
and central monopoly, and we may not have very long to wait for a
fresh outbreak of sanitary reproach and protest, that having gone
farther we have only fared worse. Daily journalism will wax
eloquent and indignant meetings grow stormy ; and the Water Trust
office will rejoice that the day of reaction has come. Public opinion,
out of temper, will be readily taken at its word ; unforeseen necessities
will remain the excuse for unprecedented expenditure, the burthen
will fall exclusively on the Ten Cities of the Thames, and a pro-
visional order to authorise the borrowing of a sum not exceeding so
many millions will be carried in a House the bulk of whose members
care for none of these things. Opposition will be futile on the
second reading, and in committee protesting citizens will be told
that locus standi they have none. Responsibility to Parliament
in a body without equal competitor or rival under such circumstances
will prove to be the merest sham. The temptation to reckless ex-
penditure will neither be curbed by the shareholding interest of a
joint-stock company nor the ratepaying interest of a local corporation
nor the union of both in one as in Manchester or Birmingham.

To do him justice, the late Home Secretary seems to have shrunk
from the invidious task of subjecting the property and people of the
metropolis to the unbridled rule of a mere government board. If
their rates were to be mortgaged for the supposed advantage of
buying out the eight companies at a capital sum of thirty-four
millions, he felt that they were at least entitled to a representative
voice in the management of the affair ; and his bill was therefore
framed for the constitution of a hybrid board composed of delegates
from the Board of Works and the City Corporation, as well as three
functionaries with high salaries named by the Crown. Practically,
however, this device would have resulted merely in a consultative
body resembling in its inability to originate, veto, or control, the
Indian Council whose members are allowed the luxury of dignified
discussion in tranquil times, and permitted to explain their ideas in
confidential essays when the wind from the east is stormy, but who
have no more power to take the reins out of the hands of the Secre-
tary of State than the inside passengers in a mailcoach had to inter-
fere with their driver. On they must go whatever road he chooses
to take, and whatever pace he chooses to drive, certain only, if they
call out of the windows that they are very uneasy, to be jeered at

1880 THE GOVERNMENT OF LONDON. 785

for their pains. As the bill was rot discu?sed before the dissolution
in March, and was not reintroduced afterwards, it is needless to
dwell on its specific characteristics. The report of the recent com-
mittee points to a different constitution of Metropolitan Water Trust,
recommending likewise, indeed, the sending of delegates by the City
Corporation and the Metropolitan Board as well as representatives of
certain suburban districts not comprehended within the jurisdiction of
either ; and omitting all mention of salaried Crown functionaries.
Whether these last be added or omitted is a question of secondary
importance. That of primary consequence is whether a central
Water Trust elective in name or reality must not be regarded as the
first story of a unified municipal edifice for the whole of London.

From a return moved for by Lord Stafford,8 it appears that six
hundred cities and towns in England and Wales depend for their
supply of water wholly on the works of private companies or upon
these and wells and rivers in each locality, or finally upon the latter
only : while a comparatively small number, but chiefly commercial or
manufacturing towns, with large populations, rely on their municipal
government to furnish them at prime cost with this great necessary
of life. The experiments which had been made at Manchester,
Glasgow, and other great northern towns in the business of corporate
water-finding and water-vending seemed to be successful in the
judgment of the communities they exclusively concern ; and it is
probable that ere long other towns will seek to follow their example.
The select committee on metropolitan supply declare as the result
of their investigations that

it is expedient that the supply of water to the ncetropolis should be placed under
the control of some public body which shall represent the interests and command
the confidence of the water consumers ; and that in the absence of any sing'e
municipal body to which these functions could be committed, a water authority of
a representative character should be constituted, and that a bill having that object
should be introduced at an early date by her Majesty's Government.j

It is to be observed that these recommendations do not necessarily
imply the buying out of the existing companies or any of them. The
concluding passages of the report significantly intimate that Govern
ment would not disfavour the idea of taking over their stock and
works if better terms could be made for the public than those which
Mr. E. J. Smith sought to exact last year ; and warning is distinctly
given that when the new municipal authority shall be created, Parlia-
ment will be quite open to consider the expediency of giving it statutable
powers, as has been done elsewhere, to go further afield in search of
new sources of supply. All such projects, however, are judiciously left
to the judgment of the future; and the primary and pressing con-
sideration for us all just now is the proper constitution of the municipal
authority whose duty it would be to enforce adequate and punctual

8 Urban "Water Supply in England and Wale?, ordered by the House of Commons
to be printed July 3, 1879.

786 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

service at reasonable rates by the companies so long as they exist,
or to buy them out and economically to take their places, if
reasonable terms can be agreed upon. It will perhaps be time
enough to discuss terms for a transfer and sale when the municipal
trustees for the community who are to find the money are in a position
to make a bidding or to receive one; meanwhile popular consideration
had best be concentrated on the exact nature of the trust, and how it
ought to be constituted. After all that has happened in the experi-
mental history of metropolitan institutions, it is most desirable that
we should have no more transitional expedients in local rule, but that
the foundations should be laid whereon we may build permanently
and securely not only for the wants of to-day but for the time to
come. To satisfy present weariness and impatience at the unsatis-
factory state of things that now exists, it would not be difficult to put
together a sub -department of the Local Government Board with a
certain number of water trustees elected for form's sake by the people
like poor-law guardians to come when summoned,'sign their names
in a book, listen to orders, and go home again ; leaving the whole
direction and management of another great branch of local taxation
to the Government of the day. We know exactly what this hybrid
system of responsibility without power, and power without responsi-
bility, in local affairs comes to. \Ve have seen the experiment tried
out thoroughly, and we are now witnessing its results. Guardians of
the poor have been gradually but steadily deprived of all power or
discretion over the administration of relief; they are reduced to
indignity and unimportance. They are representative in nothing any
longer but the name ; and if to-morrow the sham were swept away by
an unpublished edict from Whitehall, neither ratepayers nor paupers
would be conscious of the difference in any practical respect whatever.
It would be equally easy, were it thought politic, to create another
central board by way of election, to whom might be confided the
absolute control and guidance in all matters connected with water
consumption and water supply. The Board of Works is such a body,
and two years ago it was not only willing to undertake the task, but
it actually went to great expense and trouble to lay before Parliament
its views and calculations on the subject. From instinct not to be
mistaken, though not easily to be explained, Parliament shied and
could never be brought to look at the first fence again. The Board of
Works dropped the proposal quietly ; and when subsequently asked if
there was any notion of renewing it, assurances were given that the
Board * had put away ambition.' But what does all this mean ? It is
no secret that Parliament begins to think central authority has quite
enough to do, and quite enough of power to do it. What is really
wanted is the like local authority in each of our ten metropolitan
towns to that 'which exists in each of the other great cities of the
kingdom.

W. M. TOBBEXS.

1880. 787

THE CREEDS— OLD AND NEW.

II.

THE HUMAN SYNTHESIS.

PHILOSOPHY should mean such a co-ordinated system of thought as may
cause the whole mental apparatus to converge. Keligion should mean
that concentration of belief and feeling on one dominant Power,
whereby our whole human nature is purified and disciplined, and so
is constantly inspired to the strenuous accomplishment of man's true
work.

In a previous article l we tried to show that the older and cur-
rent forms of Philosophy and of Eeligion fail precisely at this point :
they do not systematise all our ideas ; they do not pretend to organise
the entire life of man.

The degenerate pupils of Kant and of Hegel who now lay claim to
the title of philosophers offer us nothing that even assumes to be a philo-
sophy of science, or of conduct, or of history, or of society. Their so-
called philosophy is limited to ontological and psychological enigmas.
The evolutionist schools no doubt tread lightly over these metaphysi-
cal bogs ; but on their side they entirely drop history, and we pass
in their pages from prehistoric and half-savage man to the sceptics
of the eighteenth century. A philosophy with such enormous voids is
not really synthetic.

Those schools of thought which adopt a theological basis, or admit
supernatural ideas, whether Catholic, Neo-Christian, or frankly Deist,
have a great deal to say about history, or rather about arbitrary por-
tions of history, explaining them freely by the light of their super-
natural hypotheses ; and they certainly do understand the great
primary truth, that Religion is, and always has been, the dominant
principle of man's social life. But then, alas! these theological
philosophers have nothing to tell us about the development of modern
science, about the statics or the dynamics of that industrial society
which forms the complex problem of modern life. None have any-
thing serious to say about secular education, scientific politics, political
economy, science, health, poetry, art. All these things, that is, four-
fifths of life, lie outside the range of Theology, just as they lie outside
the range of Metaphysics.

1 Mneteentli Century, No. 44, Oct. 1880.

788 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

Many of these subjects are no doubt strongly grappled with by
the materialist schools of thought, which deal in a scientific, and
often in a philosophic, spirit, with science, politics, economy, and the
like. But, inasmuch as their history, such as it is, jumps from the
Bone Age to the age of Diderot and Hume, they deliberately ignore just
those parts of life which Theology, with all its shortcomings, directly
takes as its sphere. The instincts of the human soul towards some
great Power external to itself, the desire to be brought into commu-
nion with the World around us, to rest in some definite conception of
the way in which We and the World around us are related to each
other, the yearning to know more of that fellowship we feel within us
towards the mighty whole of which we are sons and members ; finally,
the desire to put forth these instincts of sympathy in some common
act of adoration — these are things, we say, of vast power, utterly
ineradicable from the heart of man, essential to the life of man ; nor
can they be disposed of by an unintelligible chapter or by a logical
formula or two. They must lie deep as the great fundamental stratum
of all philosophy ; they must coincide with its entire field. The sys-
tem in which these things have no place, nay, in which they do not
take the first place, may contain many useful things ; but it is not a
system of human life. That is to say, it is not Philosophy ; much
less is it Religion.

The conventional answer to this is as follows : Philosophy and
religion have each special spheres of their own : philosophy has
nothing to do with science, or history, or politics, or devotion ; re-
ligion has nothing to do with thought, or logic, with worldly wisdom,
or physical health, or earthly wealth. The business of philosophy,
they say, is with abstract existence ; that of religion, with the Soul
and its future.

In this answer is revealed the reason why Philosophy and Religion
have to-day so little permanent hold over men, why their accepted
authority is so small, and the anarchy within them so deep. Philo-
sophies, which profess to give men an ultimate scheme of ideas, leave
out of their scheme vast regions of ideas, some of them the most
intense and profound that stir men to act. Religions, which profess
to concentrate men's spirit on the sole end of life, leave out and
profess to despise almost all that, even to the noblest natures, makes
life worth living : this, they tell us, belongs to some other sphere,
that of science, politics, art, anything but religion. The natural
result follows. Human nature soon wearies of metaphysical sub-
limities and of theological ecstasies, and it deals with life as it best
can, framing explanations of it and ideals for it in its own practical
way. And this way cannot be reconciled with the philosophies and
the religions which strive to dictate to nature. It combats them,
baffles them, and finally silences them all.

1880. THE CREEDS— OLD AND NEW. ] 789

Philosophy and Eeligion must remain thus impotent, a byword
and a jest to clear-sighted and energetic natures, whilst they thus are
content to nibble at separate sides of human nature. One sees at
once why they hold themselves restricted to special corners of man's
being. Philosophy, in so far as it is metaphysical, cannot consent to
surrender itself uniformly to the logic of positive observation, and so
cannot touch the real problems of life and of knowledge. Philosophy,
so far as it is materialist, cannot bring itself to recognise the spiritual
nature of man, and so cannot touch the problems of Veneration,
Adoration, and the highest sympathies. Eeligion again, fondly
clinging to the supernatural as if that were its sole raison d'etre,
dreads to be dragged into the real and active world where everything
supernatural is grotesque ; and so religion stands to-day, like a
pathetic Gothic ruin, soothing and touching the finer natures amongst
us still, but quite outside of and apart from the busy life of men.
Philosophy, equally with Eeligion, is nothing if not synthetic — that
is, co-ordinating and harmonising — and also comprehensive, that is,
correlating all sides of thought and life. Leave any sides of thought
or life wholly out of sight in your philosophy or your religion, and
these introduce conflict, and ultimately confusion. The reason is
obvious from the very definition of philosophy or of religion. The
one professes to set on an immutable basis the highest generalisations
of thought, the paramount ideas of the human mind. The other pro-
fesses to hold out to us as ever present and eternal verities the highest
aims of human life, and the paramount object of our noblest affection.
Is it not plain, that utter failure must ensue if the paramount ideas
of Philosophy, or the paramount ideal of Eeligion, cannot be got into
line with the practical needs of life, or the general sympathies and
instincts of our nature ? Philosophy and Eeligion are not the same ;
because Philosophy is a synthesis of knowledge and of ideas, and
Eeligion is a synthesis of nature and of life. But both are the same
in this, that they must give a complete harmony, or they give none
at all. The one must effect a complete synthesis of the whole
intellectual sphere ; the other, a complete synthesis of the whole
vital energy. Philosophy and Eeligion, affecting to deal with the
highest, and yet knowing nothing of many of the commonest and
widest truths that concern man, are mere impostures. Philosophy
and Eeligion must be able to account for the whole of thought, the
whole of life, or they do nothing. Now, no one of the current systems
of Philosophy or Eeligion either does account for the whole of thought,
the whole of life, or even pretends to do so. When Auguste Comte
recalled men to the true question — What must Philosophy explain,
what must Eeligion effect ? — he started, even if he had done nothing
else, a conclusive revolution in the method of human thought, in the
ideal of man's life.

VOL. VIII.— No. 45. 3 H

790 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

\\ V are persuaded tliat all these things can be, and must be, recon-
ciled, brought into harmony. We say there is a scheme of thought
whereby the religious emotions, the scientific beliefs, the practical en-
ergies, may all have their natural play and freedom, yet may all work
one with another, not working, as they do now, one against the other.
This scheme of thought, to sum it up in a phrase, consists in refer-
ring everything human to the continuity of human progress, on a uniform
basis of demonstrable law. This is a Human Synthesis, meaning by
this term a system at once of thought and of life, coextensive with
human nature, omitting nothing that is human or ministers to
humanity, never wandering into the superhuman, or any Absolute
Universe ; but, on the contrary, consistently grouping everything we
know or do round the permanent good of Man, conceived in the highest
and widest sense.

This Human Synthesis thus differs from every kind of inquiry
that is purely philosophical or scientific (need one say ?), from any that
is purely literary. It looks upon research not as an end, but as an
instrument to effect some real result, now, presently, or hereafter.
Abstract thought we need, special research we need, but no research,
no kind of thought is ever to be a mere law, a sole end, to itself:
arbitrary, absolute, unhuman, irreligious.

This Human Synthesis differs, too, from every reforming scheme
in that it invariably treats the present as a mere continuation of the
past, and the future as simply the necessary and destined product of
the past and the present. Social philosophers and idealists are wont
to talk as if the present were a muddle hardly worthy of attention, as
if the future could be recast in new and superior moulds, flinging the
rotten past away as dross and rubbish. Even the philosophers of
Evolution consistently forget that the generation of men to be are
being daily evolved out of the whole of the generations that have
been. Evolutionists are the readiest of all to tear up whole regions
of human history as wastepaper, or to discharge the product of
vast ages of man into the deep, as some dangerous excrement of the
race.

There is no test so sure for any claim to treat of things human as
this — does it give a complete theory of the whole history of man's
past ? When we say history, we imply of course more than annals :
some things not always included even in the learning of the Gibbons,
the Macaulays, and the Freemans. History means the whole series
of the laws and phenomena traceable in the development of the
human race, including the prehistoric, the uncivilised, and the
oceanic world, and including the history of science, of philosophy, of
religion, of industry, of manners, of economy, of mechanics, of art : in
short, the history of society quite as much as the history of war or
politics. They who can give us a scientific and consistent theory of
history in this sense are alone competent to give us an adequate

1880. THE CREEDS— OLD AND NEW. 791

scheme of philosophy or, I say it advisedly, a complete ideal of re-
ligion.

In the early days of Christianity, miraculous power was regarded
as the test of a divine mission. We might almost say in these
days that the test of a philosophical mission in sociology, that is,
power to cast accurately the laws that determine the Present and
the Future, is the fact of having given an adequate explanation of the
Past.

After five-and-twenty years of continuous study of the historical
theory of Auguste Comte, we have come for our part to believe that
there is none other with which it can be even compared. I am far
from supposing that a theory constructed forty years ago by one who
was a man of science and a philosopher, not a specialist in history, is
absolutely final or infallible. Such an idea would be laughable to a
positivist, who can smile equally at the petty criticisms of some
historical pedant or some political partisan. It is beyond all question
more lucid, more complete, more real, more scientific than the
general theory of Hegel ; and after Hegel's what have we ? We turn
to the most popular of the philosophic writers of our day. Do we
find in Mr. Herbert Spencer, in Mr. Lewes, in Mr. Mill, in Mr.
Huxley, or Mr. Darwin, nay, in Mr. Carlyle or Mr. Freeman, historians
by profession, anything that can be called a general conception of the
entire course of human evolution, moral, practical, intellectual, and
physical ?

Every attempt to found a sound conception of Philosophy or of
Religion without a real and complete Sociology 2 is futile. And
every attempt to form a Sociology or anything short of a complete
concrete theory of man's progress in civilisation is an attempt to
found Sociology out of one's head, to spin a system out of one's inner
consciousness. We hear much nowadays of the necessity for basing
our Sociology on principles of Evolution. Precisely so. But what
does Evolution, applied to the progressive civilisation of man, imply
if it be not a systematic history of human work from the time of the
Cave-men and the Lake-men to that of the great Hordes ; and thence
onward to the Theocracies, the Polytheists, the Greeks and the
Romans, and so on to the history of Catholicism, of Feudalism, the
dissolution of both, the Eevolution, and modern industrial society ?
What we need is a complete scheme of Evolution throughout 'this
entire series.

Another great difference there is which marks off the Positive
Synthesis from all the actual philosophical schemes. It is, or rather
it contains, a general Philosophy ; but the Philosophy is merely one
side of the system. It is an active, doing, changing system. It is

2 Purists in language will have at length to submit to this indispensable hybrid,
which means the science of the elements and of the course of human society.

3 ii 2

792 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

not only a philosophy with a theory of what is being done, but it is
a polity with a programme of what ought to be done, a society, a
working body, one may say a Church, with a set of institutions to
put its programme into action.

Positivism, by virtue of this Human Synthesis, never works out a
theory, or enters upon a research for mere love of research, but in
full sense of the vast importance of research wisely directed to con-
tribute to human wants. Not that all speculation is necessarily with
a direct and immediate design of present action and use. But it is
never purposely idle, consciously aimless, due to mere intellectual
curiosity as of boys intent on ' odd and even.'

To us this perpetual and aimless busying about problems,
philosophical, scientific, literary, in mere vacuity or for mere vanity,
with no social or intelligible motive but these, is one of the most
melancholy spectacles of our time. Thousands of learned and
ingenious minds are occupied in incessant re-shifting and re-sorting
the infinite materials before us, teaching us nothing, preparing
nothing, cumbering the field of knowledge and of thought, wasting
good brain in multiplying chaos. For multitudes of these studious
men never make up their minds on a single great problem of thought
or of life ; hardly know what it is that men need to know and need
to help them in life ; shrinking even from this first duty of a healthy
understanding, so long only as they can soothe the itch of their
cerebral curiosity.

Without saying that the counting of the pebbles on the sea-shore
is an altogether idle and useless employment, we may truly say that
this interminable and purposeless wandering in the realm of know-
ledge is a demoralising and humiliating spectacle. Such are like the
spirits seen by the Poet in Limbo, ' who with desire languish without
hope.' Things of priceless value need to be known ; and they are
neglected. The enormous multiplication of minute and detached
observations crowd out the really essential problems and truths.
Worst of all, the habit of employing the intellect in purposeless
researches, like schoolboys writing show verses or competing for a
prize, unmans the character, weakens the intellectual fibre, and
lowers the standard of the age.

The work before the intelligence of man is practically infinite ;
the materials and possible fields of work are infinite ; the relative
strength of our intellect to cope with this work is small indeed. As
Bacon said, the subtlety of nature is ever beyond the subtlety of man.
Ten thousand years of the brightest genius, with millions and millions
of fellow-workmen, will not suffice to accomplish all that man needs
of discovery, knowledge, method, experiment, meditation, recorded
observation, to make life all that it might be and ought to be. To
accomplish it needs the complex organisation of an army, the dis-
cipline, co-operation, patience, division of labour, of a great

1880. THE CREEDS— OLD AND NEW. 793

government. And withal we have capable brains idly exhausting
their powers in the meanest of curiosities, in the most contemptible
pursuit of personal prizes. Never will philosophy be worthy of its
mission till observers and thinkers can set themselves to labour again
in that religious spirit in which the mediaeval poets or the truly
Catholic painters would begin their work with prayer. And if it be
little now that the modern biologist or chemist could do with prayer,
he has always the real essence of prayer in a heartfelt sense of social
duty, of the human future to which his work is dedicated, of the
majestic past from which every faculty he has is drawn.

It is here that the Human Synthesis stands in such contrast with
the practice of so many schools, scientific, metaphysical, literary. It
calls for a real co-ordination of all knowledge ; that is to say, to
bring knowledge to bear on life, it must be made connected and
systematic.

Our separate lines of knowledge will go on to indefinite diver-
gence, and will fail to support each other, until we can weave them
into one — form a. single fabric of them. We must be able to answer
such questions as these : —

1. What is the bearing of Astronomy on our general theory of
Duty?

2. What is the action and reaction of the science of Chemistry
(for instance) on Sociology ?

3. What is the practical relation of Biology to Morals ?

Whilst we have no answer to these questions we have no real
Philosophy, no synthesis, no stable basis of harmony between our
thoughts and our life. Well! in other words, we have no Religion.
For religion (we say) is just that entire harmony between the human
nature and the life our human nature leads.

It is the fashion now to dispense with all attempts at convergence,
to decry it as a narrowing thing. Synthesis, religion, are words
shrunk into a remnant of their old meaning, things that the world
leaves to metaphysicians and devotees. But this assumption that all
synthesis, any religion, is bad is simply part of the revolt against an
incomplete synthesis, imperfect religion. It is against all the great
examples of high civilisation in history. It does not rest on a
shadow of evidence, or even of argument. The sceptical and revo-
lutionary schools assume it as an a priori truth. But is the actual
intellectual state, and the present social condition the result of that
state, so admirable and perfect as to justify its own transcendent
origin, to prove itself without evidence ? Do our deepest brains and
hearts rest satisfied in the intellectual state of to-day ? Far from it.
Conservatives and reformers in thought alike agree that there is
much out of joint ; they chafe at the discord of ideas which is ever
hindering truth.

The older philosophy, that which grew up with and out of

794 THE S1SETEEXTU CENTURY. November

Tbeolo.v. !i;i> it> definite connection between Astronomy and Duty.
God, said the pious thinker, made the Sun and the planets to revolve
round this earth as we see them, the Sun to give men light by day,
the Moon by night ; and He too revealed to men their duty and
commanded them to fulfil it. And so on throughout all human .
knowledge. This is, no doubt, a very rude theory, and utterly un-
satisfactory, but it is a synthesis of human thought. It is the
theological synthesis. Mighty results have been achieved thereby.

Materialism, too, has given some sort of answer to the question
(let us say) — What is the relation between Biology and Morals ?
Materialism asserts that the state of the moral nature is dependent
on the state of the nervous system, for this determines the moral
condition : in fact, that moral phenomena may be reduced to, and
studied as, phenomena of nerve-tissue and the like ; not morally,
but biologically. This theory will land us in all the evils of
fatalism ; it will deprave our hearts and muddle our heads in the
end. But it is a theory ; it is the materialist synthesis ; and, con-
sistently worked out, it will effect great things, even if they be evil
things. Every great effort or phase of human civilisation has been
due to the fact that there was a correspondence between the moving
ideas current at the time and the life that men lived in it. There
was always a congruity in men's thoughts ; they could be correlated
as a series or a system. Those who are content to base their entire
existence on Eevelation, Church, Authority of any kind, naturally
regard any co-ordination of knowledge as superfluous. The Religion,
Church, or Creed gives some general unity to men's thoughts and
knowledge, and supplies the ground of the life lived. Those, on the
other hand, who seek a real, a scientific, natural basis for their life,
who think that, come what may, knowledge and truth must underlie
all action and all morality, all such (one would suppose) must insist
on the need of having all real knowledge both reduced to order and
organically applied to life.

There are many, professing- to base themselves on science, who
repudiate any idea of reducing science to system, who shrink from it
with horror, and would leave science, and indeed life, to free research,
that is, to chance. What is this but the Nihilism of philosophy ?
The Nihilists of Russia, it is said, desire to make a tabula rasa, to
get rid at once of governments, institutions, religions, and then to
start de novo. Our philosophical and scientific Nihilists protest
against all system, especially any system that is to deal with the
relative bearing of special researches. They would leave everything
to the infallible inner afflatus of each inquirer's intellectual inspira-
tion. Nihilism in philosophy is just as chimerical as Nihilism in
society. All the reasons which apply to coherent institutions in
society apply to the necessity for congruous and systematic ideas
in thought.

1880. THE CREEDS—OLD AND NEW. 795

There are undoubtedly some materialists who seriously seek for
an intellectual synthesis, or general co-ordination of knowledge.
But these, without exception, seem to look for an Absolute Synthesis.
By this we understand an arrangement of knowledge in what pur-
ports to be the true relations of things to each other as they actually
are, some attempt to form a picture of the Universe in its real shape.
The synthetic philosophy of Mr. Herbert Spencer would seem to aim
at a co-ordination of laws cosmological, biological, and moral round
a common principle of Evolution ; and he has worked out this evo-
lution in many branches of science, the most notable things v/e miss
being the facts of general history, of religion, of churches, of govern-
ments, of poetry, of art. A synthetic philosophy should give us
some key to a general conception of history. But the history of
Evolution has hardly yet explained to us some famous events and
persons, amongst whom we might count Moses, St. Paul, Mahomet,
Caesar, Charlemagne, Richelieu, Dante, St. Francis, a Kempis,
Angelico, Scott; the Catholic Church, the Crusades, the Revolution.

A Human Synthesis is in direct contrast with any objective
unity whatever. Giving up the attempt not only to know things as
they really are in themselves, but to arrange our knowledge of things
round any external centre, from any absolute standpoint, the Human
Synthesis aims only at systematising the knowledge of that which
affects man, and of grouping it round the fact of its relation to man.
Theological thought referred all knowledge to the Creator and His
will, His revealed purposes, and man's future destiny at His judg-
ment-seat. Metaphysical thought, when it attempted any synthesis
at all, found a centre in some general hypothesis of Nature, or the
eternal fitness of things. A purely materialistic synthesis, or a
synthesis based on Evolution, in like manner attempts some Absolute
arrangement, conceived as coinciding, in a way more or less complete,
with the actual tableau of natural law as we suppose it really
energising in space.

It is a necessary result of the relativity of all our knowledge that we
can have no Absolute Synthesis, just as we can attain to no objective
truth. Even if our knowledge of a thing, passed as it is through the
medium of our own untrustworthy senses, does come very closely in
each special observation to that reality which we cannot but assume
to be behind each group of sensations, still when we attempt to
arrange a series of such groups in any order, the human perspective,
in which alone we can see them, must show them to us at an immea-
surable distance from the real relation of these groups in space, if
any such relation indeed they have. The relativity of our know-
ledge is continuous, the mass of knowable things is truly infinite, the
limitation of man's powers in comparison is complete. And so, the
attempt of man to co-ordinate his knowledge in terms of absolute
knowledge would be as idle as the attempt to reach absolute know-

796 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

led"e. If man cannot really know the objective World, much less
can he take the objective World as the measure of his knowledge.
Omniscience alone can do this.

Positivism, holding on to the necessity for a Synthesis, and aban-
doning the attempt at an absolute Synthesis, falls back, as the co-
rollary to the relativity of knowledge, on the relative Synthesis, an
arrangement of all our ideas, upwards and downwards, from the cen-
tral point of Man in the widest and grandest conception of this term,
that is, in the entire life of the human race in the highest of its
ideals and its aspirations.

Let us see exactly what is meant by a relative Synthesis for
Thought and Life. It is the real surrender of the attempt to get at
things as they are in rerum not lira ; the effort to get even at abso-
lute relations is surrendered as completely as we surrender the effort
to get at absolute existences. We concentrate all our efforts on the
work of getting a knowledge of things in so far as they affect man.
No doubt this does not imply any vulgar utilitarianism or simply
material interests in men. It means that our intellectual efforts are
animated and marshalled by the principle of their ultimate bearing
on human life.

This is what we mean by a religious philosophy, a religious tone
of thought, a religious ideal of labour. Religion does not begin and
end in just worshipping some ideal being or power, in simply holding
to this or that doctrine about the origin of the universe, in hoping
or fearing some imaginable good or evil in some imaginable after-
world — this is not religion : right or wrong, it is the machinery of
religion, the elements or instruments of religion. Religion has been
strained down into these things by priests and zealots struggling to
save something in the crash of orthodoxy, j ust as Jesuits would nar-
row Christianity down to the hierarchy or the Papal See. But re-
ligion in its proper, full sense means the state of unity and concen-
tration of nature which results when our intellectual, moral, and
active life are all made one by the continual presence of some great
Principle, in which we believe, whom we love and adore, and to which
our acts are submitted, so that the perpetual sense of our dependence
on that power goes deep down into all we think, or feel, or do.
Men may believe in God, or Heaven, and Hell, and yet their souls
may be torn with contending passions, and may have the restlessness
and incoherence of wild beasts ; souls like those of Philip of Spain,
or Mary Stuart. To have religion, in any true sense, is to have
peace.

This peace, no merely ecstatic and imaginary state of emotion,
but a real concentration of all man's varied faculties in one work,
has never been completely effected by any scheme whatever. It has
been partially effected by certain schemes, religions, systems, or
philosophies in special stages of civilisation.

1880. THE CREEDS— OLD AND NEW. 797

Even Fetichism (the belief that activity in nature around us is
due to the emotions and wills of the things that are seen in activity)
gives some sort of harmony so far as it goes ; so that, in a sense,
thought, feeling, and action are stimulated and disciplined thereby.

Theology, in its long history, has raised human nature to periods
of wonderful energy. Polytheism produced prodigies of active in-
tensity. Monotheism has had sublime power over the heart. But
what can Monotheism do now to vitalise and discipline the intellect,
absorbed as it is in its desperate struggle with science, fact, history,
common-sense ? Not that one would presume to say that Monotheism
is incompatible with intellectual force in given minds, but that on its
own confession it is quite unable to systematise the logic of modern
thought, to disentangle the accumulated masses of modern knowledge.

A metaphysical creed, such as Pantheism or that gossamer Theism
which is real Pantheism, may have some power over the emotional
nature in some characters ; much possibly over the intellect in the
poetic spirits. But how will Pantheism, or any of those nebular
hypotheses about God which now amuse subtle men of letters, how
are these to concentrate the activity ? Pantheism is a meditative,
solitary, subjective creed. How can the imaginative sentiment that
everything is God, and God is everything (certainly nothing that we
immediately see or feel), nerve a man with patience, unbending will,
enthusiastic concentration of purpose to work, that is, to change
things, to overcome this, to develop that, to assert the supremacy of
the human character in the midst of a faulty but improvable world?
Pantheism, Neo-Theism, Nephelo-Theism, is the religion of scholars,
not of men and women with work to do.

Turn to Materialism,3 in any of its prevalent forms. Take a
theory of an all-sufficing, all-explaining, all-pervading Evolution ; it
is a creed which may unquestionably stimulate the intellect, give it a
central point ; it may do the same for the activity. And, now that
the development of the intellectual and active powers is treated as the
sole end of education, that seems enough to many : so that they find
a sort of synthesis in Evolution ; it becomes to them a central idea,
round which they can imagine a future generation basing its life and
thought.

But what can Evolution do to give a basis for the entire man,
how can it act on the moral nature and appeal to feeling, to venera-
tion, devotion, love ? The heart of man cannot love protoplasm, or
feel enthusiastic devotion to the idea of survival of the fittest. Our
moral being is not purified and transfigured by contemplating the
dynamic potency that lies hid in Matter. Was any one ever made
purer, braver, tenderer by the law of Perpetual Differentiation ? The

3 It may be convenient to state that, Materialism is throughout used for any
general philosophy of the world and of man wherein the dominant force is not found
in some conception of moral will and the highest sympathy.

798 TllK MXETKKXTH CENTURY. November

scorn which true brains and hearts that have the root of the matter
in religion launch against this assumption has been far from unjust
or excessive. The dream that on the ruins of the Bible, Creed, and
Commandments, in the space once filled by Aquinas and Bernard and
Bossuet, or by Paradise Lost, the Pilgrim's Progress, and the
English Prayer Book, there might be erected a faith in the Indefinite
Persistence of Force and the Potential Mutability of Matter, indeed
deserves the ridicule it meets. Evolution will never eliminate the
heart out of man so long as Mankind exists ; nor will the spirit of
worship, devotion, and self-sacrifice cease to be the deepest and most
abiding forces of human society.

See the dilemma in which the Theological and the Materialist
Syntheses fatally revolve. The theological explanation, starting from
profound feeling and rude knowledge, would force under the concep-
tion of an anthropomorphic Providence the hard facts of the external
world. Now the hard facts of this external world — law, sequence,
struggle, imperfection, decay — are so familiar to all minds that they
have split the conception of Almighty Benevolence till it bursts and
cracks around us. To the theologians succeed the materialists, radiant
with the triumph of law, evolution, differentiation, and the. like ; they
extend these conceptions to man, to society, to the soul, and they in
turn seek to group all ideas, whether cosmical or moral, round one
supreme conception. Some call it Law, some Force, some Evolution,
some Matter : all agree in this, that they think they have found one
conception, theory, group of ideas, or system of thought, which can be
carried through the whole range of phenomena and will explain all
facts, cosmical or human, physical or moral, spiritual or social.

They have rushed on the other horn of the dilemma, with conse-
quences even worse than befall the theologians. The theologians revolt
our understanding when they seek to force into the great moral con-
ception of Providence the immutable world of law, and the waste dis-
closed by Nature. . The Materialists revolt our hearts when they seek
to crush the great moral and social forces of man, under conceptions
that are physical not moral, by reference to sources that are intellec-
tual not emotional. Against this the noble instincts of the best hearts
and brains rebel, and most honourably rebel. Man and our human
society, they cry, will be degraded into mere animality, if the sole
supreme Power presented to our daily thought is a force such as we
can trace in a chemical experiment, applicable to gases and cells just
as much as to civilisation and to our human hearts. Well ! reply the
materialists, if the sole supreme Power presented to our daily thought
be an omnipotent, ubiquitous Providence of Free Will and infinite
Goodness, your science becomes a fairy-tale, your explanation of the
world a tissue of mystical sophisms, and your life artificial, hysterical,
useless.

Both objections are unanswerable, for both are true. But then

1880. THE CREEDS— OLD AND NEW. 799

both claims are equally inadmissible, equally false. The claim of
Theology to make its Providence absolute and ubiquitous, paramount
in the physical and moral Universe, is just as hollow as its claim to
maintain the idea of fatherly protection and filial reverence is strong.
The claim of Materialism to see nothing in human nature but the
reign of Law is as shocking as its claim to maintain the omnipresence
of law is unassailable. Theology tries to make our ideas of Nature
and Man reducible in the limit to the idea of (rod. Materialism tries
to make our knowledge of the moral and spiritual world ultimately
resolvable into our knowledge of the physical and material world.
The one theory ends in becoming fantastic and even insincere ; the
other ends in being unhuman and even bestial. As we get out of
the mysticism of Theology, we fall into the slime of Materialism.

No such Monism as either theory presents is possible in philo-
sophy. Monism is a remnant of the old ambition of human thought
in its infancy. Providence is an idea that cannot be extended
throughout the realm of the External World as well as of Man, any
more than the idea of Force and Evolution can be admitted to rule in
the moral as well as in the physical world. We shall have eventually
to recognise. a Dualism, and thus we can save our belief both in Law
and in Providence. The world of Law is everywhere visible in the
Environment of Man, and, so far as we can see, is the ultimate prin-
ciple therein, manifested to the eye of man. The world of Law is
traceable also in the world of Man, so far as man shares the nature of
his environment, and is made up of it, and works with it. But face to
face with the Environment there stands Man, presenting us not only
with the phenomena of Law, but also with the phenomena of Will,
Thought, and Love. Nor are these phenomena of Will, Thought,
Love, of sympathy, and providence, and trust, and hope, at all
ultimately reducible to phenomena of sequence and evolution, how-
ever intimately associated they be with them.

Thus, then, a Human Synthesis avoids both horns of the dilemma
whereon Theology and Materialism strike in turn. It does not seek
to extend the reign of Feeling into the Universe. It does not suffer
Feeling to be absorbed into the External World and its laws. Man,
dependent on his Environment and yet distinct from it, even in a
way controlling it, remains a truly human Power, with a sublime
ideal, and profound sympathies. Great as he is, he recognises the
eternal limits of his power. Aspiring as he is, he does not forget the
facts and the immutable conditions of his destiny. The World and
Man stand in continuous correlation. And Man, renouncing all ideas
of omniscience, as of omnipotence or omnipresence, accepts the
bounds of his might ; but he is humbly conscious that on certain
fields his human heart is supreme, and that in these fields are to be
found the solid parts of human happiness.

In the end, Theology, Metaphysics, Materialism, fail to establish

800 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

any permanent unity in the whole of human life ; the first failing to
satisfy the full-grown intellect, the second being without any means
of influencing the active nature, the third being a blank in the moral

A Human Synthesis, or central motive, reaches all of these equally,
and brings them into harmony one with another. It incorporates and
revives all that is solid or permanent in Theology, in Pantheism, in
Materialism. If it does not concentrate the whole life of man on the
idea of a Divine Being, assumed to be omnipotent, omniscient, and
all good, it does concentrate man's life in the visible presence of a
being, of surpassing greatness, beneficence, and wisdom, when com-
pared with any single individual life. If it declines to treat seriously
the mystical poetry that sees God in everything, and everything in
God, still it does observe in the whole environment of man the forces
and the potencies on which the great Human Being rests for its exist-
ence, and whereout it frames its own continual growth : forces and
potencies which that Human Being can frequently control and can
perpetually adapt.

In one sense, the Human Synthesis would have an analogy with
Pantheism, if we looked only to Man, that is, to one side of the
equation, and put aside that continual environment of man, the
World, by acting on which man puts forth all his energy and works
out his progress. Humanity can be traced indeed in every man and
child ; and in some sort we can find an incarnation of Humanity in
every being of our race.

So, too, if a Human Synthesis does not treat the abstract notion of
Evolution as the ^centre of its faith, it includes Evolution in every
rational sense, inasmuch as it puts before our eyes perpetually, not
the idea of a materialistic series of cosmical laws, but the real imago
of our great human whole, itself passing in a course of evolution to a
higher state of being, whilst it gains every day a fuller command over
that unbroken reign of law which the material world presents, and
beneficently applies that command to its own well-being.

A Human Synthesis reaches to all parts of our nature equally.
What can be a nobler spur to perseverance in intellectual effort,
bracing and tempering it to its duty, than the sense that all we learn
and all we teach is but the adding a new stone in the vast cathedral
of intellectual combination, the edifice which was begun 10,000 years
ago, and grows upward, increasing in completeness and richness with
each generation ? What better guide need we in the task of giving
due correlation to our knowledge than the continual remembrance of
the subtle complexity with which the sciences have worked together
and reacted each on one another, and have combined together in ways-
so mysterious, and yet so real, for the practical accomplishment of
human good ?

The historic side of science, its moral power, its services to huma n

1880. THE CREEDS— OLD ASD NEW. 801

nature, its unwearied and almost logical evolution, its intimate union
with all that is stable and real in Humanity — these are all lighted up
with a' new colour by a Human Creed: these hard cold truths are
ennobled by it, moralised, humanised. Science becomes in our eyes
(not the godless puffing up of earthly reason), but in a new sense,
sacred, beneficent, mighty ; for we see it ever clothed in, a vesture of
great human qualities and high associations with human destiny.
Sacred, we may say, by virtue of the great lives that have been given
up for it by countless martyrs of science, myriads of unknown
martyrs no less than the great known chiefs and captains in the
battle : beautiful, by virtue of the exquisite subtlety and invention of
its handiwork : beneficent, by virtue of the incalculable blessings
that it has shed upon our once puny race : mighty, by virtue of the
almost miraculous power with which it has endowed a species that
was once as the Bushman and the Fuegian.

If this Human Synthesis show us law wherever we turn, and
thereby sheds throughout the whole intellectual system a sense of
rest, reality, utility, still it does not leave our hearts for ever in
presence of a hard world of logical formula and physical sequence. It
shows us at once law in Man, and Man himself the dispenser of law —
using it for his own purposes, with infinite versatility and command,
submitting himself with noble freedom and humility to its inevitable
limits, and yet in the end the true master of the fixed conditions
within which he finds his life has been cast, overcoming Nature, as
Bacon says, by yielding to her wisely : at last, splendidly triumphant,
not over law, nor in spite of law, but by means of law — man being
himself the most beautiful and sublime illustration of law, and yet
with his human will and his human brain and heart having that
which is never in all its parts utterly commensurable with law, nor,
in its ultimate mysteries, altogether explicable by law.

It is one of the most daring of the modern attempts to harmonise
Theology and Science (chimerical and indeed unthinkable as the
attempt itself may be judged) that God may be reconciled with the
Eeign of Law by calling Laws the thoughts of the Divine Mind, so
that the physical laws of the world and the laws of human evolution
are not potentialities inherent in things and in men, but are them-
selves the wishes and ideas of Omnipotence. In this way a some-
what sophistical Pantheism has sought to save at once the admitted
immutability of law, its omnipresence, and the free will of a Divine
Providence. The invariable sequences that science reveals in all
things are not, we are told, external to the Creator, but are simply
the way in which he chooses to work and to think. They who put
this forth have hardly, one would think, worked out all the con-
sequences of this somewhat irreverent theology, which would
make the Black Death, the earthquake of Lisbon, and the Eeign of

802 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

Terror, some out of many of the less praiseworthy thoughts of the
Creator.

Chimerical as this notion is when applied to an All-Grbod Pro-
vidence, there is a certain sense in which we may say that the laws
we observe in all tilings are indeed the thoughts of Humanity. Laws
of Nature are not so much the expression of absolute realities in the
nature of things (of this we know nothing absolutely), but they are
those relations which the human intellect has perceived in co-
ordinating phenomena of all kinds. They are the apparent con-
nection of things such as we detect them by observation.

Man is most certainly not omnipotent ; and therefore he is not
responsible for the confusions and imperfection? which he sees in law,
but which he cannot remove. He is not all-good, and his goodness
is compatible with the social catastrophes of which his imperfect
qualities make him the victim. The whole sphere of law is nothing
but the outcome of the human intelligence applied to the world
of phenomena. It is the intellectual aspect of Humanity. It is
Humanity thinking.

On the other hand, Theology, in presenting us with a centre of
inscrutable Godhead, really leaves the intellect out of its scheme, or
else bids it serve in limits and fetters, for the modern intelligence
has no meaning but in extending and consolidating the realms of
law. A metaphysical Pantheism presents us with no real centre or
motive at all. It leaves the intellect free, but it supplies it with no
adequate cause for activity, no source for its inspirations, no object
for its efforts. A logical Materialism gives us Law without (rod, as
Theology had given us God without Law ; but it leaves us without
any lofty affection whereby the exercise of the intellect can be en-
nobled, or that of the activity made moral.

A Human Synthesis (that is, Humanity as the centre of Thought
and Life) gives us both law and author and minister of law in a Human
Providence. And this Providence and this law in no way exclude
each other. Far from being incompatible, each is the complement
of the other, for they are mutually dependent. The intellect has no
check to its freedom in its pursuit of law, and it finds a worthy sub-
ject of its reverence in the being which is the real discoverer and
author of law. The spirit of worship is called out and stimulated ;
but it is never allowed to carry the nature beyond the realities of
science. The active instincts of our nature are sanctified and forti-
fied by the splendid intellectual resources which they find in their
service, by the noble work of regeneration to which the generous
instincts impel them.

Such are some of the relations and the harmonies that result
from a human centre to thought. Of necessity it makes philosophy
real, organic, useful, and relative. For it puts'an end to the eternal
search after absolute truth, and to those dissolving views of endless

1880. THE CREEDS— OLD AND NEW. 803

hypothesis which is the only avenue to absolute knowledge and to
knowledge of the absolute. Man as the great centre makes every-
thing real. The Philosophy of man must be demonstrated, verified,
brought to the test of experience. It must have a common purpose
running through it ; it is not satisfied with simple speculation ; it
has regard to the good of man, will be limited by human powers, and
be relative to mundane conditions. In every possible sense of the
term, we need to put an end to all philosophies of things in them-
selves— of Dinge an sick : we need to know things as man sees them,
and as they affect man.

Thus also Science will feel a new impetus, for science is never
really great except in due relation to philosophy, to general theory,
and man's real necessities and demands. Nothing was ever done
for science greater than what was done by the philosophers, by Aris-
totle, Descartes, Bacon, Hobbes, Leibnitz, Diderot, Hume; the
authors these of the great creative ideas in general philosophy. Nor
was any period of science so fruitful as that which followed the great
resettlements of human society; the Empires of the Macedonians
and the Csesars, the formation of modern society, and finally the
industrial development of the last century. The claim of some
modern men of science to have their studies regarded as the solitary
manifestation of individual genius, independent of philosophy, and
general classification, impatient of any social impulse, and of all
synthetic direction, is the last pettiness of pedantic specialism.
When a real classification and harmony of the sciences has become
an accepted truth, when a sound general philosophy and a vitalising
religion has come to pervade and dignify every corner and bypath
of science, it will exhibit a breadth and elevation unknown to
academies and the competitors for puerile prizes.

All that is needed is for each worker in every science to be filled
with a living sense of its relation to the whole scheme of Human
Thought and its sacred importance to the future of Human Life. It
is a mockery to pretend that this constant association of the daily
work of each of us with all that is high in general philosophy and in
social duty would be to narrow or to trammel the student in his
task. Limitation of the freedom of all human thought by moral
oppression is as odious as limitation by legal persecution. We ask
only for an adequate education and an enlightened social standard
of labour. The aim of labour that we would see is so big that no
sense of narrowness could arise from its constant presence and
influence. It demands only this : the habit of looking at the
organic spirit of all science, or its relations to the whole of human
thought, to be conscious of its high religious value, to bear in mind
its magnificent history of continual and correlated effort, to be ready
to hear the cry of humanity for the removal of pressing evils, for the
discovery of further boons, to be saturated through and through with

804 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

the belief that the whole career of Science has been one of usefulness,
reality, beneficence. Assuredly Science has nothing to lose, every-
thing to gain, by formally and visibly enrolling itself in the service of
Humanity.

But the great effect of the acceptance of a Human Synthesis will
be on Life as a whole, moral and active life, even more than on the
intellectual life. What is it that now lies at the root of all our com-
plaints and our wants? It is the breach of correspondence and
common purpose throughout our human society and our individual
powers. All schools alike complain. Not one but all cry out for
greater co-operation between classes and institutions, greater harmony
and unity in our spirits within us. The preachers of all the theologies
complain that there is no concord without or within. Ten thousand
pulpits bewail the pride and hardness of the intellect, its defiance of
Grod, its indifference to His worship. They complain as much of
the active instincts, of self-will and hardness of heart, disregard of
duty, mercy, God. The metaphysicians languidly complain of utili-
tarian aims, sordid indifference to abstract thought, to the fine beauty
of a meditative existence. On their side, the materialists complain
of the reign of superstition, of the passion for religious excitement, of
the nightmares, and the hallucinations that persist in spite of science,
in the teeth of truth.

So all are dissatisfied with our intellectual and social state as it is.
No school, or Church, or party pretends to undivided sway ; all com-
plain that they are checked or baffled by the rest. To a really
consistent theology, the eagerness of Science to know, the zeal of the
world in its business, are all waste. He to whom the Judgment is
intensely real and awfully near cannot but look on research as ungodly
trifling ; on industry, commerce, manufacture, politics, as perilous
distractions from spiritual hopes. To the true theological devotee
three fourths of life are a mistake, a curse, a snare ; and if the bulk of
professing believers openly ridicule such inhuman extravagance, it is
simply that the bulk of professing believers do not believe their own
religion. To the metaphysical enthusiast, the activities of life are
unworthy of the higher minds, the moral devotions of the pious
betray a want of enlightenment. To the materialist, the devotion,
the conviction, the consolations, the ecstasies of the pious men and
women around him are hallucination, anachronism, degradation.

So each of these leading school^ )of thought protests how partial is
their own grasp over the world of to-day. Each admits that life, as
they conceive it, is still marred, wasted, depraved, by the persistence
of some other type which undoes so much of their own work, bars the
way, baffles their labours, and turns them to a contrary issue.

What a waste is life under this era of cross-purposes, and com-
pleting ideals, and rival systems of faith ! The intellectual systems
scorn the noblest emotions and all schemes of life that are based on

1880. THE CREEDS—OLD AXD JVtfiF. 805

them ; the active and energetic schemes of life coolly push aside these
emotions, and are half suspicious of the practical usefulness of the
intellectual schemes. The emotional systems, for their part, re-
solutely turn from the decisions of the intellectual, and persist in
adoring, against all the proofs and all the realities, that which they
can hardly pretend any longer to believe in.

What a waste, discord, inhuman life is this! We should suppose
that the one thing to which the deeper brains and nature of our race
would betake themselves as of one accord would be this : to recover,
if it might be, the lost sense of unity in human life, to knit up again
together activity, intellect, enthusiasm, so that once more we might
each of us feel one, feel that human society was one, as men felt in
the days of Abraham, or of Homer, or of Charlemagne, when at least
the various faculties and provinces of man's nature were not at open
war with each other, seeking each to silence the other. One could
imagine almost that we should have heard this nineteenth century
calling aloud with groans, like the Pilgrim of the seventeenth century,
' What shall I do to be saved ? who shall deliver me from the wrath to
come ? ' Why does it not cry aloud to be saved from wasted life on
earth, to be delivered from the moral chaos of a society really at war
with itself, its best powers counteracting each other ?

It is not so, perhaps. The nineteenth century does not cry out
for salvation, for it is willing to believe that it is saved, and would do
well, if only sundry pernicious principles can be suppressed. Each
one of the great types of life still holds itself certain to succeed at
last, if it can only manage to exterminate the rest. Theology still
thinks it will ultimately get the better of Pantheism, and of Material-
ism, and will yet plant Grod securely on the throne of a regenerated
(i.e. a tamed) Thought and Will ; but to do this the intellectual and
active nature of man must bow to the commands of a devout and
ecstatic spirit. Metaphysics still hope for the ultimate enlightenment
of all human minds, and the final overthrow of dogmatic formalism
and utilitarian vulgarity. Materialism is confident also that the reign
of physical law will ultimately extirpate religion ; and having done
that, will one day no doubt succeed in making our industrial existence
a more human and shapely thing than it is.

The truly Human Synthesis is far from seeking the extinction of
any one of these three principles. It would satisfy the spirit of Devo-
tion, the Intelligence, the Energy, equally, and all together. It ends
the secular conflict by conciliation, by a true consolidation, not by
giving victory to any one. For it holds out to all the real image of an
idealised Humanity (that is, the ordered assemblage of all the brains,
wills, and labours of the human race past, present, and to come) as the
centre whereto all efforts must converge, and the source of man's
best attainments. It supplies our intellectual work at once with
material and with purpose ; our emotional zeal with object and in-
VOL. VIII.— No. 45. 3 I

806 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

spiration ; our practical labour with a noble function. This unity of
being is summed up in the formula — * Act under the influence of
Affection ; and think, in order to act.'

Thus understood, Man thinks by the aid of Humanity, from which
the substance of his thoughts is derived ; he thinks for Humanity,
which alone can give a noble purpose to thought ; he orders his
thoughts to accord with life by referring all to Humanity. Man can
honour and love Humanity, the visible author and minister of all that
he possesses and hopes. So too Man works for Humanity, the natural
object of all work, the labour which alone is always noble, always use-
ful, and never unhappy.

Here is a true Synthesis, or converging point in life. What other
complete Synthesis can we imagine ? Let us try by each of these
three great faculties of our nature any one of the great ideas which
have satisfied men in the Past, and satisfy so many still. Man has
honoured and loved God, as he has honoured and loved nothing
else. Nay, let us rejoice that the deep human instincts survive in the
wreck of Theology, that man still can honour and love God. But
where is the man who can honestly say, looking round on the vast ac-
cumulation of modern knowledge, that he co-ordinates all his thoughts
round the image of God, that the idea of God gives him a rational
theory of all his acquirements, that he thinks for the service of God,
and can see that service fulfilled in every thought ?

Or who can say, in the whirl of our modern industrial activity,
that he works and toils for God, that God is the natural object of all
human labour, that each product of his hands is a new offering to his
Creator's well-being, that it is a comfort and a use to an omnipotent
Providence ? Who can utter any of these phrases in a literal sense, in
any but a sophistical and hysterical way ?

Turn to the Metaphysical Synthesis, the philosophy of ultimate
being, or any of the cloudy theisms of the day. Who can say that
man thinks by the aid of absolute reason, or by a First Cause so sublime
that does not interfere with mundane laws ; that these ' defecated '
residua of fastidious logic enable a man to co-ordinate his thoughts,
group the laws of nature, "or give him the mutual relations of the
sciences ? And further, what mockery is implied in the question —
Can any man honestly pretend that he loves the Absolute, or any such
essence as he finds remaining after a long course of abstract medita-
tion ; much less can any one say that the Absolute is the natural ob-
ject of all earthly labour ?

What a tissue of verbiage and sophistry do these grand ' residua '
of the philosophers become, when we place them face to face with the
other sides of human nature, and ask how they stand to affection, and
to work, to industry, to duty !

Let us again turn to the Materialist Synthesis, if Synthesis the
materialists permit at all. I mean by a materialist synthesis any
central idea, law, force, or tendency which is supposed to be the ulti-

1880. THE CREEDS— OLD AND NEW. 807

mate reality in the Universe, to which all laws can be subordinated, and
to which all phenomena can be referred, but which presents us with no
dominant idea of Affection, Sympathy, and Will. Any synthesis that
omits these qualities, or fails to place them at the top, is a Materialist
Synthesis.

Now there are all kinds of forms of such a synthesis. Evolution
is, a familiar example. Men of great power and high character tell
us that they think the clearer by the light of Evolution, that all their
thoughts flow from the centre of Evolution, that Evolution truly co-
ordinates their ideas. Accordingly it is to them the real Synthesis,
and, excepting an ejaculation to save the Possible or the Unknowable,
it is all the Synthesis they need.

Very good ! Evolution may very likely serve as an intellectual
Synthesis ; but is it a moral and practical Synthesis ? Can any man
pretend to say that he loves, honours, adores Evolution ; that the
image of it is about his bed and his path, in his down-sitting and in
his up-rising, that it touches his heart, rouses him to noble effort,
purifies him with a sense of great Tenderness and great Self-sacrifice?
Can any man without laughing thus speak of Evolution, or of the
law of Differentiation, or of the Survival of the Fittest? These
potent generalisations of cosmical science are discoveries of a high
order. But the girl or the child whose tender spirit has drunk
deep at -the fountains which gave us the Morning and the Evening
Hymn, reaches to heights and depths of human nature, and knows
vast regions of truth and power, wherein these potent generalisations
can as little enter as a toad or a piece of quartz.

Much less can any say that Evolution, Differentiation, Survival,
or any general cosmical principle whatever can be treated as the
natural object of all social work, that it can be looked on as the one
aim of labour, the sanction of human industry, the guarantee of
happiness in labour ? Does any such cosmical principle bring us
nearer by one jot to the settlement of any single industrial problem ?
Does it not leave all practical problems to the law of the strongest ?

In what sense, then, is Evolution a synthesis, if we desire to
embrace in our synthesis the whole of the powers of man ? Try any
one of the metaphysical or the materialist central ideas, and ask
what possible power they can have over the greater outbursts of the
human heart ? Are we, then, to tear up out of our idea of human
nature, and cast aside as an effete tendency, together with slavery,
polygamy, and cannibalism, the world-old instincts of men and
women for Devotion, Self-sacrifice, Adoration, the overmastering
passion of well-doing, and sympathy, and care for others, the
humbling of the spirit of self, veneration for great benevolence,
gratitude for great services — in a word, the outpouring of the Soul
towards a good Providence, which has been known to man since the
days of the Cave-men under a thousand forms of religion ?

3 i2

808 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

' Then,' cry the orthodox, and those who imagine they can save
the essence of orthodoxy, by enveloping every scientific difficulty in
a cloud of phrases, * theology does give us such a synthesis in the
idea of a Creating and Ruling God ; accept with us this centre of
affections of which you admit the ubiquity and the power ! '

Here, alas ! comes in the other part of the dilemma. The theo-
logical synthesis is just as flagrantly and hopelessly impotent in the
whole mental and practical sphere of man as the materialist synthesis
is impotent in the devotional sphere. And that even by the tacit
admission of theologians and pietists themselves. In ages when the
theological idea was really dominant, it did profess to be a complete
synthesis of man's life, and was distinctly accepted as such. The
thought of God, the love of God, was honestly taken by powerful
brains and characters to be the real centre of all thoughts, and not
only of all love and hope, but of all work and of all enjoyment also.
Abraham and David, St. Paul and St. Bernard, Mahomet and Luther,
perhaps even Fenelon and Ken, did literally in their hearts believe
the love of God to be the true explanation of all man's knowledge,
and the proper object of every human effort.

But now, since science has surrounded our lives with such a
concurrent mass of correlated law, and this sense of law is so wide-
spread and familiar to the daily thought of the most ignorant ; now,
since our social existence has so developed, and has so clothed with
noble colours the free resources of man's manifold powers, now it is
simply impossible to find the Creator in every thought, God in every
act. The most mystical of theologians, the most austere of devotees,
does not ask us to do so. Common-sense is too overwhelming to be
resisted. Piety itself adopts its language ; orthodox authority depre-
cates the exaggeration of theology. The Pope alone holds out, and
discharges a Syllabus now and then. But bishops, priests, and dea-
cons, for the most part, sweep theology away from the whole field of
systematic thought and active life. Science, they say, explains the
laws of nature and the laws of society ; social motives are an adequate
explanation of worldly activity. All we ask, say they, as sensible
theologians, is to reserve the idea of God and the Scheme of man's
Salvation for the hours that are given to meditation and prayer,
to the spiritual sphere alone.

In other words, the idea of God, which, when theology was a
Synthesis, filled the whole human sphere, has now, even in the hearts
of the most devout, shrunk into one part of human nature, one aspect
of life, and that one which all but a Trappist monk or an Indian
fakir would admit to be an occasional, not a continuous, aspect of
life. It follows that Theology, or the idea of Divine Providence, does
not now pretend to supply man with a complete Synthesis for his
whole life, even in the minds of those who make the largest claims
for Divine Providence, and who feel its power over their hearts, most
profoundly and most constantly.

1880. THE CREEDS— OLD AND NEW. 809

This, at length, is the conclusion to which our argument has led
us. There is discoverable in human and mundane things no Syn-
thesis but one, and that is a Human Synthesis. A true synthesis
must, if it is to concentrate human life, be coextensive with human
nature ; it must be real ; it must perfectly submit to logical verifica-
tion ; it must directly appeal to the whole range of thought, of
affection, of energy ; it must harmonise all these to one end ; and
finally, that one end must be such as can inspire our noblest emo-
tions of Love and Veneration. The tests of a true synthesis are
these : completeness, reality, truth, unity, sympathy. These tests
and qualities are presented, we say, by one ideal alone, the ideal of a
transfigured Humanity, in which the Past and the Future are bound
up, in which the life of each one of us is incorporated and dignified,
by which its fruits may be indefinitely continued.

Such, then, are the two problems, or rather the two phases of one
problem, which it is the business of this discourse to propound.

Firstly — Let us deliberately weigh the suggestion that no Synthesis
whatever is possible, or needful ; that we are for ever to give up the
hope of finding any Centre, or Idea, or Power, wherein our lives may
be made one, whereby society may be made one.

Secondly — Let us test in turn each of the creeds or systems which
pretend to offer us a Synthesis, and try if any one of them presents
us with a force that can dominate alike all the faculties of man.

This I take to be the one indispensable dogma of the system we
follow, the one central point round which everything may be left to
group itself; that it holds up to us a common Principle whereby the
whole nature is united and glorified in its moral, intellectual, and
practical sides at once, by devotion to a Power, human, real, de-
monstrable, and lovable. It shows us something that we can love
and be proud to serve ; something that can stir all our intellectual
efforts, and reduce them to system ; something which at the same
time can dignify and justify our best active exertions. And this
something is one Power for all parts of our nature, equally related to
all, to be approached by all parts of our nature at once. It can be
proved to exist by scientific verification ; its being and its life can be
traced by scientific laws. It transcends in perpetuity and power by
unimaginable proportions the utmost duration and power of any
single mortal liie. And withal it appeals to our noblest affections
and sympathies : we can look on it with Veneration, Attachment,
Gratitude, so that our true devotional instincts can grow to be the
dominant motive of our lives. That real, provable, mighty, and
beneficent Power is Humanity, which sheds throughout the complex
scheme of human organisations harmony complete and stable, and
thus at length gives peace, the child of harmony alone, to the spirit
of the individual man, and to progress throughout the ages of human
society.

FREDERIC HARRISON.

810 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY:, November

THE WORKS Of SIR HENRY TAYLOR.1

IT is told of a court physician that, when asked to explain why the
malady from which bis royal patient was suffering pressed so unequally
upon mankind at large, he took refuge in the following generalisa-
tion : ' Sometimes, your Majesty, the gout takes us ; sometimes we
take the gout.' The same distinction applies to poetry not less than
podagra. There are some natures — Shelley's was one — which are
absolutely seized and dominated by their imagination. They are
nothing if not poetical ; no antagonism of unfavourable conditions
avails to hinder their development, and you cannot separate the poet
from their composition or conceive their fulfilling any other calling
without destroying their individuality. In many other natures
imagination is a cherished faculty, which under fortunate auspices is
certain of indulgence, but it never interpenetrates or subdues their
essence. They are poets by choice and habit rather than necessity.
Under different circumstances they would have developed the practical
side of their character instead of the ideal, and usually contrive to
develope both sides more or less fully. It cannot be denied that this
is virtually identical with the distinction between genius and talent,
never perhaps more pithily stated than in a line of the present Lord
Lytton's : —

Genius does what it must, and Talent does what it can.

The one answers to the fitfully headstrong impulse of a mountain-
torrent that will choose its own course ; the other to the steadily
placid lapse of a canal that may be turned whither you please. We
protest, however, against the stock assumption of criticism that to
credit a writer with talent instead of genius is to brand him with a
stigma. It is no disparagement of what is good to say that it is not
the best ; and it is certain that the best is not always the most
generally serviceable. Although creative art is the noblest exercise
of the imagination, and affords the highest enjoyment to those minds
prepared for its reception, it can never command the suffrages of the
majority. Reynolds must always be a more popular artist than
Raffaelle ; Haydn have a wider circle of admirers than Beethoven.

1 The WorJt* of Sir Henry Taylor. Five Volumes. C. Kegan Paul & Co. 1877-8.

1880. THE WORKS OF SIR HENRY TAYLOR. 811

How many are humanised and soothed by the verse of Thomson, Gray,
or Goldsmith, whom poets of a higher order fail to touch ! Poetry
of all the arts is the most comprehensive, and there is no section of
mankind inaccessible to its influence. To the least imaginative
classes, politicians and men of business engrossed with the active
pursuits of life, it has a twofold value ; on the one hand providing
their memories with an inexhaustible supply of illustrations of charac-
ter and of maxims pregnant with social wisdom ; on the other hand
raising their view from the concrete to the abstract, from the real to
the ideal. We have recently had the testimony of a practical states-
man to its utility in one or both of these aspects at the present day.
4 Never was there a time,' says Mr. Grant Duff, 4 when a wise adviser
would more decidedly say to a young aspirant to public life : " Be
sure to take a great passport of poetry." ' No sentiment, therefore,
but that of gratitude is due to a busy man of the world and an ex-
perienced servant of the State, like Sir Henry Taylor, for having
devoted the leisure of his long life to the production of imaginative
works fitted for the apprehension of readers similarly situated, and in
the ripeness of age bestowing such final touches upon his art as may
render it more acceptable to his latest contemporaries. Without
assigning it a higher literary rank than properly belongs to it, or dis-
guising the existence of its limitations, a just criticism will recognise
much in it to commend, a generous criticism much to condone.

To a poet of practical imagination and active pursuits historical
drama offers the most congenial field of study, -and though he has in
turn essayed lyrical and idyllic composition also, the great bulk of
Sir Henry Taylor's work has been cast in that form. His success in
characterisation seems to be limited to the cases in which he has
drawn upon his observation, or in which ample data for the construc-
tion of types have lain at his disposal. Where he has failed it is
evident that he has transcended the range of sight, or been inade-
quately furnished with historical and biographical material. The
students of his plays must be content to miss the shaping fore-
thought, the definite analysis, the vivid energy, and intense passion of
the great dramatists ; but, in lieu of these, they will be rewarded with
a discriminating selection of dramatic subjects, many truthful por-
traits and representations of historical scenery, much ripe scholarship
and sound wisdom, habitual dignity and occasional grace of style, and
a uniformly high-minded and healthy tone.

As a dramatist, he belongs to the school of Elizabethan revival,
but, except in one instance, has been careful to avoid the mistake of
imitating his models too closely. In seeking, however, to steer clear
of the quicksand of archaism, he has sometimes struck upon the rock
of modernism. Philip van Artevelde in his colloquy with Elena (Part
II. act v. sc. 3) might be taken for a German metaphysician. Isaac
Commenus has affinities with an agnostic thinker of the present

812 Till-: SIXUTEEXTH CENTURY. November

century. Wulfstan, in Edwin the Fair, has been plausibly supposed
to be a caricature of Coleridge, and Leolf, in the same play, is a
gentle sentimentalist who would be more in his element at an
'aesthetic tea 'than as heretoch of an Anglo-Saxon army. These
lapses, however, are comparatively rare. The keeping of each
dramatic picture is for the most part consistently maintained, and
the dialogue fairly harmonises with the assumed position of the
speakers. The dramatist's occasional failure to keep this in view
may be explained by remembering that none of his plays were in-
tended for representation. One who is not continually stimulated by
the need of conforming to the conditions of the stage is unavoidably
tempted to aim at subtlety rather than definiteness of characterisa-
tion— to attempt, that is, the delineation of characters which do not
readily unfold themselves through the medium of soliloquy or dialogue,
and whose motives can only be made intelligible by means of detailed
description, unsuited to any form of poetry but the narrative or
lyrical. Two or three of Sir Henry Taylor's most elaborate studies
suffer from this inadequate definition, but the majority of his types
are happily familiar and simple enough to carry their interpretation
along with them.

The two-part drama of Philip van Artevelde, which is the best
known of his works, deserves its rank of precedence and popularity
by the greater vigour with which the action is carried on, and the
larger variety and clearer portraiture of the persons of the drama.
These merits belong more particularly to the firet section. The
personal jealousies and the turbulence of faction which hindered the
healthy growth of civic freedom in the merchant cities of Flanders,
and necessitated the remedial intervention of a dictator, are forcibly
represented in the opening scenes. The character of Philip, upon
whom this function devolves in the city of Ghent, is drawn with
exceptional skill. Meditative and melancholy, domestic and gentle
in repose, he conceals under his calm exterior a lofty ambition to be
the champion of right, a keen appetite for vengeance on wrong-doers,
and a capacity for prompt and resolute action which only oppor
tunity is required to arouse. At once strong, just, and generous, lie
silences opposition, rewards fidelity, and disarms suspicion. In times
of wavering will and divided counsel, he sees clearly what his own
and the popular course should be, and firmly adheres to it, dragging
along with him those who hesitate, and cutting down those who
resist. In Ghent's sorest hour of peril and distress, when the Earl
of Flanders, from whose tyranny it has revolted, is straining his
utmost to reduce it by famine, Philip frankly takes the citizens into
confidence, and, putting before them the alternative of submission
to degrading terms of peace or a desperate attack upon the enemy's
position, inspires them with his own enthusiasm for the manlier
policy which he speedily crowns with success. His address to the

1880. THE WORKS OF SIR HENRY TAYLOR. 813

citizens ere he and his little band set forth has the eloquence of
simple sincerity, legitimately appealing to those emotional resources
upon which a great leader can most safely rely : —

Then fare ye well, ye citizens of Ghent!
This is the last time ye will see me here
Unless God prosper me past human hope.
I thank you for the dutiful demeanour
"Which never — never — verily no, not once,
Have I found wanting, though severely tried
"When discipline might seem without reward.
Fortune has not been kind to me, good friends ;
But let not that deprive me of your loves,
Or of your good report. Be this the word :
' His rule was brief, calamitous — but just.'
No glory which a prosperous fortune gilds,
If shorn of this addition, could suffice,
To lift my heart so high as it is now.
This is that joy in which my soul is strong,
That there is not a man amongst you all,
Who can reproach me that I used my power
To do him an injustice. If there be,
It is not to my knowledge ; yet I pray
That he will now forgive me, taking note
That I had not to deal with easy times.

The minor characters, though obscured by Philip's prominence,
are grouped round him effectively ; the brutal but honest dema-
gogue, Van den Bosch, and the treacherous, cowardly Occo being the
most noteworthy. Adriana, the loving and trustful woman who plights
her troth with his, is little more than a sketch ; but the incident of
her abduction by Occo, who, besides being a traitor to the cause of
Ghent, is her rejected suitor, twines a thread of personal interest with
the political texture of the plot. Philip's sister, the bright- witted,
warm-hearted Clara, and her chivalrous lover, D'Arlon, are also slightly
but gracefully delineated.

The action in this part of the drama is well-knit, no scene being
superfluous or without manifest bearing upon the rest. The same
praise cannot be so freely given to the second part, which might be
curtailed of more than one scene without apparent loss, although
each possesses an independent interest. The presentment of the
events in which the leading characters take part is not less vivid than
before, but there is less distinctness in the definition of their indi-
vidual motives. There is still more uncertainty as to the purpose with
which the successive incidents have been prepared to bring about the
denouement. Dramatists, of all artists, are allowed most immunity
from didactic obligations, but that this is not Sir Henry Taylor's
desire may be gathered from the preface to the play, in which he
assumes as a canon that one of the main functions of poetry is ' to
instruct and infer.' The ' moral,' however, of Philip's downfall is not

814 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, November

clearly pointed. As a man he forfeits the sympathy hitherto
accorded to him by his unworthy readiness to descend from the
height of a spiritual love and sully the memory of a lost wife by
indulging in illicit intercourse with a frail adventuress; but no
attempt is made to connect this private dereliction with any impeach-
ment of his rectitude, foresight, or skill as a leader of men. He
sacrifices no public interest to his personal passion, wastes no time in
dalliance that might have been employed in diplomacy or strategy.
In his capacity as Regent of Flanders he seems to have been no less
wise, just, and firm than when he was captain of the White Hoods of
Ghent. The assumption of outward dignity with his new rank was
not dictated by vanity, but to produce a calculated impression upon
the vulgar mind. His one error of judgment, in placing too generous
a confidence in the honour of a proved traitor whose life he had
spared, was fatal to him personally, but contributed nothing to the
ruin of his cause. Nor is his fate shown to have been due to any
inherent defect in the democratic principle which he represented.
He was not the victim of popular fickleness or factious jealousies
from within, but of the overwhelming force of feudalism from without,
and the craft of its unscrupulous instruments. The defection of so
many of the revolted cities from the cause of freedom at the first
approach of danger testified only that the time was not yet ripe for
emancipation on so large a scale as he had striven to effect ; but,
abortive as his gallant efforts were, it cannot be doubted that their
memory kept alive the seed of liberty, which two centuries later bore
fruit in the Dutch Republic. Upon the whole, the posthumous
judgment passed on Philip by the Duke of Burgundy is so well
borne out by the dramatic evidence, that he cannot be said to have
deserved his fate ; and if the dramatist intended it to be instructive,
the<[lesson needs interpretation : —

With a noble nature and great gifts
Was he endow'd — courage, discretion, wit,
An equal temper and an ample soul,
Bock-bound and fortified against assaults
Of transitory passion, but below
Built on a surging subterranean fire
That stirr'd and lifted him to high attempts.
So prompt and capable and yet so calm,
He nothing lack'd in sovereignty but the right,
Nothing in soldiership except good fortune.

The character of Elena, the Italian adventuress, is also somewhat
vaguely outlined, notwithstanding the unusual license which the
author has allowed himself of anticipating its dramatic evolution by
embodying a long autobiographical soliloquy in the form of a lyrical
interlude. The account which she therein gives of herself as the
passionate victim of misplaced confidence and heartless desertion

1880. THE WORKS OF SIR HENRY TAYLOR. 815

tallies only too well with the position which she occupies when the
play opens, as the truant mistress of the worthless Duke of Bourbon,
but is less easy to reconcile with the capacity for a genuine love
which she evinces in her subsequent relation with Philip, and her
quasi-maidenly reserve in accepting the proffer of his own. The
readiness with which she passes from this stage into concubinage
without any hint of a preference for marriage, and the boldness
which prompts her declaration over his corpse when a doubt has
been expressed as to the nature of their connection —

'Tis false ! tliou liest ! I was his paramour —

are again in keeping with her national temperament, always prone
to the development of emotional sensibility unrestrained by principle,
and with her original antecedents, but leave her recent behaviour
more than ever difficult of explanation.

If the presentment of the two leading characters be unsatisfactory,
it is to a great extent redeemed by the vigorous and truthful drawing
of the subordinate figures. Especially happy are the sketches of the
boy-king of France, Charles the Sixth, his uncles Burgundy and
Bourbon, the lesser nobles who compose his council, and their wily
clerk, Tristram de Lestovet, who harmonises their jarring jealousie
and secretly directs their decisions. Sir Fleureant of Heurlee, who
conceals his perjury and treachery under a front of frankness and
courage, and Van Muck, whose meaner baseness lurks beneath genuine
stupidity, are admirable companion-portraits. But even better than
these careful studies are the rough draughts of character incidentally
thrown off in the course of Philip's speeches. He thus describes the
several imperfections of the instruments which circumstances com-
pel him to make use of in diplomatic negotiation : —

Quick-witted is he, versatile, seizing points
But never solving questions ; vain he is —
It is his pride to see things on all sides,
Which best to do he sets them on their corners.
Present before him arguments by scores
Bearing diversely on the affair in hand,
He'll see them all, successively, distinctly,
Yet never two of them can see together,
Or gather, blend, and balance what he sees,
To make up one account. . . .

Then the next,

Good Martin Blondel-Vatre, he is rich
In nothing else but difficulties and doubts ;
You shall be told the evil of your scheme,
But not the scheme that's better ; he forgets
That policy, expecting not clear gain,
Deals ev erin alternatives ; he's wise
In negatives. . . . But admit
His apprehensions and demand, what then ?
And you shall find you've turned the blank leaf over.

816 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

Scarcely less acute are some of the observations attributed to
Lestovet. It is in such shrewd comments upon human nature that
Sir Henry Taylor's experience finds fittest expression, and none of his
writings afford a more varied illustration of its range.

Edwin the Fair, which, according to the present arrangement of
his works, follows next in succession, is little inferior to Philip Van
Artevelde as a dramatic conception, but much more unequal in exe-
cution. The action sometimes drags heavily, and at other times is
broken by a frequent shifting of scenes which transports the spectator
from one point to another so quickly that he loses his bearings. The
general impression produced by the work, however, justifies the choice
of subject. A clearer idea could hardly be conveyed of the distracted
condition of the Saxon kingdom under the aggression of the spiritual
upon the secular authority. The character of Dunstan, the repre-
sentative spirit of this aggression, dominates over the rest so pre-
eminently, that the play may be considered as designed for its exhi-
bition. Part fanatic, part impostor, he arouses disgust by his pious
frauds, and indignation by the ruthlessness with which he sacrifices
loving hearts and innocent lives to his iron will, yet is redeemed from
utter detestation as a man by his love for his aged mother, and from
reprobation as a statesman by the patriotic fervour of his resistance
to the Danish invaders. The most effective scene is that wherein his
eloquence sways the synod which has threatened to gainsay his policy,
and he clenches the decision by a concluding adjuration which is
echoed by an apparently miraculous voice that proceeds from the
cross. Gurmo, his creature and the instrument of his frauds, is
another notable figure, and there is a striking touch in the repugnance
he displays when dying to be shriven by the master whose base behests
he has so faithfully executed.

The abject prostration to which the unrestrained exercise of
monastic discipline degraded its votaries is graphically portrayed in
the colloquy of the two monks in attendance upon the Abbot of
Sheen (act i. sc. 9):

First Monk. He slept two hours — no more ; then raised his head

And said, ' Methinks it raineth ! '
Second Monk. Twice be cougbed,

And tben be spat.
First MonJi. lie raised himself and said,

' Methinks it raineth,' pointing with his hand,

And as he pointed, lo ! it rained apace, &c.

Earl Leolf's chaplain, Wulfstan, the simple-hearted scholar with
his inexhaustible fountain of speech, is a conceivable if somewhat
exaggerated character. The voluble outpouring of ' Billingsgate *
attributed to another divine, Morcar, when haranguing the synod,
will not bethought extravagant by any whose studies have lain in the
direction of theological polemic. The ample materials extant for

1880. THE WORKS OF SIR HENRY TAYLOR. 817

these pictures of ecclesiastical life are wanting to illustrate the life of
the Saxon nobility, and, in relying upon imagination for his por-
traiture, Sir Henry Taylor has once or twice departed widely from
that standard of historical vrai semblance to which he usually con-
forms. Accepting such information as history affords for our guidance,
the types depicted in the ban que ting-scene (act ii. scene 5) may be
pronounced true to nature ; but anything less like probability than
the introspective, fanciful tone of thought ascribed to Earl Leolf in
act ii. scene 2, or the strain of refined sentiment in which his converse
with Elgiva is pitched (act v. scene 7), it would be difficult for a
caricaturist to invent. His friend, Earl Athulf, is only a shade or two
more real. Less license is taken with the young king, who may be
assumed to have undergone a culture to which his nobles must have
been strangers, but the portrait fails to arouse that interest which his
unhappy fate should challenge. It was no doubt impossible to make
him an heroic figure, but his passion was at least a source of strength,
and the weak declamatory language with which he is here credited
does it injustice. His death in the closing scene is not told without
pathos ; but this would have been heightened by substituting a few
simple sentences, such as Shelley has put into the mouth of Beatrice
Cenci, for a jerky succession of broken phrases which remind one
painfully of Verdi's spasmodic music in the finale of La Traviata.

Isaac Commenus, which is, we believe, one of its author's earliest
works, though third in their present order, is open to the same charge
as the second part of Philip Van Artevelde of over-subtlety in the
delineation of its leading personage. As a picture of the time in
which the story is laid, it is upon the whole successful. Some of the
scenes, however, e.g. that in the churchyard (act iii. scene 3), have the
effect of being designed pro re nata instead of arising naturally out
of the necessities of the plot. Others are superfluous, such as the
scenes between the Eunuch and the Exorcist (act ii. scene 4), and
Alexius and the soldier (act iii. scene 2) ; the last being moreover
obviously imitated from a memorable episode in Henry the Fifth.
The character of Isaac is throughout impressive, but its interest is
impaired both by the inadequacy of the motives and by the modern
tone of the sentiments attributed to him. The brave and generous
soldier of whom we read in Gibbon's forty-eighth chapter, though an
uncommon, is an intelligible figure. In the revolt to which the
Commenian brothers were impelled by the suspicion and hostility of
their ungrateful master, the Emperor Nicephorus Botaniates, Alexius
the younger is recorded to have taken a leading, not, as the dramatist
represents, a strictly subordinate part. His successful generalship of the
motley army that rallied to their standard seems to have impressed a
conviction of his superior abilities upon the mind of Isaac, who had
the frankness to admit what he had had the good sense to discern.
Like an illustrious French marshal under analogous circumstances, he

818 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

voluntarily waived his right of precedence, and ' was the first to invest
his younger brother with the names and ensigns of royalty,' while
yet without the gates of Constantinople, before the treachery of some
of its guards and the surprise of others had brought the throne
within reach. The protagonist of Sir Henry Taylor's drama neither
answers to this description nor acts in the same fashion. With a
heart seared to personal happiness by the loss of a beloved mistress,
and a mind disdainful of conventional titles to distinction, he is so
keenly alive to the claims of brotherly affection as to sacrifice not
only his allegiance and rank, but stake life and all its remaining
attractions on the chance of winning the throne for Alexius. It is
with no other visible object that he plans and conducts to a trium-
phant issue the revolt against Nicephorus ; defies the Church whose
terrors have been armed against him ; rejects the Emperor's daughter,
Theodora, who proffers him her love ; and wounds the susceptibility of
his cousin Anna, whose unavowed love is not less apparent, by
soliciting her hand for his brother. Alexius, meantime, though em-
ployed as a military instrument, knows nothing of the dignities
intended for him, and gives orders to his troops, after the city has
been taken, to proclaim 'the Emperor Isaac' through its streets.
It is not until the people have mustered before the palace to
witness the coronation, that the elder brother announces his
concealed resolve and fixes the crown upon the younger's head.
Having effected this purpose to his satisfaction, and only dis-
appointed by Anna's refusal to share the rank of Alexius, he so far
awakes to self-regard as to propose that she should share obscurity
with himself. His weary tone of acquiescence in her sanguine expec-
tation of happiness foreshadows the doom which awaits him from the
vengeance of Theodora, who immediately afterwards stabs him to the
heart. A hero of such an exceptional stamp of magnanimity, so
anomalously compounded of sentiment and cynicism, was doubtless
drawn from the ' inner consciousness ' rather than living models.

Of the other male characters, Alexius is almost a nonentity, and
does nothing to justify his brother's choice; Nicephorus and the
Patriarch, however, are skilfully painted ; both studies of old age in
its least venerable aspects of crafty suspicion and impotent passion.
Of the female personages, Theodora is a somewhat stilted queen of
tragedy, and Anna's unobtrusive gentleness recalls the features of the
Flemish Adriana. The most striking portrait is that of Eudocia,
sister of the Commeni, a survival to the decadence of the empire of
that heroic type of womanhood which Lucretia,^Cornelia, and Arria
had transmitted from ancient Rome.

The Virgin Widow is the play already referred to as Sir Henry
Taylor's solitary attempt to reproduce an Elizabethan pattern with
over-fidelity. Had he selected tragedy for the experiment, it might
have been accomplished more successfully ; but to revive j< the roman-

1880. THE WORKS OF SIR HENRY TAYLOR. 819

tic and poetic comedy,' which he justly describes as so i bright and
abundant ' in ' the pleasantries of wisdom,' demanded a more delicate
sense of humour and a lighter touch of grace than he can be admitted
to possess. The gallant spendthrift Silisco, the virtuous and mis-
construed Euggiero, the licentious but generous king, the rascally
Jewish money-lenders, the perjured assassin Spadone and his victim,
the minstrel-girl Aretina. with her hopeless passion for the Count,
who loves her singing, are more or less conventional copies. Rosalba
and Fiordeliza are companion-portraits of the kinds which Sir Henry
is fondest of contrasting — the one pensive and confiding, the other
sprightly and capricious. In one fortunate instance he has travelled
out of the beaten track. Count Ugo, the aged husband of Rosalba,
setting forth on pilgrimage under the stress of an honourable remorse
at discovering that she has been forced to become his wife while
pledged to another, is an heroic figure who throws all the rest into
the shade. Much of the dialogue is laboured and undramatic. Some
lines have the effect of being fragments from a didactic poem con-
verted to unforeseen use. Ruggiero's comment upon the old Count's
farewell speech is an instance : —

Till now I knew not lie had utterance,
But generous sorrows and high purposes
Make the dumb speak. Ye orators, note that,
That in the workshop of your head weave words.

There are nevertheless many graceful passages of sentiment and
fancy, and the moralising vein which never fails the writer is occa-
sionally worked to good result. It is favourably illustrated in such

lines as

The fairest flower that e'er was born of earth
Were better cropp'd than canker'd ;

In this mortal journeying wasted shade
Is worse than wasted sunshine.

The latest of these plays, St. Clement's Eve, ranks, we think, as
an historical fiction, on a level with Philip Van Artevelde, if not
above it. The helpless distress to which France was reduced during
the chronic mental alienation of Charles the Sixth, when the two
chief princes of the blood, the Dukes of Orleans and Burgundy, dis-
puted the reins of government, is portrayed with real power. The
allegorical vision in which Robert the hermit depicts the nation's
misery before the royal council, and denounces the authors of it to
shame, is framed on the noble model of Hebrew prophecy. The tena-
cious hold of superstition upon the mind of the fifteenth century is
vividly illustrated in the scene wherein the sacred tears of Mary Magda-
lene are invoked for the king's recovery. Of the characters of the
drama two or three differ from any types that Sir Henry has elsewhere

820 THE SISETEESIIl CEXTURY. November

delineated. The young Duke of Orleans with his dissolute habits and
chivalrous impulses, capable of being inspired by a pure passion and
of making a resolute effort to repress his baser nature, is the most
striking and lifelike figure. lolande, the object of his passion, with
her struggle between the claims of human emotion and spiritual
enthusiasm, is a heroine worthy of Scott. The scenes in which she
battles with her love for Orleans after he has told her that he is_
married, are very delicately handled. The self-delusion with which
she strives to quench it in the ardours of devotional ecstasy, and her
humiliation at recognising the failure of her attempt to heal the
king's disorder by the application of the sacred tears, as the judicial
penalty of her weakness, are pathetically true to human nature under
the despotic conditions of an unnatural creed. If the truthfulness of
her portrait be open to any exception, it is that no touches in the
earlier scenes, wherein she appears as the pensive contrast of her
lively companion Flos, prepare us for the eventual development of
her disposition, but the suddenness of the emergency may sufficiently
justify this. The character of Flos, which may be taken at first
sight for one of Sir Henry's favourite studies of bright and sportive
girlhood, undergoes a similarly abrupt transformation under the
stimulus of wounded pride. Her revulsion from love to hate when
her trusted knight proves false is thus happily symbolised by a by-
stander : —

There is no haunt the viper more affects

Than the forsaken bird's nest.

Burgundy, with his treacherous instincts and proclivity to ignoble
passion, forms a marked contrast to his rival. Montargis is a villain
of the Occo stamp, but differentiated by the lago-like craft with
which he contrives to inflame his master's mind to the desired tem-
perature of crime. The action is less spasmodic, and moves more
swiftly to the goal, than in most of the author's plays ; and this is the
only one of the number to the effective representation of which upon
the stage there seems no valid objection.

If Sir Henry Taylor's verse offers few special attractions of melody
or style, it is chargeable with few fault?. Of all that he has written,
we can select but two or three lines by which the ears of readers
accustomed to 31 r. Tennyson's music are likely to be haunted. The
description (in I*aac Commenus} of a farewell as

Tlu- (lvin«r cadence of a broken chord,
may deserve to live. Another line in the same play —

What dream hath moulded that pathetic mouth ?—

has the charm of skilfully varied alliteration. The words of Orleans
to lolande in St. ^"-.ncnfs Eve—

1880. THE WORKS OF SIR HENRY TAYLOR. 821

I ask no more, no more, oh, nothing more ;
Not for one tone of that too tender voice,
Not for one touch of that transparent hand —

only lack this to be equally melodious. It is difficult to understand
how a poet, whose instinct has guided him to the choice of these
verbal harmonies, can have allowed such a grating collocation of con-
sonants as ' from clenched' st ringers wrings ' to pass uncorrected
through successive editions. But if peculiar sweetness is rare with
him, extreme harshness is still rarer. Here and there some untune-
able line or phrase may jar upon an acute sense ; but where the level
of versification is so smooth the introduction of a few discords is defen-
sible to prevent monotony.

His gravest fault of style is a tendency to pedantry, which is seen
at its worst in Isaac Comnenus. On the other hand, he is seldom,
if ever, obscure ; and though a failure in the fire of thought or
emotion sometimes leaves him tame, he never conceals the deficiency
by a cloudy smoke of words.

His lyrical gift is not remarkable. Two or three of the ballads
interspersed amid the plays, particularly * The Lion of Flanders ' in
Philip van Artevelde and Thorbioga's battle-chant in Edwin the
Fair (l By Wellesburne and Charleccote ford'), have considerable spirit,
but the songs have little spontaneity. The interlude between the
two parts of Philip van Artevelde is described in the preface of 1834
(here substantially reprinted) as a concession to the prevalent taste
for the sentimental and fantastic poetry of Byron and Shelley, upon
the pretensions of which to the foremost artistic rank the writer
passes a severe judgment, although consenting to 'cultivate and
employ it ' as an occasional pastime. We doubt if any one, who had
not the preface before him, would have discovered this concession
from the interlude itself. Its mild, not to say insipid, flavour of
romance a little reminds us of Scott, but not at his strongest, and of
Byron only at his weakest. Of resemblance to Shelley it would strain
the keenest critical microscope to detect a trace. The miscellaneous
poems collected in the third volume bear, on the other hand, obvious
marks of the influence of Wordsworth, whose personal acquaintance Sir
Henry had the privilege to make, and who almost appears to realise his
ideal of poetic perfection. Of the characteristic attributes which con-
stitute the master's title to universal veneration, his deep insight
into nature, and his intense human sympathy, the pupil offers a pale
but genuine reflection. The poems written on visiting the Lakes of
Varese and Lugano, and the address to the Lynnburn, exhibit this
most fully. In the latter he has closely followed his model by
selecting a favourite object of memory as a centre for fancy to
encircle. The stanzas on St. Helen's, Auckland, carry imitation to the
extreme limit of adopting almost the identical language of a well-
VOL. VIII.— No. 45. 3 K

822 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

known piece in the Poems of Sentiment and Reflection? The
triteness of the theme, however, is redeemed by the happy expression,
and the lyrist is unquestionably seen at his best in the following

verses : —

The sounds that round about me rise

Are what none other hears ;
I see what meets no other eyes,
Though mine are dim with tears.

The breaking of the summer's morn —

The tinge on house and tree —
The billowy clouds — the beauty born

Of that celestial sea,

The freshness of the faery land

Lit by the golden gleam. . . .
It is my youth that where I stand

Comes back as in a dream.

Alas ! tlie real never lent

Those tints too bright to last;
They fade and bid me rest content,

And let the past be past. . . .

In every change of man's estate

Are lights and guides allow'd ;
The fiery pillar will not wait,

But, parting, sends the cloud.

Nor mourn I the less manly part

Of life to leave behind ;
My loss is but the lighter heart,

My gain the graver mind.

It must be added that Sir Henry reproduces also, in a modified
form, what Wordsworth's warmest admirers must concede to be the
lower elements, not to say the drawbacks, of his power, viz., undue
egotism and didactic tediousness, together with the conservative and
ecclesiastical instincts which tended to narrow his sympathies. The
poems already named, and one or two others in the collection, will
furnish evidence of this to any one who cares to seek for it. But it
would be ungenerous to dwell upon blemishes which, if partly
resulting from congenital defects, may be mainly traced to the too
faithful study of a venerated exemplar.

The two volumes of prose works which complete the present edition
• display the same gifts of practical imagination, discrimination of
character, and knowledge of the world which constitute the chief
value of the poetry. The Notes from Life and The Statesman are
the precipitate of an active mind which ^has undergone a long and
quiet process of interfusion under favourable conditions. If the

* ' My eyes are dim,' &c. — The Fountain.

1880. THE WORKS OF SIR HENRY TAYLOR. 823

Notes (which are in effect essays) cannot be said to possess any dis-
tinctive intellectual quality, the writer's sound judgment, scholarly
culture, and moral refinement lift them wholly out of the ordinary
category of didactic treatises to which their old-fashioned sententious
form gives them a superficial resemblance. The Statesman, which
might be less ambitiously entitled The Civilian, embodies the results
of a life's experience in the public service, but, though addressed
more particularly to those who move within that limited sphere of
duty, may be read with advantage by hundreds outside it. Sir
Henry's prose style is obviously modelled upon that of the seventeenth
century classics, and alternately reminds us of Lord Bacon's pith and
Milton's stateliness. A good memory enables him to diversify his
serious observations very pleasantly with humorous anecdotes and
apposite quotations. His egotism jis too frank to be disagreeable, and
the naivete with which he^appeals to his own dramas, when in want
of an authoritative illustration, puts to shame the timidity of such
writers as resort for that purpose to a fictitious manufacture of ' old
plays.'

It would be doing injustice to his critical acumen to regard his
preface to Philip van Artevelde as a complete poetical credo and a
deliberate verdict upon two leading poets of our century. Viewed as
the work of his youth, its crudity and onesidedness are intelligible
enough, and the only matter for surprise is that he should have seen
fit to reprint it. His judgment upon Byron is true so far as it goes,
but the truth is only half told when the claims of the poet's passion,
wit, and picturesqueness are so grudgingly recognised. A constitu-
tional want of sympathy manifestly precludes Sir Henry from appre-
hending the nature of such a poet as Shelley, the view of whose
qualifications here put forward is almost ludicrously inadequate.
To estimate the larger scope of the critic's matured vision, this
j uvenile production should be compared with the chapter on ' The
Life Poetic ' in Notes from Life, and the reviews of Wordsworth
and Mr. Aubrey De Vere in the fifth volume. He is rarely to be seen
at more advantage than when interpreting[the poetic philosophy of the
one and analysing the devout and graceful spirit of the other. Two
or three disquisitions upon social subjects are appended. Stuart
. Mill's arguments for the political equalisation of women have pro-
bably seldom received a more just and temperate consideration than
in the last of these, which exhibits the writer's Conservative attitude
in its most favourable aspect.

HENRY G-. HEWLETT.

3 K 2

824 THE NINETEEN!! CENTURY. November

BRIBERY AND CORRUPTION.

THE appointment of divers Royal Commissions to inquire into the
* existence of corrupt practices at elections for members to serve in
Parliament,' is a palpable proof that we still bribe and are bribed.

If we could with truth and confidence assert that those which are
being visited by Royal Commissions are the only boroughs in which
corrupt practices prevailed or prevailed extensively at the late
general election, we might congratulate ourselves on the fact that the
black list is by no means a long one ; but unfortunately it is suffi-
ciently notorious that in many places where a petition would un-
doubtedly have been successful, it was not presented, that in others
where threatened it was hushed up, and allowed to drop, while some
petitions were 'arranged ' after being filed, and the worst features of
others which did come on for hearing were carefully concealed.

In moving for Royal Commissions, the Attorney-General quoted
figures which, as he gave them, seemed to show that the number of
petitions was decreasing.1 The figures, may, however, be made to
prove very nearly the opposite, if looked at in another light, while it
is probable that the number of petitions at any given general election
is not by any means necessarily an accurate test of the amount of
corrupt practices which prevailed. It is possible, however, and per-
haps probable, that, except in certain boroughs, we are not quite so
directly corrupt as we used to be not very many years ago, and for this
result we have to thank the Ballot Act, and the increased enlightenment
of public opinion on the question. The exchange of so much money for
the vote is perhaps now less frequently the rule, and if it is any advan-
tage to believe that where payment is given it is usually of smaller
amount than it used to be, we may, I think, fairly congratulate our-

1 In 1857 there were 46 petitions presented, of which 22 were withdrawn, 17 were
unsuccessful, and 7 successful. In 1859 41 were presented, '22 withdrawn, 11 un-
successful, 9 successful. In 1865 the figures were respectively 55, 26, 15, and 14.
In 1868 (exceptional year in consequence of new jurisdiction given to judges) they
were 82, 32, 31, and 19. In 1874, 30, 8, 7, and 15. This year 42 were presented,
14 withdrawn, 11 unsuccessful, and 17 successful. — See Attorney-General's speech,
Sept. 2, 1880.

Eight Royal Commissions have been appointed — namely, one for each of the
following boroughs : Gloucester, Oxford, MacclesSeld, Boston, Knaresborough,
Sandwich, Chester, Canterbury.

1880. BRIBERY AND CORRUPTION. 825

selves on this improvement at least. But, though the art of direct
bribery may be on the wane, its place is efficiently supplied by indirect
corruption. The cost of elections is increasing, and the amounts paid
to agents, canvassers, clerks, messengers, watchers, &c., are usually very
large, and in some cases absolutely startling in amount, and are de-
cidedly on the increase. These, and often the payments for commit-
tee-rooms and conveyances, are to a very large extent so much money
expended, not for work done or for the use of articles hired, but merely
as bribes to secure the vote of the payee and of any others he can in-
fluence : the bulk of such payments may therefore fairly be classed
under the head of ' bribery and corruption. ' 2

The assertion is constantly made that corrupt practices would
entirely cease if there were a redistribution of seats and equalisation
of constituencies, leading to the abolition or absorption of all consti-
tuencies with less than seven thousand or so voters. It is possible
that direct bribery might be somewhat abated by such a change, but
a redistribution is hardly likely to be a panacea for all electoral ills
and misdeeds ; direct, and more especially indirect, bribery being by
no means confined to the smaller boroughs. It is likely enough that,
whether there be redistribution, or non-redistribution, equal electoral
districts, or unequal, bribery and corruption (direct and indirect)
will continue with us yet a little while. Parliament is a marvellous
attraction to many, and while there are, on the one hand, some who are

determined to be M.P.s, honestly if they can, but if not, , and on

the other, hosts of men who mean, in some way, to profit at an elec-
tion, by fleecing their own party, or the other side, or both, I fear that,
without more stringent and enforced regulations against bribery, we
shall never see much reduction in its extent.

It becomes therefore important to consider whether it would not
be wise and practicable to amend and improve the laws directed
against electoral corruption, so that, if possible, the power of bribery
may be diminished. No very sweeping changes of the law would be
necessary, and none such as could not be easily carried into effect.

There need be no party issue in the matter. Both sides are
equally concerned in electoral purity, are equally guilty and are
equally innocent ; and neither can assert with truth that they have
gained and lost a less number of seats, through corruption, than the
other.3

- Lord Glenbervie defined bribery at common law as follows : ' Wherever a per-
;son is bound by law to act without any view to his private emolument, and another,
by a corrupt contract, engages such person, on condition of the payment, or promise
of money, or other lucrative consideration, to act in a manner which he shall pre-
scribe, loth parties are by such contract guilty of bribery ; ' and it may be added
that the gift of money, &c., to a voter to induce him to vote, or to forbear, though he
•did not vote at all, or though he had not forborne, is bribery.

3 It is often asserted that the Liberals owed somewhat of their late victory to
the Irrger sums they spent at the elections than the Conservatives. This assertion

826 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

The two chief reforms that I would advocate are, first, the
appointment of a Public Prosecutor, whose duty it should be to
prosecute all those found guilty of bribery and corruption, and,
secondly, the entire cessation of the punishment of disfranchisement,
or suspension of writ, for a guilty constituency.

I will taka these two proposals together, for to attempt to carry
out the one without the other would probably be entirely useless. To
appoint a Public Prosecutor, and at the same time to allow the con-
sequence of an unfavourable report of a Royal Commission to be
disfranchisement or suspension of writ, would be to court failure, and
to connive at the contempt into which the law would again fall, as it
has already fallen. While to do away with disfranchisement, and not
to appoint a Public Prosecutor, would be to give a still greater
impetus to electoral misdeeds.

Our aim should be to endeavour to cause bribery and corruption
to be despised, contemned and abhorred by public opinion, to visit a
breach of the law by inevitable and just punishment, as a warning
to all, and to avoid punishing the innocent for the sins of the guilty.
Almost the opposite of these desired and desirable results are
obtained by the absence of a Public Prosecutor, and the presence of
the shadow of disfranchisement.

The existing system results in one of two consequences. Where
the bribery has not been very extensive or barefaced, the town, its
bribers and bribees, escape altogether ; where the corruption has been
too evident to be overlooked, the guilty again are more likely than
not to escape punishment as individuals, while the town, as a whole —
its innocent and guilty inhabitants alike — suffers for the misdeeds of
the few, and thus are brought into contempt the election petition
trial, the judges' charges, and the inquiry of the Royal Commission ;
while the law, shorn of its terrors, becomes a laughing-stock to the
evil-doers, and a term of reproach to those who do well. A law, to-
be of any use for good, must be just and must be respected ; to make
it respected it must be enforced ; and, unfortunately, the laws directed
against bribery fail lamentably in this particular.

Then, again, though a disfranchised town may, as a corporate
body, feel itself somewhat disgraced, few individuals take such dis-
grace to heart or to themselves \ those who have brought down the
punishment on the town, and whose evil deeds deserve to be punished,
are rejoiced that they have escaped scot free, and that it is only that
indefinite thing — the borough — which has to bear on its broad
shoulders the stripes for their sins ; they will certainly not complain

is hardly borne out by the facts ; the returns of election expenses are not yet com-
plete, but glancing down the list, a feature which strikes attention is. that almost
invariably the Conservative candidates expended more than the Liberal. It is
pretty certain that the ' returned expenses ' of the two sides are equally incorrect
and understated.

1880. BRIBERY AND CORRUPTION. 827

of such vicarious punishment. Then those who are entirely innocent
of the offence — and they will always surely constitute the majority —
are less affected by the disgrace which has befallen them, as a warning
against bribery, than they are aggrieved that, through no fault of
their own, the sins of others are visited on them.

Neither the innocent nor the guilty, therefore, will look upon the
disfranchisement of their town, whether permanent or temporary,
whole or partial, as being a just condemnation of bribery ; nor will
it cause them to think worse of such conduct, or to refrain from it
at any future time. The guilty will keep quiet, and sin again if
they have the chance ; the innocent will loudly complain that they
are unjustly punished, but not be the more inclined to frown on the
guilty, or to condemn and despise bribery and corruption.

I doubt if the disfranchisement of a borough has in any way
diminished bribery, except of course in the particular town, though
it has led to the concealment of bribery elsewhere ; the dread of dis-
franchisement does not diminish bribery at the election, the fear of
it acts as a preventive to exposure. Disfranchisement is the lopping
off, from the not too healthy trunk, of that which appears to be, more or
less, a rotten bough ; while our desire should be to effect a cure of the
tree as a whole, so that it may not put forth unhealthy branches.

On the same grounds, it seems to me, our aim should be to punish
the wrong-doers, to cast them out of the body politic, either perma-
nently or until healing time may have revitalised them, and not to
place the whole of the borough under a ban, because it appears some-
what tainted with giving and taking. Purge it of its taint, and it
is probable that it will forswear bribery, and live cleanly afterwards,
and remain an encouraging example to other boroughs ; while the
fate of its evil-doers will be ''a warning to those like-minded or
tempted to be like-minded with themselves.

There is no reason why bribery — both the giving and receiving —
should not be followed by its meet reward ; imprisonment without
option of fine in bad cases, with the option where there may be
extenuating circumstances (if such can exist), or where the offence
is of a milder description. Misdemeanors, moreover, "such as voting
after being paid for working (bona fide or otherwise), should be
followed by the punishment the law prescribes.

At present the number of bribers or bribees who suffer for their
offences is infinitesimal,4 and chiefly for this reason — that there is no

4 Mr. Justice Manisty, in one of his charges as election petition judge, made the
following remarks : ' The Corrupt Practices Act of 1854 has been in force more than
a quarter of a century, but not many persons have been prosecuted.' Mr. Justice
Lush said elsewhere : ' Nothing will perhaps put an end to the system (of bribery
and colourable employment) but a vigorous prosecution of every offender. ... In
view of the peril which unscrupulous election partisans thus encounter (from being
liable to actions for misdemeanor, &c.), it is surprising that the practice still

828 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

one definite person to prosecute them even \vhen their sins are open
and palpable. The petitioner and his supporters have accomplished
that which affects them when they have unseated their adversary, and
they hardly care to follow the matter further. It may be they fear
recrimination ; in any case they might well dread the uncertainty
and expense involved in a prosecution, for who can judge for himself,
with any confidence, whether he will be successful in an action of this
sort or no ? Besides there is always a tendency, natural enough, to
hush up election scandals, to let bygones be bygones, and not for one
citizen to inform against and prosecute another on public grounds.5
The prosecutor will have little to gain, and a great deal to endure, if
he be patriotic enough to attack a neighbour on the charge of
bribery, and obtain for him a month or two of imprisonment. Prac-
tically the Attorney-General, who might prosecute the bribers, never,
or hardly ever, prosecutes ; it is scarcely his business so to do.

It appears, therefore, that there should be a Public Prosecutor
for election bribery. The post might be a temporary one, or rather
one in abeyance between the elections, and the official might be
appointed after each general election, for a stated period, at a good
salary, while for bye-elections it might be the more stringent duty of
the Attorney-General to prosecute, if necessary, or the Public Prose-
cutor might undertake these prosecutions also. It should be the
duty of the Public Prosecutor — whenever there was, in his opinion,
a sufficient likelihood of success — invariably to prosecute every
person ' named ' to the House by the election judges, or reported by
the Royal Commissioners, as having been guilty of giving or receiving
a bribe, or as guilty of any misdemeanor or offence against the
divers bribery laws, unless they had received a ' certificate of in-
demnity.' If, moreover, in the course of his prosecutions any fresh
evidence came out implicating additional persons, it would be his
duty to prosecute them also.

Prosecution by an official paid by the Crown, and above suspicion,
would be infinitely more effective, less rancorous and personal than
any other form of prosecution. The Prosecutor would be cold,
judicial, without party passion or personal feeling, and it would not
become necessary for the respectable members of the guilty party to
support the disreputable, on the ground that the attack against the
latter was a piece of party spite. No pressure could be brought to

continues;' our surprise is mitigated when we know that the 'partisans' escape
punishment with impunity.

* The penalty for bribery in a civil action, which is neither barred by nor bars
criminal action, is a fine of 1(XM. for every bribe proved to have been given, the
greater part of which fine goes to the informer. It would be possible, therefore, in
cases of bribery, for one political party to give the other a severe lesson by in-
forming (through one of their members) against the bribers after a successful
petition; and so at one and the same time punishing those who had bribed, causing
them to pay the costs of their own prosecution, and obtaining besides a good sum
towards the funds of the party organisation.

1880. BRIBERY AND CORRUPTION. 829

bear to stave off the prosecution, and the guilty would be left face
to face with stern and even-handed justice, against which there
would be no appeal.

If such an office were created and filled by an able man, the
terrors inspired by his name, * the Public Prosecutor for offences
against the Bribery and Corrupt Practices Acts,' would go far to
diminish bribery.

As a rule, I believe bribers are arrant cowards, and certainly are
by no means desirous of being martyrised for their cause. A man
who is capable of debauching others in secret, and afraid to show his
face, is not probably anxious to see the inside of a prison (though it is
likely enough that some day he will pay it a visit). Therefore, if the
former almost absolute certainty that at the worst a timely confession
will indemnify him from prosecution, while he can safely pocket his
ill-gotten * commission ' on his nefarious transactions, were changed
into an opposite certainty, that he would be dealt with as he deserved,
it would become increasingly difficult for those who wished to bribe
to find men to undertake this lucrative, but now dangerous, office.

The Attorney-General the other day excused himself for not
prosecuting those named by the election judges as guilty of bribery,
on the ground that the practical result of such a proceeding would
be 'that the smaller offenders would be caught, while the greater
escaped, and the effect so produced on the public mind would un-
questionably be demoralising.' There is some truth in this remark,
and it is unfortunate that the greater offenders — the candidate, the
agent, the friend — are, as a rule, much too clever to allow themselves
to appear in any way as connected with the bribery, which they
always repudiate and abhor ! The person who ultimately pays the
money is never ' guilty ' himself ; he knows nothing about it ; at all
events, no complicity can be traced to him, and the same can be
usually said of the principal agents, and it is only when we get a
little lower down to the tools, who are hired to do the job, that guilt
can be traced and exposed. One advantage of a Public Prosecutor
would be the probability^that under the influence of hoped-for escape,
some of these tools, who now have little reason for betraying secrets,
might be often induced to turn Queen's Evidence and tear the mask
from the faces of the chief villains of the plot. Still, because the
chief actors cannot be discovered, there is no real reason why the
lesser stars should not suffer for their own misdeeds, and I would not
have the Public Prosecutor shrink from attacking the poorest and
meanest tool. If the instruments are prevented and deterred from
acting, those who use them could no longer pursue their game.

A man who will condescend for reward to do the dirty work
expected of a briber does not deserve any commiseration on the
ground that he is tempted ; but, at the same time, if we are to be
judges of guilt, those who incite him and tempt him to commit his

830 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

ill deeds are much more worthy of punishment, just as one may
think that any briber is really infinitely worse than a bribee ; so,
according to ^Esop, the trumpeter who incites is worse than the
soldier who is incited.

A Public Prosecutor being appointed, the next object in view
would be to expose as many cases of guilt as possible, and to let
convictions for bribery and corruption follow exposure. The more
prosecutions and convictions there were at first, the less, we might
hope, would be the future bribery, and need for prosecution ; for by
as much as a proper endeavour were made to attack and ferret out
of their holes the men who lie skulking there, by KO much would the
offence of bribery be certain to diminish.

To attain the results of multiplied punishments and just rewards
for evil-doing, it is important that the number of successful petitions,
and consequent Eoyal Commissions, and exposure of guilt, should in
no way be checked or diminished, but encouraged — and here comes
in again the question of Disfranchisement.

A petition, as far as it be successful in proving that which it
alleges, and in exposing the existence of bribery, much or little, is
an advantage to purity of election, and to representative government.
But at present the state of the law minimises to an extreme degree
the advantages which should be derived from petitions, for, with the
exception of the unseated member, the offending persons are never
touched.

Though few, I should suppose, go as far as to agree with Mr.
Justice Lush, when he said at Plymouth that ' he had never un-
seated an innocent member for the acts of his agents, without feeling
that the Law which so punishes the member and the constituency for
the single act of the agent is unduly severe,' still it does seem some-
times hard measure that a member should be unseated who was
absolutely and entirely ignorant that any malpractices were being
carried out in his name and for his benefit — nay, who may have
actually prohibited all and any such practices. One may pity the
unseated member; but it is absolutely necessary that a candidate
should be responsible to the full for the acts of his friends and agents.
It is almost impossible ever to prove that a member was in any way
cognisant of the bribery which took place, and if he were not to be
responsible for his agents, no petition would ever be successful, and
we might as well repeal all the laws directed against bribery and
corruption. It is difficult, where gross corruption is shown, to believe
that the member is always really so innocent of all knowledge of the
offence as he asserts ; the candidate may know all that is going on,
or he may be but a sleeping partner in the firm, but at the same
time have a shrewd suspicion that his party or his colleague were
doing that which would ultimately benefit himself ; no doubt he does
not ' want to know anything about it,' thinking that where ' ignorance

1880. BRIBERY AND CORRUPTION. 831

is bliss,' &c. But when a man is seeking an office of trust, it is his duty
to employ respectable agents, and to be responsible for their actions ;
and therefore, whether he be innocent or guilty, there is no absolute
unfairness in unseating him for their acts.

The unseating of a member will tend to make candidates more
particular in their directions to, and supervision of, agents and friends,
and so far, therefore, a petition, from a public point of view, is no
evil. The only other result which ever seems to follow a petition is
disfranchisement or suspension of writ, and the innocent and guilty
are all damned together, punishment raining equally on the just and
unjust. Further than this, however, ' no one is a penny the worse,'
while a petition followed by a Royal Commission ought to be pain
and grief to all those who have committed malpractices at the
election, and the member and the town, as a town, should not alone
be singled out for condemnation.

The probability that a successful petition, which is at all events
certain to give rise to much ill feeling and irritation, will result in
the appointment of a Royal Commission ; and the possibility — and
in some cases the certainty — that a Royal Commission will bring
disfranchisement in its wake, while it will not lead to the punish-
ment of the guilty, has the natural tendency to make a petition
appear to the majority of the electors an evil to be avoided ; and the
consequence is that efforts are often made by both parties to prevent
a petition being presented, or to quash it before it comes on for
hearing. Few desire to see their borough disfranchised ; and so,.
though abhorring bribery and corruption, the rest will throw their
weight into the opposite scale ; while, if they knew that a petition
would not in any case be followed by disfranchisement or suspension
of writ, and that the probability would be that all or most of the
bribers and bribees would be punished, they would, as respectable
men, be in favour of an exposure.

Then again, it is notorious that petitions are often threatened
and actually presented, and then withdrawn or ' arranged,' because
the petitioner knows full well that his case is so overwhelming that
a Royal Commission will be the result of his success, and dis-
franchisement must follow, and it would therefore only be from a
severe sense of public duty that he would take action in a matter
which is evidently against his own private interest. If he does
petition, and the place is disfranchised, or the writ suspended, he
gains nothing and earns the certain enmity of many ; while, if he
bides his time, he may be successful at the next election. Or the
petition is staved off in consequence of the united pressure of the
party managers from both sides, who see the peril involved in
its success, though the beaten candidate, smarting under the sense
of a defeat which he knows, had the battle been fairly conducted,
must have been a victory, would be rash enough to imperil the

832 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

future of the borough.6 Again, some'^towns enjoy so bad a reputation
that the bribers count on it and bribe in peace, with the absolute
certainty that neither side will be foolhardy enough to seal their
own doom while attempting to expose them. The consequence is
that neither side being able with safety to petition, and it being
evident that where bribery continues unchecked the purse will win,
both sides are tempted more and more to pile excess upon excess,
and the place becomes a sink of corruption. Under present circum-
stances, therefore, one side has only to bribe hard enough to make a
petition morally impossible.

I should very much doubt if there now exist boroughs of equal
impurity with Beverley and Bridgwater, the electoral Sodorn and
Gomorrah of twenty years ago, though Sandwich appears to run them
close. If ever towns deserved disfranchisement, these places did ; for
when disfranchised they hardly had one sound spot from head to heel,
and of them perhaps it might have been said, as it was said of Gram-
pound in 1820 (by way of palliation), that ' there might possibly be two
or three voters who had taken no bribe.' But it is probable, if the fear
of disfranchisement had not been before the eyes of the party leaders in
these and other corrupt towns, that successful petitions would have been
presented years before they actually were, the places would have been
freed of the bribers, and by this time might be enjoying representation,
and find themselves among the purest in the land. As it was, the fear
of disfranchisement sufficed to prevent petition after petition at sue
cessive elections, and by causing the bribers to grow more callous
and bolder, the towns became seven times worse than they had been,
until the mines being exploded by rash petitions, the places (but not
the bribers) were blown into the air. Once the plunge is made,
therefore, and no notice taken, the fear of disfranchisement operates
as a hindrance to purification, or exactly in the opposite way to that
which was intended. It is probable that for every petition heard
and decided there are four or five nipped in the bud, quashed, or
arranged.

Remove the overpowering fear of disfranchisement, provide at
the same time proper machinery for the punishment of the wrong-
doers, and we may safely assert that, at all events at first, until
bribers have been shown the errors of their way, the number of peti-
tions would be increased, and places, parties, and persons who now
pursue their evil courses unmolested would then be dragged to the
light of a public tribunal, and would receive stripes according to
their merits.

• The evidence given before the Commissioners shows that at Sandwich an offer
was made to Sir J. Goldsmid (apparently by both sides) that if he would allow his
petition to drop, the sitting Conservative would give up to him his seat, and the
expenses of the late election and of the petition would be reimbursed. At Canter-
bury a large sum was, it seems, offered to the petitioners to induce them to with-
draw their petition.

1880. BRIBERY AND CORRUPTION. 833

The more genuine petitions there were, the more bribery would
be exposed, receive its due reward, and be thereby diminished. A
petition leads to a trial by the election judges, who report to the
House their opinion of the prevalence of bribery. At present, if
they report that bribery has prevailed, but not extensively, and
unless they consider that extensive corruption has prevailed, it is
not the custom to appoint a Eoyal Commission, but a new writ is
immediately issued. I would suggest, that with a Public Prose-
cutor appointed and disfranchisement abolished, every successful
petition (except the member were unseated for a technicality
merely) should be followed by a Royal Commission, whether the
judges reported that corrupt practices prevailed extensively or no,
the writ being suspended until after their report. And, again, where
the judges did not unseat the member, but reported that they had
reason to believe that bribery did exist, but not to the knowledge of
the member or his agents, there also a Royal Commission should
inquire into all the circumstances, and in all these cases the Public
Prosecutor should take action on their reports, and go behind their
reports too, if necessary.7 In addition, if it in any way appeared to
the judge before whom was pleaded the prayer for the withdrawal of
a petition, that a corrupt arrangement had been come to, in order to
obtain the withdrawal, it should be the duty of the Public Prose-
cutor to inquire into all the circumstances of the case and to
prosecute if the law had been broken.

And so not only would petitions be increased in number, but
(again we might hope only at first) Royal Commissions likewise
would be more numerous, to the advantage of purity, for they would
no longer be looked upon as evils to be avoided if possible, but their
advent would be hailed by those careful of electoral purity as the proper
Nemesis of wrong-doing. At the same time, with disfranchisement
abolished, we might expect that the Royal Commissioners would carry
out their instructions in a rather different spirit from that which now
animates them. They, and others, seem to think that the law which
directs them ' especially to report, with respect to each election, the
names of all persons whom they find guilty of corrupt practices at
snch elections,' intended them to call, examine, and consequently to
indemnify against prosecution, all and every person against whom there
is any evidence of bribery. We see, therefore, that instead of a
sufficient number of witnesses being called, to incriminate if possible,
the chief offenders, and these latter being left to their fate, they, as
well as all the other criminals, are called, confess, and are indemnified.

7 It would be only just, if the member had been retained in his seat by the elec-
tion judges, that no evidence which might come out under the examination of the
Royal Commissioners should affect his seat, though, of course, it might affect him
personally. No man should have to undergo the ordeal of trial twice for the same
alleged offence.

834 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

The law is surely capable of a different and more sensible interpreta-
tion t'if it is not, it should be altered — namely, that the object of the
Commissioners should be to expose as much guilt as possible with the
least amount of indemnification. The witnesses they called would be
ready to give their evidence in order to escape prosecution for bribery
and for perjury ; those incriminated would be given the option of
denying the charge on oath, but not of joyfully confessing to their mis-
deeds, and being absolved from the consequences of them. Thus we
might hope to see the chief offenders punished, and not escape in the
scandalous way they do at present. A Royal Commission would then
cease to be either a thing to mock at as impotent to do that for which
it was appointed, or an instrument of injustice which punishes the
innocent and guilty alike ; but it would be one important part of
the scourge which would inevitably make itself felt where it was
deserved.

]So one party could any longer feel, as they are often forced to do
at present, that though their side has been perfectly innocent
throughout, they, equally with their guilty opponents, are disgraced
and debarred from all future political life. Such a prospect is
hardly encouraging to those who desire to be pure ; while the know-
ledge that such a result could not possibly ensue, and that, if the
other side committed themselves, there would be a near oppor-
tunity of again attacking the seat, would certainly be the best induce-
ment to a party to keep pure, in order that no retaliatory evidence
could be brought against them which might affect their candidate
and themselves, and prevent them from winning the election.

Thus in two ways the misdeeds of the sinners would be exposed
in a much greater degree than they are at present, and punished
accordingly ; but, in addition, they could no longer count on the
suppression of evidence which now takes place in the majority of, if
not in all, election petitions — the suppression being caused by the
fear that exposure will lead to disfranchisement. It is at present mani-
festly against the interests of everyone, of the party managers of both
sides, of the respondent and of the petitioner, to allow more evidence
to be given than will carry the petition, or, if less barefaced acts
will be sufficient, to allow the worst cases to appear at all. The chief
aim and object of the petitioner and his friends is to unseat the
respondent with the least possible exposure of corruption, in
order to avoid all chance of the judges reporting that ' corrupt
practices extensively prevailed.' The same reasoning will also affect
the other side, and so arrangements are often agreed on between the
representatives of the petitioner and respondent, that the former
shall confine himself to one or two points — and those probably the
mildest in which agency can be shown — and endeavour to prove
those ; while the charges of general corruption and the like shall not
be pressed.

1880. BRIBERY AND CORRUPTION. 835

Over and over again, election judges have complained that they
were convinced an agreement had been made to suppress material-
evidence, but that it was out of their power to force the petitioner
to bring forward that which he wished to conceal ; thus gross mis-
carriage of justice has arisen, if indeed it can be called a gross mis-
carriage that certain persons escaped the only punishment which they
would anyhow receive — exposure of their guilt.

The petitioner can hardly be expected to endeavour to prove more
than is sufficient for his object, any unnecessary prolongation of an
election petition trial being an expensive amusement ; but it is now
often expedient for him to go out of his way, and with pain and
difficulty to produce the most milk- and- watery cases he can find, and
carefully to avoid those which, if brought forward, would no doubt
unseat the opponent, but might also fatally damage the character of
the constituency.

If the fear of producing the bad cases, or of proving * general cor-
ruption,' were removed, the petitioner would bring forward his worst
cases first, and thereby the whole scheme of bribery and corruption
might be unravelled without more ado, instead of being hidden away
and kept concealed. The clue being thus placed in his hands, the
Public Prosecutor would be the more able to follow up the track and
trace out those concerned in the plot.

There need be no fear of an increase of frivolous petitions follow-
ing the abolition of disfranchisement ; for the great expense and
endless worry entailed by all petitions is sufficient to check an undue
inclination towards them.

Disfranchisement, or suspension of writ, must always necessarily
be unfair in its results ; for, say what we will, it is not always if ever
possible for the respectable members of the community to stamp out
for once and for ever all corruption. If there exist some who mean
to be corrupt and to corrupt others, they will hardly be influenced by
the protests of the right-minded ; and as it is almost impossible for
the two sides to come to any definite agreement to suppress bribery,
the upright may find themselves tarred with the same brush as the
real offenders. The punishment of disfranchisement is also necessarily
capricious, for while two boroughs may be equally bad, the one, from
no petition having been filed, or from being fortunate enough to re-
ceive a milder condemnation from the Koyal Commissioners than has
been meted out to its fellow, will escape from punishment by the
skin of its teeth, while the other is disgraced and disqualified. On
the other hand, if a Eoyal Commission and the appointment of a
Public Prosecutor resulted in the escape of the innocent and in the
punishment of the guilty — or at least in the punishment of those
who were doubly guilty by being found out — all capriciousness and
unfairness would at once cease.

At the same time the constituency which permitted — even if it

836 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

could not prevent — the existence of bribery in its midst would not
escape altogether the consequences of its laxity. It would be some-
what disgraced ; and no doubt the borough which had required a
Royal Commission and the presence of a Public Prosecutor would
be scored with a black mark against the time when a redistribution
of seats became necessary ; and, if it were not then disfranchised, would,
at all events, be purified by the infusion of new blood. Then,
moreover, it would still have to bear the cost of the Royal
Commission — no light charge in a small town.8 Besides, under the
reformed state of things, no new writ would be issued in any case,
whether the judges had reported corrupt practices to prevail ex-
tensively or no, until after the Royal Commission had reported, and
until after the resulting prosecutions had been decided. There
would, therefore, be a short temporary suspension of writ in every
case ; no undue punishment for the offending town. Such a sus-
pension would be greatly to the advantage of purity ; for the bribers
and bribees, having been punished and suspended before the new
election took place, would have no hand in it, and time would be
given for the remembrance of the * kindness ' of the unseated member
to fade somewhat from the recollection of the constituency. In the
present inefficient state of the law, it seems to be an almost in-
variable rule that the side which has been petitioned against reseats
a member of their party at the subsequent election. And this is not
unnatural ; for while the offenders escape, and are ready to play the
same old game again, the unseated member is sure to be a most
active as well as a most effective canvasser for his nominee and suc-
cessor, and the rashness of the petitioners in risking disfranchise-
ment and exposing the borough is made the most of. If however, before
the election again took place, the offenders and the receivers had
been punished and scheduled, their swift retribution would act as a
deterrent to others, and if the unseated member were also disquali-
fied from taking any part in the election, purity would again have a
chance, and the petitioning side might carry their candidate.

As the law stands, all persons found guilty of any corrupt practice by
a competent legal tribunal are disqualified for seven years from voting
or taking part in an election ; while a candidate, if personally guilty,

• Mr. Watkin Williams proposes, I see, to throw the cost of these Royal Commis-
sions on ' the perpetrators and their agents of the illegal practices ' which caused
the appointment of the Royal Commission. If the suggestions discussed above
were not to be carried out, perhaps — as at present these perpetrators and their
agents always escape punishment — it might be expedient to inflict this fine on
them, but it would be better to punish them in other ways by imprisonment and
definite fine ; for it would be eminently difficult to assess the proportion of the
amount to be paid by each briber, and the infliction of such a punishment might
tend more towards commiseration being felt for the bribers than towards the
desired contempt and dislike. Such a penalty might also lead to the suppression
of evidence, for none of the guilty could receive an indemnity relieving him of his
share of the cost.

1880. BRIBERY AND CORRUPTION. 837

is disqualified from standing for the like period. Any person who
has been guilty of bribery or undue influence, and has been con-
victed criminally, or upon judgment in any penal action, is liable to
perpetual disqualification ; all such persons, of both classes, are to have
their names inscribed on a list, and are said to be ' scheduled.' More-
over, if they take part in any election as ' canvassers or agents for
the management of the election,' their assistance would void that
election. Practically this law is not by any means stringently en-
forced, but the appointment of a Public Prosecutor would cause it to
be genuinely carried out and extended, so that all persons ' named '
by the election judges or reported by the Eoyal Commissioners,
and who have received certificates of indemnity, or who for any reason
are not prosecuted, would be entered on the schedule and be^dis-
qualified for seven years from taking any part in an election — and
their doing so in any prominent way would cause avoidance of the
election ; while every person prosecuted and found guilty would be
perpetually disqualified, with the same penalty attaching to his
taking part at an election. Those found guilty of voting after being
employed should perhaps be disqualified for a term only.

In addition, it would be an immense advantage to purity of
election if the member who had been unseated on petition, but who
had n,ot been found personally guilty of bribery, should in every case
be disqualified from assisting in the subsequent election, and his
doing so should, on petition, be followed by its avoidance. At present
the unseated member is the best possible canvasser, seconder, and
backer, that the candidate he supports can have. The unseated
member (of course) has not been guilty of bribery, but as his agents
have been found guilty, or he would not have been unseated, ifc
is very indecent that 'he should be allowed to go about helping
his friend, and attitudinising as the injured man who has been
turned out through the malice of the other side (whose malice,
even if it were malice, has been amply justified by the result), and
pointing out that for their selfish ends the town has been deprived of
one who was a benefactor to it, and whose purse-strings were ever
unloosed, especially at election times. His presence recalls to re-
collection the corruption of the late election, he is a living advertise-
ment of the power of money, and a sug-gestive guarantee that his
nominee is of the same way of thinking as himself, and will not be
behindhand in his goodness to the poor.

As late as 1854 it was obligatory on the voter, when he presented
himself at the polling booth, to take an oath or affirmation against
bribery, but this, along with many other superfluous oaths, has been
rightly abolished ; for to impose such an oath on the voter was
placing a premium on perjury and must have led to great waste of
time. It is certainly a mistake to multiply oaths unnecessarily, but
there are two occasions when the imposition of definite oaths or affirma-
VOL. VIII.— No. 45. 3 L

S3S THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

tions would probably tend greatly to increase the purity of elec
tions.

Would it not be advisable, before the election, to impose some
form of oath or affirmation against bribery on the candidates and their
authorised paid agents ? They should be obliged to declare that
they have abstained from all acts of bribery and corruption, that
they mean to continue to abstain ; and that, as far as lies in their
power, they will prevent their agents, friends, and party from com-
mitting any illegal actions. The candidates, moreover, should declare
that they had not paid, and did not intend to pay, any money, for the
purposes of the election, except through their election-expenses agents.
No candidate or his agent could fairly and legitimately refuse to make
such an affidavit. If he did not mean to bribe at all, the obligation
to subscribe would be no hardship, while it might make the would-be
briber think twice before he perjured himself; for — not to speak of
his conscience — if it afterwards came out that he had been in any
way cognisant of the bribery, he would be liable to prosecution, not
only for bribery, but also for perjury.

To the candidate who is pressed to wink at corruption and pay
large sums, not knowing for what they will be spent — but who has
compunctions on the subject — the oath would be a good excuse for
refusing all complicity in the proposed action ; and it would be a
godsend to all those who desire to keep pure and be honest ; while it
is probable that the sanctity of the oath would radiate from the can-
didate to his agents and friends, and purity would be advanced. The
agent also would feel obliged to examine somewhat more closely the
accounts sent in to him, and see that they were more or less reason-
able and legitimate.

This bribery oath would be taken before the election. After the
election another oath or affirmation should be required of the election-
expenses agent when he returned the election expenses two months
after the election. He should be required to vouch on oath for the
accuracy of his accounts ; to the statements that he had paid no other
sums ; that with the exception of those given in a schedule (the
ones he intended to pay should be specified) he knew of no liabilities
outstanding, and that he would pay no further claims.9 It is a misde-

' To give one instance of manipulation, Mr. Justice Lush observed at Sandwich
that ' a sum of 348Z. 10*. had been expended by the respondent's agent in illegally
providing flags, banners, &c., and he must observe in passing that 315Z. 10*. of this
amount had in the summary of accounts handed to the returning officer been
charged under the head of clerks and personation agents.' As to omissions, it had
come out before the Commissions that at Oxford no true returns of election expenses
have of late years been sent in ; that at Macclesfield, while the returned expenses
of both parties together amounted to 1,327Z., over 4.000Z. was really spent ; that at
Gloucester the Liberals acknowledge to 1.300Z. and he Conservatives to 2,OOOJ. not
returned ; and so on.

1880. BRIBERY AND CORRUPTION. 83U

meanour for the agent wilfully to furnish an untrue statement of elec-
tion expenses ; but, though it is notorious that the ' returned ' election
accounts are — I will not say as a rule but very frequently — manipula-
ted as to the figures themselves, while they also abound in wilful omis-
sions and suppressions, no agent is ever prosecuted for a misdemeanour,
for the before-mentioned reason, that it is nobody's business or interest
to take action. The agent should be given the choice of making a
true return or committing perjury, and the Public Prosecutor should
make it his business to prosecute, if the judges or the Royal Commis-
sion showed (as they often do) that there had been wilful misstatement
in the accounts.10

Any one who does not send in his claim on the candidate to the
election-expenses agent before the expiration of a month from the
election is, so runs the law, debarred of his right to recover full
claims. This clause is however nugatory, for no candidate can really
refuse to pay a late bill, unless it be manifestly exorbitant. Accounts
are often wilfully kept back (sometimes by arrangement with the
agent), and not presented or paid till after the expenses are returned.
It should therefore be a misdemeanour to pay any bill presented later
than the month, the withholding it being strong evidence of want of
bona fides, and the payment pointing to bribery.

I will not here discuss the huge expenses of elections, the evils of
canvassing and of the employment of voters, for I have sufficiently
enlarged on the former of these subjects elsewhere,11 and I hope in
another article to have an opportunity of discussing the latter points ;
nor will I linger to expose the evils arising from the permission which
the law gives to the extensive and wholesale hiring of committee-
rooms, especially in public-houses, the engagement of conveyances,
the retaining at huge fees of lawyers by the dozen, the lavishness in
printing and circulars ; nor to the manifold evils arising from the
feebleness of the law, which only demands a small and never-exacted
penalty for the offences of giving refreshments to voters and non-
voters engaged in sinecure work, and for the forbidden voting of
those employed.

There are happily not many boroughs in which victory reflects on
the candidate greater disgrace than defeat, in which it is as certain
as any law of nature that the candidate with the longest purse and
the shortest conscience will win ; nor is the number great in which
voters are numerous who invariably split their votes and give one for
their party and the other for the money, or what is worse, one for a

10 It would be very advisable also if there were one uniform detailed statement
to be filled up by all the election-expenses agents, so that different elections might
be easily compared one with another; at present each agent draws up his statement
as he pleases, and there is no uniformity.

11 Fortn'u/litly licricn; Feb. 1880.

3 L2

840 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

bribe from one side, and the other for a bribe from the opposite party.
The huge cost per head of voters polled proves, however, that there are
constituencies innumerable, large as well as small, in which bribery and
corruption do really prevail, though they may be disguised under
inoffensively sounding terms, or are less condemned because the
voters are supposed to receive their reward from their own party and
not from the other side. A bribe, of course, is none the less a bribe
because it is given to strengthen a political conviction and not with
the intention of subverting it.

The spoils of elections chiefly go into the pockets of the lawyers,
the printers, the publicans and the sinners ; where there are no sinners,
the other partners divide the spoils between them.

There do exist unfortunately men who are a scandal to representa-
tive government, who mean to buy their way into the House (as their
only chance of getting in), and who, as long as they can avoid a peti-
tion, are reckless as to bribery, corruption, or law-breaking, and to
whom a voter (like M.P.'s used to be to Walpole) is but a creature
who is sure to have his price. They have effectually over- learnt
the proverb ' bis dat qui cito dat,' for they give both early and
often.

One word as to subscriptions. The lavish contributions to local
charities and institutions, the distribution of good things to the poor,
the 'nursing' of a constituency, are forms of bribery more subtle
perhaps than the brutal money or employment transactions which
take place during the election, but equally effective. I do not mean
for an instant to imply that there is anything wrong or ' subtle ' in a
member subscribing to a select number of local institutions. He
professes to be, and should be, interested in the welfare of the con-
stituency, and if he can, by a judicious expenditure, give an impetus
to, or retain the vitality of any useful institution, he is quite within
his honourable rights, and may be justly praised for his liberality ;
while, of course, he also does not lose by his action, this being one of
the points, among many others, in which wealth has an advantage
over poverty. But, further than this, though it is difficult or impos-
rible to draw the line, there is a lavishness of expenditure on subscrip-
tions and the like, which is colourable and corrupt because only done
with the object of obtaining or retaining a seat. This form of corrup-
tion, if judiciously carried out, cannot possibly be made to affect the
validity of the election. It may be done foolishly and too openly, and
thereby be overdone, and recoil on the head of the benefactor ; there
have been instances of this, and members have been unseated, and
justly so, for the too-evident intention of their charitable distribu-
tions.

One would have thought that all careful for purity of election
vrould agree that the abuse of subscriptions was a form of bribery which

1880. BRIBERY AND CORRUPTION. 841

should be discouraged ; it is therefore the more to be regretted that
any one in authority should give to such proceedings the sanction of
his respect and pity. It is unfortunate that Mr. Justice Manisty —
who has in other election petition charges made some excellent re-
marks, and given some valuable suggestions towards the minimisa-
tion of bribery — felt himself called upon at Plymouth, when unseating
the Conservative member, not only for bribery, but also for (so ran the
petition) ' giving large doles of coals and other gifts with a political
object,' to remark, that ' the petitioners, actuated, as I think and be-
lieve, by party spirit, have succeeded in depriving not only the poor
and needy of all creeds and denominations, religious and political, in
Plymouth, but also the inhabitants at large, of a good friend and
generous benefactor, and the majority of the constituency of a repre-
sentative whom they had elected, and of whom they had good reason
to be proud.' It is hard on the petitioners that at the same moment
when the judge, by unseating the member, pronounces them to be
entirely justified in their action, he should declare that it was an
iniquitous proceeding on their part to bring the petition.12 This by
the way ; but the unfortunate part was that an election judge should
practically declare that, in his opinion, the lavish distribution by the
member of gifts and doles to the poor and needy is an action to be
proud of, and not a subject for reproach.

' To be good to the poor ' is a phrase capable of much expansion,
and some seats were lost at the late election on both sides because the
* poor ' thought that their member had not fed, clothed, and treated
them sufficiently, or because they thought that the new man was
better aware of his duty in this respect and possessed larger means by
which to accomplish it.

The question of how far subscriptions, &c., are given with a corrupt
intention, and are corrupting, does not fall within the possibilities of
legislative action, but must be left in the hands of the election judges
to decide. Let us hope that they are not all of the same way of
thinking on the question as their learned brother just quoted.

Public opinion has never been very strongly expressed against
bribery and corruption. It is satisfactory, however, to note that lately
a change for the better seems to have taken place, and the public
appear to be somewhat shocked and scandalised at the recent reve-
lations of election petitions and Eoyal Commissions. This is a good
omen for purity of election ; for, though more stringent regulations

12 As may be naturally supposed, in the ensuing election the Conservatives were
not slow to take advantage of this extraordinary admission, and the town was
placarded with the opinion of the judge that the Liberal party had been only
actuated by contemptible party spite in bringing their petition.

It is evident that the reasoning expressed in the judge's remarks is illogical. If
.Sir E. Bates had been so liberal to the town irrespective of any political feeling or
question, the petition would in no way affect his liberality.

842 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

can he adopted and enforced against bribery, with very happy results,
the sheet anchor of our hope must always be that the public consci-
ence will awake to the fact that bribery and corruption are in them-
selves wicked and iniquitous, that they are eminently demoralising
and debasing, and that their existence destroys to a very large extent
the representative character of our form of government. "When this
time arrives, bribery, instead of being thought a rather good joke, as
is now too often the case — this opinion being greatly strengthened
by the publicity of the proceedings of the Commissioners — would be
considered a disgrace ; and if punishment went hand in hand with
this disgrace, those tainted by it would soon sink to the level of ordi-
nary malefactors. Once deprived of its artificial halo, and looked
upon with proper aversion, bribery would lose its charm, and would
be relegated to the hands of the class least cleanly — morally if not
physically speaking — and would then be doomed.

We may all have our own Utopian ideas on the question of how best
to cause bribery and corruption to cease ; but it is useless to propose
or discuss any scheme with this object which cannot without infinite
difficulty be adopted, or which would be opposed to the feelings of
the majority under the existing conditions of life and opinion. I have
endeavoured to confine myself to suggestions which I believe to be
easily practicable, and which might be adopted without involving-
any violent changes. They aim at allotting punishment where pun-
ishment is due, and at preventing the escape of the criminal.
Whether, until public opinion pronounces strongly on the subject, they
would be remedies and not merely checks, it is hard to say ; but, short
of the real remedy — a wholesome and radical change in public feel-
ing— these proposal?, if adopted, ought, as I have endeavoured to
show, to fulfil their purpose and affect corruption to an appreciable
degree.

It may be said that the different decisions and judgments of the
election judges are buoys which mark the shoals and quicksands of
bribery, and permit of their avoidance by those who sail down the
stream. But, if proper laws were passed and enforced, and if more
dangerous obstructions were placed in the stream so that the bark
striking on them were certain to founder, and not be able to push off
again scatheless, then, though it might not prevent all attempts at
sailing, the increased difficulties and dangers of navigation would
deter many from attempting a risky undertaking.

So inefficient are the existing laws, and so feeble is their enforce-
ment, that purity can hardly be recommended as a specific for victory ;
it may ease the conscience and save the pocket, but it will hardly gain
the seat.

The revelations of the Eoyal Commissions lately sitting are chiefly
remarkable and startling in the conclusion forced upon us, that there

1880. BRIBERY AND CORRUPTION. 843

exist numbers of men, and men in high positions — men, too, who would
be insulted if they were not designated as honest and honourable,
but who have no compunction in buying votes, in tempting others to
betray their trust, and in paying them either to lie or to violate
their consciences. These disclosures are an eloquent testimony to
the frightful apathy of the public conscience at present on the ques-
tion of Bribery and Corruption.

SYDNEY C. BUXTON.

844 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

RECENT SCIENCE.

(PROFESSOR HtJXLET has kindly read, and aided the Compilers and the Editor with
his advice upon, the following article.}

ALTHOUGH the invention of such instruments as the telephone, the
phonograph, and the microphone, has prepared the way for other
acoustical marvels, no one will be the less disposed to admire the
remarkable instrument which Professor Graham Bell has lately de-
scribed under the name of the Photophone. This is an instrument
for the transmission of articulate sounds to distant stations, not by
means of an electric wire or indeed of any material medium, but
simply by a beam of light. Wherever a beam of light may be
flashed from one point to another, there the ph otophone can be
worked. Such an instrument may evidently become of great value
in establishing rapid communication between distant surveying
stations, and especially in military signalling, where it promises to
displace the heliograph. Possibly the field of utility of the photo-
phone may not be so wide as that of the telephone, but in point of
scientific interest there can be no doubt that the new instrument is
quite as remarkable as its predecessor. An apparatus of extreme
simplicity transmits the spoken words, another of equal simplicity
receives them, and between the two instruments there is nothing,
save a line of light, to act as a connecting medium. The method by
which this extraordinary result has been attained was first disclosed
to the scientific world during the recent meeting of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, at Boston. From Pro-
fessor Bell's communication to that meeting, it appears that the
photophone is the direct outcome of experiments upon the curious
action of light in affecting the electric conductivity of selenium.*

Selenium is one of the rarer chemical elements, found only in a
comparatively few minerals, which are but sparingly distributed.
The substance was discovered in 1817 by the famous Swedish chemist
Berzelius. In examining a deposit which had been obtained from
some oil of vitriol works at Gripsholm, near Falun, in Sweden, he
was perplexed by the presence of a disturbing element which he was
unable to identify with any known substance. It presented many
points of resemblance to a rare metal-like body which Klaproth, a few

1 For descriptions of the photophone see the Illustrated Scientific News, Sept. 15 ;
the Scientific American, Sept. 18 and Oct. 2 ; Supplement No. 246; Engineering,
Sept. 17 ; Nature, Sept, 23, 1880 ; and American Journal of Science, Oct. 1880, p. 305.

1880. RECENT SCIENCE. 845

years previously, had named tellurium ; yet the strange substance
from the Swedish vitriol chambers was certainly not tellurium.
Careful investigation ultimately led to the conclusion that it was a
distinct kind of elementary matter which had not previously been
recognised by chemists ; and to mark its relation to tellurium — which
had been so named from tellus, the earth — the new element was
termed selenium from o-s\^vr), the moon.

While selenium closely resembles, in some of its properties, cer-
tain of the metals, in other characters it is intimately allied to
sulphur. Like sulphur it is capable of assuming several distinct
physical conditions, or allotropic modifications. Thus, if the selenium
be fused and then rapidly cooled, it forms a dark brown glassy mass
which, like sulphur, does not conduct electricity. But if the
melted selenium be allowed to cool with extreme slowness, it solidifies
as a granular crystalline mass, having a dull leaden colour, and being
capable, as Hittorff first showed, of conducting electricity to a
limited extent. The former variety may be termed, for distinction's
sake, vitreous selenium ; the latter crystalline or metallic selenium.
It is notable that, if the vitreous variety be exposed for some time to
about the temperature of boiling water, it slowly passes into the
crystalline condition.

Since crystalline selenium can conduct electricity, but neverthe-
less offers considerable resistance to its passage, it occurred to Mr.
Willoughby Smith that a bar of this substance might be used with
advantage in cases where a high resistance is required, as at the
shore-end of a submarine cable in connection with his system of
testing and signalling while the cable is being submerged. But, on
putting the crystalline selenium to the test at Valentia Bay, it was
found by Mr. May — who was acting for Mr. Smith — that the elec-
trical resistance was far from constant, and a few experiments re-
vealed the startling fact that the conductivity was controlled by the
action of light. When exposed to light, the conductivity of the
selenium was much greater — or, what comes to the same thing, its
resistance was much less — than when kept in the dark. This fact
was communicated by Mr. Willoughby Smith to Mr. Latimer Clark
in a letter which was read before the Society of Telegraphic Engineers
on February 12, 1873.2

So unexpected were the results of Mr. Smith's experiments that
the subject was soon taken up by other investigators. One of the
earliest to repeat and extend these experiments was Lieutenant Sale,
who found that the selenium was not affected by those rays which are
most active chemically, while the greatest effect was produced by the
red rays, or those of low refrangibility.3

2 ' The Action of Light on Selenium.' Journ. of tJic Soc. of Telegraph Engineers,
vol. ii. 1873, p. 31.

3 ' The Action of Light on the Electric Resistance of Selenium.' Proceedings of the
Royal Society, May 1, 1873, vol. xxi. p. 283.

S4G THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

Electricians had long been familiar with the fact that heat has
considerable influence on the resistance which various bodies offer to
the passage of a current; but until the publication of Mr. Willoughby
Smith's letter no instance had been recorded in which light exerted
an influence of this kind. It was consequently pardonable to suggest
that the variability in the conducting power of the selenium might
be due to variations of temperature rather than of luminosity. To
determine this point some experiments were conducted by the Earl
of Rosse.4 In these experiments it was found that the selenium re-
mained comparatively, if not absolutely, insensible to radiant heat of
low refrangibility. The' dark heat from a vessel of hot water, for
instance, failed to affect the selenium.

Researches of a more extended character were soon afterwards
carried out by Professor W. Gr. Adams, of King's College, London.5
The selenium was exposed not only to radiations from different
sources, but to light which had been transmitted through various
absorbing media, such as coloured glass, solutions of coloured salts,
plates of rock salt, quartz, mica, alum, and other appropriate sub-
stances. These experiments showed convincingly that light was the
chief agent in inducing the change in the electrical properties of the
selenium, inasmuch as these properties were scarcely affected either
by the ultra-red or by the ultra-violet rays. The maximum effect
was obtained in the yellowish-green portion of the spectrum. Under
the influence of moonlight the resistance of the selenium was sensibly
reduced. On the whole it was clear that light and not heat was the
agent to which Mr. Willoughby Smith's phenomenon was due. In
fact, it is now a well-established fact that while light increases the
conducting power of crystalline selenium, heat diminishes it.

While these investigations were being conducted in this country,
Dr. Werner Siemens was independently engaged upon the same
subject in Berlin.6 He devised an ingenious form of selenium cell,
which was prepared in the following manner. Two opposite spirals,
or two parallel zigzags, of thin platinum wire were laid upon a sheet of
mica, and united by a drop of molten selenium, which, before solidify-
ing, was squeezed out into the form of a thin film by pressure of a
second plate of mica. The current was caused to enter the cell through
one of the wires, then to traverse the selenium, and finally to pass out
through the opposite wire. With cells of this construction, a great

4 'On the Electric Resistance of Selenium.' Philosophical Magazine, March
1874, p. 161.

* 'The Action of Light on Selenium.' Proc. Roy. Soc. June 17, 1875, vol. xxiii.
p. 535 ; Jan. 6, 1876, vol. xxiv. p. 163 ; June 15, 1876, vol. xxv. p. 113.

' Ueber die Abhangigkeit der electrischen Leitungsfahigkeit des Selen von
Warme und Licht.' Monattbcrichte d. k. prevas. AJtad. d. Wistentchaften s. Berlin,
Feb. 17, 1876 ; June 4, 1877. See also a lecture on ' The Action of Light on
Selenium,' by Dr. C. William Siemens, in Proc. Hoy. Institution, Feb. 18, 1876, vol.
viii. p. 68.

1880. RECENT SCIENCE. 847

number of experiments were made by Dr. Siemens in conjunction with
Dr. Obach. As long as the selenium remained in the amorphous con-
dition, the current was unable to pass, but on heating it to 100°C.,
and then allowing it to cool, it became a feeble conductor, and its
conductivity was increased by the action of light. If, however, the
selenium disc were exposed to a temperature of about 210°C., or
nearly to its melting-point, and then gradually cooled, the substance
passed into a second modification, in which it was a much better
conductor of electricity, and was extremely sensitive to luminous
rays.

For the purpose of detecting variations in the strength of the
current under varying conditions of illumination, all experimentalists
who had worked on this subject had naturally made use of galvano-
meters. It occurred, however, to Mr. Graham Bell, that his telephone
might be advantageously used in such experiments. It is obvious
that if a telephone were introduced into a circuit which included a
cell of crystalline selenium, the telephone would be affected at every
admission of light to the sensitive material, and again at every ex-
clusion. But, in each case, the effect would be only of momentary
duration. Consequently, in order to throw the diaphragm of the
telephone into a state of vibration, so as to produce distinct sounds,
the light must be intermitted with great rapidity. Let the selenium
be subjected to a quick succession of exposures and eclipses, and the
corresponding changes in the conductivity of the material would keep
the disc of the telephone in a state of oscillation, and thus sound
would be produced by the action of light. The light would act
upon the selenium, and the telephone would audibly respond.

Foreseeing the possibility of thus evoking sound by the action
of light, Professor Bell, in the course of a lecture which he delivered
at the Royal Institution in 1878, ventured to express his opinion that
when light which had fallen upon selenium was intercepted, it would
be possible, by proper arrangements, to hear the shadow. And only
a few days afterwards, Mr. Willoughby Smith announced that he had
actually heard, through the telephone, the effect of the fall of a ray
of light upon a piece of sensitive selenium.

Practically, however, it was found that the very great resistance
which the selenium offered to the passage of the current rendered it
unmanageable. But Mr. Bell, working conjointly with his friend,
Mr. Sumner Tainter, has completely overcome this difficulty, and
has prepared, by very simple means, selenium cells which offer only
a moderate resistance, and are, therefore, suitable for telephonic
experiments. No fewer than fifty different forms of apparatus have
been devised by these experimentalists for the purpose of actuating
the telephone by varying the illumination of the selenium. One of
the most simple of these forms consists merely of a small flexible
mirror, upon which a beam of light is concentrated. The mirror

848 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

may be made of a piece of very thin glass, or of a disc of mica silvered
on one side. Upon such a mirror a beam of light — preferably sun-
light, by reason of its intensity — is concentrated by means of a lens.
The light reflected from the mirror is passed through another lens so
as to form a beam of parallel rays, and this beam is projected to the
distant station, where it is received upon a parabolic mirror. The
mirror concentrates the light upon a cell of sensitive selenium which
is placed in the focus, and is connected in a local circuit with a tele-
phone and a galvanic battery.

If a speaker at the transmitting station now directs his voice
against the back of the little flexible mirror, the mirror is thrown
into a state of vibration, and the agitation is necessarily communicated
to the beam of reflected light. When, therefore, this light reaches
the receiving station, it falls upon the selenium as an ' undulatory
beam ' — in other words, although it may shine continuously upon the
selenium, its intensity , is yet subject to rapid variations. These
variations produce equally rapid changes in the electric current
which traverses the selenium, and every rise or fall in the conduc-
tivity of the selenium is thus transmitted to the telephone, where it
manifests itself audibly by throwing the diaphragm into a similar
state of vibration. It is obvious, therefore, that every sound pro-
duced at the back of the transmitting mirror must evoke a corre-
sponding sound at the distant receiving station. Words uttered at
one end are thus faithfully reproduced at the other, though the
bond between the two stations is nothing more than a beam of light.

No sooner had the photophone been constructed in the form
which has just been described than it was destined to undergo an
extraordinary modification. It may fairly be supposed that when
light falls upon the selenium, it must set up some kind of molecular
disturbance upon its sensitive surface. Accordingly, Mr. Bell argued
that if such a movement of the molecules really does take place,
there was the bare possibility that it might be heard with the un-
aided ear. Removing then the telephone and battery, Mr. Bell
applied his ear directly to the selenium disc. The early experiments
were not successful, but ultimately he had the satisfaction to find that
the crystalline selenium, under proper conditions, did actually emit
distinct sounds.

Far more remarkable, however, than this fact, was the unexpected
discovery that such an emission of sound, under the influence of
varying illumination, is not confined to selenium. The first material
in which Professor Bell distinctly observed this phenomenon was a
piece of hard rubber, and a great variety of other substances were then
tested with more or less success. Antimony and hard rubber were
found to emit the loudest sounds, paper and mica the weakest, while
the only substances which remained silent in the course of these
experiments were carbon and thin glass. The inventors of the photo-

1880. RECENT SCIENCE. 849

phone feel warranted in stating, as the result of their studies, that
sounds can be produced by the action of a variable light upon sub-
stances of all kinds, provided they be used in the suitable form of
thin diaphragms. Mr. Bell's experiments have therefore resulted not
only in the invention of a new acoustical instrument, but in the dis-
covery of the fact that matter in general is susceptible of molecular
change, under the influence of light, to an extent and in a way which
had not previously been suspected.

In delivering the Presidential Address to the British Association at
the recent meeting at Swansea, Professor Eamsay gave publicity to
some geological observations which had recently been made by Pro-
fessor Geikie in the north-west of Scotland, and which, if they bear
the interpretation that has been put upon them, are undoubtedly of
the deepest interest to the physical geologist.7 The President's
announcement was immediately followed by the publication of Pro-
fessor Geikie's own account of the observations.8

For many years past the order of succession of the old rocks in
the north of Scotland has been placed almost beyond dispute. Mr.
Peach's discovery of Lower Silurian fossils at Durness long ago
settled the age of the limestones and white quartzites of Sutherland-
shire, and thus afforded a starting-point for the determination of the
age of the unfossiliferous rocks in this region. Beneath the Silurian
rocks, in the north-west of Scotland, are enormous masses of dark red
or purple sandstones and conglomerates, which rise at places into
conical mountains upwards of three thousand feet above the level of
the sea. The late Sir Henry James and Professor Nicol showed that
these sandstones are separated by a strong unconformity from the
overlying Silurian rocks ; and Sir Eoderick Murchison, recognising
their higher antiquity, referred them to the Cambrian formation.
But far older than these Cambrian strata, and separated from them
in turn by another unconformity, is a series of highly metamorphosed
crystalline rocks, consisting chiefly of contorted gneiss. This gneiss
occurs in the outer Hebrides, and is occasionally known, from its
occurrence in the Isle of Lewis, as Lewisian gneiss : it also stretches
along the coast of the opposite mainland from Cape Wrath, with
more or less interruption, as far south as Loch Torrid on. Finding in
this pre- Cambrian gneiss a representative of the most ancient strati-
fied rocks in the country, Murchison bestowed upon it the name of
the Fundamental gneiss — a name which was intended to suggest
that it formed the floor of the British islands, upon which the later-
formed deposits had been spread. When the investigations of Sir
William Logan and his colleagues had clearly shown that there

7 'Address on the Recurrence of certain Phenomena in Geological Time,' de-
livered before the British Association, August 25, 1880, p. 17.

6 ' A Fragment of Primaeval Europe.' Jiaturc, August 26, 1880, p. 400.

850 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

existed in Canada a vast series of metamorphic rocks, also of pre-
Cambrian age and largely made up in like manner of gneiss, it was
but natural to compare the old Scottish rocks with those of Canada,
and thus the * Fundamental gneiss ' of Scotland has come to be
generally called nowadays Laurentian gneiss — the term * Laurentian '
having been borrowed by Canadian geologists from the Laurentides,
a range of hills which lie on the north of the valley of the St. Law-
rence.

Along the western margin of the counties of Sutherland and Eoss
the Laurentian gneiss presents a peculiar type of scenery, which has
been graphically described by Professor Geikie. The gnarled gneiss
forms a succession of bosses, hummocks, and ridges, peculiarly rounded
in contour, and wellnigh destitute of vegetation. The mammillations
of the surface suggest that the rocks have been worn down and
rounded by the passage of moving ice ; and it needs but little ex-
amination to recognise the smoothing, the polishing, and the striation
which speak so unmistakably of glacial action. At first sight it might
naturally be assumed that these effects were due to erosion by ice
during that comparatively modern period which is known as the
Glacial Age. Yet it is strange that the neighbouring sandstones,
quartzites, and schists, over which the ice of that period must also
have travelled, fail to exhibit equally marked traces of glacial erosion.
Nor can it be said that the unyielding nature of the gneiss has
enabled it to retain with persistence the evidence of ice-work, while
such evidence has been obliterated from many of the neighbouring
rocks ; for in the Scottish Highlands, where gneissose rocks of
younger age have been exposed to the action of ice during the glacial
period, the contours and general characters of the rocks are quite
different from those of the Laurentian gneiss. How then can the
geologist hope to explain the peculiarities in the erosion of the
venerable gneissose rocks of the north-west of Scotland ?

Probably the explanation is to be found in the recent observations
of Professor Geikie. In examining the ice-worn surfaces of Lauren-
tian gneiss, he has been able to trace their rounded outlines passing
distinctly beneath the overlying Cambrian rocks. This was the case,
for example, on both sides of Loch Torridon, and again on the west
side of Loch Assynt. The conclusion is thus forced upon the observer
that the old gneiss must have received its smooth flowing contours,
to some extent at least, before the Cambrian sandstones were de-
posited. Can it be, then, that we have evidence in these rocks of a
glacial period dating back to early palaeozoic times ?

This suggestion appears to receive some support from Professor
Geikie's observations in the neighbourhood of Gairloch, where he
found the undulating surface of gneiss to be capped in places by a
coarse unstratified breccia, containing angular fragments of the
Laurentian gneiss, sometimes as much as five feet in length, standing

1880. RECENT SCIENCE. 851

on end and at all angles. Such a breccia obviously bears a suspicious
resemblance to a modern moraine.

Since Professor Eamsay, in 1855, brought before the Geological
Society the evidence upon which he had satisfied himself as to the
existence of glaciers during the Permian period, he has naturally been
interested in any traces of the recurrence of glacial phenomena,
especially among the earlier rocks. To him, therefore, Professor
Greikie's observations were peculiarly acceptable, and he received
them without hesitation as evidence of the action of ' ancient glaciers
of Cambrian age.' There was already a body of facts tending to show
that glacial conditions must have prevailed in certain parts of the
world during a portion of the Silurian period; but if the early
glaciation of the Laurentian gneiss be admitted, we may now carry
the glacial phenomena a stage further back in the earth's history. It
is only fair, however, to remark that Professor Greikie himself speaks
most guardedly as to the conclusions to be drawn from his observa-
tions, and in referring to the rounded surfaces of the gneiss is content
to remark that ' they have certainly been ground by an agent that
has produced results which, if they were found in a recent formation,
would without hesitation be ascribed to land ice.' If this ascription
be warranted in the case of the old Scottish gneiss, that rock presents
us with vestiges of glacial action far older than anything of the kind
hitherto known to geologists in any part of the world.

"When Sir Charles Lyell, in preparing the first edition of his
Principles of Geology, now nearly half a -century ago, addressed
himself to the task of classifying the Tertiary strata, he introduced a
principle of arrangement founded upon the varying proportions of
living species which occur among the fossil shells in the several beds.
Since that time the number of Tertiary species of mollusca known to
palaeontologists has vastly increased, and the percentages originally
suggested by Lyell have not been strictly adhered to, though his
divisions and their well-known names — Eocene* Miocene, and Pliocene
— still hold their place in our geological systems. There can be no
doubt that the quantivalent expressions have ceased to convey the
ideas which they originally expressed ; and Professor Boyd Dawkins,
holding that the classification is not in harmony with our present
knowledge, has accordingly proposed a new method of arrangement.
For this purpose he uses the mammalian remains instead of the mol-
lusca. Not that he seeks to displace the Lyellian names, or to propose
a new set of divisions. But he holds that the fossil mammalia of Europe
present stages of specialisation which coincide with the old geological

9 ' The Classification of the Tertiary Period by means of the Mammalia.' Quar-
terly Journal of the Geological Society, vol. xxxvi., No. 143, August 1880, p. 379.
See also his Early Man in Britain, and Ms Place in the Tertiary Period. London :
Macmillan and Co. 1880.

852 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

division?, and are more useful for classificatory purposes than are the
mollusca, or indeed any invertebrate forms, or even the lower verte-
brates. If his views referred only to certain points of classification,
they might be left to the attention of the technical geologist ; but,
as a matter of fact, they possess a wide and popular interest in con-
sequence of their bearing upon the probable period at which the earliest
remains of man may be expected to occur.

The Eocene, or oldest group of the Tertiary formations, originally
included all those strata which contained only a very small propor-
tion of recent species of mollusca. But if the palaeontologist fastens
his attention upon the mammalia, he finds that the Eocene period
was characterised by the appearance of representatives of living
orders and families of placental mammals, but not of living genera,
much less of species. In this country, for instance, we have repre-
sentatives of the Ungidata, or great group of hoofed quadrupeds,
both in the odd-toed division (Perissodactylia) and in the even-toed
section (Artiodactylia). There are also representatives of the
Rodentia and — what is of far more importance — of lemurine forms
of the order Primates, which is the highest order of mammalia,
including the lemurs, the apes, and man. It is important to
remember that it is only the placental mammals which are used as
the basis of Professor Dawkins's classification. For if the palaeonto-
logist descends to the marsupials, he finds that even in the Eocene
period there were representatives of at least one living genus. Thus
the Woolwich-and-Reading beds of Suffolk have yielded an opossum
(Didelphys). Marsupial mammals are known to have existed through-
out the secondary period, and it is therefore only probable that they
should have attained in Eocene times to a more advanced stage of
evolution than that reached at the same period by the higher
mammalia. But, so far as the placental mammals are concerned, all
the fossils found in the Eocene rocks are referred to extinct genera,
and consequently the Eocene fauna is not likely to have contained
man. 'To seek for highly-specialised man in a fauna where no
living genus of placental mammal was present would be,' in Professor
Dawkins's opinion, ' an idle and hopeless -quest.' 10

In the Miocene, or middle stage of the Tertiary strata, the
proportion of recent species of mollusca is larger than in the Eocene
beds, but still the extinct forms are dominant. Professor Dawkins
would define the Miocene as that period in which living genera of
the placental mammalia first make their appearance. Although the
Miocene mammalia are represented in Britain only by the hog-like
Hyopotamus, yet on the continent, where the Miocene strata are
strongly developed, there is a rich mammalian fauna of this period.
The Miocene fauna includes representatives of a large number of
existing genera, and Professor Dawkins's studies lead him to the con-

10 I'ai ly Man, p. 36.

1880. RECENT SCIENCE. 853

•elusion that certainly as many as twenty-three living genera date
their earliest appearance from Miocene times. During the early
stages of this period the opossum might still be found lingering in
the European forests ; but at the close of the Lower Miocene age the
palaeontologist bids farewell to this, the last representative of the Euro-
pean marsupials. On the other hand, he finds several representatives
of the Primates, more or less allied to the anthropoid apes, yet all
apparently belonging to extinct genera. Eemains of these apes occur
in the Middle Miocene strata of France and Germany, Switzerland
and Italy, and in the Upper Miocene deposits in Greece. It is
noteworthy that a large ape has left a record of its existence as far
north as Eppelsheim in Germany, thus proving that the range of the
Simiadce in Europe must have extended, during the warm Miocene
period, at least fourteen degrees north of the present limit of the Old
World apes.

Whether we regard the apes or any other of the terrestrial mam-
mals of the Miocene fauna, it is a significant fact that we fail to find
any trace of a single existing species. Upon this fact Professor
Dawkins bases a strong argument against the probability of ever
finding any remains of man in strata of Miocene age. ' Man, the
most highly specialised of all creatures, had no place in a fauna which
is conspicuous by the absence of all the mammalia now associated
with him.' " Yet it must be remembered that several eminent
naturalists in France have confidently expressed their belief in the
existence of Miocene man. Some of the evidence upon which this
belief is grounded has already been set forth in these pages.12 It is
true that Miocene Europe, with its warm climate and with abundance
of food in its luxuriant forests, appears to have offered all the needful
surroundings for the development of man. But Professor Dawkins,
reasoning on the evolution of the higher mammalia, refuses to include
man in the Miocene fauna, and expresses his opinion that c were any
man-like animal living in the Miocene age, he might reasonably be
expected to be not man, but intermediate between man and something
else.' 13

With regard to the chipped flints and incised bones, to which
the French anthropologists point as exhibiting the handiwork of
Miocene man, two questions naturally suggest themselves to the
sceptical inquirer. In the first place, are they really contemporaneous
with the deposits in which they were found ? And then, if they be
contemporaneous, do they exhibit unequivocal evidence of artificial
treatment ? But if both these questions be affirmatively answered,
Professor Dawkins is not even then ready to accept the flints and
bones as witnesses to the existence of man in Miocene Europe. ' If
they be artificial,' says this observer, ' then I would suggest that they

11 Early Man, p. 67. l- Nineteenth Century, vol. iv. 1878, p. 766.

n 1J Early Man, p. 67.

VOL. VIII.— No. 45. 3 M

854 T1IK SIXETEEXTH CENTURY. November

were made by one of the higher apes, then living in France, rather
than by man.' M And in anticipation of the objections which would
naturally be urged against this suggestion, on the ground that such
stone-chipping and bone-cutting as that in question is generally
considered to lie beyond the range of pithecoid intelligence, he does
not hesitate to argue that ' even if the existing apes do not now
make stone-implements or cut bones, it does not follow that the
extinct apes were equally ignorant, because some extinct animals are
known to have been more highly organised than any of the living
members of their class.' 15

Although man may have had no place in Miocene Europe, is it
equally probable that he was absent from the fauna of the succeeding
Pliocene period ? The Pliocene group of strata, which immediately
overlies the Miocene, contains numerous fossil shells, of which the
larger number belong to recent species. It is in these beds that
living species of placental mammals first make their appearance,
and consequently it might be supposed that the search for Pliocene
man in these deposits would be a hopeful quest. But it must be
borne in mind that, so far as our knowledge at present extends, the
number of living species of terrestrial mammals in deposits of Pliocene
age is extremely small. The Pliocene beds of East Anglia — known
as the Coralline, Eed, and Norwich Crags — have yielded so fragmen-
tary a collection of mammalian remains, and these so mixed with
Miocene fossils, that, instead of basing any conclusions upon the study
of such relics, it is desirable to turn to the better-preserved Pliocene
fauna of France and of Italy. Among twenty-one species of fossil
mammals, found by Dr. Forsyth Major to have lived in Tuscany
during the Pliocene period, only one — the hippopotamus — is still
living. l It is to my mind,' writes Professor Dawkins, ' to the last
degree improbable that man, the most highly specialised of the
animal kingdom, should have been present in such a fauna as this,
composed of so many extinct species.' 16

And thus ends speculation as to the probable existence of ' Tertiary
Man.' For, with the close of the Pliocene stage, most geologists
bring the Tertiary period to a conclusion, all later-formed strata
being regarded as Post-tertiary or Quaternary. Such a classification
is, however, objected to by Mr. Dawkins, since a study of the mam-
malia shows that although a great break does certainly occur between
the Pliocene and the Pleistocene period, yet the proportion of Pliocene
survivals is so large that it is unreasonable to draw at this stage as
strong a line as that which separates the Tertiary from the Secondary
formations. He therefore argues in favour of the upward continuity of
the Tertiary series, and would embrace in the Tertiary period all the
events which have happened from the termination of the Secondary

14 Early Man, p. 68. >» Ibid, footnote on p. 69.

«• Ibid. p. 93.

1880. RECENT SCIENCE. 855

or Mesozoic age down to the present day. The expressions Quater-
nary and Post-tertiary thus vanish from this system of classification.

Although there may be no violent break in the life-history of the
Tertiary period, using that term in its widest sense, there is never-
theless a great difference between the fauna of the Pliocene and that
of the overlying Pleistocene formation. In the* Pleistocene deposits
the living species of placental mammals are abundant, and greatly
predominate over the extinct species ; while in the Pliocene deposits,
as already shown, the extinct species are dominant, and the living
forms are extremely scarce. It is in the Pleistocene fauna that man
makes his earliest indubitable appearance in Western Europe. In
the Mid-Pleistocene deposits in the Valley of the Thames, flint flakes
have on two or three occasions been discovered, and these flakes are re-
garded by Professor Dawkins as the very oldest relics of man's handi-
work that have yet been obtained under conditions which place their
authenticity above suspicion. In the lower brick-earths of Crayford
in Kent, a worked flint was detected a few years ago by the Eev.
Osmond Fisher ; and a second implement was afterwards found in
similar deposits at Erith by Mr. Cheadle and Mr. B. B. Woodward.

These rude implements must have been employed by the primeval
hunters who inhabited the valley of the Thames at a time when the
climate was, at certain seasons, extremely rigorous. The severity of
the cold is proved by the presence of such northern animals as the
marmot and the musk -sheep. Yet these northern forms were
strangely associated with numerous animals which are now found
only in temperate and even in warm climates. There were vast
numbers of horses, stags, bison, and uri ; while the great Irish elk
was still lingering in the valley. The extinct mammalia which then
dwelt in the valley of the lower Thames included two species of
elephant and three of rhinoceros : these were the mammoth (Elephas
primigenius) and the short- tusked elephant (E. antiquus); the
woolly rhinoceros (Rhinoceros tichorhinus\ the big-nosed rhinoceros
{.R. megarhinus}, and the small-nosed species (R. leptorhinus). It
is remarkable, as Mr. Dawkins has pointed out, that the megarhine
rhinoceros has not been found in association with human remains in
any other locality. The Mid-Pleistocene fauna of the Thames valley
also included the hippopotamus, the lion, and the wild cat, the brown
bear and the grizzly bear, the spotted hyaena and the wolf. Such, in
general terms, was the group of animals that shared possession of the
valley of the Thames with the earliest human inhabitants of whom
science has yet obtained any indisputable record.

Since Professor Dawkins published his work on Early Man-, an inte-
resting discovery of stone implements, in the brick-earths of Crayford,
has been announced by Mr. Flaxman Spurrell.17 The ' find ' comprised

17 ' On the Discovery of the Place where Palaeolithic Implements were made at
Crayford.' Abstracts oftlie Proceedings of the Geological Society, No. 390. Also : < On

SM 2

856 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. November

a large number of flint flake?, with cores from which the flakes had
been struck ; some fragments of an unfinished stone-axe, and several
stones which had apparently been employed as hammers for dressing
the flints. In intimate association with the flakes were found bones
of the mammoth, of the woolly rhinoceros, and of the horse — these-
boues presenting the appearance of having been broken by man,
perhaps for food. As the edges of the flints are still sharp and
unused, and as the flakes lie in close contact with the finest clappings,
it is plausibly inferred that the work of flint-dressing must have
been carried on at this locality in palaeolithic times, and that, in
short, the discoverer has had the good fortune to light upon the site of
an old manufactory where chalk-flints were fashioned into weapons by
the early palaeolithic men who dwelt in the valley of the Thames.

Many years ago the important silk-producing industry of the
valley of the Rhone was threatened with ruin. A mysterious disease
seized upon the silkworms, and resisted all the efforts at its cure,
until at length M. Pasteur, who was even then engaged on those
studies upon fungi and fermentation which have since rendered him
so famous, demonstrated that the pest was caused by a living parasite,
and devised means of stamping it out effectually.

Few modern researches have been more suggestive or more fruit-
ful in practical results than these of Pasteur. Our knowledge of the
vast amount of mischief to health and industry caused by the lower
fungi, and particularly by Bacteria, has been rapidly increasing, while
happily the power of successfully destroying these has increased in
scarcely less rapid proportion : witness the improvements in wine-
making, the still greater advance in the art of brewing, and, best of
all, that revolution in surgery effected by the introduction of anti-
septic methods.

Of late years the vine-growing districts of France have been
steadily invaded by a serious pest of a widely different kind, the
Phylloxera vastati^ix, an insect belonging to the same family as the
common green Aphis of the rose, and endowed with the same power
of rapid asexual multiplication. In spite of all remedial measures,
the insect is still spreading, and thus constitutes a serious danger to
the wine supply of Europe. Soon after the establishment of the
Phylloxera Commission of the Academy of Sciences, M. Pasteur threw
out a very ingenious suggestion, clearly derived from his early ex-
perience of the silkworm disease — to destroy the invader by inocu-
lating it with a parasitic fungus ; thus reversing the principle of all
the previous applications of our knowledge of these organisms by
treating them as allies instead of enemies. Unfortunately no experi-
ments were made, and the subject was forgotten until last year, when.

the Site of a Palaeolithic Implement Manufactory at Crayford, Kent.' Paper read
before the Geological Section of the British Association at Swansea.

1880. REGENT SCIENCE. 857

Professor Hagen, of Harvard, published an account of his experiments
on the destruction of obnoxious insects by the application of the yeast
fungus. He concluded that the yeast cells entered the body of the
insect, there giving rise to fatal disease, and accordingly recommended
the application of yeast to the Phylloxera, Colorado beetle, &c.

Such results as these, on the one hand confirming the old belief
in the efficacy of yeast as a means of destroying greenhouse pests,
and on the other at variance with all experience as to its mode of
life, could not but stimulate inquiry. The subject was soon under-
taken by a distinguished Eussian biologist, Elias Metschnikoff, who
has shown 1S that the disease-producing fungus of Hagen was not the
yeast itself, but was merely associated with it as an impurity. He
has succeeded in cultivating several species of fungi parasitic upon
insects, notably one which he terms ' green muscardine ' (Isaria de-
structor} and in tracing their entire life-history. By cultivating the
green muscardine apart from insects upon a suitable nutritive fluid,
he has been able to obtain a considerable quantity of spores, and thus
feels justified in recommending the cultivation of such fungi on a
large scale, and the dissemination of their germs in places infested by
insects. The subject is at present engaging considerable attention
in France, and experiments are being made of which we shall doubt-
less know the result in the course of next season. In the meantime
it is impossible not to await with interest and hope this application of
a new method.19

Two years ago a description of the researches which completed
our knowledge of the morphology of Bacillus anthracis, the bac-
terium of the splenic fever of sheep and cattle (anthrax), was given in
these pages. We have now to summarise our recently gained know-
ledge as to the means of dealing with this formidable scourge, which
is widely disseminated throughout Europe, in some districts — as, for
instance, the department of Eure-et-Loire — inflicting damage to the
extent of millions of francs annually. And here again we are mainly
indebted to Pasteur 20 and the germ theory.

He shows that the disease is produced by feeding sheep on fodder
known to contain germs of anthrax, the more readily if barley or
thistles, of which the sharp points make tiny lesions on the walls of
the alimentary canal, and thus open a way for the entrance of the
spores into the blood, be present. It was formerly believed that the
Bacilli and their germs were killed by the putrefaction which rapidly
follows the death of the poisoned animals, and this is so far true.
Some blood, however, is sure to be mixed with the earth in which the
animal is burieci, and thus a certain number of germs find themselves

18 Zool. Anzeiffer, 1S80, p. 44.

19 See also Future, 1880, p. 447.

20 See numerous papers in the Comptes liendus, July- September 1880.

858 TUI-: MXETEENTH CENTURY. November

in conditions which insure their survival even for years. But how are
they enabled again to reach the surface ? How do they escape the
fate which seems natural to particles of such extreme minuteness —
to be carried deeper and deeper into the ground by the rain ? This
would indeed take place but for the earthworm, which is constantly
bringing up to the surface new myriads of germs of the parasite. The
worm-casts from places where diseased animals had been buried even
two years before, were invariably found to contain an abundance of
spores capable of activity, and it is easy to understand how these
casts, broken up by rain and drought, yield to the wind, and spread
over the surface of the adjacent ground ; thus scattering abundant
germs which soon give rise to fresh outbreaks of disease. M. Pasteur
is hence led to speculate on the possible influence of the earthworm in
the aetiology of disease; on the dangers which may lie hidden in
the earth of cemeteries, and on the utility of cremation ; and then
goes on strongly to recommend the interment of animals which have
•died of anthrax in poor sandy or calcareous soils, unfrequented by
earthworms and never used as pasture. By attention to this simple
precaution he is confident that the malady would disappear in a few
years ; for inquiries into the relation of the prevalence of anthrax in
any given district to the quality of the soil show that the disease is
unknown on the poorer lands, even while abounding on rich clayey
land in the immediate neighbourhood.

In a somewhat later communication he gives a complete demon-
stration of the justice of these views. In a small village of the Jura,
•where a solitary outbreak took place two years ago, the places in which
the victims were buried are still easily recognisable by the increased
rankness of the vegetation. At these spots he found germs in every
worm-cast he examined, as well as on the surface of the ground,
although, a few yards off, none could be discovered. Two small en-
closures of equal size were then made, the one containing the spots in
which the diseased animals had been buried, the other at a few yards'
distance, and an equal number of sheep were placed in each. In the
latter enclosure the sheep remained healthy; while, in the former, the
•disease broke out in a week.

The method of vaccination is also being applied, and with con-
siderable success. M. Chauveau has succeeded in reinforcing the
resisting power of the Algerian sheep, which is naturally very con-
siderable, and in proving that the lambs borne by previously inoculated
•ewes are completely safe. M. Toussaint, on the other hand, selecting
sheep of the very breed most liable to anthrax, and inoculating them
with plasma taken from animals which had died of the disease,
appears to have rendered them proof against it, at least after the
second inoculation; while Pasteur, in the course of his successful
•efforts to secure fowls from an allied disease (cholera des poules)
by the inoculation, finds that he has at the same time insured them
against anthrax — a result which has wide theoretical bearings.

1880. RECENT SCIENCE. 859

Since the researches of Wyville Thomson and Carpenter on the
fauna of the deep sea, much attention has been paid to the subject
not only by British, but also by American and Scandinavian natu-
ralists ; and a well-equipped French commission, including1 MM.
Henri and Alphonse Milne-Edwards, Folin, Marion, and several other
eminent French zoologists, accompanied by two of our most expe-
rienced dredgers, Messrs. Gwyn Jeffreys and Merle Norman, has
recently been exploring that deep and almost unknown region of the
Bay of Biscay which lies off the northern coast of Spain, between
Cape Breton and Cape Penas. A steamer of 1,000 tons burden, the
Travailleur, well equipped with dredging and sounding apparatus,
was provided by the Minister of Marine, and the cruise lasted during"
the greater part of July. The weather being favourable, as many a»
twenty-four dredgings were made during the last fortnight, at depths
varying from 300 to 2,700 metres.

At the greater depths, the bottom was covered with a thick bed of
greenish-grey mud which rapidly choked the dredges. The best
results were therefore obtained by trailing bundles of net and
hempen tangle. The collection, which has been divided among the
various specialists composing the expedition, is of great importance,,
including not only the majority of the deep-sea forms- already
described by British and Scandinavian naturalists, but also many new
species.

Fishes are rare, but crustaceans and molluscs are abundant. The
Crustacea, which are wholly different from those found on the ad-
jacent coasts, are of great interest, including a number of curious
crabs, some blind, others with large phosphorescent eyes. The
doctrine of uniformity of the deep-sea fauna over vast areas is con-
firmed by the study of the mollusca, the known species having been
for the most part discovered off the coasts of Shetland, Greenland,,
and Norway. Some, too, are Mediterranean, while others had pre-
viously been obtained only as fossils in Sicily, and in the Pliocene
deposits of Northern Italy. The collection of coelenterate animals is
extremely rich, and most other groups are tolerably well represented.

The 103 soundings taken between Cape Breton and Cape Penas-
give a clear account of the configuration of the sea-bottom, which
seems the continuation of the slope of the Pyrenees. At a short
distance from the coast there are depths of nearly 3,000 metres ; and
steep slopes, and almost vertical precipices, which very often inter-
fered with dredging operations, are frequently met with, especially
to the north of Santander. Further west, however, between Tina Mayor
and Cape Penas, a large plateau has been discovered at a depth of 170*
metres. It has been named the * Plateau du Travailleur? 21

The Sea of Galilee, which now lies 212 metres below the level of
21 Comptcs Rendits, August 9 and 16, 1880.

860 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

the Mediterranean, and of which the waters are slightly brackish,
appears to have been undergoing a gradual process of freshening
since the comparatively recent period when it began to discharge
its waters into the Dead Sea. In the hope of discovering a
fauna and flora showing signs of adaptation to these altered condi-
tions, M. Lortet 22 has carefully dredged the lake, which he finds to
have a depth of 250 metres, with a bottom of fine volcanic mud
mixed with diatoms and foraminifera. Save for the diatoms, there
is an entire and unaccountable absence of vegetable life. He finds,
however, twelve species of fishes, of which four are new. The majority
belong to the genus Chromis, with which the lake is swarming,
and which has the curious habit of hatching its eggs and sheltering
its young within the cavity of the mouth. There are also ten species
of molluscs, of which three are of thoroughly marine type, thus con-
firming the hypothesis of the freshening of the lake derived from
geological considerations.

While all these searchings after new forms of life at great depths
or in distant seas have been in progress, an animal no less remark-
able than any thus found has been discovered without going so far
afield, indeed in the most unexpected of places — the very heart of
London. At the beginning of summer, Mr. Sowerby, of the Regent's
Park Botanic Garden, was surprised to find the Victoria regia tank
swarming with a beautiful little jellyfish. He supplied specimens to
Professors Allman 23 and Lankester,24 who have succeeded in making
out the structure and affinities of the medusoid, which they term
Limnocodium Sowerbii, and place among the Trachymedusce, which
develope directly from the egg instead of budding off from a fixed
zoophyte. Its main interest lies in the fact that it is the only
known fresh-water medusoid, the two other fresh-water Ccelenterates,
Hydra and Cordylophara, being fixed forms, not producing swimming
bells. It is supposed to have been introduced from the West Indies.

n Comptes Rendus, September 13, 1880.

*• Jonrn. Linn. Soc., July, 1880.

*4 Nature, June £4, 1880, and Quart. Jonrn. Micro. ,S"r/., July 1880.

THE

NINETEENTH
CENTURY.

No. XL Y.I.— DECEMBER 1880.

IRELAND IN '48 AND IRELAND NOW.

SIR CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY'S book appears at an appropriate time.
' Young Ireland,' the confederate movement of 1848, deserves ta
have its history written. Even if all the leaders of that movement
were still living, there would probably be none as well qualified
to tell its whole story as the author of the work which has just been
published. As it is, the men of that time are nearly all dead. So far
as I can recollect, only three of the really prominent Young Irelanders,
Sir Charles Duffy, Mr. Eichard O'Gorman of New York, and Mr. P. J.
Smyth, M.P., are still alive. Thomas Davis, John Dillon, Smith
O'Brien, Meagher, Mitchel, McGee, Doheny, Devin Reilly, John
Martin — these and many others are gone. The movement was one of
more than political importance to Ireland. It was a healthy influence
upon the young men of that time. It began with something in
the nature of a protest against the kind of policy into which O'Conneli
was allowing the national movement to drift. Young men were
naturally growing impatient of O'Connell's more recent policy. They
had for a long time firmly believed that his intention was to rouse the
spirit and organise the manhood of the country into such a condition
that he would be able to make a demand upon the English Govern-
ment, and if the demand were refused, to launch a rebellion at Eng-
land's head. O'Conneli probably at no time had any such purpose.
At the most, he only intended to get together a force with which he
VOL. VIII.— No. 46. 3 N

862 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

might threaten England, and which, if the English Government
gave way, would answer all his ends. But he had apparently not
prepared himself for the crisis, certain to arise at some time, when the
English Government would refuse to draw back, and when, therefore,
he must decide between going into rebellion or practically dissolving
his organisation. The time came, and O'Conuell drew back. From
that moment his power over the young men was gone. Besides,
there had been during most of these later years something undecided,
unsatisfactory, and, as many of the younger and more ardent Irishmen
thought, ignoble about his policy. Sir Charles Duffy has, on the
whole, given a fair and faithful picture of O'Connell. He has not
underrated his merits and his great powers, and, on the other hand,
he has with cool unsparing touch shown his weakness, his want of
steady purpose, and his occasional preference for a circuitous to a
straight course. At one time O'Connell's movement seemed as if it
had no other object than to help into place a number of rising young
Irish lawyers. It was natural enough, as Sir Charles Duffy points
out, that people should begin to ask what good was done for the
farmer's holding, and the peasant's cabin, by the elevation of a few
enterprising young men to office under Government. O'Connell often
denounced the Whigs in terms more fierce than the controversy of
our day would admit, but he nevertheless on so many occasions acted
with the Whigs, justly sometimes, weakly at other times, that he
produced in Ireland a revulsion against WThig and even Liberal
principles, which exists in full force to this day. At present the term
4 Whig ' is used in Ireland without the slightest reference to its
historic meaning. The present Government is called in anger a
Whig Government. Mr. Gladstone is commonly spoken of as a
Whig. Mr. Bright, Mr. Chamberlain, and Sir Charles Dilke would
all be termed Whigs. ' Whig ' really in this sense means nothing
but a party opposed to the claims of Ireland, and at the same time
always professing, when out of office, to be in sympathy with those
claims. Irishmen of the popular party detest the Tories indeed, but
then they expect nothing from them. They have a profound distrust
of Liberal administrations, because they fear that public speakers and
members of Parliament are. likely to be enticed away from their
fidelity to the national cause by the promises and the persuasiveness
of Liberals, or, as they would term them, Whigs. This distrust and
dislike of the Whigs undoubtedly dates from O'Connell's time, and is
to be ascribed to much of O'Connell's policy. There were many
occasions wken O'Connell was right and just in holding with the
Whigs. He held with all Liberal principles all the world over.
Perhaps Sir Charles Gavan Duffy has not done him full justice in this
respect. He was as earnest an abolitionist and opponent of slavery
as Joseph Sturge or Zachary Macaulay. He was the friend of liberty
and of order at once wherever these two could be combined. He dis-

1880. IRELAND IN '48 AND IRELAND NOW. 863

liked revolution and detested communism, socialism, and the like.
But, on the other hand, he undoubtedly went with the Whigs out
of weakness or mistaken generosity, on many occasions when to take
such a course was distinctly to sacrifice the interests of his own party,
and therefore of his own country, to the temporary convenience of a
Whig administration.

Against all this policy the Young Ireland movement was a
protest. It was also a deliberate and a generous attempt to make
Ireland independent in the matter of intelligence and of literary
culture; to make her understand her own history and foster her
own rising talent, and to seek for her ultimate regeneration and
prosperity through the noble path of self-education. The Nation
newspaper was started in 1842 by Mr. Duffy, as he then was, Mr.
John Dillon, and Mr. Thomas Davis. Sir C. Duffy finds in Davis
almost every quality of a good and of a great man. Most of us, who
had not the opportunity of knowing Davis, have to take on trust his
early friend's estimate of what he might have been. Davis died too
young to give the world more than a suggestion of what he might
have come to. There can be no doubt of his earnestness, of his
purity, and of his thoroughly sincere and patriotic purpose ; and those
who read his poems with anything of an impartial mind, will say at
once that the true spirit of song is in them along with that generous
passion which alone can succeed in making song the instrument of
high political purpose. No doubt the Young Ireland movement
contributed greatly, as Sir Charles Duffy contends, to purify and
ennoble the national agitation. It substituted for the crafty and
often vacillating plans of O'Connell's later years, an open, direct, and
generous national policy. As a revolutionary movement it was a
failure. It had not got to the heart of the peasantry. The influence
it has since had upon the Irish people has sunk gradually with time
into their minds and their feelings. In that way it is more powerful
to-day than it was in its own time. But as a movement towards
revolution in 1848, it had no strength, and indeed was drawn into
the rebellion with little deliberate purpose. Sir Charles Duffy has
observed that O'Connell was singularly unhappy in the names he
chose for. his various political organisations. He was not always
fortunate in the invention of new organisations. He changed front
too often. He never made it clear whether he wanted to begin or
to end with Eepeal. He was at one time merely proclaiming him-
self in favour of perfect equality of laws between England and
Ireland, and only holding up Kepeal as an alternative if that equality
could not be obtained. At another stage of his career he was
pointing to self-government as the one great blessing without which
national prosperity and progress are impossible. At another time
again he was contending for the reform of the land laws as the
one_thing needed by the condition of Ireland. Thus each agitation

3N 2

864 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

had its ebb and flow, and its perplexing sudden cross-currents.
People never quite knew towards what shore they were moving.
Hardly had they time to be roused heart and soul to a land-reform
movement when they were borne away into an agitation for Repeal of
the Union. With many splendid qualities of a popular leader, with
some which probably no popular leader at any time has quite equalled,
O'Connell wanted one humble but most useful endowment for the
political agitator, the quality of tenacity of purpose. Since his day
there has never been a great orator in Irish political life, but subse-
quent Irish movements have shown how without oratory, sometimes-
without even a recognised leader, the Irish populations can be stirred
up to movements more formidable, perhaps, in themselves than any
which O'Connell originated. The Fenian movement of some few-
years ago was altogether without any recognised leader in the old-
fashioned sense, the parliamentary tribune, the man * whose name i»
in the play-bill/ The movement of to-day has its leaders, but it
does not profess to have its orators. It is to some extent the off-
spring of the Young Ireland movement of 1848 and of the influence
of the American Irish population on their countrymen at home.

Sir Charles Duffy's first volume is one that Englishmen would
do well to read just now, if only for the clearness with which it shows
that time and delay increase instead of abating the necessity and the
vehemence of the demand for land reform in Ireland. The story
of Irish land agitation is not a cheerful study. It is now, however,
an easy study, for, in addition to Young Ireland, we have, among
recent publications, Mr. Barry O'Brien's very useful and interesting
little book, The Parliamentai*y Histot^y of the Irish Land Question.
Mr. Sharman Crawford was about the first man who, in our time,
seriously took up the question of Irish land tenure, and identified
himself with it. He had not much encouragement at one period
from O'Connell. Sir Charles Duffy describes the rude kind of
manner in which O'Connell interrupted and chaffed him on one
occasion at a Dublin meeting. Sharman Crawford was not a man of
great ability. He was not a good speaker. He had not a persuasive
manner, and indeed he had little or nothing to recommend him as
the leader of a movement except sincerity and great firmness of
purpose. The first really important event in the history of the
agitation was the formation of the famous Devon Commission. The
Devon Commission was appointed in the year 1843. Its appoint-
ment was due to the urgency of Mr. Sharman Crawford, who at last
succeeded in making an impression on Sir Robert Peel. Peel con-
sented to appoint a Commission to inquire into the question of the
occupation of land in Ireland. The Commissioners, as Sir Charles
Duffy observes, were landed proprietors, * who had no sympathy or
interest in popular agitation.' But, 'half unconsciously,' they
became the means of revealing to the world outside Munster and

1880. IRELAND IN '48 AND IRELAND NOW. 865

Connaught the existence of certain ' social phenomena like those
which in Arthur Young's pages explain and palliate the subsequent
horrors of the French revolution.' The Earl of Devon was Chairman
of the Commission, and gave it the name which it still retains. Sir
Robert Ferguson, M.P., who had been a member of the Irish Parlia-
ment, Mr. George Alexander Hamilton, M.P., Mr. Redington, after-
wards Sir Thomas Redington, and Mr. Wynne, were the other mem-
bers. It would perhaps have been too much to expect the Government
of that day to put on the Commission some member whose name and
influence would have invited and encouraged more freely the testimony
of the agricultural tenantry themselves. It was found impossible
last session, as I know, to induce the present Government to put one
single representative of the opinions of advanced land reformers on
the Irish Land Commission. I think the Devon Commission would
have gained by the presence of such a member, as I am satisfied
the Irish Land Commission would have gained, if the resolution
brought forward last session in the House of Commons had been
accepted by the Government. However, it is certain that the Devon
Commission brought out a great deal of most important evidence.
The inquiry lasted two years, and more than 300 witnesses were
examined. It was shown that the destitute poor in Ireland
amounted then to one-third of the entire population. Then, as now,
the country, speaking in general terms, had to live on its agriculture.
Indeed, there is only too much in the disclosures made by 'the Devon
Commission which may be taken as fairly descriptive of Ireland's
condition now. There is but little of manufacture in Ireland, and
there are few large towns. When Dublin, Cork, Belfast, Limerick,
and Waterford have been named, there is hardly any other place
which, in England, would be regarded as a town of considerable size.
The climate of Ireland is peculiarly favourable to certain kinds of
agriculture. It is exceptionally mild. There is scarcely any season
there that, in most other European countries, would be called winter.
There is a vast amount of waste land, some of which at least is
capable of reclamation and practically easy and paying reclamation.
In the report of Mr. J. A. Fox to the Dublin Mansion House Com-
mittee for relief of distress, I find it stated that in one part of Mayo
alone there are 232,888 acres capable of being thus reclaimed. Yet
the men engaged in agriculture were almost everywhere ' steeped,' as
Sir Charles Duffy says, ' in poverty and misery,' and he adds, * this
poverty and misery was traceable to English law, and the English
connection as its fountain-head.' The land was held in vast tracts
by absentees — English peers for the most part, whom the Report of
the Commission described as ' regardless and neglectful of their pro-
perties in Ireland.' The effect of the land laws was declared by the
Commission ' to create a feeling of insecurity which directly checked
industry.' The landowners themselves were busily engaged at that

866 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

time in the manufacture of small tenantries, not indeed a peasant
proprietary system, but a manufacture of small tenants at will, the
object of which was to create votes when votes were a saleable pro-
perty, and to increase produce when prices were high. Then when
prices fell and votes were useless, or not to be relied upon, the land-
lords cleared out their tenants ' with the same indifference,' Sir
Charles Duffy says, ' that a man thins his warrens or diminishes his
grazing stock.' The peasantry fed on the potato only. Their hut
hardly sheltered them against the rain, abundant indeed in Ireland.
Beds and blankets they hardly knew. They had no incitement to
industry, or energy, or thrift. They were ejected at the will of the
landlords. The Keport of the Commission says, * It would be im-
possible for language to convey an idea of the state of distress to
which the ejected tenantry have been reduced, or of the disease,
misery, and even vice which they have propagated in the towns wherein
they have settled ; so that not only they who have been ejected have
been rendered miserable, but they have carried with them and pro-
pagated that misery.' The Keport adds that 'a vast number of them
perished from want.' The Commission paid a tribute to ' the patient
endurance which the labouring classes have generally exhibited
under sufferings greater, we believe, than the people of any other
country in Europe have to sustain.' One striking fact, new to many
Englishmen, and at first puzzling to them, was brought out in the
published evidence taken by the Commission. Agrarian outrages
were only too common in the south or west but were seldom heard
of in Ulster. For a long time the assumption had been complacently
adopted among Englishmen that the condition of Ulster was solely
owing to the origin and the creed of its population. Ulster was
orderly and well-behaved, they said, because it was peopled, for the
most part, by men of Scotch descent and Protestants. The evidence
given by Ulster landlords, agents, and tenants supplied, however,
the real explanation. The agrarian outrages in Ulster were few,
because the causes of complaint were few ; but wherever there was
a cause of complaint, the outrage followed as readily as in Munster
Connaught. The system of tenant-right had prevailed in Uls
from the time of the settlement of that province. The tenant, wh
he had to quit his holding, was allowed to sell the goodwill or right
of possession, and this sometimes was equivalent to twenty years' p
chase money. We have all heard so much of late about this good
will or Ulster custom of tenant-right, that it is not necessary here to
go into any description of its provisions. It is, however, perhaps as
well to remark that the Ulster custom itself is, and always has been,
of very varying application, and that while the phrase 'tenant-
right ' describes it in a very general way, it does not give any idea of
the varying operation of the custom in various pails of Ulster. The
Devon Commission showed that in instances where tenant-right had

1880. IRELAND IN '48 AND IRELAND NOW. 867

been disallowed, agrarian outrages of exactly the same kind as those
in the south set in at once. That abominable practice of which
we heard so much last session, the hocking of cattle, began to
show itself wherever the sting of agrarian injustice was felt. The
hocking of cattle is a crime of ancient origin. It prevailed in this
country as far back as the early days of the Norman invasion. The
Norman conquerors occasionally cut the fore-claws off the Saxon dogs,
to prevent them from ranging the woods in quest of game, which the
lordly Normans chose to keep for themselves, and many an injured
Saxon found his revenge in mutilating the cattle and horses of
Norman barons. Houses were burnt, crops were destroyed, cattle
were injured, and men were shot at in Ulster at the time of the Devon
Commission, when some landlord refused to recognise the principle
of tenant-right. Mr. Handcock, Lord Lurgan's agent, stated, that
' the disallowance of tenant-right, as far as I know, is always attended
with outrage.' The agent of the Marquis of Londonderry was asked
what would happen if the Ulster tenantry were treated like the
tenantry in Munster. His answer was, ' You would have a Tip-
perary in Down.' Mr. Handcock said — and the words are worth
studying just now — 'If systematic attempts were made amongst the
proprietors of Ulster to invade tenant-right, I do not believe there is
force at the disposal of the Horse Guards sufficient to keep the peace
of the province.'

Nothing practical came of the Devon Commission. The Govern-
ment of the day brought in a bill to give compensation to dispossessed
tenants for prospective improvements of a permanent nature made
with the consent of the landlord or under the approval of a Com-
missioner specially appointed for the purpose. The resistance of
the landlords in Parliament was so strong that the bill had to be
withdrawn. Mr. Sharman Crawford resumed his agitation. He was
followed in the leadership of the movement by Mr. Serjeant Shee,
Mr. George Henry Moore, Mr. John Francis Maguire, and other
men. Every now and then one Government or other took up the
question and endeavoured to deal with it. But from first to last the
difficulty of each Government was that which now exists. The leader
of an Administration must reckon with his own followers. In England
it is considered necessary, as things go, that a large proportion of a
Cabinet should be formed of great Peers and landowners. Great Peers
and landowners cannot be expected to be wiser and more disinterested
than any other class of human beings. They invariably resist any
attempt whatever to interfere with what they consider to be their
territorial rights. No Government, therefore, thus far have ventured
to go to the heart of the Irish land question. The object apparently
always is to bring in some measure that shall seem to meet a part of
the demand made by the public agitation, and yet shall not in any
way shake the nerves of the great landowners. In every measure

868 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

which each succeeding Government brought in, down to Mr. Glad-
stone's Bill of 1870, we find just the same kind of effort at com-
promise. There is a futile attempt made to conciliate and satisfy
the great landlord class, while trying to recognise the claims of the
Irish agricultural population. In most cases the attempt so con-
spicuously failed that all the concessions the Government could
make did not prevent the House of Lords or the House of Commons
from rejecting a bill, or from so mutilating it as to make it worth
nothing whatever. Parliament was continually dropping buckets in
the well and drawing nothing up. The Irish representation was
itself very often so divided as to neutralise the best efforts of its most
earnest members. The little band of which the two Sadleirs were
conspicuous members may be said to have shattered the hopes of at
least one generation of Irish land reformers. Even the present time
has not wholly lost the recollection of that extraordinary knot of
political conspirators. When some of the principal men among
them accepted office at the hands of the Government, having pre-
viously vowed that they would have nothing to do with any adminis-
tration which did not make Sharman Crawford's Bill a Cabinet
measure, the Nation had a very amusing parody on Davis's song, the
Battle Eve of the Brigade. Davis's song describes a banquet in
which the chiefs of the Irish Brigade are engaged the night before a
battle. They drink toasts, and amongst them :

Here's a health to King James, and they bent as they quaffed ;
Here's to George the Elector, and fiercely they laughed.

The Brass Band, in their day of ostentatious piety and patriotism,
were used at all their public dinners to begin by drinking the health
of the Pope. So the parody in the Nation ran thus :

Here's a health to the Pope, and they -winked as they quaffed ;
Here's to old Sharman Crawford, and loudly they laughed.

Davis had described his heroes as ' rushing ' from the revel to join
the parade —

For the van is the right of the Irish Brigade.

The author of the parody says of his patriots that —

They rushed from th» revel their claims to parade,
For ' tin ' is the -want of the Irish Brigade.

When Mr. Bright threw himself into the movement for land re-
form in Ireland, it assumed, of course, a far more important political
position than it could have had by the efforts of any number of merely
good and earnest men like Mr. Sharman Crawford, or even by the
combined strength of far abler men than he, men such as Sir Charles
G. Duffy, Mr. Moore, and Mr. Maguire. Mr. Bright was the
political precursor of Mr. Gladstone in Imh legislation. He has
told us that he is prepared now to go much further than Mr. Glad-

1880. IRELAND IN '48 AND IRELAND NOW. 869

stone's Act of 1870, and I do not myself believe that anything short
of some bold application of the three principles which Mr. Bright
described in his speech in Birmingham the other day would be of
the slightest use as an effort to settle the whole question. But the
great importance of Mr. Gladstone's measure was that it recognised
a certain property in the tenant. It admitted the fact that occupation
of the land and development of its resources by energy, industry, and
patience, do give a man a moral and political right not to be turned
out of that land at the caprice of any owner. This is the only real ad-
vance that has been made by legislation since the Devon Commission.
It would be hopeless now to endeavour to settle the question by
the mere extension of the Ulster custom to the other provinces of
Ireland. The time has gone by for that ; and there are undoubtedly
many parts of Ireland in which the actual evils of the system, under
which landlords and tenants alike suffer, could not at any time ha\e
been encountered by an extension of the Ulster system. The Ulster
system is effective in its own place and under the conditions amid
which it has grown up. Its extension would no doubt be of ad-
vantage in other places too, but there could not be a greater mistake
for any land reformer in this country than to suppose that he is going
to get rid of the whole difficulty of the Irish land question by re-
commending the simple panacea of an universal extension of the
Ulster custom. It is of much importance to see how this land
question has grown in its dimensions and in its demands since the
time of the Devon Commission. Sir Charles Duffy supplies one
striking illustration. Mr. John Dillon, father of Mr. Parnell's
colleague in the land agitation, was one of the ablest and most in-
fluential of the whole Young Ireland party. He was, in the strictest
sense of the word, a Eadical — that is, he was for going deeply and
boldly into social and political abuses and eradicating the causes
of evil. He was trusted by all in the party, because they knew that
he was at once wise and bold. His views, I take it, represented at
that time the high-water mark of advanced Irish land reformers.
Let us see what it was that he claimed for Ireland : —

What is the course (he wrote) which the people of Ireland ought to pursue?
They ought to join together and call with one voice for a complete remodelling of
the laws affecting landed property. Instead of committing unmeaning murders,
which every good man must condemn, however he may pity the unhappy wretches
who are driven to these dreadful deeds, instead of breaking out into partial insur-
rections, which only expose them to the vengeance of their oppressors, let them
unite and work with a common purpose, and their combined strength cannot be

resisted Let them demand a revaluation of the land, and perpetuity for

the tenant ; let them be faithful, united and bold, and this demand, founded as it
is in justice, will not, must not, be refused.

Now this suggestion of a sort of trades-union combination to obtain,
as its utmost end, revaluation of the land and fixity of tenure, was
thought to go dangerously far by even sucli men as Thomas Davis

870 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

and some of his colleagues. They feared that it would set the land-
lords against them, and they still hoped that much might be done
for Ireland by a cordial co-operation of the landlords and the people.
But one might well ask how many Irish land reformers who command
any popular support or represent any strength of popular opinion in
Ireland to-day would say that all the Irish people now ask for is a
revaluation of the land and fixity of tenure ?

Since the days which Sir Charles Duffy describes in his in-
teresting first volume, O'Connell's agitation has become a tradition ;
* Young Ireland ' has passed away ; repeal has been succeeded
by Home Eule ; there have been Phoenix Societies and Fenian
organisations — and the Land Question remains still a problem for
solution, just as it has always been within men's memories. Sir
Charles Duffy has seen such questions settled in other countries
meantime, but he finds the old controversy still going on here much
the same as it ever was. We have lately had one other contribu-
tion by a remarkable man towards the settlement of the dispute.
I speak of Lord Sherbrooke's article in the November number of the
Nineteenth Century. Like most persons, I turned with some eager-
ness to that article. ' Legislation for Ireland ' is the subject we are
all now talking about ; and Lord Sherbrooke, one might have thought,
is a man who must have some shrewd suggestions to offer on such a
question. I confess to having put down the article with a feeling of
disappointment and also of surprise. I have no right to complain
that Lord Sherbrooke offers no positive suggestion for the improve-
ment of the condition of Ireland by means of legislation. He an-
nounces in the beginning that he has no intention to do anything of
the kind. He says that * a person who feels himself quite unequal to
answer the question " What shall we do for Ireland ? " may be quite
competent to offer solid advice as to what we had better not do.'
1 Something,' he contends, ' will be gained, if we can in any degree
narrow the range of controversy, and every successful attempt to
narrow a controversy is so much aid towards its solution.' I entirely
admit that a man may fairly claim to have helped toward the settle-
ment of a controversy who can show that there are several courses of
action which ought not under any circumstances to be taken, even
though he is himself unable to point out the precise course that
ought to be followed. A puzzled stranger seeking his way to some
particular part of London is undoubtedly indebted for some help to a
man who, although he does not know which is the way to the place,
can positively assure him that certain of the streets which he sees
opening before and around him do not, any of them, lead to it. The
disappointment I felt on finishing Lord Sherbrooke's article came
from the fact that he seems to have precluded himself, or allowed
his mind to get into a condition that precludes him, from coming
to any opinion worth listening to on the subject. Lord Sher-

1880. IRELAND IN '48 AND IRELAND NOW. 871

brooke's keen intellectual power seems to forsake him when he stands
in front of this Irish difficulty. He becomes as hopelessly embar-
rassed in mere legal technicalities as the driest lawyer on the other
side of Westminster Hall. He puts limes in the place of things,
phrases for realities, with all the self-satisfied complacency of a
mediaeval schoolman. I remember a Welsh fairy story about a man
coming home at night, and having to cross a haunted moor. ' The
man was usually keen of sight, strong of limb, fearless of spirit, but
he could not get across the moor. He was under the influence of a
fairy spell. Every tiny rivulet at his feet was magnified in his eyes
to the dimensions of a broad and rolling stream. Every little rise of
the turf before him became to his puzzled senses as an impassable
mountain. Lord Sherbrooke stands in this way enchanted and be-
wildered before the difficulties which arise for him in the shape of
imaginary torrents and mountains. Freedom of contract is a roaring
gulf, a pathless steep for him, over which it is impossible to get.
' What,' he asks, 4 is a landlord or a tenant ? ' and he answers the
question himself. ' They are persons,' he says, ' who have entered
into contracts with each other, and they are nothing more. The one
has contracted to hire land, the other has contracted to let it, on such
terms as may be agreed upon between them, and embodied in the
contract ; that is all.' To Lord Sherbrooke's thinking this statement
of fact settles the question. The Irish landlords are persons who let
land, the Irish tenants are people who want to get it to hire, that is
all. Let them make any bargain they like. The law cannot inter-
fere with them. They are grown persons. They are landlord and
tenant, and that is all about it. It is strange to think that a man of
Lord Sherbrooke's keen intellect could think that a formidable and
complicated question, involving the welfare of the great mass of a
population, and about which generations have disputed in a kind of
civil war, is to be settled by a pedantic formula about the right of
the landlord and the right of the tenant. The reality of the question
is, that the limited, and inevitably limited, material out of which the
great mass of the Irish population have to make their living is at
present held under conditions which the advocates of the Irish occu-
piers say render it impossible for them to live. As the landlord now
holds the limited portion of land, incapable of increase, to which the
rural populations have to look for a living, the advocates of land re-
form say that the rural population cannot live. If Lord Sherbrooke
could show that this statement of the case is altogether unjust, and
that the conditions are favourable to the prosperity of the tenant as
well as to that of the landlord, then of course the question would be
answered. But the case as stated by the Irish land advocate is no
more touched by Lord Sherbrooke's formula about freedom of con-
tract than the complaint of a number of passengers in mid-Atlantic
that the captain refused to give them any food to eat unless they

872 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

would pay for it some enormous price is to be settled by the same
sort of declaration. One man has food to sell. Other persons want
food to eat. Let the one ask what he likes for the food ; if the others
do not give what he asks, that is their affair ; it is a question of free-
dom of contract. Lord Sherbrooke, I know, is not above reading a
romance, and even a French romance. He may remember, perhaps,
the case of the banker Danglars in the Count of Monte Christo, who
is taken prisoner by the brigand chief. The brigand chief offers to
feed him as often and as comfortably as he pleases, only he makes an
enormous demand for every article he serves. Even the wealthy
banker is utterly unable to continue to pay the vast sums which his
host demands for the food he is willing to give him. Would Lord
Sherbrooke say that no third party ought to interfere ? This is free-
dom of contract. One man has soup and chickens to sell, the other
man wants soup and chickens to eat. The one offers them for prices
be thinks himself entitled to demand; it is for the other to accept or
not, as he pleases. Both are grown men, responsible for their actions,
capable of deciding for themselves. It is the most obvious case of
freedom of contract in its natural exercise. I find Lord Sherbrooke's
argument very well anticipated in Mr. Barry O'Brien's book, The,
Parliamentary History of the Irish Land Question, to which I have
already referred. Mr. Barry O'Brien answers with the simple truth
that the Irish tenants cannot help themselves in what they do. ' They
make the best terms they can, which in truth means bowing to
whatever the omnipotent master of the situation impose?.' Then he
goes on to put a question himself in illustration of the case. ' Why
does Parliament regulate or fix and limit the price which a railway
company charges me for my travelling ticket ? Why are not we, the
contracting parties, the railway company and myself, left to settle
between us how much the price in every particular case shall be ? It
is because the law says we are not free contracting parties ; the rail-
way company has a monopoly of that which is, in a sense, a necessity
to me and others, and if, when I stood at the ticket office, the matter
were left to contract, I should practically have to give them 5s. a
mile if they demanded it.' If this is not freedom of contract, then I
contend that the case of the Irish peasant population, compelled to
choose between starvation and taking the land on the landlord's terms,
that land which cannot be added to one acre by all the efforts of man,
is just as little illustration of the reality of freedom of contract. In-
deed, Lord Sherbrooke himself settles the question a little further on
when he has not this particular point of his own in view and is think-
ing of something else. ' There is no real bargain,' he says, ' when
one side cannot afford to refuse whatever terms the other sees fit to
impose.' It seems almost inconceivable how a man of Lord Sher-
brooke's ability could be so careless as to let fall from his pen this
just and incontrovertible maxim when he had spent one or two

1880. IRELAND IN '48 AND IRELAND NOW. 873

lively pages before in trying to fill our minds with the very opposite
idea. Lord Sberbrooke complains of ' the tendency, already far too
strong in Ireland, to look to the land as the only source of wealth and
well-being.' Could Lord Sherbrooke suggest to us what other source
of wealth and well-being the great majority of the population in many
of the Irish counties have to look to ? Can he suggest how manu-
factures could be established in places which are fit for nothing but
agricultural occupation ? Can he tell us how to find coal-mines
where coal-mines are not, or to dig up iron from places in which nature
has made no store of this commodity ? It is unreasonable, no doubt,
of those Irish that they will only look to the land as the means of
their living. I may refer Lord Sherbrooke to another authority in
French literature. He will remember, perhaps, the familiar story
told by Rousseau of a French princess, whom people since, whether
rightly or wrongly I know not, have said to be Marie Antoinette,
who wondered why the poor in France could want bread when there
were such nice little cakes to be bought in the shops. The unreason-
ableness of the French poor was after all greater than that of the
Irish. There were the cakes if they only had the money to buy
them. In Ireland, money or no money, there does not seem any
source of well-being for at least a great proportion of the population
but the land they till. Another contribution Lord Sherbrooke gives
to the settlement of the immediate controversy is the declaration that
a time when the public mind is greatly excited by some claim, or
grievance, or suffering, is not the time for legislation to remove it.
* The time,' he says, ' for considering great and drastic changes is not
well-chosen amid scenes of heat and violence. Then is the time to
stand by the laws as they are, and to see, as far as the power of Govern-
ment goes, that they are respected and obeyed.' History does not
furnish us with many successful instances of the philosophic resolve
to stand by the laws as they are in times of great popular excitement
caused by suffering. I do not think the history of modern France
is encouraging to Lord Sherbrooke's disciples, nor certainly is the
modern history of England. I should have thought the most whole-
some lesson we have always been drawing from the successful working
of the English Constitution is that its special virtue is that very
flexibility by which in times of excitement it admits and accepts a
change in the laws. The philosophic statesman who waits for the
quiet hour to come when change can be methodically debated and
soberly prepared, is likely to find out all of a sudden that the wave of
change declines to wait for that distant period, and has broken down
the dams and rushed over the philosopher and his study.

Lord Sherbrooke is very angry with the members of the Devon
Commission for declaring that * the tenant's equitable right to a re-
muneration for his judiciously invested labour and capital is not
likely to be disputed in the abstract.' ' This property,' says the

874 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

Report, ' is undoubtedly bis own.' If the intercourse or joint co-
operation of landlord and tenant should for any reason terminate, ' it
ou^ht not to be without a just settlement of the account between
them.' * Thus, then, the labour and capital which a tenant may em-
ploy, to call these qualities into activity, are the equally distinct
property of the tenant.' Lord Sherbrooke denies that there is any
such recognition of a right of property in the tenant. But it is not
easy to understand whether, in this denial, he really means to dispute
the fact that the tenant's right is already recognised in the Act of
1870, which he himself, as a member of the Cabinet, actually helped
to pass, or whether he is going back to the first principles of the
question, and means to contend, philosophically, that the fact of a
man's having developed the resources of a certain piece of land gives
him no more claim to any interest in the permanent result of his
labour than the horse or the ox has who is fastened to the plough. If
Lord Sherbrooke put this bluntly as his view of the morality of
the case, it would then be more easy to argue with him. It would
be easy to show that such a principle has never been practically ac-
knowledged in any country of the world where there was a large rural
population, and which had risen above the level of barbarism. As
Mr. Mill well reminded Lord Sherbrooke, when Lord Sherbrooke was
Mr. Lowe, the whole land system of England is peculiar and un-
common. ' The Irish circumstances and the Irish ideas as to social
and agricultural economy,' said Mr. Mill, * are the general ideas and
circumstances of the human race. . . . Ireland is in the main stream
of human existence, and human feeling and opinion. It is England
that is in one of the lateral channels.'

If the Government, if any Government, mean to legislate with
any profit on this Irish land question, they ought to ask themselves
in the beginning, what is it that they really have in view as their
primary object? Is it, or is it not, first of all to secure the means
of life and give a chance for the development and prosperity of the
vast mass of the Irish agricultural population ? If they will keep
that object steadily before their eyes, I cannot but think that states-
manship will find the way, not of settling this great question by one
stroke of the pen, but of putting it in the way of gradually settling
itself. But if they are only inclined to attempt to do this in some
way which will at once reconcile itself to the prejudices and the
privileged interests of the great landlord class, then they had better
let it alone for the present. They can do nothing but add one other
wreck to the many legislative wrecks which have been decaying on
the political strand since the days of the Devon Commission. Every
ten years that the real object of legislation is missed or neglected,
the exigency of the question becomes greater, and its settlement
seems to involve a more venturous attempt. It now seems an easy
thing enough to have drawn up a Land Bill which would have

1880. IRELAND IN '48 AND IRELAND NOW. 875

entirely satisfied the late Mr. Dillon at the time of which Sir Charles
Gavan Duffy speaks. It seems almost nothing to concede the extreme
demands that were made by Sharman Crawford and his colleagues.
Each of these demands was denounced as confiscation at the time.
There is scarcely a landlord in either House of Parliament who does
not now go about declaring his willingness to acknowledge the j ustice
of any such claims as Sharman Crawford once made. The political
condition of Ireland has certainly not grown more easy to deal with
since the Young Ireland days. The feeling of discontent is much
stronger and much deeper now than it was then. I should like some
practical Englishman to tell me what he thinks is likely to come
within the next ten years, if in the meantime a Government is not
found strong and resolute enough to risk all on the chance of putting
this Irish land question fairly in the way of a complete settlement.

Meanwhile Lord Sherbrooke's article contains one sentence for
which a good many of us Irish politicians will thank its author.
Having argued at some length as to the hopelessness of doing any-
thing for Ireland, he winds up by saying, ' Ireland cannot possibly do
us a greater favour than by following the course which leads most
directly to her own wealth and happiness.' Exactly. That is pre-
cisely what those who think as I do have long been asking the
English Government and the English people to permit Ireland to
attempt. Let her follow the course which leads most directly to her
own wealth and happiness. As there is no means of finding, even in
the utterances of Lord Sherbrooke himself, a heaven-inspired oracle
to proclaim in advance what that course should be, we only ask that
Ireland, that is the Irish people, should be allowed to try for them-
selves in what direction it lies.

876 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

THE IRISH 'POOR MAN:

THE heavens are clear and bright, the autumn sun is shining on well-
saved hay, fine haggarts of corn and oats, and many and large pits of
potatoes, and yet the island is full of wars and rumours of wars. The
wars have made themselves heard throughout the world ; let us leave
them and turn to the mutterings of a danger that is present though
as yet unseen. The holders of land in Ireland may now be left to
make their own terms ; we may regard their claim as one certain to
be granted to the farthest point to which justice can go — perhaps
farther. In satisfying the present holders of land, a great act will be
done, but not all. There is yet another class to be dealt with, and
that the most dangerous — those who class themselves as ' the poor
man,' — that is, those who possess neither home nor birthright in the
land, the agricultural labourers, the village artisans, and the men
who work in small towns at odd jobs of various labour.

What is the present position of an industrious and sober young
man who stays in Ireland as a labourer ? What is the utmost of his
hopes, the utmost bound of his chances ? Except in the compara-
tively rare instance of the demesne labourers of a good resident
landlord, his chances may be stated as follows : — A house that no
other European peasant would occupy, two shillings a day, or possibly
two and sixpence in stirring times ; but more probably one-and-
sixpence, or even less. If he is fortunate enough to have a bit of
land from the farmer who employs him, he, as a rule, is compelled to
pay twice its value or more. One pound the quarter acre is a
common charge for land held by the farmer at two pound an acre.
The labourer has to fence, manure, &c. the bit of land, and has no
security either for it or for his house ; for the latter, bad as it is, he
pays from one pound to five pound a year. He is absolutely at the
mercy of the farmer, and is only too frequently hounded to and from
his work with curses like a dog. If he defies his employer, his house,
his bit of land, his wages, all go at once ; he is left as a waif to * travel
the road ' with his helpless family, glad to find some miserable cabin
wherein he can lay himself and them by the fireside and pay a shilling
a week for a bed of straw and a roof.

Tradesmen, except village shoemakers, are somewhat better off

1880. THE IRISH 'POOR MAN: 877

as regards wage, but their work is uncertain, and they too have no
hope of a home ; consequently they are trained to drink, and learn it
as thoroughly as they do their business. Their wretchedness is more
their own fault than the wretchedness of the labourers ; but I believe
the same cure might heal both sores, starvation and drink. Is that
cure emigration ?

It does not need showing that for the individual unskilled youth,
male or female, emigration is the only answer possible in the present
state of things in Ireland. But how about the Nation ? There is
such a thing as natural selection in the human race as well as amongst
animals. What is the process of natural selection now going on in
Ireland ? Before speaking of it, however, I must refer to one of the
remedies praised of political economists, and show that it cannot be
counted on as a help in Ireland, namely the restriction of marriage.
Irishmen, with all their faults, are affectionate, lovers of children, of
home, and of women, chaste, and of a religion that counts marriage
as a sacrament. For all these reasons marriage must be counted
with. Also, for the labourer, who is abroad from early morning to
nightfall, a wife is a necessity. Why marry young though ? Because
then his children are helpless at the time of life when he can best
support them, and are in their turn able to help him when he begins
to fail. It is better policy, to say nothing of natural inclinations,
that a labourer should marry young than old. What can he lay by
in his youth from his small earnings that could support a family of
seven children when his arm is feeble and his head is grey. Marriage
then is something we must reckon with.

A young man stays in Ireland, marries at three-and-twenty, has
any number of children up to fourteen, without being commented on,
except as the father of ' a long family.' For a few years his wages
suffice ; but soon children increase, a rainy season, or a cold season, or
a slack season sets in ; then credit is called to help, then the ' gombeen-
man,' the usurer ; then all resources being exhausted, beggary begins.
The wife and youngest children tramp round the country, or may be
seen, as I have seen them, seeking in the dark evening and winter's
snow for the tops of the seawrack as a supper. 'How do the people
live ? ' I have often asked of themselves. ' How can they support life
even in ordinary years ? ' ' They do not live, they starve,' is the
answer I have got. c How do they bring their children up ? ' ' They
bring them up in rags and beggary and starvation.' There is the
answer, and it is a true one. This is the reward of the man who stays
in Ireland, and does his work according to his light. Now for the
other side.

A lad of nineteen, strong, vigorous, unspoilt, full of intelligence,
and with a certain amount of book-learning, asks himself what he shall
do. His brother or his uncle in some of the colonies, or America,
answers the question for him, and says, ' Come out to me. Here you

VOL. VIII.— No. 46. 3 0

878 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

will earn from three to seven or more dollars a day ; here you will
have meat and cream, and good clothing ; here you will find friends
and kinsfolk and acquaintance ; here, if you wish to marry, there are
plenty of " neighbouring girls " (i.e. girls from the same neighbour-
hood in the old country), who are earning their thirty or forty
pounds a year, who dress better than the ladies do at home, and to
whom you will be able to give every comfort in a nice house of your
very own, and perhaps a piece of land. Here you will have a vote,
and have the whole sphere of politics open to you, and here you will
be free from England. This is the real free Ireland, come — ' and he
goes, and the nation loses him. Let us see who the nation retains.

Take any letter from America written from the poor to the poor,
what will you find in it ? As above to the industrious, to the young,
the strong, and the good ; what to the worthless, the drunkards, the
idlers ? ' Let no man come out to America that will not work. He
will be better at home.' Here he will starve ; here, ' if a man will not
work, neither let him eat,' is the practical rule, and the people know
it. The bad stay at home. How do they live then ? If for the
righteous there is scarcely a place found, where shall the ungodly and
the sinners appear ? Strange to say, Ireland is the place for them.
Now I will describe their lives.

This man, that ' will not respect himself,' that cares not to live
honestly, or cleanly, soberly, or chastely. He marries (in Ireland
even the worst will probably marry) at the age of nineteen, having
neither house nor means. He lodges probably with his father-in-law,
his wife being a product of the ' beggary and starvation ' described
above. They toss a heap of straw in some corner of the cabin, and so
they live, as regards their setting up in married life. He gets a job
of work when jobs are going, and spends a good part in the public-
house, for he knows his wife has been working for him. How ? she —
very probably trained from infancy to the business — is tramping the
roads with an infant on her back and another on each side, stopping
at every house, rich and poor. The poor man gives his three of four
potatoes, his handful of flour. He thinks it wrong to refuse. She
passes on, perhaps as she goes by ' whipping ' the apron of his
wife or his child's shift off the drying hedge, and hiding them in
her garments, to the rich man's house ; there she gets a bit of
silver, or a lump of bread, or a pot of dripping ; then to the dairy-
farmer's ; here she pours into her can a cup of milk (milk not to be
bought for the dying child by those who will not beg). Here she sits
down with or after the labourers, and has her dinner, and perhaps her
bit of bacon. So through the day, till she goes home rejoicing at
night, her bag well filled with potatoes, which she sells again for
money ; her second bag with flour for a cake ; her little can full of
milk for her ragged, unkempt, unschooled children. The money from
the sale of the potatoes turns into tea and whisky, and if times are

1880. THE IRISH 'POOR MAN: 879

hard the whole family will tramp together to some more prosperous
county, or sometimes travel in state with a donkey cart owned or
borrowed. The inhabitants of North Kerry habitually invade
Limerick every summer when the potatoes fail at home. The more
worthless the people, the more such a manner of living will suit them.
They can eat, drink, and live together — what do they want more ?
what do such as they care for cleanliness, or decency, or knowledge,
or God-fearingness. There is no country in Europe offers so easy a
means of life to the worthless scoundrel and his slattern wife as does
Ireland ; no country where an industrious honest man finds it more
impossible to save himself and his children from sinking into the
class where easy beggary will provide food honest labour can scarce
secure.

This is the state of the ' poor man ' l class as it is, is it to continue
so ? It neither should nor can continue. Make the farmer secure
in all just rights, give him his most extravagant demands : you have as
yet but skinned the wound ; you have but cooled the lava on the mouth
of a volcano ; the explosion will come, and come quickly — not twenty
years, not ten years hence, but in a few months — it may be in a few
days, after you have laid aside your healing tools and your cooling
apparatus, whatever it may be. And this revolution will be a
revolution of the most dangerous elements ; it will be the rising of a
class that hates the class above it with an unspeakable hatred, for so
the labourers hate the farmers. It will be a rising of a class that
feels it is fighting for life ; that regards murder as war ; that looks
upon the legal attainment of an end injurious to a poor neigh-
bour as a crime to be washed out with blood, that cries 6 Amen ' to
cursed be he that removeth his neighbour's landmark. A revolution,
not a political revolution, but a social revolution of this nature, is
what the Government will have to deal with, and that before many
days are out — whether days of years, or of weeks, or of days I know
not, but soon. But why ? Why, having borne so long, so silently,
should they not bear still longer ? For many reasons.

First, because they fully realise that in the present settlement of
the land question is their time — it is now or never with them. Their
experience of the farming classes leads them to expect in them
harsher masters than in the landlords. They see that the upshot of
the more complete hold of the farmers on the land will be that not
unfrequently the landlords will leave Ireland, and with the landlords
will go the best wages, the best houses, and the most considerate
employers. The labourers are not unwilling that the farmers should
receive a better security than heretofore, but they dread them as
masters. They have already been forced to feel in many places

1 I use this word as it is used by the people, and as a more inclusive word than
•labourer,' taking in as it does hucksters and those who make out life in many and
various ways.

3 o2

880 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

that the present agitation is more likely to injure than to help them,
and they are inclined to say, ' Let us stand by the landlords.' Their
notion is, that where the landlord is unable to recover rents, or let
land through the action of the Land League, be should band the
disputed lands to a kind of commune of labourers, and let them fight
the Laud League. They say, if the landlords did this, the Land
League would be dead in six months. It has been done in one
instance, with the result that the labourers openly defied the Land
League when it tried to put back the evicted tenant. It is the old
story of king and people versus the nobles. This card might now be
played with success by the landlords ; but if they cease to have power,
then the labourers must deal with the farmers alone.

Supposing that next year a settlement of the land question is
carried through Parliament, granting to the tenants tenant-right
pure and simple, what would be the result to the labourers ? First,
that it would be more difficult than ever for the landlords to secure a
bit of land on which to build respectable houses. Secondly, either
the farmers must be granted the power of sub-letting, or this power
must be refused to them. In the first case, the tyranny and misery
of middlemen leases would begin again, and such instances as the
following — which I believe to be an exact statement of a case I know
— would be even more frequent than at present. A B holds three
quarters of an acre of land, and a hovel, which he keeps in repair
himself. For house and land he pays at the rate of 4£. 10s. an acre ;
the farmer, his employer, paying for the same land 16s. an acre to
the landlord. This would be the result of sub-letting. If the
farmers cannot sub-let, the labourers will be forced into the towns,
often miles from their work, and if eight, nine, or ten shillings a week
is poverty in the country, it is starvation in the towns. Either alter-
native is one to drive them to despair, and a social revolt, founded on
the despair of succeeding generations, is a danger no government
would readily face. This fear is what, at present, tends to bring to a
crisis the long, moaning misery and discontent of a whole class :
this, and the distress of last winter, which showed so plainly that at
any moment their small hold on life might fail them. It was said
that the labourers were not so universally affected by the distress as
the farmers last year, that they were not so very much worse off than
usual. They could not be much worse and live. Last year the
difference between their normal misery and starvation was filled by
the relief funds ; but many a man in Ireland lived for months on one
or two meals of Indian meal a day, or, worse still, on turnips. Here
men were coming from a distance to work at lOd. a day — 5s. a week
fine-weather wages.

These men who live in Ireland in poverty such as this have rela-
tions in every quarter of the world, scattered as the thistle-down on
every wind of heaven. I suppose that in county Limerick there is

1880. THE IRISH 'POOR MAN: 881

not one household of the poorer classes from which some member
has not emigrated. This emigration has been going on ceaselessly
since '48, and yet the labourers are as I describe. Is not this answer
enough to those who advocate emigration alone as a panacea for all
our ills ? What does emigration do, not for the man who goes, but
for the country he leaves behind ? It takes, as I showed, the best
blood. It impoverishes the small shopkeepers ; it takes the market
from manufacturers ; it makes of railway stock and other companies a
loss ; and as to the individual labourers who remain, it has perhaps
given them an uncertain increase of a shilling a week in their wages —
not that it would be desirable to check emigration, but that emigra-
tion should be the natural throwing off from the body politic of the
needless particles, not the draining away of the life-blood of a nation.

As Ireland now stands, or rather as Irish families now are, there
is small danger of checking emigration. The people have such in-
numerable relations, friends, interests, and affections in other coun-
tries, and the young are so keen with the wish to see the world,
that it is now only dire poverty holds them back. Emigration would
not be checked by increase of prosperity at home, but immigration
would be very much encouraged. Should that be regretted? I think
not. I believe the wealth of the Irish out of Ireland is the source
from which we might really draw the long-talked-of myth, ' capital.'
I believe that Ireland might be as a lake to which the fertilising
streams of capital might flow in from the most distant and unheard-
of sources, and I look on it as one of the main advantages in the
scheme I propose to unfold, that it would induce the immigration of
men who have gathered ' their handful of halfpence ' in America,
but whose health, as very frequently happens, cannot stand the
American climate, or who come home from sheer love of country —
and how many would come ?

If immigrators could make for themselves comfortable homes in
Ireland, I see no reason why Ireland should not be as wealthy as
France, and more happily wealthy for the poorer classes than England.
Every island, town, and country on the globe, wherein the feet of Irish-
men are treading, would send its successful sons ' home ' to the land
they have loved, their Jerusalem. ' I would rather be a lamp-post in
Ireland than the President in Canada,' as one young man expressed it
in a letter home.

Then emigration would go on, not as now, a parting till death
from father, and mother, and home — a parting ill-omened for Ireland
and for England. In touching words Mrs. Knox, herself an Irish-
woma n and an exile, has painted the everyday sight of Ireland.

Oh, Eire, land of tears,

The hour draws nigh,
I see the faces wan,

I hear the cry.

882 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

The loved and loving part,

]>y hard fate driven,
On earth they have no other meeting —

May they meet in heaven.

Mast the father part the son?

Must he return alone,
To his silent cabin door,

To his cold hearthstone ?
Must the aged care the house ?

Must they die alone,
Unfollowed be their burying

Their graves unknown ?

Not as this would the emigration be then. It would be the
natural outpouring of the love of change and of success and riches ;
it would be gilt with the hope of a home-coming in prosperity ; Irish-
men would then go forth to conquer the world, that they might
return to adorn the mistress of their love, their country. The poor
would go, the rich would return and give employment, or, if working
men, they would be accustomed to wages a man can live on, and
would refuse to work, or to allow their friends to work, for starvation
wages. Being independent, they would force the wages up. It has
been proved hopeless, by the experience of the last twenty years, to
expect that wages will go up of themselves, simply as a result of star-
vation and emigration combined. Men must work for what is given
them, or die if they have no money in their pockets.

Is any scheme possible which would make the labourers indepen-
dent, encourage the inflow of successful men and of their capital ?
I believe such a scheme is possible. A well-grounded hope is the
))est cure for the sins of despair ; the miserable and degraded, those
most incapable of self-succour, can be saved, if at all, by hope alone.
They are the most difficult class to deal with ; they deliberately throw
away the means of life, they rather starve than send their children to
service or make an effort for self-redemption. They are beaten to the
ground like the broken ears of corn, and yet they and their children
are the very roots of the nation, and who can make a tree grow whose
roots lie clotted and twisted in stagnant soil ? It lies as a great
difficulty in the way of all improvement, that so many are content
merely to exist; but for that very reason should not a hand
be stretched to rouse them from their dejected sloth ? Not a
hand by way of gift, but some chance of living as men, some home
they may hope to call their own, some prize for which they may
strive.

I should, then, propose for the righting of those evils a scheme on
the same lines as the Church Commission. Let the Government take
up compulsorily from the present holders a reserve of land, the
amount being proportional to the extent of farm or domain, taking
no land from the small farms, but from each twenty or thirty acre

1880. TEE IRISH 'POOR MAN: 883

farm reserving one acre. The advantages of thus taking the reserve
proportionally to the large farms in preference to the principle of
taking it so many acres to the mile are various. The first and most
important advantage is that I believe it would hit the sense of justice
in the country ; the labourer, not wishing to injure the small farmers,
who are, like himself, struggling for life, but feeling galled by the
sight of men allowing hundreds of acres of land to lie waste, and no
corner spared for ' the poor man.' Again, if the land taken be pro-
portional to the size of the farms, the at present thinly peopled rich
lands from which the Irish were driven e to hell or Connaught,' would
be once more thrown open to the poor, whereas the over-peopled
poor districts would be slightly affected, as there the farmers labour
themselves. Perhaps the further portion of my scheme might aid
migration from the poor parts to the rich.

The Government, then, having, in the approaching great settle-
ment, bought one acre in every twenty out of the large farms, should
pay the proprietor and the tenant at a fixed, not exorbitant rate, say
twenty years' purchase of Griffith's valuation, with allowance to the
landlord and tenant for increased value and improvements, such
value going to the tenant, unless the landlord could prove natural
increase of value or work done. The burden of proof on the landlord,
as tenant's small work, though invaluable, is unvaluable. By adopting
such means of valuation, rack-renting landlords would have no advan-
tage over just men.

Waste lands might also be bought and thrown in with the reserve,
and land would also be needed in the neighbourhood of villages and
towns, a sort of communal lot, that could be hired without houses in
small portions.

Government being the holders of these reserve lands should ap-
portion one-acre lots to the present labourers where good houses
exist, and in the case of domain labourers the present plots of land
should be enlarged, if possible, and the houses bought at an estimate
of value. Though the domain labourers on some estates are well cared
for, I fancy, that as a rule, they too require protection in their homes.
Hitherto, the landlords' cottages being the only habitable houses, the
competition for them has been great, but if good houses and good
plots of land were within the reach of any industrious man the land-
lords would have to do more than hitherto if they wished to keep the
pick of the labour market.

The minimum piece of ground should be one acre. These single-
acre plots we may assume to go with the existing labourers' plots,
and with them would in many cases go the houses. These should be
either destroyed or improved into neat little cottages. The people
do not ask much as yet, poor fellows. A kitchen and a room above
is ' as nice a house as you would see ' in their eyes, but that would
hardly do. However, for 801. at the outside, a good house could be

884 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

built, with some out-building ; and toward this sum it might bo
right to tax landlord and tenants (as they are responsible for the
present state of things) to the amount of 101. apiece, payable by
degrees.

The one-acre plots and the house should be let to the labourers at
the lowest rent that would cover interest, expenses of repair, insur-
ance, collection of rents, bad debts, &c. The tax-collectors might
collect the rents, which should be payable before occupation. That is,,
the man should ask for his house with his first year's rent in his hand.
If unable to pay the second year, he should be at once evicted, but be
allowed to sell the goodwill, not directly to his successor, but to the
Government. He should be allowed to make his own bargain, for
everybody likes their own bargain. He, A B, says to the agent : ' 1
cannot hold the land ; here is B C, who offers me two pounds to be
allowed to enter, if you will receive him as a tenant.' B C pays to
Government two pounds ; Government pays same to A B. This pre-
caution would check sale of land to neighbouring farmers, &c. No
holder of Government plots should receive outdoor relief, but the land
should not be taken from the family on account of a short stay in the
workhouse, the rent being paid.

It is clearly desirable that the labourer should have the power of
making his piece of land his savings bank, and he should be able ta
buy out his holding by degrees. As for instance, he comes to the
agent and says, * My son in America sends me 5Z., here it is.' It is-
his first instalment, placed with interest to his credit as part of the
fee-simple. Next year he will be able to lay by a pound or so, always-
adding, and the Post Office Savings Banks should be open to small
deposits for the purpose. Tables should be printed, showing the exact
increase through accumulation of interest, and the subject should be
thoroughly taught in the most direct form in the National Schools, aa
also the computation of decrease of rents, as thus. —

Times of pressure come ; it is no longer a question of laying byr
but of tiding on to good times. He says to Government, ' Your rent
is interest on money expended ; I have repaid to you a third of that
money ; lower your rent to the interest of your share of the property.'
For every pound he paid in, even if he continued to pay the original
rent, a less share would be due to the Government. If the men once
felt they could buy out their rent in this manner, even before buying
the whole fee-simple, they would be greatly encouraged to do so in-
good years, when perhaps they would feel it hopeless to attempt
the sum total of the fee-simple. Irish children are, I believe, singu-
larly quick at arithmetic ; the parents would soon understand, if it
were clearly taught to the children in a practical form. Of course, if
a man wished to go, he should have all his money back with interest,,
and thus he could insure his life ; his widow, too, might be allowed
to draw on his deposit, and so hold on till her boys came of age to

1880. THE IRISH < POOR MAN: 885

help. Every improvement and ornament would add to the value of
the goodwill ; the man would be a free man, not a slave.

We will suppose now the one-acre man has bought out the fee-
simple of house and land. Is all chance of further improvement to
be closed to him ? No ; for the Government has more land reserved?
divided into two, three, four, and five-acre good plots ; it has also
waste lands in plots ranging up to twenty acres. A B, having bought
his fee-simple, re-sells to Government, gets his good-will from his
successor, and so, his pocket full of cash, goes to the next agent, offers
his bid for the land, which should be regularly advertised ; a certain
proportion of the fee-simple being required as entrance money on the
plots above one acre ; and so he settles into his tiny farm, to redeem it
too. He labours, and his children labour on it, and he goes out to
hire, to save money to buy ; he sends his children to service and to
America to earn for him ; the greed of thrift has sprung up with its
attendant virtues (for the nation) of hardness to beggars and sharp
canniness. He is the Irishman as you see him out of Ireland even
now ; once the owner of a five-acre plot he is an independent man,
able to enter into competition with the farmers and holders of land,
the sale of land being then presumably free.

It will be asked — ' This is a long process. What, meanwhile, is
the Government to do with the larger plots ? ' There is where
immigration would work. A mason left my brother's employment
in the spring; before the year was out he sent home 60£. An
immensity of money would return to Ireland if it got a chance. It
would buy up these Government plots either for relatives or for a
home for immigrants. Now money returns by millions, but mostly
in the form of emigration tickets paid to the steamboat companies
and bearing no fruit in Ireland. Then money — probably in much
larger sums — would tend to remain in the country, and would aid
the small tradesmen, artisans and hucksters, who themselves would
save, to buy a home, instead of drinking all their spare cash, 'because
you wouldn't feel the difference of the few shillings to put it by.'
Every man who had money to buy his holding would give employ-
ment. A man with three acres would go out as a labourer part of
the year, and for other parts he would need help. A good deal of
give and take would go on between the holders of plots. Employment
for children would be constant. The children are now brought up in
enforced idleness, except for schooling ; then every household would be
at work in common. Improvements of all kinds should be freely
allowed, and many would be the small jobs for mason and carpenter.
Now cases like the following are the reward of industry. W. W. built a
house and a workshop, or rather his uncle did so. The workshop is
taken by the landlord and given to another, no reduction of rent
being made. On the death of the old people, W. W., who had paid up
their old rents and was their successor, asks for the house. He is told

886 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

to bid ; offers nearly double rent, and to make repairs, and is promised
a thirty-one years' lease. He expends 251. on house and asks for lease.
Is offered a lease on a man's life instead of the thirty-one years. He
refuses, and stays on as a yearly tenant, having also built a new
workshop, &c., though he has no security. People improve now,
when in all reason they ought not to do so ; if they had hope and
security, work would go on apace, and on no matter how small a
hand-tilled garden, numbers of little matters are daily wanted, which
in the making and in the using would give employment and repay it.

As things now stand, no regular employment is given, from the 1st
of October to the 1 st of February. It is a matter of luck, and men
learn to be idle, and so do the children. They get accustomed to a
wintry semi-starvation, and when men have got to that it is very
hard to raise them. They hunger for land or work, and they get
neither. The law cannot give them work nor rise of wages, but it
could give them land and hope. It will be said, ' We are having a
lesson this year against undertaking the position of Irish landlords.'
But, first, the Government will not rack-rent, it -will not suck up the
value of men's improvements. It is more powerful, more punctual,
and less indulgent than landlords : it will hold the value, and much
more than the value of the rent owed, and, above all, every pound a
man wishes to lessen his rent he lessens his own part property in the
land. The Government rent would be based on the clearest and
simplest sum, and would be plain to the simplest instead of being a
capricious extraction of the pound of flesh. No other landlord could
afford house and land as cheap as Government ; therefore they would
prefer the Government houses.

Proceedings should be taken against defaulters as now for taxes.
Building and repairs should be done under the Board of Works
(renovated) ; rents collected by the tax-collectors, and weekly savings
towards purchase by the Post Office. All might be done simply and
cheaply out of the present staffs.

It appears to me that one change in the law might help in
rescuing the poor, that is, the extending of the Bankruptcy Laws to
all classes. If a man could be sold up and cleared of old debts any
day, I think the ' gombeen-man ' would not have a good time, and
the honest traders would not allow credit to run on as it does now.

According as the fee-simples were bought out, I should allow the
Government to enter the market as purchaser to the extent of the
money originally voted for the first purchase of land now. The
Government should have the power of re-selling according to above
scheme, dividing the land so bought in plots not exceeding the value
of a five-acre plot of fair land. A five-acre plot of county Limerick
land could well support a family ; but of Donegal, fifteen would not
be too much, or indeed would be far too little in parts.

The money would so turn over, some slight margin might be left

1880. THE IRISH 'POOR MAN: 887

for profit, and the whole country might then be peopled with in-
dustrious labourers who hoped to rise, with immigrants who had
already collected their ' handful of half-pence,' with artisans who had
saved their wages instead of drinking them, as they almost invariably
do now, and with household servants who, here or abroad, had bided
their time to seek a home.

Ireland is suffering now from stagnation, not from over-population.
Tear aside the bonds of entail, legal expenses, &c., put a staff in the
hand of the weak and throw a rope to the drowning ; bring back
her successful exiles ; and commerce will return, and knowledge of
practical arts will arise ; the life-blood of the nation will flow again ;
and if we do have Home Rule, it will be the rule of a happy, hopeful
people, not of a people lost in misery and despair.

CHARLOTTE G. O'BRIEN.

POSTSCRIPT.

Since writing the above, a « Labour League ' has spread silently through Limerick
and Cork, if not further.

888 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

THE IRISH LAND QUESTION.

IN reading more than once Lord Sherbrooke's able article on ' Legis-
lation for Ireland,' in your Review of this month, two things strike
me forcibly : the closeness and accuracy of his reasoning as regards
the rest of the civilised world ; and his Lordship's inaccuracy as to the
thoughts, feelings, and expectations of the Irish tenant. In en-
deavouring to test this matter, I will take but one sentence of Lord
Sherbrooke's. Much turns on that one sentence (p. 684) — 'Not-
withstanding all that the Devon Commission may say, the Irish tenant
knows perfectly well that he has no claim, in equity or otherwise, to
payment for the cabin he may build, the bog he may drain, or the
stones he may roll away.' True, according to the laws under which
he lives, or did live until the passing of the Land Act, he has no such
claim ; but that he * knows ' that such is the case ' in equity ' is the
reverse of the fact.

The Irish people are to the last degree credulous, and Ireland is
the hotbed of misstatements. In the very year which is not yet
concluded, a famine was proclaimed, which had no existence, though
there was much distress in a few isolated limited districts. A gentle-
man on one side of politics drew upon the charity of our cousins in
the United States, by the plea that a thousand people had died of
starvation in the county in which I live, where not one person has
died of starvation, or was ever likely to do so ; while, on the other
side, a statement was made, that there was not a single potato left in
this same county, at the very time that we were exporting potatoesto
Scotland. These statements, made so lately, and with the perfect
power, existing to anyone, to ascertain their truth or falsehood, have
never been met, save in a few isolated denials by individuals. Is it
wonderful then that the meagre, party-poisoned, histories of Ireland
which are read by the people, have induced the Irish peasant to hold
the belief that, not only in equity, but by custom, he has a claim on
the land, which Lord Sherbrooke supposes he cannot hold ? It is
needless to say how elastic this belief may be, and how important
to the peace and prosperity of Ireland, or the contrary. I will now
endeavour to show how this belief has been implanted, grown, and,

1880. THE IRISH LAND QUESTION. 889

finally, has been perfected by the Land Act of 1870 ; and then, if I
can keep my statements within such bounds as not to completely
weary your readers, I will venture to state my opinion as to what
might be done to mitigate — for I believe no more can be done — the
miserable condition of this country.

The ' tribal ' system, under which the Irish people lived at the
time of the English conquest, and by which they reaped a few pre-
carious and scanty crops, and grazed their cattle in common, is thus
described by no less an authority than Mr. Stuart Mill. ' Before the
conquest the Irish people knew nothing of absolute property in land.
The land virtually belonged to the entire Sept, the chief was little
more than the managing member of the association.' This would
certainly imply that the land belonged to the Sept — in other words, to
the people. What was the fact, however, according to Sir John Davis,
Irish Attorney- General to James I., who wrote altogether in the
interests of the people ? ' This extortion of Coigne and Livery did
produce two notorious effects. First, it made the land waste; next, it
made the people idle, for when the husbandman had laboured all the
year, the soldiers in one night did consume the fruits of all his labour.
But these Irish exactions, extorted by the Chieftains and Tanists by
colour of their barbarous Seignory, were almost as grievous a burden
as the others ; namely, Cosherings, sessing of the Kerne, of his family,
called kernity ; of his horses and horse-boys ; of his dogges and
dogge-boys, and the like ; and lastly cuttings, tallages, or spendings,
high and low at his pleasure (the Chief's). All which made the lord
an absolute Tyrant, and the tenant a very slave and villain ; and in
one respect more miserable than bond slaves, for commonly the bond
slave is fed by his Lord, but here the Lord is fed by the bond slave.' I
do not think the above implies much right of freehold property in the
tenant. It is with the tenant only that I have to do. I admit that, in
many cases, the * managing members of the associations ' were very
harshly and unjustly treated. As early as the reign of Edward III.
the Irish people petitioned the King that they might be permitted to
use and enjoy the laws of England ; but, according to Sir John Davis,
' The English lords finding the Irish exactions to be more profitable
than English rents and services, and loving the Irish tyranny, did
reject and cast off English law and government.' They unhappily
had sufficient interest with the Crown to delay for many long years
those equal rights, and economic laws, the justice of which Lord
Sherbrooke states so forcibly, and Irishmen now reject. It is not my
business, even if I had space, to dwell on the long melancholy history
of Ireland. All I have to do with at present are the fictions which have
led the Irish tenant to believe that he has ' a claim, in equity or other-
wise,' to his farm, large or small. The next point I must touch is
the supposed analogy between the rights of the Irish landowner and
his tenant, and those of the Prussian Knight and Bauer, under the

890 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

land laws of Stein and Hardenberg. As shortly as I can state it, this
was the condition of their respective rights when Stein and Harden-
l.rrij dealt with them, the different fiefs varying somewhat,

The rights of the tenant (to speak in English terms) were these.
He had a distinct, legally defined interest in his farm, which the
Knight had not even the power of purchasing, and he could be evicted
only on four grounds : ' incompetence, insubordination, evil habits,
and refusal to perform the customary services.' The landlord kept
the buildings in repair, and supported the aged and infirm. The
more important ' customary services' were a certain number of days'
labour — given, of course, without pay. Compulsory labour is not
worth much.

On the other hand, the rights of the landlord were considerable.
He was entitled to a certain amount of the tenant's labour. The
tenant (perhaps he should be rather called the vassal) paid the taxes.
The landlord could prevent his marriage, and dictated to him what
trade he should follow. The landlord, besides, ' exercised the most
ample powers of a civil and criminal jurisdiction' over his tenants.
It is not difficult to see that this double right of ownership and
labour was fatal to agricultural progress ; and accordingly an edict,
about 1811, states 'that the relation hitherto subsisting in these
cases is such, that the real owner exerts no direct influence on the
management or culture of the farm,' and it also states that the
restoration of one-third of the peasant's land to the landlord, and the
freeing the landlord from the responsibilities mentioned above, shall
be deemed to be a fair adjustment of the reciprocal claims of land-
lord and tenant. In case of non-descending fiefs, one half of the
peasant's land was to be given up to the landlord. No bad bargain
for the landlord, but no parallel whatever between the Prussian
Bauer and the Irish tenant-at-will. But the absolute want of
truth, in those who mislead the ignorant Irish, is best shown by the
fact, that in the above edicts, tenancies at will are specially ex-
cepted from the operation of these agrarian measures. This is
omitted in Irish agrarian speeches, but the fact of only a third of the
peasant's land being surrendered to the landlord is fully dwelt on.

The next matter used to delude the poor Irishman is the case of
the Bengal Zemindars and Ryots. I am not sufficiently well read on
that subject to say much about it, except that the Indian Govern-
ment, by their original grants to the Zemindars, had reserved rights
of interference to protect the Ryots, which the English Government
certainly has not in the case of Irish landlords, who have held their
properties for hundreds of years, or who have purchased freeholds on
the faith of their being such. I must needs say besides, that it
seems to me that the dealers in money, ' usurers ' as they are called,
are dealt with in India as could not be done here ; and it is reported
that the dealers in land, or Zemindars, are likely, shortly, to be dealt

1880. THE IRISH LAND QUESTION. 891

with in much the same way ; but Parliament will probably have a
word or two to say to that matter.

I now come to that which confirmed the Irish tenant in his belief
that he has absolute rights in the landowners' land, the Irish Land
Act of 1870. Two points in it — viz., compensation for disturbance,
and the legalising the Ulster Tenant Custom, as proposed by the
original Bill (there being no such custom, but many customs of
various dates, amounts, and origins, the chief origin being the su-
pineness and neglect of landowners and agents) — were quite sufficient
to add fuel to Ireland's fire.

Such are the sources of the Irish tenant's belief that he has 4 a
claim in equity ' to the increased value of his farm. But there is one
claim which I must needs grant, and for the recognition of which I
have always struggled, viz., the right of the tenant, in case of
eviction, to a money compensation, for the capital he has expended
on the farm with the landlord's knowledge and consent. I fully
believe that, if this had been the terms of the Land Act of 1870, its
aim being justice, and justice alone, would have come so home to
the Irish people, that it would have been a much more difficult
thing for their self-appointed leaders to induce them to embark on
their present course of anarchy, leading step by step, as avowed by
the mob leaders (excepting, of course, the last dangerous point),
through the ruin of the * Saxon' landlords, to repeal of the Union,
and, finally, separation from the English Crown. Here I am, with
great regret, obliged again to differ from Lord Sherbrooke on two
points. Over great part of Ireland, nothing will protect life and
property ; nothing put an end to the present state of things, as
miserable for the poor as for the rich, except suspension of the
ordinary laws, fitted only for a free country ; and repression of outrage
by physical force. The sooner and the sharper these are applied the
sooner the need of them will be over ; and then it will remain to be
seen, in default of a cure, what palliatives may be applied to a
country, so opposed to the economic laws, which Lord Sherbrooke has
so forcibly stated in your pages, without which no country can be
great and really free ; so divided against itself, that the very name
of Irishman is denied to most who possess any property ; more who
possess education ; and to almost all who possess land.

Having struggled, as an Irishman, for nearly fifty years out of
seventy, not only for the well-being of those about me, in which
(thanks be to God) I have much succeeded ; but also for the main-
tenance of the economic principles and laws under which alone
Ireland can rise from Being a bye-word throughout the civilised
world, to the freedom, greatness, and prosperity fitting for the third
great division of the British Islands ; I now believe the struggle to
be hopeless, and I, for one, will struggle no more. To allay the
present discontent, and, as a step to putting an end to anarchy, three

892 THE NINETEENTH CENTdRY. December

points are suggested by the more reputable of the Irish Roman
Catholic bishops and priests, and one by Mr. Bright — fixity of tenure ;
free sale of tenancy ; fair rents ; and the purchase of their farms from
the landlords by the tenants. I will take first the last, as the one
which in no way militates against the ordinary laws of property, is
popular in theory with the tenant, and in no way injures the landlord.
My chief fear as to its working is, that tenants will not buy. Land-
lords, I am very sure, will sell at a fair price. But take the case of
an Ulster tenant ; and when men talk ^bout extending the Ulster
tenant right to the rest of Ireland, they are not aware that, under
Clause 7 of the Land Act, the Ulster right has been extended, and
is in rapid progress of further extension. Say, the Ulster tenant-
buys from his landlord a farm at twenty years' purchase. But he
already has a charge upon that farm, under the name of the tenant
right, perhaps of twenty years' purchase, so that, on becoming his own
tenant, he pays forty years' purchase for his farm. Now, how will he
probably meet this ? He will take some other man as his tenant,
who will give him, at least, twenty years' purchase as a fine or tenant-
right, and the tenant and landlord system is established again, under
much less favourable circumstances to the tenant. In 1869, I heard
a curious conversation between two English gentlemen of some
eminence and considerable ability — both I believe, certainly one,
friends of the present Prime Minister — and a very intelligent country-
man. It was nearly as follows: — 'Tell me to whom that hill

belongs ? ' « To Lord .' ' What rent does Lord get for it ? '

'From "is. 6d. to 15s. an acre.' 'To whom does that opposite hill
belong ? ' ' That is a divided property, and a small part is a freehold,

belonging to a tenant of Lord 's.' * What rent does Lord 's

tenant get ? ' ' Four pounds an acre.' ' Now tell me, why does not the

poor man who pays four pounds an acre go to Lord and say, " I

am ready to pay you a pound an acre; give me some of your land let
at 7s. 6d. ? " Answer : — « Go and take another man's land over his
head ! ! I Bum him to ashes to be sure.'

Notwithstanding all this, I believe that, economic law being
absent from Ireland, Mr. Bright's proposal would go a long way to
make property more secure, and, therefore, to benefit the people of
Ireland. I have long looked upon the great extent of land in few
hands, with thousands of tenants brought up in the absurd belief
which Lord Sherbrooke cannot credit, to be the greatest danger of
Ireland. It is true that large estates gradually absorb small ones. Few
of the old English yeomen, often the best blood of the country, are left ;
but this, if left to natural causes, would be remedied by the certainty,
that many of these estates would be dispersed, or lessened, in a few
generations. It takes two or three generations to build up a family,
but one fool can easily destroy it. It is a matter of doubt with me,
whether or not the laws of entail should be relaxed ; whether while,

1880. THE IRISH LAND QUESTION. 893

on the one hand, they prevent the easy and legitimate distribution
of property ; on the other hand, they do not cause, occasionally, the
dispersion of landed property, in a way most injurious and costly to
the owner. But the alteration of the law of entail would be but a
slow process to meet the present emergency.

Secondly, I come to the much less legitimate mode of treating
the Irish difficulty — viz., ' Fixity of the tenure ' of the tenant. This
sounds very bad, but in reality it obtains already, with few excep-
tions, on all tolerably large estates in Ireland, and, with proper
restrictions, I do not see much practical evil in it. I will suppose
that, in the coming Land Bill for Ireland, a man possessing a freehold
-estate in Ireland, whether by long inheritance or by purchase, will
not be offered worse terms than those now foreshadowed for the
Bengal Zemindars, whose rights are of late date, and originally very
much controlled in favour of the Ryot, in a way unheard of in the
British Islands.

If my information is correct, these foreshadowed laws, while they
will give the Ryot much security, and a nominal fixity of tenure, will
permit the Zemindar to evict him for three causes — on paying him for
building, drainage, and reclaimed land, and one year's rent for dis-
turbance : a. non-payment of rent ; 6. the breach of some condition
of which the penalty is eviction ; c. refusal to pay an increased
rent. .

Supposing an Irish Land Bill, the terms of which might be some-
what on these lines, I should think it worth considering, and even
though the terms be little better than those proposed for the Bengal
Zemindar, I do not think the landlord will be worse off than he is
now, except in the few cases where he deserves to be so.

As for ' free sale ' of the ' tenant-right,' or, as it might be called
more properly, the goodwill of the farm, to that also I see little
objection, so far as the landlord is concerned, provided the landlord
be protected from having forced upon him as tenant, a murderer, or
a new tenant beggared by the price he has had to. pay to the out-
going'tenant. As to the fixing periodically of a fair rent, to do so by
appeal to regularly appointed, competent commissioners, would be
a change for the better, at least in Ulster. Here rent is practically
in the hands of a body, very respectable in other ways, bub of all
others, according to my experience, most incompetent for such an
office — the Chairmen of Quarter Sessions. These gentlemen, in
Ireland, are Dublin lawyers, for the most part ignorant of matters
connected with land. When there is a conflict between a landlord
and an evicted tenant, the Chairman, who is also County Court
Judge, has the power of naming the compensation to be given to
the tenant ; in other words, of naming the penalty which the land-
lord shall pay for not restoring the tenant to his farm. The tenant
calls in his valuer, and the landlord does the same.
VOL. VIII.— No. 46. 3 P

894 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

Now, as to these last gentlemen, it may sometimes be said of some
of them what King James said of a courtier, ' Do you see yon Ape ?
If I hold him he will bite you. If you hold him he will bite me.'
However, the Chairman takes the opinion of which he pleases;
violent speeches are made by solicitors, and the result too often is
what may be anticipated. Now a fixed tribunal, to ascertain and
decide on a fair rent, would, I submit, be infinitely preferable to the
above mode of proceeding, created by the Land Act of 1870. But
this must be accompanied by a real valuation. ' Griffith's valuation/
as it is called, is nothing but a snare to the tenant. It was originally
made one-third under the letting value. I have in my possession a
copy of a letter from Sir Kichard Griffith stating this. Since it was
made, agricultural produce has doubled in value. If your readers have
not been wearied with reading * Irish rows,' they will see that the
usual demand of the tenant, in the South and West of Ireland, is to
pay rent according to ; Griffith's valuation ' — in other words, to pay
about half the rent which the landlord might equitably require for
his farm.

I have now put before your readers, as well as I could, some of the
deceptions practised on the Irish people, which have tended to produce
the present state of anarchy. I have granted the principles enun-
ciated by Lord Sherbrooke, as those by which only a nation can be
great, but which I now believe to be impracticable in Ireland. I have
stated what I approve with reservation as poor and paltry palliatives,
believing them to be practicable. Under the former, the great water
powers, the magnificent western natural harbours of Ireland, might
in time become great manufactories, and great ports of American
trade, giving employment to thousands upon thousands, who now, in
the best of times, have only a bare subsistence, in an unfertile soil, and
with a watery climate. Under the latter, I well know that, though
anarchy may cease, the bitter war of classes may be lessened, yet
Ireland cannot be other than the poor degraded country which she is
now, not by any action of the British Government, but by the vices of
her own sons.

LIFFORD.

1880. 895;

EXPLOSIONS IN COLLIERIES, AND
THEIR CURE.

I WANT to set on foot a systematic and painstaking investigation of
the nature and relations of light carburetted hydrogen (next to hy-
drogen itself the very lightest thing in nature), commonly called
fire-damp, which shall neither slacken nor cease until we have secured
for our miners security from the recurrence of further explosions ;
and I want to submit to public examination and criticism (which it
will survive if founded upon sound inductions) a method by which it
appears to me that the cause of one half — it may even happily prove
to be the greater part — of these explosions can be effectually and pre-
sently removed out of the way.

As to the first — to secure colliers from future explosions. There
is a way to do this, I feel certain, and have felt so ever since
the explosion occurred in the Warrenvale Pit, more than twenty
years ago. It is not like God to bestow upon us such a priceless
boon as coal, and to append as a necessary consequence to our putting
out our hands to take it such dreadful disasters and suffering as now
accompany its acquisition. It is not Grod, who in so many places in
the Old Testament takes the title of ' the Grod of the fatherless and
the widow,' who makes crowds of miners' wives widows, and their
helpless children fatherless ; no ! these explosions are the penalty of
our ignorance, or, as the late Canon Kingsley said in relation to some-
thing else, it is ' all because men will not learn nor obey those physi-
cal laws of the universe which (whether we be conscious of them or
not) are all around us, like walls of iron or of adamant — say, rather,,
like some vast machine, ruthless though beneficent, among the wheels
of which if we entangle ourselves in our rash ignorance, they will not
stop to set us free, but crush us. ... Very terrible though very calm
is outraged nature.'

I have been striving hard for many many years to solve this great
and pressing problem, and it appears to me that it might be of some
use to those who may have the will to engage in this investigation if
I were to explain the method and direction of my own researches,
even in those directions where I have not succeeded, as, with greater
knowledge of chemistry and other facts of nature than I possess, they
might achieve success in directions in which I have been baffled and

3p2

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

turned back by want of such knowledge, or they may be able at once
to see in what directions inquiry and investigation are useless, and so
economise the mental energy available for the examination of this
subject, and, so to speak, clear the ground for further inquiry.

The first question that suggested itself to my mind in turning to
the consideration of this subject was, What is it that explodes ? It
is light carburetted hydrogen, CH4, now called methylic hydride,
which is nearly, but not quite, identical with the gas which we obtain
for lighting purposes by the distillation of coal in retorts, the dif-
ference being that the carburetted hydrogen which exudes from the
face of the coal in the pit, being produced slowly and at a lower tem-
perature, is free from the impurities which are found in the gas
which is distilled at a high temperature from coal. The latter is
largely impregnated with sulphur. The light carburetted hydrogen
evolved from the coal in the mine is something less than half the
weight of common air ; that is to say, taking common air as 1, the
hydrogen (fire-damp) I speak of is represented by '425. Now when
this gas is mixed with common air in the proportion of 10 of gas and
90 or 100 parts of common air, the mixture is highly explosive, and,
upon reaching a light, the fearful catastrophes result which we all
deplore.

Hitherto all efforts to deal with this most unwelcome intruder
into the workings of a colliery have been limited to efforts to get rid
of it by diluting it with a strong current of atmospheric air which
shall carry it off.

This gas, I may say, is entirely invisible, and has n6 smell ; you
do not therefore perceive it in breathing.

Now, as the efforts hitherto made to remove this gas have oc-
casionally failed, with such sad results, I, and probably many others,
have made many efforts to discover some other and better means of
securing the safety of the men.

I will state what direction my thoughts have taken in the
matter. I have said to myself that if this gas were visible to the eye
like smoke, or steam, that many accidents that have occurred would
have been averted by the immediate retreat of the men from its
neighbourhood.

Can we, then, unmask this gas ? Can we make it visible to the
«ye like smoke or steam ? Or, failing that, can we make it reveal its
own presence by some automatic means, as sulphuretted hydrogen,
for example, can be made to reveal itself by means of acetate of
lead?

If you take some half-sheets of note-paper and trace upon them
with a camel-hair pencil dipped in acetate of lead a single word like
' Beware/ * Run,' ' Escape,' or ' Fire,' and then take any one of these
and expose it to sulphuretted hydrogen, each of these words, although
up to that time totally invisible, would become black -in a few seconds,

1880. EXPLOSIONS IN COLLIERIES. 897

owing to the affinity which the lead has for the sulphur contained in
the gas.

It is obvious that if anything analogous to this could be accom-
plished with the carburetted hydrogen of the pit, that much would
have been done to diminish the danger which now attends the opera-
tions of the collier.

Take another example. In my hope that the resources of chemistry
might supply a solution of the problem which has so long perplexed
everybody, I have made it my business from time to time to seek the
society of practical chemists, as well as of purely scientific men whose
business it is to teach chemistry. I have seen several amongst the
former who are engaged in calico-printing works, lead works, &c.,
and have sought, by getting them to talk about chemistry, and by,
so to speak, lying in wait myself for some hint in their conversation,
for something which might supply the missing link.

I had formed great expectations from the co-operation of Mr.
Baker, the chemist employed at the lead works in Sheffield, as he
appeared to me to possess an intellect eminently qualified to perceive
latent existences and their relations, but his untimely death destroyed
my hopes of help from that quarter.

In print works (calico), however, I found that the various tints
which give beauty to the calico cloth are not produced by the direct
imposition upon the cloth of a pigment or dye of the colour we see,
but that these colours, as to far the largest number of them, are all
contained or included in madder (or alizerine, an artificial madder,
so to speak), just as violet, indigo, red, blue, orange, green and
yellow are all contained in the white light of the sun ; and that the
cloth itself, previously prepared by what are called mordants, helps
itself, so to speak, from this store of colour to the particular tint it
wants.

Thus, for example, if the cloth is printed with a mordant con-
sisting of acetate of iron, wherever the cloth has been saturated with
this acetate, although it is perfectly colourless when put in, it will,
when it emerges from the alizerine or madder, be either black or any
shade of purple varying from very dark to pale, according to the
strength of the acetate which was impressed upon the cloth.

Again, if other parts of the same piece of cloth are saturated with
acetate of alumina, the colours which are absorbed by those parts so
saturated vary from dark red to pale pink, according to the strength
of the solution employed ; whilst varieties of chocolate, puce, claret,
lilac, &c., are obtained by a combination of the acetates of iron and
alumina in varying proportions.

The cloth, after having been fully treated and its whole surface
covered with these mordants, is still colourless when put into the
bath of alizerine, and upon emerging from that bath will show all
the colours which you see upon it in the drapers' shops ; these mor-

898 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

dants having from one fount of colour attracted to themselves all
the varying tints which are shown upon it.

If chemistry can do so much to reveal invisible existences, then, it
appeared to me, at least, to be a hopeful thing to do, to question
chemistry in relation to th se explosive gases : Could it be made by
itself, or in relation with something else, either to develope a latent
colour or to discharge, as chlorine will, some colour already given to
the paper employed ?

Another branch of the inquiry was, whether advantage could not
be taken of its less weight to the common air to show its pre-
sence.

The first experiment that suggested itself to my mind in this con-
nection was, that as, in any given portion of a pit where this gas is
present, it overlies the common air, that if a vertical recess were
chased in the side of a passage or place in the pit, in the coal, and
the front were glazed, leaving open the top and bottom, and if then a
small balloon of collodion, like the children's toys which are seen in
the street, were filled with the light carburetted hydrogen and put
into these recesses, it would float upon the stratum of common air
because filled with the lighter gas, but would remain at the bottom
of the stratum of the gas because kept down by the weight of the
envelope enclosing it.

The presence also of carbonic acid gas — which is heavier than
common air — could be demonstrated by a similar ball filled with
common air, which would float upon the carbonic acid gas and at
the base of the stratum of common air, for similar reasons.

But there are in chemistry forces known as Exosmose and Endo-
smose (diffusion of gases) which would so soon establish an equilibrium
between the surrounding medium and the gas or air contained, that
the hope of thus indicating the presence and quantity of the gas dis-
appeared.

A delicate instrument has been invented, constructed on the
principle of the diffusion of gases ; but as this would require the
application and careful observation of anybody using it, and as all it
shows can be equally ascertained by watching the elongation of the
flame in a safety-lamp, I pass it by.

A third avenue of investigation which I pursued was this : Can
this gas be absorbed ? — that is to say, can any means be found of
absorbing it, as it escapes from the coal, in some way analogous to the
following : ordinary limestone is a crystallised carbonate of lime ; if
it is exposed to the action of fire in a kiln, it is made to give off first
its carbonic acid, and then the water which holds the lime in the
form of crystals ; it is then quick-lime, and has so strong an affinity
for hydrogen in the form of water, that fifty-six pounds of it will
absorb from eighteen to twenty pounds of water, and still remain a
perfectly dry powder (hydrate of lime)? (Any addition to this

1880. EXPLOSIONS IN COLLIERIES. 899

quantity of water reduces it to the form of putty, for plasterers and
whitewashing. )

This eighteen or twenty pounds would represent a very large
quantity (which I have not had time to work out) of gas. Now here,
you see, we have a ready means of absorbing in this quick-lime a very
large volume of gas, or its equivalent in water ; and I thought it was
well worth a little inquiry and investigation as to whether any treat-
ment like this could be adopted in relation to the case which is the
subject of our consideration.

Next I put the question : Supposing all these branches of inquiry
to result unsatisfactorily, whether this gas should be loaded or
neutralised in some manner that should render it non-explosive ?

Some of these inquiries may seem, and no doubt are, very crude ;
but those who know most of chemistry will be least likely to deride
even crude suggestions on this subject, since they, at least, know
some of the marvellous transformations effected by it, and know
also how the sum of human knowledge does but touch the fringe
— fringe did I say ? — the edge of the edge of the fringe of the
vast unknown.

The next question I put to myself was : Can this gas be exploded
in regulated quantities with safety ? — that is to say, if naked lights
were kept constantly burning in those parts of the pit where the gas
was found to accumulate, could it be regularly fired in regulated
quantities that would not do mischief? since the results of these
explosions would be to convert the light carburetted hydrogen into
carbonic acid, and water (setting free of course a large volume of
nitrogen), which, being heavier than the common air, would follow the
water-courses to the bottom of the pit shaft and be removed without
difficulty.

This expedient might certainly be adopted with safety if we could
be certain that this light carburetted hydrogen or methylic hydride
exuded into the workings of the pit in a continuous and regular
manner ; but as we cannot be sure this is the case, and as, in some few
instances at least, it is thought that the operations of the miner liberate
a pent-up quantity of gas, it was necessary to regard this expedient
as unavailable.

In all these directions I have for many years patiently, though
blunderingly, endeavoured to find a solution of the problem before us,
but have been continually baffled by my ignorance of chemistry ; and
my object in now referring to these hitherto abortive inquiries and
investigations, is the hope that someone more qualified by technical
and scientific knowledge may be induced to pursue these or analogous
inquiries with better results, as, if we could J only make fire-damp as
visible to the eye and as obnoxious to the respiratory organs as was
the London fog of last January, we should have ga*ined a great point.

I cease to appeal to individual men of science for aid — they are all

900

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

far too busy, their time is always fully occupied by their daily occu-
pations : one with his political duties ; another with his students and
lectures; and the operative chemists with their daily employment.

But surely it is within the resources of science to accomplish this
work ; and surely there must be some of its votaries who have the
needful leisure for the investigation. To these, then, my appeal must
now be made. Do you need a motive ? Consider the case of the
women widowed by these explosions. I remember seeing one poor
woman, a day or two after the explosion at the Edmunds or Swaith
.Main Pit. The dead body of her husband was then lying in tbe
mine ; but she had children — the daily work of life must be done-
even by her. She wanted a pan which, nearly full of dirty water,
stood near her door upon a stone. I shall, I suppose, never forget
(it is many years ago now) the far-off look in her eyes as she
approached the pan; her whole figure was the expression of one
without hope, the very embodiment of despair ; she raised the pan
by the edge, utterly careless that the falling water splashed her dress
and feet, and listlessly moved away. Her grief was too deep for words
or tears ; and I turned away with a heart sick to see such suffering,,
and to know that she was but one of more than a hundred in the same
sad condition.

Take another case. When they were recovering, after an interval
of months, the bodies of the 189 men and boys killed in the Luna Hill
explosion, they, the bodies, were brought to bank and carried to the
shed in a large sheet of sailcloth, and there laid side by side. The
shed was about thirty feet long by eighteen feet wide and high, and
its four sides were of upright laths or battens about three inches wide
each, and with an interval of similar width between each, in order
that, from whatever quarter the wind blew, it might sweep away to-
leeward the dreadful effluvium arising from bodies in such an advanced
stage of decomposition.

Whilst I was there a body was brought in so burnt and so decayed
out of all likeness to a man, that you could not distinguish the front
from the back of the body ; it could only be surmised from the cir-
cumstance that from one side of the head a greenish yellow matter
was oozing from two places or holes, which were therefore supposed to
be the orbits of the eyes. The smell was dreadful, notwithstanding a
free use of chloride of lime and other disinfectants. There were
several women there ; one of them suddenly exclaimed, ' It's ahr Jack ! *
and before anyone could prevent her, she with a bitter cry stooped
over and actually kissed the loathsome object : what the eye of love
discerned that was hidden from us who were standing round, ' God
alone knows,' I only speak of what I actually saw.

Consider the men their husbands, too. What like husbands are
they? Remember the one whose body was found in the Hartley
Mine, after the accident to the engine-beam, lying with his break-

1880. EXPLOSIONS IN COLLIERIES. 901

fast can in his hand, upon the side of which with the point of his
pocket knife he had scratched a dying message of love to his wife
Sarah.

Or that other husband who, going in the dark in early morning
to that same colliery, in deep depression of spirit, which he could not
account for but only felt, turned back to kiss once more ivith tender-
ness his wife and children, and then resumed his walk to the pit which
in two short hours became his living tomb — for they did not die at
once in this case, their fate hung in the balance many days, during
which our kind-hearted Queen constantly telegraphed inquiries about
the possibility of saving the men's lives.

Do you want to know what sort of fathers some of these men are ?

Remember the man who, escaping with his boy and a comrade only
this year (I think it was in the Seaham Colliery after the explosion),
found the boy unable to go any farther ; I think he was insensible.
They could not carry him, and the boy's father was urged by his com-
rade, who did escape, to come along with him. What was the father's
reply ? ' Nay,' he said, looking at the insensible boy, ' I'll bide with the
lad.' And he did stay, and father and son were found after many days
lying side by side in death.

Do you want to know what kind of sons and brothers nearly all
these men are ?

Look at any report of the various committees that have been
formed on the occasions of past explosions, in order as far as possible
to prevent the material miseries of hunger and destitution being
added to the anguish caused by bereavement, and you will almost
invariably find that nearly a third of the men killed were the sole
supporters of widowed mothers or fatherless little brothers and sisters.
I have been a member of these committees more than once, and have
seen the reports of others, and I never saw one which did not give, in
addition to the list of widows and fatherless children belonging to
the men who had been killed, a further list of old women (widows)
and little brothers and sisters, who also had been deprived of their only
support by the loss of son or elder brother.

Lastly, would you like to know what sort of comrades and what
type of men our colliers are ?

This is what happened in connection with two of the colliery
explosions, the scenes of which I made it my business to visit when
these events occurred : it is not exceptional, it is merely typical of
what occurs whenever an explosion occurs with b'ke circumstances, as
every newspaper reader knows.

When the Edmunds Main explosion occurred, which widowed so
many scores of poor women, there was a doubt, as there often is,
whether all the men and boys in the pit had been killed ; there was a
hope, very faint indeed but still a hope, that there might be some
men still alive in the pit ; there was imminent risk of a second explo-

902 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

sion which might occur at any moment, and the peril of going down
then was simply awful. Still some men might yet be then alive below.
What happened ?

Volunteers offered themselves to go down ; the needful number
were selected (I think seven men) ; they took their lives in their
hands, quite unconscious of the heroism of their conduct because their
moral attitude was simply that of so many others ; they went down on
their errand of mercy, and in a short time these men (whose names
even were not given in the published accounts, so little surprising did
their conduct appear to those who know colliers) were added to the list
of the slain, for the dreaded explosion occurred ; and now, alas I there
was no longer room to doubt that all below were numbered with the
dead.

Take another instance. When the last dreadful explosion took
place at the Oaks Colliery near Barnsley, which also killed nearly two
hundred men and boys, if I remember rightly. I went there im-
mediately, and what had happened ? My friend Parkin Jeffcock,
mining engineer, had been sent for after the first explosion had oc-
curred; it was one of extraordinary violence and had completely
destroyed the head gear, and they were in momentary expectation of
a second, as it was clear that the first had utterly deranged the venti-
lation ; but here also the hope was clung to that some of the men might
still be alive in the pit, and, after most anxious consideration, it was
decided to incur the awful peril of descending the other shaft to see
if it were happily so (scores upon scores of men's lives have been
saved by these heroic darings of peril). When the decision was taken,
Mr. Jeffcock said, ' I want eight men to go down with me ; volunteers,
stand forward.' At once not eight but fifteen men stepped out from the
crowd ; they then picked out and rejected the seven men who had the
largest families, and had to employ the police to put them back into
the crowd, out of danger, lest the dreaded second explosion should
come even while they were getting ready to go down ; and Mr. Jeffcock
and his eight companions (heroes every one of them — and this they
would equally have been had they all returned alive) got ready and
went down. They had not been down long before another explosion
took place, and they too were numbered with the dead.

Are these the men, men of science, whose lives are not to be
cared for? who are to be slaughtered by hundreds every year?
Men so noble as many of these are make one feel that it is a
proud thing to be an Englishman. They are noblemen before whose
claims to our respect those of the aristocracy of mere rank sink into in-
significance and make those of mere wealth simply contemptible.
I say that, in spite of the researches and discoveries of Volta and of
CErsted, of Faraday and of Wheatstone, of Watt and of Davy, of
Stephenson, of Scheele and of Daguerre, it is a reproach and a
disgrace to the science of the nineteenth century that this state of

1880. EXPLOSIONS IN COLLIERIES. 903

things now exists ; that if you had bestowed one half the pains upon
this subject that have been taken in investigating the nature, the
properties and the relations of coal tar, we should have known all
about it long ago.

It is not God's will that this state of things should exist. His
character can be seen in the words in Exodus, c. xxii. vv. 22, 23 and
24, ' Ye shall not afflict any widow, or fatherless child. If thou
afflict them in any wise, and they cry at all unto me, I will surely
hear their cry ; and my wrath shall wax hot, and I will kill you with
the sword.'

Eead also these passages :—

Thou slialt not pervert the judgment ... of the fatherless; nor take a
widow's raiment to pledge. — Deut. c. xxiv. v. 17.

How long shall the wicked. . . slay the widow. . . and murder the fatherless ?
• — Ps. xciv. w. 3, 6.

. . . That widows may be their prey, and that they may rob the fatherless. —
Is. c. x. v. 2.

Oppress not the widow; nor the fatherless. — Zee. c. vii. v. 10.

Is it conceivable that He who uttered all this is responsible for all the
misery created by these catastrophes, making happy women into
widows, and making so many children fatherless ?

No, it is c because men will not learn, and will not obey the
physical laws of the universe ; ' and the bounden and pressing duty of
our men of science is to give themselves no rest until by continuous
painstaking and pertinacious inquiry they have found the solution of
this problem, the answer to this question. They must go down into
the pits, fearless of griming their hands and soiling their clothing,
and examine the physical condition of the coal in the vicinity of
' blowers ' to see if there is a ' fault ' or vertical fracture in the coal ;
this, if found, might explain the greater issue of gas at a blower,
as there would exist slow friction over a large area of vertical face of
coal. I found such an explanation of a blower in one pit I visited.

Some one pit should be set apart for observation ; the ingoing
atmosphere should be analysed, and the issuing atmosphere also,
taken at a point before it enters the furnace (where it passes through
the furnace)., or at the point where it is led into the upcast above the
furnace, where that course has been adopted to escape the risk of
ignition at the furnace ; the length traversed between the two points
should be noted ; analyses at points on the route should be made ; an
analysis of a sample taken at the foot of an ascending boardgate, and
then one at its upper end, should be taken to see if the ascending
current has carried up with it all the carbonic acid gas it started
with, plus that gathered on the way ; an analysis of a sample taken
at the top of a descending boardgate, and then one at the bottom,
would show if the descending current has carried down with it the
methylic hydride or light carburetted hydrogen plus what a calcula-

904 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

tion would show it had taken up in its course, and to what extent
these gases have succeeded in evading influences operating against
their natural tendencies. And all the results should be carefully
noted and recorded.

It might be that their incidence on the subject of the inquiry
would not be at once apparent ; it might, and probably would be,
that as to some of them, their incidence might only occur to a sub-
sequent observer ; the whole should be illustrated by a map of the
pit. These are a few of the very many aspects of this subject which
should all be closely and patiently interrogated by men of science.
They must ascertain the degree of intimacy with which fire-
damp mixes with atmospheric air, whether it is as intimate, for
example, as the union of sugar or salt with the water in which they
are dissolved ; or whether it is less so, like that of cream in new
milk, which only requires a little time and rest to rise to the surface.
They must ascertain how much gas has been fired in any given ex-
plosion. Surely, if they can tell us what is the force and velocity of a
cannon ball as it leaves the muzzle of the gun ; the dimensions and
position before the explosion of the broken timbers in the head gear of
a pit, their height above the point at which the force of the ascending
column of air was above the mouth of the pit, the point at which it
could relieve itself laterally, would give the speed of the ascending
column and the time (which could be ascertained) occupied by it, would
afford data enough for them to do so (it is merely a simple question
of dynamics) ; and they must give themselves no rest until the answer
is found, for that there is a solution of the problem I hold to be
certain, and in my opinion it will be deemed in the future, that
to have been a man of science in the nineteenth century and not to
have — I will not say, made the needed discovery — but not to have
done his utmost to do so, will be ipso facto a deep stain upon his
name. To what purpose do you tell us the component parts of the Sun,
of Jupiter, nay even of the sunbeam itself? For my part, I would far
rather you should tell me all about this gas, its properties, and
its relations, and that you should thus show us how colliery ex-
plosions are at once and finally to be rendered impossible in the
future.

For my own part, I was obliged to come back to the consideration
of the first and existing means of dealing with this gas, in the hope
that some improvement in those means might lead to the result
which I had vainly sought in the various directions I have already
indicated.

This brings me to the second part of my subject.

It will perhaps aid in the consideration of this problem, if I en-
deavour to restate its conditions.

We have, in any given section of the pit where these gases are

1880. EXPLOSIONS IN COLLIERIES. 905

found, atmospheric strata composed as follows : — the top stratum will
consist of light carburet ted hydrogen (since it is less than half the
weight of common air), next below this will lie the common air, then
— if it is present — will come carbonic acid gas, and below these —
assuming its presence also — water will be found.

Now the light carburetted hydrogen, which is our great difficulty,
is not the only thing which we have to remove from the mine ; there
are also the coal, the water, and vitiated air and heat to be got rid
of. How do we proceed to obtain the removal of these things ?

As to each and all of these, we ally our methods with the opera-
tion of natural forces.

To make this clear, however, I must make here a little digres-
sion. The bed of coal to be wrought seldom or never lies in a
horizontal position, but lies at a greater or less angle from the
horizontal. In those with which I am best acquainted the rise is
one in ten. When a given area, then, of coal has to be won, care
is taken to sink the shafts on the lower side of the area to be operated
upon ; parallel roads are driven from these shafts to right and left,
in a line which is at a right or nearly at a right angle with the angle
of inclination of the coal ; they are, therefore, level, or nearly so.
From the upper of these levels, parallel passages, called ' boardgates,'
are driven through the coal to the boundary of the area at its upper
extremity ; these, again, are united by ' headings,' and it is usual
(unless pecuniary pressure operates in another direction) to commence
winning the coal from the boundaries, which we thus find to be at
the highest part of the area to be worked. Now then, see the object
of sinking the shafts at the lower edge of the field, and how it enables
the miner or coal proprietor to obtain the aid of natural forces in the
removal of the water and the coal.

The water, of necessity, runs down hill, and so accumulates at the
bottom of the shaft, up which it has to be pumped. It there falls
into and fills a hole purposely made for it, say twelve feet deep,
called a ' sump,' and into this the pumps are inserted. So far as to
the water. The ' corves ' loaded with coal also travel much more
easily down hill than up ; they too descend these passages to the pit
bottom.

So far as to the coal. Now, as to the vitiated air.

Heated air is so much lighter than cold air (the coefficient
of expansion being '0021 of its bulk for every one degree Fahr.),
so a huge furnace is lighted at the bottom of the upcast shaft, which
is never thereafter allowed to go out whilst the pit remains a pit.
The air, then, which fills the workings is heavier than that which is at
the bottom of the upcast shaft, and it therefore rushes down to the
bottom of the upcast to supply the place of that which, being heated,
rises rapidly to the top of the pit through the upcast shaft. The air
to supply the place of that thus drawn through the workings of neces-

906 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

sjty descends the other shaft, and, by means of doors which fit the pas-
sages closely, it is made to travel on the levels, and up and down the
boardgates, thus traversing and sweeping clean all the places where the
men are at work before it can reach the upcast shaft. Here also a
natural force, the tendency of heated air to ascend, co-operates with
the operations of the miner, or rather, does the work required.

So far as the intention of removing vitiated air and heat and
supplying fresh air to the miners is concerned, this object is effec-
tually secured. But a further object is sought to be combined in this
operation, and that is the removal of the carburetted hydrogen ;
but this is lighter than the air, and consequently remains at the top
of the current, and, as it will be seen, has, as to a large portion of the
course of this circuit, to be carried down the slopes, or returning
boardgates, itself lying on the top or upper surface of the current of
air, and impelled in a direction contrary to that in which its own
specific gravity constantly and unceasingly tends.

That this operation is far less effectually performed than that of
supplying fresh air to the miner, will surprise no one, I think.

The current of common air, of necessity, does not quite reach to
the roof, or fill the sectional area of the passages, since the gas lies
between it and the roof of the passage down which it is driven.

There are inequalities also, and little pockets in the roof, which
fill with the gas, and, as a matter of fact, it is found that in nearly
every pit those portions of it from which the coal has been removed,
and which are called ' goaves ' (all lying at a higher level than the
exit from the pit into the upcast shaft), are almost invariably more or
less filled with this gas, which is simply kept at bay, so to speak, by
the current which sweeps the face of the workings, and establishes a
margin of breadth between these accumulations of gas and the places
where the miners are at work.

Now consider, with regard to the water, the coal, and the vitiated
air, it will be seen that the operations of the miner are in close
alliance with, and are aided by, natural forces ; but in that of the gas
(fire-damp), the operation of endeavouring to sweep a current of it
down a steep and long passage, up which its own tendency would
take it, is not in alliance with natural forces, nor does it seek to
overcome one natural force by another equally natural force, and
more potent, as in the case of a pump, for instance, working in strict
accordance with natural forces, overcoming the strictly natural force
of gravitation in the water ad hoc.

The expedient relied upon is not ineffective of course, but, after
all, it is very crude, and is analogous to that of endeavouring to sweep
water up a slope with a broom. A considerable portion of it may be
swept up the slope by vigorous sweeping, but some small portion, so
to speak, will get behind the besom, and will inevitably accumulate
at the lowest point~accessible to it.

1880. EXPLOSIONS IN COLLIERIES. 907

So, in endeavouring to drive this gas in a direction contrary to
its natural tendency, we undoubtedly succeed to a large extent in
doing so, but we must not forget that we do so with an instrument
or by means of a gas (oxygen) which itself is the most indispensable
element needful or needed to effect an explosion combined with this
gas. Still, after all, some of this gas escapes, and, as a matter of fact,
at the present moment it is not likely that there are many pits in
the whole of the country, which have been worked for some time,
but what have their accumulations of gas or fire-damp in the upper
and disused portions called c goaves,' from which the coal has already
been removed.

I have said, in relation to water, that a considerable portion might
be swept up a slope by a vigorous sweeper, but that some of it of ne-
cessity gets behind the besom, and occasionally it would happen that
the sweeper would tire. This is analogous to what happens when
the barometer falls, or the fire in the furnace is allowed to get too
low ; in both these cases the rate of progress of the current of air is
diminished, and then there is danger of the accumulation of gas to
which I have referred receiving such an accession to its volume and
force as would obliterate the margin before referred to, and bring the
gas into the working places.

Now, can we not in this case also — that is to say, the removal of
the gas (fire-damp) — ally ourselves and our efforts with natural
forces, that is, with the tendency of the gas in question to seek the
highest place of the pit ?

I do not propose to alter anything in existing arrangements in
the suggestion which I am about to offer, but only to . supplement
them.

Let the present system of ventilation remain as it is in all its
vigour, but, in regard to the gas which escapes it, gets behind it, and
accumulates in the upper and the waste portions of the pit, can we
not go arm in arm with nature in this matter, as we do in the other?,
and follow the gas whithersoever it goes ? and thus, in Lord Bacon's
words, by obeying nature learn how to conquer her.

It goes to the highest part of the pit, therefore into the exhausted
spaces.. I would work with this tendency, and, as in the case of water
a large hole is dug, called a ' sump,' to collect the water at the bottom
of the pit and so focilitate its removal by the pumps, so I would make
a hole or ' sump ' for the accommodation of the gas ; but as the water
is heavy and lies upon the floor, and has the sump for it made in the
floor, so my hole or ' sump ' to gather the gas should be in the roof of
the mine, and that in the highest accessible places.

Is it more certain that the water will run into the hole or * sump '
dug for it in the floor of the lowest part of the pit, than it is that the
light carburetted hydrogen would rise in a ' sump ' or hole dug for it
in the highest part of the workings of the pit ?

908 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

I would then place a vertical tube with an open trumpet-shaped
mouth, something like the funnel or chimney of a locomotive, in this
place, and of such length that the open mouth (which should be pro-
tected with a louvre covering or cap to keep out the dirt) should
reach up very near to the roof ; the bottom end of this pipe or tube
I would continue to the bank of the pit ; and as, in the case of water,
you proceed to remove the accumulation by a water-pump, so in this
case, I would pump out the accumulation of light carburetted
hydrogen by means of an air-pump (probably a small fan like that
used in foundries would do as well or even better).

This air-pump or fan could easily be worked by a strap from the
winding-engine, or by hand. It would only require assistance during
the daily drawing out of the pipe the atmospheric air which would
fill it when the gas was exhausted from the mine. I ask your
common sense, could you not as certainly in this way draw off every
cubic foot of gas in the mine as you now can certainly remove the
water from it ?

When the air-pump or fan was put into operation, it would first
draw off the atmospheric air contained in the pipe, and then gas pure
and simple could be drawn off, or if the outlet at bank were left
open, it would come of itself — would syphon itself out up the shaft ;
and this latter would be the better course, for the syphon would
continue in operation just as long as, and no longer than, there
would remain any gas to be removed, for as soon as the gas was
exhausted the syphon would be found filled with common atmo-
spheric air and would cease to act ; a most important fact if, as I hope,
the gas could be utilised. It would be easy to test, from time to
time with a light, what was being drawn off, taking the precaution
to disconnect the sample to be fired from the conducting pipe, lest it
should be in a condition which would allow the fire to travel back-
wards down the pipe into the pit in a manner similar to that which
caused the accident in Tottenham Court Koad. Small bladders
could be filled at a nozzle provided for the purpose and then carried
to a distance to be tried. I invite the thoughtful consideration, not
merely of colliery engineers, but of any person possessing common
sense, to this proposal. It appears to me, the more I think of it, to
give absolute and immediate control to the managers of the pit over
any gases which might be lurking in the recesses of the mine.

I confess that, when this expedient entered my mind last month,
my heart was filled with joy, as it appeared to me that, simple though
it is, it offers a real and effectual method of getting rid of this gas,
or at least of that which accumulates in the ' goaves ' and waste
places.

My feelings reminded me of those of Archimedes when he dis-
covered the way to determine specific gravity, and, therefore, the
integrity of certain metals, and was so elated with his discovery that

1880. EXPLOSIONS IN COLLIERIES. 909

he ran through the streets crying ' Eureka ! Eureka ! Eureka ! ' A
short time ago I saw a highly interesting letter, relating to the
Seaham explosion, in the Times, from a colliery engineer, who re-
commended that in new collieries, at least, a shaft should be sunk to
the rise of the area to be won, with a view to the more effectual
removal of these gases.

I invite him to pronounce upon the expedient here suggested,
and I do so the more readily because, valuable as his suggestion is in
the case of mines to be sunk, it could scarcely be enforced upon
existing mine owners without inflicting a heavy loss in the shape of
expenses in all cases, and in very many absolute ruin, under the
present condition of this trade. We must not forget that, owing to
the high prices which prevailed in 1873-4-5, there resulted a very
large increase in the number of collieries — a number far in excess of
our national requirements — and that this state of things removes,
therefore, far into the future the period when existing collieries will
be, to any considerable extent, replaced by others in which that
gentleman's views of ventilation could be adopted or enforced.

To summarise : — 1. Is it not a fact that fire-damp or light
carburetted hydrogen will, and does, seek the highest places of refuge
open to it in the pit ? 2. Is it not a fact, that at this moment there
is scarcely a coal-mine which has not gas in its goaves and highest
parts ? And 3. Is it not clear that by thus tapping the highest places
it can as surely be drawn off as water can be pumped out of the pit ?
I have spoken of utilising this gas for lighting purposes after
withdrawing it from the mine. This is not the dream of an enthu-
siast, for although the idea of thus withdrawing it from the mine has
not been before mooted, yet the gas itself has been used for lighting
purposes in one instance, at least, with which I am acquainted. It
is now considerably over twenty years that a more than usually pro-
ductive blower (or issue) of this gas was found in the Oaks Colliery,
near to Barnsley, and it was suggested by someone that, as it was so
steady, it would be well to use it, and a small gas-holder was erected
over it by Mr. Hutchinson, the then and present manager of the
Barnsley Gas Works (who has more than once filled a large india-
rubber bag sent by me, from London, for my experiments)"; and it
continued to be used, I believe, up to the time of the last explosion
at that colliery, when Mr. Parkin leffcock and his heroic companions
lost their lives. The gas has not been used since that time, I
am told, because that part of the pit has not been reached in the
subsequent working of the colliery.

I regard it as a point of no slight importance, that in the event
of the experiment of withdrawing the gas in the ma nner I hve
proposed proving successful (and if I live, and domestic considera-
tions permit my return to England in the early part of next summer,
it shall not be for want of trying, if the experiment be not made
VOL. VIII.— No. 46. 3 Q

910 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

before another winter), the effort should be made to use the gas for
lighting purposes for the following reasons. The plan of draining
the gas from a mine might be successful, but it would certainly
involve outlay, and if the gas were wasted or useless, the tendency
would be to do as little of the draining as possible. But if we can
make the gas useful, and so make it pecuniarily valuable, or ' put
money into it' — as business men would say — the question with
the manager of a colliery would cease to be, * How little of this gas
drainage will secure the safety of the colliery ? ' but, ' Where can we
find a further supply of gas ? ' and they would ' prospect ' all the old
workings and goaves in search of it, for it must not be forgotten that
this gas needs no purifying whatever, it simply needs collecting, and
this, the drain-pipes once in their place, it would all but do of itself.
Neither would an accident to the piping, say by its being broken even
in two, involve any liability whatever to explosion, as in a gas-escape
in a house or building, because the circumstances are radically dif-
ferent in the two cases.

In the case of a broken pipe in a building, the gas escapes
because there is a great pressure put upon it in the gas works to
secure its delivery at the points where it is required ; but in the
case of the piping in the pit there is no pressure whatever, and all
that would happen, therefore, would be that the gas contained in the
piping, between the fracture and the goaf, would return to the goaf,
common air taking its place in the pipe, and that between the
fracture and the pit bank would, if the end of the pipe at the pit
bank were open, simply ascend to the aperture and let itself out ;
and if it (the end of the pipe at bank being closed) would remain in
the pipe — in any case there would be no escape of gas at the frac-
ture— the gas would not come out, but air might go in, and no
possible harm could follow.

But I have also spoken of averting half, it may happily prove
even more than half, the number of explosions by this means, if it
proves successful.

Well, the proportion of accidents, which we may hope will be
averted by draining the pits of the gas which now gets behind and
escapes the ventilating current of air, will be variously estimated by
practical men, according as they attribute them to gas issuing from
the goaves and waste places, or to what some call « outbursts ' of gas.
There is reason, I think, to suppose that the meaning of this
term * outbursts ' is different in different men ; some, for instance — I
myself am one of them — consider all sudden ejectments of gas from
the goaves by fall of roof, i.e. the subsidence of the undermined
ground, are meant by this term, but I have heard some colliery
engineers and managers say that an * outburst ' of gas may arise from
the overlying stratum of rock, through the roof in fact, and the fall
of a portion of roof has been cited as proving this ; or again, that an

1880. EXPLOSIONS IN COLLIERIES. 911

6 outburst ' may come up through the floor, i.e., from the underlying
shale or rock ; or, lastly, from the coal itself. From the coal it
doubtless comes primarily, but I think it comes from the coal
gradually and steadily, through a multitude of small ducts, regularly
exuding it as a large upland bog gives off its rainfall gradually,
feeding the rills and the rivulets, and not like water issuing
suddenly in overwhelming volume from a reservoir, as when the dam
at Bradfield burst. Let us examine these two theories carefully, and
try to ascertain which of them is most in accordance with the doctrine
of probabilities.

We will take the theory of the sudden outbreak of a large
volume of gas, from the roof or from the floor of the mine, or from
the coal itself, first, and question it.

That the gas must have existed before it burst out, I suppose will
be admitted. In what form then did it exist ? Did it exist as a
solid or as a fluid,'from which state a blow or mere exposure would
instantly set it free, as the 720 cubic inches of carbonic acid gas
contained in an ounce of gunpowder can be instantly set free by fire ;
or still larger quantities of gas from gun-cotton, and from dynamite
or nitro-glycerine ?

It is not, of course, a rare thing for gas to be found or rather to
be capable of artificial conversion into a solid or a fluid, and we can
decompose oxygen gas from chlorate of potash, and from black oxide
of manganese for experimental purposes.

But all these preparations are artificial, and are not all capable of
instant conversion into gas ; and I have never heard of carburetted
hydrogen gas existing as a solid or as a liquid, and being capable of
instant conversion into a gaseous form. I do not, of course, say that
it cannot so exist, I know too little of the subject; but if it is
claimed that it does so exist, I think we are entitled to ask for its
production in that state, or, at least, for proof that it does exist in
that state.

Or, is it contended that it, the gas, existed merely in the usual
form of gas before it burst out ? Burst out from where ? Ex nihilo
nil. It must have^been in some cavity, for the coal itself only gives off
the gas gradually, more gradually than a bog gives off its water,
even when it, the coal, is subjected to tremendous heat in a retort.
It may, of course (having been given off gradually), have been collected
in some cavity or reservoir, and then suddenly tapped; but for
a cavity, having a cubic content of 1,000 feet, to give off even 1,000
feet, presupposes that it held at least 2,000 feet ; for its sides being
solid would not collapse like those of a bladder, and therefore it
must'still, after the supposed outburst, have 1,000 feet of something
in it. This hypothesis, too, makes it necessary that the gas must
have exerted great outward pressure before it was tapped, a pressure
of at least 30 Ibs. to the square inch.

3Q2

912 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

But cavities Buch as we have supposed (and much larger ones would
have been required for many — for most past explosions) not only
have never been found, but they cannot exist, either in the bind or
shale rock, originally clay, which invariably, as was first noticed by
Sir William Logan, underlies every coal measure, nor in the overlying
bed of sandstone rock, simply because both of these strata are
deposited rock, that is, they have both been slowly laid down by water
as ooze and sediment, and it is not possible that cavities such as exist
in igneous or volcanic rocks as plenty as those in a piece of gruyere
cheese, as I saw in the mountains of the Auvergne in September, and
see in every excursion in Maderia now, it is not possible for these
cavities to exist either in the rocks underlying, or in those overlying
the coal, nor in the bed of coal itself.

Surely if the facts had been otherwise there would be evidence
forthcoming. If it is suggested that the gas itself might by its great
expansive force make for itself cavities, we have the great difficulty of
understanding how, if the gas is expressed by force or pressure, it could
itself exert a stronger pressure still against that which is supposed
to be creating it ; further, in this case, as it is a law of nature that a
pent-up force will always seek vent or relief in the direction where
there is least resistance, these cavities or reservoirs would always be
formed in the coal itself, since it is nearly always much less hard than
either the underlying or the overlying rocks. If such cavities existed
there would surely be some existing evidence of them.

But further, the supposition that such cavities or natural gas-
holders are the sources of supply of the gas which is the cause of an
explosion, involves this also, that it must have been very closely com-
pressed in its cavity up to the time of its sudden liberation, that it must
have exerted great outward pressure. If only two volumes of gas were
in the place of the one, the outward pressure would be 30 Ibs. to the
square inch, as against 1 5 Ibs. pressure inward which is exerted by the
atmosphere outside, or 15 Ibs. outward pressure to the square inch,
extra.

Now, we know that every colliery engineer regards the readings
of the barometer with anxious solicitude, and any downward tendency
or actual fall is made the occasion of increased care to see that the
ventilation is in perfect working order, and especially that the safety
lamps are all carefully looked to.

In the evidence given before the coroner at the inquest following
the Seaham explosion, it is stated that special directions were given,
enjoining extra caution, the day before the explosion, as 'the barometer
was falling and gas might be expected.'

The pressure of the atmosphere in a normal condition of the
barometer, reading say 30'2 tenths, is 15 Ibs. to the square
inch, and it will be admitted that a fall to 28 inches would
be tremendous ; yet even so the pressure would only be reduced

1880. EXPLOSIONS IN COLLIERIES. 913

to 14 Ibs. and six-tenths of a pound, whilst in the greatest de-
pression of the barometer recorded in the British Isles it, the
pressure of the atmosphere, would not be reduced more than half a
pound. Is it not very difficult to understand what appreciable
difference the removal of half a pound in the external pressure could
have in liberating a body of gas exerting an outward pressure of at
least thirty times that amount ?

But the adherents of the theory now under consideration allege
that the outward force exerted by the gas supposed to be imprisoned
is vastly greater than I have supposed, and I have seen a statement
quoted in Eoscoe and Schorlemmer's Treatise on Chemistry, vol. i.
p. 608, which speaks of it (I cannot quote the ipsissima verba here,
as I have not the book with me) as escaping with a noise and force
equal to that of steam from a boiler, and as exerting a force which
sustained two columns of water to a height of thirty feet (above
ivhat?\ one ten feet and the other eleven and a half feet in diameter.

I cannot but think that these eminent men have made this
quotation, as of something bearing on the subject under consideration,
without fully considering it, as it is evidently written by an ignorant
man ; for what has the diameter of the column of water to do with it ?
It would require just as much pressure from below to sustain a column
one inch in diameter as to sustain one of ten feet in diameter. If
the water did rise in the shafts (for I presume they are indicated)
thirty feet, it probably rose to the same level in the pit below ; or, if
it did not — as the gas which exploded vented itself up the shaft at
the time of the explosion, destroying the head gear, &c., it is clear
that it was not the gas which exploded which raised and sustained the
water, but gases liberated after the water rose high enough in the pit
to seal the lateral entrance from the shaft into it.

The quotation, however, shows the idea of the great force and
consequent volume of the gas which occasioned the explosion, and so
far strengthens the idea that the large quantity of gas fired in the
explosion must have been contained in a large cavity or in some other
reservoir, or in a solid form, capable of instant liberation ; and it
further increases the difficulty of believing that the inappreciably
slight diminution in the restraining influence (half a pound) of the
atmosphere indicated by a fall in the barometer had anything what-
ever to do either with retarding or liberating this large volume of
gas ; that is, if we suppose its issue in the manner contended for in
that aspect of the ' outburst ' question we are considering.

In reference to the explosion to which the quotation in Roscoe
and Schorlemmer referred, I am able to state the following : —

I myself was in the pit a few days before the explosion occurred,
and this was what I saw. There were with me two ladies, the wives of
the two partners who had recently opened the colliery in the impulse
given to the trade by the high prices which were obtained for coal in

914 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

the winter of 1874-75. Neither of the partners was practically ac-
quainted with the trade. One was a barrister, and one a manufac-
turer.

We went into some * straight ' work, i.e. cutting a level or a board-
gate ; these are usually cut in pairs, and until progress sufficient to
be worth while is made to unite them by a cut or heading, the work
is necessarily in each a cut de sac ; but as the miner wants fresh air,
and as the gases want diluting and carrying away, the part which
one level performs to the other, or one boardgate to the other (that
is, that the air current shall go up one and down the other), has to
be done in the cut de sac itself, by suspending a continuous sheet of
tarpaulin from ceiling to floor midway and in the direction of the
working. The air is made to go up one side of this lateral partition,
or diaphragm, called technically ' bratticing ' — to go round the end
of it and down the other side.

In this particular working the man had neglected the bratticing
and left it dangerously far behind him ; he had also cast behind him
with the shovel the coal which he had cut away in working (which
is almost all small in straight work), until the heap filled at least
two-thirds of the vertical sectional area of the drift he was driving.
We climbed over the heap of coal, and I showed the ladies the man-
ner in which passages were driven through the solid coal ; and the
man, who had recently been an agricultural labourer, but had been
employed, as many and many another were in the great extension of
coal mining which then took place, volunteered to show the ladies a
blower, and taking his light he applied it to a large blower from
which the gas was issuing so that you could hear it ; immediately a
flame as large as you will see on a Saturday night at a butcher's shop
in any of the London markets appeared. I said, * there, that will do ; *
and he then took his coat up from the floor, and fluffed the flame out ;
and I made all the haste I could to climb back over the heap and to
conduct the ladies to bank. As soon as I got there, and not before,
did I feel safe, and shortly afterwards said to a friend, that I felt as if
we had come from the very antechamber of death. This was less than
a fortnight before 189 men and boys were hurried into eternity in
that pit by the explosion referred to in the quotation in Eoscoe and
Schorlemmer's works.

We have considered the theory of ' outbursts,' i.e. from the roof
or floor of the coal.

Now let us consider the theory that these outbursts are no outbursts
at all, in the sense maintained by some, but simply displacements
(which may be sudden or partial, but always sudden in their effects)
of gas which, itself exuding gradually from the coal, has been accu-
mulating silently and gradually in the higher recesses of the mine, and
see whether the known circumstances and conditions of the problem
admit of explanation by a theory which conflicts less violently with

1880. EXPLOSIONS IN COLLIERIES. 915

probabilities than the foregoing — which shall be more in accordance
with common sense.

Here again, I must ask space for a digression. I could speak of
* goaves ' and ' levels ' and ' boardgates ' and ' dips ' with the certainty
that mining engineers would fully understand, for they know more of
these things than I do ; but I want to be understood by non-practical
and by non-scientific readers, as well as by those people who can only
exercise common sense about it — people who, as Matthew Arnold said,
can let their ' thoughts play freely round ' my subject, unbiassed to
this opinion or to that, who do not think in grooves. My illustration
will only be understood by people acquainted with London, but those
who are not so acquainted will for the most part (as to those who are
likely to assist in the discovery of a remedy for explosions) be able to
do without the illustration.

We will suppose that the area included by the Edgware Road,
the Marylebone Eoad, Tottenham Court Road, and Oxford Street is
part of an estate under which the coal has been leased to a colliery
firm. Suppose further that, instead of the very moderate rise in the
ground from the Marble Arch to the junction of Tottenham Court
Road and Marylebone Road, the rise was one foot in ten and in that
direction. What would be done to get the coal underlying that area
would be this : two shafts would be sunk near the Marble Arch : one,
say at the end of the Edgware Road and on the north or upper side
of Oxford Street ; and one close to the top of Park Lane, on the south
or lower side of Oxford Street. Now, without describing the inter-
mediate and very interesting operations, let us suppose that a passage
has been cut through the solid coal from the Edgware shaft under the
pathway on the north side of Oxford Street up to its junction with
Tottenham Court Road, near Meux's Brewery. Here it crosses
Oxford Street to the south, and runs into a similar passage which has
simultaneously been cut from the bottom of the Park Lane shaft, and
which runs from it under the pavement on the south side of Oxford
Street up to its junction with Tottenham Court Road.

Now, if you light a huge furnace at the bottom of the Park Lane
shaft, and thus create a strong upward draught in it, the place of
the air thus withdrawn must be supplied by air going down the
Edgware Road shaft, running up the level under the pathway on the
upper or north side of Oxford Street, and back again down the level
running under the pavement on the other or south side of Oxford
Street to the furnace at the bottom of the Park Lane shaft.

But we want to get the coal which underlies the area north of
Oxford Street up to the Marylebone Road : how is the air current
already established to be made available for this purpose ?

Passages called boardgates are cut in pairs in the coal running
at right angles from Oxford Street to the Marylebone Road, and the
ends of these are united in a cross passage called a heading. Let one

916 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

of these boardgates run under Portman Street, Gloucester Street and
Place to the Marylebone Road, and let the return boardgate run
under York Place, Baker Street, and Orchard Street into the upper
level in Oxford Street. How is the air from the intake or down-cast
shaft in Edgware Road to be made to take this detour instead of
going on its way up Oxford Street ? This object is secured by erect-
ing in the passage in Oxford Street closely fitting doors which open
towards the Edgware Road (so that left to themselves the air
current will always shut them), somewhere between where Portman
Street leaves Oxford Street and the place where Orchard Street runs
into it, so that the air has to run up to the' Marylebone Road and
down again to Oxford Street before its progress up Oxford Street can
be resumed. This process has, in a pit of any considerable extent,
to be repeated over and over and over again.

Now, let us suppose that the coal enclosed between these two
boardgates, and the winning of which commences at the Marylebone
end, is somewhat advanced, has all in fact been ' got ' down to the
south side of Portman Square, is it not clear that the current of air,
no longer shut in by solid coal on the right hand and on the left,
will no longer go up to the Marylebone Road, but after going up
Portman Street will take the shortest cut available to it — on the
south side of Portman Square (in a line with Seymour Street) into
Orchard Street and so down into Oxford Street ? and is it not likely
that the area thus won north of and including Portman Square, the
' waste ' or ' goaf,' will fill with fire-damp ?

The air course cannot always nor generally clear the goaves ; it
forms a current round the unwrought coal, where the working places
are broader, when the current is vigorous, narrower when from any
cause it is less vigorous.

But the fire-damp is always in the goaf, always ready to extend
outwards when the current flags towards the working places of the
men, or in case it (the current) ceases, then to close in as a crowd
kept back by a body of mounted soldiers closes in upon their rear as
they pass onwards.

So well is this understood that when the viewer or under-viewer
of a mine finds a door (like the one we have supposed in the upper
level in Oxford Street between Portman Street and Orchard Street)
open (an accident which may arise from the fall of a piece of coal
from the loaded corves as they pass through jambing it), he never
closes it to send the air course through its proper channel up Portman
Street, &c. without finding out first how long it has been open.
Why ? Because, if the door has been open long, there may have
accumulated in the Portman Street Orchard Street direction a
quantity of gas which it would be highly dangerous at once to drive
into the air course under the Oxford Street pavement, as, if it came
into contact with a naked light, it would probably result in an ex-

1880. EXPLOSIONS IN COLLIERIES. 917

plosion. (If my memory does not deceive me, disastrous explosions
have been so caused.)

What he does is this : he will close the door or doors for a short
time, so as to drive into the Oxford Street level a portion only of the
accumulated gas, and then open them again, so that the air, resuming
the shorter cut once more, shall dilute the gas coming in at the
Orchard Street junction, and then after a time close the door again ;
and this he does as often as in his judgment it is necessary, in order
to clear out the accumulated gas without incurring the risk of an
explosion.

Now in circumstances where the gas in larger or in smaller quan-
tities is always not far off, the margin of safety cleared by the
ventilating current of air is in danger of being unduly narrowed
by any, even temporary diminution of its force and volume, and it is
liable to this diminution from neglect to keep up the furnace, for
instance, and also from diminished pressure in the atmosphere, i.e. a
falling barometer. If you suppose but a narrow margin at the outset,
either of these or both combined might easily result in its disappear-
ance altogether.

There is another condition also, always present, which a falling
barometer will certainly influence.

The earth which we have undermined in getting the coal from
Portman Square up to the Marylebone Eoad, though it does not fall
in immediately, nor in a lump, yet it does eventually, though more
or less gradually, subside, as can be seen even on the surface.

You can see a fine illustration of this as you ride from Bridwell
Bar, on the road from Sheffield to Barnsley, down into Worsbro' Dale,
on your right towards Worsborough old church ; you may see in the
upland slope of the hill a long ridge or terrace almost as clearly
defined as the terraces at Windsor. This is caused by the subsidence
of the land, under which the coal has been won.

This superincumbent mass falls in portions, large and small, from
time to time, and gradually fills up the goaf, say between Portman
Square and the Marylebone Koad. Now a very little reflection will
show that at first it is upheld by the attraction of cohesion, which
for the time at least is greater than the attraction of gravitation ; but
a time comes when the latter prevails, and a mass of rock and earth
falls into the goaf.

But in the course of this a time came when these forces were ab-
solutely balanced against each other — i.e. the attraction of cohesion
(in alliance with the upward pressure of the atmosphere 15 Ibs.
to the square inch) was exactly equal to the attraction of gravitation,
and only vis inertice withheld the mass from falling ; a fall in the
barometer now would mean something, it would mean the withdrawal
of quite sufficient sustaining force (equal say to half a pound to the
square inch) to turn the scale in favour of gravitation, and when the

918 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

mass falls, the accumulated gas below is expelled in volume, and if
it comes into contact with a naked light an explosion results.

Here then in the case of accumulations of gas in goaves we
have two very intelligible and appreciable ways in which a fall in the
barometer may, and no doubt does, tell ; it may diminish the volume
of the ventilating current of air very sensibly, and it will and does
hasten the fall of all portions of roof in goaves which are nearly ready
for falling.

I believe that, in addition to these, it has been ascertained that
this gas diffuses itself into the surrounding atmosphere much more
rapidly in times of low atmospheric pressure than when the atmo-
sphere is in a normal condition, leading one to suppose it would issue
from the goaves and wastes more plentifully under these circum-
stances. This point I must leave to others better able to assess its pro-
bable influence than I am.

Whilst in England for a few days a month ago, I was shown a
paragraph in the Bamsley Chronicle, October 9, 1880, which it may
be useful to quote in this connection : —

OUTBTTESI OF GAS AT THE OAKS. — On Friday morning week, a very extensive out-
burst of gas occurred at the Oaks Collieries, near Barnsley, of which Mr. James
Wilson is the manager. Fortunately, however, everything was in perfect order,
and so the occurrence passed off with no worse results than driving the men away
from their work for the time being. It appears that on Thursday night the deputy
went his round about eleven o'clock, and at that time he found that everything
was safe and free from gas. However, he had got instructions from the manager
to take special care that, night, as, in consequence of the state of the atmosphere,
the glasses falling or being likely to fall, gas might be expected. Between two
and three o'clock, therefore, on Friday morning, the deputy was returning again
to examine the place when he met the men working at the far end of the Board
Level near the place where the gasometer was erected by Mr. Hutchinson, of
Barnsley, and where the gas issued that lighted the mine previous to the first ex-
plosion. The deputy on inquiry found that the men had noticed the gas issuing,
and taking the alarm in time they made off from that district of the mine without
staying to get their clothes. On examination of the place by the deputy he found
that there was some weighing going on in the goaf, and the gas was issuing in
large quantities, and was at that time very bad ; and it did not get clear again for
some time. The quantity of gas which issued was very large, but owing to the
perfect state of every lamp and other appliances in the mine, it was taken away
without much inconvenience to anyone. Had there been the slightest defect in
any of the lamps, &c., an explosion must have resulted. Everything, however,
was in perfect order, the current of air passing being a very large one, and with
this, as we have said, the gas was eventually carried off without injury to anyone
or anything.— Barndey Chronicle, October 9, 1880.

And the following quotation from the Daily News, October 20, 1880,
which I bought on board the ship in which I sailed from Liverpool
on that day : —

The adjourned inquiry into the Seaham explosion was opened yesterday
at Seaham Harbour. A plan of the colliery was explained by the manager,
and a number of overmen and deputy-overmen gave evidence, but no light was

1880. EXPLOSIONS IN COLLIERIES. 919

thrown on the cause of the accident. The only exceptional circumstance noticed
on the evening before the explosion was an accumulation of gas in the third east
way, occasioned by a fall ; otherwise, the witnesses said, the ventilation was good,
and nothing was seen to cause alarm. No shot was fired on the night of the ex-
plosion, nor for months before. None could say where the mischief originated.

Michael Spence, back overman, deposed that he saw gas in Belcher's ' flat,'
caused by a fall. This he reported. There was danger where gas was seen. The
ventilation was good.

The ' weighing ' in the first of these quotations means the bulging
downwards of the roof of the goaf ; the ' fall ' in the second, a fall of a
portion of the goaf.

I have endeavoured as fairly and as carefully as I can to examine
the two theories of c sudden expulsion of gas from the coal or its con-
taining strata,' and also that of the l displacement of gas already
accumulated in the process of mining.' It is the great difficulty of
reconciling the first to the physical conditions existing, and the
apparently easy reconcilement of these conditions with the second
theory, that has led me to say at the outset of this paper, ' that if we
can remove these accumulations of gas we shall possibly remove the
cause of even more than half of the explosions which occur.'

Whether further inquiry will show this to be the case or not, or
whether even so the means I have suggested, viz. tapping this gas at
the highest parts of the workings and drawing it off, will prove to be
the hoped-for remedy, time and experiments carefully made can alone
show.

Should experiment show it not to be any remedy, then I would
suggest that some scientific or philanthropic body should offer a
premium of say twenty thousand pounds for the discovery of an en-
tirely effectual preventive of these explosions — that, and a nation's
gratitude, would surely be inducement sufficient, not to speak of the
enormous pleasure of doing so much good, to attract to the considera-
tion of this matter the highest scientific knowledge and the most
powerful intellects we have ; and I do not think there would be any
difficulty in obtaining from the generous people who always give so
freely to the relief of the suffering caused by these explosions, sub-
scriptions to a guarantee fund for this amount, the successful appli-
cation of which would prevent so much suffering, so many violent
deaths.

Whether these accumulations of gas can be so completely with-
drawn from the workings by the means I have suggested as to secure
the safety of the miner from explosion so far as these accumulations
are concerned in producing them ; as also, whether the whole or
merely a part, and if so, what part, of all explosions, are due to these
accumulations, must, as I have already said, be left at present ; but
of this I think we may be very sure, that if all men of science who
are competent to the investigation of this problem will henceforth
give it their pertinacious regard, we may say with great confidence

920

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

December

that the night of our ignorance is already far spent and the day is at
hand.

May God grant it, for then shall this gas diffuse genial warmth
and cheerful light in homes into which hitherto it has brought only
bereavement and anguish, desolation and woe ; and the miner him-
self shall pursue his beneficent labour deep down in the dark bowels
of the earth in safety as complete as that of the husbandman em-
ployed in the sunlit fields high over his head. Amen and Amen.

SAMUEL PLIMSOLL.

Madeira, Nov. 10, 1880.

1880. 921

MUSIC AND THE PEOPLE.

Is England, as a nation, musical ? Few questions can be the subject
of more frequent and vehement discussion among us, the English
people, ourselves ; and by this very fact we point with an unconscious
finger to our inherent weakness. Qui s'excuse, s'accuse. When
would a German writer find it to his interest to indulge in long dis-
sertations as to whether Germany is or is not a musical country,
and to collect every scrap of evidence which may help to vindicate her
claim to be so called ? Until we have quite made up our own minds
whether we think ourselves musical or not, we cannot be surprised if
our Continental neighbours politely pass us over in their musical cal-
culations— politely, we say, because we enter into these calculations
as a business item, important exactly in proportion to the number of
pounds sterling we are ready to pay for the article, music.

Certainly, if to hear much music, to have the first of European
performers, and the luxury of paying the highest prices for them, could
constitute a claim to a musical disposition, then England would be the
most musical country in the world. Yet, were an earthquake to sweep
away the whole of this musical fabric that we raise here with so much
trouble and cost, what would the art lose ? Imagine for a moment
that the German race were to be blotted out from the face of the
earth ! We feel at once that music would be left like a watch without
a mainspring. Nor could France, nor modern Italy, nor the Polish
and Hungarian peoples, nor even Eussia and Scandinavia, disappear
without leaving a sensible gap somewhere. None of these but have
produced artists or works of art whose influence has acted and reacted
beyond the limits of the respective countries that gave them birth,
and who, however various in degree and in quality of merit, may be
called cosmopolitan. What does England contribute to the general
store ? A considerable number of musical executants — instru-
mental executants, vocal executants, and executants in com-
position. Not those phenomenal executants of whom the world pos-
sesses but a few, and who are, in their way, as truly creators in art
as are great composers. But accomplished executants of a very high
class, nevertheless, worthy of respect and of admiration.

922 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

Still we cannot disguise from ourselves the unpalatable fact that
the history of art would be unaffected by the disappearance from the
world of the whole mass of this English execution. All we so far
succeed in doing is in ministering (and that only in part) to our own
needs. We do not enrich other nations.

And yet it is undeniable that there is in Great Britain an intense
wish for music, seemingly rendered keener by the fact of its being an
alien growth, and by its tardiness in taking root here. The craving
has, as we know, persisted unabated for many centuries. We want to
naturalise the thing, like the potato-plant ; for, short of this, we know
it can have no vitality, no organic growth, or individual existence here.
It has become as indispensable a luxury as our tea or coffee, and we
can apparently as little make it grow here as we can these. We
import and import, but each importation leaves us, in the main, where

we were.

Still we go on, undaunted by difficulty. It is hard to believe that
where so strong a wish exists, there is not also much latent capacity.
Those of the cultivated classes who love and practise music have such
a profound faith in its softening and elevating influence that they
are beginning to exert themselves to bring its benefits within easy
reach of all. The last few years have witnessed the rapid rise and
spread of People's Concerts, series of which have been started in
London and some of the chief provincial towns by a sort of simul-
taneous impulse, and which, tried at first as experiments, have already
in many cases developed into what seem likely to be permanent in-
stitutions. The success attending this remarkable movement has
varied indeed in amount and in kind according to circumstances, but
has unquestionably been great, and sufficient to set speculation at
work as to the causes of the need for establishing such concerts, as it
were, from outside. How is it that the demand which seems to exist,
is inadequate to create its own supply ? Why, seeing that the artisan
classes enjoy music so much, have they hitherto made so little effort
to get it for themselves ? And the question naturally follows, ' Will
this existing state of things be permanently modified by these attempts
to bring music to people who have not found it out for themselves ?
Will they make it their own, or still go on waiting till it comes to
them ? ' It may help us in feeling our way to some sort of answer if
we look, in the first place, at what is actually being done by a few of
these societies.

Chief among London undertakings of the kind are the People's
Entertainment Society, the Kyrle Society, and the People's Concert
Society. These three differ somewhat from each other both in their
aims and their methods of working.

The object of the first is expressed in its own prospectus as being
4 to provide good high-class amusement for the poorer classes in
London during the winter, in the hope of withdrawing them from

1880. MUSIC AND THE PEOPLE. 923

lower places of resort.' It has, therefore, a distinctly philanthropic
end ; and while at the ' entertainments,' which are the means to
this end, music is the chief, often the only attraction, others, such as
readings, recitations, or even dramatic performances, have an occa-
sional place. No less than sixty-six of these entertainments were
given in the first four months of 1879, in some of the poorest districts
in London, such as Lambeth, "Westminster, Battersea, &c. ; and during
this last spring six or seven such concerts were being organised
weekly by the society. At some places a small charge was made for
admission, at others the entertainments were free ; but in this, as in
both the other societies mentioned, the bulk of the expense is met by
voluntary subscriptions and donations from well-wishers. The per-
formers at the concerts are amateurs, and professionals who generously
give their services, or at most accept such remuneration as covers
their expenses. Songs and ballads, interspersed with instrumental
solos, and now and then a comic song, constitute the staple of the
programmes. This excellent undertaking has been rewarded by a
most encouraging amount of success, the halls and rooms being, as a
rule, well filled, and the audiences numbering several hundreds. The
appreciation by these audiences of the efforts made in their behalf was
shown at Battersea, in the presentation to the earnest and energetic
Treasurer (and founder) of the society of an address signed by 200
working-men, expressive of their pleasure and their gratitude.

Similar societies, in connection with this, have been recently
started at Manchester and Winchester, with every prospect of success.

The Kyrle Society's expressed object is ' to bring Beauty home to
the people.' While fulfilling a philanthropic purpose this is, there-
fore, an art society, and music is but one among the many forms of
beauty with which it deals. Its musical branch consists of an amateur
choir, formed for ' the practice of oratorios, cantatas, and other choral
works of the highest class, with a view to their gratuitous performance
in churches, schoolrooms, and halls situated in the poorest parishes of
London.' These performances are all free, as it is an integral part of
the society's scheme to bestow * beauty ' on the people as freely as
Nature bestows it. Between the beginning of 1878 and the present
time sixty-six of them have been given, including oratorios, such as
the Messiah, Creation, Elijah, and many others (which when
performed in churches, have formed part of the religious service), and
smaller miscellaneous concerts, some of them in hospital wards. All
these have proved, and continue to prove, attractive to large numbers
of the people.

The People's Concert Society aims at ' the popularisation of good
music by means of cheap concerts.' By * good ' music is here to be
understood classical music, and that instrumental. Songs are given,
by way of variety, but the main feature of the programmes is con-
certed chamber music, quartetts and trios, such as are heard at the

924 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

Monday Popular Concerts ; with this difference, that only short por-
tions of these works are performed at a time, so as not to tax too
severely the attention of an untrained audience. Such programmes
cannot compete with those of the music-halls, for they are not
amusing ; neither with oratorios, as they are not a form of devotion.
This society, recognising music as a good in itself, holds it out as its
own reward. The concerts are not given gratis, but the prices of
admission, varying from one penny to one shilling, make them acces-
sible to all but the utterly destitute. Presenting music, as they do, in
its severest, if also its purest form, they cannot hope to vie in wide
popularity with the People's Entertainments ; still the fact is en-
couraging that the society's second season has been more prosperous
than its first. Between November and April last it had twenty-five
concerts, among which the most successful were a series of six, given
in the Chelsea Vestry Hall, and repeated in Bishopsgate Schoolroom ;
and, more especially, three single concerts at the South Place Institute,
Finsbury, all of which attracted numerous and apparently appre-
ciative audiences. One of these Finsbury concerts was on a Sunday
evening, when 1,100 people were present. Admission on this occasion
was of course free, but a voluntary collection was made afterwards,
of which the results averaged twopence per head.

Considering the sort of music performed, its reception by the
audiences was favourable beyond what could have been expected. It
has occurred that every instrumental number in a programme has
been encored ; single concerted movements have been so on several
occasions ; while violin or violoncello solos, when first-rate, elicit un-
bounded enthusiasm. The last number in the programmes is always
instrumental, and it rarely happens that these people leave before the
last note. In this how unlike the upper classes ! Many well-known
artists have given their services, or accepted merely nominal fees ; a
boon to the society of which the importance cannot be overrated, as it
has been abundantly proved that to make such music intelligible to
such an audience a masterly performance is even more necessary than
it is when the hearers are more musically cultivated.

Except, it may be, in cases of individuals, these concerts can hardly
appeal to the very lowest and most degraded class. In instrumental
chamber music there is little to excite or forcibly to arrestTdull
attention ; while to follow it at all requires on the part of those to
whom it is utterly strange, an effort of mental concentration which it
is hopeless to expect from people struggling and toiling for mere
existence. The degree of perfection in performance, too, which, as we
have said, is requisite if the music is to be comprehensible, makes the
getting-up of concerts a serious matter, and renders it impossible for
this society to multiply its operations and centres with the rapidity, of
the itinerant societies. Its field must for a long time be more restricted,
and its results in appearance less brilliant than theirs. But by

1880. MUSIC AND THE PEOPLE. 925

sowing the seed of art for art's sake among the people, it strikes at
the root of the state of things described as existing in this country.
It should with perseverance become a permanent institution, putting
within the people's reach the possibility not only of hearing, but
themselves practising the music which affords to those who know it
such pure and elevating pleasure ; and which, once it obtains a footing
among the people themselves, will make its own way and provide a
source of growing interest which may in time prove the most fatal
of all rivals to lower forms of amusement. It can never compete with
these on their own ground ; but by withdrawing from them gradually
those who are capable of better things, it must in the end raise the
general standard of enjoyment.

It is not always easy to recognise the fact that there is something
antagonistic in philanthropy and art. The essence of art is freedom and
self-development, though there may be that voluntary subordination to
a higher rule which is not incompatible with these. Practical philan-
thropy aims at making men better than they are, it may be by legis-
lation, by persuasion, by inducement, but its end is always modification.
No nation is so distinguished by the philanthropic spirit as the
English, and a most admirable spirit it is, but not the soil most
favourable to the growth of art. When concerts are presented to
people as something good for them, a moral duty rather than a
privilege seems involved in frequenting them. It lies at the root of
so much that is done and so much that is not done in England, this
doing nothing for its own sake, but for some secondary object to be
gained by the doing it, some advantage abstract or concrete, terrestrial
or celestial. The object may in itself be all that is desirable, but it
does not seem naturally to occur to us that by this direct aiming at
it we may destroy or invalidate the most effectual means of bringing
it about. Direct philanthropic action, like direct legislation, may
counteract certain manifestations of evil influences, but does not neces-
sarily tend to modify the condition of things which has brought these
weeds into existence, and will produce fresh crops as fast as the first
are removed. The soil must be prepared, as well as the seed of better
things sown.

We are said to be, as a nation, unsociable ; and it is very true that
the poorer classes do not here, as in Germany, find relaxation after
the labours of the day by meeting together to make music in concert.
Apart from the fact that the German standard of general education
is higher than ours, there are many reasons for this. Our climate
in great measure forbids outdoor recreation, while the crowding of the
vast masses of poor in our great cities makes social meeting in their own
homes impossible to our people. On this subject we would refer our
readers to an interesting report of parish work in Whitechapel
(1878-9), by the Kev. S. A. Barnett, than whom no man has done
VOL. VEIL— No. 46. 3 R

926 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

more to raise and educate the people under his charge. Whether
his work finds as yet its due recognition we know not, but it is the
kind of work that leaves permanent traces behind it. He writes :
* From company, from social intercourse, the mass of the people is cut
off. . . . No one can know the lives of our people without seeing
their dulness, and many of us see in such dulness an excuse for their
wild courses ; ' while farther on he testifies to the fact that ' there is
nothing which people find so interesting as their fellow-creatures.'
It is manifest that no place affords this interest to poor people but
the public-house, of which it is to many the greatest attraction. To
dwell on the numberless dangers and temptations to which the better
sort of men are here exposed would be superfluous.

Now music, as if to make up for being the most abstract and
ideal of all the arts, requires for its materialisation, so to speak,
more active co-operation than does any other one of them. In order
to have an objective existence at all, it has, on every occasion of its
presentment, to be re-created by performance. This gives it, for
English people, at once an advantage and disadvantage as compared
with other arts. Our practical nature is not the stuff of which good
audiences are composed for works requiring brain-abstraction in the
listener. On the other hand, it does afford the very best material for
active realisation, and even a little actual practice in music goes a
long way in facilitating the effort of listening, besides giving the
natural human interest of a possible personal participation in the kind
of thing performed. No doubt this is one reason of the wide
popularity of oratorio, which is greater here than in any other
country. Not the only reason. The uneasy conscientiousness to
which we have alluded as an element unfriendly to art development
finds in oratorio peace and repose. In the country especially, where
the parochial clergy are foremost in all collective gatherings for edu-
cational and recreative purposes, there are numbers of people, the in-
heritors of puritanical principles, who cherish a distrust and dislike
of anything theatrical, to whom an opera-house is terra incognita,
and who have an uncomfortable feeling about any art pursuit when it
is quite dissociated from their own form of religious service. All the
artistic and musical aspirations of this class are resumed and ex-
pressed in the oratorio. They go up once or twice a year to hear the
Messiah or Elijah at Exeter Hall, as the Jews went up to worship
in the Temple at Jerusalem. But even this would not sufficiently
account for the vast comparative popularity in England of works of
this sort without the fact that in these, and these only, some social
co-operation is realised in art work. More of whatever capacity and
love for music may be innate in us has been elicited by choral societies
than by any other influence. This choral music is loved because it is
known ; it can be appropriated and understood, for all take, or have
taken, or might take, an active share in it. When this feeling, now

1880. MUSIC AND THE PEOPLE. 'J27

limited almost entirely to vocal works, extends to instrumental, there
may be popular audiences here for symphony concerts.

No society has recognised this fact so distinctly, and made so
sagacious and practical a move in its direction, as the Birmingham
Musical Association. In the winter of 1878-9, Mr. Collings, M.P.,
the then Mayor of Birmingham,1 gave a series of four free concerts to
members of the artisan class, with the double purpose of affording
pleasure to his fellow-townsmen and of ascertaining how far good
music would be attractive to those who had previously had few
opportunities of enjoying it. The results were in the highest degree
encouraging, about 3,000 persons being present on each occasion.
A public meeting was called to consider the matter, which resulted
in the establishment of the Birmingham Musical Association. T\vo
objects were to be achieved, if possible.

1. ' The provision of cheap concerts of a high class, which, it was
believed and hoped, would be self-supporting.' Towards this end
great advance has already been made. Between November 8, 1879,
and April 24, 1880, a series of twenty- two concerts was given. The
music at these concerts was of various kinds. Birmingham is rich
in musical resources, and not being so vast as this unwieldy London,
which can only be worked by districts, it can afford to concentrate
these resources on one undertaking. Some were ballad concerts,
varied by harp, organ, or violin solos, or by vocal glees. Many were
of the choral kind dear to people's hearts. Several choirs — the
Festival Choir, the Birmingham Philharmonic Union, and Amateur
Harmonic Association, and many more — assisted on different occasions,
performing selections from the best oratorios ; cantatas, glees, and
part-songs. On other evenings Mr. Stockley's band was the attrac-
tion, when such works were given as the overtures to Oberon and
Masaniello, the ballet music from Schubert's Rosamunde, and
Eubinstein's Fer amors, the introduction to the third act of Lohen-
grin, Meyerbeer's Coronation March, and Beethoven's First Sym-
phony ; these being interspersed not only with ballads and Volfcslieder,
but with songs by Handel, Mendelssohn, and Beethoven. Many of
the tickets (price 6d. and 3cL) were sold, by permission, at coffee-
houses, and in this manner reached the right class of persons. On
some occasions all tickets had been disposed of on the day before the
concert, and on many evenings hundreds of people were turned away
before the doors were opened.

2. The second object proposed by the association is ' the establish-
ment of popular classes for musical instruction, both vocal and
instrumental, with the addition of a musical library, so varied as
to include the compositions of all the great masters, so copious as to
afford a sufficient number of practice parts, and so accessible as to

1 To him, as well as to the secretary of the society, we are indebted for full
information', courteously given to us, of its proceedings.

3 K 2

928 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

bring within the reach of all classes music hitherto unattainable ex-
cept at serious cost.'

How this splendid project will work can only be shown by time,
and remains yet to be seen. Here, however, we seem to have the
suggestion of what most of all is wanting, the co-operation of all
classes in one object for its own sake. Of all influences adverse to
our end, none is perhaps so fatal as the prevalence of endless class
distinctions, and nowhere are these so complex nor so aggressive as
in our * democratic ' country. In Germany the broad line of demar-
cation between the nobility and the ' people ' saves a good deal of
trouble by dividing the world in two well-defined sections. But
here, where professional people fight shy of shopkeepers, where large
shopkeepers will not send their children to cchool with those of small
shopkeepers, nor small shopkeepers theirs with those of artisans,
where farmers' daughters and squires' daughters have distinct * circles,'
where everyone knows that nothing prevents him from rising any
number of grades in the social scale — if he can, where each man,
and still more each woman, is on the defensive lest he or she should
be suspected of associating on equal terms with any one in a ' lower
set ' — what chance here is there for an art which neither knows nor
recognises any of these things ? If we are to combine in musical
art work, all sense of favours conferred or received must be put aside.
What is wanted is association ; and unless the upper classes are finally
to be excluded from progress, the example must emanate from them-
selves.

In these centres where concerts are established for introducing to

the people a kind of music as yet utterly new to them, can nothing

be done towards putting such people en rapport with what they are

to hear ? We constantly hear complaints from people of leisure,

women especially, of lack of scope for their powers or their energy.

In this attracting and drawing together of the atoms of our masses

of poor, there is work for any number, if rightly set about. The

choral societies are doing a great deal, but in the large cities, and

above all in London, there are vast numbers of the population quite

beyond their reach, and much remains to be done that is not even

attempted. We do not want only to beg people to come and hear us,

but to put them in the way of doing for themselves what we now do

for them. We should like to see such a possibility established in

every important concert ceutre, in the shape, to begin with, of a

singing-class for imparting the rudiments of musical knowledge.

Trained teachers should be appointed to these classes, for to do such

work efficiently requires knowledge and experience. But the labour

would be lightened and the impetus of the movement tenfold increased

if amateurs would associate with the work by themselves joining

such classes and singing too. If the teaching were good, this would

be very instructive to those who did so join ; there are plenty of men

1880. MUSIC AND THE PEOPLE. 929

in the upper classes to whom it would be as improving as to their
artisan brothers ; while ladies whose musical education is limited, as
too often it is, to the mere finger-practice of the pianoforte, would
materially gain by such association.

But besides this, if we expect working-people to come and listen
patiently to instrumental music, after the novelty of the thing has
worn off, we should found some associations, be they at first on ever
so humble a scale, for concerted instrumental practice. The con-
ductor should be a good practical musician, either professional and
paid out of the society's funds, or an amateur fit for the work and
able to devote himself to it. Some competent person, too, should be
* retained ' for the piano, which would be necessary, at any rate at
first, to fill up blanks in so elementary an orchestra. A room with
a piano in it should be hired for, say, one or two evenings a week ; a
few special fittings for this room, desks, &c., would be required. It
should then be made known in the neighbourhood that any man who
can play on an instrument is welcome on such and such evenings for
concerted practice ; perhaps some nominal fee might be charged as
condition of membership and towards defraying expenses. If this
appeal were responded to, it would be necessary to separate those
who came into two classes : those who may have some knowledge of
reading music at sight, and those who play by ear only. For those
who desired it, of these last, special extra instruction might be pro-
vided. The music would probably have at first to be arranged to
suit the materials. From simple melodies, purely harmonised, it
might be possible soon to proceed to arrangements of easy overtures
and symphony movements. Here, again, if our amateurs who can read
and play ' a little,' and especially some of those many gentlemen who
now learn to play on the violin and other orchestral instruments,
would associate themselves with such practice, they might turn their
smattering of knowledge to the best account, and most effectually
help themselves in helping others who have not had their oppor-
tunities.

It is probable that the nucleus of a sort of orchestra might soon
be formed in this way. When we come to inquire, it is astonishing
how many men in the artisan class can play a little on some instru-
ment or other — cornet, saxhorn, flute, concertina, nay even violin
or violoncello. A ' sister ' engaged in hospital work at Clewer states
that in the male wards they have had, at different times, numbers of
men who played such instruments. On some occasions when there
has been an unusual amount of ' talent ' among the convalescent
patients, they have got up concerts among themselves with great
success. But what was performed ? Solo tunes on the various in-
struments, and songs. Nothing, beyond perhaps a ' Christy Minstrel '
chorus in unison, was attempted in the way of ensemble. Each in-
dividual showed off in his own individual manner. All this, with

930 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

organisation and perseverance, might be made available for better
purposes. How constantly in some English circles is music still
spoken of as a kind of snare, likely to lead men who are its devotees
into ' low company.' In all ranks it is true that men who possess
any accomplishment by means of which they can amuse their fellows
are generally popular, especially among idle people ; and when a
working-man sings his songs or plays his tunes to his companions in
the public-house, no doubt the situation is fraught with some peril,
to say nothing of the temptation to undue vanity in the performer !
But it would l>e strange indeed in Germany, where music is a serious
thing, to hear such an allegation made against it.

From time to time information comes from various parts of the
country, all tending to confirm the belief that such a movement as
here has been vaguely shadowed forth is on foot, and slowly but
surely making its way. Some facts with regard to the county of
Fife in particular are so remarkable as to be worth quoting.

1 Great interest is felt in music by the lower classes. There are
musical associations in almost every town and village. A committee
of gentlemen and others is formed in each such town to make
arrangements with an Edinburgh conductor or local professor, and
weekly practices are held under his leadership during the winter
season. Through these associations the lower orders — fisher people,
mill girls, foundry lads — have opportunities of cultivating their taste
and developing their voices. In Dunfermline and Kirkcaldy, where
the societies are very large, they engage a good Edinburgh orchestra
for the public performance. In the fishing village of Anstruther the
conductor and members of the orchestra are amateurs and trades-
people, the chorus-singers and soloists are chiefly fisher people. At
Leven, in a population of 2,000, there are between seventy and eighty
members in the Choral Union. These people read well, mostly from
the old notation. Solos in the oratorios are invariably sung by
amateurs of all classes. Many of the rank of dressmakers, milliners,
and small tradesmen, spend much of their leisure time in getting up
these solos and songs for the frequent amateur concerts. There are
some very beautiful voices among them ; and in some of the girls,
and men also, the talent for singing is so great that without in-
struction they sing their Handelian " runs " with the required distinct
vocalisation. Glee clubs, too, are formed, independently of the Choral
Union. The Scotch precentor is often a good musician, competent
to train a choir, to sing glees and part music, not only correctly but
with taste.'

These details are interesting, both in themselves and as furnish-
ing hints which may be widely useful. Here in Fifeshire natural
capacity and universal co-operation have quietly and without any
fuss established music, vocal music at any rate, on a firm popular
footing, from which it may proceed to do great things in time. It

1880. MUSIC AND THE PEOPLE. 931

needs not external support, it does not require to be preached as a
crusade, it has become an indigenous, abiding, and elevating interest.

But the working-classes of London and our- vast crowded cities,
in the fierce struggle for existence, labour under social and physical
disadvantages for such a pursuit unknown in remote counties, un-
known even in quiet German towns. It is not to be wondered at if
help, unnecessary there, is wanted here. But association is the only
form of help that will be productive of permanent good. Unless
this is attained, we might as well plant a garden by plucking flowers
from another garden, sticking them in the ground and expecting
them to grow, as go on calling to people to listen to what they can-
not or do not share in.

Let nothing that has been said be understood as casting a slur on
what has been described as practical philanthropy, uor as depreciating
any one of the noble efforts of disinterested men and women to better
the condition or raise the mental and moral standard of their suffering
fellow-creatures. The purest art and the highest philanthropy are
truly one. But, in these things, cause and effect do not follow each
other in the anticipated, nor even in the desired, order. The self-
devotion of the philanthropist results in even greater good to himself
than to those for whom he labours. The artist who has striven to
give adequate expression to a grand thought knows how far his
execution has fallen short of his conception, and is disappointed ; the
gainers by his work are those whom it inspires with his idea. The
tendency of philanthropy is towards introspection in its subjects ; it
invites men to consider themselves with a view to improving them-
selves. Art points to something beyond and greater than them-
selves. In aspiring to the highest good men must become better,
but only so long as they forget themselves in their object. Of all
the great art creations which now serve the ends of philanthropy,
not one could have resulted from any amount of calculation, or of
conscience, or indeed of culture. The seer simply declares what he
beholds, and the artist translates his idea, as best he may, into his
own form of art ; but the artist who looks away from his ideal to
contemplate himself misses his mark, and the student who utilises
art as a mere tool for self-improvement defeats his own object. All
noble and ennobling art has been, and must be, followed for its
own sake.

When we look back on the advance music has made in England
since the beginning of the century, it seems wrong to take an un-
hopeful view. Only all our advance seems to be in the representation
of the already presented. Not till music has become the speech of
the people will it find anything fresh to say. Not till that has come
about will the most heaven-born genius, should he appear among us,
have much chance of recognition or appreciation unless first exported
and returned to us with a foreign seal. It may well be that the

932

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

December

future of English music lies in the success and the spread of the
movement which, in some of its phases, we have described. Till
then we seem only to fashion a lovely statue, as Pygmalion did ; we
add grace after grace and finish after finish till it is all but life-like.
We exclaim in delight as we recognise again and again the features
and the smile that we have dreamed of — that we know. But in vain
we kneel and worship and invoke — in vain, so far. The smiling
statue is still a statue. It does not descend from its pedestal ; it
will, as yet, not live for us.

FLORENCE A. MARSHALL.

1880. 933

SOUTH AFRICA.

IN the number of this Eeview for April 1879, I discussed the re-
moter causes of the Kaffir and Zulu wars of that and the preceding
year. I traced these misfortunes to our having forced on the unwil-
ling colonists of the Cape of Good Hope the system of what is called
' responsible government ' as an excuse for withdrawing from them
the protection it was our duty to afford. I endeavoured to show that
' responsible government ' was utterly unsuited to the existing state
of society in South Africa, and that this country had no right to
abdicate its responsibility for protecting both the white inhabitants,
and the native tribes in this part of Her Majesty's dominions. I argued
that the British Government had failed, in what was its plain duty,
by acting upon a policy which was morally certain to cause a succes-
sion of cruel and destructive wars between the white and coloured
races in this part of Africa, and to which it would be practically im-
possible to adhere, since no British Government, when real danger
arose, could leave subjects of the Queen to be slaughtered, and to have
their property destroyed, without taking measures for their protection.
I pointed out that the state of things which then existed demon-
strated beyond all doubt, that the policy of leaving the white inhabi-
tants of South Africa to manage their own affairs and to defend them-
selves had failed, and that it had become urgently necessary to
decide upon some better policy and to act upon it vigorously. Such
were the conclusions which the article I have referred to endeavoured
to establish ; a consideration of all that has happened since that
article was written, and of the additional information laid before the
public, tends to show that they were right, and also to prove the
urgent necessity for a change of system.

Of this necessity all doubt is removed by the fact, now brought
clearly into view, that under the existing arrangements the Cape
ministers, without being subject to any real control from the servants of
the Crown at home, or from Parliament, are allowed to govern the very
large coloured population of Her Majesty's South African dominions,
in a manner and in a spirit which, if the case were thoroughly under-
stood, would certainly not be approved by the people of England,
who are called upon to provide, and to pay for, a large part of the

934 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

military force by which this system of government is maintained.
Both the spirit in which the coloured races have been, and still are,
governed in the Cape Colony, under its present constitution, and also
the powerlessness of the Home Government, are shown in a very
striking manner by the account which appeared in the newspapers of
an interview given by Lord Kimberley, at the end of May, to a
deputation of gentlemen interested in the welfare of the native
population of South Africa. Mr. Froude, on behalf of the deputation,
complained to the Secretary of State of acts of cold-blooded cruelty
which had been committed against helpless natives by certain
colonists, who had escaped the punishment they deserved owing to
the prevailing feeling of the whites in favour of men of their own
colour as against the natives. It was also urged on the part of the
deputation, that the Vagrant Act, passed by the Cape Parliament, was
most unjust and oppressive to the natives. Their objections to thi*
Act were unanswerable, and might have been made still stronger,
since it might have been shown that the real aim of the measure was
to place the coloured people under the necessity of working for the
whites at low wages. Above all, the deputation remonstrated against
the conduct of the Cape Government towards the Basutos, both in
depriving them of land to which they consider themselves entitled,
and also in requiring them to give up their arms. The reply of
Lord Kimberley to the statement laid before him is most instruc-
tive. He did not, as it appears, deny that the atrocities described
by Mr. Froude had really been committed, and had escaped the \ <in-
ishment they deserved, and could only plead that they had been per-
petrated two years ago. With regard to the vagrant law, ' it con-
tained,' he confessed, ' some startling clauses,' but he said it had been
passed by the Cape Parliament, and he had no power to alter it. As
to the disarmament of the Basutos, he believed the Cape Government
was proceeding with caution, and he expressed his opinion that —

This tribe deserved the highest consideration at our hands ; they -were singularly
loyal, and had made considerable progress in the arts of peace. He added that
lie had a decided opinion that it -would be imprudent if they were not allowed the
enjoyment of their land ; he had telegraphed to the Governor to take no decided
steps until he received further communications from himself, and he had now
pointed out. very strongly the original understanding of the Basutos on the character
of our relations with them, and the possible consequences of the allotment of- their
land to settlers, and he had advised the reconsideration of the question. More, it
was not in his power to do. He hoped the colonists would see that that was an
unwise step to take.

Such, according to the report of The Times, was the substance of
the reply of the Secretary of State on May 27, to the deputation who
pleaded before him the cause of the native tribes of Africa. It will
be seen that this answer of Lord Kimberley amounted in fact to a
mere confession of helplessness, and of his inability to prevent the
Colonial authorities from acting towards the natives in a manner

1880. SOUTH AFRICA. 935

which he did not attempt to defend, but for which he tried to throw
the whole responsibility upon them. But so long as the power of
the Colonial government rests mainly on the support of British
troops, the Ministers of the Crown cannot be thus relieved from
responsibility for its acts. Since the interview took place further
information on the subject has been laid before Parliament, from
which we learn, that so early as the spring of last year both the
Aborigines Protection Society in this country, and the Paris Evan-
gelical Missionary Society, drew the attention of the Secretary of
State to the injustice of the policy pursued by the Cape Government
towards the coloured people, and especially towards the Basutos, and
to the danger there would be in attempting to disarm the Basutos, as
was already in contemplation. In March last, the French Missionary
Society made a farther appeal to the Secretary of State by presenting
to him another remonstrance against the intended measure, which
well deserved the most serious consideration, as well from its tem-
perate language as from the cogency of its reasoning. About the
same time Sir G. Wolseley also wrote a despatch, condemning in the
very strongest terms, and for what ought to have been accepted as
conclusive reasons, the proposal that the Basutos should be required
to give up their arms. These warnings were not altogether without
effect upon the Government at home, since the Governor of the Cape
was ordered, though in singularly feeble languuge, to impress upon
his ministers the necessity of caution in their proceedings. But each
timid interference proved as useless as might have been expected ;
the attempt to disarm the Basutos was persevered in, with the result
anticipated by Sir Garnet Wolseley ; it has kindled a 4 very serious
war,' and it has ' converted into enemies a large section of the finest
race in South Africa, which is now ' (Sir Garnet was writing on March
10, 1880) 'contented and loyal.' And the injustice and impolicy of
the measure by which this fine people has been driven into war is
well exposed by Sir Garnet in the same despatch. He says : —

Hundreds of thousands of firearms have in recent years been sold by our
merchants to natives, and the revenues of the several colonies have gained con-
siderably by this trade. We are ourselves responsible for the present condition of
things. In order to make money our merchants have sold these firearms to the
natives, and in order to increase their revenue the several colonies concerned have
recognised and openly sanctioned the trade. To induce the natives to work at the
Diamond fields we have allowed each man, when returning, to carry back with him
a gun as the result of his labour. Under these circumstances it seems to me that
for us now to insist upon these natives surrendering their arms, which we have sold
them, would be unjust, whilst the selection of a time, such as the present, at the
conclusion of a series of wars during which they have proved faithful to us, would
be most impolitic.

Whatever may be the opinion of the colonists, I am convinced
that there can be few persons in this country who will differ from
Sir Garnet Wolseley as to the injustice of the measure which he so

936 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

properly deprecated, or will be satisfied that Britisb power should be
used against the Basutos in the war which has arisen from its adop-
tion. I am aware that the war is at present carried on, not by
British, but by colonial troops, and that the Cape ministers have been
told both by the late and the present Secretary of State, that they
1 must clearly understand that the Cape Government must deal with
any difficulties which may arise in Basuto-land from this measure,
and that they must not look for the assistance of Imperial troops for
this purpose.' But we know too well, from sad experience, that
when war has once been begun between British colonists and bar-
barous tribes among which they dwell, it is practically impossible for
the Imperial Government to avoid being drawn into the contest.
Sir Garnet Wolseley had warned Her Majesty's Ministers that ' this dis-
armament policy will array against us the native sentiment in every
part of South Africa, and should it result in a Basuto war, every
native from the Zambesi to Cape Agulhas will feel that every shot
fired in it against us has been fired in his interests.' I enter-
tain no doubt that this view of the subject is correct, and if so, it is
plain that the war is one into which we are sure to be dragged.
Indeed, at this moment, British power is really used in support of the
colonists in a war which hardly a man in England will defend as a
just one. No part of our regular army may yet be fighting against
the Basutos, but a considerable number of British soldiers are still
employed in the general defence of the colonists, who are thus
enabled to use against the Basutos more of their own force than
would otherwise be available for this service. It cannot require any
argument to show that it is unjust to the people of England that
English troops should, at their cost, be made use of to carry on a
war of which they generally disapprove. Nor is this question of
money what is most important. I hold that, for the honour of the
British Crown and of the British nation, the carrying on of an un-
righteous war in the name of the Queen ought not to be allowed.

A larger question is also raised by the Basuto war. This war
must not be regarded as a mere accidental misfortune : it is, on the
contrary, only an example of the natural consequences of committing
the government of a large coloured population without control into
the hands of a comparatively small number of whites. Sir Garnet
Wolseley, in his excellent despatch of February 13 last, has shown
the injustice that must be worked by such an arrangement. His
argument in this despatch is directed only against the establishment
of « responsible government ' in Natal, but it applies equally against
that system of government in the rest of South Africa. Throughout
this part of the British dominions the coloured people are generally
looked upon by the whites as an inferior race, whose interests ought
to be systematically disregarded when they come into competition
with their own, and who ought to be governed mainly with a view to

1880. SOUTH AFRICA. 937

the advantage of the superior race. And for this advantage two
things are considered to be especially necessary : first, that facilities
should be afforded to the white colonists for obtaining possession of
land heretofore occupied by the native tribes ; and secondly, that the
Kaffir population should be made to furnish as large and as cheap a
supply of labour as possible. Though the old Dutch notion of obtain-
ing this last object by avowedly reducing the coloured population to
slavery has now been abandoned (except, perhaps, by a few of the
Boers), it is easy to trace the operation of the feeling which. Sir
Garnet Wolseley describes as prevailing in Natal, that the Kaffirs
ought to be made to work for the whites at low wages, in the mea-
sures adopted by the Colonial legislatures, or demanded by the
colonists. As I have already observed, it was for this purpose that
the vagrant law that Lord Kimberley could not defend, was really
passed by the Cape Parliament. This desire for cheap labour, and
what has been well called * the hunger for land,' has led settlers of
European descent to deal harshly and unjustly with uncivilised tribes,
not only in Africa but elsewhere. This fact must be borne in mind
in considering how the British dominions in South Africa ought in
future to be governed. It is calculated that the native tribes living
either within the British frontiers, or not too far beyond them to be
in communication with the Colonial authorities, are probably not less
than three millions in number. By establishing ' responsible govern-
ment ' in the Cape Colony, a great part of this vast population has
been placed under the authority of ministers who practically represent
only the white inhabitants, and who are subject to no effective con-
trol on the part of the Crown or of the Imperial Parliament. Even
in those parts of the British territory which is not at present included
in the Cape Colony, the policy pursued towards the coloured race is
in no small degree under the guidance of the Cape ministers, nor
could this be avoided under the present system without incurring the
great evil of having conflicting systems of native policy pursued in
different parts of the British dominions in Africa.

These considerations seem to me to lead to the conclusion that the
system of government which for the last few years has been acted upon
at the Cape ought not to be allowed to continue. Nor do I believe
that a doubt is entertained by any one that some alteration in that
system is required. But although the anomalous and mischievous
character of the existing arrangements (if arrangements they can be
called) for the government of South Africa is not denied by any one,
no feasible plan for their improvement has yet been proposed, and
neither the last nor the present administration has shown any dispo-
sition to grapple seriously with the difficulties of the subject. Both
the late and the present Ministers have indeed expressed their hope
that the maintenance of peace in South Africa might be provided for
by a confederation of the several governments which now exist there.

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

But I do not hesitate to affirm that this hope is a mere delusion.
The Act passed by Parliament for the purpose of effecting the desired
confederation was necessarily only a permissive one, and in spite of
the pressure put upon the colonists in its favour by the Home
(i.iverament, it has been rejected by the Cape Parliament, ;md
appears to have gained no acceptance elsewhere. There is not the
slightest prospect of this scheme being adopted, and, if possible,
even still less of its proving successful if it were. It is quite true
that there is much need for making better provision than heretofore
for securing that those who are intrusted with authority in the
various divisions of the British territory in South Africa should act
in concert with each other, and be guided by one uniform policy in
their measures with regard to the native population, and for the
protection of the settlers. But more than this is required. In order
to be successful, the policy of the Government must not only be the
same wherever British rule exists in South A frica ; it must also be
steady in purpose, and not liable to frequent alteration ; it must be
firm, and at the same time directed by a spirit of fairness and of
kindly consideration towards the coloured race. I can see no ground
whatever for hoping that a government of that character could be
obtained by adopting the scheme of confederation that has been
proposed.

This scheme, as explained by Lord Carnarvon to the House of
Lords in 1877, contemplated uniting together in a Confederation the
colonies of the Cape and of Natal with Griqualand, which had not
long before been added to the British dominions, and what were then
the independent Dutch republics of the Orange Free State and of the
Transvaal, of which the last was soon after taken possession of in behalf
of the Queen. The authority of the Confederation was also, as I under-
stand, to have been extended over certain districts, which were then
still ruled over by native chiefs, who were not, however, regarded as
altogether independent, but as owing allegiance to the Crown. The
existing governments in these several provinces were to be allowed
still to manage their own internal affairs ; but the power of dealing
with all matters of common interest, and especially with all that re-
lates to the protection of the territory and to the management of the
native tribes, was to belong exclusively to the Government of the Con-
federation. This Government it was intended to intrust to a Gover-
nor appointed by the Crown, who was to act by the advice of
ministers responsible to the legislature of the Confederation. The
constitution of this legislature was left studiously undefined by the
Act of Parliament which gave power for creating the Confederation,
except that it was provided that it should consist of two chambers, the
one an Assembly with the usual powers, representing the inhabitants
of the several provinces ; the other, a Senate, of which it was left
altogether uncertain whether the members were to be elected or ap-
pointed, and whether they were to hold their seats for life, or for a

1880. SOUTH AFRICA. 939

term of years. With regard to the Assembly, the all-important ques-
tion of the franchise was left undecided ; and it was to be determined
by the Colonial legislatures whether the native inhabitants of the
territory were or were not to have a voice in the election of represen-
tatives. In the Cape Colony, properly so called, the coloured popu-
lation are not, I understand, excluded by law from the exercise of the
franchise, but practically they seem to take little if any part in the
election of members of the Cape Parliament, probably owing to the
rather high qualification required to give the right of voting. In
Natal they are allowed no votes in the election of the elective mem-
bers of the Legislative Council, and in the two Dutch Eepublics they
were not only rigorously excluded from all political power, but could
hardly be said to enjoy the ordinary civil rights of freemen. Though
the Act of Parliament did not determine whether the coloured people
were or were not to have votes in electing the members of the
Assembly of the proposed Confederation, it is impossible to suppose
that this privilege would have been generally accorded to them. In
Natal the coloured population, which exceeds the whites in number in
the proportion of about 400,000 to little over 20,000, consists of
tribes which are but just beginning to emerge out of barbarism. In
the Cape Colony the difference between the numbers of the two races
is not so great, and in part of that Colony many of the coloured
people have made much more progress in civilisation. Still, looking
at the territory as a whole, it is clear that the coloured people are far
too ignorant and uncivilised to be entrusted with political power,
and if the scheme of confederation were to be adopted, it would be
necessary so to regulate the franchise, that the Assembly, to which
supreme authority would be committed, should virtually represent,
not the whole population, but only the more civilised race. For it
must be borne in mind that the scheme of confederation, as explained
by Lord Carnarvon, would have given to the Assembly the entire
control of the executive administration, as well as the power of legis-
lation, since the Governor was to be required to act by the advice of
ministers responsible to the Assembly, and only holding office so
long as they retained its confidence. To regulate the franchise in
such a manner that the command of an Assembly, armed with so
much authority, might fall into the hands of the rude tribes that
form an overwhelming majority of the population, could not be
thought of; and the complete ascendancy of the white race must have
been secured. The objections to this are so obvious that they scarcely
require to be stated. I have endeavoured to show that there is little
reason to approve of the spirit in which the Cape Parliament has acted
towards the coloured people, and if the projected Confederation had
been brought into operation, the effect of the change would have been
to give uncontrolled power over a wider territory to a new Assembly, in
which the faults of the Cape Parliament would have been exaggerated.

940 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

The representatives of the white inhabitants of the Orange State, the
Transvaal, Griqualand, and Natal, would have been even more deeply
imbued than the members of the Cape Parliament with those feelings
and prejudices which have exercised so unfortunate an influence over
the latter in their measures affecting the natives. The conflicting
interests of the various provinces represented in the Assembly would
also have made it even more difficult than it has been found in other
colonies, to secure the continued support of the legislature for any
administration, owing to the tendency of these bodies to split into
parties, no one of which is able to maintain itself against a combina-
tion of the others. The evil of a rapid succession of ephemeral
administrations, with continual changes of policy, which is thus
commonly produced by 'responsible government,' is a serious one
everywhere, but it would be especially injurious in the extensive
territories it was proposed to place under the rule of the South
African Confederacy, inhabited as they are by so large an uncivilised
population. In managing such a population, steadiness of purpose, and
the absence of frequent changes of measures, are, as I have already
pointed out, among the first requisites for success.

I have noticed only a small part of the objections which might be
urged against the scheme of confederation ; but I abstain from enter-
ing further into that subject, because I think I have said enough to
show that even if the measure were carried into effect, no reliance
could be placed upon its success. Such being the case, and the project
having also been rejected by the colonists, it seems clear that no
more time should be lost in a vain attempt to act upon this principle,
and that some other means should at once be sought for, for making
better provision than at present exists for the government of South
Africa, and for the protection of its inhabitants. And this, I believe,
can only be accomplished by reverting, at least in principle, to the
mode of governing this part of Her Majesty's dominions, which was
abandoned when the system of ' responsible government ' was estab-
lished at the Cape. I know that this is a suggestion which will
not gain easy acceptance in any quarter, but I am convinced that if
the difficulties of the subject are carefully considered, it will be
found that they cannot be surmounted by any other means, and that
it will be impossible to discover any other arrangement which could
be expected to answer.

When the Cape Colony was induced, by the strong pressure put
upon it from home, to acquiesce in the establishment of * responsible
government,' its extent was much less than at present, a large amount
of territory having since been added to it. Within its then restricted
bounderies, the power of legislation had been exercised for some
years by a representative legislature, but the functions of this body
were limited to legislation : it neither exercised nor claimed any
control over the executive administration. This was entrusted to
the Governor, who acted under the instructions of the Secretary of

1880. SOUTH AFRICA. 941

State, and was responsible for his conduct, not to the Cape Govern-
ment, but to the Queen. He was assisted in the performance of his
duties by civil servants, who held their offices nominally during the
pleasure of the Crown, but practically during good behaviour, and
who had no responsibility for the measures of the Governor, but only
for the due execution of his orders, and for the effective performance
of the duties of their several offices. Up to 1856, when an ill-ad-
vised change was made, Natal was governed, as what is called a Crown
colony, by a Lieutenant -Governor, who was subordinate to the
Governor of the Cape. The latter was not expected to interfere
with the ordinary administration of affairs by the Lieutenant-
Governor, but was empowered to exercise so much control over his
measures as to secure their being in general harmony with those of
the larger colony, especially in all that could affect the relations
between the white colonists and the native tribes. While a complete
control over the policy of the Colonial Government was thus main-
tained on the part of the Crown, it was recognised to be the duty of
its Ministers to provide for the protection of the colonists.

This system of government I hold to have been sound in principle,
and well fitted to meet the wants of such a state of society as
exists in South Africa. At the same time I acknowledge that there
were serious faults in the details of the arrangement, and that none
of the Ministers, to whom the large powers retained by the Crown
over the Colony were successively intrusted, can claim to have
exercised them without falling into some mistakes. But the faults of
the former arrangement admit of being corrected, and the experience
that has been gained ought to enable future Ministers to avoid the
errors of their predecessors. I will endeavour to point out by what
modifications the arrangement, which existed at the Cape before
* responsible government ' was introduced, might be made to work
with success, and also what lessons may be drawn from experience
for the better management of African affairs.

But before I attempt to do this, I must say a few preliminary
words on two objections which have been urged against the change I
have suggested. In the first place, it has been asserted, to my great
astonishment, that representative institutions without ' responsible
government ' are an absurdity. To this I will only answer that it is
scarcely forty years since ' responsible government ' was established
in any of our colonies, while, in some of the older ones, representative
institutions without this system had existed with fair success for
near two centuries. More than this, the great colonies, which, by the
mismanagement and folly of the British Government, were lost to the
Empire, and now constitute the United States, throve and grew into a
nation under representative institutions, having no resemblance to the
new system of ' responsible government.' And to this day the distin-
guishing principle of ' responsible government,' which requires that
VOL. VIIL— No. 46. 3 S

942 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

tho?r t.» \\hoin tlie chief executive power is entrusted shall possess the
confidence of the representatives of the people, is not admitted in the
constitution either of the general government of the United States
or of the separate governments of the several States composing the
Union. In the next place, it has been contended that a change in
the existing system of government at the Cape is impossible, because
the unrestricted power of managing their own affairs has been
deliberately conceded to the colonists by the mother country, and
that to withdraw it from them would be inconsistent with honour
and good faith. If the Cape colonists are prepared to fulfil the terms
on which they agreed to accept ' responsible government,' this last
objection would undoubtedly be conclusive against an alteration
made without their assent, but I see no reason for doubting that this
assent might be obtained if it were sought for on proper terms, and
with a distinct intimation that, should it be refused, the Colony must
not look for a continuance of those advantages for which it is now
indebted to the mother country. The contrast between what they
would gain by accepting, and what they would lose by rejecting, a
proposal to return to the former system of government, might be so
placed before the colonists that there would be little chance of their
not agreeing to it.

My reasons for thinking so will be shown in a later part of this
article. First, however, I must explain that I do not recommend a
simple return to the arrangements for governing this part of the
Queen's dominions which existed before ' responsible government ' was
adopted at the Cape. As I have already observed, I think that these
arrangements would require to be modified in some particulars. The
modifications I should suggest would not be numerous, nor would they
affect the principle of the former system of Government ; still they
would be of considerable importance. The Governor should, I think,
as before, administer the executive government under the general in-
structions of the Secretary of State, and should be responsible to the
Crown for his measures, in which he should be assisted by the civil
servants of the Colony, holding their offices (as formerly) practically
during good behaviour. The power of legislation and that of impos-
ing taxes and appropriating the revenue, ought as before to be exer-
cised by the Cape Parliament within the Colony, but subject to
some conditions, to which I shall presently advert. These powers
might, I believe, be safely exercised within the old Colony by the Cape
Parliament, since there is in that part of the Queen's dominions a
sufficient civilised population from which to draw a representative
Assembly, quite competent to exercise the power of legislation,
subject to an effective veto on the part of the Crown, to guard the
interests of the uncivilised part of the population. These interests
would be further secured by the fact that there is nothing, so far as I
am aware, in the existing law to subject the coloured inhabitants to
any special restraints on account of their colour, and to debar them

1880. . SOUTH AFRICA. 943

from enjoying the franchise, and thus sharing in the exercise of politi-
cal power, as they gradually become entitled to do so by the acquisi-
tion of the necessary qualification. But within the last few years a
large extent of territory has been added to the Cape Colony, in which
there is a smaller proportion of white inhabitants, and in which the
coloured people have made less advance in civilisation than in the old
colony. In these portions of the territory it would, I believe, be
necessary to have a simpler system of government, and more prompt
means of passing such laws as are likely from time to time to be
wanted in order to provide both for the present wants of a very rude
state of society, and for those which will arise as civilisation advances.
Hence I am of opinion that British Kaffraria, Basutoland, the Trans-
vaal, and any other portions of territory which it would be inconvenient
to place under the legislative authority of the Cape Parliament, should
be again separated from that colony, and formed into distinct Crown
colonies, in which the power of legislation should be exercised by
the authority of the Crown, either by Orders of Her Majesty in
Council, or by local ordinances passed by the Lieutenant-Governors
and their Councils. The whole of South Africa which is under British
rule, and was not included in the Cape Colony, might probably be
formed into two or three separate colonies of this kind, in addition to
that of Natal.

For the purpose of ensuring that one uniform policy should be acted
upon in these separate divisions of Her Majesty's African dominions,
the different Lieutenant-Grovernors should be made subordinate to the
Governor of the Cape, as was formerly the case in Natal. The Governor
should also be H.M.'s High Commissioner for dealing with the inde-
pendent native tribes beyond the British frontiers.

Thus far I have suggested no deviation from arrangements which
formerly existed, except the organisation of some additional territory
under distinct but subordinate governments. The arrangements, how-
ever, to which I propose in the main to revert, had this practical fault,
that while the Gfovernor of the Cape was entrusted with executive
power, he was left without any means of carrying on the government
of the colony, unless the legislature could be induced to support
him by granting the money required for the purpose, which was
not always to be relied upon. This was a great evil, even when
there were comparatively few difficulties in our relations with the
natives ; in the present state of affairs, it would be most inconve-
nient to throw upon the Governor the responsibility of conducting
the executive administration without assigning to him a sufficient com-
mand of money to meet its most necessary charges. I would therefore
suggest that in again placing real executive power in the hands of the
Governor, with the responsibility it would involve, an annual sum ought
to be permanently appropriated by the legislature, sufficient to meet
the fixed expenses of the public service. No doubt it will be Urged.

3 s2

944 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

in objection to this proposal, that such a permanent appropriation
would make the Governor to a certain extent independent of the Cape
Parliament, nor do I seek to conceal the fact that this is true.
Indeed, the whole object of making any change at all is to give to the
Governor, in the interest of the mother country, and of the coloured
population, sufficient independence of the Assembly to enable him to
administer the executive government with firmness and impartiality.
The question, therefore, to be considered is whether the fixed appro-
priation I have suggested would be likely to expose the colonists to
any real injury or risk of being misgoverned ; and I venture to assert
that no such danger need be apprehended. The permanent appropria-
tion ought not to exceed what would be required to meet the regular
expenses of the government, with a very moderate sum for unforeseen
contingencies. The application of the grant would of course be
regulated by a permanent law, and full accounts of its actual expen-
diture would have to be laid before the Cape Parliament. The
Governor would thus be enabled to perform his duties with a certain
independence, but he would by no means be left free to act capri-
ciously or unwisely, without being very speedily checked. Though
the Cape Parliament would not have the power of dismissing a
Governor, it would have the power Colonial legislatures have always
enjoyed, and not seldom exercised, of petitioning the Crown to remove
a Governor they consider to have misconducted himself, or to alter
measures they regard as wrong. When a good case can be made out
against a Colonial Governor by a legislature, the Ministers of the Crown
in this country have seldom been found unwilling to listen to it, nor
is it probable that they would be so in future, feeling as they must do
their own responsibility to Parliament for their decision. Nor would
depriving the Cape Parliament of the power of controlling the execu-
tive administration leave it without functions of very high importance.
No new expenditure could be incurred, and no new taxes could be
imposed, nor could any alterations be made in the laws, except by its
authority, and in a society rapidly advancing in numbers and wealth, a
very large amount of business must come before it under these heads.
It would also have to consider and decide upon all proposals for new
railways and other works of internal improvement.

So far as regards the internal government of the Cape Colony
(properly so called), I am not aware that there would be any other
matters to be determined before the proposed change of system was
brought into operation, or which ought not to be left to be dealt with
by the Cape Government and Parliament. But it would remain to
make provision for the management of those affairs in which the
Cape would have a common interest with the rest of the neighbouring
territories under British rule. The two most important objects of
common concern to the whole of these territories, for which arrange-
ments would require to be made, are first their defence, and the re-
gulation of the policy to be pursued towards the coloured inhabitants

1880. SOUTH AFRICA. 945

with a view to their gradual civilisation ; and secondly, the raising of
a revenue by customs' duties in such a manner as to secure to each of
the separate Governments its fair share of the revenue so raised, and
to resist interfering with free intercourse between them. The former
of these objects is by far the most important, but as the produce of
well-regulated customs' duties would afford the best means of defray-
ing the expense of measures for the general defence of South Africa,
and for the management of the native population, it will be convenient
to begin by considering how such duties ought to be levied.

A large proportion of the public income of the Cape is now de-
rived from duties of customs, and as these are levied on goods which
are consumed not only within the Cape Colony, but also by a large
population beyond its boundaries, the consumers who are thus taxed
might fairly claim that a due proportion of the revenue so levied
should be expended for their advantage. A part of the supply of
goods for the interior is obtained through Natal, and it is probable that
hereafter a larger portion of the trade may take this route, or be
carried through other ports not included in the Cape Colony. The
rates of duty levied on goods are not the same in the two colonies,
and each charges duties on imports from the other as if they came
from any other part of the world. Goods may, however, be brought
to the Cape and kept there in bond till they can be forwarded to
Natal without being taxed at the Cape. Each colony is entitled to
the whole of the duties received in its ports without reference to the
ultimate destination of the goods on which they are charged. This
state of things must be inconvenient, and may sometimes be produc-
tive of injustice, which will become more felt as trade increases,
especially if the territory between the Cape and Natal should be
formed into a distinct colony with ports of entry of its own. The
circumstances, and the position of the British possessions in South
Africa, are such as to make it manifestly expedient that, although for
other purposes they may remain (as I think they ought) divided into
separate Governments, they should be united for the purpose of rais-
ing a revenue by customs. Without such a union it will be impossible,
when there is more intercourse between the several divisions of the
territory, to avoid the commission of injustice by taxing one part of
the population for the benefit of another, and the obstruction of trade
by charging duties on carrying goods from one colony to another, to
the great inconvenience and damage of them all. Great advantage
would therefore be obtained by forming a single establishment of
customs for the whole territory — levying, throughout its extent,
duties according to one uniform tariff, and using the revenue thus
raised in such a manner that each of the several Governments should
have its fair share of advantage from it. I would accordingly suggest
that the duties which are now in force in the Cape Colony should be
made payable in all the South African ports, that they should be col-
lected under the direction of Her Majesty's Treasury (which, till not

946 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

many years ago, had the charge of the customs in all our colonies),
and that their proceeds should form u fund for the benefit of the
various (iovernments included in the arrangement. The existing
taritf ought to be made subject to revision by the Cape Parliament
(of course with the assent of the Crown), and it should be provided
that any changes of duties so made in the Cape Colony should apply
to the other colonies also. The revenue thus raised ought, as I
think, to be used in the first instance to meet expenditure in which
all the colonies are interested. Whatever surplus might remain
should be divided among them as nearly as possible in proportion to
the estimated consumption by each of the articles subject to taxation,
and should form part of the public income, to be appropriated as the
several legislatures might direct. The expenses of common concern,
which ought to be provided for out of this revenue, would be first the
m.-t of collection and of the measures necessary for the promotion of
trade, such as the maintenance of lighthouses on the coast; and
secondly, the keeping up of a sufficient armed force for the protection
of the whole territory. For this last most important purpose I would
suggest that there should be paid annually into the military chest,
such a sum as might, on full consideration, appear to be a reasonable
contribution by the colonies towards the expense of the regular British
troops stationed there, and a further fixed sum to be employed in
raising and supporting a disciplined colonial force to be employed
wherever, in the j udgment of the Governor, it might be most required
for the protection of Her Majesty's subjects in Africa. This force
ought to be entirely under the control and management of the
Governor, acting under the instructions of the Secretary of State ; but
full reports, both of the measures of the Grovernor in the performance
of that part of his duties, and also of the expenditure incurred, should
be laid before the colonial legislatures. The sum placed at the dis-
posal of the Governor should be sufficient to meet the cost of main-
taining a considerable colonial force, with an allowance for the extra
expense of moving troops when necessary, and for other unforeseen
contingencies, but it ought to be the duty of the Governor to keep
down extraordinary expenditure as much as possible, and any savings
from the fixed annual sum appropriated for the military service of the
colonies should be paid back into the general fund divisible among
them.

With regard to the colonial force to be maintained, I am of opinion
that it ought to consist mainly of Kaffirs under European officers.
V* lute soldiers would be too costly to be kept permanently embodied
in any considerable numbers, nor could they be spared from their
present employments out of the scanty white population. The services
of the whites would be very valuable in case of war, but the best way
of making use of them would be to maintain, and, if necessary, to .ex-
tend and improve the existing corps of volunteers and yeomanry. The
natives, properly trained, and led by European officers, would, there

1880. SOUTH AFRICA. 947

is no doubt, form excellent troops. The former Kaffir police of the
Cape Colony were found for a long time to furnish a most useful and
trustworthy force, and though in the end they deserted us and joined
the enemy during the Kaffir war of 1851, this was owing to the great
mistake of employing them against their own chiefs. The feeling of
clanship was then as strong among the Kaffirs as it was among the
Scottish Highlanders at the beginning of the last century, and even
so late as when our gallant Highland regiments were first raised it
would not have been a safe experiment to employ them to put down
a rebellion of their own chieftains. There would be no difficulty in
avoiding a similar mistake for the future, and there can be no reason
why the policy of using native troops led by English officers to support
British rule, which has succeeded so well in India, should not have
equal success in Africa. Of course in Africa, as in India, it would be
necessary that there should be regular British troops to support, and
if necessary, to control the native force, but with that precaution, the
formation of a properly disciplined body of Kaffir troops would afford
a safe, an inexpensive, and most valuable addition to the military
power of the Government. As I pointed out in my former paper,
Kaffirs trained as military pioneers would not only be valuable in war,
but might also be made scarcely less useful in peace by their labour
in executing the many public works so urgently required for the de-
velopment of the natural resources of the country. And the industrial
training they would thus receive would be most advantageous in fit-
ting them to become useful labourers to the settlers after four or five
years' service. Some of the natives taken into the military service
should be formed into a well-organised and equipped transport corps,
which, in the event of renewed disturbances, would greatly reduce the
heaviest item of expenditure in African warfare. I cannot doubt that
subjecting a considerable number of the natives to militar}^ discipline
might be made, if properly managed, one of the most powerful
instruments that could be used for the civilisation of the race.
Hitherto, in our various African wars, it has been necessary
to call upon friendly chiefs to bring their followers into the field in
aid of our troops, and the effect of this is not favourable, but adverse
to the progress of civilisation. It tends to keep up the barbarous
customs of the people, and the tribal organisation, which it ought to
be our endeavour gradually to break down as soon as a better system
of maintaining order can be brought into operation in its place.
There are other grave objections to the employment of these undis-
ciplined allies, who, after all, are of very little military value. To
get rid of any need for them by the formation of a disciplined force
would therefore be in all respects an advantage.

I have suggested that the South African colonies collectively
should be called upon to undertake part of the burden of their own
defence by consenting to a permanent appropriation from their joint
revenue sufficient to defray the whole cost of a colonial force to be

948 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

raised and managed by the Governor under the direction of the
Secretary of State, and also to make an annual payment into the
military chest in aid of the expense incurred by the Imperial
Government in keeping a part of the regular army in South Africa.
I have said in aid of this expense, because it is not to be expected that
the whole cost of the British garrison stationed there will ever be
defrayed by the colonies, and for some time to come it is to be
feared that the share of this charge which will fall upon the Home
Treasury will continue to be somewhat large. In the present state
of affairs, an early reduction of the considerable force still retained in
this part of Her Majesty's dominions is not to be looked for, nor is it
likely that the colonies will be able to pay for it. But though, to
those who have reckoned upon relieving this country from all
military expenditure on account of the Cape, it may be a disap-
pointment to forego the hope of doing so, I believe that in reality
the arrangement I have suggested would prove a very advantageous
one for the mother country in respect of money, as well as generally
beneficial to the colony. Though the Imperial Government might
at first sight appear to be accepting a heavy charge and responsi-
bility in undertaking to protect the colonists in return for a fixed
payment, which for some time at least would not be sufficient to meet
the expenditure to be incurred, in the end I can have no doubt it
would be a great gainer by doing so. The colonists, it is true, when
' responsible government ' was established at the Cape, undertook that
when they were allowed to manage their own affairs, they would pro-
tect themselves without putting England to any further expense
than that of a small garrison sufficient for the defence of our naval
establishment, but this engagement has never been fulfilled. As Mr.
Wodehouse reminded the House of Commons, in spite of all the
pressure put upon the colonists by successive Secretaries of State,
they have never contributed more than 10,OOl)L a year to our
military expenditure on their account, even in quiet times, and
their conduct towards the natives has been the main cause of wars
which, the House of Commons was informed by the Under-Secretary of
State, had cost nearly six millions up to the 30th of September 1879.
To this no small addition must be made for expenses incurred during
the last year. He must be a sanguine man who expects that of this
large sum much will ever be repaid.

By the proposed change of system, I believe that this country would
in all probability be effectually secured against the recurrence of such
heavy demands upon its resources. What has been done in Natal shows
that by a just and impartial system of government a very large Kaffir
population may be kept in willing obedience to British authority, and
order and security preserved with little or no expense to this country.
And much more than has been done in Natal might without difficulty
be accomplished. Though the system there acted upon, of ruling the
people through their own chiefs, and subjecting them only to a very

1880. SOUTH AFRICA. 949

light tax to pay the expense incurred, was, I believe, the best that could
be adopted at first, it ought not to have been regarded as a permanent
system, and in the thirty years that it has been in operation, much
might have been done towards gradually bringing these people under
the same laws as the white inhabitants of the colony, making them
contribute in equal proportion with them to the public expenditure,
and giving them equal rights and protection. Were the Crown again
invested with its former control over the executive government, and
were the Cape Colony again reduced to its old limits, by separating
from it the portions of territory recently added to it, which are in-
habited by tribes still in a very rude state, it would become possible
to govern the whole of the coloured population subject to British
rule upon one consistent and uniform system, which would render
future wars very unlikely to occur. The subject is too large a one
to be here discussed, but I have not the slightest doubt that it would
be perfectly practicable by proper measures to provide for the mainten-
ance of peace and order in those parts of the territory kept under the
immediate control of the Crown, and for the gradual civilisation of
the people entirely at their own cost. It would be a great gain to this
country to avert in this manner, or, at all events, greatly to diminish,
the risk of being involved in all the evils and enormous expense of more
Kaffir wars, nor is it all that it would gain. Five thousand British
troops, it was stated in the House of Commons, are still serving in
Africa at the Imperial expense. Under the existing arrangements, it
is exceedingly improbable (as I have said) that it will be possible for
some time either greatly to reduce this force, or to make the colonies
provide for its cost. But under a different system, though we must
reckon upon having to submit to the charge for the present, we
might confidently reckon upon being able soon to diminish it, and at
no very distant date to get rid of it altogether, except as regards the
small amount of force required to protect our naval station — a charge
which it has always been admitted ought to fall upon this country.
After the local force to be raised had attained its proper strength,
there would be no need for retaining more regular troops in Africa,
in addition to the garrison of our naval station, than would be paid
for by the fixed contribution of the colonies.

To secure these advantages, it would be well worth while for
England to undertake the protection of the colonies on the terms I
have mentioned, and further to withdraw the claim it has upon the
Cape for the expenses of the last Kaffir war. The expense of the Zulu
war, it may fairly be contended, ought not to be charged against the
Cape, since it was not undertaken so much for the benefit of that colony
as for the security of Natal; but the same cannot be said with regard
to what are called the Transkei and Grriqualand wars, of which the first
is stated by the Under-Secretary of State to have cost the Imperial
Government 543,465?., and the second 220,000^., or no less than
763,4(>5£. for the two. Both of these wars were waged for the pro-

950 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

..n of the inhabitants of the Cape territory and for Capo
interests: the expense therefore which they have occasioned ought
undeniably to be provided for by the colony according to the terms
• >t' the arrangement by which 'responsible government' was granted
to it. But though the colony must be held liable to a claim on the
part of the mother country for the money spent on these wars, still,
considering all the circumstances of the case, und especially the fact
that the system of ' responsible government ' wa»s only acceded to by
the colonists under heavy pressure from the Imperial Government,
they have a strong claim to indulgence, and on that ground, as well
as for the advantages to this country of a change of system, I hold
that it would be good policy to offer to the colonists to cancel the
debt, provided they would concur in making such an arrangement
as I have suggested for the future, but unless this is consented to,
justice to the English people would require that the colony should
be called upon to repay the expense that has been incurred in its
behalf.

The course, therefore, which I would venture to recommend is, that
Her Majesty's Ministers should submit to Parliament resolutions
which would sanction their inviting the Cape Parliament to concur
in the changes I have described in the existing arrangements for the
government of South Africa, with an assurance that if this proposal
should be accepted, no claim would be made on the colony for the
expense of the recent wars, and that for the time to come Her
Majesty would undertake the protection of all her subjects in that
part of her dominions. To this proposal it would manifestly be for
the interest of the colonists to agree. By doing so they would retain
the benefit of representative institutions in a form suited to their
present circumstances ; they would be relieved from a heavy pecuniary
liability, and they would gain that security which it was the object
of the rejected scheme of Confederation to afford them, and which, it is
impossible they can enjoy so long as no provision is made for insuring
that the British authorities in the different parts of South Africa shall
act in concert with each other upon one uniform policy, having for its
object to protect the colonists, and gradually to civilise the large bar-
barous population around them. On the other hand, the rejection of
this proposal would not only subject the colony to a heavy pecuniary
burden, but would lead to other consequences very injurious to it.
I have already remarked that the money question is not the only one,
and not the gravest, which arises from the conduct of the Cape
Government towards the natives. I must repeat that the honour of
the British Crown and nation requires that the Imperial Government
and Parliament should interfere promptly and effectually to prevent
any measures being taken by the authorities at the Cape in the name
of the Queen which the English people would condemn as unjust.
The necessity for this would not be averted if the colony were to
insist on retaining the system of k responsible government.' I forbear

1880. SOUTH AFRICA. 951

from now discussing how this interference should take place ; but
whatever might be its form, it must to a greater or a less extent
bring the Home and the Colonial Governments into conflict, and it
is needless to point .out how much of evil and of danger this would
bring upon the colony.

The sketch I have now given of the mode of governing South
Africa, which I consider it desirable to substitute for what now exists,
and of the reasons for the proposed change, is, I am aware, a very
imperfect one, and on several points I should have been glad to offer
further explanations, but I abstain from doing so, as I am unwilling to
add to the length of this article. There are, however, some observa-
tions I must make before I bring it to a close. And in the first
place, I would submit that the suggestion that greater authority than
it has of late exercised in the administration of African affairs should
-be resumed by the Crown, ought not to be rejected unless some other
mode can be pointed out of relieving that country from the position
in which it is now placed, of having to bear the burden of African
wars, and the responsibility for the measures adopted towards the
natives by the Cape Government, without having any real control
over them. If some such change of system as I have recommended be
not introduced, I am for my own part unable even to conceive how it is
possible to get rid of the burden and responsibility of which we have
now so much right to complain, except by breaking off altogether the
connection between this country and the Cape. If it is still to be
considered a part of the British dominions, and its inhabitants
British subjects, if the government is still to be administered in the
name of the Queen, and any part of Her Majesty's regular army is still
to be kept there, I am persuaded that in the time to come, as in the
time that is gone by, it will be found practically impossible for the
Queen's Government to refuse to protect her subjects from the
dangers which the measures of the Colonial Government may bring
upon them. I hold it to be equally certain that these measures, in
the absence of an efficient control from home, and while they
continue as at present to be guided by the passions and prejudices of
the white minority of the population, will lead to a succession of wars
like that now raging, in which the good name of England will suffer,
and her resources will be wasted.

And the question as to what is to be done will not bear delay ;
the necessity is urgent for Her Majesty's Ministers to interfere by
some means or other to put an immediate end to a state of things in
South Africa which I can only describe as being disgraceful to the
nation. We learn from the newspapers that the war the Cape
Government is now waging with the Basutos is daily assuming a
more alarming character. Already it has caused somewhat serious
losses to the colonists, and the slaughter of some hundreds of a tribe
which the Secretary of State has described as ' deserving the highest
consideration at our hands,' as being 'singularly loyal and having

952 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

made considerable progress in the arts of peace.' This calamity has
been produced by a measure pronounced by Sir Garnet Wolseley to
be unjust and impolitic, and to be likely to convert into enemies the
whole coloured population as far as the Zambesi. A similar opinion
as to the character of the measure, if not expressly declared by the
Secretary of State, seems to be at least implied by his despatches.
Other tribes, as was anticipated by Sir Garnet Wolseley, are now
being drawn into the war, and it is altogether uncertain how far the
conflagration may extend. While this most deplorable war is raging,
there is a large British force in the country, which is taking no part
in it. The war is carried on in the Queen's name. Officers holding
commissions (as I believe) in Her Majesty's army are employed in it,
but the British troops in Africa remain passive, and allow the two
parties to carry on the work of mutual slaughter without interference.
Now, whatever opinion we may adopt as to the war, this is a line of con-
duct that cannot possibly be right. If Her Majesty's Ministers believe
(as may be inferred from Lord Kimberley's despatches) that the war
is an unjust one, it is their duty peremptorily to forbid its being
carried on for another day. If, on the other hand, they hold the war
to be just, and that it is really necessary to compel the Basutos to
obey the orders of the Colonial Government in the matters in dispute,
the question of money ought not to prevent them from using whatever
British troops may be available, for the purpose of bringing the contest
as soon as possible to a close. Not less for the sake of the Basutos
themselves, than in the interest of the colonists, this is what ought
to be done. In the end the power of the more civilised race must
prove too strong for their semi-barbarous enemies, and it would be
far better for the latter to be forced to yield at once by the employ-
ment of British troops against them, than by leaving the colonists
unaided to allow a bloody and protracted struggle to go on which would
certainly end in the destruction of the tribe. Again, if both these views
of the subject should be rejected in favour of the conclusion that,
though the war may have been rashly entered into by the Cape
Government, the Basutos are also not free from blame, then the
right course for Her Majesty's Ministers to take would be to prohibit all
hostilities by either party, till it could be ascertained, by an impartial
inquiry} under the authority of the Crown, what just cause the
Basutos had to complain of the measures of the Cape Government
which provoked their resistance, and whether these measures ought
to be persevered in, or to be withdrawn or modified. If the Basutos
were informed that the Queen did not approve of the hasty manner in
which the Cape Government had proceeded to enforce the proclama-
tion for their disarmament, and that the new Governor, who is pro-
ceeding to the Cape, had been instructed to inquire into the subject
and to act as he found justice to require, there is no reason to suppose
that they would either object to the inquiry, or resist the carrying
into effect of the decision it might lead to when supported by British

1880. SOUTH AFRICA. 953

military power. Opposition to this course is not to be looked for
from the Cape Government, nor, if it should be offered, would it be
difficult to overcome.

In conclusion, I have only to express my firm conviction that if
Her Majesty's Ministers are not prepared to allow the present state
of things in South Africa to continue, there are really but two courses
open to them. The one would be to insist that increased authority
should be placed in the hands of the Queen, in order that this part of
her dominions may be firmly and impartially governed for the
welfare of all classes of the population. The other would be to order
the British flag to be struck, to bring home the Ofovernor and Her
Majesty's troops from South Africa, and to inform its inhabitants that
they must no longer consider themselves to be subjects of the Queen,
or look to her for protection or assistance in settling their quarrels
among themselves, and in managing their own affairs as may seem
best to them. Between these two courses I am persuaded that it will
be impossible to find any middle one that can long be adhered to. Of
these, for the reasons I have given, I believe the first clearly to be the
right one ; the other I regard as altogether unworthy of a great
Christian nation. Let us not disguise from ourselves that, by following
it, we should give over for long years to anarchy and bloodshed what
is now no inconsiderable part of the British Empire, unless indeed
some other powerful and civilised nation should step in and assume
the duty we had repudiated. We should also throw away a glorious
opportunity of spreading Christianity and civilisation through a great
part of the African continent. And all this we should do from a mere
selfish desire to escape an expense which, by wise measures, might be
reduced to a mere trifle as compared to our resources. By so acting
the great British nation would be justly lowered in the estimation of
mankind, and, what is infinitely worse, would, as I believe, become
guilty of a grievous sin in the eyes of God.

GREY.

POSTSCRIPT.

Since this article was sent to the press I have learnt from the newspapers that
another depiitation on the affairs of South Africa was received by Lord Kimberley at
the Colonial Office on the 18th instant. I have read the account of what took place
on that occasion with much regret, because in the answer returned by the Secretary
of State to the gentlemen who waited upon him I find signs of his being imperfectly
informed on this important subject, and also of his taking what I consider a very
low view of the responsibility of the Queen's Government for the protection from
injustice of the coloured inhabitants of South Africa, over whom Her Majesty was
advised to assume sovereignty, and who are now British subjects. I need not,
however, comment upon any part of what was said by Lord Kimberley, except that
which relates to the wars between the colonists and the Maories in New Zealand.
On this point Lord Kimberley seems to me to have fallen into mistakes so glaring,
and at the same time so important, with reference to the African question, that I
cannot leave them altogether unnoticed. He is of opinion, it appears, that our
experience of what happened in New Zealand ought to encourage us to persevere in
the policy of leaving the white inhabitants of South Africa to deal according to their
own judgment with the coloured people around them. He affirms that, so long as
the Home Government retained in its own hands the management of affairs in New
Zealand, things went on badly, and bloody and costly wars occurred, but that so
soon as we adopted a different policy, refusing to assist the colonists in their wars,
and leaving them to act on their own judgment, wars were soon brought to an end,

954 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

and peace has since been preserved. Hence lie contends that the i>olicy which suc-
ceeded in New Zealand ought to be persevered in at the Cape. I hold this to be an
erroneous account of what occurred in New Zealand, and that the conclusion to be
drawn from the real facts is the very opposite to that come to by Lord Kiraberley.
I shall best explain my own view of the subject by referring to one of several speeches
I made upon it some years ago in the House of Lords against the policy of forcing
• responsible government ' on the Cape with the object of withdrawing the greatest
part of the British troops stationed there. This policy, which I took every oppor-
tunity of opposing, as being sure to produce, sooner or later, a war of races, was first
began under a Liberal Administration, and, if I recollect right, when Lord Granvillc
was Secretary of State for the Colonies. It was adhered to by his successors, of both
the great political parties, and amongst others by Lord Carnarvon, who spoke in
defence of it in a debate raised by the Duke of Manchester on the 18th of June
1867. I replied to Lord Carnarvon, and I extract from Hansard's Debates the
following passage from my speech, which bears directly on what has been now said
by Lord Kimberley : —

' If their lordships referred to the case of New Zealand, they would find a most
significant warning against the policy which his noble friend advocated. Soon after
New Zealand was colonised, quarrels sprang up between the colonists and the native
population, and a war, in which we at first met with great disasters, broke out with
the natives. The noble Earl opposite (the Earl of Derby), who was at that time
Secretary for the Colonies, sent out a very distinguished man (Sir George Grey) to
take the government of the colony, by whose wise and energetic measures the
natives were first defeated and then conciliated. Peace was restored, and a firm and
just system of government was established, under which for the eight years between
1847 and 1855 the most perfect tranquillity reigned in the colony: New Zealand
waa advancing in wealth, and each day saw an improvement in the condition of the
colony, and the natives and British settlers were in a fair way to become gradually
amalgamated, and to form a happy and prosperous population. But in an unhappy
moment it was thought right by the Ministry of this country not only to establish
representative government in New Zealand, but to do this under the form of what is
called •' responsible government," which virtually deprived the Crown of the authority
necessary for the protection of the natives from injustice. Within six months
after the establishment of that system of government there, disaffection reappeared,
and improvement was stopped ; the old feuds recommenced, and the passions of the
natives were roused by seeing those who had recommended the most unjust measures
against them put in places of trust and power. In spite of all our declarations
about the colonists defending themselves, and about their interests not being ours,
as soon as the war broke out the Home Government began to feel that they could
not allow British subjects to be murdered and British property to be destroyed, and
not fewer than 10,000 British soldiers and a large naval force from this country were
employed to put an end to a war in which an enormous amount of property was
destroyed.'

No one attempted to deny the accuracy of this statement when it was made, and
I can assert with the utmost confidence, not only that it was strictly true, but that
much more might have been said to prove that the Maori war was directly caused
by wrongs inflicted on that people owing to the system of ' responsible government.'
It is perfectly true that afterwards the British troops were withdrawn, and that for
a good many years there has been no further war. But during the years in which
that war was carried on in the fiercest and most unrelenting manner by both parties,
it was calculated that not less than two-thirds of the whole Maori population had
perished by the sword, by famine, and by disease, and I believe that the feeble
remnant that was left was supposed not to exceed 40,000 souls. The strength of the
natives was utterly broken in the unequal contest between them and the great
military power of this country, and it was only after this had been done that the
colonists were really able to defend themselves. I cannot, for my own part, consider
that a policy can be held to have been successful which ended in almost destroying
a most interesting people, after causing incalculable suffering not only to them but
to the whites, with the loss to the latter of very many valuable lives and an
enormous amount of property. Lord Kimberley cannot wish that the African troubles
should end in the destruction of the Kaffir race, yet this is what must be looked for
if the British Government leaves the two parties to fight out a war of extermination ;
unless, indeed, the superior numbers of the coloured race should prevail over the
greater resources and knowledge of the whites. Though not likely, this is not
altogether impossible. We have now to deal not with a population of 120,000
Maories, from whom we could cut off all supplies of ammunition, but with three
millions of a warlike race, well supplied both with effective arms and with ammunition

November 22, 1880. (j.

1880. 955

THE CHASE—ITS HISTORY AND LAWS.

II.

AT the close of our former article on hunting we proposed, 011 resuming
the subject, to deal with that of the Eomans. As we then observed, it
is not as hunters or as devoted to the chase that the Romans were
remarkable. It is a mistake to suppose, as a modern French writer
has done, that, because Horace speaks of the ' venator ' who remains
' sub Jove frigido,' unmindful of his tender wife, for the sake of a
hind or Marsian boar, all Romans were ardent sportsmen, or that,
because, towards the close of the Republic, and in the early days of the
Empire, hunting became for a time the fashion, therefore the Romans
had been from the beginning a nation of hunters. Plutarch, it is
true, represents Romulus and Remus as given, among other things,
to hunting ; but as no one now doubts that the twin brothers were of
a purely mythical character, the statement of that estimable but
too credulous historian is but of little value. Columella also, in his
treatise De Re Rustica, while he declares his objection to hunting, as
enticing the husbandman away from his work, and tending to make
him idle, says that the ancient Romans, ' vera ilia Romuli proles,'
as he is pleased to call them, divided their time between the labours
of agriculture and those of hunting ; but, here again, as Columella
did not write till long centuries after the age of which he is speaking,
his testimony can avail but little. The fiercer beasts of prey being
happily unknown in Italy — ' rabidaa tigres absunt, et sseva leonum
semina,' says Virgil in that well-known noble outburst of patriotic
enthusiasm — there was not the same necessity for hunting on the
larger scale. At the same time, there is no reason to suppose that in
a country still thickly wooded, and well supplied with wild animals,
the rural population did not take the trouble to capture them.
Wolves and foxes, too, as enemies to the flock and the farmyard,
would require to be destroyed. The deer, the roebuck, and the hare
would be worth the trouble of capture, as acceptable food. The wild
swine, destructive to the crops, and also available as food, and to the
pursuit of which the danger of the sport would add an additional
zest, would not be suffered to escape pursuit. But the hunting of wild
animals does not appear to have been organised on a large scale. Italy

956 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

is not represented as having possessed any indigenous breed of dogs
distinguished for hunting qualities of first-rate character ; for the
Umbrian breed, though excelling in point of nose, was, we are told,
useless in other respects ; nor does the use of hounds in packs, as a
means of capturing game, appear to have been known till a compara-
tively late period. It was not till the tide of conquest had brought
them into contact with the Eastern nations, and had made them
acquainted with the grander style of hunting there pursued, that
the Romans took to the chase in a manner at all deserving of the
name. Having subdued Macedonia, Paulus ^Emilius is said to have
brought away the hounds and hunting establishment of Perseus, the
conquered king, to Rome, and to have given them to his son Scipio
^Emilianus. Hunting became soon afterwards the fashion of the
day, especially with the younger men ; so that Terence, writing
some century and a half before Christ, says in the Andria : —

Plerique omnes faciunt adolescentuli,

Ut animum ad aliquod studium adjungant, aut equos

Alere, aut canes ad venandum.

So strong, indeed, did the passion for hunting become for a time,
that Sallust represents Catiline as having used the gift, of horses and
hounds purchased for the purpose — ' aliis canes atque equos mercari '
— in addition to the * aliis scorta prsebere ' — as one of the means
resorted to by that arch-conspirator for the purpose of corruption.

Their conquests in the East having made the Romans acquainted
with the paradeisoi of the Persians, and the plunder of conquered
nations and provinces having caused a prodigious influx of wealth, the
Roman magnates, who now began to build sumptuous villas, added to
them inclosures for breeding and preserving game ; rather, however, it
would seem, for the purpose of having the game at hand, when
wanted for the table, than for the amusement of hunting ; or, if for
the latter, that the sport might be had without the chance of disap-
pointment, as well as with the least possible amount of trouble and
fatigue to the luxurious sportsman. Being surrounded by oak palings,
these inclosures were termed roboraria. They appear, however, to have
been at first of comparatively small extent, and to have been confined
to the preserving of hares, whence they were also termed leporaria.
Later on they sometimes assumed larger dimensions, and became
parks in the fuller sense of the term, and contained deer and boars as
well as hares and rabbits.

The information on this subject is derived from Varro, an in-
telligent and reliable author who lived to a great age, and who
therefore when he wrote could look back for two or three generations.
Aulus Gellius, in the Nodes Attica;, at a later period refers to the
subject, but adds nothing to what was before known. Writing in
the early years of Augustus, Varro says that there are three append-

1880. THE CHASE. 957

ages to a villa : a leporarium (a hare-warren) — for which name, by
the time of Pliny, in consequence of its having become the custom to
keep other game besides hares in these inclosures, that of vivarium
had been substituted ; an aviarium, or, as it was also then called,
an ornithon, and a piscina (fish-pond). Speaking to his Koman
friends of the leporaria of their day, Varro tells them that these
differed very materially from those of their great-grandsires, inasmuch
as the latter had been small inclosures of an acre or two, and for
hares only ; whereas in their day the leporaria were many acres in
size, and contained wild swine, wild goats, and deer, as well as hares
and rabbits. He mentions that Fulvius Lippinus, who, according to
Pliny — who, however, calls him Lupinus — was the first Roman who
established a vivarium on this large scale — an example followed soon
after by Lucullus and Hortensius — had in the neighbourhood of
Tarquinii an inclosure of seventy acres, in which were not only the
animals just named, but also wild sheep. Varro speaks of another
large inclosure in which the wild boars and wild goats had been
made quite tame, and came to be fed when called; and also of one
belonging to Hortensius. in Laurentinum, of fifty acres and up-
wards, which the owner called a drjpiorpofatov, and in which, having
his triclinium spread on an elevated spot, he supped with his guests.
A trumpet being sounded, the table was surrounded by such a
multitude of deer, boars, and other animals, that the scene, Varro says,
gave him as much pleasure as a venatio in the circus would have
done, barring the absence of African wild beasts. It may be as-
sumed that a vivarium in which the animals were thus rendered
tame cannot have been established with much of a view to hunting.

Speaking of the hares, which such a leporarium should contain,
Varro mentions four sorts — the Italian, which he says is small, with short
fore-legs and long hind ones, and is dark in colour on the back, but
white underneath ; those of transalpine Graul, and those of Macedonia,
both of which are very large ; and the Spanish breed, which is small.
He adds, as of the hare species, the rabbit (cuniculus\ which he states
to have been imported into Italy from Spain, in which statement he is
confirmed by Pliny.

With regard to the ornithones or aviaries, they appear to have been
originally intended, not at all with a view to sport, but for the rearing
and fattening of quails and thrushes, both of which were esteemed great
delicacies by the Romans, and the rearing of which was a source of large
profit to the proprietors of these establishments. These buildings
were carefully constructed. They were roofed over with network, were
furnished with artificial trees, and every convenience for the birds to
perch and roost, and were supplied with small streams of running water,
the whole being made to look as much like the country as possible ;
but they had only a few high windows, lest the birds, able to see
outside, should pine for their natural freedom, and in consequence
VOL. VIII.— No. 46. 3 T

958 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

not fatten as they should do. But besides these aviaries, in which
birds were kept, as Varro terms it, ' fructus causa,' that is for the
table or the market, some villa proprietors had others, in which
birds — especially singing birds — were kept ' delectationis causa ; ' M.
Laelius Strabo, a friend of Varro's, having been the first to introduce
such an ornithon. Lucullus, at his Tusculan villa, combined the
two things under the same roof ; and while, like Hortensius in the
midst of the wild boars and goats, he was reclining on his triclinium
at supper — * ubi delicate co3naret ' — he had the satisfaction of seeing
some of the thrushes on the dish cooked, and at the same time the
others flying about — ' alios videret in mazonomo positos coctos, alios
volitare circum fenestras captos ' — perhaps anticipating the gratifica-
tion of eating the latter in their turn.

Hunting was no doubt a common pursuit at the commencement
of the Augustan sera. Horace not only says that the

Imberbis juvenis, tandem custode remote,
Gaudet equis, canibusque —

but also represents hunting as the ordinary and fitting occupation of

Roman men —

Romania solemne viris opus —

and as a pursuit at once :.

utile famse,
Vitseque et membris —

though the ' venator,' who remains, ' tenerae conjugis immemor,'
in pursuit of the deer or Marsian boar, must be taken as representing
an exceptional case of individual ardour, rather than as the type of
Roman sportsmen in general.

From the references to hunting in the writings of this period, it
seems pretty certain that, while importance was attached to the breed-
ing and training of hounds, the hound was at this time little, if at
all, employed for the purpose of running down the game, but mainly
for the subsidiary purpose of driving it into the net that it might
be taken, or rousing it that it might be brought down by the javelin,
arrow, or sling of the hunter. Virgil recommends, as not the least
important point to be attended to by the countryman, the rearing
of dogs of Spartan or Molossian breed :

Velbces Spart® catulos, acremque Molossum. —

the latter, it would seem, for the protection of his homestead and
flocks from thieves and wolves, the former for hunting. With the
merits of the numerous foreign breeds — more especially of the Gallic,
Tvhich was used in Gaul for pursuing the game without net or other
contrivance — he seems to have been unacquainted. When he says —

1880. THE CHASE. 959

Et cauibus leporem, cauibus venabere dainas,
he adds :

Montesque per altos
Ingentem clamore premes ad retia cervum.

And when speaking of the pursuits to be followed in winter —

Cum nix alta jacet, glaciem cum flumina trudunt —

though he mentions 4 auritos sequi lepores,' he combines with it ' retia
ponere cervis,' and

Turn figere damas,
Stupea torquentem Balearis verbera fundse.

So that it may well be doubted whether he had any idea of the use of
the hound for running down the game. Indeed, when we come to
the treatise of Arrian, we shall see that the Spartan hound, of which
Virgil speaks, being wanting in speed, would have been of little use
for that purpose.

Horace, it is true, speaks of the ' visa catulis cerva fidelibus ; ' but
he leaves us in uncertainty as to the purpose for which the hounds were
here employed. It is the nets of his ' venator ' that the Marsian boar
has torn ; and if the happy countryman is described by him as
* trudens acres hinc atque hinc multa cane Apros,' it is ' in obstantes
plagas;' while it is with the snare that he takes, as 'jucunda
praemia,' the timid hare and the foreign crane.

That the net was the principal instrument of the Eoman sports-
man is clear ; and, as was the case with the Grecian net, it was an
apparatus of an extensive character. First came the indago, or net
of large circumference, by which the area intended to be beaten was
in a great measure inclosed, so that the game, if once driven within
it, should not again escape. To this was added, at each end, the
formido, or rope hung with coloured feathers, which, waving in the
wind, frightened the animals, and so deterred them from attempting
to escape at the sides. Subsidiary again to the larger net were the
plagce, or road nets — the enodia of Xenophon — which were placed
across roads or narrow openings. Besides these there were the casses,
or purse nets, made to receive the animal, as it rushed towards the
indago, with a laqueus, or noose, which tightened round it, making
escape impossible. Each of these nets had its appropriate attendant,
or attendants ; but nothing would be gained by repeating their re-
spective appellations. But from their number it is obvious that this
form of hunting must have been of a somewhat expensive character.

The weapons of the hunter were various — adapted of course to the
game he was pursuing. Among them was the venabulum, or hunting
spear, with broad point, used for thrusting, not for throwing ; the veru-
tum, or javelin, or dart, used, on the other hand, for the latter purpose ;
the lagobolon or harepole ; the bow and arrow ; and lastly the Toledan
knife, Spain being, even in that age, celebrated for its metal. We read,

3T2

9GO THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

too, of the triaina, a three-pronged instrument, for despatching the
hare when entangled in the net — a more formidable weapon, one would
have thought, than was required for such a purpose. We also
occasionally read of the sling as used in hunting, but we can scarcely
suppose it to have been of much avail.

With the nets and weapons of the hunter, the hound occupies an
important place. If the net was to be employed, the service of this
useful auxiliary was essential towards finding the game, and driving-
it into the toils. If the hunted animal, like the stag, was to be des-
patched by the spear or javelin of the hunter, the hound would assist in
bringing it to bay. If, like the boar, it was capable of offering
resistance, fierce and powerful hounds would assist in tearing it down.
Where the purpose was merely to find the game, that it might be
started by the hunter himself, and so be within the reach of dart or
arrow, the use of the dog being then to indicate the immediate vicinity
of the game, the hound underwent a different training, and seems to
have been taught to behave very much in the way of a modern
pointer. Indeed, one would almost be led to think that it was of the
pointer that the writers who refer to this use of the dog were
speaking. Thus Pliny, dwelling on the sagacity of the dog, says : —
* Sed in venatu solertia et sagacitas prsecipua est. Scrutatur vestigia
atque persequitur, comitantem ad feram inquisitorem loro trahens :
qua visa quam silens et occulta, quam significans demonstratio est,.
cauda primum, deinde rostro ! ' Equally striking is the language
of Lucan : —

Nee creditur ulli

Silva cam, nisi qui presso vestigia rostro
Colligit, et prseda nescit latrare reperta,
Contentus tremulo monstrasse cubilia loro.

Thus Gritius Faliscus, too, whose work we are about to mention, speaks
of the dog standing, as it were, fixed and rooted to the spot : —

Aut eflecta levi testatur gaudia cauda,

Aut ipsa infodiens uncis vestigia plantis

Mandit humuiu, celsasque apprensat naribus auras.

The earliest treatise on hunting which has come down to us from
the Roman times is a poem called the Cynegeticon, by the Grratius
Faliscus just referred to, who, having been mentioned by Ovid — by
the reference to Tityrus, Ovid would appear to make him contemporary
with Virgil — is supposed to have belonged to the Augustan age, but
of whom, except this poem, nothing certain is known. As a poem
the work is of very inferior merit. The writer gives instructions on
most of the points which we have seen referred to by Xenophop, the
construction of the different nets, and of the spears and instruments
used in hunting, and the foot snare (the TroSovrpafir) of Xenophon),
which he calls the ' dentata, et iligno robore clausa, pedica,' and which
he seems to contemplate with satisfaction as an ingenious and

1880. THE CHASE. 961

•useful invention, ascribing this and all other contrivances for taking
game — though some of them would appear to us to be of a very
poacher-like character — to divine suggestion. But it is on the sub-
ject of dogs that the interest of the poem principally turns. Of these
he enumerates some twenty different sorts. It will be sufficient to
refer to a few of the leading ones. The Median breed is fierce, but
indocile. ' Extollit gloria Celtas,' for the opposite quality. But of
the latter he says nothing as to the swiftness, on which we shall find
Arrian laying so much stress. The Grelonian breed is sagacious, but
cowardly. The Persian combines sagacity with courage. TheSeric — by
which, we presume, is meant the Chinese — is a ' genus intractabilis iroe.'
The Lycaonian dogs, on the other hand, are good-natured, yet bold.
The Umbrian, while admirable for its scenting qualities — ' solertia
naris ' — will not face the game which it has roused. The strangest
statement of all is that the dogs of Hyrcania, to increase the strength
and fierceness of their breed, go into the forests and engender with
tigers. The offspring, says the poet, will make you suffer in your
flocks : bear this, however, as the dog will compensate you for it by
his service in the woods. We shall find Pliny and ^Elian saying in
substance the same thing — and indeed things still more startling —
so prone were even the learned of the ancient world to believe in
fable.

After dealing with the merits or demerits of several other
breeds, to follow him in which would lead us too far, Gratius pro-
ceeds to eulogise the British dog, whose only defect he seems to
•consider to be his want of beauty. The following lines on this
subject are interesting, as being, however small may be their intrinsic
merit, the earliest testimony to the qualities of the British hound : —

Quid freta si Morinum, dubio refluentia ponto,
Veneris, atque ipsos libeat penetrare Britannos ?
O quanta est merces, et quantum impendia supra !
Si non ad speciem mentiturosque decores
Protinus : haec una est catulis jactura Britannis.
Ad magnum cum venit opus, promendaque virtus,
Et vocat extreme prseceps discrimine Mavors,
Non tune egregios tantum admirere Molossos.

From what Gratius here says of the appearance of the British
dog, it is not improbable that he was referring to the mastiff breed,
which, like the Molossian, would be admirably adapted from its
strength and courage to boar-hunting, in his day a favourite pursuit .

The upshot of the whole is that the author strongly recommends
the crossing of the various races, and advises which breeds shall be
thus combined.

It may be observed that Strabo, the geographer, who wrote in the
beginning of the first century, in what he says respecting Britain,
speaks of it as producing a good breed of dogs for hunting — KVVSS

962 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. . December

ev(f)V£iS Trpos Kvvrjyeaids. Strabo, it is true, had never been in
Britain, and therefore must have got his information at second hand ;
but the statement shows that the British dog enjoyed a good reputa-
tion in his day.

In the troubled and dangerous times which ensued after the days
of Augustus, hunting appears to have very much gone out of
fashion. What with foreign wars and intestine dangers, amid which
every man carried, as it were, his life in his hand, men's minds were
too much occupied to give themselves up to field sports. Still more
fatal, as calculated to supersede real hunting, were the so-called
* venationes ' — so called, however, only by an abuse of language, for
the term ' venatio ' is little applicable to what was practised under
it — the wholesale slaughter of wild animals in the Circus and Am-
phitheatre— which, introduced in the later years of the Republic, had
now assumed huge dimensions, and, together with the equally hideous
gladiatorial conflicts, had become .the ruling passion of all classes —
not only of the poorer citizens, to whom real hunting was impossible,
but also of the wealthy and great, who preferred to witness these
exhibitions at their ease to the toils and dangers of the chase.

Originally the exhibition of wild animals had 'arisen out of the
practice of exposing, on the occasion of the triumph of a Roman
general, together with the spoils taken from the enemy, the particular
products of the conquered country, and among these any animals pre-
viously unknown to the Roman people, and which consequently would
be objects of curiosity and interest. When, therefore, the Romans
extended their conquests to Africa and the East, it was natural that the
larger animals, the produce of those countries and unknown in Italy,
should be made part of the show. Being of no further use, after they
had been exhibited they were killed. But the practice of exhibiting
wild beasts, and putting them to death, was soon afterwards trans-
ferred to the Ludi Circenses, as part of the show provided on such
occasions ; and successive exhibitors vied with one another, not only
in the magnificence of the games, but also in the number and nature
of the animals exhibited. At the Ludi Circenses exhibited by Scipio
Nasica and P. Lentulus, as -curule aediles, in B.C. 168, Livy tells us that
elephants, as well as panthers and bears^ formed pail of the show.
Elephants first fought in the Circus, according to Pliny, in the games
exhibited by Claudius Pulcher in his sedileship, in B.C. 99. In the
games of the Luculli, B.C. 79, they fought with bulls. Seneca states that
at the games given by Sulla in his praetorship 100 lions were exhibited,
which were killed by javelin-men sent by King Bocchus for the purpose.
Scaurus, in his sedileship, B.C. 58, astonished the Roman public by
exhibiting in the Circus, for the first time, a hippopotamus, as also five
crocodiles in an artificial canal. Still more prodigious was the quantity
of wild beasts exhibited by Pompey, in his second consulship, in B.C. 55,
in a venatio given on the dedication of the temple of Venus Victrix.

1880. THE CEASE. 963

Six hundred lions and twenty elephants were exhibited and killed, the
latter by Grsetulians, who fought them with darts. The huge animals in
their terror endeavoured to break down the railings which separated
them from the spectators, and thereby caused no little consternation
and alarm. Cicero was present at this exhibition, and evidently was
disgusted at the sight of so much carnage. He writes to his friend M.
Marius, who, from illness or some other cause, had been unable to
attend : ' Beliquse sunt venationes binse per dies quinque ; magnifies
nemo negat ; sed quse potest homini esse polito delectatio, quum aut
homo imbecillus a valentissima bestia laniatur, aut prseclara bestia
venabulo transverberatur ? ' Even the Eoman public, not as yet
brutalised by the frequency of such massacres, appear to have rather
sympathised with the elephants than derived pleasure from the enter-
tainment. For Cicero adds : ' Extremus elephantorum dies fuifc ; in
quo admiratio magna vulgi atque turba?, delectatio nulla extitit. Quin-
etiam misericordia quasdam consecuta est atque opinio ejusmodi, esse
quandam illi belluae cum genere humano societatem.' Pliny says that
the spectators, touched with pity for the poor beasts, who seemed to
appeal to them for mercy, were not only moved to tears, but broke
out into imprecations against Pompey, as the author of this cruelty,
which, adds the superstitious Roman, were soon afterwards realised
in his downfall.

Julius Caesar, in his third consulship, exhibited in like manner a
venatio which lasted five days, and at which the camelopard was seen
in Italy for the first time. He also caused bulls to be encountered
by Thessalian horsemen, whose business it was to chase them round the
Circus till they were exhausted, and then to seize them by the horns and
kill them. Similar bull-fights were exhibited afterwards by Claudius
and Nero. Augustus, in the games exhibited by him in B.C. 29, besides
a hippopotamus, showed for the first time a rhinoceros, and, if we are
to believe Suetonius, a snake fifty feet long, and as many as thirty-six
crocodiles. At a venatio of this emperor, no less than 3,500 animals
were slaughtered.

Confined originally to the Ludi Circenses, the venationes, at a later
period, were often associated with imperial triumphs or other state
occasions. And the rage for this wholesale massacre of animals, as a
source of amusement and gratification to the public, continued to
increase, and led exhibitors to compete with one another in the num-
ber and rarity of the animals they presented. Thus, among other
instances, on the dedication of the Colosseum by Titus, we are told
that 5,000 wild beasts, and 5,000 other animals, were slaughtered. In
the games celebrated by Trajan, after his Dacian victories, Dion
Cassius asserts that as many as 11,000 animals were killed. At the
games exhibited by Septimius Severus in A.D. 207, on the occasion of
his return to Rome after his victories in the East and the marriage
of his son Caracalla, 400 wild beasts were let loose in the amphi-

964 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

theatre at one time, after which a hundred a day were slaughtered
for the seven days during which the games continued.

Equally remarkable, if we may believe Vopiscus, was the venatio
of Probus. Of wild beasts, 100 lions and as many lionesses, 100
Libyan and as many Syrian leopards, and 300 bears ; of other
animals, 1,000 ostriches, 1,000 boars, 1,000 stags, 1,000 deer, and a
multitude of other animals, were slaughtered on this occasion. The
same historian states that among the animals collected by the
younger Gordian for his triumph, but afterwards exhibited by his
successor Philip at the secular games in A.D. 248, were a hippopota-
mus, a rhinoceros, thirty-two elephants, ten tigers, sixty tame lions,
thirty tame leopards, ten hyaenas, ten cameloparls, ten elks, twenty
onagri, forty wild horses, and an immense number of other animals.
Many other instances might be given, but these will suffice.

When the wild beasts had been exhibited in the Circus, they were
killed in the amphitheatre by the bestiarii, a class of men trained
expressly for the purpose of fighting wild beasts, and who were an
entirely distinct class from the gladiators, who fought not with beasts
but with one another. The other animals were hunted and killed in
the Circus. '

But at these hideous exhibitions wild beasts, especially lions,
were frequently put to a still more revolting use than that of
being fought with and killed by men. Convicted criminals were often
condemned to be exposed to the beasts, and, when so sentenced, were
delivered over, naked and unarmed, to the fury of a ferocious animal,
while the demoralised and heartless Komans found in the frightful
spectacle a source of pleasurable excitement, witnessed with grim
satisfaction the terror and agony of the wretched victim, watched
with breathless interest for the onset and rush of the beast, and
saw a fellow-creature torn to pieces before their eyes with the same
satisfaction as they would have felt at seeing a hunted wolf, or other
noxious animal, torn to pieces by a pack of hounds.

The demand for wild animals from the African and Eastern pro-
vinces, to satisfy the requirements of the Roman amphitheatre, was
such, that it was at last with difficulty that these provinces could
furnish the necessary supply. As early as the time of Nero, Petronius
writes :

Quseritur in silvis Mauris fera, et ultimus Ammoii

Afrorum excutitur, ne desit bellua dente

Ad mortes pretiosa ; fames premit advena classes,

Tigris et auratii gradiens vectatur in aula,

Ut bibat humanum, populo plaudente, cruorem.

1 he deficiency of wild beasts became such that an edict was issued
prohibiting the destruction of these animals. The governors of the
provinces and their officers were alone authorised to hunt them, and
then only for the purpose of taking them alive and sending them to

1880. THE CHASE. 965

Rome. To all others their pursuit was prohibited under severe
penalties. The result was that the provinces were overrun with these
destructive beasts, to the terror and distress of the inhabitants. The
evil became so crying, that the Emperors Honorius and Theodosius,
by a law of A.D. 409 (Cod. Theodos. lib. xv. tit. 11), revoked the
prohibition, and made the killing of these animals again lawful. At
the same time it was forbidden to take lions alive for the purpose
of sale.

Gibbon writes : ' The African lions, when pressed by hunger, in-
fested the open villages and cultivated country ; and they infested
them with impunity. The royal beast was reserved for the pleasure
of the Emperor and the capital ; and the unfortunate peasant who
killed one of them, though in his own defence, incurred a very heavy
penalty.' ' This extraordinary game law,' adds Gibbon, ' was miti-
gated by Honorius and Theodosius, and finally repealed by Justinian.'
In the last statement the great historian is not quite accurate.
To Justinian belongs the credit of having abolished the gladiatorial
conflicts. As regards wild beasts, Justinian simply repeats in the
Code (lib. xi. tit. 44), in totidem verbis, the law of the two emperors
revoking the prohibition to kill them. The fighting with wild beasts
appears to have gradually fallen into disuse, though it may possibly
have received its final death-blow by the abolition of its kindred
amusement, the gladiatorial exhibitions.

To return from this digression. In the time of Trajan hunting
had again come into fashion. Trajan and his successor Hadrian were
both hunters on a great scale. Both were hunters not only of the
ordinary beasts of chase, but of lions and the other wild beasts, when
their presence in the African or Eastern provinces afforded the op-
portunity.

It is to a Greek that we are indebted for the next treatise on
hunting. Arrian, who was born at Nicodemeia, in Bithynia, and
who lived in the time of Hadrian and the Antonines, was a philo-
sopher, an accomplished scholar, and an elegant writer, in point of
style resembling Xenophon, whom he appears to have made his model.
He attached himself to the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, as Xenophon
had attached himself to Socrates. He also proved himself an efficient
general, and having thus so many points of resemblance to Xenophon,
he acquired the appellation of the younger Xenophon. In A.D. 124,
he gained the favour and friendship of the Emperor Hadrian, who was
then in Greece, and a few years afterwards was appointed Prefect of
Cappadocia ; and that province being invaded by the Massagetse, he
defeated them in a decisive battle. Under Antoninus Pius he became
consul. In addition to several philosophical and historical works —
among the latter the Anabasis of Alexander, considered by competent
critics as by far the best account of Alexander's conquest of the East —
he composed, as Xenophon had done, and possibly to make the re-

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

semblance to him the more complete, a work on hunting, to which
he also gave the title of ' Kunegeticos ' — not, however, in any spirit
of rivalry, but avowedly as a supplement to the work of his admired
predecessor, more especially with reference to hare-hunting. The
principal interest of the work is to be found in what he says on
the subject of dogs, and the style of hunting which he recommends.
Having in the course of his official career been employed in Gaul,
Arrian had become acquainted with the Gallic breed of hounds, which
he represents as far superior to those known to Xenophon, to the in-
feriority of which, and to Xenophon not having been acquainted with a
superior breed, he ascribes the statement of the latter that a hare could
not be run down and caught by hounds. Confident in the power of
the Gallic hounds, Arrian disdains not only the use of gins and traps,
but also that of the net — to run the game down fairly with hounds
being in his view the only pursuit worthy of a true sportsman. Nay,
so generous is his mind towards the object of the chase, that he is of
opinion that, if the hare, having afforded a good run, and being ex-
hausted, betakes itself to the shelter of a bush, the hounds should be
called off, and the life of the animal spared. He has often, he tells
us, taken up the hare when thus overcome, and having coupled up
the hounds, let her go again ; or, if he came up too late to save the
hare, has flogged the hounds for not having spared her — a mode of
gratifying his sensibility, which certainly savours quite as strongly of
injustice towards the hounds as of tenderness towards the hare. The
death of the hare was to him, differing herein from Xenophon, a
painful sight. But the sympathy of this evidently kind-hearted man
was obviously misplaced. The pain to the hare is in the terror and
distress this timid animal undergoes while being pursued, and dread-
ing to be overtaken, rather than in its death, which, when once it is
overpowered by the hounds, is instantaneous.

Taking the Gallic dog for his model, Arrian dwells on the length
of body, and the size and brightness of the eyes, as essential charac-
teristics of a fine hound. He tells us of one he had himself possessed,
to which he ascribes almost human sagacity, and such extraordinary
swiftnesi and strength that alone he could run down four hares in
a day. He describes two sorts of Gallic hounds ; the 'Hjovcnat
(Segusii), and OvepTpayoi (Vertragi), the latter of exceeding swiftness.
Early in the morning men are to be sent to observe where the forms are.
The hunter is afterwards to come with the first-named hounds, and
start the hare, which then the swifter Vertragi pursue ; but the hare
was to be allowed a fair start, and only two of those swifter hounds
were to be loosed after her. From the manner in which the sport
is described, the latter hounds would appear to have been what we
call Greyhounds, and we should unhesitatingly conclude that they
were so, were it not that Arrian says nothing which at all intimates
that they ran by sight and not by scent. At all events, the Gauls

1880. THE CHASE. 967

appear to have had a much higher sense of real sport than their
Roman masters.

Like his model, Arrian confines himself almost entirely to hare-
hunting. Of stag-hunting he says but little ; though, by the way,
he tells us that while the latter required to be followed on horse-
back, hare-hunting was generally practised on foot. When run down
the stag is to be killed by a spear, or taken alive with a noose.

The hunting which Arrian sought to introduce does not appear
to have found favour, at least in his time. The next treatise on hunt-
ing, which has come down to us, is the ' Onomasticon ' of Julius Pol-
lux, a Greek sophist and grammarian, a work written for the instruction
of the youthful Commodus, and which deals, in a quaint and amusing
style, with every known, we had almost added and unknown, subject,
and to which the title ' de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis ' might
not have been altogether inapplicable. In this work, combining fable
with fact, but adding little or nothing to the prior stock of knowledge,
the author, amongst other subjects of his book, deals in the 5th sect,
with that of hunting, and, for the most part closely following
Xenophon, goes again over the old ground of nets and weapons,
taking no notice of the Gallic form of sport. His detestable pupil
profited little by his instructions. Commodus, though vigorously
and powerfully made, and thoroughly devoted to athletic sports, never
took to those of the field. The pleasure of this monster in human
form, so far as concerns animals, was confined to the wholesale
slaughter of the circus or amphitheatre. He is said by his biographers
to have been passionately addicted to this low form of sport, but,
being as cowardly as cruel, to have taken care to be protected from
the possibility of harm, shooting his arrows, or throwing his javelins,
from behind a screen of network ; just as in his gladiatorial conflicts,
in which he is reported to have killed some hundreds, he is also said
to have worn impenetrable armour, and to have fought with a heavy
sword, while the arms of his opponents were of tin or lead.

The next author who claims our attention is one respecting whose
identity there has been some confusion and controversy among the
critics.

In the reign of Severus, or his son, Caracalla, there appeared
three poems in Greek hexameter verse, on fishing, hunting, and fowl-
ing, entitled ' Halieutica,' ' Kunegetica,' and ' Ixeutica,' each pro-
fessing to be the work of a writer named Oppianus. An anonymous
writer of the life of Oppianus having represented the ' Kunegetica '
and the ' Ixeutica ' as having been the work of the Oppianus whose
life he was writing, and his author as having been a native of Cilicia,
it was assumed, and long believed as undoubted, that the other treatise,
the 'Halieutica,' which had appeared the first of the three, and
which was known to be the work of a Cilician Oppianus, though
no mention is made of it by the biographer in question, was also

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

by the same Oppianus as the other two works; and the three
poems were considered as the productions of the same writer ; till at
the close of the last century, Schneider, a learned German scholar, in
editing the ' Halieutica ' and * Kunegetica,' asserted the contrary,
maintaining that the Oppian of the ' Kunegetica ' was a totally dif-
ferent person from the author of the ' Halieutica,' as manifest from
the fact that the former in his work declared himself to be a native of
Apameia, orPella, in Syria — this being apparent from two passages, in
one of which, speaking of the River Orontes, he describes it as washing
his native town, sp^v iroKiv ; while in the other, speaking of the
temple of Memnon, in the neighbourhood of Apameia, he refers to
the evpea Kd\\ij as of his own country — whence it followed that he
could not have been the same as the Cilician of that name, and
that the author of the biography had been mistaken in representing
him as a Cilician. This argument of course assumes that the author
of the * Halieutica ' was a native of Cilicia, a fact as to which the
ancient writers are agreed, and which appears to be borne out by a
passage in which the writer speaks of the * dcrrv K«pu/aoi>,' and the
'EXcoyo-a,' both of which were in Cilicia, as rj^erep^s
On the other hand there is a passage in the Kunegetica
which would appear to be conclusive as to the identity of authorship.
It is that in which the poet (v. 77 to 80) makes his excuses to
Nereus, Amphitrite, and the Dryads, that quitting them — that is,
quitting the subjects of fishing and fowling— he is now about to de-
vote himself to the hunting deities, Saifj.oa-1 6ijpo(p6voicri TraX-ivrpo-rros.
Schneider meets this apparently conclusive evidence by the ingenious
suggestion — for which, however, he adduces no authority — that the
'Halieutica ' having been first written by the Cilician Oppian, the other
author, on taking up the cognate subjects, adopted his name, or, if of
the same name, sought to represent himself as the same writer.
Schneider further supports his view as to the non-identity of the author
of the one poem with that of the other by reference to the style of the
two ; that of the * Kunegetica ' being in his view vastly inferior to that
of the other poem. Indeed, while he describes the ' Halieutica ' as
* elegans et concinnum, et satis puro sermone conscriptum,' the other
poem, in his estimation, is ' durum, inconcinnum, forma tot a incom-
positum, saepissime ab ingenio, usu, et analogia Grrseci sermonis abhor-
rens.' On this point again modern critics are divided. Some, though
they may not go so far as Schneider in depreciating the merits of the
' Kunegetica,' agree in thinking the style of this poem inferior to that
of the ' Halieutica.' Others, as is done by a learned writer in an able
analysis of the * Kunegetica ' in the Metropolitan Magazine, extol the
work as a poem, and refer to passages not wholly devoid of poetical
beauty.

As if to make the matter still more perplexing, the author of the
anonymous life of Oppian, treating, as has just been said, the « Kune-
getica ' as the work of the Cilician Oppiaus, tells a story — on what

1880. THE CHASE. 969

authority we know not — that the author having been admitted to
read his poems before the Emperor Severus and his son Antoninus,
better known as Caracalla, to whom (then just nominated Caesar) the
poems were addressed, the emperor was so pleased with them that he, at
the poet's request, recalled his father from banishment to which he had
been condemned, and ordered him to receive a golden stater (about
15s. 6«L) for every verse. If the fact really happened, which of the two
poets was it to whom this bit of luck occurred ? — the Cilician, who was
not the author of the ' Kunegetica,' or the author of the ' Kunegetica,'
who was not the Cilician ? Some learned critics, however, treat this
story as unworthy of belief, contending that the Tair^s inrarov tcpdro?
'AVTWVIVS, to whom the poem is addressed, is not Caracalla, but
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, and that the several allusions in the
poem to the son of the person addressed refer to Commodus, and
not to Caracalla, which is the more probable from the fact that
Caracalla had, so far as is known, no son. The learning on this
somewhat curious and controverted subject is to be found well con-
densed in an article on Oppianus in that abundant and admirable
repository of classical knowledge, Smith's Dictionary of Greek and
Roman Biography and Mythology, to which every lover of classical
literature and lore is under great and enduring obligation.

An argument in favour of the identity of authorship, and which
deserves to be mentioned here, may be found in the extraordinary
admixture of fable with fact which characterises both poems. But
it occurs to us that the argument founded on this coincidence is
met by the fact that the fabulous matter in both poems is in all
probability derived from the same sources, namely, the works on
Natural History which existed at this period, the principal ones being
— at least of those which have come down to us — first, the ' Indica '
of Ctesias, who, of all the writers whom 'Grrsecia mendax' has pro-
duced, may safely be pronounced to be among the most ' audacious,'
seeing that he declares the outrageous absurdities he narrates as
having come within his own personal knowledge when in the East,
or as having been communicated to him by persons who had seen
what he describes ; secondly, the Natural History of Pliny, who, in
his chapters on zoology, has mixed up with zoological facts a series
of idle stories and statements revolting to common sense, which it
is astonishing that a man who enjoyed the reputation of being the
most learned of the Romans could possibly have entertained ; and
thirdly, the ' De Natura Animalium' of ^Elian, who wrote some half
century later, and for whose power of intellectual deglutition nothing
appears to have been too gross, and who, though he professes to be a
philosopher, and epaarrjs d\r]8£ias, exhibits, if we are to give him
credit for intended truthfulness, a degree of credulity as wonderful as
some of his own stories.

We have not included Aristotle in this category of authors, his
work being a treatise on the anatomy and physiology of animals —

970

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

December

and as such a prodigy of knowledge and research, if looked at with
reference to the time at which it was composed, and the then state
of science on such subjects — rather than as professing to enumerate
the various kinds of animals, or to give a description of animals
or their habits. Nor does the great philosopher condescend to
indulge in fable, citing the mendacious Ctesias only twice or thrice,
and then either throwing the whole responsibility of the statement on
the latter by the introductory words, ' if we are to believe Ctesias,'
or declaring Ctesias to be untrustworthy — OVK dgiotrio-Tos a>v.1

It would not be just to impute to Pliny, or perhaps even to
/Elian, the invention of the monstrous things they tell us of. Be-
tween the time of Ctesias and that of Pliny, Megasthenes and
many other authors, both Greek and Eoman, whose works have not
come down to us, had written on the history or the geography of Africa
and the East, and it seems to have been the practice of all these
authors to endeavour to make their works attractive by the introduc-
tion of the marvellous, sometimes of their own invention, sometimes
existing in popular tradition, sometimes told them by the natives, who,
there can be little doubt, amused themselves by imposing on the easy
belief of the credulous foreigner. Pliny frequently makes a point of
citing the writer on whose authority he makes a statement, leaving
the reader to form his own judgment. But it appears pretty plain
that, in most instances, his own belief goes along with the story,
however repugnant to common sense.

As there can be little doubt that the authors on hunting derived
their ideas as to the nature of the wild animals, the pursuit of which
they were describing, from the works of the natural historians who
had preceded them, it becomes matter of some interest, not only
with reference to the subject we are dealing with, but also in a scien-
tific point of view, to see what were the notions of the zoologists
of those times on the subject. But we have already exceeded our
limit, and must reserve this matter to our next.

A. E. COCKBURN.

The sudden and lamented death of Sir Alexander
( \n-lilnirn ivill jm-vcnt the completion of the
tr>-irx of articles nliicli he had projected.

ED.

1 Neither have we included Solinus, probably the greatest gotcmouchr of all
these authors— partly because, though the time at which he wrote is uncertain, there
is every reason to think it must have been considerably later than the epoch at
which we have arrived ; partly because we look on him for the most part as only
the servile copyist of Pliny, whose statements he constantly repeats, ij>ti*timit
rcrbit, without any acknowledgment.

1880. 971

THE OBLIGATIONS OF THE NEW
TESTAMENT TO BUDDHISM.

THAT the New Testament contains elements, infused in one gospel,
at least, into the teachings of Jesus himself from a foreign source, is
one of the results which recent criticism must be said to have placed
almost beyond dispute. But it is not the fourth Gospel only which
has drawn upon itself the suspicion of not being a native product of
Palestinian soil. It is the opinion, for example, of one critic bearing
the honoured name of Burnouf, that all the elements of the legend of
Christ are to be found in the Vedas : * his double origin, his birth
before the dawn in the midst of extraordinary events, his baptism,
the sacred unction whence he derives his name, his marvellous know-
ledge, his transfiguration, his miracles, his ascension into heaven,' all
these made their way into Palestine from the East, boasting already
the venerable age of two thousand years.1 Inasmuch as this theory
is supported by the identification of the Vedie Agni with the Chris-
tian lamb (Lat. agnus)? it must be said to sin against all laws of
philology in somewhat the same way as Nork's attempt to vindicate
the Vedic origin of Levitical institutions on the ground that the
Hebrew amen was the same as the sacred Brahmanic monosyllable
om.3 Undeterred by the incredulity and contempt excited by his
endeavour to identify Christ with Krishna,4 M. Jacolliot in a second
work reasserts his main proposition, and declares that Christianity,
with its doctrines of the Unity and Trinity of the Supreme Being, of
immortality, of heaven and hell, is only a pale copy of Brahmanism.5
But this derivation sins against the laws of time as well as of
language ; for it is the opinion of the best Indianists that the
worship of Krishna did not arise until the fifth or sixth century
of our era, and the passages of the Mahabharata, in which he
receives divine honours, are among the latest in the poem.6

* Emile Burnouf, La Science des Religions, p. 243. Paris, 1872. 2 p. 258.

3 Brahminen und Jlabbinen (1836), p. 208.

4 The Bible in India, London, 1870.

5 Christ-no, et le Christ, p. 376. Paris, 1874.

6 It is a curious circumstance that the resemblances on which M. Jacolliot relies
are so strong as to have given rise to the suspicion that the legend of Krishna has

972 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

A more striking parallel may, however, be found in the career of
the great Hindu teacher, whose followers exceed by so many millions
the bearers of the Christian name, Gotama Buddha. The resem-
blances between his life and teachings are, at first sight, so close as
to have given rise to the crude suggestion that the Galilean prophet
had himself travelled in the East, and brought back with him the
traditions and the lessons of his Indian predecessor.7 A slight
acquaintance with the general outline of Gotama's story may indeed
easily lead to the airy mention of the * obligations of the New Testa-
ment to Buddhism ' as though they were beyond dispute. But it
should not be forgotten that, apart from the deeper questions of in-
trinsic analogy, we are restricted by historical limitations which must
not be set aside. The rise of Buddhism and the rise of Christianity,
the origins of their respective literatures, maybe said, broadly speak-
ing, to be sufficiently well established. They are fixed within certain
dates, which belong to the historian and are not open to alteration to
support or refute a theory. Seneca and Paul may be linked by
a fictitious correspondence because they lived in the same era,
were affected — though how differently — by the same civilisation,
and to some extent shared the same thoughts. But while Christ can
owe nothing to Krishna, because he preceded him by four or five
centuries, Gotama has the same priority of Jesus, and chronology
consequently does not at once destroy the basis of comparison. A
brief summary of some of the main analogies as they are severally
recorded in the sacred books of their religions,8 may fitly clear the
way for the inquiry, whether any links of historical connection can
be established between them.

The pious fancy of Buddhist disciples early surrounded the very
birth of their master with miracle and prophecy. In the succession
of existences through which they believed him to have passed, it was
to this incarnation that he had ever looked forward, that he might
been largely influenced by the Christian story. See F. Lorinser, Die Bhayarat
(ihita iibcrtettf, &c. Breslau, 1869. A portion of the appendix is translated in the
Indian Antiquary, p. 283 sqq. Oct. 1873. In the number for March 1875, Dr. Muir
publishes the opinions of Windisch, Weber, and Bohtlingk on the subject, as well as
his own.

' See Eitel, Three Lecture* on Buddhism, p. 4, 1871. M. Jacolliot makes Jesus
study in Egypt and perhaps in India, between the ages of twelve and thirty, Bible
in India, p. 289.

• But little relating to the life of Buddha has as yet been translated into English
direct from the Pali Scriptures. But the general consensus of various lives of Buddha
which have been recently made known from Singhalese, Burmese, Chinese, and other
sources, points to the formation of a tradition which became widely diffused at an
early period. This tradition in its most important features, such as the general
purport of Buddha's mission, the incidents of his miraculous birth, his renunciation,
temptation, and subsequent labours as a teacher, is entirely confirmed by those
portkM of the Pitakas so far made known. I have grouped together the available
materials without any attempt at critical comparison; for which the time is hardly
yet come. The Chinese version in Mr. Seal's lloni antic Legend must be received
with great reserve.

1880. THE NEW TESTAMENT AND BUDDHISM. 973

bring deliverance to mankind from the restlessness of sin and sorrow.
He had fulfilled the ten probationary courses, not for the purpose of
realising his own beatitude, but that he might redeem the world.9
Accordingly, he voluntarily descended from his high estate ; and the
inauguration of his career was worthy of so great a resolve. He
became incarnate in Maya,10 the wife of Suddhodana, Kaja of
Kapilavastu, between Benares and the foot of the Himalaya, and
came into the world as she was on a journey to her parents' home at
Devadaha. The Devas who received the babe, held him before his
mother, saying, 'All joy be to thee, queen Maya, rejoice and be glad,
for this child thou hast borne is holy :' u while in the heavens the
angels sang, ' This day is Bodisatta born on earth, to give joy and
peace to men and Devas, to shed light in the dark places, and to give
.sight to the blind.'12 When the child was presented to his father, an
aged saint, Asita, who had travelled from afar to see him, wept — un-
like Simeon — as he predicted his future greatness. ' Alas, I am old
and stricken in years, my time of departure is close at hand : reflect-
ing on this strange meeting at his birth, I rejoice and yet I am sad.
Maharaja, greatly shall this redound to the glory of thy race. What
happiness from the birth of this child shall ensue. The misery, the
wretchedness of men shall disappear, and at his bidding, peace and
joy shall everywhere flourish.' 13 As he was destined to be the esta-
blisher of faith throughout the world, the name Siddartha (' the
establisher ') was conferred upon him.14 The years passed by, and
the child grew in wisdom and in stature. He excelled in feats of
prowess, and he taught his teachers.15 But the time for him to fulfil
his career drew nigh. In spite of his father's efforts to seclude him
from all sights of sorrow, he found no satisfaction in the pleasures by
which he was constantly surrounded. From the joys of his home, his
young wife, his father, he resolved to flee. When the tidings reached
him that a son was born to him, he only remarked, ' This is a new
and a strong tie that I shall have to break,' 16 and on that very night
he left his home.17 The tutelary angel of the gate opened it in silence
that he might escape without the knowledge of the guards who

9 Tumour, in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, vii. p. 799.

10 Burnouf, La Science des Religions, p. 107, boldly affirms that Maya is now
recognised as identical with Mary. Maya has also the meaning of 'delusion.'

11 Beal, Romantic Legend of Saltya Buddlia, p. 47.

12 Ibid. p. 56 : cf . Bigandet, Legend of the Burmese Buddha, p. 38 : Alabaster,
Wheel of the Law, p. 107.

13 Beal, p. 60: cf. J.R.A.S.B., vii. p. 802 : Alabaster, p. 108 : Bigandet, p. 109 :
Hardy, Manual of Buddhism, p. 148 : Lalita Vistara, translated by Foucaux, p. 106.

u J.R.A.S.B., p. 802. ' He who has accomplished his aim,' T. W. Rhys Davids,
Buddhism, p. 27.

15 In a manner, however, analogous rather to the stories related of Jesus in the
Gospel of the Infancy than to his sojourn among the doctors in the Temple. Beal,
p. 70, sqq. : J.R.A.S.B., vii. p. 803 : Lai. Vist., p. 121, sqq.

16 Bigandet, p. 53 : cf. J.R.A.S.B., vii. p. 805.

" The beautiful description in Beal (p. 131) is of palpably late origin.

VOL. VIII.— No. 46. 3 U

974 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

watched around.18 But a more formidable enemy awaited him with-
out. Mara, the tempter, appeared in the air, and promised him that
in seven days he should attain universal sovereignty over the four
great quarters of the earth with their two thousand isles.19 To this
Gotama replied, * I know that both empire and universal dominion
are offered me, but I am not destined for royalty. Depart, 0 Mara.'
But Mara could not thus easily relinquish the hope of overcoming
him. He followed him as a shadow accompanies the body,20 while
for six years Gotama strove to attain the peace he sought according
to the approved fashion of the severest penances and fasts. These,
however, brought him no lasting rest, and he at length determined
to relinquish what was universally regarded as the only true method
of holiness, to quit his solitude, and proclaim the way of peace to all
in the renunciation of evil desire. ' I vow,' such is the thought as-
cribed to him, ' from this moment to deliver the world from the
thraldom of death and of the wicked one. I will procure salvation
for all men, and conduct them to the other shore.' 2l It was the occa-
sion of a second great crisis. Under the shade of a large tree, hence-
forth to be known as the Bo-tree, or tree of wisdom, in the neighbour-
hood of the village of Gaya, Gotama sat, while Mara gathered all
his forces for the assault. He saw them approach like a mighty
storm. ' What,' said he, ' is it against me alone that such a countless
crowd of warriors has been assembled ? I have no one to help me,
no father, no brother, no sister, no friends, no relatives. But I have
with me the ten great virtues which I have practised : the merits
which I have acquired in the practice of these virtues will be my
safeguard and protection.' 22 All that night the contest continued ;
but the angels strengthened him, and the powers of evil were defeated.
An ancient Gatha of the northern Buddhists relates the final victory.
'Let a man but persevere with unflinching resolution, and seek
supreme wisdom, it will not be hard to acquire it. When once ob-
tained, then farewell to all sorrows ; all sin and guilt are for ever
done away.'23 This was the attainment of Buddhahood: Gotama
had now gained complete enlightenment. It was signalised, like his
conception and birth, by thirty-two great miracles. The blind re-
ceived their sight, the deaf could hear, the lame walked freely, and
the captives were restored to liberty. He himself was transfigured,
and his body shone with matchless brightness.21 For seven times
seven days he continued fasting near the bo-tree : but the subtlest

'• J.R.A.S.B.. vii. p. 807 : Bigandet, p. 57.

19 J.R.A.S.B., vii. p. 807 : Bigandet, p. 57 : Hardy, Manual, p. 159 : Alabaster, p. 1 27.
Bigandet, p. 58 : Davids, Buddhism, p. 32. » Beal, p. 194.

" Bigandet, p. 81 : cf. Beal, p. 205, sqq. : Hardy, Manual, p. 171, sqq. : Alabaster.
p. 149: Lai. lift. p. 281, sqq. The radical difference between Buddhism and
Christianity may be estimated by comparing this -with the titterance ascribed to ,
Jesus, 'I am not alone, for the Father is with me.'

a Beal> P- 225. " Bigandet, pp. 91, 95.

1880. THE NEW TESTAMENT AND BUDDHISM. 975

temptation yet remained. The difficulty of imparting the knowledge
of the truths at which he had arrived nearly overcame him. He saw
men sunk in the stupidity induced by evil passions, and he anticipated
from his preaching no result but unprofitable weariness. The great
Brahma, perceiving what was taking place in his soul, cried out,
' Alas, all mankind are doomed to be lost ! ' ^ His supplications
filled Buddha with a tender compassion for all beings, and he set
forth ' to establish the kingdom of righteousness, to give light to
those enshrouded in darkness, and to open the gate of immortality
to men.' 26

The true mission of Gfotama as the Buddha, or ' enlightened,' was
now begun. He was thirty-five years of age : and he spent the rest
of his long life in journeying from place to place, preaching the new
gospel of escape from sorrow and the way of peace. Among the
incidents which are spread over a series of years are many which have
their parallels in familiar stories in the narratives of the evangelists :
they are such as naturally arose out of his mode of life, and his rela-
tions with his followers. The records, moreover, are full of descrip-
tions of his miracles ; but they are for the most part mere displays
of superhuman power. Only one work of healing is attributed to
him, which is wrought upon his father, the Eaja Suddhodana.27 This
aspect of his career we may dismiss ; it presents no analogies to the
miracles ascribed to Jesus. But the lives of the teachers do not
essentially differ. It was the mission of both to awaken men out of
a state of spiritual indifference, to kindle within them a love of right-
eousness, to comfort the sorrowful, and to reprove as well as to
redeem the guilty. Grotama, like Jesus, was the ' great physician,' 2*
but he found disease even more widespread. Little by little disciples
gather round him, and he sends them forth to labour like himself-for
the deliverance of their fellow men, — to preach on the housetops
what they have heard in the ear. ' Gro ye now and preach the most
excellent law to all men without exception. Let everything respect-
ing it be made publicly known and brought to the broad daylight.' 20<
Early in his career, he likewise preaches a sermon on the mount.3*
He has his hours of difficulty in the jealousy which springs up
among his disciples. Two of them, Moggallana and Suriputta, are
elevated to the dignity of the right and of the left, and the murmurs
of the rest come to the Buddha's ears.31 Of one he anticipates the half-
formed resolve — almost as Jesus did with Nathanael — by addressing

24 Bigandet, p. 104 : cf. Beal, p. 241, sqq. : Lai. Vist. p. 364. See the remarkable
dialogue between Brahma and the Buddha on the inability of men to receive his
teachings, MaMvagga, I. v.

26 Beal, p. 245. As the idea of immortality (at least in the Christian sense)
has no place in Buddhism, it seems doubtful how far the Chinese, from which this
is rendered, truly represents the original Pali : cf. Mahdvatjrja, I. vi. 8.

27 Bigandet, p. 196. -9 In an old Gatha, in Beal, p. 138.

25 Bigandet, p. 124. 10 Ibid. p. 139. 31 Ibid. p. 153.

3 u 2

976 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

him by a private name known to none other but his parents.32
Another yields to his appeal. t Come, then, oh come my Yasada,
take this way to the fearless Nirvana : the world-honoured one knows
all things, he can read the thoughts of every heart, and so his words
are full of hidden meaning.' 33 He has his hours of public triumph
likewise. When he visits Kapilavastu, his native city, on his
journey flowers arise in his path, and the rough places are made
plain ; as he approaches, marvellous rays proceed from him, lighting
up the gates and walls, the monuments and towers ; the whole city,
like the New Jerusalem illumined by the Lamb, is full of light, and
all the citizens go forth to meet him.34 But through every change,
he preserves a heart untouched by the desires of ease or fame or life.
When a merchant who had joined the band of disciples was desirous
of returning to his own home, to preach to his relations, he came to
the Buddha to ask leave to depart. * The people of Sunaparanta,' said
the teacher, ' are exceedingly violent ; if they revile you, what will
you do ? ' * I will make no reply,' said the disciple. * And if they
strike you ? ' * I will not strike in return.' ' And if they try to kill
you ? ' * Death,' said the disciple, repeating the lessons of the
master, ' is no evil in itself. Many even desire it, to escape from the
vanities of this life : but I shall take no steps either to hasten or delay
the time of my departure.' Buddha was satisfied, and the merchant
departed.35 Gotama himself did not escape the trial of his own prin-
ciples. In the thirty-seventh year of his mission, Devadatta, his
cousin, the Judas among his followers, hired thirty bowmen to kill
him. But when they came into his presence, like the soldiers in the
Garden of Gethsemane. awed by his majesty, they fell down at his
feet.36 Then, listening to his preaching, they were all converted.
The subsequent attacks of Devadatta one by one were foiled, and the
faithless disciple, confident in the unbounded mercy of his master,
sought him in penitence to entreat his forgiveness.37 It is character-
istic of the intensely clear perception of the chain of moral causation
which distinguishes the ethics of Buddhism, that while Gotama
frankly forgave him, the demerits of Devadatta were still left to work
out their appointed penalty. At length the time arrives when
the Buddha must depart. This is the occasion of a second assault from
Mara,38 after which the Buddha announces that in three months he
•will pass out of existence entirely.

My age is ripe, my span of life is brief,

I shall leave you and depart, having made myself a refuge.

Be diligent, earnest in thought, of good conduct, monks,

K Hardy, Manual, p. 217. » Beal, p. 263. •« Hardy, Manual p. 202.
* Ibid. p. 259. «• Bigandet, p. 249 : Hardy, "Manual, p. 319.

" Bigandet, p. 252 : Hardy, Manual, p. 328.
'' MahilparinibbUna Stitta, p. 24.

1880. THE NEW TESTAMENT AND BUDDHISM. 977

"With firm resolve watch over your own hearts.

Whosoever shall live diligently in this Faith and Discipline

Shall escape from the succession of births and make an end of suffering.39

On the last day before his death, as though in premonition of his
end, his body is again transfigured.40 With words of tenderness he
seeks to comfort those who will shortly be bereaved. ' It may be,
Ananda, that some of you may think " tbe word of the Teacher is
ended, we have no Teacher more ; " but you must not look upon it
thus. The Faith and the Discipline preached and enacted for you
by me, let these be your Teacher when I am gone.' 41 At length the
hour long foreseen is come. ' 0 monks,' says the teacher, '* this is
my exhortation. The parts and powers of men must be dissolved ;
with diligence work out your salvation.' 42 Shortly after, he yielded
up the ghost, and at that moment a tremendous earthquake was
felt throughout the whole world.43

That a life of self-devotion thus conceived and fulfilled should
remind us almost at every stage of the life which we have hitherto
regarded as the highest type of self-sacrifice, is not perhaps after all
so remarkable. The needs and cares, the desires and fears of men, do
not change from land to land, or from age to age ; they were the same
on the banks of the Ganges as on the shores of the Lake of Galilee.
And hence it is also less surprising than it might at first sight appear,
to find the same principles of human conduct declared, and the same
methods of illustration employed to enforce them among the fields and
palm-groves of India as among the pastures and the vine- clad hills
of Palestine. If Gotama did not preach the first commandment
of the ancient Hebrew law, he did not fail in that which Jesus
selected as the second. 'Let good will without measure, impartial,
unmixed, without enmity, prevail throughout the world, above,
beneath, around.'44 To this he dedicated his life, of which the
key-note had been struck in the conflict with Mara, ' I want not an
earthly kingdom.'45 Protesting against slavish adherence to an
immovable system, he declared that salvation was in the spirit
and not in the letter,46 and with one single principle he overthrew
a decayed ceremonialism; 'Keverence shown to the righteous
is better than sacrifice.'47 When one asked him 'What must I do
to lay up in store future blessedness ? ' he replied,

Ministering to the worthy, doing harm to none,
Always ready to render reverence to whom it is due,
Loving righteousness and righteous conversation,

39 ITahdparinilbdHa Sittta, p. 37. 40 Hid. p. 46. 4I Hid. p. 60.

42 Ibid. p. 61 : cf. Davids, Buddhism, p. 83. I may further express my indebted-
ness to Mr. Davids for much information and many suggestions.

43 MdMpar. Sutta, p. 62 : Bigandet, p. 323 : J.R.A.S.S., vii. p. 1008.
41 Klniddalta Pcifha, translated by the late Prof. R. C. Childers, p. 16.

45 Hard}', Manual, p. 164. 4« Khuddhaka Pdffia, notes, p. 22.

47 Dhammapada, 108.

978 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

Ever willing to listen to that which may profit another,
Rejoicing to meditate on the true Law,
And to reflect on the words of Divine Wisdom,
Practising every kind of self-discipline and pure life,
Always doing good to those around you.43

As he passed up and down among his own kind, and stood by the
farmer at work upon the soil, ' I, too, plough and sow,' said he, ' and
from my ploughing and sowing I reap immortal fruit. My field is
religion ; the weeds I pluck up are the passions of cleaving lo exist-
ence ; my plough is wisdom, my seed purity.' 49 Or, changing the
parable, as though in illustration of his maxim, ' Speak the truth, yield
not to anger, give if thou art asked from the little thou hast,' 50 he
described almsgiving to those advanced in perfections as ' good seed
sown on a good soil that yields an abundance of good fruits. But
alms given to those who were yet under the tyrannical yoke of pas-
sions are like a seed deposited in a bad soil; the passions of the
receiver of alms choke as it were the growth of merits.' 5l Once more,
with another familiar comparison, he likened the effects of passion on
the unreflecting mind to rain breaking through an ill-thatched house,
while the mind that had conquered evil desire could resist the storm.52
Like Jesus, Gotama also placed the inward disposition above the
ritual act, and taught that the real defilement consists in ' evil
thoughts, murders, thefts, lies, fraud, the study of worthless writings,
adultery, — such are Amaghanda, and not the eating of flesh.' 53 And
like Jesus, Gotama bade his disciples lay up for themselves a
treasure where neither moth nor rust would corrupt, nor thieves break
through and steal. ' A man buries a treasure in a deep pit,' he observed,
' which, lying day after day concealed therein, profits him nothing. . . .
But there is a treasure that man or woman may possess, a treasure
laid up in the heart, a treasure of charity, piety, temperance, soberness.
It is found in the sacred shrine, in the priestly assembly, in the
individual man, in the stranger and sojourner, in the father, the
mother, the elder brother. A treasure secure, impregnable, that can-
not pass away. When a man leaves the fleeting riches of this world,
this he takes with him after death. A treasure unshared with others,
a treasure that no thief can steal. Let the wise man practise virtue,
this is a treasure that follows him after death.'64

When so many elements of the Gospel records, alike in incident
and teaching, are thus discovered in wide diffusion through the East
before the birth of Jesus, the suspicion is not at first sight unnatural
that eome of them might have travelled to the West and been

48 Beal, p. 279 : cf. the blessings in Khuddalta PatJia, p. 5.

* Hardy, Manual, p. 215 : Bigandet, p. 226.

» Dhammapada, 224. sl Bigandet, p. 211 : cf. Dluimmapatia, 356-359.

** Dhammapada, 13, 14.

" AmaghandaSuttaw. Sutta Ailjrata, translated by Sir M. Coomara Swamy, p. 67.

14 Khuddhalia Paffia, p. 13.

1880. THE NEW TESTAMENT AND BUDDHISM. 979

reproduced in Christianity. The deeper differences which lay beneath
these resemblances do not catch the eye so readily as these luminous
points in the history of the great Indian preacher of goodwill. The
figure which grows in clearness to our view as the mists of time are
parted, bears so remarkable a likeness to that of the Teacher of
Nazareth, that the conjecture that some lineaments have been trans-
ferred from the one to the other may be readily pardoned. But it
must be recollected that in this case we have to do not with the
common tales of a widespread folk-lore, or the general prevalence of
a certain type of myth, but with the historical connexion of one
series of events with another. If the story of Samson can be shown
to contain elements arising out of an interpretation of natural pheno-
mena common to other races beyond the Semitic boundaries,55 we have
at least no limits of time to shut up the possibilities of the develop-
ment of prehistoric myths among the primitive peoples of Central
Asia. But in this case we have to do not with the analogies of an
indefinitely remote past, but with the contact of one highly organised
civilisation with another, and the transmission of a complete set of
conceptions almost without change. That the same tendencies of
thought should illustrate similar careers with similar legends,
adorning them from birth to death with the same miraculous em-
bellishments, may well be conceded. They operate independently,
and, though far apart, their courses may run more or less parallel.
But if it is suspected that the sources of one have been replenished
from the waters of the other, the channel of communication must not
be assumed, it must be traced. Is there such a communication
between Buddhism and Christianity ?

The history of Buddhism, so far as it is at present known from
Indian sources, cannot be said to present any such points of contact.
For some time after the death of Gfotama, it seems to have made
little progress beyond the limits within which he chiefly preached.
Its home was in Central India, especially in the territories of Magadha
and Kosala, with the territories upon their borders. But from
the troubles attendant on the conquest of the Punjaub by Alexander
the Great in 327, Buddhism emerged with fresh vigour. The political
disorganisation which resulted from this rude intrusion upon the calm
of ages, enabled a man from the ranks, a Sudra, named Chandragupta,
to overthrow the Macedonian supremacy and, by degrees, to conquer
the whole of Hindustan. Sprung from the people, Chandragupta
found it to his own interest and that of his dynasty to aid the
followers of Grotama with their doctrines of universal equality
in their struggles with the Brahmanical system of traditions and
castes, against which his own career was one long revolt. His

" See the well-known Essay of Steinthal in the ZeitscJmft fur VolkerptycTwlogie,
vol. ii. p. 130, sqq. 1862, translated by Mr. R. Martineau in Goldziher's Mythology
among the Hebrews.

980 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

grandson Asoka, after his accession to power, was formally converted,
and became the Constantino of Buddhism. Under his government
a great council was held at Pataliputta (the modern Patna), when
it was resolved to send missionaries to proclaim the Law throughout
the length and breadth of the land.56 Southwards they passed into
Ceylon, northwards along the base of the Himalayas into Kashmir and
the lands of Kabul : the spirit of enterprise was fully roused, and the
passion of redemption found now its free scope. Asoka, however, did
not confine his regards even to the countries embraced within this
wide sweep. That he maintained relations of some intimacy with
the countries of the Mediterranean maybe inferred from the remark-
able circumstance that though he is nowhere alluded to by the
historians of the West, the names of five Greek kings appear in one
of his edicts, engraved on a huge block of rock at Kapur di Giri in
the neighbourhood of the modern Peshawur. Unhappily the in-
scription is too mutilated to throw much light on the purpose for
which these names are introduced ; and the evidence is entirely in-
sufficient to support the idea that he had negotiated any treaties with
these princes for the introduction of Buddhism into their dominions/'7
In truth, for some time the new religion was fully occupied in
organising itself throughout the vast area over which it was thus dif-
fused, from Ceylon to the Hindu Kush ; and it was destined to be tested
by more than one rude shock. Driven from their ancestral homes in
Central Asia about the year 160 B.C., the Scythians swept down over the
Jaxartes and the Oxu?, subdued Kabul and the Punjaub, and finally
extended their conquests over the valley of the Ganges as far as the /
original home of Buddhist doctrine. Under the Indo-Scythian kings
Buddhism entered on a second period of brilliancy, with the conversion
of one of their most powerful sovereigns, Kanishka, a contemporary cf
Augustus. By his means the countries of the Indus became a centre
from which Buddhism gradually won a large portion of Central and
Eastern Asia.58 Early in our era it passed with some of its sacred
books into China in response to the request of the Emperor, Ming-ti.59"
But its native historians claim no conquests for it [in the far
West.60 The civilisations of the Roman Empire offered no field
for its enthusiasm. The brief glimpse of three centuries,'before had
faded away. Syria, Egypt, Greece, appear no more in Buddhist

*• Koeppen, ii. p. 11 : Lassen, ii. pp. 241, 442.

" Westergaard, Ueber Buddha's Todetgattr, p. 120, Breslan, 1862: cf. fKern,
Jaartelling der ZuideUjke Buddhistcn, &c. p. 91. Mr. C. W. King, relying on
Prinsep's version, speaks of Buddhism as 'actually planted in the dominions'of the
Seleucidae and Ptolemies before the beginning of the third century, B.C.' (The
Gnottict and their Re main t, p. 23.) But more accurate copies of the inscriptions
and more cautious scholarship have thrown doubt on Prinsep's rendering. See the
Corput Intcriptwnum Indicarum, Calcutta, 1877, vol. i.

" Koeppen, ii. p. 12. «• IMd. ii. p. 34 : Eitel, Three Lectures, p. 6.

" The term Yona or Yavana land, in Pali literature, refers to Baktria, and cannot
be extended to the lands of the Mediterranean.

1880. THE NEW TESTAMENT AND BUDDHISM. 981

annals. They were lost from the view even of a religion that was
designed to embrace the world.

But even if no Buddhist missionaries carried the story of their
Master's life into lands so ready to welcome a new ideal of purity and
self-sacrifice as the shores of the Mediterranean subsequently proved,
can we reverse the connexion and track it through the travellers or
the commerce of the West ? The wide circle of the dispersion of the
Jews does not seem to have reached to India. They are found on the
banks of the Tigris, but the Indus was unknown to them. Among
the four hundred and eighty synagogues for which Jerusalem was
famous, there were many synagogues for foreign Jews ; the citizens
of Alexandria or of Tarsus had their own places of assembly; but
the list contains no hint of any Indian name.61 Even after the Christian
era the travels of Jewish scholars extended no further than Rome on the
one hand, and the Parthian kingdom on the other.62 The tendency
which arose after the conquests of Alexander to connect the elder philo-
sophers with the East by imaginary journeys to India, has no
counterpart in Jewish tradition. Among the teachers who gathered
at Jerusalem during the century preceding the ministry of Christ,
were several of Babylonian origin. Hillel himself, in whose liberal
views has been sought one of the sources of the inspiration of Jesus,
was of Oriental birth ; but the assumption would be a large one that
Buddhism could have passed into Palestine through the valley of the
Euphrates, when there is no evidence that it had ever penetrated
there at all. That foreign influences did enter from that quarter
into the teaching and literature of Judaism is of course obvious, but
they were derived from Persia and not from India.63 It has been
suggested that the Essenes derived some of their tenets and usages
from the Buddhist order, and the hasty assumption of a connexion
between that body and Jesus has seemed to open up the line of
transit of which we are in search. But the Essenes, if they were not
a pure product of Judaism, find their analogies rather among the

*' Griitz, Ge&chiclite der Juden, iii. p. 282. Ewald, History, v. 239, thinks that son: e-
Jews may have reached India, and even China ; but this conjecture, which is not
even founded on Is. xlix. 2, appears unsupported.

62 See the account of Akiba, Jost, Geschichte des Judenthmng, ii. p. 66, sq.

63 Mr. Beal, in his preface to the Romantic Legend, p. ix., says, ' We cannot doubt
that there was a large mixture of Eastern tradition and perhaps Eastern teaching
running through Jewish literature at the time of Christ, and it is not unlikely that
a certain amount of Hebrew folk-lore had found its way to the East.' The instances
which he gives, are, however, by no means conclusive. The history of the Messianic
idea full}' accounts for the doctrine of the ' kingdom of heaven,' without recourse to
the Buddhist dfiammacakka, ' religious kingdom.' The statement that the Jews
believed in the pre-existence of souls and a modified form of metempsychosis (founded
on a passage in Lightfoot, Exercitt. Talmm., John ix. 2) is a very large inference
from very imperfect data. And it is certainly not necessary to explain 2 Pet. iii. 6,.
7, by reference to the Buddhist system of Kalj>as, any more than by the Mexican
theory of successive ages, in which the earth, having been once destroyed by water,
would hereafter perish by fire ; cf. Clavigero, History of Mexico, i. p. 288, sqq.

982 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

philosophical schools of Greece,61 and while the influence of Greek
culture is apparent even in Palestinian as well as Alexandrian
thought,65 it is difficult to discover any evidences of acquaintance
with any of the peculiar ideas and terminologies of the East. We
cannot suppose that an obscure resident in Galilee could have caught
up and popularised a system which lias left not the faintest impress
on the subsequent literature of his nation ; and in this quarter, at
least, the attempt to establish a connexion meets with no support.

But it must be remembered that the New Testament contains
many elements besides those which it derives from Jesus himself.
The books which constitute it were written far apart, at different
dates, and exhibit signs of various culture. It must not, then, be
isolated from the general circumstances of the age in which it was
produced. From an historical point of view it is only one among many
diverse phenomena extending over many lands. It thus takes its place
among the general movements of thought, into the midst of which
Christianity was launched. It cannot be judged apart from them,
and here, perhaps, the missing link may be recovered. The amount
of intercourse between India and the countries of the Mediterranean
has been very differently estimated, and the influence of Hindu
speculation, whether Brahmanic or Buddhistic, on the later course of
Greek philosophy is by no means a constant quantity in the histories
of the schools. M. Vacherot, than whom no one has written with
more eloquence, boldly declares that the philosophy of the Alex-
andrians derived nothing from Greek philosophy but its language and
its methods : the essence of its thought connected it with the East.68
Even Bitter forsakes his usual calm to place at the head of his
account of the neo-Platonic philosophy the general title * Diffusion
of Oriental modes of thought among the Greeks.' C7 He admits,
indeed, that of the various schools into which Indian philosophy was
divided, several were entirely inoperative in the West ; and at most
only a vague and imperfect influence could have been exerted. But
in the doctrines of emanation, of the opposition between the body and
the soul, and the mystic intuition of deity, he discerns elements which
must be sought elsewhere than in the lines of Greek development.
That he should find them in India is not surprising, for they are
doubtless there. But he is unable to detect the process of trans-
mission, and confesses that the mode by which these doctrines made
their way to Egypt, Syria, and the rest of the countries of the Medi-
terranean, must be matter for conjectures, among which every critic

M Cf. the remarks of Zeller on Buddhism and Essenism, PhilosopJiie dcr Ori-cchen,
1868, pt. iii. 2nd div. p. 278. Since the1 above Essay was written I find that the
subject has been discussed by Dr. Lightfoot in an essay on the Essenes in his
treatise on St. Paul's Epistles to the Colossian* and Philemon, p. 151.

M Cf. for instance, the infusion of Greek words, Jost, Qesch. des Judenth. i. p. 303.
Hist. Critique de FEcole d'Alexandrie, iii. p. 250.

" GcscJnchte der Philosophic (1834), iv. p. 492.

1880. THE NEW TESTAMENT AND BUDDHISM. 983

may please himself.68 In this uncertainty, Zeller, impressed with the
necessity of supporting indefinite theories of influence by definite
historical facts, relinquishes the quest. Neither in Philo, nor in neo-
Pythagoreanism, nor in neo-Platonism, do any conceptions appear
which can be ascribed with confidence to a foreign source. The
analogies which look forcible enough on a first inspection, vanish
when examined more closely. Under conditions generally similar,
the human mind must be allowed to have expressed itself in similar
forms ; and the Western doctrine of emanation, for example, may, on
the one hand, be sufficiently accounted for out of Greek antecedents,
while, on the other hand, the philosophical conception out of which
it springs, is by no means identical with that which produced its
counterpart in the East.69

From these diverging judgments the only escape lies through a
brief survey of the facts of the connexion of India with the West, so
far as they may have influenced the transmission of philosophical and
religious ideas. The first real knowledge of India was brought to
Europe by the companions of Alexander the Great. But the works
of Diognetus, Aristobulus, Nearchus, and others, soon dropped out of
sight. They recognised in Hindu rites the worship of Dionysus and
Herakles,70 but their observations, made under all the disadvantages
of a military expedition, while they may have served to stimulate
curiosity, could hardly have contributed much to knowledge. The
alliance of Seleucus Mcator, however, with Chandragupta, bore very
different fruit. The Greek prince gave one of his daughters in
marriage to the Indian sovereign, and sent an ambassador to reside
at the court of Pataliputta. It was from this ambassador, Mega-
sthenes, that the Western knowledge of India was for a long time
derived. Living in the very heart of the land, in a time of peace, he
had far better opportunities of penetrating into the inner life of the
people than the officers of Alexander's army : and his statements
have a proportionately higher value. They are preserved only in
the extracts of later writers, and they contain numerous exaggera-
tions ; but the sketch which he gives of the philosophers wears all the
aspect of truth. They were divided, he remarked,71 into two classes,
the Brahmans, and the Germanes or Sarmanse. Of these the former
were held in the higher repute, inasmuch as they were more agreed
about their doctrines. Their philosophy in many respects resembled
that of the Greeks. They taught that the universe had had a
beginning and would have an end ; that its shape was spherical ; and
that the deity who created and administered it pervaded every part
of it. The original elements of all things were different, the primitive

68 GcscMcJtte der PItilosnj}7tic, iv. p. 414, sqq.

69 ZeJler, iii. 2te Abth. p. 575, sqq. Cf. p. 385, sqq.

70 Siva and Vishnu; see Monier Williams, Indian Wisdom, p. 181.

71 Strabo, Geojraplnj, xv. p. 711.

984 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

constituent of this world being water ; while, in addition to the four
elements, they believed in a fifth, of which the heavens and the stars
were made. The earth they regarded as placed in the centre of the
universe, while of the soul they related myths like those of Plato
concerning immortality and the judgments of Hades. Of the Sar-
manae the most honoured were the Hylobii. They dwelt in the forests,
and lived on leaves and fruit ; their dress was woven of bark ; and
they abstained from all sexual intercourse. Owing to their peculiar
sanctity, they were consulted by the kings, and they supplicated the
deity in their behalf. Next to the Hylobii came the physicians, and
beneath these again a class of diviners skilled in the rites of the dead,
who gained a precarious living by wandering through cities and
villages. The Sarmanae have been identified by many critics with
the Buddhist monks who subsequently appear in Greek literature
under the name Samancei. It is the opinion of Lassen, however, that
the classification of Megasthenes is founded on the four a^ramas or
stages of ascetic life into which the Brahmans were divided. Of these,
the Sarmanae designated the ascetics, in distinction to those who
shared the social life around them.72 They were not, therefore,
Buddhists at all ; the characteristic marks of the Buddhist mendi-
cants are not attributed to them; while the Hylobii correspond
exactly to the Vdna-prasthas (Wood-dwellers) or third Brahmanic
order.73 Add to this the circumstance that Buddhism was as yet by
no means powerful or established ; that its range was exceedingly
limited, and the number of its adherents comparatively few, and that
the name of Buddha appears to have been unknown to Megasthenes,71
and it may be inferred with much probability that his descriptions
refer to the orders of the Brahmans alone.

The intercourse with India which was thus favourably commenced
was, however, only fitfully maintained. Megasthenes returned from
Pataliputta, and Damiachos, a Hellenised Persian, was afterwards
despatched to the Indian court,75 where Amitraghata had succeeded
the great Chandragupta. But of his mission we know nothing, unless
a story told by Athenseus may have come through him. Amitraghata

:* Lasscn's opinion is also adopted by Professor Max Miiller, Fref. to Koger's
Trnntlation of Jiuddhaghoshd's Parables, p. lii. Dr. Lightfoot, however (fl/>. cit.
p. 154), adopts Schwanbeck's view that they were Buddhists.

" Lassen, Ind. AUcrth. ii. (2nd ed.)pp. 705, 711. Monier Williams, Indian Wisdom,
p. 245. See Vana-pattho in Childers' Dictionary. Wheeler, Hiatm-y of India, iii.
p. 191, ignores the arguments of Lassen altogether, and states that the point in
dispute is whether the Sarmanae were Buddhists or Jains. But it is very doubtful
whether the Jains, originally a sect of Buddhists, had then made their appearance
at all.

" Among the numerous classical writers who found their statements on the lost
Intiica of Megasthenes, Arrian, Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, Pliny, and others, not one
alludes to Buddha.

» Eratosthenes, in Strabo, ii. 70; cf. Matter, Higtvirc de VEcole d' Alexandria, ii.

1 .* 1 .

1880. THE NEW TESTAMENT AND BUDDHISM. 985

(Greek Amitrochates) wrote to Antiochus, asking him to buy sweet
wine and figs, and a sophist, and forward them to him. * The figs
and the sweet wine,' replied Antiochus, * we will send you ; but
among the Greeks it is not lawful to sell a sophist.' 76 Even this
feeble effort at interchange between Oriental and Greek culture was
not followed up. The edicts of Asoka have no counterparts in the
West. The growing power of Alexandria made it the natural channel
through which Indian influences might pass into Europe, but the
traces of it are exceedingly scanty. Among the travellers sent out
by Ptolemy Philadelphus to explore and report on distant countries,
the name of Dionysius is connected with India,77 but of the results of
his journey nothing is known. Could we believe the statements of
Eusebius and Epiphanius, Demetrius of Phalera drew the attention
of Ptolemy to the sacred books of India,78 together with those of
Persia, Babylonia, Assyria, and a host of other nations. But these
flourishes are unfortunately destitute of all historical foundation,79
and the writers of this era exhibit no sign of acquaintance with the
vast theological literature thus broadly indicated. We are already
within a hundred years of Christ when India comes again into
view. The cyclopaedic works of Alexander Polyhistor, who was
carried as a prisoner to Kome during Sulla's war in Greece, appear
to have embraced nearly all the known countries of the world.
From his treatise on India a few scraps of information reach us
through later writers. A description of an Indian order of holy
persons, found in the writings of Clement of Alexandria,80 is com-
monly referred to him.81 The order included both men and women.
They were named ' Semnoi ' or * Venerable ' ; they lived in celibacy,
devoted themselves to truth, and worshipped a pyramid beneath
which they imagined the bones of a certain god to repose. The
* Semnoi ' are probably the Samanas, or Buddhist monks.82 The
pyramid is the stupa or dagoba, found in nearly every temple,
whose bell-shaped dome contains a relic of the lord Buddha.
The secular Indians, however, worshipped Herakles and Pan ; while
the Brahmans abstained from animal food and wine, some of
them only eating once in three days. They despised death, and
counted life as of no value, believing that they would be born
again. From another source, the reply of Cyril of Alexandria to the

76 Athenseus, DApno&opli. xiv. 67; cf. Weber, 'Die Verbindungen Indiens mit
den Landernim Westen,' in Indi&clic Skizzen, p. 84.

" Died. Sic. iii. 35, 42 : Plin. Nat. Hist. vi. 17 : Matter, Hist. &c. i. p. 159.

78 Euseb. Chron. p. 66, 2, ed. Seal. : Epiphan. De pond, et mens. 9.

79 Matter, Hist. &.C., i. p. 139 sqq.

80 Strom, iii. 7 ; cf. Lassen, Ind. Altcrth. iii. p. 356.

81 On the other hand, see Priaulx, Indian Travels, &c. p. 1 35 ; Lightfoot, Ep. to
Coloitsians, &c. p. 154.

82 Lassen, ibid., identifies them with the arhats, or persons in the fourth path :
Monier Williams, Indian Wisdom, p. 55.

986 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

treatise of the Emperor Julian against the Christians,33 it has been
inferred that Alexander mentioned the existence among the Bactrians
of an order of Samaneans, who have also been identified with the
Samanas.*1 These brief notices, however, by no means imply the
transit of Indian doctrines towards the west during the century
preceding our era. The statements of Alexander Polyhistor do not
appear to have been derived from personal observation. Diodorus,
the contemporary of Julius Csesar, still draws his chief information
from Megasthenes, and mentions neither Brahmans nor Sarmance,
nor Samanaei. And it is again to Megasthenes that Strabo resorts
in the reign of Augustus, with the complaint that the commerce of
the Red Sea brought with it no information ; ' the merchants who
visited India were few, they were uneducated persons, and contributed
nothing to the exact knowledge of the land to which they sailed.' s3

The consolidation of the empire led to an important development
of Indian commerce, and the Augustan poets beheld the Mede, the
Scythian, and the Hindu, all brought beneath the protecting
care of imperial Rome.80 The fame of Augustus began to attract
embassies from native kings. At Antioch, the historian Nicolaus of
Damascus encountered the three survivors of an embassy from a
monarch bearing the historic name of Porus.87 They carried with
them a letter addressed to the emperor, and were on their way to
Rome.88 The insignificance of the presents which they carried, the
difficulty of identifying Porus, and other circumstances, have been
invoked to discredit the story. But one incident connected with it is
of considerable interest and receives confirmation from another source.
The embassy, it is said, was accompanied by an Indian named Zar-
manoschegan, of Bargosa. Successful in everything he had hitherto
undertaken, he feared lest longer life should bring him misery and
disappointment ; and so, when he arrived at Athens, he reared for him-
self a funeral pile, and smiling, leapt into the flames. Upon his tomb
was placed this inscription, ' Here lies Zarmanoschegan, an Indian of

M Contr. Jvl. iv. p. 133, cd. Spannheim, 1676.

11 Lassen, Ind. AUertJi. ii. 2nd ed. p. 1092 ; iii. p. 355. On Brahmans among the
Bactrians, see the dialogue of Bardesanes, with parallel passages, in Hilgenfeld's
Jidrdrxanes, <Icr htzte GnottiJter, pp. 94, 125. The ascription of this passage to
Alexander is, however, very doubtful ; cf. Lightfoot, Ef. to Colomans, p. 151.

•* Qeogr. xv. 1, 4.

M Hor. Carm. iv. 14 ; Virg. J3n. viii. 680, sqq.

" Strabo, xv. 1, 73 ; (cf. ibid. 4.) The chief incident of this embassy is a.x.
mentioned by Dion Cassius, liv. 9. He seems to have had other information beside?
the account of Nicolaus, as he speaks of tigers, « the first which were seen at Rome,'
of which Nicolaus says nothing.

Priaulx, Indian Travels, &c. p. 86, suggests that the embassy was originally
intended for Alexandria only, and was sent on with the Greek letter to Augustus by
the merchants of that city. But if so, it is difficult to see why they should have
been met at Antioch. This circumstance indicates that they came overland through
Palmyra, the nearest route from a kingdom such as that of Porus most probably
in the west of the Punjaub.

1880. THE NEW TESTAMENT AND BUDDHISM. 987

Bargosa, who, according to the custom of hig country, sought immor-
tality.' The monument was known long after as Hhe Indian's tomb.'89
If Lassen's explanation of the name be correct90 — Sramanacharya,
teacher of the Sramanas, or Buddhist monks — we have here the first
trace of a Buddhist visitor to the Mediterranean. But the derivation
on which this identification rests does not seem assured, and the
severity of Grotama's precepts against suicide makes it very doubtful
whether a Buddhist devotee would have thus publicly defied the first
principles of his master's system. At all events, it cannot be sup-
posed that either Zarmanoschegan, or the ambassadors in whose suite
he came, contributed to the diffusion of Indian religion among the
nations of the Mediterranean, any more than the arrival of a Chinese
embassy at St. James's propagates in this country the Confucian
doctrine of Eeciprocity, * What you wish not done to yourself, do not
to others.' Of any further embassies during the reign of Augustus, no
information has been preserved by any of the historians. According
to the text of the will of Augustus, as it has been restored from a
Greek translation on a monument at Ancyra, communications were
frequent from the Indian kings.91 But this statement is unsupported
by any other evidence, and the writers on India at the close of
the century possess no more accurate intelligence than those at the
beginning. Pliny reports a second embassy which arrived at Kome
in the reign of Claudius. It arose out of the shipwreck of one Annius
Plocamus, who farmed the taxes of the Red Sea. While sailing off
the coast of Arabia, he was carried by a storm to the shore of Ceylon.
The general value of the accounts of Ceylon which Pliny derived from
the ambassadors need not be here discussed. It is sufficient to
remark that though the island had long been converted to Buddhism,
he asserts that Hercules was the object of its worship.92 The tenets
of Grotama would not have been out of harmony with his own lofty
agnosticism, but it is plain that he was entirely ignorant of them ;
and his brief allusions to the Brahman s show that on the ancient
religion of India he was no better informed. Important as was the
commerce between the Mediterranean and the East,93 it cannot be
inferred that it served as a medium for the spread of ideas. The
intervention of the Arabs in the Eed Sea rendered it needless for
many Europeans to extend their own voyages to India.94 The only
linguistic traces of intercourse with the natives are found in the
names of the various products which were imported, such as sulphur,
camphor, beryl, opal, and the like.95 But of any transmission of the
peculiar religious or philosophical terminology of the schools, no

69 Plutarch, lit. Alcxandri, 69. »° Ind. Altcrth. iii. p. 60.

81 Keinaud, Relations Politiqucs ct Commercials de VEmpire Bomain avcc I'Asic
Orientale, p. 104, Paris, 1863.

92 Nat. Hist. vi. 24. Cf. Davids, Ancient Coins and Measures of Ceylon, p. 12.

93 For Pliny's estimate of its annual value, see Nat. Hist. vi. 26.

91 Von Bohlen, Altct Indien, i. p. 70. »* Weber, Ind.^SMz. p. 89.

988 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

evidence appears. Plutarch is still content to repeat that the
Indians worshipped Herakles: and Pliny echoes the lament of Strabo,
« The merchants who sailed thither went for the sake of gain, and not
of knowledge.'96 How under these circumstances is it possible to sup-
pose that either the incidents of Buddha's career, or the principles of
his philosophy, could have effected an entrance, and secured a place
in Western culture ?

Only one sign of distant acquaintance with the vast ranges of
Indian literature greets us at the opening of the second century in
an oration of Dion Chrysostom on Homer. Even the Indians who
looked not on the same stars, sang in their own tongue of the woes of
Priam and Andromache, of the valour of Hector and Achilles.97 All
that can be inferred from this rhetorical flourish is that the existence
of a poem in India, bearing some general resemblance in its episodes
to the incidents of the Iliad, had become known in the "West. Por-
tions of the Mahabharata, in the opinions of Weber and Lassen,
fulfil this condition.98 But the vagueness and inaccuracy of Dion's
allusion prevent it from yielding any support to the theory of such
close and continuous intercourse as could alone produce a real infu-
sion of belief. Nor can much greater stress be laid on his refer-
ence to the presence of Indians at Alexandria. ' I see among you,'
he exclaimed, * not only Greeks and Italians, and natives of the
adjoining countries, Syria, Libya, Cilicia, and the Ethiopians and
Arabians beyond them, but also Bactrians, and Scythians, Persians,
and certain Indians.' " Such was the mingling of nationalities in the
streets and at the public shows. Who these Indians were there is no
further hint. But the fact that they attended the theatrical exhibi-
tions with the rest of the multitude renders it in the highest degree
unlikely that they were either Brahmans or Buddhists. When, some
three centuries afterwards, some Brahmans did visit Alexandria, and
were entertained with appropriate tendance at the house of a wealth}'
Roman named Severus, it was recorded of them with surprise that
they made no use of the public baths, vrent to none of the city sights,
and avoided everything outside the doors.100 The silence of Dion and
his contemporaries, therefore, suggests that these Indians were only
some stray sailors or traders, whose presence was too insignificant
to excite further comment. That the Christians of Alexandria began
to cast their eyes eastwards before the century closed appears from
the report of Eusebius that Pantaenus, under whom Clement of
Alexandria studied, was said to have preached to the Indians.'01 It is

•• Von Bohlen, Alte» Indlen, i. 70 ; cf. Nat. Hist. ii. 45.
" Orat. liii, vol. ii. p. 277, ed. Reiske.

" Weber's Indite?* Studien, ii. p. 161 ; Lassen, Ind. Alterth. iii. p. 346.
M Orat. xxxiiL, vol. i. p. 672, ed. Reiske.

" Extract from a life of Isidores by Damascius, in Phot. Biblioth., ed. Bekker,
p. 340.

Eus. Hitt. Eccl. v. 10. Eusebius indeed affirms that there were many evange-

1880. THE NEW TESTAMENT AND BUDDHISM. 989

certainly at this period that Buddhism comes most clearly into view.
It is in the writings of Clement that the first mention of Buddha is
now to be found. After describing briefly the Brahmans and the
Sarmanse he observes, ' There are also some who obey the precepts of
Boutta, whom, on account of his eminent holiness, they honour as a
god.' 102 In the tantalising brevity of this statement, it is impossible
to conjecture how much Clement really knew, and speculations as to
the possible sources of his information are equally fruitless. Certainly
had he any closer acquaintance with the beliefs thus abruptly dis-
missed, he might have added a long list of proofs to his indictment
that the whole of the barbarian philosophy was borrowed from the
Scriptures.

Our fullest intelligence, however, we owe to a contemporary of
Clement, whether somewhat older or younger, the Syrian Bardesanes.
He had the good fortune to meet, in Babylon, some of the members
of an embassy addressed to the Emperor Antoninus.103 From two
of these, Damadamis and Sandanes, he derived a large amount of
important information, a great part of which has happily been
preserved in the treatise of Porphyry on Abstinence.104 Dis-
tinguishing between the Brahmans and Samaneans or Buddhist
monks, he observes that the former are all of one race, the others
gathered from every nation of the Indians. The life of the members
of the order is described in some detail. Their renunciation
of their property, their conventual dwellings, their simple meals,
even the bell at the sound of which those who were not members
of the order were obliged to withdraw — all pass under review.
But of the inner principles of belief or aspiration, no tidings reach
us, and just at the point at which we might have hoped, however
late, to secure some link of doctrinal connexion, we are again
baffled. Only Jerome, who was probably dependent on Barde-
sanes, casually alludes to the birth of Buddha from a virgin,105 a state-
ment which, though not correctly representing Buddhist faith, had a
foundation in the legends of the miraculous conception. The most
explicit account of an Indian philosophical creed is supplied by the
author of the Philosophumena.106 The author's statements are, indeed,

lists there. Dr. Davidson, Introd. to New Test. i. 469, interprets India as South
Arabia. On the supposed preaching of Bartholomew on the coast of Malabar, see
a controversy in the Indian Antiquary, vol. iv. pp. 153, 183, 306, 1875, vol. v. p. 25,
1876, between Dr. Burnell and the Rev. B. Collins.

102 Strom, i. 15.

103 According to Lassen, Ind. Alterth. iii. p. 62, Antoninus Pius (158-181, A.D.),
not Antoninus Elagabalus (218-220). Porphyry, however, states distinctly that it
was Antoninus of Emesa. See the whole evidence collected in Hilgenfeld's Essay,
Sardetanes, der Letzte Gnostilier, p. 12 : cf. Priaulx, Indian Travels, kc. pp. 137, 153.

104 De Abstinentid, iv. 17. los Contr. Jovin. i. 26.

106 Philos. i. 21. This account deserves much more attention than the extrava-
gant narrative of Phiiostratus about Apollonius, which yields no data for our present
purpose.

VOL. VIII.— No. 46. 3 X

990 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

deficient in precision, but they imply a greater amount of knowledge
than any other writer seems to have possessed since the time of
Megasthenes. The Brahmans are divided by him into two orders,
the one admitting family life, the others ascetics, living in seclusion,
and eating only fruits that had fallen upon the ground. It was the
peculiarity of these last that they wore no clothes, declaring that the
Deity had constituted the body a covering for the soul. They desig-
nated God under the figure of light, not that of sun or of fire, but of
the inward reason, the Logos, which found its expression not in ar-
ticulate sound, but in the knowledge which is acquired by the wise.
To this these Brahmans could alone attain, inasmuch as they only
cast off all vain opinion, the last garment of which the soul ever strips
itself. They saw that men were captive to their own evil passions,
sensuality and concupiscence, anger, joy, sorrow, and the like. Against
these, warring in their members, they maintained perpetual conflict ;
he only who had reared a trophy over them, had access to God.
Some of these principles are in singular harmony with the leading
tenets of Buddhism. On the other hand, the conquest of all the evil
passions centring round an ill-regulated individuality, was necessarily
the aim of all ascetics everywhere. Buddhism knew nothing of any
mystic intuition of the Deity ; and the language in which these
Brahmans are said to have expressed their conception of a pervading
reason, would have sounded strange to the true followers of Gotama.
In these naked philosophers it is probable that we must see the sect of
the Niganthas or Jains, who were originally closely connected, if not
identical with Buddhists, but subsequently became highly odious to
them.107

Thus, then, do the notices of Indian thought become, as might
be expected, a little more explicit as the centuries advance. But
even at the latest they are singularly meagre, and afford little ground
for the assumption of any widespread acquaintance with even the
most rudimentary ideas of Brahmanism and Buddhism. No clue has
yet turned up which may serve in any way to connect Christianity
with these far-off systems. But it has been strongly urged that be-
tween Gnosticism and Buddhism, at least, there are affinities which
cannot be overlooked, and through these, possibly, we may retrace
our steps to some hidden links which have left no marks on ordinary
literature. The first person to call attention to the apparent resem-
blances between Gnosticism and Buddhism was Dr. J. J. Schmidt,
whose studies in Tibetan Buddhism contributed so much to open up
new and unfamiliar fields.108 His researches were largely employed

17 Monier Williams, Indian Wisdom, p. 128; Childers' Dictionary, art. Nigantho.

93 Forschungen im Gcbiete der Bildwigsgeschichtc der YolJier Mittcl-Asiem, p.
241, sqq., St. Petersburg, 1824 ; Ueber die Yer>vandttch<ift der Gnostisch-TheognphucJien
Lehren, mit den Peliyiontfystemen des Oritntt, vorziiglich dem Buddhai&mut, &c.,
Leipzig, 1828.

1880. THE NEW TESTAMENT AND BUDDHISM. 991

by Baur, in his important investigations into Gnostic systems.109
Subsequent writers have laid stress on the same points in the direction
thus pointed out. Von Bohlen refers the Gnostic doctrines of the
inherence of evil in matter, of the access through virtue to union
with the Deity, and of the psychic and pneumatic man, to Indian
sources,110 a view which also receives the support of Weber.111 The
resemblances between Gnosticism and Buddhism are summed up by
Lassen under three heads: (1) the opposition between matter and
spirit, and the consequent worthlessness of all worldly things : (2)
the representation of creation as a series of emanations from the
supreme principle : (3) the high importance attached by Buddhists
and Gnostics to righteousness.112 The first two of these doctrines
are very closely connected, and rest upon the same philosophical
foundation. There can be no doubt that Adi Buddha, to whom Lassen
resorts for the spirit which is intrinsically opposed to matter, largely
fulfils the Gnostic requirements. When in the beginning all was
perfect void, or ever the elements came into being, Adi Buddha (' the
first wise ') was revealed in the form of flame or light. He is the cause
of all existences ; from his profound meditation was produced the
universe. He thus stands in essential contrast with matter, and the
existing system of things is only derived from him through five suc-
cessive acts of Dhyuna or contemplation. Each one of these produces a
Buddha of its own. In the line of descent these Buddhas stand
related to each other as father and son, but they are only third in
the scale of existence, Adi Buddha being the first.113 That there
is here a system which presents many elements of affinity with the
Gnostic schemes, is at once apparent. Only one circumstance is
wanting to establish the possibility of their dependence on it. It is
that of time. Adi Buddha, so far from being ' the first wise,' is him-
self a creation of the tenth century. Primitive Buddhism knew
nothing of spirit. No immaterial existence came within its view.114
A supreme essence filling the mystic space in silence before the worlds
were, had no place in a system of endless change, decay, and death.
But as if to anticipate the truth of Voltaire's epigram, its later
votaries, having no God, were obliged to invent one. This great
departure from the original principles of Gotama Buddha only took
place, however, in comparatively modern times. In the southern
schools Adi Buddha is still unknown. Even in Tibet itself the doc-

109 Lie Christliclie Gnosis, p. 56, sqq. Hansel in his reference to the influence of
Buddhism on Gnosticism appears to have contented himself with following Baur,
The Gnostic Heresies of tlie First and Second Centuries, pp. 29-32. I find here that I
have unwittingly travelled over ground already occupied by the writer of an article
referred to by Dr. Lightfoot, Ep. to Colossians, &c., p. 157, in the Home and Foreign
Review, 1863. For his remarks on Gnosticism and Buddhism see p. 143, sqq.

110 Altes Indie n, i. p. 371. 1U IndiscJic Skizsen, p. 91.

112 Ind. Atterth. iii. p. 384. m Hodgson, Essays, &c. p. 27, sqq.

114 Brahmajula Sutta, in Grimblot's Sept Suttas Palis.

3x2

992 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

trine concerning him is not canonical. Only in Nepal has it reached
the dignity of an article of faith. The evidence which Lassen pro-
duces in favour of its earlier origin cannot be regarded as satisfactory.
Although there is no literary trace of Adi Buddha, or the five-fold
Dhyana, for at least ten centuries after our era, he boldly assumes
that they were developed in the interval between the third Buddhist
synod under Asoka, and the fourth under Kanishka, the contemporary
of Augustus.115 The foundation on which this hypothesis is erected
is surprisingly insecure. It consists of a single coin of the Bactrian
kings, on which he believes that he detects the legend ' Odi Bod.' ll&
The theory has been overthrown by the recent demonstration of the
incorrectness of this decipherment,117 and in the absence, there-
fore, of any distinct proof of the existence of the doctrine of Adi
Buddha, and of communication of thought between India and the
West, the dependence of Gnosticism on Buddhism cannot so far be
regarded as confirmed.

The third of the resemblances enumerated by Lassen is hardly
sufficiently strong to avail much by itself, though it might be thrown
in as an additional weight where the scale is already well loaded.
That Buddhism and Gnosticism should both attribute a high import-
ance to righteousness, is not enough to vindicate any relationship
between them. The same may be said in a broad sense for Christianity,
and for every other great religion all the world over ; and the analogy
fails completely in its most essential point. To the Buddhist karma,
the doctrine of merit and demerit, Gnosticism presents no parallel ;
and if the moral law is administered by the Gnostic demiurg,
he has no likeness whatever to the impersonal power which directs
the destinies of men through the vicissitudes of successive births.118
The terminology, methods, and aims of Gnosticism, all betray the
sources whence it was derived, Jewish, Christian, Greek. What further
influences contributed to its development must probably be sought
in Persia rather than in India ; so that not even here do we find
any vehicle for the transmission of Buddhist thought to Europe.119

"• Lassen, Ind. Altertli. iii. pp. 384, 389.

" Ibid. ii. 2nd ed. p. 845. What is here stated as 'most probable,' is afterwards
assumed as 'firmly established,' p. 1103.

" Sallet, Die Nachfolger Alexanders des Grosscn in Balttrien und Indien, Berlin,
1879, p. 193.

111 On the supposed affinities of Origen with Buddhism, see Schultz, in Jaltrbb.
fur Protest. Theoloyie, p. 224, 1875.

" Want of space prevents me from following this inquiry through the curious
story of Terebinthus-Buddha connected with the origin of Manichzeism by Cyril of
Jerusalem, Epiphanius, and Socrates. But its late date, and the extraordinary per-
version of facts which runs through it, add further evidence of the ignorance of
Western writers concerning the great Indian reformer. The Arabic accounts of Mani-
chaeism do not connect it in any way with India, nor do they mention Buddha's name ;
see the extracts from Arabic sources given by Flugel, Mani, seine Lehre und seine
K.-hriften. — The first satisfactory evidence of acquaintance with any version of the
Btory of Gotama appears in the very curious romance of Barlaam and Josaphat, of

1880. THE NEW TESTAMENT AND BUDDHISM. 993

It would be easy to gather analogies far more striking than those
just examined from sources unquestionably independent : 12° but the
fact is that the existence of even a large number of analogies between
different systems of thought and life, or even between the precepts
of different teachers, cannot be regarded as sufficient evidence of
their connexion. Every approach to truth must inevitably produce
these resemblances ; but they may be easily overrated, and it should
not be forgotten that the likeness between many of the sayings
of Jesus and of Gotama covers a deep-rooted divergence. That a
system which knows of no God, and preaches for its hope of
deliverance the extinction of all being, should even bear any
superficial affinities to Christianity, may appear at first sight strange.
They are alike, however, animated by a passionate 'enthusiasm of
humanity ; ' they both protested against the worn-out traditions of
a sacred caste, and flung wide open the way of truth to all. An
absolute universality is common to them both, and each proclaims
that in conduct lies the true path of salvation. But Gotama
founded his teaching of righteousness upon a profound metaphysical
theory of the power of accumulated merit or demerit to determine the
conditions of men in successive existences ; Jesus saw in it the realisa-
tion here of ' the will of the Father who is in heaven.' The essential
conceptions of Buddhism are intellectual rather than spiritual. The
very name Buddha, ' the enlightened,' indicates the avenue through
•which deliverance is sought. When the awakened believer has con-
quered all evil desires, his final task is to free himself from ignorance ; m
and even universal charity is scarcely so much an end in itself as it is
the removal of the last cloud over that perfect wisdom which will lead to
peace. Nowhere perhaps is this distinction brought more clearly into
view than in the striking description of the ' whole armour ' of
Buddhism.

Converting uprightness into a cloak, and meditation into a breastplate, he
-covered mankind with the armour of religion, and provided them with the most
perfect panoply. Bestowing on them memory as a shield, and intellect as a sceptre,
lie conferred religion on them as the sword that vanquishes all that is incompatible
with uprightness, investing them with the three wisdoms (i.e. of the three great
truths, viz., the imperrnanence of all things, the presence of sorrow, and the non-
existence of a soul), as an ornament, and the four phale (the fruit of the four
paths) as a tiara. lie also bestowed on them the six branches of wisdom as a
•decoration such as flowers to be worn ; assigning the supreme law to them as the
white canopy of dominion which subdues the sins (of heresy), and procuring for
them the consolation (of redemption from transmigration) which resembles a full-
Wown flower, he and his disciples attained Nirvana.123

which the Greek form apparently dates from the ninth century. See Prof. Max
JVIiiller, Contemporary Review, July 1870.

lw Compare the extraordinary affinities of Mexican religion (Bancroft, Natire
Races of the Pacific States of Central America, vols. ii. and iii.) with Roman Catho-
licism ; or the parallel developments of Greek and Indian philosophy.

121 This is the last of the Ten Fetters. Davids, Buddhism, p. 109, sq.

122 Buddhaghoso's Commentary on the Buddhawanso, translated by Tumour in
the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. vii. p. 796.

994 Till-: NHTBTEBNTH CENTURY. December

In short, the fundamental idea of Christianity, that of a personal
relation between the soul and God, is diametrically opposed to a
system which denies in the most unqualified manner the existence of
either soul or God : and if from these positive and negative poles of
faith apparently similar results proceed, it is because when the
currents of moral impulse play upon the needs of men, they find
that whatever be the truth about the soul and God, the sores and
sins of the world are everywhere the same. The rarest of all gifts is
that of clearing the vision of darkened hearts, and creating new ideals
of life and duty. No two men of all our race, it would seem, have
possessed this power in such large measure as the Indian philosopher
and the Syrian prophet. And our trust in the capacities of humanity
receives large increase when we recognise that it has produced in-
dependently the two careers of Gotama Buddha and Jesus Christ.

J. ESTLIN CARPENTER.

1880. 995

EARL RUSSELL DURING THE EASTERN
QUESTION, 1853-1855.

WHILE the Eastern Question again causes such, grave anxiety, and the"
minds of men naturally revert to the last great Crisis of the Question,
it can scarcely be unimportant to consider certain much-discussed
passages in the history of that period, and among them the grounds of
the course then taken by so eminent a statesman as Lord Russell. I
should not myself have presumed to enter on this task, had I not
been favoured by the sight of despatches and memoranda not yet
published. As might be expected, in looking over those of Lord
Russell, one finds that same unswerving resolution, high-hearted
courage, and sense of duty, which led him with steady step through
years of patient toil and watching, undisturbed by factious agitation,
• undismayed by party opposition, until at last he stood victor in the
forefront of the Reform party; which supported him at the Colonial
Office in the darkest period of Canadian troubles, and made him come
forward at a critical moment of the Corn Law struggle as the
champion of Free Trade. Nor is the tact wanting — such tact as-
many must call to mind who have heard him handle some difficult
problem before the House of Commons, or make one of his terse off-
hand replies to the sallies of an opponent ; nor his patriotic belief in
the English race c destined to be the greatest among races ; ' nor the
glory in the ' imperii porrecta majestas ' of England, which inspired
the desire for an ever-closer union with the colonies, their direct re-
presentation in London, and their perfect consolidation with England
into one British Empire. Knowing that ' to be weak is miserable,'
he did not cease to urge that there should be no niggardliness witli
regard to armaments, he being convinced that we should, if need
were, be able to stand alone as the friend of oppressed nationalities.
These, though it might be impossible to help with our arms against
the giant Continental armies, we could nevertheless strengthen by
our advice l and by a firm attitude, and he proved it in his own
advocacy of Italian freedom.

1 England, from her neutral position, has exceptional scope for political action
in Europe ; it was on this account that Lord Russell wished that the study of the
history of international politics was more general among Englishmen.

996 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

His constant faith in the individuality of states, and its advan-
tage to the world, rendered him always anxious to prevent the
absorption of the smaller by the larger. He seemed to look upon
it as an hereditary privilege of Great Britain to assert the natural
independence of the states of Europe ; for l has not the nationality
of Holland, of Portugal, of Spain, of Germany, of Greece, of Belgium,
been at various times upheld by the influence of England, and some-
times supported by her arms ? ' It must not be supposed that this
faith in the independence of nationalities, coupled with his general
distrust in the policy of exclusive alliances, induced him to neglect
our national friendships and obligations. On the contrary, it made
him keenly alive to the want of continuity in English foreign
policy. For instance, he was grieved at any needless coldness on our
part towards Austria, not only because ' the maintenance of the
Austrian monarchy is so bound up with European interests and so
conducive to the continuance of European peace ; ' but also because
for some years English statesmen have more or less endeavoured to
preserve friendly relations with Austria in spite of her slow and
timorous movement, believing her likely, as an improving nation, to
become an effectual bulwark for Eastern Europe, and moreover, because
the English people are naturally fond of the Austrians.2 Yet, however
strong the feeling for the continuity of our policy, it had from its very
essence definite bounds. While he regarded Russia's proposed par-
tition of Turkey with the dislike, if not with the pity and horror,
aroused by the partition of Poland, no one would have taken more
stringent measures for her reform, for the overthrow of that despotism
of the harem, ' more destructive than the plague in her cities, than
the simoom in her deserts.' 3 < If the Turk wishes to remain in
Europe,' Lord Kussell would say, ' she must admit the Christian to
share in the government, and reserve nothing but the throne to the
disciples of Mahomet. Will she do so ? Is there yet any vitality in
the feeble monarchy of the race of Ottoman ? If there is, it will be
well with the Turk. If not, there are Christians enough in Roumelia
and Greece to govern at Constantinople without the necessity of a
conquest or the disgrace of a partition.' He has even been heard in
later years to suggest that as an ultimate expedient Constantinople
would become a free port. Anyhow neither Turkey nor any other
nation can be permitted to be the centre of disturbance to Europe, if
Europe can prevent it.

With such ideas of international duty, it is not surprising he
should have held that * no English foreign minister who does his duty
faithfully by his country can, in difficult circumstances, escape the
blame of foreign statesmen.' Happy indeed may he esteem himself
if he escapes the blame of his own countrymen ; and assuredly in

» Lord Russell to Lord Westmoreland, January 1, 1853.

1 £ttablithment of the Turkt in Europe, p. 116. Lord Russell (1828).

1880. EARL RUSSELL DURING EASTERN QUESTION. 997

Lord Russell's own public career they were measures of foreign
policy wearing the ' guise of paradox ' which were most severely
criticised.4

It was in January 1853, that Lord Russell wrote his famous despatch
about the Holy Places. The Holy Places were the Bethlehem Church of
the Nativity, and the shrine of the Virgin at Jerusalem, and the other
Holy Buildings of Palestine. The French averred that the Holy Places
were consigned to the care of the Latin monks in the reign of Francis
the First. The Greeks, it was said, subsequently asserted equal claims
and obtained firmans from the reigning Sultan. The French on
behalf of the Latin Church, the Russians on behalf of the Greek
Church, came to words in 1819, as they had often done in bygone
days. Nevertheless, the adjustment of these privileges was ad-
journed, and in 1850 the French renewed the quarrel. The Porte
now resolved to permit the Latin Church to celebrate their services
in the shrine of the Virgin, and gave them the keys of the Church of
the Nativity. The Sultan, however, would not allow any exclusive
claims to the other Holy Buildings, but ' issued a firman, accompanied
by an autograph letter to the Emperor of Russia, which confirmed
certain privileges possessed by the Greeks in the Holy Land.' 5 Russia
then took a new point of departure. Angered by the judgment of
the Porte in Palestine, and by the threatening attitude of France,
she demanded that her rights of protectorate over the Greek Church
throughout Turkey should be defined — rights claimed from the
treaty of Kainardji, made in 1774 between Catharine the Second
and the Sublime Porte. By this treaty protection was insured by
the Porte for the Christian religion and its churches ; and the
ministers of the Russian Empire were privileged to ' make repre-
sentations ' in favour of the new Greek Church at Constantinople.
On this promise on the part of Turkey to protect her Christian sub-
jects, the Russians based their claims to a sole protectorate over the
fourteen million Christians of the Greek Church under the dominion
of the Sultan. Prince Menschikoff, who was the reverse of a con-
ciliatory diplomatist, was negotiating at Constantinople. The Porte
would not listen ; Russia persisted. She marched her troops, in July
1853, across the Pruth into the Danubian Principalities. The
Russian manifesto set forth that the occupation was not to be con-
sidered as a declaration of war, but as a ' security ' for what was due to
Russia. Constraint was put upon the Porte by the great Powers not
to declare war. A conference was being held at Vienna, and the

4 See a fine passage in Lord Eussell's History of Christianity in the West of
Europe : ' He had too deep an acquaintance with the practical course of things not
to be aware that the skill of the logician is not omnipotent over the affairs of life, and
that he who would rightly avail himself of men and things must sometimes be content
to wear that guise of paradox which the actual constitution of the world often
exhibits in itself.'

s Lord Aberdeen to Lord Russell, January 31, 1833.

998 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

' Vienna note ' was the result. The English Cabinet also drew up a
draft Convention. Lord Palmerston writes to Lord Russell :

The Cabinet yesterday agreed provisionally to an amended draft of Convention
to "be proposed for Russia and Turkey, simply renewing the treaties of Kainardji
and Adrianople without any extension. . . . This Convention made no mention of
the Holy Places, because the French would not agree to a Convention between
Russia and Turkey on that matter. All this is very well for effect and for a Blue
Book, but in my opinion the course which the Emperor has pursued in these matters
from his overtures for a partition of Turkey, and especially the violent, abusive,
and menacing language of his last manifesto, seem to show that he has taken his
line, and that nothing will satisfy him but complete submission on the part of
Turkey ; and we ought therefore not to disguise from ourselves that he is bent on
a stand-up fight.

The Vienna note proved acceptable at Petersburg — not accept-
able at Constantinople. Lord Stratford de Redcliffe read between
the lines that it virtually embodied a formal acknowledgment of
the sole Russian protectorate over all the Christian subjects of
Turkey, to which we could never consent in consideration both of
the progress of liberty in Europe and of the welfare of the Princi-
palities. Turkey modified the note ; Russia would not admit the
modifications. A difference sprang up in our Cabinet as to the in-
dulgence to be given respectively to Turkey and Russia.

The failure of the attempts to avoid war (according to Lord Russell) c did not
arise from any reluctance of Lord Aberdeen to insist on the signature of the
Austrian note by Turkey, but from a fundamental difference of opinion between
Lord Palmerston and me, on the one side, and Lord Aberdeen, Sir James Graham,
and various members of the Cabinet on the other, upon the respective claims of
Turkey and Russia which arose after the refusal of the note by Turkey. This dif-
ference of opinion caused hesitation in our language and bearing, and probably
encouraged the Emperor of Russia in his aggression. The Emperor of Russia was
at this time in a state of frenzy, and would not have been content with anything
less than the total destruction of the independence and dignity of the Sublime
Porte. . . . The real cause of the war was the discovery that the Vienna note as
interpreted by Russia, and a project of treaty which was framed by the Russian
Ambassador, were in effect a surrender of the whole government of the Christians
of Turkey into the hands of Russia.

Lord Aberdeen also gives the same reason for the origin of the
war in a letter to Lord Russell. « When the Emperor gave his reasons
for rejecting the modifications, we found that he interpreted the
note in a manner quite different to ourselves, and in a great degree
justified the objections of the Turks.' 7 On the 5th of October the
Porte announced to Russia that unless she evacuated the Principalities
in fifteen days, she would declare war. On the 14th of October the
English and French fleets went to Constantinople. ' La paiz entre
TAngleterre et la France est la paix du monde,' 8 had been the mot of

• Lord Russell to Sir Arthur Gordon, February 1875.

• Lord Aberdeen to Lord Russell, September 22, 1853.

• M. Drouyn de Lhuys to Lord Russell, January 1853.

1880. EARL RUSSELL DURING EASTERN QUESTION. 999

M. Drouyn de Lhuys, but the wholesale destruction of the Turkish
fleet at Sinope by the Russians roused England. ' We could not do
otherwise than take command of the Black Sea.' The Emperor
Napoleon wrote a letter to the Czar, and suggested an armistice on
conditions. ' The Czar of all the Russias ' rejected his overtures.
* Few then doubted of the necessity of the war.' Whether the war
had grown out of our shortsighted vacillation or not, most people
in England now argued thus : ' The attempt to rule over Turkey, to
weaken first by assuming the protection of her Christian subjects, then
to reduce Moldavia and Wallachia under Russian sway, and lastly to
govern either directly or indirectly at Constantinople, was an enter-
prise not suddenly, not obscurely, but openly cherished by the
Sovereigns of Russia.'

Our steps were — ' a treaty with France ; a convention with
Turkey ; the preparation of two fleets, one for the Baltic, the other
for the Black Sea ; and an expedition to the Black Sea.' The
British Government sent its ultimatum to Russia insisting upon
her evacuation of the Principalities before April 30 (1854). No
answer was returned. The allied armies sailed first to Constantinople,
thence to Varna. A war Budget was brought in by Mr. Gladstone
doubling the income tax and laying an extra duty on malt and
spirits. In June advices were despatched by the Duke of Newcastle
to Lord Raglan, urging him to proceed to Sebastopol. Lord
Russell moved for a vote of credit of 3,000,OOOZ. There was no great
debate. No one just then dared to hamper the Ministry. England
was enthusiastic for the war. Austria had approved the course of
France and England, though she did not act, reserving her power for
probable wars of independence in Hungary and Italy. But Prussia,
afraid of Russia, had shrunk into silence, like a scared child ; and thus
discarded the policy which she herself had advocated.9 In September,
our troops disembarked at Eupatoria; in December, Parliament voted
her thanks to the officers and men of the army in the Crimea. The
Russian redoubts above the Alma river had been magnificently
stormed, the charge of Balaclava had been made, and the battle on
the heights of Inkerman had been fought and won. But this winter
session of Parliament was full of anxious debates, and the Bill for
foreign enlistment was passed.

London gossip had murmured that it was a mere petty dislike to
being second where he had been first which had made Lord Russell
hesitate to take office under Lord Aberdeen in a coalition Cabinet,
and which had induced him to oppose certain of Lord Aberdeen's
measures. Needless to say, the gossip was false. His love of
England was such that, to do her any good, he would ' gladly have
been shoeblack to the whole Cabinet.'

Lord Aberdeen stood deservedly high in the estimation of those
9 Gladstone's Gleanings, vol. i. p. 107.

1000 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

who knew him, yet his Government was accused of feeble preparations
for the war. The truer statement would have been that ' Lord Aber-
deen's Government had rushed into war without adequate previous
preparation' in 1853 when we saw it imminent, but 'a mightier
effort was never made at the beginning of a war than that which was
made in 1854.' When our 25,000 British troops had first reached
Balaclava, had Lord Kaglan's advice been followed, and had there
been a bold advance, without delay, on Sebastopol, it would probably
have fallen. General Canrobert carried the decision otherwise.
'The evils of a divided command were already felt.' Blunder
succeeded blunder. Orders were slowly executed. Dilatoriness and
gross carelessness were apparent everywhere. Lord Palmerston, in
a letter to Lord Russell, from Paris, speaks of ' the wants and dif-
ficulties of the army, and the urgent necessity of sending them rein-
forcements and supplies.' ' We are ordering here,' he adds, ' a great
quantity of sheepskin cloaks, but I fear the frost will have pinched
our men severely before their dresses can arrive.' 10 Through the cold
winter winds the soldiers had but bad food and insufficient clothing.
In the hurricane their tents were torn to shreds or swept away.
Blankets enough had not been sent to cover the men at night. In the
hospitals, too, the necessary appliances, and wine and medicines,
were wanting, and in the hospital wards paralysing confusion reigned.
Although in the harbour, at no great distance from our camp, there
was plentiful provision for men and horses, yet men and horses died
through need of it, there being no possibility of transport.

Those in power knew that it was ' the system, not any particular
minister in office,' that was to blame for our defective organisation ;
but England clamoured for Lord Palmerston at the War Office. The
correspondence between Lord Aberdeen and Lord Russell in November
relative to the dissatisfaction in the country, the ' incompetence ' and
* lack of vigour in the conduct of the war,' ' the more rapid and
punctual execution of orders,' was laid before the Cabinet. Lord
Russell thought it just to the country to recommend that the Duke
of Newcastle should be transferred to the Home Office, Lord Palmer-
ston to the War Office. All the Cabinet differed from him. He
writes : * I felt, although not convinced, not entitled on my sole
opinion to force upon Lord Aberdeen a change which he had told me
he could not honestly recommend to the Queen.'

There was another question, however, to which Lord Russell's
thoughts were directed. It was certain that an inquiry into the
conduct of the war would be moved in the House of Commons.
There he would * not merely be one of a Cabinet,' since ' the chief
responsibility of refusing inquiry would devolve upon him as the
leader of the House of Commons.'

Until almost the last moment he thought that he could refuse ;
" Lord Palmerston to Lord Russell; Paris, November 23, 1834.

1880. EARL RUSSELL DURISG EASTERN QUESTION. 1001

but -when the moment came he felt ' strongly in favour of inquiry,'
for honest men need not mind it. He remembered the modern pre-
cedents for this ' salutary and constitutional check on public men and
public measures.' n In 1757 when Minorca was lost, in 1777 when
Burgoyne capitulated, and when the Walcheren expedition failed in
achieving its chief objects, there were inquiries in the House of
Commons. Inquiry, he says, is indeed at the root of the powers of
the House of Commons. ' Upon the result of inquiry must depend
the due exercise of those powers. If from vicious organisation the
public affairs are ill-administered, the remedy is better organisation.
If from delay and confusion in the execution of orders injury has
arisen, the subordinate officers should be removed. If from negli-
gence, incompetence, or corruption, the Ministers themselves are to
blame for the failure which has been incurred, those Ministers may,
according to the nature and degree of their fault, be censured, or
removed, or punished.'

The sum of it all was that Lord Russell was so confident in the
result of an examination into the conduct of the war, that he would
have been prepared to remain in office, and to oppose, as he did
oppose, Mr. Roebuck's motion of censure. But he maintained that
* it was not in his power to remain in office, and to take that course,
for Lord Palmerston, as the organ of the Cabinet, opposed all inquiry,'
and so he resigned.

When the division on the motion for inquiry took place, Lord
Palmerston was defeated by an immense majority. The announce-
ment was received by the House with the silence of blank amaze-
ment, then with shouts of semi-hysterical laughter. On the 1st of
February, 1855, the Aberdeen Ministry formally resigned. Lord
Derby was called on to form a government, after him Lord Russell.
Both failed, "and Lord Russell recommended the Queen to send for
Lord Palmerston, who undertook the task. The new Ministry was
appointed, and Lord Panmure stepped into the place of the Duke of
Newcastle at the War Office. Lord Russell declined office altogether.

Mr. Roebuck and his friends remained firm, and he gave notice
for the appointment of a committee of inquiry. Lord Palmerston
yielded to their wish, but Sir James Graham, Mr. Gladstone, and
Mr. Sidney Herbert, retaining their several objections, left office.
' The committee pursued their inquiries,12 and the bugbears of a dis-

11 See speech of Lord Castlereagh, Jan. 23, 1810.

12 See Lord Russell's speech in the Sebastopol debate : — ' With respect, however, to
the Duke of Newcastle and the Eight Honourable the Member for South Wiltshire
(Mr, Sidney Herbert), I think no one who has looked at the evidence given before the
committee will deny that, in spite of defects, in spite of an organisation which
has been left too long at peace without interference .or reform — in spite, I say, of
those defects and that organisation, over which it would have been difficult for any
man to triumph — great activity was shown in despatching to the Crimea the men,
the food, and the clothing which the army required. No doubt many defects existed,
and the accurate and sagacious mind of my noble friend the member for Totness has

1002 'HIE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

solution of the French alliance, of the impossibility of procuring
evidence on account of the absence of witnesses, &c., vanished into

thin air.'

The new Ministry had set to work in earnest. Among other
measures a sanitary commission was appointed, a commissariat com-
mission was appointed, and some much-needed reforms were introduced
into the transport service.

The Cabinet vacancies were filled by Sir George Cornewall Lewis,
Sir Charles Wood (Lord Halifax), and Lord Eussell — the latter taking
the Secretaryship for the Colonies, the offer of which reached him on
his way to Vienna.

Suddenly in March the Czar Nicholas died. The Czar Alexander
agreed to join the new conference at Vienna, whither Lord Kussell had
gone as our plenipotentiary, with ' very general instructions.'13 During
the negotiations Sardinia allied herself with England and France.
Everything was unfavourable to peace ; Sebastopol had not fallen,
* the pride of Eussia was unchecked.' Lord Kussell had foreseen the
difficulties of the mission (he had indeed regarded it as almost hope-
less), and when asked to go had answered, ' It would be awkward to
go on a mission to Vienna with a return ticket.' Lord Clarendon
had urged him to go — u

If you made peace, the country would feel that the best terms practicable had
been obtained ; if you broke oif negotiations, everybody -would know that the
honour of England and the future safety of Europe rendered that decision ne-
cessary. Your presence would give a dignity and importance to the negotiations,
and your position and character would check Russian impertinence, and prevent
any flagrant backsliding of Austria which you would be able to expose on your
return. You have followed the turnings and windings of the whole Eastern
Question more closely than any member of the Cabinet except myself, whose special
business it was, and Prince Gortschakoff would have no chance of imposing upon
you in any of the arrangements involved in the four ' bases.' In short, I can only
hope that such a mission may be half as agreeable to you as it would be useful to
the country.

The four * bases' of the projected treaty were : the Eussian pro-
tectorate over the Principalities to cease, and the provinces to be
placed under a collective guarantee15 of the Powers; the navigation of

pointed out where in various respects our organisation was defective, and where evil
consequences resulted from that organisation ; and I think that the labours of the
committee will not have been thrown away if, with the knowledge they have gained
in consequence of its appointment, the present Government are enabled, and Lord
Panmure is enabled, to give a more concentrated power to the Wax Department,
and to prevent those delays, and" supply that want of energy, which resulted from
the organisation of the former War Departments, of the Ordnance and its correspond-
ing military departments.'

11 Lord Russell to Lord Panmure, March 28, 1855.

11 Lord Clarendon to Lord Russell, February 10, 1855.

" Article 27 in the General Treaty of Paris : 'If the internal tranquillity of the
Principalities should be threatened or compromised, the Sublime Porte will "come to
an understanding with the of her contracting Powers upon the measures to be

1880. EARL RUSSELL DURING EASTERN QUESTION. 1003

the Danube to be free ; 1G the preponderance of Eussia's power in the
Black Sea to be limited ; the privileges of the Christians to be duly
observed by the Ottoman Government, and the independence of the
Porte to be recognised. It was not improbable that in the spring
Sebastopol might fall ; it was not improbable that Russia might be
willing to hurry on a peace when she saw that her great arsenal must
be destroyed, when she saw that her military resources were being
hourly exhausted. Lord Eussell had concluded that with such possi-
bilities it was well to go. His appointment seemed to him to 'imply
that there was to be an endeavour to conciliate opposite views ; to
smoothe down difficulties : in short, to make some sacrifices for the
sake of peace, and to reckon the cessation of a horrible carnage as an
element in the consideration of such terms as might be placed within
our reach.' It was right not to decline a ' task which offered even a
possibility of peace,' and Lord Eussell's recent withdrawal from the
Queen's service was a reason the more for his accepting the onerous
post pressed upon him.

No doubt it was quite competent for anyone ' to say, " that the
terms, which fulfil the objects of the war, cannot be expected in the
present state of the war, but we will not make peace on less favour-
able conditions, and we trust to future victories for the means of ob-
taining them." But in that case it would have been sufficient to send
instructions to Lord "Westmoreland in the most precise form to make
these terms an ultimatum, and to desire him to break up the con-
ference when these terms were refused.'

The first and third were the really important ' bases ' or * points.
The third was that which proved fatal to the projected treaty.
Its object was to attach Turkey to the system of the balance of
power in Europe by putting an end to the preponderance of Eussia
in the Black Sea. ' There were only two ways of guarding against
this danger ; one was to make Turkey stronger, the other to make
Eussia weaker.' Should the first way be tried ? Should Great Britain

taken for maintaining or establishing legal order. An armed intervention cannot
take place without a previous agreement between the Powers.'

Certain diplomatists wished to throw a heavier responsibility on England and
France. ' A guarantee of the integrity of a kingdom is burdensome, of a dynasty
perilous, but the guarantee of privileges of provinces partly subject to one Power, and
partly influenced by others, must be doubly hazardous; hazardous, above all, to
England and France, which do not touch the Principalities by land, and are forbidden
by treaty from approaching them with an armed force by sea ' (Lord Eussell).

16 A statesman has said that ' there is not a drop of water in the Danube which
is not Austrian.' Lord Russell remarks on this : ' Although this assertion is not
strictly true, it is true to say that the Power which will derive by far the greatest
advantage from the opening of the Danube will be Austria. . . . Before 1848
feudal privileges and local institutions deprived the State of the due proportion of
the revenue for the general defence, and debarred the inhabitants of different
provinces of the same monarchy from the enjoyment on equal terms of home and
foreign productions. The revolutionary flood swept away these mischievous barriers,
and the Austrian Government has been too wise to set them up again.'

1C04 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

and France aid Turkey with their forces ? Even if this expedient,
which would have entailed a constant expenditure, had not been out
of reason costly, the ' uncertainties attending such a perpetual alliance
between two great maritime Powers' would have been most hazardous.
The second expedient, that of making Russia weaker, was to curb
her by limiting the number of her war-ships in the Black Sea, or
by neutralising the Black Sea, and excluding all war-ships what-
ever.17 * Russia has in the Black Sea, by the regulation applicable
to the Straits, a protection for her ships and coasts, so long as she is
not at war with Turkey, which saves her from the ordinary opera -
tions of war.' * Having an exceptional security,' it was considered
just that ' she should submit to an exceptional restraint.' 18

The main objections raised against limitation were that, Russia
and ourselves always having ships of war face to face in the Black
Sea, would be too like an armed truce ; that Russia might build
men-of-war of extraordinary force or armament ; and that she might
keep any number of ships for commercial purposes, easily convertible
into ships of war.19 We feared that Russia would regard any such
limitation as derogatory to her dignity, and that, whatever restrictions
dependent on good faith were placed on her in the Black Sea, she
would probably contrive to evade them. M. Manteuffel recalled the
fact, that when Napoleon bound Russia by treaty to maintain no
more than 40,000 men, she always contrived to keep three times
that number.

The main objection raised against neutralisation was that it
was preposterous to expect Russia to do away with all her ships of
war in the Black Sea, her coasts lying unprotected, whereas to Turkey
would be left the right of retaining ships of war in the Bosphorus.

Both limitation and neutralisation were proposed to Russia. We
disliked the former, we rather liked the latter. Both were rejected.

Russia on her part made counter-proposals either to open the
Straits to the ships of war of all nations, or to close them while she
should be at liberty to maintain an unlimited naval force in the
Black Sea, and the Porte would have the faculty of calling in any of
her allies to the Bosphorus in case of aggression or threat of aggres-
sion from a foreign Power. Neither M. Drouyn de Lhuys nor Lord
Russell deemed these proposals conformable to his instructions.

Then the hapless Austrian draft treaty was launched. If France
and Great Britain agreed to accept the Proposals,20 the Austrian

" ' Limitation,' precisely defined, meant ' that only fonr ships of the line should
be maintained in the Black Sea by Russia, and two each by the allies of Turkey.'
Neutralisation, proposed by the French plenipotentiary, M. Drouyn de Lhuys, con-
templated a much further « reduction of force— namely, to eight or ten light vessels,'
intended solely to protect commerce, and to ' perform the police of the coast.'

'• Lord Russell.

>• Lord Russell

"* The Proposals ' included the following provisions : ' —

1880. EARL RUSSELL DURING EASTERN QUESTION. 1005

Ministers assured Lord Eussell that they were ready to sign a treaty for
a triple alliance with us to defend Turkey. A peace might have been
concluded, Lord Eussell thought, on terms which he ' could not consider
entirely satisfactory,' but ' by which all the concessions would have
been on the side of Eussia and none on the side of Great Britain and
France. Eussia would have renounced her exclusive protection of
the Christian subjects of the Sultan, and all the advantages she had
obtained on that head from the treaty of Kainardji to the treaty of
Adrianople. She would have admitted an European commission .to
guard the free navigation of the Danube. She would have admitted
the principle that all European Powers except Eussia herself might
pass the Straits of the Dardanelles.' Lord Eussell, therefore, informed
the Austrian plenipotentiary,21 that he would be ' prepared to recom-
mend to her Majesty's Government the acceptance of the Austrian offer
to send her alternative to Petersburg, and make the continuance of
an Austrian mission at that Court contingent upon its favourable
reception.' 2a

English feeling, however, was still warlike. Englishmen did not
believe in the sincerity of Austria,23 for her alliance seemed to them
to depend on our success. It was asked why Eussia, having curtly
rejected the first terms, should now have fresh proposals made to
her. It was affirmed that we should play into her hands by giving

' 1. A renunciation on the part of Eussia of all the separate rights of interference
•which since 1774 had teen formed into a complete net, including the Principalities
in its intricate meshes.

' 2. The confirmation and development of all the privileges of the Principalities
under the guarantee of the principal Powers of Europe.

' 3. The freedom of the navigation of the Danube, so far as it could be free without
any diminution of the territorial integrity of Eussia.

<4. The guarantee by all the Powers of the integrity and independence of Turkey,
as one of the States forming, or contributing to, the balance of power in Europe.

'5. The putting an end to the preponderance of Eussia in the P>lack Sea by ad-
mitting Great Britain and France to pass through the Straits while Kussia was to be
prohibited from so doing, and regulating the respective forces in such a manner that
in case Eussia should increase the number of her ships, Turkey, France, and Great
Britain together might maintain a force double that of Eussia. Thus if Eussia
should have eight sail of the line, Turkey must have eight, and France and Great
Britain four each. (Should this plan not prove acceptable to Eussia, an alternative
to be proposed that Eussia should engage not to increase the number of her ships
actually afloat in the Black Sea.)

'6. The equality of the Christian subjects of the Porte with the Mussulman
subjects of the Porte to be enacted by the Sultan.'

21 The language of the Holy Alliance (of Eussia, Prussia, and Austria) had been
very explicit, its acts very positive. ... It was a great object to break a compact
alliance, which hung over Europe like a dark cloud, obscuring the day with its
shadow, and threatening destruction from its thunder. I thought, therefore, that I
was doing good service to my own country, to Europe, and the cause of freedom
(Lord Eussell).

53 According to a high authority, it was said that at this particular time Lord
Eussell asked military advice as to whether the fall of Sebastopol was likely or un-
likely— and that the answer was ' most unlikely.'

23 Cf . Count Buol to Baron Bourqueney, May 3.

VOL. VIII.— No. 46. 3 Y

1006 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

her the time which she needed, and by sapping through delay our
own war energy. Lord Kussell returned to England. Lord Palmer-
ston and Lord Clarendon did not think that the new terms were
* sufficient security for the integrity and independence of Turkey.' 24
To some it appeared that Lord Kussell had not fully apprehended the
strength of Lord Clarendon's views 25 on the subject, but had relied
too much on the -discretion allowed him ; to others, that the terms
had not received the consideration which their importance demanded.
The Emperor Napoleon approved of the principle but not of the details
of the Austrian proposals. Lord Palmerston said that he ought to be
urged to express his opinion in clearer language ; and, with Lord
Cowley, warned him against the prejudices of the French Minister.
They also entreated him not to listen to the tattle of the French
Bourse. A telegraphic despatch arrived. The Emperor refused
to accept the Austrian terms. Lord Russell's * position was at once
changed.' He had * always stated the policy of accepting the terms
as doubtful,' even when they were ' proposed in conjunction with the
French Government,' though it had seemed to him that they might
through a lapse of years pave the way toward a ' solid peace.' But now
his policy of doubt was exchanged for a policy of certainty owing to
this decision of the Emperor Napoleon, and to his staunch friendship
for France, and the fear ' that the discontent of the army might have
disturbed the internal tranquillity of France.' He declined any longer
to put forward the Austrian proposals. He believed that, unless
Austria should offer terms more acceptable to the Emperor of the
French, and the English Government, the war must be carried on
with the utmost vigour. Our Cabinet was in full accord. The
French Minister, M. Drouyn de Lhuys, resigned ; and upon this Lord
Russell contemplated taking a like step, but Lord Palmerston dis-
suaded him from it. Lord Russell in a Private Memorandum relates
the sequel :

Adopting this advice, I could not but concur in every measure which would
tend to bring the war to a satisfactory conclusion. For this purpose it appeared
to me indispensable to hold the most decided language in the House of Commons.
When, therefore, Mr. Disraeli brought forward in May a motion to overthrow the
Ministry, I pointed out the danger of acceding to those propositions of Russia
which I had rejected at Vienna. I also pointed out the dangers to be feared from
the aggrandisement of Russia. In the whole of that speech, I spoke my own real
and true sentiments, such as I had already stated in writing or verbally to the
Cabinet, such as I entertained then, such as I have entertained ever since. It is
true that I did not state the nature of the Austrian propositions, which I had at
one time advised the Government to adopt. But could I have done so, consistently
with my duty to the Crown ? The negotiations with Austria were not then con-
cluded, and to have revealed the substance of these negotiations, before the Govern-

** Cf. The Eastern Question, by the Duke of Argyll, vol. i. p. 4, on the meaning of
the ' Independence of Turkey.'

» For the numerous pros and cons see Eaitern Papers, pt. xv., 1855.

1880. EARL RUSSELL DURING EASTERN QUESTION. 1007

ment had advised her Majesty to lay them before Parliament, would have been
to violate my oath as a Privy Councillor, and betray my duty to the country. It
was even possible that Austria, finding her proposals rejected in Paris and in
London, might have improved her terms, and have adopted that plan of M. Drouyn
de Lhuys, which she some months afterwards sent to Petersburg. A premature
declaration of what had passed .would only have prevented any such termination.
I therefore advised the House of Commons, as I had advised the Crown, to pro-
secute the war. If the Austrian terms were not to be entertained, there was no
other course to pursue.

In the account which I gave of the power and proceedings of Russia, I merely
gave the result of my observations at Vienna. What I had told to my colleagues,
I told to the assembled Commons ; such were my opinions then, such are my
opinions now. So false and unfounded is the charge of having attempted a fraud
upon the public.

The country indeed was not informed that I had been of opinion that the
Austrian terms should have been entertained. But until Count Buol — most un-
warrantably— stated my opinion in a circular despatch, it would have been a
breach of confidence in me to have made any such avowal.

Everyone knows what followed. The despatches relating to the negotiation
with Austria must have been produced, but the circular of Count Buol and the
questions of Mr. Milner Gibson forced from me a premature declaration. My
enemies took advantage of my avowal to cabal against me, and the Opposition
naturally enough made my conduct at Vienna a handle for a hostile motion. Lord
Palinerston, who had advised me to remain a member of his Administration,
handsomely offered to support me, but he could not have done so without risking
the existence of his Government, and the public interests required that he should
remain at the head of affairs. I therefore retired.

Had the disclosures taken plaee in the order of the transactions,
there could, as we see, have been no ' handle ' for the ' hostile motion.'
With Lord Russell's retirement the memoranda, from which I have
been quoting, cease.

The changes and growth of time would no doubt have enforced
on him applications of his political maxims other than those of
his own day. Yet not the less would the maxims themselves have
stood firmly on the conviction, that it is not in arrogant assertion
of individuality, nor in effacement of individuality, but in its highest
development, and its honest use in the service of other individualities
— first of those nearest by natural ties, and then, as occasion with
ever-widening circle offers, of those more remotely connected — that
a nation fulfils its loftiest destiny.

HALLAM TENNYSON.

3 Y2

1008 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

THE SCULPTURES OF OLYMPIA.

AT Olympia the earth had kept well her secrets of the past from
many eager travellers in the present century, disclosing them in no
material degree even to the French expedition of 1829. But
German enterprise and love of classic soil could no longer be with-
stood, and the result is now known. It is a gain of the first magni-
tude if we consider only the interests of those whose minds are
imbued with the history of art in ancient Greece. But it is a gain
also of such a kind as may be expected to enlarge that circle. For
though nothing has been found higher in art than what could before
be seen in the sculptures of the Parthenon, yet along with the new
statues there has come into play positive information about the men
who made them, such as appeals to the natural desire of associating
whatever is recovered from antiquity with some name surviving in
tradition, and this must appeal in the first instance to a spirit more
general than is the simple appreciation of sculpture. Nor is there
danger in this desire now, when a long period of negative criticism
has carefully defined its limits.

In any case it is from this combination of historical statement
with artistic interest that the sculptures of Olympia acquire the fas-
cination of things which have been lost and are found again, as com-
pared with others which when found answer to no description of a
missing treasure. Such, for example, is the fact regarding the marble
statue of the god Hermes, obtained in the ruins of the temple where
Pausanias had seen it. According to him it was the work of Praxi-
teles, but whether he found the name so inscribed on the base, or
knew it otherwise, cannot well be determined so long as that part
of the sculpture is missing. Its recovery, along with the lower
part of the legs of the statue, while urgently demanded for artistic
effect, might at the same time serve to settle a point of ambiguity
which has been raised regarding the word employed by Pausanias
which we have here translated as ' work.' No doubt there was the more
serviceable word ergon at his disposal, and equally true is it that
techne, which he selects in this case, may under special circumstances
correspond with our expression * school.' Against this interpretation,
however, in the present instance there is this to be said; that the figure
stood within a famous temple, into winch, it is reasonable to suppose,

1880. THE SCULPTURES OF OLTMPIA. 1009

no work of art would have been admitted" without the recommendation
of a high name, or some extraordinary interest. A piece of sculpture
merely of the school of Praxiteles could hardly have satisfied the con-
ditions.

At the same time, so slender a statement as that of Pausanias —
and there is nothing more — does not, it may be argued, prepare us
to expect in the Hermes a masterpiece of the great Athenian, even
when we consider how often it is the case that ancient records fail at
the most critical moments. Before taking them into account we
must inquire whether the statue may not really belong to that class
in the works of all celebrated artists, which, to say the least, have
not been the foundation of their fame. Usually, in such cases,
indulgence is craved for the insufficiency of youth, or for the decay of
age. But to make a satisfactory inquiry of this kind, the means of
comparison are necessary, and as regards Praxiteles, they do not
exist, except in the form of late copies, which cannot adequately
serve the purpose. On the other hand, it is a curious fact that
between this statue, accepting it .as the work of Praxiteles, and a
marble figure in Munich, which has long been clearly traced to his
father, Kephisodotos, we find in one respect a very remarkable
agreement, or rather an instance of direct copying, which becomes
the more significant when we recall the statement of Pliny that
.Kephisodotos had himself also made a statue of Hermes nursing the
infant Dionysos. The son, while under parental influence, and per-
haps with his name still to make, could be easily understood to have
adopted a motive already familiar in sculpture, from his father's
hand, while such a proceeding is barely conceivable at a later period
of his life. If this be agreed to, as we think it must, it will follow
that the Hermes of Olympia is to be regarded as one of the early
works of Praxiteles, executed possibly before he had attained any
great reputation, and valued afterwards enough to receive a place in
that temple of Hera at Olympia where, as is known, things very old
or very curious were preserved.

The statue in Munich to which reference has just been made
is generally called Leukothea. But it has been well ascertained that
she is no other than Eirene with the infant Plutos on her left arm,
and with her right hand raised as if resting on a sceptre, or at least in
that attitude. Some have thought it the original work of Kephiso-
dotos, others, a copy made in later times. Yet all agree in praising
the sculpture, calling attention specially to the beauty of the compo-
sition, and the sweetness with which Eirene bends towards the infant
on her arm. Now a moment's comparison with the Hermes will
show that the infant Dionysos on his left arm is entirely iden-
tical as an artistic production with the infant Plutos, and is besides
carried in precisely the same way. It is also a peculiar infant, with
drapery carefully arranged across its legs, as if it were an old person,

1010 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

and not at all like the child Dionysos which Satyrs are seen fondling
in many sculptures hitherto believed to be copied from works of the
age of Praxiteles. It is in fact the child of an older age of sculpture
than that of Praxiteles, and he, if I may say so, has adopted it. The
question is, whether he adopted it from the Eirene and Plutos, or
from that other group of Hermes and Dionysos attributed to his
father, -which has not yet been identified in any way. Perhaps in its
absence, it will not be regarded as unreasonable if we assume that
Praxiteles started from the Eirene. He would see that the sweetness
of her action would not suit the god Hermes, and he altered that.
He should have seen what spectators now plainly remark, that it was
necessary to change the action of the child also in a corresponding
degree, to save it from seeming to appeal in vain for the caresses of
its temporary guardian. As it is, the infant meets with general pity,
while the motive so charming in the Eirene is lost to a great extent,
and this is the more curious since an ancient writer has said of Prax-
iteles that he was conspicuous in expressing the emotions, meaning,
it is to be supposed, those gentler emotions which reveal themselves
on slight occasions.

These, then, are circumstances which seem, on the one hand, to
preclude all possibility of the motive of the Hermes having been a
spontaneous creation of the artist, and, on the other, to prove that it
was an adaptation from the work of Kephisodotos, attended with
just such want of success as would best be attributed to youthfulness
in the sculptor. But how, it may be asked, is this to be reconciled
with the excellence of the statue as a work of sculpture, apart from its
character as an imaginative composition ? That is a difficulty which
I do not wish to underrate, though it may be pointed out that in the
treatment of the hair there is certainly no excellence. But for the
present it may be better to raise certain other points ; and first let us
see what is to be made of the tree-stump, on which Hermes leans
his left elbow to take off the weight of the infant Dionysos. The
attitude would be natural if it could be supposed that the god was
in reality standing in a wood resting on a blasted trunk. But that
is not the case. The stump is nothing more than a sculptor's
accessory, introduced to support the weight of marble in the upper
part of the group. It may support the marble but it must not
support the god. Yet that is what it obviously does, and thus two
ideas are confused, which ought to be kept strictly apart, as they are
seen to be kept in the great majority of instances in ancient art,
where the tree-stump has no part in the composition, but is a mere
accessory to be overlooked by the spectator. Nor is it a little
remarkable that the exceptions are mainly, if not always, such as it
has been usual to associate with the school of Praxiteles. Take, for
instance, any of the ancient statues traced to an original by him, and
known as Apollo Sauroktonos. There the god leans well over to the

1880. THE SCULPTURES OF OLTMPIA. 1011

side, supporting himself with his left hand stretched out to the
stem of a tree. Up the tree runs a lizard, towards which Apollo looks
with the intent, it is supposed, of killing it in his function of lizard-
killer (Sauroktonos). Here at least is a reason for his leaning towards
the tree. Yet it is obviously a very inadequate reason. The insignifi-
cant lizard could have been seen and slain without any such attitude.
Indeed the attitude does not plainly indicate that it has been
assumed either to see the lizard better or to kill it more effectively.
No doubt, if it did, it would be described as realism or an approach
to realism, and this would be strongly objected to in a sculptor of
the age of Praxiteles. Still idealism also has its duties, and must
take care that its symbols, however simple, are neither above nor
below the mark. In the Apollo Sauroktonos this cannot be said to
be the case, since it is impossible not to feel that the idea of the god
leaning and looking at the poor lizard is entirely secondary to the
desire of the artist to present one of those marvellously supple, grace-
fully formed human beings of his creation, in an attitude best
calculated to bring out those points of his art in which he was
conscious of excelling. At the same time it is true that the display
of form is accounted for by an intelligible, if not an adequate, motive,
and in this respect the Apollo must be regarded as an advance on
the Hermes.

In the sculpture galleries of Europe there are a number of statues
representing a youthful satyr standing idly with legs crossed and his
elbow leaning on a tree-stump at his side. These statues are con-
sidered to be Grrseco-Roman copies from originals by Praxiteles or
his school. With him, as the originator of the motive, we have here
another advance on the two figures just described. For it is true to
the nature of ' a satyr that he should be seen thus leaning idly on a
tree. The satyrs were personifications of the joyousness of life in the
vine groves, and if a sculptor chose to represent one of them in this
attitude, it could not be said that he obtained the accessory support for
his figure by any but fair means. In fact, there are few ancient statues
more pleasing in their composition than those idle young satyrs.

There is then between the Hermes, the Apollo, and the Satyr, a
gradual improvement in respect of the motive such as would justify
our taking the first mentioned to have been the first executed, and
probably a work of early years. Nor is it strange that a motive so
characteristic of Praxiteles should have been invented in his youth
and elaborated into perfection in his later life, the less so when we
remember how in reality it is not altogether a pure invention, but
rather in its origin an adaptation from his father. Unfortunately
the best examples of the Apollo and the satyr appear to be only
ancient copies, and cannot, therefore, be trusted to supply from their
style and execution corrobative or contradictory evidence on this
matter.

1012

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

December

Again, as regards the drapery of the Hermes, with its extraordinary
beauty, there is this to be said, that from the care with which it is
made to conceal the stem of the tree, and from the prearranged
nature of its folds, it gives the impression of a design worked out for
secondary effect, showing the artist's pride in the execution of details,
rather than his grasp of the composition in its broad and equal truth-
fulness in every part. I do not say that this treatment of the drapery
is in itself evidence of youth fulness in the sculptor, because the
search after secondary effects apparent in it may be only one of the
many instances which prove that this was a line of development very
successfully followed by Greek sculptors immediately after the time
of Pheidias. Yet the obviousness of it in the Hermes may fairly
be urged against its being the result of ripe study, and so far may
confirm the argument we have used in favour of accepting the statue
as a work of the early life of Praxiteles.

Next in the varied interest it has created is the statue of Victory
(Nike) which bears on its base the name of the sculptor Pseonios, and
tells among other things how the cost of it had been defrayed from
spoils taken in war by the Messenians and Naupaktians. So much
Pausanias also had read and noted down, thinking it strange that the
enemy was not specified. On inquiry it appeared that the Messe-
nians had erected the figure to commemorate their part in the
engagement at Sphakteria B.C. 425, but that from fear of the
Lacedaemonians they dared not own to it openly. This did not seem
to Pausanias to be the truth. He would rather have it that the
Acarnanians and (Eniadae were the enemy in question, from whom,
he adds, nothing was to be apprehended in raising the monument. But
in that case, it may be asked, why not write up their names ? If there
was no occasion for fear, there was none for delicacy. One reason may
have been that the expedition into Acarnania, between B.C. 456-452,
though in many respects a glorious feat of arms, was in the end a
disaster rather than a victory for the Messenians, as Pausanias knew
well, for he elsewhere describes the campaign. They had marched
into Acarnania and had taken by siege the town of (Eniadse, which
they held peaceably, and no doubt profitably for a year, when it
became necessary to stand on their defence against a large army that
had been raised in the surrounding country. First there was a sharp
engagement in the open field, resulting in a serious loss to the small
force of the Messenians, who then withdrew within the strongly forti-
fied city. They knew that an assault on them was impracticable, and
trusted to their provisions outlasting a siege. For a time this went
well, but with all their display of food in the face of the enemy it
proved in the eighth month of the beleaguering that they could hold
out no longer. They attempted to escape during the darkness of night,
but were intercepted, and 300 of them fell. Only a few succeeded
in making their way home to Naupaktos.

1880. THE SCULPTURES OF OLYMPIA. 1013

At the same time it may be argued that the original capture of
(Eniadse had yielded considerable spoils, which may reasonably be
supposed to have found their way to Naupaktos during the year of
peaceful occupation. From a tenth of them the statue may have
been commissioned. Nor is there in the final disaster any fatal
objection to the commemoration of the campaign as a whole by means
of a figure of Victory. At least Pausanias, who was acquainted with
the facts, did not think so. But there are other complications in the
records. The inscription on the base of the statue itself states that
Pseonios who made it, also executed the akroteria of the temple, that
is, the great temple of Zeus ; and if the line which conveys this in-
formation was not added sometime afterwards, it obviously affirms
that these akroteria, whatever they were, had been completed before the
statue of Victory, and it therefore implies, if we accept the date pro-
posed by Pausanias for the Victory, that they were executed previous
to B.C. 450. But this does not fall in with other facts. For it
appears that Alkamenes made part of the sculptures of this particul
lar temple in the period from B.C. 438-432, and it is improbable that
his colleague Paeonios should have preceded him by so many years.
On the other hand, there is nothing unlikely in this last line of the
inscription being a later addition. Indeed it is on the opposite view
abnormal, while as an afterthought it permits us to accept the date
of Pausanias, and to reconcile the making of the akroteria with the
time when the other sculptures of the temple were being executed.

But suppose Pausanias was wrong in doubting what was told him
about the statue having been set up in honour of the victory at
Sphakteria in B.C. 425. That was a great event for the Messenians,
though apparently their share in the spoils was small. One diffi-
culty is that the last line in the inscription could not then be
regarded as a subsequent addition, since the sculptures of the temple
must have all been finished before this time. But that difficulty is
no more than conjectural, and would not be an obstacle if the condi-
tions of art observed in the statue were found to be more consistent
with the later than the earlier date. On this opinions vary.

Disputes about dates ordinarily have little interest except for points
of detail. But in this instance the question really resolves itself
into whether Pseonios made his statue of Victory after he had come
into contact with Pheidias and Alkamenes, and had thereby been
brought under the influence of the Attic school, or whether he had not
rather made it previous to the arrival of these sculptors in Olympia,
having learned his style and manner in his native town of Mende in
Thrace. On the latter theory it has been argued at great length
that in the generation before Pheidias there existed in Northern
Greece, including Mende in Thrace, a school of sculpture which had
been largely influenced by the sister art of painting, also practised in
that region with even more success. In this school we are to suppose

1014 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

Pieonios was trained. When it is asked how it could have happened
that sculpture by him should possess in the main so much affinity
with sculpture of the Attic school under Pheidias, the answer is that
this very Attic school owed a special impetus in the previous genera-
tion to the painter Polygnotos, who came from Thasos, an island near
to Northern Greece, and settled in Athens, possibly inducing other
artists to follow by his favourable reception. Thus the immediate
effect on Athenian sculpture would be an approximation to that of
Northern Greece. From this Pheidias developed his ideal, leaving
the style and manner in which Pa3onios grew up far behind, but still
in sight. Such is the theory. But the facts are very scarce, especi-
ally as regards the supposed influence of Polygnotos and others on
the Athenian school. On the other hand, the rich mining districts of
Northern Greece had enjoyed from the earliest times an active
intercourse with Asia Minor, and probably it was in this intercourse
that they obtained their ideas of art along with their well-known
habits of luxurious living. Fortunately there exists still enough of
the early sculpture of Asia Minor to show that in principle it was
considerably influenced by the art of painting, and if we could
assume that in this condition it was prolonged, so to speak, into
Northern Greece, Brunn's theory would gain a support, which at pre-
sent it is much in need of, owing to the sad scarcity of monuments to
illustrate it.

There is, however, another side to the picture. In Athens there
had been generations of sculptors before Pheidias, and busy com-
munication with Northern Greece, where her artistic influence was
likely to have been felt. It would be the influence of sculpture,
not of painting, and its effect would be to check, if not to destroy,
the pictorial element originally derived from Asia Minor. Not
Athens only but Argos, Sikyon and other centres were, in this
period, alive with the productions of sculpture, the fame of which
was known far and wide. So that, the moment we think of Pseonios
as a young and ardent student in Mende, we cannot avoid associating
him with the influence of Southern Greece if not of Athens directly.
His sculptures go far to prove this, though, no doubt, they still leave
it an open question whether he came under the Attic influence pre-
vious to his meeting with Pheidias at Olympia, or after that event.
The colossal statue of Zeus in gold and ivory, which Pheidias made
for the temple at Olympia, held out in one hand a figure of Victory,
but how far it may have served as a prototype for Pasonios cannot
be determined.

To speak now of the statue by Pseonios, it will be observed that
he has represented Victory in the act of descending through the air,
and, if I am right, he has indicated the element of air by placing
under her feet an eagle with outspread wings flying from right to
left, as in cases of good omen. In the same way the figures of Nereids,

1880. THE SCULPTURES OF OLYMPIA. 1015

as they are usually called in the British Museum, are shown to be
moving over the sea, by the fish, sea-bird, or shell, under their feet.
It is, at the same time, right to state that the Victory has been sup-
posed to be lighting on the earth, and the eagle to be a bird of some
other kind. What this indefinite bird indicates is not said, and from
want of a reasonable explanation of its function I should much prefer
to retain it as an eagle, and to adhere to the description of its part
in the composition I have just given. The Victory then is descending
through the air, letting herself down with her wings, which have been
raised in a vertical direction. "What she has held in her hand, or
what her face was like, cannot be ascertained. But it can be seen
plainly that she is on the whole of a very noble form, and draped as
no other ancient statues are draped, except those of the Parthenon.
To say that she is much behind them both in form and drapery, is
what everyone will admit. But by very general consent she is next
to them, not, however, without considerable rivalry in some respects
on the part of the Nereids just mentioned. They fail beside her in
the impressiveness of a bold and large conception. But they are
often delicate where she is coarse. For there is no other word to
describe the treatment of the sculpture below her girdle in front, or
the management of her drapery on the left side above the girdle.
These are faults which are not to be explained away by Brunn's theory
of the artist having been trained under pictorial influence. They are
inherent vices, and are the more conspicuous from the largeness and
boldness with which the figure altogether is conceived.

If it be asked where the sculptor had obtained this largeness of
style, the most obvious answer would be, from contact with Pheidias
at Olympia. But this, as has been seen, is only possible if we accept
the date told to Pausanias, and decline that which he proposes in its
stead. At the same time, there are other considerations involved.
In the first place if the Victory had been made subsequent to the
sculptures in the east front of the temple of Zeus, as Pausanias im-
plies, it ought to present more affinity than they to the Athenian
school. The case would stand thus : Pasonios arrives at Olympia,
and is employed on the sculptures of the east front of the temple while
Alkamenes is engaged on those of the west, and while Pheidias is occu-
pied with his gold and ivory statue of Zeus. During the progress of
the work Pa3onios adapts his style to that of the Athenians, and after
he has fairly succeeded, he makes the Victory. Now a considerable part
of his work on the east front of the temple has been found, and though
despised in comparison with that of Alkamenes, it is admitted to possess
broadly the same style, and therefore to prove a community of artistic
feeling between the two sculptors. How far this artistic feeling may
have been shared by Pheidias also, is the question at issue.

It is a question which admits of illustration from the sculptures of
the Parthenon, where there are, on the one hand, the statues of the

1016 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

pediments and the bas-reliefs of the frieze representing, as has always
been supposed, the true art of Pheidias, while, on the other hand,
there is the series of metopes reflecting in many ways the training of a
different, apparently an older, school. I refer to the metopes in the
British Museum, which alone have been well preserved. They com-
pare with the statues in the pediments at Olympia, just as the
statues in the pediments of the Parthenon compare with the Victory
at Olympia. Even the subject of these metopes is the same as that
of the pediment by Alkamenes — that is to say, a combat of Centaurs
and Lapiths. His two principal groups are formed each by a Centaur
seizing a female Lapith, and in both cases the artistic conception is
identical with that of one of the metopes of the Parthenon. Or again
in his secondary groups, where the capture is effected in another way,
we have the same design as on a very archaic silver coin found
in Thrace. Probably enough, one or both of these conceptions had
been familiar in art for some time, and for that reason the occurrence
of one or other in two places would not justify the claim of one
sculptor for both. Indeed, the execution at Olympia shows such a
different degree of ability that this cannot well be thought of. But
there are other points of contact between the Parthenon metopes and
the temple sculptures, both those of Paeonios and of Alkamenes ;
above all, the singular and striking manner of realising such types
of lower beings as Lapiths and river-gods, in whom the human
physiognomy is made to express the phrase ' a child of nature,' with
a completeness that does not occur elsewhere. For example, in the
head of the river-god Kladeos found last year, every feature is normal
according to the type of higher beings, and yet on the face altogether
is an open simplicity which seems as if it could comprehend nothing
beyond the obvious phenomena of nature, and was content with that —
content with what the ever-flowing river told in its constant musings.
This head was by Paeonios, but in point of its being a personification
of nature, it is identical with the head of a female figure by Alkamenes,
while in type of face it is essentially the same as the heads of the
Lapiths on the Parthenon. These examples could be multiplied,
but let us take another order of beings — the Centaurs. Here
Alkamenes and the sculptor of the Parthenon metopes have chosen
the same type. In that circumstance itself there may not be any
strong argument, since this type of Centaur was perhaps common at
the time. With no great variation it occurs on the frieze from
Phigaleia which is attributed to Iktinos, one of the architects of the
Parthenon. Yet how different the details, especially those of drapery.
In the Phigaleian frieze the drapery may be described as florid. In
the Parthenon and at Olympia it is the reverse, being not only very
simple in its lines, but being also curiously constrained, as if perfect
freedom in the treatment had not yet been reached. Eeference to
the eighth metope in the Museum series will make this clear. For

1880. THE SCULPTURES OF OL7MPIA. 1017

there the drapery of the Lapith, exquisitely beautiful though it be,
does not fall freely, but clings to the background as in cases where a
sculptor has not complete command of his art. At Olympia, whether
in the work of Paeonios or of Alkamenes, we have the same effect
with this difference — that the sculpture is there coarsely executed.
How far this coarseness may be due to the want of skill in the
subordinate artists employed at Olympia, or whether in the original
marbles colour, now lost, may not have been so applied as to give
refinement of detail, cannot at present be decided.

\Ve have thus in Athenian sculpture for which Pheidias was
directly responsible two materially different styles of art, the one
represented by the metopes, the other by the statues of the pediments.
At Olympia, again, we have the same divergence of style, though
attended with coarseness, between the pediment sculptures and the
statue of Victory. The natural inference is that this double phase
of artistic style was taken from Athens to Olympia by Alkamenes
and Pheidias, and that Pseonios there adapted himself first to the one
and next to the other, following Alkamenes in his sculptures of the
pediments, and Pheidias in his figure of Victory.

These then are some of the questions which have arisen from the
successful excavations at Olympia, and my object has been here to
show that they involve considerations worthy of general interest
apart from the extraordinary merits of the sculptures as works of art.

A. S. MURE AY.

1018

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

THE PROBABLE RESULTS OF THE
BURIALS BILL.

A LONG controversy, in the course of which a good deal of bitter
feeling has been evoked and perhaps some angry words spoken on
both sides, has resulted in a settlement which, in the view of the
Primate, * contains concessions to the claims of both sides.' For the
catholic spirit which he has brought to the discussion, for his anxious
efforts to bring about a compromise, and for his desire that the
passing of the Government measure may have a conciliating influence,
the Archbishop deserves the thanks not only of the lovers of peace,
but still more of the best friends of the Church. It must be very
hard for one occupying his venerable position to yield one iota of
the claims of the institution of which he is the head, and whose
members look to him for an unflinching defence of all its privileges.
The high tone of Church feeling which at present prevails, and to
which he himself alludes as one of the least desirable results of the
1 Catholic revival,' must have made such surrender even more difficult
for Dr. Tait than it might have been for some of his predecessors.
4 My predecessors in the episcopate had,' he says, 1 1 think, less diffi-
culty than we should experience nowadays in welcoming the co-
operation of such men as was Robert Hall in the days of our fathers,
and wishing them God-speed in their labours to resist prevailing
infidelity.' But it must be harder to concede a demand to a Dissent-
ing agitation than to accept the help of Dissenting earnestness and
ability in the defence of a common cause. The greater the credit
which is due to an archbishop who does not hesitate to make what
must have been for him a painful sacrifice, at the certain risk of mis-
construction by those whose approval he is naturally most anxious to
deserve. It needed the sagacity of a statesman to see that the time
was come when a protracted resistance must be injurious to the
Church itself, but when this conviction had been formed it required
no little courage to own it and to act upon it. There may be very
grave questionings as to the value of the c compromise,' which, it may
be assumed, is due to the combined wisdom of the Primate and Lord
Selborne, but there will be a general agreement among all but the
most heated partisans that the Archbishop, in his willingness to

1880. THE BURIALS BILL. 1019

make terms, has shown a far sounder judgment and a truer appre-
ciation of his own duty as a loyal son of the Church, than if he had
counselled a policy of ' No surrender ' and so kept alive a controversy
which while it lasted was only intensifying hostility to the Establish-
ment itself. It would, as I believe and shall endeavour to prove,
have been better for the Church and the clergy if there had been no
attempt at compromise at all ; but an unconditional acquiescence was
scarcely to be expected even from so liberal a primate, and would
certainly have made his relations with his clergy more embarrassing.
There is, at all events, reason for congratulation, especially on the
part of those who desire to prolong the existence of the Establish-
ment, but also for all who do not wish that the battle of great prin-
ciples should be fought on so narrow a field, that he did not play the
part of the Bishop of Lincoln and put himself at the head of the
Irreconcilables. Lord Beaconsfield's ' brilliant chaff ' and the wild
accusations of excited clergymen notwithstanding, the Archbishop
has proved himself the best defender of the Church.

His conciliatory utterances in regard to Nonconformists are all
the more to be commended because there is in them no suggestion
that the settlement of this burials controversy ought to be the end
of all differences between us. On the contrary, he frankly recognises
the antagonism of principle by which we are placed in opposition to
each other. * At home important questions of policy may keep us
apart. Certainly it is our duty to resist all efforts for subverting the
national constitution of our Church, which makes it the authorised
teacher of all our people, and the mouthpiece through which our
common Christianity speaks in all our public acts as a State.' The
Archbishop is far too just and sensible a man not to. admit that
Dissenters who hold an opposite principle owe a duty to it which
they are equally bound to discharge. .Neither party has a right to
ask the other to be silent, or to expect, or indeed to desire, anything
more than that we should, to use the Archbishop's words, ' all feel
that it is our duty to meet the inevitable state of circumstances in
which we find ourselves in a tolerant Christian spirit.' The settle-
ment of the burials difficulty may serve, at all events, to foster this
temper. There have been incidents connected with this contention
which have made it specially irritating, and now that it is ended
it may be hoped that the discussion of the great principles which lie
behind may be conducted with more moderation and good feeling.

That the clergy will accept the law and obey it, and that Non-
conformists will abstain from any proceedings calculated to produce
needless irritation, may be taken for granted. Exceptions there may
possibly be, but there is too much of Christian principle on both
sides to allow of the perpetuation of the embittered feelings produced
by a controversy on which Parliament has pronounced a definite
verdict. So far as Nonconformists are concerned, I feel that I can

1020 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

confidently say that the friendly sentiments expressed by the Primate
are heartily reciprocated, and that it will be their endeavour to
avoid all cause of offence. Their right has been conceded ; it will be
for them to use it with proper consideration for the feelings of
Churchmen. It is probable that in the early days of the Act the
relations between the clergy and their Nonconformist neighbours may
be subjected to a severe strain, which the very unwise provision
relative to Sunday funerals may tend to aggravate, but it will be for
Dissenters to prove that they can be as considerate of the suscepti-
bilities of others as they have shown themselves tenacious of their
own rights. That there will be unseemly manifestations in connection
with Nonconformist funerals will not be thought credible by those
who have any acquaintance with our real sentiments ; and if, unfor-
tunately, there should be exceptional cases where hot-headed men in
the intensity of their own feeling, or in response to some provocation,
real or fancied, give way to a vulgar and unchristian ostentation of
triumph, such outbursts would be condemned by the public opinion
of Nonconformity. We have not been fighting against a church,
still less against its clergy, but against what we felt to be an in-
justice, and in the hour of success the last act of which we should be
guilty would be to insult opponents whose convictions are as sincere
and conscientious as our own.

Still it is impossible for us to fritter away the significance of our
victory in deference to the feelings of opponents. The member for
Wolverhampton, speaking as a Nonconformist, and arguing for a
position which he admitted to be logically indefensible, said the
settlement ought to be effected not in a spirit of conquest but of
compromise. Conquest it was nevertheless. The Primate and some
of his colleagues were ready to accept the Bill on certain conditions,
but the opposition of an overwhelming majority of the clergy and of
the Tory party was unrelenting to the last. The success of the
measure was a Liberal triumph, due solely to the victory of the
Liberal party at the polling booths. When the battle had thus been
fought out to the bitter end, it was a little out of place to talk of
settlement by compromise rather than by conquest. If by the ' spirit
of conquest ' was meant only an overbearing, inconsiderate temper,
which would trample ruthlessly upon the clergy, it was needless to
repudiate it, as there was no one by whom it was ever entertained.
It was necessary to assert a principle, and its acceptance by the
nation is a triumph, the value of which we cannot consent to minimise.

The compromise which the Government, at the instigation of
Lord Selborne, forced on their reluctant supporters, and of which Mr.
Fowler was content to appear as a Nonconformist defender, was really
no concession to the clergy at all. They had fought for their own
exclusive rights, and had lost them. An entirely new question was
raised by the illogical and inequitable proposal of the Lord Chan-

1S80. THE BURIALS BILL. 1021

•cellor. The principle laid down by himself in his speech on the
second reading of the Bill was that every parishioner had a right to
be buried in the parochial bury ing-ground with such rites as he might
desire. The contention of the clergy was that such right was limited
to those who were content to be buried with the Anglican service. The
present Bill sets aside that limitation, but instead of carrying out its
own principle, which is that of perfect liberty, it introduces an
entirely new restriction, and provides that the service must be
* Christian.' It is unnecessary here to inquire whether the accep-
tance of the condition was necessary in order to secure the passing of
the Bill. That is a simple question of policy, the decision of which
must be affected by a great variety of considerations, the relative
value of which will be very differently estimated by different in-
dividuals. There are those who do not regard immediate success as
the paramount object, and who would rather have suffered a year's
delay than allow a great reform to be marred by the mutilation of its
cardinal principle ; and there are others who believe that even with
a view to present results the bolder policy is the wiser one. Still it
must be granted that the position of the Government was a difficult
one. The time was very limited, and the Opposition watchful and
eager to seize any opportunity for obstruction ; the sacrifice of the
Bill would have been a considerable loss of prestige, as well as a
bitter disappointment to numbers who were eagerly expecting the
relief which it gives. The Bradlaugh incident had created a prejudice
which would have made it extremely difficult to do justice to un-
believers, and, despite the eloquent and convincing demonstration of
the futility of this ' Christian ' restriction by the Bishop of Peter-
borough, it is probable that its removal would have meant the post-
ponement of the measure, especially as it was desirable, even if not
imperative, to secure the concurrence of the Primate. On grounds
of policy it is possible, and perhaps even probable, that the Govern-
ment were right. But it should have been argued on these grounds
alone. The Nonconformists have not shown themselves unreason-
able and exacting, and they would have given their full weight to
any appeal of the kind. But when Mr. Osborne Morgan, tacitly
ignoring the fundamental principle of the Bill, argued that it was
intended mainly as a measure of relief for Dissenters in rural dis-
tricts in general and Wales in particular, he irritated those whom it
should have been his business to conciliate. His argument reduced
the whole question from one of national right to a mere Dissenting
grievance, and the days are past for this sort of appeal. Dissenters
ask no special privileges. They have been contending for a right,
.not supplicating a favour. Their demands and the reasonings by which
they are sustained have been put forth so distinctly that Liberal states-
men, at all events, should have no difficulty in understanding them.
Sectarian advantages or indulgences they do not seek, but simply
VOL. VIII.— No. 46. 3 Z

1022 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

the acknowledgment of rights which belong to them not as Non-
conformists or Christians, but as citizens, and in which they desire all
other citizens to have equal participation.

If this be borne in mind, it will be seen how misleading is the
suggestion of compromise in connection with this establishment of a
new test within the graveyards. It does not touch the members of
Nonconformist churches at all. They have everything which they
could desire for themselves, and if this be the compromise, they
secure it by the very cheap expedient of a surrender of the rights of
others. The grievance of Mr. Ashton Dilke under the new law is
precisely the same as that of Mr. Osborne Morgan's Welsh Noncon-
formist clients under the old one, and every argument which has
been employed against the one tells with equal force against the
other. A Nonconformist who talks of the necessity of moderation
shows a very easy, cheap generosity, when his moderation consists in
coolly sacrificing the demands of others while insisting upon the
uttermost farthing of his own. We could understand Dissenters
deferring so far to the feelings of the clergy as to accept the clause
forbidding Sunday funerals, and even admire the generosity with which
they surrendered a point on which in strict equity they might have
insisted. In this there would have been a real compromise, for it is
not to be denied that there are many Nonconformists among the
working classes who would have felt the pressure of this restriction.
But to resist this concession, and then to urge the acceptance of the
limitation of services to those which are Christian, is not to exhibit
Nonconformity in a very noble character to the unbelievers who are
left out in the cold. We have been told that it is not reasonable to
complain, seeing that we have got nineteen shillings, or possibly even
nineteen shillings and sixpence, in the pound. But this is a very
fallacious representation. A number of creditors who realised so
much out of a bankrupt's estate might indeed be marvellously con-
tent and even complacent. But suppose these creditors numbered
twenty, and the arrangement was that nineteen should be paid in
full, provided the twentieth was left to recover his debt as he
best could, is it very probable that the unfortunate man who got
nothing would see the equity of the compromise, or would be
likely to listen with much patience to one of his more fortunate
companions who urged the necessity of moderation ? Would he even
be prepared to give the nineteen credit for perfect integrity ? In
such case the nineteen, were they honest men, would certainly insist
on an equality of payment all round, and to me it seems that we, as
Nonconformists, are bound to do the same.

Canon Barry maintained, in the September number of this Eeview,
that the passing of the Burials Bill will not affect the question of dis-
establishment. There is a sense in which the assertion is true, but it
is, after all, only one side of the truth. When he says ' that the

1880. THE BURIALS BILL. 1023

Dissenters will get into the churches through the churchyards I do
not believe,' and that ' the arguments gravely advanced that a " shower
of rain," if it drive mourners for a few moments under shelter,
will achieve an ecclesiastical revolution, are hardly worth any serious
refutation,' I fully agree with him. Such confidence might indeed
seem misplaced when it is remembered how narrowly we were saved
from the extraordinary and sweeping revolution which Mr. Osborne
Morgan, carrying out the suggestion of Mr. Fowler, was prepared to
inaugurate. Still only panic could suggest the idea that some
temporary inconveniences at the grave-side would sweep away the
Act of Uniformity and give Dissenters right of entrance into parish
churches. Excited churchmen may dismiss all apprehension on this
score. There is not the slightest probability that the Liberation Society,
having thrown open the gates of the churchyard, will now commence
an agitation for similar liberty within the churches. Necessity
forced on the movement which has now been crowned with success,
but no such plea can be advanced in the other case. The clergy
are not likely to be disturbed in their pulpits, except as the result of
disestablishment ; and whenever that event shall come they may be
assured that in this as in every other point their claims will be met
in a spirit not only of equity but generosity.

But, while these visionary fears may properly be dismissed, the
question still remains whether this fresh assertion of the control of
the nation over property held by the Anglican Church is not another
advance towards disestablishment. If indeed it can be shown that
churches and churchyards are held by a different tenure, the settle-
ment of the one point may have no relevance to the other, but the
proof of this is not forthcoming. Canon Barry contends that this
difference exists, but it is not easy to see on what grounds his con-
tention rests. The original relations between the churches and the
churchyards are in truth points which interest the ecclesiastical
antiquarian, but will hardly be taken into account by the lawyer, and
assuredly will not influence the decision of the statesman. The
Canon himself speaks with modesty, and well he may, considering
how contrary is his view not only to the ideas of Nonconformists, but
also to those which have been persistently put forward by Church
defenders. It may be that the connection between the church and
the churchyards was originally accidental, but it puzzles us to under-
stand what practical bearing this has upon the subject. The con-
nection dates back so many centuries, and has become so universal in
our parishes, that any attempt to establish a distinction between the
tenures by which they are respectively held comes somewhat late.
There are no doubt a great many curious points of law and usage
which the careful student may exhume from the record of the past.
Our ecclesiastical, like our civil, institutions have been a growth, and
in the archives of the Church may possibly be found some facts which

3z2

1024 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

are altogether opposed to our modern ideas. But to require that we
are to go back a thousand years and recast all our notions about
Church property because of something that is said to have taken
place then, but the evidence for which is extremely doubtful, is to
ask a little too much. Churches and churchyards have for some
centuries been a part of the estate enjoyed by the National Church.
Churchmen maintain that both alike are her own private property.
Nonconformists, on the other hand, contend that they are all the
property of the nation, which has already altered the mode of appropria-
tion and can do so again. The Burials Bill is practically a Parliamentary
decision in favour of the Nonconformist contention, and that decision
has been made all the more emphatic by the refusal to bring the grave-
yards belonging to Nonconformist communities within the provisions
of the Bill. It may be long before the principle now applied to the
churchyards will be carried out in reference to the churches, but its
admission is a significant fact, the force of which even Canon Barry's
ingenious pleadings will not avail to weaken.

The present Bill, Canon Barry says, ' will not have a particle of
influence in diminution of the fury of the crusade against the
Establishment and the Church.' (So far as Nonconformists are con-
cerned, I must repeat here that there is no crusade against the Church,
and I hope even that against the Establishment may be kept free
from fury.) 4 But, on the other hand, it will not strengthen the forces
against us, except so far as, by embarking in a hopeless antagonism,
we have discredited the Church by defeat, unless indeed (which I cannot
believe), the Bill, if passed, be met by obstruction and evasion *
(p. 511). This is a very large exception to make, but when it has
been made, Dr. Barry's estimate is probably correct. Defeat must
always involve some loss of prestige and power, while victory, on the
other hand, brings an accession of spirit and energy. The conflict in
which the clergy chose to engage on this question was impolitic in
the last degree, but, having embarked in it and sustained a crushing
defeat, they cannot hope to escape the consequences of their own want
of foresight and consideration. The statesmanlike spirit which the
Primate and some of the other bishops have shown in the later stages
of the controversy has done something towards mitigating the results
of the defeat. But all their efforts have been crossed and thwarted
by the action of men of another spirit. What infatuation can have
possessed the Archbishop of York when he marred the effect of pre-
•vious liberality by proposing an amendment which there never was a
•chance of carrying, but which indicated the reluctance with which
the measure was accepted, it is hard to understand. The Bishop of
Lincoln was at all events intelligible, and so were the clergy who
persisted in flaunting the flag of ' No surrender ' to the last, and so
did their utmost to neutralise the moderating influence exerted by
the Archbishop of Canterbury. To the end there was no sign of

1880. THE BURIALS BILL. 1025

graceful concession, and they who thus fought a outrance, and fought
in vain, must feel that their cause has been damaged by their ob-
stinacy. Far be it from me to hint a censure of their resolution.
They believed that they had a sacred trust to guard, and they deter-
mined that they would never yield it. For this they are entitled to
the admiration of all who are struggling for principle themselves.
But that admiration cannot alter the fact that their unbending re-
sistance has involved them in defeat, and that defeat has, as Canon
Barry admits, discredited the cause of the Church.

A still more manifest gain for the principle of religious equality
has been secured by the new position which the Bill gives to Dissenters,
their services, and their ministers. It is true that it does not deal
with Dissenters as such, and gives neither recognition nor privilege
to their ministers. It is possible also that some funerals of the
Nonconformists will be conducted by men who do not fill the
ministerial office. But, after these deductions have been made, there
still remains the fact that the Dissenting minister will, from time to
time, be seen discharging the duties hitherto jealously restricted to
the Anglican clergyman. The law has not established the Dissenting
minister, but it has so far disestablished the parish clergyman that
it has stripped him of the exclusive right to conduct services in the
parochial bury ing-ground. Canon Barry says that ' the serious thing
which it does do is to order, not only that silent burial shall be
in all cases allowed, but that what is in the eye of the law lay
ministration shall be sanctioned at the grave, on the demand of the
representatives of the deceased, and shall be, as lay ministration
mostly is, unconfined to any set form of funeral service.' This is a
very ingenious statement, but smooth words cannot get rid of ugly
facts. Technically, Dissenting ministers may be treated by the law as
laymen, and their services as lay services, and it may be very gratifying
to the advocates both of the high sacerdotal and the Erastian theories
to have them so regarded and described. But, as a plain matter of
fact, the design of the Bill has been to provide, not for the ministra-
tions of Anglican laymen, but for the services of religious com-
munities which have thrown off their allegiance to the Established
Church. The significance of this change cannot be abated in the
slightest degree by any designation which the clergy may see fit
to give to these new services and those by whom they are
conducted. The Dissenting minister is not less a minister in the
eyes of the people because he is described by the high Anglican
who knows no Christian minister unless he be in the Apostolic suc-
cession, or the strong Erastian who treats as an intruder every one
but the religious official commissioned by the State as a layman. Of
ecclesiastical theories they know little, and for them they care less,
especially if they contradict the palpable facts of their daily experience*
To them the Dissenting church and its minister are realities, and

1026 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

when they see their services celebrated in the parochial graveyard
they will understand that the old relations of the two communities
have been materially altered. Some of the opponents of the Bill have,
as might have been expected, adduced this as one of their strongest
objections to it. It is perfectly true the law still leaves very much
to the incumbent. The churchyard remains under his control ; the
fees for funerals are still to be paid to him ; on Sundays, Christmas
Day, and Good Friday, he can forbid a funeral if he states a distinct
objection to it in writing. But he can no longer determine who shall
officiate at the graveside, and the Baptist minister or the Wesleyan
local preacher is just as much entitled to conduct a service, if the
friends of a deceased parishioner desire it, as the rector himself. In
the graveyard the rights of the parish have taken the place of the
rights of the Church or of the clergy. The rector is not disendowed,
but a very large step has been taken towards disestablishing him so
far as his services in the churchyard are concerned.

It may indeed be said that so important a concession will disarm
many of the opponents of the Establishment, and that the completion
of the work may be almost indefinitely postponed in consequence of
the secession from the ranks of the assailants of some who are satisfied
with the removal of what has been to them a grievance, and do not
care to press further the demand for absolute equality. There may,
no doubt, be some of this type, but I do not believe that they are
numerous, or that the friends of the Establishment can calculate on
any important accession of strength from them. They are not the
men who have done much to win this battle, and the Liberation
Society will not find itself weakened though they should refuse to
take any part in the struggles of the future. The character of
those coming conflicts must undoubtedly be considerably affected by
a success which leaves Nonconformists with few if any actual wrongs
to be redressed. The gradual clearing away of the long list of
grievances against which the principal efforts of the Dissenters of the
last generation were directed has changed the entire aspect of the
controversy, and may to some extent affect the relative positions of
parties. There are Liberal churchmen who are extremely anxious
that the Establishment should press as lightly as possible upon
Dissenters, but who are not prepared to surrender the Establishment,
and who do not see that its maintenance involves a positive injustice
to all who cannot conform to its requirements. They have been
supporters of the Burials Bill, but they will be opponents of disesta-
blishment, unless they can be convinced that religious liberty is
incomplete so long as the State favours any one class of religionists.
But they have never been among the supporters of the Liberation
Society, and the termination of the temporary alliance between them
in consequence of the accomplishment of the object for which it was
formed does not mean any weakening of the force contending for

1880. THE BURIALS BILL. 1027

religious equality. If indeed in the ranks of the society there were
those \vho were contending for sectarian ends and not for a great prin-
ciple of national policy, they may now cease from further efforts. But it
may be questioned whether their withdrawal will be a subtraction of
real strength, or whether the loss, such as it is, will not be more than
compensated by the movement being freed from the purely sectarian
element and assuming a more distinctly national character.

Canon Barry very clearly perceives that the course taken by many
of the clergy is, to say the least, as likely to advance the cause of
disestablishment, as is the success achieved by the Dissenters in the
Burials Bill. He sees that the State Church cannot live as a merely
privileged sect, and that they who desire the continuance of the
Establishment must treat it as the Church of the nation, and accept
all the responsibilities which this implies. But how is it possible to
create this tone of thought and feeling among churchmen ? They
know that the nation is not within their Church, and they cannot
always act and speak in accordance with what after all is only a
legal fiction. Hence we find them demanding to have the same
freedom as Dissenters, complaining that they are hedged in by
restrictions to which the feeblest sect in the country would not
submit, clamouring for self-government and claiming for Convocation,
an authority at all events co-ordinate with that of Parliament.
Church defenders have even been known to speak of theirs as the
most powerful denomination .in the country. The language is
perfectly intelligible, for it is perfectly true, but it is utterly incon-
sistent with the idea of a National Church, which alone has any chance
of survival in those collisions of opinion to which we are rapidly
drifting. Nonconformists contend against the theory, but they will
be materially helped in their opposition to it if churchmen themselves,
and especially the body of the clergy, practically ignore it, and act
and speak as though their own Church were a privileged Church
among Churches , and not the Church of the nation.

Holding this view, I feel that the provisions in the Bill for the
relief of the clergy are those which are really most menacing to the
Establishment. In order to meet their wishes a serious breach has
been made in the Act of Uniformity, the full consequences of which
are not yet apparent. They would have been much worse had Mr. H.
Fowler's original amendment been carried, and the way opened for
the introduction of any variety of service which a clergyman might
choose to adopt. It was certainly a great improvement to require
the approval of the bishop, although the provision is only another
example of a legislation which has been doing much to establish an
episcopal autocracy with the possibility of different * uses ' in different
dioceses. But even worse than this tampering with the constitutional
law of the Anglican Church is the liberty of option given to the
clergyman as to the form of service which he will use in each case,

1028 TUS NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

which is nothing less than to invest him with a right to pronounce a
judgment on the individual life. If this be not a fruitful source of
trouble, clergymen must indeed be ^ endowed with an extraordinary
wisdom and judgment, the signs of which have certainly not been seen
in their mode of dealing with this burials question in the past.
Should controversies arise, they will be of a personal and therefore
bitter character, and are sure to tell against the Church. No right-
minded man can be surprised at the anxiety of the clergy to escape
from the painful necessity of having to read the sublime words of
faith and hope which are found in the Burial Service of their Church
under circumstances in which they must feel that they are nothing
better than hollow mockery. But the difficulty is to see how this
is to be avoided in a National Church except by an alteration of the
formulary in all cases. As it is, the liberty secured for the clergy
may yet prove a grave peril for the Establishment.

It may be hoped that when the natural irritation of the time has
subsided, one effect of this much-debated, and by the clergy much-
hated, Bill, will be to produce more kindly relations between Church-
men and Dissenters. It will be something if we are spared
wranglings about questions of detail, and have instead discussions of
principle. But still more important will be the increased intercourse
between the clergy and their Nonconformist neighbours which cir-
cumstances will almost necessitate. Had they known each other
better, probably many hasty and unfounded charges on both sides
would have been unspoken. Nonconformists have certainly felt that
they were strangely misunderstood when it was gravely argued that
they might make the graveside the scene of demonstrations against
the Establishment or its representatives. But they have now the
opportunity of giving a practical refutation of a suggestion showing
such entire ignorance of all their views and habits. It will not be
long before the fancy pictures of Dissenting irreverence and an-
tagonism, by which so many excellent churchmen have been alarmed,
will be shown to be the creations of prejudice, ignorance, or panic ;
and I can anticipate a not distant time when some of the keenest
opponents of the measure will look back with surprise on the ex-
aggerated alarm with which they anticipated, and the vehemence
with which they denounced, a measure which has not only been
perfectly harmless in its operation, but has served to promote a spirit
of unity among old antagonists.

The proceedings at the Church Congress, followed by the action
of the Congregational Union, showing an anxious desire to take
advantage of this pause in the controversy in order to mitigate
something of its bitterness, encourage the hope that the laudable
wishes of the Primate will be fulfilled. Very much, however, will
depend on the clearness of the understanding between the opposite
parties. It is simply impossible that the differences relative to the

1880. THE BURIALS BILL. 1029

existence of the State Church can be held in abeyance. If there
could be a general agreement to this effect to-day, circumstances
would be pretty sure to arise which would destroy it to-morrow.
There are movements of thought which are not to be controlled by
these pretty little arrangements of those who may, for the time, be
representatives of contending principles. What those who are out-
side all our churches, and indifferent if not hostile to all our creeds,
would think of the religion of Christian men, who could only agree
to dwell together in peace on condition that they suppressed their con-
victions on an important point at issue between them, and who had so
little reverence for what they hold to be truth, that they "would sacri-
fice it for the sake of a hollow friendship, it is not necessary to inquire,
for such silence is altogether impossible. There are, indeed, no indi-
cations that the churchmen who expect it from Dissenters would
observe the terms themselves. It is not intended that there should
be anything of mutual concession. What they mean is that Dissenters
should be silent as to the injustice and evil of the Establishment,
not that they should cease to proclaim its inestimable advantages.

The Bishop of Liverpool gave the most distinct expression to this
spirit. His paper was in exceptionally bad taste, and was all the
worse because of the contrast it presented to the breadth of view
shown by the Primate in his charge, and the consummate tact and
judgment with which the Bishop of Peterborough replied to the
address of the Nonconformist ministers of Leicester. Dr. Eyle was
ready enough to acknowledge the religious work of Dissenters, but it
seemed impossible for him to hide his antipathy to Liberationists.
He caricatured their representations and demands ; but he is so much
in the habit of presenting the case of his opponents in a form so ex-
aggerated as to distort it altogether, that there is nothing surprising
in the alarming picture which he drew of the abject destitution to
which the ' wild men ' who are opposed to the Establishment would
consign the clergy. His great mistake, however, lay in his attempt
to persuade himself and the congress that only a very small section
of Dissenters desire religious equality. ' I believe that the vast
majority of serious, God-fearing Nonconformists have no sympathy
with this kind of language, and thoroughly dislike it. Although
attached to their own chapels, they have no wish to quarrel with the
clergy, and are willing to " think and let think." The empty tubs
always make the most noise.' The last suggestion is rather a
dangerous one for an orator like the Bishop. But, waiving that point,
has his lordship really been able to persuade himself that it is only ' a
rabid minority ' of Dissenters which desires Disestablishment ? As to
the language he condemns, I dislike it as much as he does, but I know
not who uses it. If it is meant to be descriptive of ' the reasonings
or demands of Liberationists,' the Bishop is as unjust in his idea of
that spirit as he is incorrect in his estimate of their number. The

K>3(> THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

most remarkable feature of the whole is that, after this illustration of
his own liberality, Bishop Ryle should pass on to exhort his friends to
1 cultivate the habit of treating Dissenters with kindness, courtesy, and
consideration.' Happily there are in the Church, and on the Epi-
scopal Bench, men who have already acquired the habit. Even the
narrowness of the Bishop of Liverpool will not undo the effect of the
healing words of the Primate, who, with true statesmanship, recog-
nises the folly of attempting to stifle controversy, but with true
Christian charity desires that even in our discussions we should re-
member that we are brethren.

J. GUINNESS ROGERS.

1880. 1031

PARLIAMENTARY OBSTRUCTION AND
ITS REMEDIES.

THE subject of Obstruction in the House of Commons, to which atten-
tion was called in these pages a year ago, has certainly not ceased to
attract public interest in the interval. A new Parliament has come
into existence ; a new Ministry has assumed the reins ; an over-
whelming majority has seated itself behind the leaders, whose more
energetic policy was to revive public spirit and dissipate the stagnant
atmosphere, which was held to make Obstruction possible. Yet the
evil, so far from having disappeared, would seem to prevail to such a
degree, as to have wrung from at least one eminent parliamentary
censor the avowal that the cloture in some form or other has become
indispensable, if the House of Commons is to recover its ancient
authority. As neither Lord Sherbrooke nor myself has had the op-
portunity of studying the question during the recent session from the
benches of the House of Commons, I hope to be acquitted of pre-
sumption in saying, that while much of what he has written must
command the assent of every one who has the privileges of free debate
and the honour of the House of Commons at heart, his conclusion
appears to me to be highly inexpedient in itself, and to be reached by
somewhat random reasoning and imperfect observation.

The writers who denounce obstruction unquestionably have a right
to be angry ; but those who propose a remedy should not let their
anger blind them to a just definition of what really constitutes the
Parliamentary misdemeanour of which we all complain. Nor, in their
haste to apply the most revolutionary remedies, should they ignore
the first principles of Parliamentary government itself. It would
almost seem as if there is rising up in our midst a class of publicists,
who believe the House of Commons to be, not so much a representa-
tive assembly convoked to deliberate as to the highest interests of the
empire, as a branch (and a very ineffective branch) of Her Majesty's
civil service. There can be no doubt, that in some minds a theory
prevails that such a transformation would be beneficial to the State ;
and that a legislative chamber, whose only function it would be to
register the foregone conclusions of an autocratic Minister (with so
much of verbal amendment as the Elect of the people would permit),

1032 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

must be a more serviceable piece of political machinery than any now
available. Those who hold these ideas naturally reprobate an estate
of the realm which is bound by constitutional doctrine, no less than
by the history of six illustrious centuries, to be the jealous guardian
of public and of private rights, and the vigilant if not unfriendly
inquisitor upon each and every proposal of the Executive Government.
That there are theorists to whom a bouleversement of these cardinal
principles of our Constitution will commend itself, few Englishmen
can now venture to doubt. That there should be found practical
politicians, by whom such a change is already regarded as a fait
accompli, would be incredible if it had not been proved to demonstra-
tion.

While it is necessary to lay some stress upon the original and
unaltered scope of the constitution of Parliament, it would of course
be idle to contend that a body, without which the Ministers of the
Crown are practically powerless except for purely administrative
purposes, is not morally bound to co-operate with the Government,
which depends upon its confidence, in effecting such reforms and
carrying out such a policy as it finds itself able to approve. The first
duty of the House of Commons is still to examine and check the esti-
mates of national expenditure — this is recognised by every Speech from
the Throne : — its second function, to act as the Grand Inquest of the
nation and to take care that abuses are corrected, or at least satisfac-
torily excused, before the Ministers can exercise an entire control over
the public purse. When these tasks have been performed, and the
Mutiny Bills have become law, it is obvious that the Government have
a claim for the consideration and reasonable despatch of the legisla-
tive proposals which they have thought it incumbent upon them to
submit. But that Parliament is bound to pass such measures with-
out examination or debate would hardly be seriously maintained by
Lord Sherbrooke or by anybody else. It is by carefully measuring
the extent of the examination, the amount of debate which it is
justified in bestowing upon the projects of law which are submitted
to it, that we shall be able to define the limits that separate legiti-
mate Opposition from real Obstruction. It is upon a clear apprecia-
tion of this distinction that any suggestion of an effectual remedy
must rest. And to nobody is Obstruction more indebted than to
those who wilfully or hastily confound two essentially different
systems of resistance to the will of the majority.

The distinguished critic, to whom I have already referred, appears
to me, if I may in all humility say it, to have altogether missed this
radical distinction. We are told that Obstruction has taken place in
the last Session, and the first and most glaring instance alleged is the
Bradlaugh controversy. Now, setting apart for the moment the
question whether or not such a controversy was legitimate, it must
be admitted that Obstruction must consist in obstructing the will of

1880. a OBSTRUCTION AND ITS REMEDIES. 1033

somebody. 'Was it the Government that was obstructed? It was the
Government itself which originated the controversy by twice proposing
a Select Committee to consider the question, and was in such a hurry
to do this that the first Committee was proposed before the House was
fully constituted, or a single member of the Cabinet in his place. Was
it then the will of the majority that was contravened ? If so, it was
by the majority itself, which ranged its forces against Ministers and
their protege. Was it, then, Mr. Bradlaugh who was unduly retarded
in taking his seat ? Surely it is notorious that Mr. Bradlaugh himself
offered at the second stage of the conflict to take the oath, which, if
taken by him in the first instance, would have precluded all discus-
sion whatever. It would seem, then, that if we had to charge any
person or persons with obstruction in the matter, it would be rather
Mr. Bradlaugh and the Government, who threw upon the floor of a
newly-elected House of Commons such a pretty bone of contention.
But those who regard the matter as one of the highest constitutional
interest, and as one which has stirred public feeling more deeply than
any other conflict for ten years past, will be slow to blame the
authors, whosoever they may be, of so important a discussion, even if
it has ended by involving the House of Commons only too probably in
that very conflict with the Courts of Law which the Prime Minister's
unlucky ingenuity has given an opportunity to arise, although almost
any other conceivable solution must have avoided it.

This digression, by way of reference to the Bradlaugh episode1,
may, I trust, be excused, not because it can be justly brought within
the compass of a discussion of obstruction, but as a means of showing,
by Lord Sherbrooke's own selected illustration, how dangerous it is
for any one who would eradicate that evil to set about his task with a
haste which is likely to prove at least as injurious to the wheat as to
the tares. And as might be expected, the remedy is as vague as the
undiscriminating diagnosis on which it is founded. The cloture in
some form or other is, we are informed, the only method left to us of
abating the evil, though we are still left in the dark as to whether
the cldture is to consist merely in closing the mouth of a particular
peccant member, or whether it is to extend — as in its most usual
sense it would extend — to the arbitrary abrogation of free debate at
the will of the majority. If Lord Sherbrooke desires the former only
of these remedies, there can be no doubt that, subject to certain de-
finitions and accompanied by certain safeguards, the House of Com-
mons must, and the sooner the better, defend itself by some such
form of discipline. But if it is sought by loose assertion and mis-
taken instances to stimulate public opinion to the suppression of
Parliamentary minorities, all that can be said is, that the remedy is
the one thing that can be imagined more intolerable than the disease.
If we are asked to adopt the French cluture, in order to preserve the
dignity of Parliament, I can only say that this is the most strikin^

1034 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

example recently to be found of the disposition 'propter vitam
rlveiidl perdere causas.' Parliaments exist for tbe purpose of free
debate ; but we are to put down free debate in order to maintain the
prestige of Parliament. Here indeed is a reductio ad absurdum of
constitutional theory. "We are threatened by a new constitutional
danger, which seems not unlikely to culminate in the ' survival of the
unfittest,' and in order to save ourselves from this we are invited to
jump into the pit in which so many other legislative assemblies have
sunk never to rise again.

Having employed Lord Sherbrooke's Bradlaugh illustration as a
specimen of what does not constitute obstruction, let us proceed to
examine once more the limits which can be drawn between that
legitimate opposition which it is the first duty of every member of
Parliament to offer to proposals which he regards as detrimental or
inexpedient, and that modern system of Parliamentary resistance
which has come to be stigmatised by the title of Obstruction. That
any member of the House of Commons is entirely within his right in
speaking as often as the forms of the House permit against any
measure of which he disapproves, and of speaking at such length as
can be justified by the matter or the arguments which he has to ad-
vance, will not be seriously questioned. That he is also entitled to
employ such manoeuvres as a knowledge of Parliamentary forms will
suggest can hardly be disputed. But though the performance of
such acts must remain free and uncontrolled so far as the acts
themselves are concerned, the intention which prompts them
requires most careful watching, and, where it is subversive, the
severest treatment. The privileges of a representative of a free con-
stituency are and ought to be virtually unbounded, but the under-
standing between the House and its members which alone makes such
liberty possible, is that these privileges should always be exercised
with due respect to the House itself, and with absolute loyalty to
that Constitution of which the House of Commons forms the strongest
part. There were bores in the House before Mr. Brotherton, and
coxcombs and fanatics before the first Eeform Bill, and in such we
may be sure no Legislature ever has been or will be deficient. That
a member should sometimes, by stupidity or conceit or indiscretion,
impede the course of public business, is what must happen in every
deliberative assembly. It is unnecessary to subscribe to the astounding
paradox that ' every one who addresses the House is the enemy of
the transaction of public business either in posse or in esse,' inasmuch
as the principal contribution to public business which either House
can afford must be found in those debates which tend to modify,
change, or defeat the measures brought before it. But it is none the
less true that any member who rises to speak without wishing to
assist in maintaining the honour and usefulness of the great assembly
to which he belongs, or without recognising his obligation to facili-

1880. OBSTRUCTION AND ITS REMEDIES. 1035

tate as a loyal subject the ordinary administration of affairs by Her
Majesty's advisers, is deserving of even more emphatic censure than
that so generally dealt out. If we apply the test which I am anxious
to suggest to the conduct of those who in the present or preceding
Parliaments are at hap-hazard charged with obstruction, how absurd
does it appear to seek one and the same remedy for every speech or
motion which may appear to the dominant party unduly to embarrass
the Minister of the day. It is no part of my task on this occasion to
vindicate the course taken by those who constitute what is called the
' Fourth Party,' or those achievements of Mr. Lowther and others
under Mr. Gladstone's former Administration, which are at this
moment merely reproduced with greater oratorical ability by Lord
Randolph Churchill and his friends.

Vixere fortes ante Agamernnona ;

and the late Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland might
point to precedents in his own experience created by those who in
former Sessions resisted the Parks' Bill and Sir B. Leighton's Game
Act, including even, if I remember rightly , the present occupant
of the Chief Secretary's Lodge. What I venture to advance is,
that if the standard which I would recommend is adopted, all
these cases fall outside it altogether, and the resistance offered by
such combatants to measures which they have disliked, if such as
might sometimes expose them to the imputation of faction, is quite
a different thing from that Obstruction, a plant of new growth and
special characteristics, with which the House of Commons has been
engaged for the last four years in a desperate struggle.

Greecia Barbariae lento collisa duello.

That Obstruction, then, which the House of Commons must put
down, if it is to retain either its authority or its credit, is one which
is, in its essential spirit, hostile to the prestige of Parliament, and to
Parliamentary government. A man whose ambition is Parliamentary,
whose object it is to win power and to attain fame by Parliamentary
achievement, may indeed lend himself to factious enterprise in the
course of his career, but will never wilfully set himself . to impair
the reputation of that body, by association with which he hopes to
gain honour. If, however, a combination can be shown to have been
formed — and the evidence of this is scattered broadcast — to diminish
the authority and cripple the action of the House of Commons, not
merely with regard to particular measures, but throughout the whole
range of its functions, there can surely be no difficulty now, as there
never has been in the past, in proceeding against those individuals
who make no secret of their design or of their contempt for the
assembly which has so long forborne to punish them.

If the late Government had taken action against the ringleaders
in this enterprise, when they were distinctly challenged to do so by

1036 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

formal resolutions moved and adopted at a public meeting in one of
our largest cities more than three years ago, the evil might have been
readily stamped out, provided that the Opposition of that day could
have been depended upon to show anything like the energy in vindi-
cating the fair fame and rightful authority of the House of Commons,
which some of their spokesmen so indiscriminately exhibit at present.
There was no question of Parliamentary privilege on the part of the
persons implicated ; nor is there any in dealing with such a speech as
that which is quoted by Lord Sherbrooke. A flat defiance of the House
of Commons uttered outside its walls is at least as great, if indeed it
is not a far greater offence against the privileges of that House, when
it proceeds from one of its members. If the House had, in the first
instance, when such an outrage was brought to its notice, severely
reprimanded the offender, and suspended him from his right of speak-
ing or voting until he had made at the Bar such public apology, and
such assurance of future good conduct as should satisfy them, there
would have been, as I think, little likelihood of its repetition.
Some may think it rather late in the history of these malpractices to
seek to suppress them now by summary correction of this sort,
although they can hardly deny that it is worth while to try the
experiment. But with a Minister at the head of affairs, who only a
year ago thought so little of the Obstruction then rampant as to
describe its perpetrators as * mere accessories,' while ' the Executive
Government was the chief offender,' it would be unreasonable to
expect a just appreciation of the difficulties which he will, neverthe-
less, not be long in beginning to experience.

There are always to be found in every community persons who
justify their fear of vigorous measures by the cant phrase which de-
precates * making a martyr ' of somebody. No one, I should hope,
would seek in these days to make an example of anybody for merely
talking nonsense, even if it be offensive nonsense ; but when the
enterprise of talking nonsense is elevated from the mere retail business
which any individual can set up in at a moment's notice, to the whole-
sale manufactory which has recently been undertaken with the expressed
purpose of causing detriment to the State ; when a person to whom
we are exhorted to refuse the palm of martyrdom proceeds to make
martyrs of all his fellow-members, and, what is much more to the
purpose, to visit with a lingering death the Constitutional privileges
of the House of Commons, one is reminded of the well-worn anecdote
of the man who was ready to abolish capital punishment ' if Messieurs
lea Assassins would begin first.' Self-preservation calls upon the
House of Commons not to let itself be tortured into imbecility, so
long as it has still the power to defend its position. As is usual at a
crisis in anybody's experience, and not least in that of Mr. Gladstone,
there are three courses open for our choice. The House of Commons
may go on enduring the ills which it has from fear of others which it

1880. OBSTRUCTION AND ITS REMEDIES. 1037

knows not of, or it may adopt Lord Slierbrooke's heroic remedy, and,
in order to ensure abundant legislation, put an end to free debate ; or
it may take measures for punishing particular offenders and fortify
itself by preventive regulations against their recurrence. For the
last two or three years, as we know, it has been sought to devise a
remedy against future attempts to pervert by systematic audacity the
forms of the House. Committees have sat, evidence has been taken,
debates have followed, resolutions have been adopted ; and yet al-
though it is too soon to condemn the standing order of last February
as wholly inoperative, it may safely be said that Obstruction has lost
none of its power or of its probability. I have said that the Standing-
Order, which, fortunately for the present Government, is a Standing and
not a Sessional Order (as Mr. Forster desired to make it), should not
yet be regarded as useless. And I am inclined to think that such an
Order, after the House had publicly arraigned, judged, and sentenced
one or more culprits for their open machinations to subvert its
authority, might in the hands of a determined Speaker or Chairman,
supported by a courageous Minister, and backed by a hearty concert
of both parties, be found adequate to control members who had been
impressed by a salutary example. But without speculating on the
probability of a concurrence of all those favourable circumstances
(though some, at least, of them we certainly possess at present), I
doubt whether any preventive measure of this sort, perhaps whether
one of any sort, will be found sufficient, before the House has
made a public example of some offender. It is putting the cart
before the horse to expect submission to a law against practices
which are unquestionably offences already, if their perpetrators
are suffered to go unpunished for acts at least as punishable as
any others which they are likely to commit. If a combination
such as is avowed out of doors and exemplified inside the House of
Commons is not now an offence against the privileges of Parliament,
let us think once, twice, and thrice, before we take any steps to
create a new Parliamentary misdemeanor. If it does amount to a
real breach of privilege already, let us commence our corrective reform
by inflicting such penalties upon the offenders as in the opinion of
the House they now deserve. Lord Sherbrooke will not, I trust, con-
sider a debate upon this subject as great a loss of time as he seems
to have thought the Bradlaugh controversy ; at least he may rest
satisfied that if those who are responsible for the general conduct of
public business can be sure of their own minds, and can depend upon
the support of their majority, a week spent in thus dealing with the
question at the commencement of a Session will bear very remunera-
tive interest within the compass of that Session itself, while it will
leave to future years a recovered heritage of Parliamentary freedom.
To return to the new Standing Order as a specimen of what can
be done to restore to the Chair that authority which it formerly derived
VOL. VIII.— No. 46. 4 A

1038 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

from the willing obedience of members, and the wish which every
member had to enjoy the good opinion of the House and of the public,
there can be no doubt that it arms the Speaker or Chairman with a
documentary weapon, so to speak, which is, however, we may infer from
its latest paragraph, not intended to supersede his more ancient and
more extensive power by naming a member to invite for him the
censure of the House. If it should be wrongly construed, it would
really curtail very greatly that authority for repressing disorder or dis-
respect to the House which has always been considered to be inherent
in the Chair. Everybody will be able to understand that a purely
discretionary right to invoke for any misconduct an expression of the
House's displeasure is far more valuable as a means of preserving order
than one which can only be put in force after two warnings have been
given, each such warning, as experience demonstrates, being likely to
engender fresh digressions in debate, and to produce a corresponding
waste of time. While, however, it is to be hoped that no occupant of
the Chair will ever interpret it as a substitute for the more elastic and
comprehensive powers which have always been attached to his office,
there can be no doubt that in any case in which it is put in force it
does most effectually diminish the power of the House to vindicate its
authority. The very limited penalty which it imposes may, of course,
on a repetition of the offence, be seriously magnified, and for the
immediate requirements of the case, viz., the instant removal of a
temporary nuisance, may be found sufficient ; but it must not be
forgotten that on the only occasion on which it was employed during
last Session, it was brought to bear on a member who stood quite
alone in the course by which he had incurred the displeasure of the
Committee ; and it remains to be proved how far its very slight
penalty will on some other occasion deter from protracted irregularities
the friends and associates of a member who has thus been censured. If
it should unhappily come to pass that the enforcement of such a trifling
punishment serves only to generate anew acrimonious and irrelevant
discussion, the new Standing Order may perchance tend rather to the
waste than the economy of public time. Let us, however, hope that
it will not be needed so frequently as to obtain that familiarity which
breeds contempt. And as has been already stated, there should be
no reason why, if associated with other and more formidable indica-
tions of the temper of the House, it should not render some service
at least so long as it remains in the shadowy background of things
unfamiliar to experience.

Although a good deal has happened since the last Committee on
Public Business examined their witnesses, I see no reason to depart
from the opinion then expressed that a Standing Order, which should
impose a penalty not more severe, but differing considerably from
that now in force as regards the circumstances and method of its
application, would certainly assist the House in the discharge of its f

1880. OBSTRUCTION AND ITS REMEDIES. 1039

functions. Whereas the existing Order can only be put in force by
the personal interposition of the Speaker or Chairman, and that after
two previous warnings have been disregarded, the procedure should
be one enabling any member to rise and call the attention of the

Chair to the fact ' that the honourable member for is obstructing

the business of this House (or Committee).' An absolute discretion
should rest with the Chair whether or not to submit this question to
the House (or Committee). In the event of the question being thus put,
the proceedings should follow the lines of the existing Order, and the
penalty, which for reasons easily to be explained may prove insufficient
under the standing order as it exists, would be adequate, in view of
the much greater facility for exercising it, as a means of enforcing
the Order which I would propose to substitute. One disadvantage of
the existing Order is to be found in the fact that it makes the Speaker
or Chairman, whose duty is that of a Moderator, the sole accuser of the
member inculpated. And it follows not only that the authority of
the Chair is gravely compromised by its occupant being brought
into antagonism with any individual member in a controversy which
must be decided by members present, and in which therefore the
decision may be opposed to the action of the Chair, but also that the
conduct of the Speaker or Chairman, in thus taking the initiative, may
be open to incrimination at the next sitting of the House either by
the member who has been censured or by his friends, and thus
create a new and fertile source of waste of time. In the Order
recast as has been suggested, the initiative would be taken by a
combatant member who is not in the same degree responsible to the
House for the exercise of his discretion, as is the functionary to
whom it looks for guidance and direction. In such a case, the onl}r
function which I should assign to the Chair would be the determina-
tion whether or not the Obstruction thus denounced was of such a
character as warranted its consideration by the House (or Committee)-
And hereby an opportunity is afforded for warning the member
charged of the consequences which would follow any persistence in
the conduct complained of, by which the necessity for putting the
question would be usually avoided ; and at the same time, frivolous
interposition on the part of any member who ' called attention,'
merely for the purpose of interrupting or delaying business, would be
very effectually checked ; it would only be necessary in such a case
for the Speaker or Chairman to remind the member so interposing
that his conduct in so doing brought him within the scope of the
Standing Order, or if the offence was a flagrant one, at once to put
the question to the House (or Committee), whether the honourable
member who had interposed was not guilty of Obstruction. This
procedure still seems to me the most free from objection of any of
the various proposals that have been made from time to time. It is
simple, it is expeditious, and I am certain that, if enforced with

4 A 2

l,,.to THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

prudence and vigour, it would prove effectual. In either case the
House (or Committee) is the judge which decides the case, but the
neutrality of the Chair is far more carefully guarded, and its power
to preserve order much more substantially fortified by this method
than by that which the House has recently adopted.

An alternative mode of proceeding was that attempted by Mr.
(iladstone during last session, in the case of Mr. O'Donnell's attack
on M. Challemel-Lacour. That the Speaker had no warrant in any
express rule or known precedent for refusing to put the question,
that Mr. O'Donnell be no longer heard, will probably be conceded.
But it might be argued with equal force, that no rule or precedent
existed, by which authority for putting that question could be estab-
lished. Somewhere or other in the antiquarian reminiscences of the
Stuart Parliaments there lingers a tradition of a member who was
thus constrained to * hold his peace.' But the danger and inconve-
nience of such an attempt to revive a disciplinary power so long in
abeyance, without carefully considered precautions, was fully illustrated
in the course of the same evening, when another member proposed
(with apparently as much right as the Minister himself) that the Home
Secretary be no longer heard. This reductio ad absurdum probably
sufficed to warn even the present leader of the House, that the ancient
tradition on which he relied might be found an exceedingly handy
weapon for obstructive purposes, if his doctrine came to be accepted
by the House. That every deliberative body must possess the power
of regulating the order of its own debates, even by silencing, if neces-
sary, any one of its members, is not to be disputed : as to the way in
which this power is to be exercised, there is, as we know, room for
considerable divergence of opinion. And the rashness of Mr. Glad-
stone, in suddenly, without any concert with the Opposition, or pre-
sumably any previous intimation to the Speaker, extorting from the
chair a sanction for such an obsolete and arbitrary mode of pro-
cedure, although it fortunately involved no greater immediate pub-
lic injury than the waste of a single night, might well, if any
•Obstructives had cared to imitate it, have produced a succession of
scenes of infinite disorder. This is not the time or place to discuss
whether Mr. O'Donnell's attack on the French Ambassador was of
f uch a character as to make him hostis humani generis in a sense
.vhich should disentitle him to the privileges of a member of the
House of Commons, but as far as information exists respecting the
precedents for Mr. Gladstone's motion, it might, I think, fairly be con-
tended that there is nothing to show that conduct which was not una-
nimously condemned should be made the subject of such a motion, at
least until a new Standing Order had been framed to define and formu-
late the jurisdiction of the House. What will occur to many will be
that such a proposal, as matters now stand, if put at all from the chair,
Nfcndd only be put if the propriety of doing so were recognised by

1880. OBSTRUCTION AND ITS REMEDIES. 1041

the House nemine contradicente. And the mere fact that debate
ensued left behind an unpleasant impression that the Government, if
zealous to vindicate the comity of nations, in •which all parties would
cordially support them, were at the same time actuated in their ex-
cessive anxiety to silence Mr. O'Donnell by some other reasons not
equally apparent to the rest of the House.

The most hopeful feature in all the miserable altercations which
Obstruction has provoked is to be found in the ready loyalty with
which the body of the House, irrespective of party, has supported the
Chair. Ministers may come and Ministers may go, but the House of
Commons, as at least all patriotic Britons believe, goes on for ever.
There may be and there will be often gentlemen occupying what is
called the post of leader of the House, who may be not exactly those
best qualified to sustain the authority of Speaker or Chairman. It is
quite possible to conceive a case in which, from a desire to escape re-
sponsibility, or to avoid opposition, a Minister may cast upon the Chair
a share in the direction of public business which can only devolve upon
it in consequence of a real if unconscious dereliction of duty on the part
of those to whom the House naturally looks for initiative. Nor is it
beyond the range of probability that a Speaker or a Chairman may
sometimes find his authority when exercised and disputed rather
left to take care of itself by the occupants of the Treasury Bench.
Moreover, there is a contingency in the opposite direction which can-
not now be overlooked, viz. that of some ardent enthusiast being
placed at the head of a majority and impelled thereby to usurp the
functions of an arbiter and interpreter of Parliamentary Order.
But whatever may be the difficulties which the varying composition
of Governments may bring to embarrass the occupant of the Chair,
all experience, and especially that which is the most recent, has
shown that the most cordial and ungrudging assistance may be
expected from the House at large by its officers. Perhaps it may be
permitted in connection with this 4 branch of the subject to deprecate
the introduction of a practice, entirely irregular, of encouraging a
reference from the Chairman of Ways and Means to the Speaker as
to rulings which have proceeded from the Chair in committee. Such
a proceeding involves an entire misconception of the relations sub-
sisting between the Chairman and the Committee of the whole
House, and of those between the Speaker and the House itself. The
function of either officer is not one independent of the assembly over
which he presides, nor is he responsible to, or to be overruled by, any
authority except that of that assembly itself. If the Speaker inter-
prets the unwritten or expounds the written law of the House
erroneously, it is for the House itself to correct the utterance of one
who is its mouthpiece but not its master. In the same way, if the
Chairman in Committee of the whole House makes a mistake, it is
for the Committee to set him right, not for him to defer to the autho-

1042 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

rity, however justly respected, of the President of another body. If
any difference of opinion between the Chairman and the Committee
should by way of appeal find its way to the House, though the
Speaker's opinion would doubtless be invited, and would necessarily
carry with it the greatest weight, it would not prevail to settle such a
question except by the acquiescence of the House. The distinction
may seem superficial, but it is real. If the Chairman of Committee is
to be exposed to a constant risk of appeal from himself, who is per-
sonally cognisant of the circumstances involved in a controversy, to
-Air. Speaker, who is necessarily without that knowledge, his authority
will rapidly disappear. Another and peculiarly scandalous oppor-
tunity will be created for those who wish to disturb or preclude the
transaction of public business, and those who know full well how far
the judgment of the Committee then present would support the
ruling of the Chair might yet find scope for endless disquisition on a
motion to refer some plainly intelligible point of order to an
extraneous court of appeal.

Some suggestions which I made last year in these pages, for the
simplification of some of the forms and the general acceleration of
the business of the House of Commons, may be found by those who
are sufficiently interested in the matter to refer to the Nineteenth
Century of twelve months back. I will not recapitulate them on this
occasion. What, however, I would lay especial stress upon now, as I
did then, is the futility of any such or any other amendments of proce-
dure to cure the evil of Obstruction of a genuinely Anti-Parliamentary
character. That must be met, as I have already urged, by special mea-
sures directed against those who avow their contempt of the High Court
of Parliament, and their determination to paralyse the action of the
House of Commons. The mere avowal might be treated with indiffer-
ence, if the intention was not exemplified by overt acts. The acts, if
unaccompanied by the avowal, might be difficult to distinguish from
other dilatory or factious proceedings which have always more or less
prevailed in the House of Commons, and which are certainly dictated
by very different motives. But when the House of Commons is con-
fronted by such a combination as we have seen to exist, the task of
suppressing it cannot be said to be one demanding qualities more
uncommon than manliness and common sense. When the House has
once vindicated its authority at the expense of those who systematically
set it at nought, it may be able, if so disposed, to scramble through
its business as it did before the year 1876, with the aid of the
Standing Order of the 28th of February. How much it might gain
by adopting the alternative procedure which, has been suggested
above, has been already indicated. But whether one or the other
weapon is to be kept in the armoury of Parliament as a terror to evil-
doers, after a signal example has been made of the original promoters
of systematic disorder, it would be much to be regretted that so

1880. OBSTRUCTION AND ITS REMEDIES. 1043

exceptional an opportunity for a general revision of the forms of the
House of Commons should be lost.

Let us then, without entering again into the minutice of the
various modifications which might advantageously be introduced
into the conduct of Parliamentary business, consider, in the light of
Lord Sherbrooke's new revelation, two proposals, the nearest to the
cloture in their operation which it seems possible to adopt without
undue interference with the freedom of debate. Leaving things as they
stand with regard to the order of debates in the whole House — and
this appears to me essential, if the character of our Constitution is not
to undergo a complete change — may it not yet be practicable to cm>
tail the license now allowed to discussions in Committee without
precluding the expression of opinion or impairing the value of
detailed scrutiny ? Everybody of course is aware that any member
may make any number of speeches upon any question before the
committee ; that he may multiply those questions by moving any
number of verbal amendments to the clauses of a Bill or of reduc-
tions of items in a vote in supply ; that he may supplement these
legislative opportunities by any repetition of his views upon any
dilatory motion (to report progress, or that the Chairman do leave
the chair), which it is open to any member to move. And while
the ordered freedom of debate in the House may be, and too often
has been, abused by factious or obstructive members, it will be
evident that for one opportunity which offers itself for such conduct
while the Speaker is in the chair, at least ten times as many are
supplied by the laxity of the procedure which still prevails in com-
mittee. A few years back a Sessional Order was adopted with the
object of limiting the right of any member to a single dilatory
motion on each separate question, but as it has been allowed to
lapse, it may be doubted whether a Chairman would now feel justified
in thus restraining the ancient liberty of members with respect to such
motions. And even if it were still enforced, it could be of little
substantial utility, as the ingenuity of members could always be
trusted to devise some fresh amendment to the question before the
committee, which, however trivial, would nevertheless become itself
a substantive question, and thereby renew the dilatory potentialities
exhausted by a former motion. The time has now come, as I venture
to think, for abridging much of this superabundance of controversial
facility. Without abrogating the right of any member to bring
forward as many amendments as he chooses to any question in com-
mittee (and this surely would afford free scope for the expression of
individual opinion), it has really become necessary to limit to one
speech any member who addresses the committee on the amend-
ment (excepting of course, the member in charge of the Bill, or
the vote in supply, and the mover of the amendment). And a
new rule might well treat a second dilatory motion on the same

1044 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. December

question, when negatived, as tantamount to what is called * the
previous question,' when rejected, and consequently entailing an
instant decision by the committee on the main question itself.
When it is remembered that any member may discuss the
main question as freely as he pleases on a motion to report
progress, or that the Chairman do leave the chair (for in his
appreciation of the merits or demerits of the proposal must rest
his warrant for wishing to have it deferred or affirmed), nobody can
fairly say that such a new rule could be practically employed to
stifle discussion. But if the House will only consent in these two
particulars to bring the discussions in committee within bounds, laid
down in accordance with the spirit indicated by its own rule of
proceeding, people will be astonished in a Session or two to recognise
the improvement in quality, no less than the diminution in quantity,
in the debates. The mere fact that a speaker knows that he has
only the one chance of impressing his views upon an audience in-
sensibly concentrates his mind upon his argument, and intensifies the
force with which he applies it. And the very same rule which will
exclude much vain babbling on the part of those who do not aspire
to speak well or to persuade will be found equally valuable in making
those speak better who are now too often shut out from speaking
at all.

There remains another suggestion which was received a year ago
with horror by some of the leading organs of Liberal opinion. I mean
that recommending for consideration the American method of expe-
diting discussions in Committee. The plan which is stated to hare
been tried at Washington is one by which the House fixes by antici-
pation the day on which the Committee is to report a Bill that has
been referred to them. This arrangement, providing, let us say for
example, a space not exceeding lour days for the consideration in
Committee of the details of a particular measure of some importance,
renders it necessary, when a certain ' measurable distance ' only inter-
venes before the appointed end of the discussion, that the Chairman
should put the remaining Clauses and the amendments to them, of
which notice has been given, without debate, so that the judgment of
the Committee may be pronounced before the space allotted for its
labours has terminated. Few will be found to regard such procedure as
perfectly satisfactory; but, happily, the mere fact that it was possible
would greatly tend to obviate the occurrence of circumstances calling
t into play. Those whose one object is the obstruction of public
business, and who protract indefinitely a particular discussion, not with
the view of amending a particular Bill, but with the intention to
bring about a Parliamentary deadlock, would have no object in useless
prolongation of debates not intrinsically interesting to them, when
the real end of their prolixity was not to be compassed. Othello's
occupation would be gone. And the consequence would be that,

1880. OBSTRUCTION AND ITS REMEDIES. 1045

instead of a three or four days' debate on the question that Clause 2
stand part of the Bill, reasonable expedition might be confidently
anticipated in getting to Clause 10 or Clause 20, or any other Clause
containing really debateable matter. It will be borne in mind that
any haste or carelessness in Committee admits of rectification at the
next stage when the Bill is considered as amended in the full House.
,And with the opportunities that exist both for recommitting a Bill at
a subsequent stage, and for its further amendment in the second
House of Parliament, it may fairly be questioned whether such an
experiment would unduly confine the provision made for examination
in detail. It would probably be found expedient that the House
should delegate to a small Standing Committee the function of
fixing the limit of time for consideration of each Bill in Committee,
and in the chair of such a committee it would be desirable to place
the Speaker or Chairman of Ways and Means. With such safeguards
it may be prognosticated that some regularity would be effected with-
out much risk of important measures being ' rushed ' through the
Commons ; but the remedy is undeniably a very drastic one, and
should not be attempted until other means have been found to fail.

It will beyond doubt be an occasion both for shame and anxiety
if matters should be allowed to drift to such a pass, that a treatment
even so remotely akin to the genuine cloture should be found indis-
pensable, even if it is to operate only within the limited area of the
Committee of the whole House. If the principle is once accepted, it
will be found increasingly difficult to resist its application in a more
stringent form and on a more extended field. The enemies of free
discussion, and these are to be found at least as often among the
doctrinaires and philosophic politicians as among the rude per-
verters of our parliamentary procedure, will certainly not be slow
to press further any innovation which may serve to augment the
tyrannical pressure of a tyrant majority. While therefore I must
confess myself unable to conceive any state of things which could
make the cloture itself an improvement in the transaction of Par-
liamentary business, I am most unwilling to see adopted any procedure
which might tend to its introduction, until every other imagin-
able reform has had a trial. But, as far as I can judge, there
is as yet no reason to despair of the House of Commons. If those
who lead it will rise to a due sense of the crisis through which it is
passing, and will have the courage to arraign before the House those
who have openly striven to cripple and to thwart it in the discharge
of its duties, we shall soon have heard the last of real Obstruction for
many a year to come. If these should shrink from their duty — and
they may unhappily point to great hesitation in realising what that
duty was on the part of their predecessors — it will still be open to the
House itself to vindicate its privileges and its authority. When
those who glory in what should be their shame have met their deserts,

1046 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

and when any attempt to follow their example has been sternly
repressed by such a Standing Order as has been sketched above, the
House will have breathing time so to remodel some of its more
dilatory forms as to diminish the opportunities for vulgar vanity,
or factious manoeuvre to impede its deliberations. And it will
be well that the chance should not be thrown away. But let not
that body which, as Lord Sherbrooke has eloquently said, con-
stitutes now the single anchor of the State, fail to hold its own
against the tornado which seems to perplex the present at least as
much as the former crew. If the vessel is to be allowed to drive
before the gale, she will, as we all know, be speedily among the
breakers. But if it is attempted to set her head in a particular direc-
tion without ascertaining the direction or force of the wind, she may
quite as probably find herself on her beam- ends. Those who confound
Parliamentary opposition, even when it is most factious, with the new
theory of resistance to constitutional authority which has grown up
during the last few years, are only less dangerous to the liberties of
the House of Commons than the Obstructors themselves. If the
latter are summarily dealt with, the former may, at least for the
time, be safely disregarded. But if a policy of disregard is still to
be maintained in the case of those who brave the displeasure of
Parliament, it is only too likely that the day is not far distant when
the resentment provoked by it may bring within the range of
practical politics even such a proposal as Lord Sherbrooke's. After
King Log comes King Stork. This House of Commons has not yet
had time to prove whether with the reputation it has inherited the
wisdom of more ancient Parliaments. If it wishes to be thought
wise, it must be wise in time.

HENRY CECIL RAIKES.

INDEX TO VOL. VIII.

The titles of articles are printed in italics.

ABB

ABBOTT (Dr. E.), his 'Hellenica,'
reviewed, 336

Aberdeen administration, the, 999-1001
Africa, South, responsible government

in, 241-244, 933-937
Africa, South, 933-954
Aide" (Hamilton), hia ' Poet and Peer,'

reviewed, 339

America, a Stranger in, 67-87
' Apple Blossoms,' reviewed, 337-338
Arabian racehorse, the, 416-423
Arnold (Matthew), The Future of

Liberalism, 1-18

Arrian, his treatise on hunting, 965-967
Art, Modern French, 56-66
Art Collections, our National, and Pro-

vincial Art Museums, 249-265
Assurance, Industrial, State Aid and

Control in, 275-293

Assyrians, hunting among the, 552-553
Atheism, 545

Atheism and Repentance, 19-41
Atheists, no statute for the admission to

Parliament of, 181

"D ACILLUS anthracis, 857-858

J_) Barbarossa, wars of, 751-755

Baroda, administration of, 162

Barry (Canon), The Burials Bill and
Disestablishment, 501-512

Basuto -war, the, 935-936

Bell (Professor Graham), the photo-
phone invented by, 844

Bliaunagar, Mr. Percival's administration
of, 163

Birmingham Musical Association, the,
927-928

Bismarck (Prince) on the formation of
public opinion, 10

Black (Clementina), her ' Orlando,' re-
viewed, 339

Blackley (Rev. W. Lewery), The
House of Lords and National Insur-
ance, 107-118

Blackmore (R. D.), his ' Mary Anerley,'
reviewed, 339

Blasphemy, meaning of, 756-759

BYE

Bleeding to Death, 157-176

Blomfield (Bishop) on Sunday occupa-
tions, 710

Blunt (W. Scawen), The Thoroughbred
Horse, English and Arabian, 411-
423

Board of Works, the MetropoH tan. 774-
776

Bonnat (M.), his picture of 'Job,' 60

Bouguereau (M.), his picture of the
' Flagellation of our Lord,' 59 ; of
the ' Birth of Venus,' 61

Boulger (D. C.), The Future of China,
266-274

Bourne (F. S. A.), Translation of the
Diary of Liu Ta-jeris Mission to Eng-
land, 612-621

Brabourne (Theophilus), his distinction
between the Lord's Day and the Sab-
bath day, 706 note

Bradlaugh difficulty, the, 513-514,1032
-1033

Bret Harte, stories by, reviewed, 338

Bribery and Conniption, 824-843

Bright (John), his character as an em-
ployer, 72 note

Britain, colonial empire of, 246-247

British Constitution, religious basis of,
178-180

Brown (Gerard Baldwin), Modern
French Art, 56-66

Bryant (William Cullen), his criticisms
of the English language, 434-440

Buddhism, the Obligations of the New
Testament to, 971-994

Bunbury (E. H.), his Ancient Geogra-
phy, reviewed, 326

Bunyan, English of, 426-427

Burials Bill, 16

Burials Bill, the, and Disestablis7iment,
501-512

— the Probable Results of the, 1019-
1030

Burton (Dr.), his history of Queen Anne,
reviewed, 330-331

Buxton (Sydney C.), Bribery and Cor-
ruption, 824-843

Byron, poetry of, 396-408, 756

1048

INDEX TO VOL. VIII.

CAT

CA I KD (Dr. John), on the philosophy
of religion, reviewed, 310-317
Calthorpe (Lord), his proposals relative

to Arabian racehorses, 411, 422
( 'aiuula, a stranger's impressions of, 81-
89

— origin of responsible government in,
237-239

Carlisle (Bishop of), The Philosophy of

( 'mi/fishes, 622-637
( 'arnarvon (Earl of), A few more Words

on National Insurance, 384
Carpenter (Professor J. Estlin), The

O/ilif/ations of the New Testament to

Kuddhism, 971-994
( 'aucus system, result of its adoption at

the late election, 568
Chase, the, its History and Laws, 650-

563, 955-970
Chautauqua Lake, a Convention of

Liberals at, 73-74

( 'heyne (Rev. T. K.) on the prophecies
• of Isaiah, reviewed, 315-316
Chicago, city of, 71
( '/tina, the Future of, 266-274
China, native opposition to railways in,

615
Christians, Early, the Creed of the, 207-

217
Civilisation, means of promoting, 5-7 ;

instability of the Liberal party due to

their neglect, 13

— European and Chinese, a Chinese
comparison of, 619-621

Clot ure, the, in Parliament, 42-55
- Obstruction or, 513-525
Cobbett, his contempt for the two great

political parties, 1-2
Cockburn (Sir A. E.), The Chase, its

History and Laics, 550-563, 955-970
•Collieries, Explosions in, and their Cure.

895-920 '
Colonies, Representative Government in

the, 237-248

Colorado Sketch, a, 445-457
Commons, House of, Radical theory of

the function of the, 745

— discussions in committee in the.
1043-1045

•Compensation for Disturbance Bill,

the split on the, 565
-Conservatism, the Philosophy of, 724-

747
Co-operation, prospects of, in America,

86
Cox (Robert), his bibliographic work on

the Sabbath question, 695, 710
Crattfithes, the Philosophy of, 622-637.

See also Huxley.
Creed, the, of the Early Christians, 207-

•Creedt, the, Old and New. 526-549, 787-
809

FIR

DAVIDSON (Dr. Samuel), on the
canon of the Bible, reviewed, 316

Dawkins (Professor Boyd) on the classi-
fication of the tertiary period, 851-
856

Deak (Francis), memoir of, revieiced, 328

Deccan, the bill for the relief of the agri-
culturists in the, 159.160

Deism, 540-542

D^jazet (Virginie), 144-146

Demoniacal Possession in India, 646-652

Derby (Lord) on the development of our
manufacturing industries, 7

— on the practicability of the National
Insurance scheme, 109

Devon Commission, the, 681-682, 864-
867

Dicey (Edward), The Egyptian Liquida-
tion, 458-473

Disestablishment, the Hurials Sill and,
501-612

Dormeuil (M.), manager of the Palais-
Royal Theatre, 142-144

Dresden, Sunday in, 711

Drunkards, how to reform, 712-713

Duffy (Sir Charles), his ' Young Ire-
land,' 861, 864

Dumas, Alexandre, 653-671

Dunraven (Earl of), A Colorado Sketch,
445-457

— Wapiti-running on the Plains, 593-
611

Duval (E. Raoul), The Commercial
Treaty bet^oeen France and England,
99-106

TUBERS (Georg), his romance, 'The
JJ Sisters,' reviewed, 339
Egyptian Liquidation, the, 458-473
Egyptians, hunting among the, 553-

555

Election prosecutions, 826-829
Elizabeth (Queen), administration of

Ireland bv, 348-349
Elyot (Sir f homas), diction of, 427
Emigration, co-operative, 79-81
— Irish, 877, 881-882
England, the Commercial Treaty between

France and, 99-106
English Rational and Irrational, 424-

443

Englishman's Protest, an, 177-181
Evarts (Mr.), Secretary of State in the

Government of Washington, 83
Examinations, Competitice, Ecils of,

715-723

f, Political, 638-645
-*• Fauna, deep-sea, 859
Fiction, Fair and Foul, 195-206, 394-

410, 748-769
Fire-damp, 806

INDEX TO VOL. VIII.

1049

FOB

Forster (Mr.), the Compensation Bill of,

365-368
France, the Commercial Treaty between

England and, 99-106
France, mode of enforcing order in the

legislature of, 47-48

— the cloture in, 51-52

Franchise, proposed extension of, to the

agricultural labourer, 4
Franldand (Dr. E.), on water-analysis,

reviewed, 321
French Art, Modern, 56-66

— Clergy, the, and the Present Republic,
119-139

Froude (James Anthony), Ireland, 341-
369

nAILLARDET (M.), his duel with
\J Dumas, 663
Galilee, Lake of, fauna of the, 860
Geddes (James), his devotion to India,

167
Geikie (Professor), his observations of

the Laurentian gneiss, 849-851
Geoflroy (M.), the French comedian,

152-153
Germany, mode of enforcing order in

the Reichstag of, 49
Gerome (M.), his picture of ' Phryne

before her Judges,' 60
Gill (G. W.), his narrative of a Journey

to Burnaah, reviewed, 325
Gipsies, historical sketch of the, 578-

592
Gladstone (Rt. Hon. W. E.), his motion

against Mr. O'Donnell, 43-45, 1040-

1041 ^

- his Irish Land Act, 306, 363-364, 639
Glenbervie (Lord), his definition of

bribery, 825, note

Gneiss, Laurentian, geological pheno-
mena connected with the, 850-851
Gnosticism and Buddhism, affinities

between, 990-992
Gordon (R.), his report on the Irra-

waddy, reviewed, '626
Gosse (E. W.), his poems, reviewed, 335
Gotama Buddha, 972-978
Grant (Rev. A. R.), Evils of Competitive

Examinations, 715-723
'Grassot (M.), the French comedian, 149
Gratius Faliscus, his treatise on hunting,

960-961
Greeks, ancient, hunting among the,

558-563

Greenwich pensions, the, 116
Grey (Earl), South Africa, 933-954

HALL (Fitzedward),1 English Ra-
tional and Irrational, 424-443
Hallett (Frederic F.), Our New Wheat-
fields at Home, 761-765

IEE

Harrison (Frederic), The Creeds, Old

and New, 626-549, 787-809
Hartington (Marquis of) on the cloture

question, 50

Hayes (President) and his wife, 83
Heidenhain, his experiments on hypno-
tism, 474-479
Hewlett (Henry G.), The Works of Sir

Henry Taylor, 810-823
Heylin (Dr. Peter), his criticism of

English, 432
Hjaltalin (J. A.), his description of the

first settlement of Iceland, 219
Holyoake (George Jacob), A Stranger

in America, 67-87
Home Rulers, obstruction tactics of. '

517, 520
Hood (Thomas), his OdetoRae Wilson,

quoted, 713
Horse, the Thorouqhbred, English and

Arabian, 411-423
Humanism, 535-537
Hunting, antiquity of, 550

— real charm of, 448

Huxley (Professor), his Introductory
Science Primer, reviewed, 317-318

— on the crayfish, reviewed, 320
Hyacinthe (M.), the French comedian,

154
Hyndman (H. M.), Bleeding to Death

157-176

Hypnotism, 474-480
Hysteria, peculiar manifestations of,

646-647

JCELAND, 218-236

•* India, Demoniacal Possession in,

646-652
India, British and native administration

of, 163-164

— cost of British rule to, 165-166

— our intercourse with the natives of,
168

— necessity of financial reforms in, 169

— trade of, 176

— connection of, with the ancient
Western world, 983-990

Indian Civil Service, competition in the,

717, 719
Industrial Assurance, State Aid and

Control in, 275-293
Industrial life at great manufacturing

centres, 8-9

Insecticide fungi, 856-857
Insurance, National, the House of Lords

and, 107-118

— a few more Words on, 384-393
Interviewing, newspaper, 77-79
Ireland, 341-369

— Legislation for, 677-639

— in ''48 and now, 861-875
commented upon, 870-875

— peasant farming in, 182-193,882-880

1050

INDEX TO VOL. VIII.

NLA

Ireland, the Compensation Bill for.
l:<l,;!06, .-{11,366-368

— the Land League of, 307

— legislation for, 17-18

Irish Land Question, the, 888-894
Irish ' Poor Man; the, 876-887

TACQUOT (M.), 653-654

U James the Fifth of Scotland, Ins

treaty with the gipsies, 684
Jebb (Professor), his lectures on Modern

Greece, reviewed, 327
Jefferies (Richard), his 'Hodge and his

Masters,' reviewed, 322
Jellyfish discovered in the Regent's

Park Botanic Garden, 860
Jesuitism, 640

Jews, hunting among the, 656
Johnson (Dr.), style of, 428
Johnston (Keith), his ' Geography,' re-

viewed, 325

TZIMBERLEY (Lord), his replies to
IV the South Africa deputations, 934,

953-954
Knighton (W.), Demoniacal Possession

in India, 646-652
Kyrle Society, the, 923

T ANDLORD and tenant, relation of,

JU 734-736

Landowners' Panic, tlie, 305-312
- Reply to, 638-645

Lankester (Professor E. Ray), on de-
generation, reviewed, 318-320

Leclaire (Edme-Jean), history of his
participation scheme, 372-376

Legge (Professor), on the religions of
China, revieiced, 313

Liberalism, the Future of, 1-18

Liberals, disunion of the, 565-566

Lifford (Lord), The Irish Land Ques-
tion, 888-894

Light as a medium of transmitting
sound, 844

Literature, Recent, 313-340

Liu Ta-jcrfs Mission to England, Diary
of, 612-621

London, the Government of, 766-786

London streets and railways, a Chinese
minister's impression of, 616, 617

Lonsdale (Margaret), her ' Sister Dora,'
reviewed, 331-332

Lords, the House of, and National Insur-
ance, 107-118. See also Carnarvon

Lords, House of, Radical fallacy con-
cerning the, 744-745

Lortet (M.), his dredging of the Lake
of Galilee, 860

Lucas (Joseph), Petty Romany, 678-
089

Luckock (Canon), his 'After Death/

reviewed, 314
Lymington (Lord), The 'Portsmouth

Custom,' 672-676

MACAULAY (Lord), English of,
426, 437, 442

McCarthy (Justin), The Landomiei-s'
Panic, 306-812

— Reply to, 638-645

— Ireland in '48 and Ireland now, 861-
876

Macdonald (Sir John), Canadian Prime
Minister, 82

Machinery, Chinese objections against,
618-619

Mallock (W. H.), Atheism and Repen-
tance, 19-41

— The Philosophy of Conservatism, 724-
747

— his poems, reviewed, 334
Manning (Cardinal), An Englishman's

Protest, 177-181

Marburg, Sunday in, 711

Markham (Captain A, EL), his edition
of John Davis's works, revieiced, 325

Marriage with a deceased wife's sister,
15-16

Mars (Mile.), 658-659

Marshall (Mrs.), Music and the People,
921-932

Martin (the Abbe"), The French Clergy
and the Present Republic, 119-139

Masquerier (Louis), bis ' homestead '
scheme, 74

Metschnikoff', his experiments on insec-
ticide fungi, 857

Mills (Arthur), Representative Govern-
ment in the Colonies, 237-248

Mines, working of, 905-919

Minto (Lord), life of, revieiced, 327-328

Morris (Lewis), his ' Ode of Life,' re-
viewed, 336-337

Moukabaleh loan, the, 467-468

Murray (A. S.), The Sculptures of Olym-
pia, 1008-1017

Museums, Sunday opening of, as a de-
terrent from the public-house, 712

Music and the People, 921-932

Myers (Ernest), his ' Defence of Rome,
and other Poems,' reviewed^ 336

VTEO-THEISM, 542-545

lM New York, a stranger's first im-
pression of, 67-68

New Testament, the Obligations of the,
to Buddhism, 971-994

New Zealand, responsible government
in, 240-241

Newspapers, a Chinese idea of producing.
618

Niagara, Falls of, 68-69

INDEX TO VOL. VIII.

1051

OAK

OAKS colliery, 902, 918
Oath, the Parliamentary, 179
O'Brien (Miss Charlotte), The Irish

< Poor Man,' 876-887
Obstruction, Parliamentary, and its

Remedies, 1031-1046
Obstruction or ' Cloture,' 513-525
O'Connell (Daniel), 861-864
O'Donnell (Mr.), his attacks upon M.

Challemel Lacour, 42-43
Oliphant (Mrs.), her ' Beleaguered City,'

reviewed, 338-339
Ollivier (Emile), on the religious crisis

in France, 134

Olympia, the Sculptures of, 1008-1017
Opium revenue, need of, to India, 174
Oppianus, poems of, on fishing, hunting,

and fowling, 967-969
Optimism, Political, 294-304
Option, local, 16

Owen (F. M.), her essay on Keats, re-
viewed, 330

T) AINTING, artistic requisites of, 63
JT Palais-Royal Theatre, the, 140-156
Palev (F. A.), his edition of Sophocles,

revieiced, 335-336
Parliament, the Cloture in, 42-55
Parliament, the oath a test of fitness

for, 179

— speaking against time in, 516-519

— the remedies for obstruction in, 521-
522, 1035-1045

Parties, the Unstable Equilibrium of,
564-577

Parties, alternations of popular favour
towards, 5-13

Pasteur (M.), on the Bacillus anthracis,
857-858

Pattison (Dr. Mark), on Milton, re-
viewed, 329

Paul, the apostle, 692-693

Payn (James), Story-telling, 88-98

Payne (John), Francois Villon, 481-500

Peasant Proprietors at Home, 182-194

Percival (Mr.), his successful adminis-
tration of Bhaunagar, 163

Percy (Dr. John), on metallurgy, re-
viewed, 320-321

Persians, hunting among the, 557-558

Philo, on the observance of the seventh
day, 695-696

Photophone, the, 844

Plimsoll (Samuel), Explosions in Col-
lieries, and their Cure, 895-920

Pollock (Walter Herries), Alexandre
Dumas, 653-671

Pope (Hon. Mr.), Canadian Minister of
Agriculture, 82

' Portsmouth Custom,' the, 672-676

Positive Science, 547-549

Protest, an Englishman's, 177-181

Protestantism, 537-539

STA

~DADICALISM, social tendency of,
•** 733

— genesis of, 745

Radicals, augmented strength of the,
567-568, 674

— doctrines of, on the land question,
737-738 ; on inequalities of property,
741 ; on the two Houses of Parlia-
ment, 744-745

Raikes (Henry Cecil), Parliamentary
Obstruction and its Remedies. 1031-
1046

Railways, Chinese views of, 613, 614,
617

Ravel (M.), the French comedian, 147

Renouf (Le Page), on the religion of
Ancient Egypt, reviewed, 314-315

Repentance, Atheism and, 19-41

Robinson (J. C.), Our National Art
Collections and Provincial Art Mu-
seums, 249-265

Rogers (Rev. J. Guinness), The Probable
Results of the Burials Bill, 1018-1030

Romanes (G. J.), Hypnotism, 474-480

Romans, hunting among the, 955-970

Romany, Petty, 578-592

Ruskin (John), Fiction, Fair and Foul,
. 195-206, 394-410, 748-759

Russell, Earl, dunny tJie Eastern Ques-
tion, 995-1007

SABBATH, the, 690-714
Saintsbury (Mr.), his study of
Dumas, 654

Sarcey (Francisque), The Palais-Royal
Theatre, 140-156

' Saviour of Society' a Real, 370-383

Science, Recent, 844-860

Scoones (\V. Baptiste), his 'English
Letters,' revieived, 332

Scotch Sermons, reviewed, 314

Scott (Sir W.), Sundays of, 408-409

Sea, deep, fauna of the, 859

Selenium, action of light on the electric
conductivity of, 844-847

Senior (Nassau W.), his 'Conversa-
tions,' reviewed, 323-324

Sherbrooke (Lord), Obstruction or
' Cloture; 513-525

— Legislation for Ireland, 677-689

commented upon, 870-875

Smith (Professor Goldwin) on Cowper,

reviewed, 329-330

— (Herbert H.), on Brazil and the
Amazons, reviewed, 326

Society, English, condition of, 17
Socrates on the moral influence of paint-
ings, 56
Somerset (Duke of), his ' Monarchy and

Democracy,' reviewed, 323
Speaker, authority of the, 46, 54
Stanley (Dean), The Creed of the Early
Christians, 207-217

I o:,2

INDEX TO VOL. VIII.

STE

Stenhouse (Mrs.), her 'Englishwoman

in Utah,' reviewed, 327
M.,ry-teiKng, 88-98

Swinburne (A. C.), his 'Songs of the
. Sjiringtides/ revieiced, 332-333

' I1 \ YLOR (Sedley), A Real Saviour oj
± Society, 370-383

— (Jeremy), on Christian cheerfulness,
713

Taylor (Sir Henry), the Works of, 810-
823

Tennyson (Hallani), Earl Russell dunng
the Eastern Question, 995-1007

Todd (Alpheus), on parliamentary go-
vernment in the colonies, reviewed,
324

Torrens (W. M.), The Government of
London, 76C-786

Traill (H. D.), Political Optimism, 294-
804

— Political Fatalism, 638-645
Tremenheere (H. Seymour), State Aid

and Control in Industrial Assurance,
275-293

Trench (Archbishop), his essay on Cal-
deron, reviewed, 333-334

Trinity, Biblical meaning of the sepa-
rate names of the Persons of the,
208-213

Trollope (Anthony), his 'Duke's
Children,' and ' John Caldigate,' re-
viewed, 340

Tuke (J. II.), Peasant Projmetors at
Home, 182-194

Tyndall (Professor), The Sabbath, 690-
714

TTLSTER, the massacre of, 350

U — tenant custom of, 866-867, 869

l;nited States, mode of enforcing order

in the legislature of the, 49-50
Universities, examinations at, 715-716

T7ICTORIA, the cloture enforced in
V the Assembly of, 63-54
Villon, Francois, 481-500

XK\

WAKEFIELD (Gilbert), on English
literary style, 443-444
\Yallachia, connection of the gipsies

with, 579

Wapiti, the, 456-457
Wapiti-running on the Plain*, 593-611
AVard (A. W.), on Chaucer, reviewed.

329-330
Washington, city of, 68

— authority of the Speaker in the
House of Representatives at, 49-50

— rules for closing a Parliamentary
debate at, 52-53

— plan of expediting discussions in
committee at, 1 044

Wedderburn (Sir David), Iceland, 218-

236
Westminster Assembly of Divines, their

discussion on the Lord's Day, 703-

704
Wexford, management of Lord Ports-

mouth's estates in, 672-676
WTieatfields, our Neic, at Home, 761-

765
Wheeler (J. Talboys), his history of

India and the frontier States, reviewed,

328
Wrhigs, conduct of the, on the Irish

Disturbance Bill, 565
W'ilson (E. D. J.), The Cloture in Par-

liament, 42-55

— The Unstable Equilibrium of Parties,
564-577

Wilson (Sir Rivers), his appointment to

the presidency of the Egyptian Com-

mission, 465
Wine, French, import duty on, 104-

106

Witches, torture of, 707-708
Wrolseley (Sir Garnet) on the Basuto

war, 935
Wordsworth, poetry of, 204-206, 748-

749
WTorkmen, participation of, in their

employers' profits, 370
Works, Metropolitan Board of, 774-776

VENOPHON, his treatise on
A 560-563

LOXD03T t PRUTTBD BT

SPOTTISTTOOIJE AXD ( O., SKW-STttEKT SQTTAEB
STBKM:

AP The Twentieth century

v.8

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